“Beyond the town, darker than dark, King Haggard's castle teetered like a lunatic on stilts...”

“There is no darkness like that of a confined space. It's darker than the inside of eyelids, and darker than the night.”

“But the Lady Amalthea and Prince Lir walked and spoke and sang together as blithely as though King Haggard's castle had become a green wood, wild and shadowy with spring. They climbed the crooked towers like hills, picnicked in stone meadows under a stone sky, and splashed up and down stairways that had softened and quickened into streams.”

“In their castle beyond nightGather the Gods in Darkness,With darkness to pattern man's fate.The colors of darkness are no monotonous hue - For the blackness of Evil knows various shades,Full many as Evil has names.Vengeance and Madness, inseparable twins,Born together and worshipped as one;Nor can the Gods tell one from his brother.In their castle beyond nightGather the Gods in DarknessAnd darkness weaves with many shades.”

“Perhaps this was what Queens did. Perhaps they held their Kings in the darkness, deep within their castles and allowed them that moment of weakness they could never show to anyone else. Perhaps they gave strength to their Kings, because everyone else only took it from them.”

“The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.”