They emerged from the tent and looked around. It was still snowing, and the stubborn mist hung back among the trees. Sephrenia and Kurik sat by the small fire in front of her tent.
‘Where is she?’ Kalten asked, looking out into the settling snow.
‘She’s here,’ Sephrenia said calmly, sipping her tea.
‘I can’t see her.’
‘You don’t have to, Kalten. All you really need to know is that she’s here.’
‘It’s not the same, Sephrenia.’ His voice was just slightly disappointed.
‘She finally went and did it, didn’t she?’ Kurik laughed.
‘Did what?’ Sephrenia asked him.
‘She poached a group of Church Knights right out from under the nose of the Elene God.’
‘Don’t be silly. She wouldn’t do that.’
‘Oh, really? Take a look at Kalten there. That’s the closest thing to adoration I’ve ever seen on his face. If I put together something that looked like an altar right now, he’d probably genuflect.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ Kalten said, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘I just like her, that’s all. She makes me feel good when she’s around.’
‘Of course,’ Kurik said sceptically.
‘I don’t know that we should pursue this line of thought when Bevier joins us,’ Sephrenia cautioned. ‘Let’s not confuse him.’
The others also emerged from their tents smiling broadly. Ulath was actually laughing.
Their mood had lightened enormously, and the bleak morning seemed almost sunny. Even their horses seemed alert, almost frisky. Sparhawk and Berit went to where they were picketed to feed them their morning ration of grain. Faran normally greeted the morning with a flat look of dislike, but on this particular day the big, ugly roan seemed calm, even serene. He was looking intently at a large, spreading beech tree. Sparhawk glanced at the tree and then froze. The tree was half-concealed by mist, but he seemed quite clearly to see the familiar figure of the little girl who had just banished their despair with her joyful song. She appeared to be exactly the same as she had been the first time he had seen her. She sat upon a limb holding her shepherd’s pipes to her lips. The headband of plaited grass encircled her glossy black hair. She still wore the short, belted linen smock, and her grass-stained little feet were crossed at the ankles. Her large, dark eyes looked directly at him, and there was the hint of a dimple on each of her cheeks.
‘Berit,’ Sparhawk said quietly, ‘look.’
The young apprentice turned, and then he suddenly stopped. ‘Hello, Flute,’ he greeted her, sounding strangely unsurprised.
Aphrael blew him a little trill of recognition and continued her song. Then the mist swirled about the tree, and when it cleared, she was no longer there. Her melody, however, continued.
‘She looks well, doesn’t she?’ Berit said.
‘How could she look otherwise?’ Sparhawk laughed.
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.
‘I am,’ he said sullenly. ‘All the rest went off to die in Lamorkand. I’ll die here. That way I don’t have to walk so far. Now get out of here.’
She extended her arm and then turned it over in front of his stubbled face. The image of the serpent’s head rose from her palm, its tongue flickering. The half-blind hunchback puckered his face, turning his head this way and that in an effort to see what she was holding. Then he cried out in fright, half-rose and stumbled back over his stool, spilling his beer-keg.
‘You have my permission to offer your greeting,’ Sephrenia said in an implacable tone.
‘I didn’t know who you were, Priestess,’ he gibbered. ‘Forgive me, please.’
‘We’ll see. Is there no one else in the town?’