“The people, or whatever they were who made the Great
Charters, put three in bloodlines and two in physical constructions: the Wall
and the Great Stones. All the lesser stones draw their power from one or the
other”.
There are six Great Stones and two were just being broken,
broken with the blood of his own sisters, sacrificed by his Free Magic minions
as we approached. I saw their last seconds, the faint hope in their clouding
eyes, as the Queen’s barge came floating across the water. I felt the shock of
the stones breaking and I remember Rogir, stepping up behind the Queen, a saw
edged dagger striking so swiftly across her throat. He had a cup, a golden cup,
one of the Queen’s own, to catch the blood, but I was too slow, too slow…”
Rogir had jumped from the barge and was wading to the
Stones, holding the cup. His four sorcerers were waiting, dark-cowled, around
the third stone, the next to be broken. I couldn't reach him in time, I knew. I
threw my sword. It flew straight and true, talking him just above the heart.
The cup dropped, blood floating on the water like oil.
She smelled the reservoir before she saw it, somewhere
around the thirty-ninth step. A chill, damp smell that cut into her nose and
lungs and filled her with the impression of a cold expanse.
Then the steps ended in a doorway on the edge of a vast,
rectangular hall – a giant chamber where stone columns rose up like a forest to
support a roof sixty feet above her head, and the floor before her wasn’t
stone, but water as cold and still as stone. Around the walls, pallid shafts of
sunlight thrust down in counterpoint to the supporting columns, leaving discs
of light on the water. These made the rim of the reservoir a complex study of
light and shade, but the centre remained unknown, cloaked in heavy darkness.
“It’s about waist-deep” = The Water
But the quiet slosh-slosh of their wading seemed very loud,
echoing and spreading up and out through the cistern, adding to the only other
noise – the regular dripping of water, plopping loudly from the roof, or more
sedately down the columns.
The luminous light came from a diamond of protection, the
four cardinal marks glowing under the water, line of force sparkling between
them.
In the middle of the diamond, a man-shaped figure stood,
empty hands outstretched, as if he had once held weapons. Frost rimed his
clothes and face obscuring his features, and ice girdled the water around his
middle.
The reservoir was a vast hall of silence, cold stone and
even colder water. The Great Stones stood in the darkness at its centre,
invisible from the landing where the palace stairs met the water. Around the
rim of the reservoir, shafts of sunlight came down from the grilled openings
high above, casting cross-hatched ripples of light across the mirror-smooth
surface of the water. Tall columns of white marble rose up like mute sentinels
between the patch’s of light, supporting the ceiling above.
The water was, as always, extremely clear. Sam dipped his
hand in it as helped his father untie the barge that was moored at the end of
the Palace steps. As the water trickled between his fingers, he saw Charter
marks sparkle briefly. All the water in the reservoir absorbed magic from the
Great Charter Stones. Closer to the centre, the water was almost more magic
than anything else, and was no longer cold – or even wet.
The barge was not much more than a raft with gilded knobs on
each corner.
Out there in the centre where no sunlight fell. The Great
Charter Stones glowed with all the millions of charter marks that moved in and
on them, but most of the time it was only a faint luminescence, no rival even
to the filtered sunlight.
The barge passed between two columns and Sam’s eyes slowly
adjusted to the strange twilight. He could see the six Great Stones ahead now,
tall monoliths of dark grey, their irregular shapes quit different from the
smooth masonry of the columns and only a third of their height. And there was
the other barge, floating in the centre of the rings of Stones.
Extra
For a moment nothing happened. Then other marks caught the
light and the golden flames spread to cover the whole Stone, roaring up like a
crown-caught wildfire. More marks leapt to the next Stone till it kindled too,
and then to the next, until all six Great Stones were ablaze, and streams of
bright Charter marks flew up and across to weave a tracery of light like a dome
above the two barges.Looking over the side, Sam saw that the golden fire had
spread underwater too, forming a crazy maze of marks that covered the reservoir
floor.
Things I would like the Diorama to contain
- Six Charter Stones (two broken) with moving Magic symbol texture
- A large ornate circular plinth thing
- Pillars and water
- A golden goblet with blood
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