The White Tower Church

The White Tower Church holds the Pontificate in the middle lands, and with it the oracle, the paladins and the faith of the common people of the world. It insists that the seats of the seven great houses must be made up to the number seven, and it takes one of those seats itself.

The High Sanctum on the south side of the palace is not under the Royal Guard but directly under the Church. Seven god-statues stand at its main door for the seven realms and seven houses, each 4 metres high and carved from white stone; the dust that gathers in the folds of their robes is cleaned twice a year, and the rites text is recited while it is done. The faces of the statues are cut afterwards — once the rough stone has been set up, a mason chosen by the Pontificate carves the features in, and that step of the work is called the opening of the face.

The heaviest power in the Church's hands is succession. Whenever the kingship stands vacant it convenes the Extraordinary Synod and presides over the accession. In 400 years the Extraordinary Synod has met 17 times, 14 of them over a succession; and of those 14, on 9 occasions the outcome was that the Church named the new king itself.

How the oracle is obtained, the Pontificate has never explained to anyone outside it. Outside, only the result is published, issued in one of six fixed forms of words, and what the difference between one form and another weighs is something only men inside the Pontificate can tell. The common people have worked out a reading of their own from this: whichever form of words is heard, the price of grain moves the same day.

The paladins are under the Church's direct command, 1,200 on the establishment, quartered among the churches of the seven realms. Their armour does not use Ironhold's iron but ore from the White Tower's own workings, greyish-white in colour and left unpainted. On the day a paladin receives his commission he stands a night before the seven god-statues, which is something like a Wallwarden's first night up on the wall in the Mute March, except that this night has lamps lit.

The Church's values are faith and stability, and its greatest difficulty lies there as well: it has to make everyone believe the gods are still listening — even though one of the seven god-statues in the Sanctum has never had its face opened, and where the face should be there is nothing.