The walls of Glasslight Palace were transparent, only the tracery of frosted vines winding across their surface kept people from running into them. They looked like fine crystal, or ice, about to melt into nothing in the morning sun. They were neither fine, nor fragile, the substance harder than diamond, able to absorb any attack, and heal themselves of any chip or crack that might mar their flawless surface.
There were three gates interrupting the flow of the walls, one near the kitchens for deliveries and service workers, one by the river, for goods and visitors travelling by water, and the one people always pictured when the Glasshouse Gate was mentioned.
The walls were double the height of a tall man, the top of the gate began equal with the wall on either side, then swooped upwards in a smooth curve. At its highest point, where the two halves of the gate met, it was three times a man’s height and yet didn’t loom. Largely because the frosted patterns on this section of Guardglass created a flowing pattern of picture and movement that brought lace, rather than protection, to mind.
Glasslight Palace had never been breached, for all there had been plenty of attempts in the early days. Days when an alarm would sound and the residents of Glasslight City would gather what they could and scurry inside the invisible walls, to watch an opposing army smash itself uselessly against them. The army would fail, and die, and the people of Glasslight would go back out and rebuild; larger, better, more beautiful buildings every time.
The DNA of Stories 