The days seemed to race by after that. What had been tedious plodding through gloom and snow now took on an almost holiday air. They laughed and joked and even ignored the weather, though it did not noticeably improve. It continued to snow each night and on into the morning, but at about noon each day, the snow gradually turned to rain, and the rain melted down each night’s accumulation so that, although they rode through continual slush, the drifts did not pile up sufficiently to impede their progress. Intermittently as they rode, the sound of Aphrael’s pipes hauntingly drifted out of the mist, urging them on.

It was several days later when they came over a hill to look down at the lead-grey expanse of the Gulf of Merjuk stretching before them, half-shrouded by mist and the chill drizzle, and huddled on the near shore was a sizeable cluster of low buildings.

‘That would be Albak,’ Kalten said. He wiped at his face and peered down at the town intently. ‘I don’t see any smoke,’ he noted. ‘No, wait. There’s one live chimney – right near the centre of town.’

‘We may as well go down there,’ Kurik said. ‘We’re going to have to steal a boat.’

They rode down the hill and entered Albak. The streets were unpaved and clogged with slushy snow. The snow had not been churned into soupy muck, a clear indication that the town was uninhabited. The single column of smoke, thin and sickly-looking, rose from the chimney of a low, shed-like building facing what appeared to be a town square. Ulath sniffed at the air. ‘A tavern, judging from the smell,’ he said.

They dismounted and went inside. The room was long and low with smoke-stained beams and mouldy straw on the floor. It was cold and damp and smelled foul. There were no windows, and the only light came from a small fire flickering on a hearth at the far end. A hunchbacked man dressed in rags was kicking a bench to pieces to feed the fire. ‘Who’s there?’ he cried out as they entered.

‘Travellers,’ Sephrenia replied in Styric, her tone strangely alien. ‘We’re looking for a place to spend the night.’

‘Don’t look here,’ the hunchback growled. ‘This is my place.’ He threw several pieces of the bench into the fireplace, pulled a greasy blanket about his shoulders and sat back down, pulling an open beer-keg closer to him and then extending his hands towards the feeble flames.

‘We’ll gladly go somewhere else,’ she said to him. ‘We need a little information, though.’

‘Go and ask somebody else.’ He squinted at her. His eyes were oddly disconnected, looking off in different directions, and he looked to one side of her in that peculiar way of the nearly-blind.

Sephrenia crossed the straw-littered floor and faced the uncivil hunchback. ‘You seem to be the only one here,’ she told him.