At this point I heard voices out in the corridor. 'Em, what are you up to?' (This one in a deep, rough voice that sounded like a dragon.) 'Are you all right?' (The squeaky voice of a gnome.) 'Does Em even know who she is any more?' (The musical tones of someone who might have elven blood.)

Four figures followed Emrietta into my room, all looking decidedly battered, presumably because they had been helping to fight off the armies of zombies. Like Emmrietta, they were spattered with snow. There were two tall, imposing dragonborn, one of whom had the rising-sun mark of Lathander on his forehead; a gnome wizard with an owl perched on his shoulder; and a half-elf who looked startlingly like pictures I had seen of King Rothgar of Quaffy. Perhaps he was some relative? There were rumours that clones had been made of Rothgar – perhaps one of them had escaped somehow? Still, there were more important things to deal with right now.

'Has anyone got a knife?' I asked. The dragonborn without the symbol of Lathander stepped forward. 'Can you cut my finger off, please? The one with this ring on?'

'What?' He looked shocked, as far as I could tell without being familiar with dragonborn facial expressions.

'It's a cursed ring, there's a demon who's trying to control me through it. I need to keep it with me – it's hard enough for me to control it, I don't think anyone else could – it's especially not a good idea for you, Emmrietta – but actually wearing it just gives it too much power. And, uh, have you got a bag to put it in?' I hoped I might be able to wear the severed finger in a bag round my neck until I found a suitable volcano to throw it and the ring into.

Reluctantly, the dragonborn lifted a knife in his strong, taloned paw and cut my finger off. It was agonising for a moment, and then my body surged with a feeling of warmth as Lathander's blessing came back to me once more. The stump of my finger healed instantly. Unfortunately, in the moment while we were distracted, Emmrietta made a grab for the severed finger. I tried to grab it before she could, but, as I've said, I'm not the deftest person, and having just lost a finger didn't help. Emmrietta grabbed the finger, and vanished. Not 'vanished' as in 'ran out of the open door and away', but simply dematerialised.

'Oh, no!' sighed the gnome. 'Next time we see Happy, he'll be wearing the ring on his paw!'

I wondered confusedly who Happy was. It sounded like a dwarven name, but that didn't make sense of the reference to his paw. In the meantime, I laid my hands on my battered rescuers to heal their wounds, and we introduced ourselves. The shifty-looking dragonborn with the mark of Lathander branded on his forehead was a warlock by the name of Kos, who, I learned, had an invisible pet pseudodragon. From the way the others behaved around him, they seemed to regard him as untrustworthy – though they seemed even more suspicious of the regal-looking elf. At any rate, if Lathander had marked the warlock in this way, there must be some goodness in his heart.

'It's always good to meet a fellow follower of Lathander,' I said. 'How long have you been a worshipper of the Morninglord?'

'Uh – about a day,' said Kos, looking embarrassed. The half-elf sniggered. Of course, Kos would be a recent convert – I knew that most dragonborn worshipped dragon gods, either Bahamut or the evil Tiamat. If Kos was a former devotee of Tiamat, it wasn't surprising that he wouldn't want to talk about his past – and I could only be glad that he had started on the journey towards the light.

'I'm Beira Lightbringer, paladin of Lathander,' I said, showing them the holy symbol I always wore on a chain around my neck.

'It looks like a hand,' said the half-elf sceptically. To be precise, it was half of a disk showing a pattern of two interlocking hands. I admit that it's a less common symbol of Lathander's worship than the rising sun, and it wasn't exactly surprising that most of the group hadn't heard of it.

'It's a rare symbol – a very old one,' said the gnome. 'I've seen it in books, but I hadn't seen someone wearing it before.'

I was glad to have an ally. I wanted to like Kos, but I felt more comfortable with the gnome, and with Kriv, the dragonborn who had cut my finger off. He was a calm, practical person who looked as if he might have been a military officer. The gnome, Bobbynock, introduced me to himself and to his owl, Mr Who. I had just asked the half-elf his name when we suddenly had more company: a band of angry-looking men.

'All right, you lot!' one of them snarled. 'You've caused enough trouble, bringing this infernal winter on us, and it's time you answered for your crimes!'

'That was my fault,' I put in at once. 'I mean, it wasn't intentional – I picked up a ring that turned out to have an ice demon in it, and I haven't been free of it until a few minutes ago, when these good people cut my finger off…'

'But then it got stolen,' put in Kos.

'But anyway, it wasn't their fault,' I repeated. 'Take me, but spare them.'

Something hard smacked into the back of my head, and I crumpled to the ground. I had just time to think, 'Why would someone called Happy want a cursed ring?...' before I passed out.

When I woke, I tried to raise a hand to rub my aching head, but didn't get very far, as I was tied to a chair. I was in a warehouse and surrounded by crates with holes in. My holy symbol was gone, and, while I knew I ought to have enough faith for Lathander to work through me, with or without physical artefacts, the fact was that in practice I had never been able to make spells work without the pendant. For some religions, like Omnianism, holy symbols can be just symbols – the turtle as a reminder of the innocence and courage of the prophet Brutha, who had narrowly escaped being roasted to death on a metal turtle – but for me, it had always been more magical than that.

Standing in front of me was a big man with a red beard and hair. 'So, you thought you'd save your friends, did you?' he sniggered.

'What have you done with them?' I demanded, furious. Why had I been naïve enough to think that pleading for the innocent to be spared would make any difference? Why hadn't I fought?

'Oh, they're not here yet. But they will be. You, missy, are just the bait to bring them here to rescue you. They're going to hand themselves over to their old friend, Jeremy Wessell. Do you know what I've got concealed in each of these crates?'

I was too tired and headachey to answer.

'Men with gonnes,' leered Wessell. 'They're a weapon from another world, very useful, fire death without needing magic. Your friends are going to be shot so full of holes, you could use them for a colander.'

'I'm sorry to cause their deaths,' I said. 'But they're noble-hearted people, and they'll go to heaven. Where are you going?'

Wessell roared with laughter. 'Noble-hearted? You think they're noble-hearted? You don't get out much, do you? Do you realise what they've been up to?' He began to list every disaster that had happened in the surrounding countries over the past few years, which, according to him, were all the fault of my new friends.

I suspected that Wessell wasn't telling the whole truth, but on the other hand, I didn't know enough to tell him he was wrong. All I knew was how horribly easy it was to bring a disaster on a town without meaning to. 'I feel kinship with them,' I said.

Right on cue, the group rushed in, now accompanied by an old man who looked as if he might be another wizard. The half-elf had his arms tied, and Kriv was taking care to stand between him and the old wizard, as if he was afraid that the half-elf might attack.

'Didn't I tell you?' sneered Wessell. 'I knew you'd come to save your friend.'

'Who says she's our friend?' retorted Kos.

'Well, you're my friends, at any rate,' I said. 'I'm just sorry to have…'

Bobbynock fired a bolt of lightning at Wessell, and everyone began fighting. There was a sound like a thunderclap, and something faster than an arrow flew from one of the gonnes in the crates, and pierced Kos's armoured scales.

I heaved my shoulders as far as I could, and managed to burst my ropes apart. Feeling somewhat amazed that this had actually worked, I looked around the room to try to see if I could spot any weapons or armour. Of course, there was no good reason why my own plate mail or my mace should have been there – while I had been ill, Emmrietta had kept anything I could hurt myself with out of reach, and even if I'd had them with me, my attackers would hardly have brought them to my prison. But Wessell seemed the kind of man who loves to taunt and gloat, so it was always worth a try. Admittedly, I'm so short-sighted that I probably wouldn't have seen them even if they had been there. As it was, I couldn't think of anything sensible to do, so ran towards my group of friends.

'Run!' shouted Kriv, making his way to the warehouse door. He held it open as first Bobbynock, then the half-elf, and finally the human wizard, Kos and I ran out into the street, where the snow had been trampled into dirty, slippery slush. I glanced as Kos to see whether he needed any help, but he seemed to have managed to heal himself. I didn't know much about warlock powers, but his seemed effective – or maybe it was Lathander working in him.

We hadn't run far before we heard another set of footsteps following us. More men – not Wessell's ruffians this time, but the Watch. Kriv hastily explained to them that we weren't criminals, and, on the contrary, were escaping from criminals.

'They're good people,' I said. 'They cut my finger off…'

'Why did you do that?' said one of the watchmen suspiciously. 'She's a nice lady, after all.'

'Because I asked them to,' I managed to finish. 'I'd been caught by a ring that was causing this terrible winter and refusing to let me take it off.'

After Kriv, who had been Captain of the King's Guard in his home town of Elventower ('Though he's currently suspended,' Kos muttered to me) had talked to the Nyth Watch for a while, they relented, and agreed to escort us to the Mansion.

'What mansion?' I whispered to Bobbynock, as we made our way there.

'It's outside this dimension,' he explained. 'A magical, extra-dimensional mansion where we might finally get some rest.'

And this is what we're now doing. This place has everything, including warm, soft beds. I shouldn't need luxury, but it's wonderful to be able to feel warm and comfortable after being a frozen wreck for so long. I said I'd go straight to bed, and I meant to go to sleep after writing a few notes to try to make sense of how suddenly and bizarrely my life has turned around. It's taken longer than I expected – writing is slower when I have to get used to resting the pen against a different finger, and I also needed to twist a piece of wire I'd found into a makeshift rising-sun symbol.

I think the others assume I'm asleep now, because they're starting to talk more unguardedly. I overheard Kos's voice – 'So, Rothgar, are you going to tell her you arranged for your clone to replace you as king so you could run off and have adventures? Paladins are terribly Lawful, she won't like that!' and Rothgar's, in response – 'Yeah right, and are you going to tell her that until yesterday, you were an arbiter of Shub-Niggurath, and were planning to help an evil cat nekomancer open a Gate?'

I suppose if I were truly Lawful, I'd return to Nyth, confess what I'd done, and – if the people of Nyth forgave me – help them to fight the remainder of the zombies, and try to restore the church of Lathander. But still – Kos had presumably repented of serving the eldritch god, and he's obviously important to Lathander – so perhaps Lathander needs me to help Kos on his spiritual journey. Besides, I owe this group my life twice over – how could I refuse to help them, if they want me to come with them? If Kos needs to atone for his wrongs by defeating this 'nekomancer' – I don't even know whether that's the same as a necromancer, and I can't ask without admitting that I overheard this conversation – then I should do everything I can to help.

It's more a question of whether I can help them. So far, I seem to be the most ineffectual paladin ever. In the battle in the warehouse, I didn't do anything useful. And if I'm going to learn to be a hero, I'll need to learn soon, or die.