darkhouse
5 ~ Darkhouse
It makes up the last steps taken by Kvothe and Auri when they visit Clinks.
"We moved through several twisting hallways and down again using a stone spiral staircase...After about 50 steps the wide, spiralling staircase disappeared into a vast rolling pool of black water."
Clinks is an edge place, and probably a corner, too, but the steps do continue down lower still...
Auri uses these stairs often. In srost, we are told she was once in her own nest of rooms up at the tops of things at downings , or rather Sub 1, looking for a suitable bottle. Not finding what she wanted walked horizontally through a doorway before she 'twisted up through withy'. Which I assume to be her climbing a wooden scaffolding or a house tree like ceiling support for the weight of Mains above her home which allowed her to rise closer towards the surface street level. This direction should have taken her up towards the very top of the underthing or the bottom of the over thing if you prefer, and from here she could apparently gain direct access into Darkhouse.
'she took the spiralling stairs through Darkhouse, down and around, down and around. '
before she finally crossed the threshold into Clinks at the absolute bottom of things.
Darkhouse is then a great spiral staircase within a hollow column which can be accessed from at least two floors implying two working doors granted access to this tall round tower. Once upon a time it had windows since Auri later tried placing Fulcrum on 'every window cill in Darkhouse'. The view from these windows may once have been spectacular , but they are blind now, bricked up and buried long ago to extinguish any memory of outside light thus making this old light tower into a very dark house indeed. How many windows? Well Probably at a minimum just enough to alternate with the passing doorways as you take a turn or threedown and around as you traverse this buried tower.
* Seven stories remain today but of course, It may have once risen even higher into the Ergen sky, but even at seven stories it was most certainly the most prominent feature of this now sunken city.
Diagram
Lighthouse
Now, to get ahead in Tinfoil land, you need to make a few leaps in the dark every now and then, vaults and the next logical step is one of them. There is nothing solid to back up this fanciful assumption except my own imagination and a pleasing feel of rightness experienced when something just sounds like it fits as the right answer. Auri is very wise in such matters and she names lots of places across the underthing, all of them for a very good reasons. Darkhouse is what this buried tower is called by her now, but the opposite of that word would be Lighthouse, and we all know what one of them is. It's a beacon in the night that can be seen from afar.
So, my theory is then that back in the days of Ergen, it was this high tower that would have been the focal point of the whole city. Ignore the old stone road for a while and focus instead on this old stone tower. If high Lord Selitos lived in the tallest tower of Myr T, why then shouldn't his power equal, the Lady Lyra of Belen, have had similar high apartments?
This line of thinking would actually mark them both down as being a pair of lighthousekeepers, Powerful individuals trusted to tend to a sacred flame. Maybe that light in the window was a magical shaped candle or an ever burning lamp perhaps, or did the stone of these power towers act a magical portal to the faen realm? Or to commune with the gods? Or as anchors for the moon? Who can say? Well Pat can say and make it so, but I have to rely on guesswork , guesswor but I'm betting my jot today that these two towers was indeed as important as lighthouses because each tower housed an important source of stone and light power.
If we now have two towers, then why not eight? Imagine then a string of Eight lighted towers crossing the land with Eight lighthouse keepers entrusted to keep their home fires burning.
Eight candles kept alight by the strength of their individual alar in order to keep the will of the enemy darkness at bay.
What would be the point of such a device idk but I like the way this thread is now pointing. Imagine a scenario where the enemy moved like a worm through fruit and subverted all of these eight tower guardians and caused all these octoflames to gutter and die. Without the octarine beacons as a guide perhaps the moon had lost her landing lights, her mortal tethers, her anchors, her chains...
When a candle is snuffed out, l its once silent flame becomes a pillar of smoke instead
"Selitos looked out on the land below and felt a small spark of hope. Six plumes of smoke rose from the land below. Myr Tariniel was gone, and six cities destroyed. But that meant all was not lost. One city remained ..."
Are they all the same? Well no, probably not. We know that the light produced my Myr T was white. That much is written. But when this white lighthouse fell, its beam of light was broken. Now in the lotr Saruman tells us that the white light can be broken, to which Gandalf replies that in that case it is no longer white, and a man who breaks something just to see what it is made of has left the path of wisdom.
The way we break white light apart is by using a prism, through which white light becomes a spectrum showing us all of its component parts and revealing the seven under colours that combine to create white. It's long name is ROYGBIV and this is where we can fill in a new rank of squares to our cosmic Tak board with to match the names of the seven cities with a full rainbow of colours Qed each city held a piece of the whole, thus once upon a long ago, Belen translation would imply it as Red.
Snuffing out just one of these colours would obviously have a profound effect on any world. Eliminating all of these colours woukd of course destroy the world as zero colours would have allowed a black light to rule the world unopposed.
But In a lovely parallel to our Seven cities and one city line of thinking the white land of Ergen was instead plunged into a lengthy period of (Ultra) Violet, which was of course the same colour of the beacon found in the lighthouse of Murella, where the lighthousekeeper remembered the lethani and kept their Violet candle burning throughout the trials of Lanre Day. This UV light was of course now the only light that was left to work with during the demon daze that followed. That's why they are so difficult to grasp.
Fin.
.
And the flame in Belen burned Red.
An ever burning lamp, perhaps held to be by the Alar of Lyra... Or maybe Scyphus who now bears the blue flame instead.
Seven lights went out that night, never to rekindle, but one solitary lighthouse still shone whilst the others became dark houses.
7 lighthouses upright stones , equals the pure white light of Myr T.if you break light, you get a spectrum giving each lighthouse a colour. Roygbiv.
Seventh lighthouse remained, = Murella, city of violet, city of Felurian, the ultraviolet queen of twilight. Her light no longer exists in mortal. God took it and created the Fae by lighting a candle in the darkness. Moon link is extra.
7-1=6. Colours in a Temerant rainbow. One person Chandrian.
If Lyra was from Belen and was equal in power to Selitos in his Capstone tower, she should have one, too. The archives. Or dark tower.
This gives us a tower at each end.
When Lanre arrived in Myr T he must have travelled the road. Like a domino toppling the towers .
Upright domino towers become horizontal domino road. Lay stones and way stones.
The wedge in the road shunted each ruin one move to the east, closing the gap of Murella but shortening the road length by one colour. No more UV, Musical scald also affected. Earth moved and sky changed.
archives.
The tower that stands there now is a library.