The Place
The Goblin Warrens are a range of ruined hills, a broken spine of earth stretching five kilometers from the black river to the white fields, and the hills are ruined the way a mouth is ruined, all hollow where the teeth should be. The surface is a lattice of trip-lines, thin wires strung between the stones at the height of a walking man's chest, and the lattice is the first thing the hills show a visitor, which is to say it is the first thing the hills tell a visitor. The pits are deep and honest, the holes in the ground that go down where the light does not follow, and the honest is the depth, and the depth is the day. The ground is soft underfoot, a packed dark that gives and does not give back, and the give is the first installment. The sky above is a flat grey, the color of the hills when they are not trying to be anything, and the light on the stone is thin and mean, the kind of light that does not flatter. It smells of wet earth and old snare, a smell that is the hills and is also the warning, and the one sound is the snare, a soft snap in the lattice that is the hills' only word and the word is the sentence. There is no landmark the way a hill has a landmark, but there is one: the Pit Gate, a low arch of packed earth at the mouth of the main warren, and the arch is the door, and the door is the pit. What makes the Goblin Warrens themselves is the deep: the pits are deep, and the deep is the day, and the day is the pit, and the pit is the hills.
How They Live
The Goblins keep this place in the deep, building their warrens in the packed earth and the bone, their chambers low and their entrances lower, and a warren is dug one pit at a time, because a pit is the season and a pit is the calendar. Light comes from the fire, small and dirty and kept low, because the fire is a location and the hill reads locations, and a fire that is not kept low is a fire that is a map. Food is the find: the scrap, the bone, the small game, and the pit, and the pit is the meal, and the meal is the kept. Water is drawn from the hill's springs, which the pit-makers tend the way you tend a trap, carefully and with an eye on the catch, because the springs are the find and the find is the law. Heat comes from the fire, which is to say the fire does everything, and the fire is the reason the hills are deep. The defense is the pit itself: a visitor who steps onto the hill is already in the snare's path, and the snare is the alarm, and the alarm is the sentence. The day is measured by the pit, because the pit is the only clock the warren has, and the clock is not in a hurry. Every goblin that is born must set one snare in the lattice before the hill will call it one of its own, and the setting is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the deep ever gives back.
People
Home of the Goblins, whose warrens are counted by pit. Thirteen pits are honest at last count, and the count is kept in the earth, which is to say the count is as fixed as the pit, which is to say it does not lie. The pit-makers lead, and rank is decided by the setting, because a maker who can set a snare the lattice has never seen is the maker the hill trusts. Nothing that cannot keep a secret is welcome, and the secret is not needed, because the hill has a pit, and the pit has a snare, and the snare has a ledger. A surface traveler who once crossed the hills, the last one to find the lattice forgiving, called it the only place where the ground makes you pay before you take a step, which is the truest thing he said and the thing the deep paid the least attention to.
In Stories
The place where the pit is the only honest snare, and the snare is the price, and the price is the hunt, and the hunt is the end. The Forgotten have not been to the warrens, but Uaellaen has read the pits once, from a distance, and the pits read him back, and the reading was the first thing he has ever paid for that he could not buy back.