The Zenith Crown

The name has two senses. The Zenith Crown is the whole plateau: a high table of pale stone, about three days’ walk from east to west, thin soil over limestone and marble, with pastures of goats and sheep, walled fields of barley and rye, and to the east the High Woods of grey oak and beech. It is the highest inhabited place in Lumen, and for a thousand years the eclipse stood nearest the highest point of the sky above it. The Crown, on its own, is the rim of the plateau at Auren: a chest-high wall with battlements which, seen from the forests below, really does look like a crown set on the plateau’s head.

Against the wall, facing the sky, stand thirty-six marble statues: the twelve figures of the Meridian Hall, repeated three times. For a thousand years they cast the same shadows, and stepping on one brought bad luck. Since the Breaking the shadows turn, and children run from statue to statue trying to step on all of them before the Sun moves.

It is on this wall that Teo weeps alone for Edrin, and where he becomes a Weaver.