The gates of Frosthold closed behind us with a sound like the world ending—a deep, resonant boom of iron-bound oak settling into its frame, sealing us within the mountain's ancient embrace. I felt it in my bones, that sound, felt it as a threshold crossed, a door closing on everything I had been and opening onto everything I would become.
The courtyard was vast, larger than it had appeared from outside. It stretched before me, an open space of packed snow and ancient stone, surrounded by the soaring walls of the fortress. Buildings rose on all sides—armories, stables, great halls, towers—their facades dark with age and glittering with frost. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys, carrying the scents of wood fires and cooking meat and the indefinable smell of people living their lives in a place that had stood for a thousand years.
And those people were everywhere.
