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Dakar pried his gut from behind the trestle and carved a staggering course toward the doorway. As he bypassed the party at the fireside, a dart flew to another barrage of shouts. The mule drover had hit another bull’s-eye.
    ‘Damn me to Sithaer,’ cried the tanner in beet-faced irritation. ‘You cheat like the Shadow Master himself!’
    Dakar tacked sharply and caught himself a bump against the doorpost. ‘Hardly,’ he volunteered to whoever was wise enough to listen. ‘Yon one’s no man for harmless games. His sort of tricks infuriate and kill and make enemies.’
    But the Mad Prophet’s slurred advice was pre-empted by warning from another bystander. ‘Don’t speak that name here! Would you draw him, and the winds of ill luck? Sorcerers hear their names spoken. There’s a burned patch, I’ve heard, in Deshir where the soldier’s bones lie that will never again grow green trees.’
    Dakar half-turned to denounce this, but lost his chance as the latch let go under his hand. The doorpanel he leaned on suddenly swung wide and spilled him outside in a stumble. He yowled his injured shock as grey slush soaked both feet to the ankles; no boots, he remembered belatedly. The struggle to go back in and search for them entailed too much effort, his hose being already sodden.
    The inn yard wore ice in sheets unsliced by the ruts of any cartwheels. Unless there were east-running storms, travellers on the Eltair road were unlikely to choose the byway through the foothills. Beleaguered by gusts that cut straight off the summits of the Skyshiels to rattle the signboard of the cooper’s shack, stung by an unkindly fall of sleet, Dakar yawed and slipped on his errand. He collided with the firewood hovel, a hitching rack and a water trough, and cursed in dark conclusion that mountain villages were an uncivilized place to suffer the virulent effects of brewed hops.
    Returned an interval just short of frostbite, with his points tangled and his hair screwed to ringlets by the damp, he blundered back to the tavern door. He had sheltered in the privy until the cold came near to killing him, and was ready primed with pleas in case the barmaidwas still piqued. But the panel was not locked against him. Intensely relieved, Dakar hauled his mushy socks into the taproom as furtively as his shivering would allow.
    Nobody noticed him.
    The door had stayed unbarred in the bustle created by a new arrival, a slender, aged gentleman even now being solicitously ushered to the fireside. The landlord had personally stirred from his parlour for this service, and even the sour-tempered bar wench had brightened in her haste to cheer the gloom with rushlights.
    Probably some rich man stranded in the passes by a wrong turn in the storm, Dakar supposed; until he noticed the dart players standing stalled in mute awe with their coins abandoned on the table.
    ‘Fiends plague me, I never thought to live as witness,’ the mule drover said in a powerful whisper. ‘The Masterbard himself, come to visit our village?’
    Dakar blinked in astonishment. Halliron,
here?
    Beyond the smoke-grimed support beams, the newcomer tossed back his sleet-crusted hood. Shoulder-length hanks of white hair tumbled free, caught with sparkles of unmelted ice. Then, striking and clear as a signature, a mellowed voice addressed the landlord. ‘What a storm. The passes are awful. We have silver if you’ve got quarters for extra lodgers.’
    ‘Oh, no!’ protested the innkeeper. ‘That is, I have rooms. All tidy. Cleanest linen on the coast side of High-scarp. But your coin stays in your purse. Every penny. Your presence will draw customers just for the news, even if you don’t care to sing.’
    ‘Your commons won’t go tuneless, for your kindness,’ Halliron promised. Erect despite more than eight decades of age, he had a prominent, aristocratic nose, and spaced front teeth that flashed in a smile. ‘We’ll need two beds. My apprentice will be in as soon as he’s