Chapter 29 Aerys's Portrait

With a furtive glance, Dmitri slowly opens the door to his most secret place. A kaleidoscope of light dazzles my eyes; at first, I cannot tell what stands before them, but when my vision clears, I am astounded. Sunlight pours through windows lining the western wall, but it is interrupted, bent, and redirected by swaths of heavy fabric in a variety of dark colors. Some thinner pieces of fabrics flutter in the breeze that flows from a few open windows, and these tint whatever beams of sunlight come their way. The fabric forms a fantastical forest; canopies cover most of the ceiling and thick trunks of slanting fabric are nailed to the floor. Between these fabric walls jut wooden sculptures, some sprouting from the floor and others plunging from the ceiling. All are painted curiously, with unlikely colors and strange patterns, but I find them all delightful. Some are fantastical in nature: fauns and satyrs, centaurs, faeries, dryads mid-transformation between tree and human. Others are in