First, assume there is a Plinth.
It is old, and worn, and inscribed with many arcane symbols like those of the Ancients—the races and places lost to the tides of time. Suns and moons have passed over this plinth, and yet it stands in the sands of its home—unmoving, unbending, tracking the celestial bodies in their courses with its long shadow. Many circles have been built around it—first from stones, arranged in the dusty whorls of the nomad tribes; the reverent marble of the errant kingdoms of the Ald Pegasi, soon to be welcomed into the Union, soon to forget the old superstitions; the careful archaeology of the pre-industrial Griffons, ever seeking fresh engines of conquest.
Each has risen, and each has crumbled, and yet the plinth remains: tall, craggy-grey, reflecting no light; granite, perhaps, or some exotic basalt. And now a new room has been built around it—sheet metal and concrete, cold-iron girders and charge-crystal glass. Faceless, joyless, grim: built in recognition of things past and things yet to come, and with the full intent of righting the course of both.
It is the Box, and in the Box lies the Plinth.
Fixed to the base of the Plinth are the Chains.
Tethered by the chains, and the rough leather collar at his neck, is the Stallion.
Each day, the Stallion rises from the past night’s slumber and polishes the Plinth. It is a careful operation, for the rags and oil afforded him are from a latter age, and the stone would sooner crumble than shine, even under the tenderest hoof. He takes neither food nor water; the magic of the place sustains him in all things, and his work provides in turn. But when, at last, the blackstone gleams in the reflected light of the blue-white crystal lanterns, the Stallion begins his daily Song. Brutish, atonal, beautiful in its raw and unfettered baseness, it is neither taught nor learned, but wells up within him as he explores the whorls and crevices of the stone.
Those few who have stood there to hear the Stallion’s Song feel it welling in their breast, tempting, screaming for release alongside his own. None yet have dared succumb.
And several have stood there, for in time, the Box attracts the due and necessary attention such an item earns in the minds of its minders’ self-sworn foes. They plot, they whisper, they wonder, but in the end they come. Whatever their pasts, whatever they seek, whatever they suspect of their Equine neighbours, they come.
First came the Fey, flanked by their escort Yaks and Rockdog servants. They cursed what they could not understand, the foolishness of mortal and immortal Mare, and left offerings of flowers and carved stone at the thin line of sand where magic met earth.
Then came the Dragons, whose cold fire could not breach the divine wards the Sisters had set. They calculated, and they pondered, and they—in some way—knew, loath as they were to admit it. It is said, now, that no Dragon will go within a hundred leagues of the place, and that the ring of mountains that smoked with their forges in the ancient past lie cold and still.
Then came Griffons, armed with guns and carriages, howling birth-right and eminence. Yea, and their wrath was mighty, powder and smoke and rending steel, but as has become their custom, they disregard what they do not understand, and so the mage-burnt corpses of their soldiers and machines ring the Box, as fine a barricade as portent.
And at last, in due time, word of the Box and the Plinth and the Stallion reached the two who might covet it the most: the Many-Angled Man, in his infinite ways and permutations, slithering like bile in the womb of worlds; and the Stoneheart Queen, hellish psychopomp, mother of corpses and horrors, inimitable in her many-loined worldly lusts.
And when they heard, they came, in their careful sidelong ways, whispering through air and soil, through emerald fire and the white-flash bone-snap fingers. They passed the wards with ease, chuckling and snarling as they wove and twisted and arced and recognised one another’s forms and arts in the doing.
And now they circle the room over the Stallion’s head—ephemeral, elastic; chitinous, hollow—testing and toying and teasing and taunting as they whirl and wheel and whisper and wile.
‘’Tis wondrous strange,’ says the Many-Angled Man, as the Stallion awakes from another sleepless night. ‘That this beautiful machine should be kept here so far from the world. An engine it be, surely, a thing of change and endings.’
‘Machines and madness!’ spits the Queen. ‘’Tis a monument true, a history of things and a testament to those that raised it. Neither gearshaft nor driver will you find in’t.’
‘Ah, my dear Queen. Again as so many times before, thou disappointest in full. The quality of make maketh not the quality.’ He smiled, guilelessly. ‘No further proof needst thou than the mirror fair.’
‘It is of stone and fire-glass, as I. Who would know it better, coiled one?’
‘It is of ages and power, and in them the means to control. Saw you not the bodies, and the offerings withal? Whatever power it holds, it holds well, and the many respect it, even as they desire it for their own.’
‘As do we both, oh Man.’
‘As do we both, oh gracious Queen.’
‘And yet you claim not to understand the power it holds?’ She laughed, high and cruel. ‘But perhaps you can be forgiven, for it reeks of things you could not understand. Outsider! Blight! Magic though you hold, Magic know you not—the Old Magic, the Deep Magic, the fundaments of creation borne through the bones of the earth.’
‘And yet thou thinkest so small, invertebrate. Power! Wasp or spider, crawling on the surface of a leaf, power they possess—to web, to hunt, to claim dominion. But no wasp born could comprehend the tree, nor any spider rule it.’
‘Yet what serpent could claim aught without the artifice of others? Others’ hands to grasp, others’ ears to bend . . .?’
The Many-Angled Man roiled—a shrug, conciliatory, unconcerned. ‘’Tis true, both know why both seek to claim. But seeing as both cannot possess it—’
‘I would sooner kill you than see it lost to your embrace.’
‘—as both cannot possess, perhaps a contest is in order, to determine the worthiest holder of its power.’
‘What would you propose?’
‘A matching of claims, to begin with; then a matching of wits. Should all else fail, and the matter remain undecided, a matching of swords.’
‘You know your better on the field of battle, then?’ Again, the imperious laugh. ‘I reject your terms. The matter shall be decided through force of arms, or not at all.’
The pulsing, fractal light slowed a fraction in its dance. ‘You would forfeit your object so easily, then? I am but one against your horde, and if pressed I could destroy it now, here, and deny us both; you will grant me this boon.’
A long pause, and, finally, a sneer, sharpening in focus as its owner materialised in full. ‘Very well. Stake your claim, and I shall stake the better.’
‘Very well,’ echoes the Many-Angled Man, unfurling himself into a facsimile of presence in turn.
And they began, and they continued, and all eyes in the room were upon them, and though their deeds were many, and their boasts full-throated glory, there is, in truth, no need to recount them here, for the Plinth saw all it needed to, and so did they.
The Stallion went about his work, as usual, polishing and singing and sleeping as the two circled and argued and pronounced, and took no notice of him. And in the years to come, as wits turned to wagers turned to wars, he kept at his work, and smiled as he did, for he alone knew the purpose of the Plinth, and the task he had been set there to guard.