All along the hall are marvels: some bigger than a man and standing alone, others smaller than an egg and resting on velvet cushions on stone plinths. There’s a mechanical giant built from bronze and silver with its workings visible through windows set all across it. A black sphere hovering in the air, a great clock with multicoloured clockwork jesters juggling amid the swirl of cogs and the swing of the pendulum. A burning horse that seems to be made of water, a flower larger than a man with petals whose iridescence shades into colours never seen before, a pillar of electric blue stone from
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