The ancestral bastion of the Goblin Kings was a hulking citadel of towers and barbicans, linked by a chaotic web of walls, all atop the dominating hill known as Penda’s Rock. Even growing up in the shadow of Stone Fort, Padric found the construction of the castle mind boggling. Each of its rulers had built atop the Rock, adding a keep or tower or gatehouse at their whimsy until the compound beyond the walls was a hideous, disjointed mating of the minds of madmen. The oldest structures had been raised with knowledge now lost to time. The sharply pointed conical roofs of thin, round towers soaring up and away from the central keep made Padric’s skin crawl. Much of the castle had been shattered during the Rebellion and several of the inner buildings were nothing but rubble. The Red Caps had repaired most of the outer wall, but some of the watchtowers lay broken, their stones still scattered down the slope of the Rock.

He felt Svala squeeze his hand, and he turned to her. She looked at him, all trepidation and worry gone from her face. She knew him now, and he knew her, neither of them afraid to meet the gaze of the other.

“Hvila,” she said simply. There was no coaxing in her voice, no shyness nor boldness, she just spoke the word.

“Yes,” he agreed, suddenly exhausted. “Bed.”

There was no passion in their coupling, no lusty cries of relief or surrenders to animal abandon. They had been forced together by terror, driven to companionship by their shared nightmare. She had not seduced him, and he had not taken her as the goblins wanted. They had laid together in comfort, merely holding onto each other in the blackness of strange bedchambers, each trying and failing to find peaceful sleep, listening to the other draw in and breathe out the air that would one day no longer fill their mortal bodies. Ghosts and goblins tormented their days with only a straw stuffed mockery of a man to call friend. But at night they were alone, clinging to their weak humanity, and finding in their union a reminder of the strength such weakness required. It was a ritual of comfort, always slow, deliberate and necessary. They did not take from the other, nor did they give. They clung to each other and became one, breathing together in the darkness, forgetting it was all around.

But, before they were allowed their succor, they had to cross through the Cog Yard.

Descending the stairs from the walls, they made quickly for the keep, the ancient stonework suddenly looming around them. The stars no longer held dominion. If Padric and Svala dared glance up, they would find the night sky held fast between the jaws of battlements and drum towers, gnashed by the teeth of spires before being swallowed down into a bubbling gullet of steam where motionless metal giants stood waiting.