It was a bird – a completely ordinary-looking bird, a lark of some kind, Sparhawk judged. Nothing at all was unusual about it – if one were to overlook the fact that it hung absolutely motionless in mid-air, looking for all the world as if it had been stuck there with a pin.

They all looked around, their eyes a little wild. Then Sephrenia began to laugh.

‘I don’t really see anything funny about this, Sephrenia,’ Kurik told her.

‘Everything’s fine, gentlemen,’ she told them.

‘Fine?’ Tynian said. ‘What’s happened to the sun? – and that idiotic bird?’

‘Sparhawk stopped the sun – and the bird.’

‘Stopped the sun!’ Bevier exclaimed. ‘That’s impossible!’

‘Apparently not. Sparhawk talked with one of the Troll-Gods last night,’ she told them. ‘He said that we were hunting and that our prey was far ahead of us. He asked the Troll-God Ghnomb to help us catch up, and Ghnomb seems to be doing just that.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ Kalten said. ‘What’s the sun got to do with hunting?’

‘It’s not all that complicated, Kalten,’ she said calmly. ‘Ghnomb stopped time, that’s all.’

‘That’s all? How do you stop time?’

‘I have no idea.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe “stopping time” isn’t quite accurate. What’s really happening is that we’re moving outside time. We’re in that winking of an eye between one second and the next.’

‘What’s keeping that bird up in the air, Lady Sephrenia?’ Berit demanded.

‘His last wing-beat, probably. The rest of the world is moving along quite normally. People out there aren’t even aware of the fact that we’re passing through. When the Gods do the things we ask them to do, they don’t always do them in the way we expect. When Sparhawk told Ghnomb that he wanted to catch up to Martel, he was thinking about time more than the miles, so Ghnomb is moving us through time, not distance. He’ll control time for as long as it takes us. Covering the distance is up to us.’

Then Stragen came forward at a gallop. ‘Sparhawk!’ he cried. ‘What in God’s name did you do?’

Sparhawk briefly explained. ‘Just go back and calm the Peloi. Tell them that it’s an enchantment. Explain that the world is frozen. Nothing will move until we get to where we want to go.’

‘Is that the truth?’

‘More or less, yes.’

‘Do you actually think they’ll believe me?’

‘Invite them to come up with their own explanations if they don’t like mine.’

‘You can unfreeze things later, can’t you?’

‘Of course – at least I hope so.’

‘Ah – Sephrenia?’ Talen said tentatively. ‘All the rest of the world is stopped dead, right?’

‘Well, that’s the way it appears to us. Nobody else perceives it that way, though.’

‘Other people can’t even see us then, right?’

‘They won’t even know we’re here.’