Bram Tollick (Human, the keeper's son, Casimor watch-post)

He had seen that one more than any of the others, because that one came at the evening hour, and the evening hour was when the door was barred and he had nothing to do but watch.

It walked the way it always walked. Up the hall from the dark end toward the door, on the left side, at a walking pace, the size of a person, and made of the light the way a person is made of what they are made of: not lit, made. It was the lamp's light, the colour of the lamp, and more of it than the lamp had to give at that distance, as if the hall had been saving what reached it and had put it all in one place. His father had taught him that first, before anything: bring no lamp and you will see nothing; bring one and look at the floor under it. There is nothing on the floor under it. It throws no shadow. A person has a floor under them.

It came to the fourth door on the left, and turned, the way it always turned, as if the fourth door were open, and went where the door was, and was not there.

Bram let his breath out. He had not held it on purpose; he never did, and it always went.

Beside him Pellam's girl had not moved. He had told her not to and she had not, which was better than the last one had managed, and when he looked at her she was not frightened. She had the face of somebody who has just been handed the end of a sentence.

"Aldous," she said.

"What?"

"That one. That's Aldous. The first name. Aldous, who came first, who was given the Castle and gave it to the kingdom and went in. That's the first line of the chronicle. That's him." She was looking at the fourth door on the left, which was shut, as it was always shut. "He went in. That's what the line means. He goes in. He's been going in every evening since the chronicle began and nobody told me, because nobody who told me had seen him."

Bram looked at the fourth door on the left. He had watched that one go into it four thousand times.

"It goes to the fourth door," he said, because it was the only thing he had that she did not. "Every evening. Left side. Fourth. Never the third, never the fifth. The one at the morning hour goes the other way, down, right side, all the way to where the lamp stops, and the one at midday stands at the second door for as long as it takes to bar the gate and then isn't. We don't have names. The watch doesn't keep names. We keep which way they go."

She was quiet for a while. The hall was quiet; it was always quiet, it was the one place on Krilzat with no wind in it.

"The second name is Mereth," she said. "Mereth, who stood at the door."

"Midday," said Bram, and found that his voice had gone somewhere, and brought it back. "Second door. Stands."