Durfyn's minaret

From the Hills of Mylandiel the passage to the Elmglow cave opens straight into Durfyn's Belfry. It's worthwhile to digress into what a "belfry" means in a society like that of The Shadow Elves, lacking Middle English church buildings.

The word "belfry" in English is etymologically a portmanteau, worthy of Lewis Carroll himself. Linguists track this one to Germannic, for that burg which keeps the peace: *burganfrithuz. This compound got into (Old) French, which contracted it berfrei. At some point "berfrei" got applied to moveable siegetowers, but I don't know that this caught on in England. Later we English thought the word had something to do with a bell, often found in watchtowers - and in churches. So we folk-etymologised that word in there: bell-frey.

On to how an English visitor in shadowland, like the late Dr Carl Lynwood Sargent, could hear "belfry".

The point of any tower is to create, artificially, a height advantage, for observation and alarms. If you lived in a rocky cavern, would you build a whole new rickety stone building; or would you rather clamber up the side of the wall (somehow) for some ledge that Nature has assuredly put there for you. It also happens that the shadow elves own an air-force. So the Belfry complex need not be a freestanding tower as the surface knows it.

The word in Elvish, then, agglutinates connotations of "peacekeeping", "fortification", "height", and "alarm". There may be an additional connotation of the elvish call-to-prayer, but we needn't count on that. What "belfry" here does not connote, is a freestanding tower. Nor does it require an actual bell, nor any other sonic form of alarm. Durfyn's main alarm-mechanic is the line-of-sight to Sylaros, through a beam of light. Visitors from Ylaruam under comprehend languages will comprehend "Durfyn's Belfry" as "manârat Durfyn".

Shadow elves tend to park skinwings in their belfries. The elves' idiom lacks that mildly-blasphemous twentieth-century Americanism, bats in the belfry, although some might smile should they first hear it. They might say instead "his belfry is a few 'wings short of a flock". Trust me, it sounds better in Elvish.

Durfyn's Belfry is an aerie, [very] high off the Elmglow cavern floor.