Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
The col-house is the flagship of the Wayhouses — a stone rest-house at the very top of a high mountain pass, the most exposed and the most needed of them all. Inside there is a hearth, a long table, a single deep-set south window, and a kettle always on its hook. Built long ago from a shepherd's ruined shelter and kept by one keeper after another, it exists for one reason: to be a warm place with water at the top of a hard road, for anyone who needs it. No one is turned away. No one is asked to earn the door.