Mirkheim.
Returning to Starfall, Lady Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen flies near the Palomino River and above the Runeberg domain:
"Afar she glimpsed the mansion of the Runebergs themselves. She had visited there and remembered well its gracious rooms, ancestral portraits, immensity of tradition, and children's laughter for a sign that new life was ever bubbling up from beneath these things." (X, p. 147)
In England, we visit "stately homes" where indeed we see gracious rooms, ancestral portraits and children of current occupants. Poul Anderson makes Hermes seem as real as England. Anderson readers also remember the Coffin home on Rustum.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And old Daniel Coffin's mansion on Rustum was a stately home in its own right. And one he hoped his descendants would continue to use and live in.
By contrast, Tolkien gives us an example of stately homes in DECLINE, as these words of Faramir shows, when discussing the decay of Gondor in THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Book IV, Chapter V: "Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anarion had no heir."
The childless lords would have done far better to have married and have children and to be active in the world, rather than musing on the deeds of their ancestors!
Sean
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