Relentless walls whose darksome round contains

I.

You will find, if you look back far enough, that most castles start as rough structures of timber or mud, crawling from the earth like golems. Several of the greatest holdfasts in the Telorian Empire started as piles of branches, hurriedly thrown together by a tribe of barbarians on a cold and rainy night; but none of these great families know it, and would not admit it even if they did.

Not so with Pursbyen. It is crafted, deliberate, artificial, humanistic in the worst sense of the word. It was not constructed from earth; rather, the earth was beaten with hammer and chisel until the holdfast revealed itself, somehow complete and ready, waiting beneath the surface to be discovered like the leviathan’s bones. It sprang to earth as a war-machine, with moats and arrow-slits carved out even as the first corridors and archways appeared. It was created for no other purpose than to kill men, and to save a few men from being killed.

Whoever holds Pursbyen holds Haarstinn, and whoever holds Haarstinn holds the Grottameer and its mines. All the business of government, the executions and coronations and civil broils, is but a farce.

II.

Pursbyen is the only thing that remains of the family that once held it (and often not even that, for a true Haarstinn man will only call it the Rock, just as its inhabitants are known as the family). The name is a reminder: if you stand against the Arxakontes, they will not merely wound you or bleed you; they will wipe you so thoroughly from the historical record that you may as well never have lived at all.

III.

There may be any number of hidden thoroughfares running in and out of the Mount, but knowledge of them has been lost to the ages. Drawing maps of one’s secret passages is the business of fools who want to get invaded. Individuals wishing to meet the Elector-Palatine must pass beneath one of the largest portcullises in the realm. Do not make the mistake of assuming it is merely decorative; every tooth is sharper than a blade and, if the right switch is thrown, it will crash down faster than you can blink. Above, in the gatehouse, fires burn summer and winter so that the castle may spew burning pitch on any invading army that makes it as far as the gates. But no army ever has.

IV.

Nothing blooms in the Grottameer but ambition and malice, and no gods live in the gray-green shrubs that crouch along the hillsides like roadside bandits. The Stone Garden is near the western end of the holdfast, nestled in rock but open at the top so the sun can peek in as it moves westward across the sky. The rays hit the pathway of pebbled tourmaline and tiger’s-eye first, then sweep honey-slow across clusters of moss agate and silver-black clumps of hematite as big as your fist. By an hour before sunset it is scorching and the light reflecting off the heliodor outcroppings will blind you. A hundred years ago, an enterprising washerwoman chisled a nugget of grass-green tsavorite from the wall, hoping it might serve for her daughter’s dowry. Titus VI Arxakonte had her bound to one of the larger rocks, her skin shiny with oil, and left her to cook in the sun. It took her three days to die.

In the Grottameer they pray to the winds and the tides, to the yellow gleam that winks up from gray rock and the clink of silver in pockets. They pray for the safety of trade routes, for good exchange rates and good interest rates, for strong draft horses, well-greased axles, well-greased palms. They pray for the good will of the Arxakontes, and have for so long that they remember no other gods. They will continue to do so, out of habit, long after the last of that house breathes his last.

V.

There are fourteen hearths in the great hall. There are one thousand, four hundred, and eighty-two books in the library, most of them with gilded pages. There are four hundred and six graves in the Pursbyen Crypt, but only three hundred and seventy-three Arxakontes in them. There are just under three thousand steps. The central keep is greater than most holdfasts; its servants can walk the corridors for months sometimes without ever seeing the same face twice.

VI.

There are some that say the first Arxakonte wasn’t really a man at all, but a god. His father was the night and his mother was the earth. He took rock from his mother and fashioned it into a stone blade, and with this blade he stabbed his father the night-god and when he bled it was black blood that seeped from his wounds, and Abraxas I Arxakonte dipped his hands in it and that turned his hair pitch, for all the best gods must kill their fathers.