The moment when the Giants of the Search first see Revelstone is one of the most powerful moments for me. Of course, your students won't get nearly the full impact, since they don't know the story of the Unhomed. Still...
"Can you read it? Do you know what it means? I've been here three times" - four counting the brief translation during which he had refused Mhoram's summons - "but no one's ever been able to tell me what it means."
Swallowing heavily, Pitchwife murmered, "No words. There are none. Your scant human tongue is void-" Tears spread through the creases of his face, mapping his emotion.
But the First said for him, "All tongues, Giantfriend. All tongues lack such language. There is that in the granite glory of the world's heart which may not be uttered with words. All other expression must be dumb when the pure stone speaks. And here that speech has been made manifest. Ah, my heart!" Her voice rose as if she wanted to both sing and keen. But for her also no words were adequate. Softly, she concluded, "The Giants of the Land were taught much by their loss of Home. I am humbled before them."
This is when the
Haruchai army first saw Revelstone, in GILDEN-FIRE:
Revelstone itself met the eyes of the invaders with a wonder such as they had never known. They understood mountains, cliffs, indomitable stone, and never in their warmest dreams had they conceived that gutrock could be so made welcoming, habitable, and extravagant. The great Giant-wrought Keep astonished them, inspired them with a fierce joy unmatched by anything except the sight of austere peaks majestically facing heavenward and the enfolding love of wives. And the more they looked, the more ecstatic Revelstone appeared. Half intuitively, they sensed the pattern, the commingling flow and rest of the balconies and coigns and windows and parapets, which the Giants had woven into the rock of the high walls - perceived it dimly, and were enthralled. Here, amid warmth and lushness and fertility and food and sunlight, was a single rock home capacious enough to enclose the entire Haruchai people and hold them free of want forever. The suggestiveness of such luxurience made the very crenellations of the battlements seem luminous, strangely lit by high mysteries and unquenchable possibilities.
