💾 Archived View for tanelorn.city › ~vidak › old-blog › 2009-09-04-586.gemini captured on 2020-11-07 at 02:00:32. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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---
generator: pandoc
title: '2009-09-04-586'
viewport: 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes'
---
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More pillars. She'd seen all the pillars in the North, they moved up
high like these, and the clouds swirling above them made it seem like
the heavy building was evaporating marble. This temple gleamed gold and
white like all the others, and the hazy smell of incense would make all
those climbing the steps from the street to the altar giddy. This place
stood like a disinfecting spear from the pathetic markets strewn over
all over this city: every citizen lived in just as much poverty as the
next, the vast majority of the populace was impoverished and diseased,
selling whatever pathetic goods travellers brought as they blew in and
out of the city-limits.
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Narsh stood in the markets, watching the temple in the corner of her
eyes, her strange clothes largely ignored. Who cares about what a
stranger wears when they're paying your way out of the mines?
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The temple was largely open, housing few walls, what shelter it did
provide was from the sun. It was possible for groups of people to access
the bronze roof of the structure, to dry out spices and clay tablets --
to spy on the dust from the mines to the south.
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A priest knelt up from the searing heat of the temple roof, his neck and
eyelids slowly burning. He cast his gaze to the south, where the two
slight mountains dividing the city from the mines normally deflected a
black column of poisonous coal-dust back on the labourers. The sun shone
through the mountains, and the priest could see the sky in the space
above the mines just beyond. A thinning cloud of black dust had settled
in the valley between the mountains, and teams of people appeared to
emerge from the sunny black valley.
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All the people who worked in the mines beyond the mountains spilled into
the city, touching nothing, moving silently, filling every street. They
moved towards the marble temple, and from the north trucks and many
vehicles trailed dust, the mountains reflecting their sound on the city.
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Sarva Narsh moved to the temple, the priest watching this from the roof.
She removed a long gun holstered on her left leg, and two miners
followed her when she turned and entered the temple.