Seven monumental gates in an empty valley, each opening onto a different road when its lost civic song is performed correctly.
Overview
The gates stand in a perfect arc with no wall between them. Their stone surfaces vibrate in windless weather and answer sung notes with harmonies too low for ordinary instruments.
Passing through a silent gate returns the traveller to the same side. When the correct civic song is performed, the arch may open onto a distant road, a vanished district or an unfamiliar season.
History
Tharos appears in early trade records as a city of bridges, then disappears without a recorded destruction. Later explorers found only the gates and foundations suggesting that streets had been carefully removed.
The Seven Ports used two known songs during the war to move messengers. Both melodies ceased working after the Silence, when written music across the world lost several measures.
The present record
Musicians and historians camp around the valley attempting reconstructions. The sixth gate recently answered a child's skipping rhyme and revealed a crowded market for twelve seconds.
Witnesses insist every person in the market turned toward the opening at the same moment.
Notes and record
This article combines campaign record, spoken lore and the mythic account preserved in the Earin archive.