I made him stand, and turned around while he pulled on his trousers. Then I grabbed his hand and pulled him after me down one of the dim, torchlit passages that led to the outside terraces. His bare feet slapped on the chilly wooden floors, and I could hear him breathing in the cold in painful gasps, and his hand shook. The air was frigid here. As I pushed open the heavy outer door, the raw air from outside rushed across us, cutting our skin like knives, and making our faces and eyes ache.

Lesharo gazed at me, bewildered, his breath white in the dawn air, his arms folded and shaking across his bare chest. I took his arm and pulled him further into the wind, beyond the flush of torchlight from the open door. I tore off my boots, my heavy outer dress, dropping them on the snow. My underdress was thin and useless against the freezing wind, but I hardly felt the cold, I was so elated.

“Lesharo, I want to teach you something. Put your arms down. Stop crouching like that. Stand up straight, close your eyes.”

He looked distressed, but did as he was told. I stood beside him in my thin dress, shivering from cold and excitement and joy, and took his hand. “I want you to think of fire,” I said. “Imagine you are warm, enclosed in warmth, warm from your mind and heart and bones and all the way through. Completely deny the cold. It doesn’t exist. The only reality is the warmth that you create. Create it in your mind, your body, and hold it there. You have far more authority than the wind or the ice. Your soul is free, transformed, strong. Your spirit is greater than anything in the world. So use it to command. Be in control. Be warm.”

I don’t know how long we stood there with the wind whipping about us, and the snowdrifts settling on our hair and clothes. But stand we did, and I felt warm; and after a while I felt Lesharo stop shaking, and his hand in mine was comfortable and still. We opened our eyes and looked at each other, and laughed. We looked at our feet, and saw that the snow was melted where we stood. Our damp clothes gave steam, and it rose from us in curls of silver-grey, and was torn away in the wind.

Laughing, Lesharo pulled me close to him and hugged me. “By God, Elsha, what a way to outwit winter!”

I drew away from him, new images flooding me, filling me.

“I’m not here only to be diviner,” I said. “I’m here to teach every soul in this dominion what I taught you just now.”

He smiled, then saw that I was serious. “I thought your other dreams were wild,” he said, “but this … this is impossible. We weren’t all born with your powers, Elsha, or your strength of will.”