The innermost sanctum of the Hall was known as the Cloister of the Patriarch of the Western Shore.
Here, surrounded by thirty-foot megalithic walls of dark fiery red stone, four hundred and eighty refugees had gathered. They were the survivors of seven fishing settlements destroyed by the Conclave’s iron-clad fleets. Salt-farmers from the Outer Skerries, net-menders from the White Estuary, old dock-carpenters, and eighty orphaned children whose fathers had vanished beneath the keel of royal warships.
They sat beneath the huge legs of the four seated Patriarchs.
These four statues were monstrous in scale—eighty arm-lengths from the base of their stone stands to their hooded brows. They sat facing inward in a tight quadrangle, their huge stone knees rising ten feet above the floor flags like castle walls of living rock. The space between those four pairs of stone knees formed a natural sunken courtyard sixty paces across, sheltered on all sides by the massive dark rock thighs and calves of the ancient guardians.
Along the outer edge of the courtyard, shallow bronze oil lamps were suspended from iron ring-bolts driven into the stone stands eight hundred years ago. The flame of sheep fat and pressed fish-oil cast a warm, golden circle across the flags, warding off the bitter chill rising from the flooded outer halls. Women with calloused hands sat together on wet rushes, step by step braiding tough strands of dried bull-kelp into fishing lines and emergency bandages, their fingers moving with the rhythmic speed of people who…
