See the sites 3

Between the suburbs of Tunwich and O'Kieran there is a piece of open ground, not quite a park, not quite a wasteland. It is crossed by a line of worm-riddled pines that once might have been a windbreak. It is mowed occasionally, so there might be snakes, but mostly it is left to the joggers and walkers of dogs. Perhaps it dreams of the houses that can be seen glowing in the night all around it; perhaps it is glad to be free of them.

On the northern side of the space there is a single stone, about a metre tall, carved with scrollwork and a beady-eyed face that is not Celtic, Norse or Scythian. The stone itself seems old with its coat of lichen and moss, like an artefact of some lost indigenous culture, but it is not. It only dates back to the 1970s and the psychotic break of Charles Voss. One night in 1973 Voss discovered that consensual reality was not good enough for him and so he invented his own. In the occasionally violent transition to his new universe he decided his role was to carve guardian stones to 'cap' or block certain geomantic nexi around the City of Witches. He sought stone from particularly sympathetic places - the stone we started with originated in a quarry some 350 kilometers away - and gave them warding spirals and stony senses to do their work. He carved and placed five before the police arrested him over what he had done with his wife of 20 years, Lola.

Five out of a planned twenty-three stones are apparently enough to slow the onset of the ley-catastrophe Voss predicted, but he still worries about the shortfall in his ward in Greyhame Psychiatric Hospital, a safe 200 kilometers away in the Town of Rams. Another eight are still piled in his former home in Tunwich in various stages of completion. Voss had not even selected the stone for the other ten.