Devil's Rest

Devil's Rest is the ancestral seat of House Marlowe, a massive black granite castle raised on an acropolis of white limestone above the coastal city of Meidua on Delos. Seen from a distance it appears as a black smear above the city, dark even in full sunlight, as though always cast in cloud-shade. Its Gothic construction — buttressed spires and knuckled masonry — and black granite walls drink the gray sunlight. The entire complex is monitored by camera drones hidden within molding scrollwork but not entirely concealed.

The Great Keep is the central structure rising fifty levels, housing the throne room with its ranks of dark columns supporting frescoed vaults depicting the death of Old Earth and the colonization of Delos, a forced-perspective trick making the archon appear larger than life, and iron doors three times a man's height counterbalanced so precisely that even a child can open them. The throne itself is wreathed in shadow with two curving horns of brass at its back. The Dome of Bright Carvings — a rotunda with a stained glass mosaic roof — serves as the council chamber. Family quarters are accessed by lift-tram; Hadrian's bedroom has curved vaulted ceilings painted with constellations, ebony rails in cream plaster with stars' names in brass inlay, and walls lined with bookshelves chaotically stuffed, along with an original Rudas painting and a gaming station.

Beneath the castle, accessed through a narrow arch, lies a necropolis with stalactite-lined cavern ceilings and still pools, where family ashes and canopic jars are interred under statues of at least thirty-one past Lords Marlowe. Prior Eusebia conducts the evening Elegy and has led funeral processions into this necropolis. The prefecture capitol — a separate deltoid building near the castle barbican topped by a central dome and three square towers — houses Lord Alistair's ministries and pinnacle office, accessible via underground tramways.

The grounds include a rock garden below the scholiast cloister, reachable by a set of stairs; a topiary garden with bushes clipped into the shapes of men and dragons, nearly black in silver sunlight; a colonnade whose inner pillars are overgrown with almost blue-black ivy; and a wall-walk connecting sections via raised viaducts. The seawall forms a massive, nearly semicircular arc of black stone constituting the easternmost expanse of the keep, with triangular merlons like saw teeth and views over steel-gray water crashing on cliffs below; Sabine's Tower lies almost a full mile around this arc from the scholiasts' cloister. The plaza adjacent to the main keep entrance features an ebony podium, a sound system, a statue of Lord Julian, and a fitted hole in the ground for erecting a whipping post for public punishments. The Horned Gate is the main exit from the acropolis to the path down from the plateau.