The solid steel was well polished, but it bore all the dents and scrapes and hard knocks of a long working life. Someone had worn this armour in the past, used the gleaming sword and shield that stood propped up beside it, in some long-forgotten conflict. I frowned again. The suit of armour . . . meant something to me. Something special. I leaned in to study it more closely, and only then realised that the whole suit was covered in thick whorls of hoarfrost. I reached out to touch the heavy steel breastplate with a single fingertip, but I couldn’t feel the metal or the ice.

I stepped back and looked around me. The floor, the walls and the ceiling were all covered with layers of frost and crusted ice. Even the huge windows were coated with heavy, fern-patterned hoarfrost. So why didn’t I feel cold? I looked down at myself. I was wearing a plain white T-shirt and generic blue jeans. My arms were bare, but I didn’t even have gooseflesh from the cold. I moved over to the nearest window and rubbed away the frost with my bare forearm. I didn’t feel a thing. I looked out the window, and winter was everywhere. For as far as I could see, great sweeping waves of snow covered the grounds, smooth and untouched by any mark of man or beast. A great billowing ocean of white, stretching off for as far as I could see. No snow fell, though a light grey mist curled and heaved around the base of the house.

Here and there in the rising and falling of the snow were distinct shapes that might have been snow sculptures. Winged horses, gryphons, and a really massive dragon. Very detailed, but utterly still. Scattered across the snowscape like watchful guardians. There was a massive hedge maze, too, all its complicated runs and turns one big pattern when seen from above. White lines and dark shadows. And then I saw something moving inside the maze, something that raged up and down the narrow ways, striking out at the snowy hedgerows with savage strength.