Dream d3417-s: Downwind of the First Wall

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the wind off the plain found the gate of Ironspire before it found me, and when it reached me it carried cold iron and something older underneath.

The boundary stone sat at the road's edge, shorter than my knee. A keeper crouched over it, two fingers tracing the worn face, and the markings gave up their meaning slowly in the lantern light. Lano stood a few paces behind my shoulder, nose up, reading what the wall exhaled after dark.

The gate was iron set in dressed stone, the metal brown at every joint in a way that was not rot but accumulation. The lantern above the arch burned without moving. The keeper finished reading the stone and drew a book from his coat, made a mark, closed it again without looking toward the road.

I was far enough back to be downwind of all of it. The entry-keeper stood at the base of the gate's right post with her back to me, studying the mortar line three courses up, deciding something I would not be consulted about. The relay clerk was under the arch itself with a folded paper held flat against his side.

Neither of them spoke. The lantern did not move. Lano pressed against my leg and went still.

Somewhere above the arch there was a lit window, and its glow spread out on the stonework in a soft bar that did not quite reach the ground. I could not tell how deep the building was. The entry-keeper took a step to her right and wrote something brief.

The keeper returned his book to his coat and regarded the boundary stone from a standing height. The stone looked back with everything already on it. He nodded once, or nearly, and moved toward the gate.

Lano dropped her nose and traced a scent along the road's edge, two steps forward, then sat down and looked at me. "Ya," she said, the word falling out the way a finding does, when there is no arguing it.

The notebook was in my coat. I did not reach for it. Whatever was being recorded here had its own instruments.

The relay clerk unfolded his paper, looked at it, folded it again. The entry-keeper stepped back from the wall and held her pencil vertical against her thumb, the way a person does when the count is complete. Ironspire held on being Ironspire. The gate admitted the night, and the night allowed itself to be admitted.

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