The High Dais of the Central Council had been designed as a sacred space of contemplative shape. Around its outer edge rose the Colonnade of the Twelve Sages. Twelve huge fluted pillars of pure white Pentelic marble, sixty arm-lengths tall, each carved with the likeness of an ancient patriarch holding a measuring rod, an inkstone, or a straight-line.
For ten thousand years, those twelve pillars had supported the massive stone upper wall that carried the weight of the upper dome. They were stone-built marvels, balanced so delicately upon their stepped stone bases that an earthquake of the fourth size would cause them merely to sway like tall pines in a wind. They took in the ground motion without fracturing.
The craftsmanship of the row of stone pillars belonged to the First Foundation, an era when the masons worked without iron hammers, using sonic chisels tuned to the natural hum of the stone. So, the Pentelic marble was not merely dressed. It was harmonized. Under normal conditions, the twelve pillars acted as giant sound dampeners. It took in the terrifying shakes of the underground waterfalls and drained away the ground-shaking energy through their deep foundations into the mountain’s roots. They were the dampening pins of a huge sound bell.
