CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Storm

When Saga awoke, the mood inside the sledge was as thick as pack ice and impossible to cut through. There were only around fifteen contestants now. They’d lost another handful, thankfully including Knut, who must have been sent off the sledge while she was sleeping. She sat up and her head rushed.

‘Steady.’ Ruvsá held on to her until she regained her balance and the sky and floor were in the right places again.

They were approaching the ice castle. A thousand stars glistened above it and the Northern Lights flickered through the sky. Now and then, they danced through Bifrost and the rainbow bridge of light turned incandescent. Saga wondered what it would sound like if you stood on it – if its magical hum would be an exquisite melody or a deafening roar; if its light would be beautiful or too dazzling for mortal eyes.

Sorcerers stood at the tip of the treacherous mountain of ice, high above the tallest castle turret, harvesting the Lights. They presented an ethereal image as the Lights ebbed and flowed around them, and for a moment Saga wondered if they were truly human. They seemed like the gods, who didn’t really care what people did as long as it didn’t affect them.

She was still muddling through it when they hopped up the ice flume, returning to another great feast laid out in the frosted hall. This time, the second table had been removed; most of the fifty contestants had left now. As ever, it was dark. Saga felt the disorientating twist of time, not knowing whether this was breakfast or the evening meal. Either way, the remaining contestants fell on it as if they’d never seen food before, and Saga’s stomach snarled at the sight of it all.

Canute laughed at her. ‘That always happens when I’ve turned into a dragon. My father likes to joke that I have the appetite of a dragon as well.’

Saga gave him an exhausted smile before she went to her room. When she returned with Bjørn, he growled at Canute again, sensing the scales under his skin, the dragon slumbering inside the boy. But this time Saga was prepared for it and she stroked Bjørn as Ruvsá softly sang to him in her language, of the dragon that was a friend and a bear that had nothing to fear. When Bjørn calmed, the three of them helped themselves to the biggest plates they could find and began the process of adding everything to them. Fire-baked breads that they softened in hot, flavourful bowls of reindeer stew, roasted aurochs of which Bjørn devoured more than his fair share, platters of crispy vegetables strewn with herbs, salted fish and a creamy mushroom soup that Saga particularly liked, although she picked out the chunks of mushrooms, explaining to Ruvsá, ‘I like the taste of them. I just don’t like their bodies – they’re too … slimy.’

The raiders and shieldmaidens kept their distance from the children, though their gaze fell in their direction more than once. Bjørn growled softly, staying closer than usual to Saga, his fur pressed against her back as he guarded her. Even the sorcerers were keeping watch. Saga hated that they all knew that she couldn’t control her magic. Worse, that some of them were afraid of her, but she didn’t blame them; she’d terrified herself. The biggest disappointment was Torben, who hadn’t spoken to her once since her light-bear had thrown Knut out of the sledge. He wasn’t even close to Knut – Saga had never seen them talk that much to each other – but Torben seemed as wary as the other raiders of her wild magic. Only Unn and Leif were indifferent and had sat near the children.

‘What happened back there?’ Ruvsá asked.

‘I couldn’t control it,’ Saga sighed. ‘It just came out of nowhere and stormed through me and I didn’t understand what was happening or how to make it stop. It felt like my body didn’t belong to me any more.’ The worst thing was now that she knew she was powerful, she didn’t know how to use that power to find Afi and Dag, or if she could even control it enough to fight off a mountain troll, let alone a whole tribe of trolls.

Bjørn gave a low whine and nudged an entire cake over to Saga with his nose. She smiled and cut herself a generous slice.

Canute pulled a strange expression.

‘What?’ Saga asked.

‘I know how you feel,’ he said.

‘Then why are you making that face?’

Now Canute looked puzzled. ‘What face?’

Ruvsá gestured at him with a chunk of bread. ‘I think that was his sympathetic face,’ she added helpfully.

‘Anyway,’ Canute said, his ears turning pink, ‘when I first discovered that I could turn into a dragon, I couldn’t control it either. My sister would borrow my skates without asking and lose them, and, next thing I knew, I’d have scales and horns and a tail.’

‘Once I was so cross with my older brothers that I accidentally made the whole reindeer herd chase them. They had to climb up a tree to get away from their antlers.’ Ruvsá laughed. ‘It’s just practice. And we can help with that.’

Saga chased the last crumbs of cake around the plate with her finger. ‘But my parents were the best rune-casters my village had seen in generations and they couldn’t control their magic. When the trolls came the first time, my parents’ magic was too powerful and it killed the trolls, but also my mother and father.’ She touched her silver hair, the reminder of how her parents’ deaths had marked her. ‘What if I accidentally use too much and it drains my life-force too? If my parents couldn’t control their magic, I don’t have any hope of controlling mine!’

‘What did your afi say about it?’ Ruvsá asked curiously. ‘You’re always talking about his stories. He must have told you something?’

Saga fidgeted. ‘He told me that they had full command over their magic, that they chose to sacrifice themselves to protect me.’ Suddenly she didn’t feel hungry any more, just tired. ‘That the only thing that was ever out of their control was how much they loved me. But now they’re gone and I can never ask them if that was true or show them how much I love them back.’

‘You can show them your love by honouring them with your magic,’ Ruvsá told her. ‘You’re a part of them and they will always be with you. Look how your shield refuses to leave you – that’s because their love will never end.’

Saga buried her face in Bjørn’s fur, her eyes watering. He snuffled at her hair. ‘I’m fine,’ she croaked. ‘Let’s talk about something else now.’

The gods granted her wish.

Vigga, the oldest sorcerer they’d seen so far, came rushing into the great hall as fast as she could, her ice crystal bobbing on her forehead, her robes and sparse silver hair windswept. Some of the sorcerers stood at once and a deep silence spread through the hall.

‘A terrible storm is rolling in over the horizon,’ Vigga gasped, leaning on the sorcerers’ table to catch her breath. ‘One that I fear has been sent by the gods to test us. If we do not secure the castle …’

Alarm stirred through the sorcerers. Saga noticed that Rollo continued to eat calmly.

‘Why are they worried?’ Canute whispered to her and Ruvsá. ‘The whole castle is magical!’

Holger stood. The runes on his cheeks dappled as he spoke: ‘Contestants, return to your rooms. The third and final challenge is cancelled until further notice.’ He pivoted to address the sorcerers. ‘Sorcerers, take up your assigned positions to raise the shields.’

There was a growing murmur of concern mixed with frustration. Solveig stalked from the room with an entire cake under her arm, followed by the rest of the shieldmaidens. The raiders exited quickly after them, taking their horns of mead with them. Leif looked more squirrelly than usual as he waited for Unn.

Unn turned to the children. ‘Do not be frightened,’ she said kindly, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. ‘You can wait out the storm with us, if you like?’

Saga stared at her. Canute paused in stuffing his pockets with biscuits. They’d voyaged to the Far North, climbed into a white-bear den and dived into the depths of the icy ocean – one little storm wasn’t going to scare them now!

‘That’s very kind of you, but we’ll be fine,’ Ruvsá said quickly. Saga, Bjørn and Canute followed Ruvsá out of the great hall. Before they entered the icy passageway that led to their rooms, Saga glanced back in time to see Rollo use several ice crystals to conjure a huge, glimmering shield of magic that rippled out, covering the windows and stretching to where she couldn’t see its limits. It was darker than her parents’ shield had been, thicker and purple-tinted, but it still plunged Saga back to being five years old and, with a dizzying whirl, she suddenly remembered that day again, as clearly as the smoothest waters.

Falling against the thick ice wall, Saga was barely aware of Bjørn’s alarmed yowl as he rushed to her side, holding her up, Ruvsá and Canute running back to her. All she could see was that moment when her mother and father had looked at her, hiding under the table, then at each other, their hands linked tightly. Saga’s mother had yanked the single ice crystal she’d been wearing round her neck and, as one, they cast the shield that exploded their longhouse with its magical force.

‘My mother did use her ice crystal,’ Saga whispered to her bear and her friends, all crowded around her. ‘That means I was worried about using normal runes for nothing. It wasn’t using runes that killed them … It was an ice crystal.’ She looked up at her friends, searching their faces for answers. ‘But where did these new runes come from? What if they’re more dangerous?’

‘The only thing that’s dangerous is your fear.’ Ruvsá rubbed Saga’s back as if she was soothing a wild animal. ‘It makes you panic and you lose control over your magic, and that’s when things go wrong. But it doesn’t have to be like that.’

Saga nodded. ‘I know I need to practise.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Bjørn whined sadly and shuffled even closer, stroking her with one careful paw. ‘If I’d been practising all along, I could have rescued Afi by myself in the first place!’

Canute shook his head. ‘You’re powerful, Saga, but you’re not take-on-a-whole-tribe-of-trolls-by-yourself powerful. Anyway, didn’t the seer tell you to enter the contest? They know everything – she wouldn’t have said that if you didn’t need to be here.’

Saga let her friends help her up, their expressions kind. But, as they made their way back to their rooms, she couldn’t stop wondering. Why did she need to be here? What more did the seer know?

That night, Saga hugged Bjørn extra tight. He gave an inquisitive huff and placed a paw on her back. ‘I wielded magic today, Bjørn,’ Saga whispered into his fur. ‘Real, powerful magic. And it was a rune I’d only seen in my dreams. What can that mean?’ She remembered the seer’s prophecy as if it was written on her skin. She repeated it now: ‘“She will dream magic,” the prophecy said. This must be what they meant.’ But now, as the storm laid siege to the ice castle and Ruvsá was lost in sleep, a deep chill descended on Saga. Fear. ‘What about the second part of the prophecy?’ Bjørn whined softly and rested another paw on her head. Its weight soothed Saga though her thoughts still flurried like a snowstorm. This was the part that troubled her the most, the part she had not shared with Ruvsá and Canute in case it shattered their newfound friendship. ‘“She will hold the fate of the North in her hands.” What can that mean?’ Saga frowned in the dark. Could rescuing her village have some bigger effect than being reunited with Afi and Dag? ‘And what if all this was a colossal mistake? We’ve wasted so much time here and I need to get to Afi. Maybe we should just leave?’ Bjørn huffed. ‘You’re right, the seer told me to come here to save them. Ugh!’ She didn’t know what the right decision was and couldn’t stop panicking that either way she’d choose the wrong thing to do and end up losing the most precious things in the world to her. Saga groaned and flopped down on her furs, waiting for sleep to reach out with its creeping fingers and steal her away. She was more tired than she’d ever been, so she closed her eyes and waited.

But sleep did not come. The more Saga tried to sleep, the more her thoughts and fears swirled about in her head until she found herself getting up, pulling on her boots and softly opening the door. It creaked on its frosted hinges and Saga stopped, but Ruvsá only turned on her side, muttering to herself in her dreams.

Saga slipped out of their room.

Bjørn padded after her on silent paws. Hunter’s paws. Since Saga’s legs were still aching from her icy plunge after the whale tusk, she pulled herself on to his back.

‘Let’s go to the hot springs,’ she whispered.

Out in the passageway, a roar battered the magical shields and the ice creaked and shifted around them.

‘Wait.’ Saga laid a warning hand on Bjørn’s shoulders. ‘Rollo was in the great hall. Maybe we should go to the storage cave instead of the hot springs? I bet we could find you something tasty to eat down there. What do you think?’

Bjørn snapped his jaws together with excitement and Saga stifled a giggle. They set off together. Down one twisting passageway and up the next. Other than the crunch of Bjørn’s claws on the ice and the storm raging on, it was silent. The contestants were all in their rooms, the sorcerers otherwise occupied. The blue-green lanternlight cast eerie shadows on the frozen walls, and the carved runes shimmered like pale moonlight as they passed.

‘We should be there by now,’ Saga said out loud, her voice echoing in the darkness as it slowly dawned on her that they were lost somewhere deep inside the forbidden castle.