She had imagined for some reason that the Fastness would be farther away and more deeply embedded in the Knot. But there it stood. It was right before them. And sweeping her gaze quickly from side to side, she took in the whole scene and understood how it was that the four great mountain ranges of the Land came together in this place, each with its own kind of rock, and were involved with one another in a manner that explained why it was called the Knot and why it could not be undone without breaking the Land asunder. Looking up at the Overhang, she could see snow and loose stones resting upon surfaces where by rights they ought to have fallen down on her head. She sensed that, had the Quest approached from some other direction, they might have been standing there right now and looking “up” at where Prim stood and wondering why she did not fall off the anvil.

But if you approached it from the north, as they had done, why, then when you reached this place the Fastness stood upright as a proper castle ought to and the road led straight to its front door. It was not surrounded with a moat or other fortification, like some castles down in the Land, for it was guarded by the Evertempest and all the terrain the party had put behind them during the last few days. Its walls rose sheer from the black bedrock to a great height. For Egdod had raised it with the power of his soul, the same that had made the entirety of the Land, and observed no ordinary limits as to where building stones might be quarried or how high they might be stacked up. He had done it, according to legend, to prove to himself that he still had that power, at least when he could work in a solitary place without the eyes of other souls upon him. So its bastions and towers borrowed some of their general shapes from fortifications of a more practical nature, but were fantastical and strangely wrought according to Egdod’s whim. The front of it was symmetrical, perhaps as a way to discourage curious visitors, but farther back along its sides Egdod had experimented with more fanciful inventions in the way of high towers and oriels, some of which were still connected to the living rock of the Knot that enfolded the whole structure. The road led straight to its front gate, and the side fork of the Chasm tunneled beneath.