The Mountains of Majipoor

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The sky, which had been a frosty blue all these weeks of Harpirias’s northward journey into this bleak and turbulent land, was the color of lead today. The air had grown so cold that it seemed to burn the skin. And a fierce cutting wind had suddenly begun rushing down through the narrow pass in the great mountain wall just ahead, carrying with it clouds of tiny hard particles, myriad sharp-edged things that struck Harpirias’s unprotected cheeks like little stinging insects.

"Prince, you asked me yesterday what a snowstorm was like," said Korinaam the Shapeshifter, who was the expedition’s guide. "Today you’ll find out."

"I thought it was supposed to be summer here just now," Harpirias said. "Does it snow in the Khyntor Marches even in summer?"

"Even in summer, oh, yes, it does that very often," Korinaam replied serenely. "Sometimes for many days on end. Wolf-summer, we call that. When the snowdrifts pile higher than a Skandar’s head, and famished steetmoys come out of the far north by the dozens to prey on the herds of the farmers in the foothills."

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