Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

Except for a large, open circle in the centre of the village, the Stonedown looked as erratically laid out as if it had fallen off the mountain not long ago. But this impression was belied by the smooth sheen of the stone walls and the fiat roofs. And when he looked more closely, Covenant saw that the Stonedown was not in fact unorganized. All the buildings faced in toward the centre.
None of them had more than one story, and all were stone, with fiat slabs of rock for roofs; but they varied considerably in size and shape- some were round, others square or rectangular, and still others so irregular from top to bottom that they seemed more like squat hollow boulders than buildings.
As she and Covenant started down toward the Stonedown, Lena said, “Five times a hundred people of the South Plains live here-  rhadhamaerl , Shepherds, Cattleherds, Farmers, and those who Craft. But Atiaran my mother alone has been to the Loresraat.” Pointing, she added, “The home of my family is there- nearest the river.”
Walking together, she and Covenant skirted the Stonedown toward her home.

Six: Legend of Berek Halfhand

DUSK was deepening over the valley. Birds gathered to rest for the night in the trees of the foothills. They sang and called energetically to each other for a while, but their high din soon relaxed into a quiet, satisfied murmur. As Lena and Covenant passed behind the outer houses of the Stonedown, they could again hear the river contemplating itself in the distance. Lena was silent, as if she were containing some excitement or agitation, and Covenant was too immersed in the twilit sounds around him to say anything. The swelling night seemed full of soft communions- anodynes for the loneliness of the dark. So they came quietly toward Lena's home.
It was a rectangular building, larger than most in the Stonedown, but with the same polished sheen on the walls. A warm yellow light radiated from the windows. As Lena and Covenant approached, a large figure crossed one of the windows and moved toward a farther room.
At the corner of the house, Lena paused to take Covenant's hand and squeezed it before she led him up to the doorway.
The entry was covered with a heavy curtain. She held it aside and drew him into the house. There she halted. Looking around swiftly, he observed that the room they had entered went the depth of the house, but it had two curtained doors in either wall. In it, a stone table and benches with enough space to seat six or eight people occupied the middle of the floor. But the room was large enough so that the table did not dominate it.
Cut into the rock walls all around the room were shelves, and these were full of stoneware jars and utensils, some obviously for use in cooking and eating, others with functions which Covenant could not guess. Several rock stools stood against the walls. And the warm yellow light filled the chamber, glowing on the smooth surfaces and reflecting off rare colours and textures in the stone.
The light came from fires in several stone pots, one in each corner of the room and one in the centre of the table; but there was no flicker of flames- the light was as steady as its stone containers. And with the light came a soft smell as of newly broken earth.
After only a cursory glance around the chamber; Covenant's attention was drawn to the far end of the room. There on a slab of stone against the wall sat a huge granite pot, half as tall as a man. And over the pot, peering intently at its contents, stood a large man, a great pillar of a figure, as solid as a boulder. He had his back to Lena and Covenant, and did not seem to be aware of them. He wore a short brown tunic with brown trousers under it, but the leaf pattern woven into the fabric at his shoulders was identical to Lena's. Under the tunic, his massive muscles bunched and stretched as he rotated the pot. It looked prodigiously heavy, but Covenant half expected the man to lift it over his head to pour out its contents.
There