“Do not talk with Qina!” called Snenneq over his shoulder from farther down the slope. The husky young troll was scrambling with surprising ease across the icy surfaces, headed toward the misty white flatness below, and his words were faint in the wind. “Her words, however full of sense, will bring you distraction and tumbling. You must instead be watching your feet!”

Limping and grumpy, Morgan made his way as carefully as he could down the glassy, treacherous stones. Little Snenneq was definitely right about one thing: using the climbing irons demanded keen attention on such a surface, because the spikes on the bottom of them were small. In most situations, he discovered, it was better to use the longer side spikes to wedge his foot into spaces between stones, so he could move slowly and balance himself. Still, even managing after a while to stay consistently upright did not make the journey enjoyable. The worst part was watching little Qina, who stayed behind him all the way—clearly by choice—looking sympathetically at him from the depths of her furry hood each time he fell. She herself had not even donned the iron spikes, but made her way over the icy stones in just her soft boots, like a particularly graceful bear cub.

As he neared the bottom of the slope, the silhouettes of the wall towers and the castle rising high against the waning moon, Morgan could finally see that what he had first taken for a vast, snowy field was in truth a lake covered in ice, right in the center of the city. He had heard someone mention it, but that was not the same as coming upon such a wide and silent place in the middle of a dark night, accompanied only by trolls.

Little Snenneq had reached the bottom of the hill long before, and sat waiting for them, beaming in pleasure as though he had created the lake himself. “Bridvattin, this water is called. Here the Little Gratuvask river bends upon itself, and so was forming this lake. At the center is an ancestor house.”

“A what?” Morgan peered out toward a small island in the middle of the lake, where a low tower and several other roofs could just be seen through the fog. A few small lights burned in the windows, but otherwise it was only an angular collection of shadows. “Ancestor house?”

“Yes, with certainty. A place where your people come together to pray to the ancestors.”

“A church, you mean,” Morgan said. “Actually, I think it’s a monastery.”

“Monastery.” Little Snenneq sounded it out, repeated it. “A good word. In any case, it is here I will show you the main part of my cleverness. Look!” He lifted up his foot. Morgan could see nothing of interest. “For sliding on ice,” the troll said, waggling his leg.

The crescent moon gave just enough light for Morgan to see that something like a knife’s blade had replaced the climbing spikes on the bottom of the troll’s sheepskin boot. “Ice skates?” asked the prince, mildly nettled. “That’s nothing new. People here skate on ice all the time. We even do it down in Erkynland.”

Snenneq shook his head. “You are not seeing the beauty of what I have crafted. Here, sit down. Give me your foot.”

Morgan grunted in a put-upon way, but sat on a slippery stone and raised his leg. Little Snenneq scrambled over and began pulling on Morgan’s side-spikes. After a moment, and a clicking and clunking that tickled the bottom of Morgan’s foot even through his boot, the troll lifted his hands. “Do you see? With my idea, the climbing irons can be taken away and turned around—as so—and when they are again rightly affixed—they are blades for ice sliding!”

“Ice skating.” But Morgan could not help being impressed. In a matter of moments the troll had changed the shoe spikes into the blade of a skate. As he watched Snenneq do the same with his other foot, he suddenly realized what this meant.

“Do you mean we are going to skate here? On this lake?”

Snenneq almost chortled. “Do not worry! I am sure the church men in that ancestor-house will not mind.”

Morgan had a feeling that the troll didn’t know many Aedonite priests. “But . . . but I’ve never skated.”

Qina finally appeared. For some reason the female troll had stopped and retreated back up the slope, and now she was dragging a heavy branch much longer than she was.

“Not to fear, Morgan Prince,” said Snenneq. “I will teach you. I am a rare teacher. I have taught Qina many things!”

“Many, yes,” she said, settling herself and her long branch on a stone near the edge of the lake. “So I do not slide on ice tonight. I sit here. If you fall into cold wet, Prince Highness—” she patted the heavy branch—“this for you to pull out.”

If Qina herself did not want to get on the ice, Morgan wanted to even less. His grandfather and grandmother had told him many frightsome stories of how treacherous ice and snow could be in the far north. But Snenneq was already hurrying him out onto the glassy surface of the lake. “Now do as I am doing. Your knees must be bending!”

Morgan did his best, but each time his feet went out from under him and he fell, he could swear he heard the ice fracturing beneath him. It was hard fully to appreciate the wonder of skating on an ice-mantled moonlit lake when all he could think about was the freezing black water that lurked beneath the ice.

“Oh, poor luck!” Snenneq said for perhaps the fourth or fifth time, so cheerful that Morgan wanted to kick him, but he had to concentrate instead on getting back up without falling over again. “Do not fear to fall, Morgan Prince! That way true learning is found! And that is why our creators gave to us hindquarters of flesh and protecting fat! Do wolves have such fundaments? Do sheep? No, only people, who learn by each tumble.”

Morgan wished he had gone to the Kopstade with the others, even if their evening had ended in a brawl. By now, he could have been comfortably drunk, and even being pummeled by angry Rimmersmen would surely be less painful than Snenneq’s ice sliding.

“By the Good God, I think I’ve broken my knee and my arse at the same time! How is that even possible?”

“Do not fear, Morgan Prince. You are doing well for a first try!” At least the troll was enjoying himself. “Yes, wave your arms, so, around and around, to keep from falling! Try to slide here to me, farther out. Of course I am knowing your knee pains you, but do you see? Such a good teacher I am that you are already learning! Soon you will be ice sliding like the most nimble Qanuc!”

“But I keep the long stick here,” Qina assured Morgan in a voice too low for Snenneq to hear. “Just for careful.”

The conversation had ranged widely over both past and present, from dragon fighting to cow breeding. As part of the estate at Engby, Isgrimnur had given Sludig and his wife several hundred head of long-bodied, short-legged northern cattle, and the creatures had become Sludig’s obsession.

“You would never credit it,” he kept saying, “but in their way, they are as interesting as people!”

“I suspect that may have more to do with the people you meet than the cows you raise, Baron,” Tiamak said, which made everyone laugh. But Sludig did not reply for some moments.

“To speak honestly, it is not the people in Engby who worry us,” he said at last.

“Remember, husband, this is a happy gathering,” said Alva.

For Simon, the pleasant haze of beer and company dispersed a bit. Based on the looks Sludig and his wife shared now, he had not been mistaken: something deeper and darker was disturbing them. “What do you mean?” asked Simon. “Not people?”

Sludig shook his head. “Truly, let us talk of something else, Majesty. Let us talk of your grandchildren. I hear Morgan is man-sized now. I would like to see him!”

“I would like to see him too.” Simon frowned. “At least now and then.” He knew he was being led away from something, and he didn’t like it. “Tell me what it is that worries you, Sludig.”