
The Firbolg king inserted the key into the lock, and twisted it, causing an audibleklink . "You may be
able to see something from the observatory that you couldn't from the Heath or Griwen Tower."
The heavy door, bound in long-rusted iron, swung open on recently oiled hinges with a groan,
revealing the domed room beyond. Rhapsody caught her breath. The observatory had not been
renovated yet; white cloths, frosted with layers of dust, were draped heavily, covering what appeared to
be furniture and freestanding equipment. They gleamed in the diffuse light of the room like ghosts in the
darkness.
Achmed's strong hand encircled her arm; he drew her into the room and closed the door quickly
behind them.
The room itself was square, with a ceiling that arched into a buttressed dome. It had been carved into
the peak of the mountain crag itself, the walls burnished smooth as marble. Each of the four walls
contained an enormous window, sealed shut, forgotten by Time. Ancient telescopes stood at each of the
windows, oddly jointed, with wide eyepieces. Magic and history hung, static, in the air of the long-sealed
chamber. It had a bitter taste, the taste of dust from the crypt, of shining hope long abandoned.
Rhapsody surveyed the rest of the room quickly—shelves of ancient logbooks and maps, intricate
frescoes on the quartered ceiling, depicting the four elements of water, air, fire, and earth at each
directional point, with the fifth, there, represented by a covered globe suspended from the apex in the
center. She would have loved the opportunity to examine the room thoroughly, but Achmed was
gesturing impatiently from in front of the western window.
'Here," he said, and pointed at the vast, panoramic horizon stretching in all directions below them.
"Have a look."
She came to the window and gazed out at the land coming awake with first-light. The view was more
breathtaking than any other she had ever seen; here, in the tower-top pinnacle of the highest crag in the
Teeth, she felt suspended in the air itself, perched above the whispering clouds below, with the world
quite literally at her feet.Small wonder the Cymrians thought themselves akin to gods , she mused in awe.
They stood in the heavens and looked down at the Earth, by the work of their own hands. It must have
been a very long fall .
Once this observatory looked out over the realm of Canrif, the marvel of the Age, a kingdom of all
the races of men, built from the unforgiving mountains by the sheer will of the Cymrian Lord, Gwylliam,
sometimes called the Visionary, known of late by less flattering epithets. Now, centuries after the war in
which the Cymrians destroyed themselves and the dominion they had held over the continent, their
ancient mountainous cities, their observatories and libraries, vaults and storerooms, palaces and
roadways were the domain of the Bolg, the descendants of the marauding tribes that overran Canrif at
the end of the bloody Cymrian War.
The gray light of early morning flattened the panorama of the Teeth into thick shards of
semi-darkness. As the sun rose it would illuminate the breathtaking sight, glittering on the millions of crags
and fissures, the abundance of canyons and high forests, and the ruins of the ancient city of Canrif, the
expansive edifice of a civilization that had been carved out of the face of the multicolored mountains.
Now, however, with but moments of night remaining, the jagged range appeared flat and stolid, silent and
dead in the sight of the world.
Rhapsody watched as the first tentative rays of morning sun cracked the black vault of night, favoring
certain mountaintops with its purest light, a light that made the ever-present icecaps on the peaks of the