Out west, where three roads meet at the foot of Thunderhead, the biggest of the mine mountains, stands the Three Roads: a coaching inn you can walk right through. Look for the tankard on the map, or follow the dirt road west from beyond Longmeadow — the inn faces straight down it, so it is the first thing you see when you get there.
- The hall is open through its middle to the roof timbers, with a wheel of candles hanging in it, a long bar along the back, and a great fire in the south gable.
- Upstairs, a gallery runs round the hall, with eight rooms off it.
- The cellar is down the stair beside the end of the bar.
- The stable yard is on the mountain side, through the gate or the side door.
Stand at its door and rest, and the Three Roads is your home — /home brings you back to its porch from anywhere, and so does waking up.
Round the crossing is Thunderfoot: a smithy for the miners under the mountain, a handful of houses along the roads, and a fingerpost pointing down all three.
South-east of the inn, in plain sight from its porch, stands the Anvil: a flat-topped mesa of red rock some thirty metres high, with sheer cliffs all round — nobody climbs those. The way up is the path cut into the notch that faces the inn: five ramps switching back and forth across it, a fire basket at every turn. On top there is a cairn with a pennant, a few wind-bent pines, and a bench at the head of the path looking back down on the crossroads. On the map it is the little flat-topped rock.