His joints began to lock up, making him sink, but as he struggled, he managed to untie his waterlogged cloak so that it floated away instead of dragging him down. Spotting a pile of corpses in one corner, their frozen limbs entangled so they couldn"t float apart, an idea struck him in a rush of mad hope. He could use them to escape the water! All he had to do was push them over to the door and climb on, then reach for the single step and haul himself up.
Using what little Etherinal control he"d learnt from watching Xanna all these years, he muttered a string of words through his chattering teeth. The water"s energy surged inside him, and forcing it to warm his body enough to swim, he launched himself over to the corpses. He shoved them roughly in the direction he needed and scrambled onto
