The Three Houses of the Tomb Hierophants

Three great houses have served the Ironhold dynasty as Tomb Hierophants generation after generation, keeping the Royal Tomb, the rites texts and the bodies of kings on the dynasty's behalf: House Greypen, House Silverhall, and the third house.

The division of work between them is fixed. House Greypen keeps the copying and the safekeeping of the rites texts, and its sons begin practising their hand at eight in a script with no joined strokes, so that an error in a copy can be seen. House Silverhall keeps the vessels and the upkeep of the tomb chambers; the keys are in three sets, and the tomb door takes all three sets together to open. What the third house kept, no one can say any longer.

Bronze statues of the Tomb Hierophants of every generation stand along the wall of the Tomb Gallery, and there should be three rows: 12 of Greypen, 12 of Silverhall, 12 of the third house. But the third house's row is 12 empty stone plinths — the statues gone, and the names struck out of the records as well. The plinths are the same size as those of the other two rows, 68 centimetres long and 40 wide, with the mark on the surface where a statue's base once pressed, and a ring of oxidised green round the edge. Whatever was carried off has been gone long enough that the green has grown into the stone.

A man seventeen years in his post, who has walked that gallery at least 800 times, has only lately noticed for the first time that somebody ought to be standing there.

The third house's name is one that nobody can bring himself to say. All that is known is that it existed, that it once stood equal with the other two, and that in some age or other it went out of this dynasty altogether, together with its statues, its name and every trace of it. What is left is one old character that keeps recurring on the stone plinths.