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to death? The bitter weather had come on us unexpectedly, a viciousearly bite of winter at the tail of a mild autumn.It’s the simple things often as not that lay us low. It’s the everydayworld intruding on our little dreams of power and glory that killsus. For all my cunning and deathly swordplay a prince of Ancrathcould die coughing up the flu, or choking on a fishbone, or frozenon a lonely slope by a freak snowstorm, same as any other man.The light and the promised cave both came into view over thenext rise. The sight arrested me. The light burned at the back of ayawning cavern but as we approached a second glow began to spreadacross the slope ahead of us. A spirit rose from the ground as aswimmer breaks the surface of a river. She moved across thesnow-covered rocks. Back and forth before the cave mouth, illuminationbleeding from each line, her face a death mask, jawbonegaping. She drifted closer, straggles of pale hair and tatters of dressunmoving despite the wind that tore across the hillside. The snowlit beneath her, each curious lump and bump of it commandingblack shadows, revolving to point away from the spirit as she moved,as if indicating the many directions in which we might flee.I felt Hakon shift behind me, turning to run. ‘Stay,’ I told him.‘I’ve met ghosts before. None of them with a bite meaner than theirbark.’The white skull tilted on its vertebra, cocked to the side whilstthe empty orbits considered me. ‘Better run, boy. Death waits inside.’Her voice was a cracked thing that set my teeth on edge.‘No,’ I said.‘My curse is on you.’ A bony digit marked me out as her target.Madness wavered in her words, and strain, as if each utterance