Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Brix is a young traveller who comes over the col burned out, his walking-party gone on ahead without him, and stays the summer at the col-house while the road grows back into his legs. He is Toll a few years earlier, near enough — which makes him the one the keeper watches most closely and helps least, because some things only mend when they are left to mend on their own terms.
Caer is the road-warden who first comes to survey the newly-built house at the top of the col, back in its…
Fenwick is the mapmaker who crosses the col each spring and autumn — the col-house's newspaper and its window…
Hetty keeps the col-house supplied, hauling barley and stores up the pass twice a season and refusing, most…
Marga kept the col-house for the better part of a lifetime before Toll, and she is the one who took him in…
Oswyn is the founder — the road-builder who raised the col-house from a shepherd's ruined shelter and became…
Toll keeps the col-house — the highest, hardest, most necessary rest-house on the mountain road — and he…