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"Why do you even bother, Thoran?" sighed a young sharp-faced man, walking past. "It will always be the same. I bet you fifty suns. It's going to be a series of 'No' for the next goddess-forsaken century."
Thoran shuffled nervously and looked down at his eland-skin boots, but he kept one eye on the wall of blue-tinged ice in front of him. "We must hope, Fzmes, otherwise it will never happen."
Fzmes rolled his eyes to the white, domed ceiling and leaned against a pillar. He stared with contempt at the older man's back, his lips pursed, his eyes narrowed, tapping his booted feet. "We are hoping for an occurrence that does not happen even in a millenia. I tell you this, Thoran. You will be waiting for the reply even when the stars fall and Iotha sinks beneath the waves."
Thoran steadfastly looked at the ice, yet although his expression was unreadable his gloved hands were balled into tight fists and his breathing had slowed. "The Empress Muttatia has chosen a magic to focus on more than any other. It can only be a matter of time before the next Obnisartes shows."
Fzmes was about to reply when he gave a cry of alarm and leapt to his feet. Thoran smiled softly as the ice began to ripple with magic, red streaks flashing inside and a silvery sheen coating the surface, and Fzmes rushed to the bronze gong in the corner of the chamber. Picking up a heavy, bronze rod with a pad of eland fur at the end, Fzmes swung it hard against the gong.
A huge, golden sound swelled through the room and echoed into the corridors outside. Other people in the building halted in what they were doing, their ears pricked and their bodies tense with longing, and outside in the cold, brutal white landscape the crowds stopped talking. The silence was absolute, Fzmes could hear nothing but the resounding echo left by the gong and the shrill, cutting Drift wind. Even with his talk about hope being in vain, his heart had leapt into his mouth and was thudding uncontrollably.
Thoran's eyes gradually widened as a piece of creamy parchment appeared in the ice - a tightly rolled scroll, bound with a white ribbon. He reached towards it, miraculously his fingers melted through the cold surface and plunged into the ice like a spoon in cream. Thoran felt the dry, sparseness of the parchment and grabbed hold of it, pulling it out of the ice. As he did so, the magic red sparks vanished, and the ice became just pure glacial ice again.
Thoran felt as though his intestines were in crooked knots and that dragons were dancing in his stomach. With shaking hands he pulled off the white ribbon and rapidly opened the scroll.
"Well, what is it?" aked Fzmes anxiously. "Stop playing around and tell us!"
"So you do hope?" replied Thoran, his voice sly.
Fzmes stalled for a moment but shook himself vigorously. "The rod's getting heavy for my arm."
Thoran's eyes flicked down to the first word in the long paragaph and then up to Fzmes's face. He held up the scroll towards the younger man.
"You owe me fifty suns, Fzmes."
Scrawled in ornate, swirling handwriting was a large YES.