Anthatiel (Olum Seheri)

Anthatiel — known as the Lake City or the Tower of Vision on the Lake of Rainbows — was an ancient Alka Alon citadel concealed in a secluded valley at the source of the river Poros, deep within the Minden Range. The city sat upon an island in a great mountain lake, surrounded by a vast gorge into which five waterfalls thundered. Lord Aeratas wove the ever-present rainbows of the falls into a songspell lattice that both cloaked the city from sight and defended it from attack; a great gate sealed the lake valley at the ascent above the Land of Scars. It was the seat of the Versaroti kindred of the House of Aeratas, a line claiming ten thousand years of rule back to the Alka Alon coming to Callidore.

Governance was held by Lord Aeratas, a prominent and conservative voice on the Alka Alon Council, with his daughter Fallawen as heir. Aeratas was among the strongest opponents of human involvement in Alka Alon affairs, yet necessity drew him into alliance with Minalan when Sheruel and Korbal marched an army of gurvani across the frozen Poros to assault the city. The desperate Defense of Anthatiel and the subsequent Fall of Anthatiel (chronicled in High Mage) saw the Tower of Vision cast down, thousands slain, and the city taken despite the Spellmonger's intervention.

Olum Seheri: the necropolis remade

After its fall, Anthatiel was remade as Olum Seheri, Korbal's fortress-laboratory — a drowned, cursed island necropolis rebuilt as a compound of workshops, prisons and draugen-factories, guarded by trolls, dragons and legions of gurvani. Its caverns contain a portal through which "other things" are moved into the Penumbra, and the Nemovorti are anchored there so thoroughly that a destroyed Nemovort simply reconstitutes in Olum Seheri if its body is slain elsewhere. In the aftermath of its conquest the city became the dark capital of the Enshadowed, a grim parody of the rainbow-cloaked citadel it once was.

The Battle of Olum Seheri (Shadowmage / Necromancer) was a calamitous raid by Minalan, Terleman, Dara, and the Alka Alon allies that bound Korbal to a decaying host and broke his full use of Sheruel — at terrible cost in lives. During the battle Atopol secretly looted the Nemovorti's vaults in the pyramid at Minalan's instruction, an act not revealed until Preceptor. It was also at Olum Seheri that Tyndal, Rondal, and the Estasi Order rescued Princess Rardine from Korbal's captivity.

After the battle the Enshadowed consolidated rule over the city and the surrounding Penumbra, and King Ashakarl and his loyal gurvani fled north into rebel exile. Olum Seheri remains the dark heart of Korbal's power through Arcanist and beyond, its Ghost Rock vein (source of the Handmaiden enneagram) still the most magically potent deposit in the known world.

Significance

The loss of Anthatiel radicalised the Alka Alon into creating the Tera Alon warrior forms and drew Aeratas at last into open partnership with humani magi. Its twin existence — beautiful rainbow citadel on one page, necropolis on the next — makes it one of the most haunting places in the series, a single location whose two names mark the before and after of the war.