Uncoiled blue light, like a question mark on the snow, mouth open, fangs bared, Adam saw the azure flash as it struck just above his boot, edging the leather, pinprick bump then burning cold.

Beside the house where the pit opened into untold eons, older than stones the leaden box shielding a coffin made from trees hewn and hammered before the oldest village of men, a time before cities, before kings and avatars, a snake with fangs of ice had bitten him.

Then it had died, kicked to bloody ruin, split by spell and arrow.

And the blue had turned to black corruption, flesh gone from raw to rotten in the blink of an eye, a viper nested in the house of time.

Alraune would help them, Decardo and his pretty elven lady Cherry. Alraune would probe the land of dreams and omens, tread the path to the Arcana, the Hermit or the Emperor, supplicant and seeking, help, if she could, the Court solve the ancient riddle. Together they would learn what lay within the dark wood box, taproots into the frozen ground, like worms, like snakes, and into the air and the ether, unsettling Decardo and his lady.

The cold ran in lines up his leg, almost pleasure, almost pain, even as he sat and talked with Decardo and Cherry and he shrugged it away, but he shivered, even in the warmth of their hearth, and later, in Trinsic, when he met the pretty girl he called Mischief, lady of secrets and shadows, the poison had lain in his belly like cold earth, even as her beauty and Alraune's had warmed his soul.

Then all was darkness, the pool's black waters, depth of ice, shadow's kiss, drowning in the cold. He knew they brought a healer and the healer worked over him, draining slow, blue poison from the bite.

Adam heard the healer's voice, warm and sure. "You will feel much better in the morning."

But Adam was down, deeper than Alraune would go, in a place where he shivered naked and alone.

In the place of the Elder Arcana.

And a voice whispered, like howling wind, endearments from a woman the color of falling ice who enfolded Adam in her embrace of razors.

"I am Winter," the spirit said. "And morning will be long in coming."