Highstone

Highstone lies among hills higher than the rest of the Line, two days’ walk west of Ashford, where the Order Road ends at the edge of the Meridian Plain. It was a village of miners of old bronze, twenty-six houses of stone and turf around a wide well, some with stone porches and forges. The Pilgrims took the goats, the tools and what they could carry; they left the beds, the big pots, the looms, the stacked firewood: a village empty of people and full of things.

The Order made use of it. The houses became stores and stables, and the forge of the oldest house became the workshop of the Engravers. The camp was pitched on the blackened hills around it. It was here that Teo was held and from here that Sera got him out; here too that the Order celebrates the Zenith Rite.