customs post
Where the road from elsewhere ends: a stone post as tall as a man on the dry shore below the plateau, a brass lamp on its head that has not gone out in living memory, and beside it the Keeper's lodge of two rooms. Every traveller stands at the post and is measured: the length of their shadow on the flagstones at the ninth hour, or, if they come at another hour, computed by the Keeper's chain and tables; the grain is noted, any seam, any lag. The chit he writes is the first line of their entry in...
Located in The Ledger of Shadows.