The school of light and darkness
Constructed on a framework of narrow pillars and flying buttresses, the great school seemed almost to be floating; an illusion enhanced by the ornamental lake which ran the length of its front wall. Soaring up gracefully, storey after storey, each one designed to combine light-filled promontories with darkness-defined alcoves which pitched and shifted with the passing of the sun and phases of the moon, the School of Light and Darkness had been designed to illuminate and reflect.
There were countless blazing lanterns fixed to its outer walls, at once lightening the facade and casting dark shadows; while its windows - that great mosaic of crystal-glazed openings which lanced every wall - were divided into those through which you could see into the opulent interior, and those which reflected back what was outside.
Wind Jackal and Quint approached the front entrance, where the crowd was at its thickest and most agitated. Elbows were flying and voices were raised as the academics jostled and scuffled with one another. In front of them, a line of impassive flat-head goblins of the Sanctaphrax Guard blocked their way, their arms folded and weapons stayed.
Representatives of every school were gathered there, Quint realized. Raintasters, cloud watchers, mistsifters; scholars of gloom, of gust, of drizzle, dawn and dusk, all jockeying for position and vying with one another for attention.
This was the grand and most prestigious Sanctaphrax institution of them all, and there were few academics who did not wear sombre grey robes of the School of Light and Dark who had ever managed to get past the Treasury Guard and fewer still who had been allowed to proceed beyond this entrance hall.
Quint gasped as he followed the others through pointed archway and found himself in a cavern atrium, so vast that a whole flotilla of sky ships could have comfortably moored there. Gallery after ascending gallery ringed the atrium, each one supported upon a forest of slender, fluted pillars. They rose up as far eye could see, a broad, encircling staircase linking one with the other, and were crowned at the top by a vast dome, painted on its concave face with intricate scenes of light and darkness.
This same theme - light and darkness - was repeated throughout the great school. There were chambers brightly lit that they were blinding, with marble walls and crystal chandeliers; there were also dark rooms, lined with black leadwood and wreathed in sombre shadows. And everywhere, like grey wraiths, the academics of the School of Light and Darkness moved about on soundless feet, absorbed in their various tasks, calculations or hushed discussions.
They went from chamber to chamber, muttering under their breath, or clustered together in twos, threes small whispering groups.
