A demon on a ghostly horse, a demon that assumed the form of a girl with huge green eyes and a disfigured face?

Who, if not a demon, travels in winter? Or asks the way to enchanted ruins?

After she had ridden away, Gosta quickly packed away his fishing tackle. He walked home through the forest. He was going out of his way, but his good sense and instincts warned him not to take the forest tracks, to stay out of sight. The girl, his good sense told him, had not–contrary to all appearances–been a phantom. She was a human being. The black mare hadn’t been an apparition, it was a horse. And people who gallop through the wilds–in winter, to boot–are very often being hunted.

An hour later a search party galloped along the forest track. Fourteen horses.

Rience shook the silver box once again, swore and smacked his saddle pommel in fury. But the xenogloss was silent. As the grave.

‘Magic shit,’ commented Bonhart coldly. ‘It’s broken, the cheap gewgaw.’

‘Or Vilgefortz is showing what he thinks of us,’ Stefan Skellen added.

Rience raised his head and glared at the two of them.

‘Thanks to this cheap gewgaw,’ he stated caustically, ‘we’re on the trail and won’t lose it now. Thanks to Lord Vilgefortz we know which way the girl is headed. We know where we’re going and what we have to do. I’d call that plenty. Compared to your efforts of a month ago.’

‘Don’t talk so much. Hey, Boreas? What does the trail say?’

Boreas Mun straightened up and cleared his throat.

‘She was here an hour before us. She’s riding hard where she can. But it’s difficult terrain. Even on that exceptional mare she’s not more than five, six miles ahead of us.’

‘And so she’s still pushing on among those lakes,’ Skellen muttered. ‘Vilgefortz was right. And I didn’t believe him…’

‘Neither did I,’ Bonhart admitted. ‘Until yesterday, when those peasants confirmed there really is some kind of magical structure by Tarn Mira.’

The horses snorted, steam billowing from their nostrils. Tawny Owl glanced over his left shoulder at Joanna Selborne. For several days he had been none too pleased by the telepath’s expression. I’m getting edgy, he thought. This chase has exhausted all of us, physically and mentally. It’s time to be done with it. High time.

A cold shudder ran down his back. He recalled the dream that had visited him the night before.

‘Very well!’ he said, coming back to his senses. ‘That’s enough meditation. To horse!’