"It… it will be quick, yes? Before he wakes up?"

"Sure. Oh, sure; yeah. He won't ever know. Won't feel a thing."

… And so he awoke in the cold snow, roused by the freezing blast inside him coming to the surface, piercing his skin at every pore, shrieking out.

He woke, and knew he was dying. The blizzard had already numbed one side of his face. One hand was stuck to the hard-packed snow beneath him. He was still in the standard-issue hospital pyjamas. The cold was not cold; it was a stunning sort of pain, eating into him from every direction.

He raised his head, looking around. A few flat metres of snow, in what might have been morning light. The blizzard a little quieter than it had been, but still fierce. The last temperature he'd heard quoted had been ten below, but with the wind-chill, it was much, much worse than that. His head and hands and feet and genitals all ached.

The cold had woken him. It must have. It must have woken him quickly or he would already be dead. They must just have left him. If he could find which way they'd gone, follow them…

He tried to move, but could not. He screamed inside, to produce the most awesome surge of will he had ever attempted… and succeeded only in rolling over, and sitting up.

The effort of it was almost too much; he had to put his hands behind him to steady himself. He felt them both freeze there. He knew he would never stand up.

Talibe… he thought, but the blizzard swept that away in an instant.

Forget Talibe. You're dying. There are more important things.

He stared into the milky depths of the blizzard as it swept towards and past him, like tiny soft stars all packed and hurrying. His face felt pierced by a million tiny hot needles, but then started to go numb.

To have come all this way, he thought, just to die in somebody else's war. How silly it all seemed now. Zakalwe, Eleth-iomel, Staberinde; Livueta, Darckense. The names reeled off, were blown away by the sapping cold of the howling wind. He felt his face shrivel, felt the cold burrow through skin and eyeballs to his tongue and teeth and bones.

He ripped one hand away from the snow behind him; the cold already anaesthetising the flayed palm. He opened the jacket of the pyjamas, tore off buttons, and exposed the puckered little mark on his chest over his heart to the cold blast. He put his hand on the ice behind him, and tipped his head up. The bones in his neck seemed to grate, clicking as his head moved, as though the cold was seizing up his joints. "Darckense…" he whispered to the boiling chill of the blizzard.

He saw the woman walking calmly towards him through the storm.

She walked on the surface of the hard-packed snow, dressed in long black boots and a long coat with a furry black collar and cuffs, and she wore a small hat.

Her neck and face were exposed, as were her gloveless hands. She had a long, oval face, and deep dark eyes. She walked easily up to him, and the storm behind her seemed to part at her back, and he felt himself in the lee of something more than just her tall body, and something like warmth seemed to seep through his skin, wherever it faced her.

He closed his eyes. He shook his head, which hurt a little, but he did it all the same. He opened his eyes again.

She was still there.

She had half knelt in front of him, her hands folded on one skirted knee, her face level with his. He peered forward, wrenched one hand free from the snow again (it was numb, but when he brought the hand round, he saw the raw flesh he'd torn from the snow). He tried to touch her face, but she took his hand in one of hers. She was warm. He thought he had never felt such glorious warmth in all his life.

He laughed, as she held his hand and the storm parted round her and her breath clouded the air.

"Goddamn," he said. He knew he sounded groggy with the cold and with the drug. "An atheist my entire fucking life, and it turns out the credulous assholes were right all along!" He wheezed, coughed. "Or do you surprise them too by not turning up?"

"You flatter me, Mr Zakalwe," the woman said, in a superbly deep and sexy voice. "I am not Death, or some imagined Goddess. I am as real as you…" She stroked his torn, bleeding palm with one long, strong thumb. "If a little warmer."

"Oh, I'm sure you're real," he said. "I can feel you're rea…"

His voice faded; he looked behind the woman. There was a huge shape appearing inside the whirling snow. Grey-white like the snow, but a single shade darker, it floated up behind the woman, quiet and huge and steady. The storm seemed to die, just around them.

"That's called a twelve person module, Cheradenine," the woman said. "It's come to take you away, if you want to be taken away; to the mainland, if you like. Or further afield, away with us if you'd prefer that."

He was tired of blinking and shaking his head. Whatever insane part of his mind wanted to play this bizarre game out would just have to be humoured for as long as it took. What it had to do with the Staberinde and the Chair, he couldn't tell yet, but if that was what it was all about — and what else could it be about? — then there was still no point, in this weakened, dying state, trying to fight it. Let it happen. He had no real choice. "With you?" he said, trying not to laugh.

"With us. We'd like to offer you a job." She smiled. "But let's talk somewhere a little warmer, shall we?"

"Warmer?"

She made a single tossing motion with her head. "The module."

"Oh; yeah," he agreed. "That." He tried to pull his other hand away from the packed snow behind, failed.

He looked back at her; she had taken a small flask from her pocket. She reached round behind him, slowly poured the flask's contents over his hand. It warmed, and came away steaming gently.

"Okay?" she said, taking his hand, gently helping him up. She pulled some slippers from her pocket. "Here."

"Oh." He laughed. "Yeah; thanks."

She put her arm under one of his, her hand under his other shoulder. She was strong. "You seem to know my name," he said. "What's yours, if that isn't an impertinent question?"

She smiled as they walked through the few flakes of gently falling snow, towards the slab-sided bulk of the thing she'd called a module. It had got so quiet — despite the snow nearby, streaking past — that he could hear their feet making the snow creak.

"My name," she said. "Is Rasd-Coduresa Diziet Embless Sma da" Marenhide."

"No kidding!"

"But you may call me Diziet."

He laughed. "Yeah; right. Diziet."

She walked, he stumbled, into the orange warmth of the module interior. The walls looked like highly polished wood, the seats like burnished hide, the floor like a fur rug. It all smelled like a mountain garden.

He tried to fill his lungs with the warm, fragrant air. He swayed and turned, stunned, to the woman.

"This is real!" he breathed.

With enough breath, he might have screamed it.

The woman nodded. "Welcome aboard, Cheradenine Zakalwe."

He fainted.