"Step back with them. The doors do not look." – the old keeper
THE GATE BOOK OF SCHARTE Last entry of the night. Bureau number 4471. The grey comes up the valley from below, not from above; the Lower Town's lanterns go out first, terrace by terrace, and the road comes out of the dark with the people still on it, twelve, standing where they stood when I said no, because nobody goes down to the inn until the doors close. Then the gate wall comes out of the dark. Then, for the length of perhaps two breaths, the notch: the pass, a wedge of paler sky between the two black ridges, directly above the arch, with the cloud pouring over it like water over a lip. I looked at it once, which the officer may. It is a notch. It is nothing. I understand why the boatbuilder sold the yard. The three went through at the hour I said the word, one at a time, each through the arch past the chair, each standing, and the strokes are on the slate: three. The man with the twenty stories went first; he put the bundle down at the chapel, the chaplain tells me, and took it ...
From the lore of The Last Pass.