Glass Children
In the Kingdom of Not where the river that ate Maroosh winds through the hills that were planted after the funeral of the Queen of Knots, there is a small square temple. Its construction is rough native stone, and it could never hold a true band of the faithful, for its ceiling is only five feet above its floor. Its hewn pews are too low and close together for adult worshippers; this is a temple for children.
At the front of the temple, under the single great slab of a roof, hangs an altar of glass and iron. The wrought-iron frame holds together the seventeen panes of white glass and eight panes of red glass which make up the altar, and five heavy masonry screws hold it in place. When the wind that stains skin blows through the hills that were planted, the altar sways gently.
To reach the temple requires a six-day journey overland, four days up the river from the village of Maroosh’s Shame and two days hiking uphill and downhill to the proper glen in the wilds. Its precise location is considered a state secret by the Royal government, but not an especially well-guarded one.
This place is sacred to the memory of the Queen of Knots. It is not a tomb or a cenotaph; it commemorates a late era in the Queen’s life, when she shook the pillars of heaven and called the Exemplars her servants. It is a temple to the Glass Children.
They are gone now. Their solemn eyes no longer stare out from under the sewer-grates of the canyon-city Misery, and their spun-glass feet no longer tread the paths of the Kingdom of Not. There are no knots to bind your liver hidden under the crossroads. There are no knots to bend your brain hidden in the wells. There are no knots to turn your blades hidden in the armories. The Seven Lances of Not are straight, with no bends, twists, or knots.
But there was a time when we were all Glass Children, when the Queen of Knots took us and changed us to suit her whims. There was a timeless period of misrule, which ended abruptly and violently and, as far as most of the folk of the Kingdom are concerned, the less said about it the better.
Now the only traces of the Queen’s actions are squirreled away in reference books, mainly, discounting (as most do) the purely physical evidence: gorges dug, mountains raised, forests burned. The temple in the hills is one of only a meager handful of memorials, but it is maintained diligently and in the spring when the river floods and the risk of storm damage is greatest, agents of the Royal government visit it, and survey the year’s worth of decay, and make repairs as needed.
Once they found a hole in the glass of the altar, cut exactly in the shape of a child. The soft wrought-iron frame was entirely undamaged, and there were no shards of broken glass on the floor of the temple, nor any evidence of visitors.