Tomas’s lead mule stopped dead three paces inside the western threshold, planted all four iron-shod hooves on the warm flagstones, and let out a long, rattling snort that blew thawed slush across Prit’s slate.
The animal’s flank was lathered under a crust of grey ice, and where the hemp trace-straps crossed its chest, the frozen hair had rubbed raw. Tomas himself looked scarcely better. The big grain carter had lost his left mitten somewhere down in the river shallows when his wagon wheel punched through the lower bridge; he had wrapped the bare hand in an empty barley sack, and his broad red face was pinched around the eyes from squinting into two hours of horizontal sleet.
For three seconds the carter simply stood there in the middle of the entry lane, staring at the dry stone floor beneath his boots and the amber glow radiating from the fuel-less hearth twenty feet away. Steam began to rise from his soaked wool trousers in thick white curls.
“Well,” Tomas croaked, his voice scraped raw from shouting at mules over the gorge wind. “They said down at the tavern you had a magic stove up here, Master Stone. I thought Jori was lying to get his roof drink paid for.”
