The rugged masses of perpendicular rock, piled upon each other in rude magnificence, surrounded the glade in the form of a square.
Viewed from the forest side, these rocks looked like one vast mound of massive stone, placed in the wild-wood valley by some freak of nature. A narrow, though deep and rapid stream, its waters shadowed to ebony blackness, laved one side of the steps of granite. It swept beneath an arching crevice, some three feet high, and as many thick, washed the sod of the hidden glade and rolled along its edge, foaming against the rugged walls; the waves plashing on high in showery drops, until it suddenly disappeared under the opposite wall, and was lost in the subterranean recesses of the earth.
The mid-day sun, shining over the rich foliage of the surrounding forests, where silence, vast and immense, seemed to live and feel; over the rough walls of the Temple of Rocks, scarce ever visited by human feet,—for strange legends scared the peasantry from the place, flung his beams down from the very zenith along the quiet of the level sward, with its encircling rocks, now animated by a scene of wild and peculiar interest.
Around a square table which arose from the centre of the sward, draped with folds of solemn black, sat a band of twenty-four men, each figure veiled in the thick folds of a monkish robe and cowl, each face concealed and each arm buried within the fold of the sable garment.
These were the priests of the Order of the Monks of the Steel.
At the head of the table, on a chair of rough and knotted oak, placed on a solitary rock, sate a tall and imposing figure, clad as the others, in the robe and cowl of velvet, with his face veiled from sight and sunbeam. His extended hand grasped a slender rod of iron, with a sculpturing of clearest ivory, fashioned into a strange shape fixed on the end—the solemn and revered Abacus of the Order.
This was the High Priest of the Order of the Monks of the Steel.
At the other end of the table was seated a figure, veiled and robed like the rest, yet with a taller and more muscular form, while his hand laid upon the velvet coverings of the table, grasped an axe of glittering steel.
He was the Doomsman of the Order.
His voice denounced, his voice consigned to death, his voice was like an echo from the grave, for it never spoke other words than the sentence of Judgment.