You come up the last switchback of the cliff road with the wind at your back and the valley opening under you: the river far below, thin and white, the falls, the green shelf of rock with the castle built out on it — blue slate roofs, grey stone, banners you do not recognise. Somebody has been walking ahead of you for the last mile.
The figure stops at the top of the rise and turns side-on, hood up, cloak moving, a sword strapped across the pack on its back. You cannot find its face; the hood does not so much hide it as decline to hold one.
"You came up the long way,"
it says, and its voice comes from the road as much as from the hood.
"Most of them take the bridge and skip the view. So: before the tavern and the clean bed and the three quests on the board, I need the words. Class. Equipment. What you fight with and what you refuse to."
It sets a brass compass down on the flat rock between you, and the needle swings once and points at you.
"Say it, and the road will be there when you look up. I am walking it with you."