The place
You are standing on a wooden warf that juts out over a wide, dark river. On the far banks, under a blue-grey sky laced with a latticework of stars lays a vast palace that stretches as far as the eyes can see in either direction. Every room, every graceful tower, every wall is adorned with lights-thousands upon thousands of lights, throwing their dancing reflections onto the churning surface of the river.
The river itself is filled with boats of all shapes and sizes, festooned with bobbing lanterns of different colors. Music drifts across the water, beautiful haunting music, the sounds of harps and flutes and rattling tambourines accompanied by merry singing and laughter.
Rising in a long, slender span to your left is an ornate bridge of whire stone with intricate flowers engraved in either end. The bridge is lit with flickering torches along its whole length, so that its delicate arc is mirrored in the rippling black water.
You climb a set of stone steps onto the bridge, breathing in the sweet aroma of the flowers hanging in baskets all along the bridge. Among other, stranger perfumes, you recognize evening primrose and moonflower.
At the end of the bridge, a long tongue of white flagstones leads to an archway on a high and imposing wall, beyond the arch is a square courtyard. A hundred windows cast light onto you as you cross the courtyard to another step of stairs and through an arched doorway.
You walk through a long, candlelit corridor with oak paneled walls and tall, mullioned windows. Paintings hang on the walls-portraits of beautiful people in fabulous clothes. You note with some interest that the children in all of these paintings have fine, shining, gossamer like wings, but the adults are all wingless. Beyond vast closed doors, you can hear the sound of tinkling music and voices, but the corridor itself is empty and you move on.
You pass through a series of rooms lit by lacelike candelabras and filled with such a display of ornate furniture, elegant statuary, and exquisite tapestries and artworks that you almost feel as though you are walking through a museum.
Your eye is drawn to a low doorwa that leads to a narrow spiral staircase, at the top there is another door, through it you can once again hear the sounds of laughter and of bright shining music. As you throw open the door, the noise suddenly becomes much louder and you find yourself in a high gallery overlooking a huge hall with a high, elaborately vaulted wooden roof and dark paneled walls hung with tapestries. Flickering yellow candles were set in iron sconces between the tapestries and two crystal chaneliers, also lit with candles, hung from the ceiling.
The hall is full of people, dressed in dazzling, almost elizabethan style clothing. At the far end of the hall is a long, wide table filled with trays and bowls and dishes of alien looking food, but you can clearly smell the delicious scent of roast meat. As well as you can clearly see a small band in the corner, playing curious looking instruments. At the center or the table are two thrones under a scarlet awning. Seated side by side on the thrones are a man and a woman.
The man is dressed in a fur trimmed black doublet, which is covered in white embroidery, its puffed sleeves are slashed to reveal flashes of a white lining. He is unadorned by jewelry aside from a simple white crown set atop his starlight blonde hair, encrusted with glimmering black jewels. He has high, slanted cheekbones, and deep, piercing blue eyes.
The woman is wearing a dark emerald dress with a lacework of white embroidery over the long, slashed sleeves. She has a high ruff that sparkles as if there are white jewels sewn into it. Her hair is a silky black waterfall that cascades down her back in a river of lustrous waves, at the top of her lightly pouffed hair is a silver coronet set with black stones that flashes in the candlelight.
A few other people sit at the table, but most of the others are dancing. The steps of the dance are slow and intricate; the men and woman weaving in and out of one another in an elaborate pattern that never faltered.
A small slender young woman sits at the kings left. She is wearing a pale blue gown trimmed with lace and beaded with sapphire jewels. She had bright, wide-set green eyes, snow white skin, and vividly red lips. Set among the curls of her updrawn red hair is a silver circlet with one black jewel shaped like a teardrop set directly across her brow. A tall and stately woman whose facials are the same as those of the red haired woman sits on the queens left. Her hair is the same lustrous black as the queens, but her eyes, set in a heart shaped face with slanted cheekbones, are a deep violet and framed by thick lashes. Her gown is of lilac silk with slashes in the wide sleeves revealing the lining of deep purple shot silk.
There is an empty chair and an untouched set of silver utensils next to her, but after your initial draw to this obviously royal family you continue your examination of the hall.
There is a huge stone fireplace set in one of the walls, but the fire is not lit and the hearth is filled with vases of flowers. After a few more moments of hushed admiration you exit the gallery and continue your exploration. Servants in holly green livery swarm everywhere, weilding brooms and brushes and cloths for polishing. They pay you no mind and the corridors echo with the buzz of their happy, laughing voices. Once, A small servant boy glances up at you, his eyes filled with a timid curiosity, but it soon passed, and you continue on your journey.
You slip inside a partly open doorway and into a huge circular hall with a high domed ceiling. Shafts of starlight pour in through tall, slender windows, brightening the great well of air. The floor is patterned with spiraling rings of black and white tiles, and tiers or ornate wooden galleries soar up around you, linked by winding staircases. The curving walls on every level are clad in shelf after shelf of books. Thousands of them, and there is a kind of brooding, scholarly hush in the hall that reminds you of a cathedral and encourages you to walk softly and speak in hushed tones. You creep through the royal library and down a series of winding stairs until you reach the ground floor. There is a plethora of activity along the corridor to your left, so you take it, curiosity burning through your veins.
The seamstress's workroom is a long low chamber filled with warm bright light, noise, and activity. The walls are lined with shelving that hold bales and rolls of every colored fabric imaginable. From opened chests spill foaming froths of lace, sinuous rivers of silk, and tumbling mounds of cotton dyed in a rainbow of colors. Most of the floor space is filled with long tables where cloth is being measured and cut by women dressed in simple blue gowns.
Out one of the many windows you can see a square ivy-clad tower with battlements and a steeply pitched slate roof. The magic user's apartments you realize with sudden certainty.
You leave the seamstress's workroom by way of a narrow servants corridors and find yourself in the palace woman's apartments. All are lavish and they are connected by a large central chamber with a framed picture of the king. He was obviously thought of highly by the palace's ladies. It is a lovely room, like a long gallery, with gable windows set into the sloping ceiling. It is carpeted, a rarity in this palace, an the walls are hung with tapestries. The furnishings are lush and luxurious, with embroidered couches and armchairs piled deep with velvet cushions. You notice a pair of sewing frames with half finished embroidery samplers on them, next to them is a small chess table. At one end of the room, the floor is raised to form a small dais, upon which stood a few more of those strange and elegant musical instruments. In the middle of the platform is something that appears akin to a piano only with a smaller keyboard and when you press one of the keys it sounds like a chorus of pure bells.
The room makes you feel warm and cheery but as you glance out one of the side windows you view a sight that makes your blood run cold. Nestled between a pair of cracked mountains rising on the far side of this seemingly endless palace of splendor was another, smaller palace perched high on a bleak cliff. A great, dark castle with massive stone walls and time gnawed battlements. Within the walls were rows of sharp pointed towers, and turrets, and keeps. A narrow road zigzags its way up the mountain face to a fortified gatehouse where red and black banners flutter. Crimson flames prance high on the walls, watch fired troubled by the shrieking winds, Yellow and white lights shone out from lofty windows. The castle appears ancient and strong, but it gives you a mournsome, troubled, watching it clinging there to its high pinnacle, so deep in the heart of those unfriendly mountains. With a sad sigh, you walk to the other end of the room to peer out at the palace grounds.
The long green lawns between the brick buildings sloped gently down to the river. The palace was truly expansive, the great red brick buildings with their cream colored stone ornamentations and their arched windows and slotted battlements extended eastward along the river into the hazy blue distance, tower beyond tower, wall after wall, bastions, turrets, and gatehouses, spreading out alongside winding river as far as you can see. At the very edge of your sight, the river becomes wider, and you can just make out large wharves and jetties and great sailing ships with tall masts and rigging like cobwebs under the blazing sun, To the south, across the river, the land seemed to be one giant green forest that went on forever. A few bridges span the flowing blue water, including the one with the white towers that you first arrived at. Where the bridges met the far bank, there were always a few clustered houses and mooring places, and you can vaguely make out the impression of roads pushing their way in under the trees. You make your way to the north of the room. To the north, the land is more open. Close under the walls of the palace, you see wide, ornate gardens with yellow pathways and colorful flower beds. Farther away are scattered clumps of woodland but there are also wide stretches of grass, like a vast park. There is a lake of clear blue water encircled by reeds and willows. In a ring of tall trees you glimpse the slender white spires of a solitary building and beyond that the land rises into rolling hills of purple heather. You lean further out the open window and glimpse a triangular clump of greenery, as you examine it carefully you see that its a tight network or neatly tended hedges, A maze.
You walk slowly down the winding stairway and through the succession of function rooms and gorgeous sun filled courtyards, shaded ivy cloisters, and a vast series of enclosed formal gardens. A few woman in sky blue gowns are watching over a group of children as they play. The children range from babies to about nine or ten years old and all have long slender gossamer wings sprouting through slots in the backs of the children's clothing. The adult women are wingless. (Noticing a pattern?)
After a a while longer of walking you reach a wide flight of marble stairs, they come to a high domed lobby with pure white walls. A pair of tall white doors stand closed ahead of you, the royal ladies' apartments. The rooms are very large, with a high ceiling of intricately decorated plaster. The rugs and furniture are all either white or ivory colored-the wood as pale as cream, the upholstered chairs and couches as white as snow, Several doors open from the room and at the far end are tall windows that stretch from floor to ceiling, draped with white lace. Scattered about the room are personal items; a sewing frame with a half finished pattern, a harp of in the corner, a few books lay open on a low table. A pair of glass doors lead out onto a white washed cobblestone patio with a stone fountain. The pathway leading from the patio led to the stone tower she'd seen earlier. It is rather gloomy but not nearly as much as the castle you saw earlier; its walls are all mantled by wide ivy leaves and all the windows are small and dark. At the base of the tower are three grey stone steps that lead up to a square black door over which hang long tendrils of ivy. There are no windows at ground level.
The culture/world
The story
