floated a structure. High-walled on two sides with what appeared to be a latticework of wicker, and surmounted by frost-rimed houses – three in all – it looked nothing more than a broken, torn-away piece of a port town or city. A narrow, crooked alley was indeed visible between the tall, warped houses. As the ice gripping the base of the structure twisted to some unseen current, the two opposites sides came into view, revealing the broken maw of wooden framework reaching beneath the street level, crowded with enormous balsa logs and what appeared to be massive inflated bladders, three of them
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