But Blues answered, sounding uncharacteristically grim: ‘An ice field.’ She remembered that he’d crossed the immense plain of ice that separated Stratem from the lands of Korel to the north.

‘Can we get through?’ she asked.

Blues shrugged. ‘There must be some way.’

She nodded at that. Yes. Surely some vessels must have made it through ahead of them. Her gaze fell on the wrapped bodies. ‘We should give them a proper send-off.’

‘Yes,’ Bars agreed, and he sounded very firm on that.

It was a channel. A narrow gap of open water that ran between tall cliffs of white and sapphire glacial ice. They reached it near to dusk, but such was the peculiar light held by the ice from the moon, and the star field where it shone through gaps in the cloud cover, that they continued on.

Luthal’s command ahead did likewise. They too neither paused nor let up, and Shimmer began to wonder whether the Letherii merchant had – rather stupidly – decided that this was some sort of race. And the gold to the winner.

Behind, the rest of the ragtag convoy straggled along. Next in line was the Mare galley. Privately, Shimmer was of the opinion that if any ship survived, it would be that one. She had a great respect for the vessels and crews of that seafaring nation.

The passage narrowed alarmingly in places. The cliffs reared nearly overhead. At times great reports cracked the night air and carriage-sized shards of ice came crashing down ahead or behind to send up fountains of frigid spray. Some of that spray even reached them on board the Forbearance.

Something about these avalanches of shards troubled Shimmer, and not just that any one of them could crush them into splinters. As they proceeded through, the sweeps hissing through ice-mush and clattering off floating chunks of sapphire-blue ice, it came to her.

The ice was only falling near them.

She watched to the rear for a time: no ice shards burst from the cliff faces behind them – at all. She turned ahead to study the three Letherii vessels and the full length of the channel ahead: nothing. No fracturing, cracking or rumbling.

She turned to K’azz.

Cowl suddenly appeared next to their commander. His scarred, ghostly pale face was upraised to study the overhanging cliffs. ‘We must back out – now,’ he said.

K’azz frowned his puzzlement. ‘Back out? Why?’

The High Mage lowered his face to gaze straight at K’azz. ‘You know why.’

K’azz snapped his gaze to the cliffs. ‘You don’t think …’

‘I do.’

K’azz spun to the mid-deck, roared, ‘Back oars! Back off!’ The Avowed on the oars pushed hard, heaving. Mael’s Forbearance came to a slow sluggish halt amid the wash of hissing crushed ice. ‘Back oars!’ K’azz yelled anew.

It appeared to Shimmer that they had just made a terrible mistake.