Out of the heaving waters from far under the clouds came yet another crag of ice, this one the smallest of the flotilla. Riders at all sides shepherded its progress. The fisherman rowed on oblivious, back hunched, his whole being focused on the effort of rowing and his song. The berg loomed closer, a dark shape frozen at its heart.

The instant vapour burst from the iceberg’s leading spur the Riders plunged beneath the ice-mulched surface. Water poured in torrents down the crag’s shoulders while the gale tore streamers of frost smoke from its peak. When a shard of glacial emerald calved from its front, it raised a fountain of spray that rolled north to the skiff and disappeared under its bow. Now from the heart of the berg jutted a prow of wood. Water streamed from it, driving wisps of cloud into the wind. Caught in a mountain of ice, it bore down on the tiny skiff.

The fisherman, his back against the thrashing wind, continued rowing as the berg entombing Rheni’s Dream shattered and slid into the waves. He chanted on even as the prow of Rheni’s Dream loomed over him. He was pulling on the oars as the skiff was smashed to shards and the glowing brazier extinguished in an explosion of steam as it was driven beneath the waves. Rheni’s Dream bore on, listing, its planks heaved and warped. Caught broadside by a massive wave, it rolled further, seemed to hesitate, then ploughed into the sea. Amid the wreckage left behind one oar floated. A sheath of ice gleamed over it already. Stormriders surged past the wreck. Some raised their ice-lances high overhead and brought them down, pointing north. At the horizon of cloud and storm-tossed sea, lightning revealed a dark smudge of land.

High combers flung themselves against the south shore, driven by a freezing wind. A woman, her long black hair and layered skirts snapping, picked her way down the rock-strewn shore. She held a woven shawl close at her shoulders as she took a footpath down to a driftwood and sod hut just above the strand. Pushing open the wooden door, she peered into the dim interior. Within sat a woman, motionless, facing the door, knitting forgotten in her lap. Her bright white eyes glowed in the darkness.

The woman at the door shivered. ‘It’s me, Agayla.’ Her breath hung in the cottage’s frigid air. She stepped closer; hoarfrost crackled beneath her shoes. Ice crystals glittered on the blackened logs in the fireplace. Frost layered the sitting woman’s lips and eyes.

Agayla reached out to gather up the knitting but the wool shattered into fragments.

In what little moonlight penetrated the churning clouds, Agayla walked the edge of the strand where driftwood and old planking lay beached by the high waves. Steam rose from the freshest seawrack of dead fish and seaweed. She gazed steadily to the south, to the horizon of sea and cloud where past the foam of whitecaps flashed a bright glimmer of emerald and azure. Her route took her to a point of tall rock overlooking the shore. Another figure stood there already, an old man in shapeless brown robes, bald but for a fringe of long white hair that whipped in the wind. Arms crossed, he scowled southward.