A casual visitor to Lomhannor Hall wouldn’t find it, and of those who might, most of them wouldn’t recognize its un-Adalon design. Intricately etched sandstone bricks tinted with a desert sunset’s hues paved it. Bordering these were bulkier, darker stones, a boundary between the lush gardens beyond the temple’s six walls and the tiny haven within them—between the press of the infidel northern land and a fragment of home in its midst for those of Tantiu blood to seek. It had cost much money to import the sandstone, as well as the delicate sandalwood screens placed behind stone latticework to give privacy from watching eyes. Holvirr Kilmerredes had even hired Tantiu artisans to craft what they could from a landscape that had never known the breath of a desert wind in all of its existence. But that had been the act of a much younger duke, a man about to marry his promised wife, an elegant gesture of affection to the young bride who would help him cement an alliance between formerly warring nations.
