The Great Chamber of Spires was vast enough to house four river barges end to end, with clearance beneath the hammered-beam timber roof for their masts to stand unstepped. Two rows of massive red stone columns, brought down three hundred years ago from the mountain quarries of the north on iron-clad rollers, supported the high galleries where the lesser nobility and the town aldermen of Crown-Reach sat in tier upon tier of dark oak benches.
At the far end of the hall, raised five steps above the polished gray stone of the floor, stood the throne. It wasn’t a gold-trimmed chair of soft cushions. But an ancient seat carved from a single block of dark gray granite, its arms worn smooth by the hands of twelve ages of kings.
King Alden IV sat upon it without the heavy ritual mantle of state. He wore a simple buff-leather riding coat over a dark wool doublet, his boots scuffed from the long ride from the southern border. There, his armies had spent the last two months dismantling the private toll-fortresses of the rebellious march-lords. He wasn’t yet forty, but the lines around his eyes were carved deep, like channels cut by salt water through limestone. His right shoulder leaned slightly against the stone arm of the throne as if the weight of his iron-rimmed crown were an actual physical load that needed careful balancing.
