The Unhushed Tower

A gravesinger's spire on the crags' barrow road, climbed floor by floor through the court of dead he raised instead of let rest — the first work of the Ash-Tongue name, and the thing the Unsealing make pilgrimage to.

Where every other barrow on the crag road was cut to keep the dead down, the Unhushed Tower was raised to bring them up. Corr Ash-Tongue built it as a stair: each grave-hall stacked on the last, each landing a deeper class of the risen, climbing toward the seat at the top where he refused the Last Guest's closing on himself and has never let it fall. The wights still answer the old names on the walls — the Unclosed, kept from a proper ending by his working, not by any song. The Unsealing climb it on pilgrimage and copy the wards backward; the Cinder Quorum's Sevda Ash-Tongue, who carries the first gravesinger's name without his leave, means to climb it to the top. Most who go in are counted among the court by the third landing.