But his horse turned out to be less resolute.

The bay reared, danced ballet-like on its hind legs, whinnied frantically, kicked and pranced. The ice broke with a horrifying crunching sound under the impact of its hooves, the sheets of ice stood up vertically and water gushed out. The horse squealed and struck the edge with its forehooves, fracturing it. Bonhart yanked his feet from the stirrups and jumped. Too late.

The water closed over his head. There was a drumming and a ringing as though in a belfry. His lungs were full to bursting.

He was lucky. His feet–kicking out in the water–struck something, probably his horse as it sank to the bottom. He pushed off, bursting from the water, spitting and gasping. He seized hold of the edge of the ice hole. Without yielding to panic, he drew a knife, drove it into the ice and hauled himself out. He lay, panting heavily, the water trickling from him and splashing down.

The lake, the ice, the snowbound hillsides, the black and frost-encrusted spruce forest–all of a sudden everything was flooded with an unnatural, pallid light.

Bonhart struggled to his knees with immense effort.

Above the horizon, the deep blue was lit by a crown of brightness, a luminous dome, from which fiery pillars and spirals suddenly rose and scintillating columns and vortices of light burst forth. Shimmering, flickering, rapidly-changing shapes, ribbons and curtains hung on the horizon.

Bonhart croaked. It was as though he had an iron garrotte around his throat.

A tower had risen up where a moment before had been only a barren hillock and a pile of stones. Majestic, soaring and slender, black, glassy and gleaming, as though carved from a single piece of basalt. Fire flickered in the few windows and the aurora borealis glowed in the serrated battlements.

He saw the girl, looking towards him from the saddle. He saw her bright eyes and the cheek slashed by the line of an ugly scar. He saw the girl spur her black mare and unhurriedly ride into the black gloom, under the arched stone entrance.

And disappear.

The aurora borealis exploded in dazzling swirls of fire.

When Bonhart regained his sight, the tower was gone. There was the snow-topped hillock, the pile of stones, the withered black stalks.

Kneeling on the ice, in the puddle of water trickling from him, the bounty hunter screamed savagely, horribly. On his knees, arms raised towards the sky, he screamed, howled, swore and railed against people, gods and demons.

The echo of his cries rolled over the spruce-forested hillsides, drifted over the frozen surface of Tarn Mira lake.