The Temble of Truth

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Karlene shivered. Thirty dozen perlats had been slaughtered to provide her furs yet still she felt the cold. An illusion-born of snow and ice and the pale azure of an empty sky. The visual effects overrode the electronic warmth cosseting her body and she lifted her hands to draw the soft hood closer about her face.

"Cold?" Hagen had noticed the gesture. "Are you cold?"

"No."

"Then-"

"Nothing." An answer too curt and she expanded it as she swept a hand at the vista before them: a landscape of white traced with azure and flecked with motes of nacreous sheen. Out there perspective was distorted so that the mound she looked at could have been a hundred yards distant or a thousand, the dune a thousand or ten.

"There's no warmth," she complained. "No shelter. It's all so bleak. So inhospitable."

He said, "Erkalt is a frigid world, but it has its uses."

"Such as?"

"Low-temperature laboratories. Some mines. Some-" He broke off, knowing she knew the details. "As a site for the games," he said. "As a frame for your beauty. An ice queen should rule over a world of ice."

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