A glossary of people, places & objects in Earthsea

Now showing glossary items relating to miscellaneous objects

Empty Throne

Also known as: Throne of the Nameless Ones

Huge throne in the Hall of the Throne at the Place of the Tombs on Atuan, dedicated to the Nameless Ones. Black, encrusted with gold & jewels on its clawed arms & carved back, it is set on a high platform of red-veined marble with seven deep steps leading up to it. It is taboo to set foot on the three highest steps, which are covered in a thick layer of dust

Sources: The Eaten One, ToA; Rejoining, OW

'The throne itself was black, with a dull glimmer of precious stones or gold on the arms and back, and it was huge. A man sitting in it would have been dwarfed; it was not of human dimensions. It was empty. Nothing sat in it but shadows.'

[The Eaten One, ToA]

Fountain

Fountains appear to be a reasonably common ornamental feature of towns. Mentions include the Court of the Fountain in the School of Wizardry on Roke, a fountain in Hort Town on Wathort, at which women gather to gossip, and the famous fountains of Shelieth on Way, commemorated in the Deed of the Young King as 'the silver harp of the waters'^a

Sources: The Rowan Tree, FS; Hort Town, FS (a)

Morred's High Seat

Also known as: Throne of the kingdom

Throne of the King of All the Isles. During Lebannen's reign, a high-backed wooden chair on a dias at one end of the throne room in the New Palace of Havnor City, bearing on its back a carving of a flying heron with a twig of rowan in its beak. Described as gold and crimson before Lebannen restored it

Sources: Bettering, T; The Dragon Council, OW

'…the throne of the kingdom had stood at the end of the long room: a wooden chair, high-backed, on a plain dais. It had once been sheathed in gold. That was long gone; the small golden nails had left rents in the wood where they had been torn out. Its silken cushions and hangings had been stolen or destroyed by moth and mouse and mold. Nothing showed it to be what it was but the place in which it stood and a shallow carving on the back, a heron flying with a twig of rowan in its beak. That was the crest of the House of Enlad. … Lebannen had it cleaned, the decayed wood repaired and replaced, oiled and burnished back to dark satin, but left it unpainted, ungilt, bare.'

[The Dragon Council, OW]

Throne of the kingdom

See Morred's High Seat

Throne of the Nameless Ones

See Empty Throne

Throne of Thoreg

Throne of the Kargad Lands, in Awabath on Karego-At

Sources: Palaces, OW

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