CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Saga’s Plan

‘That is a terrible plan,’ Canute said.

Saga gave him an indignant look.

‘Well, it is!’ he protested. ‘You were lucky Rollo only caught you in the great hall, not coming out of the mines or, worse, inside the mines. You could have been troll food! And now you want to go back out there?’ Canute exchanged a glance with Ruvsá. ‘It’s a terrible idea. He’s probably still there and you won’t get away with it twice in one night.’

Ruvsá bit her lip.

‘Do you think it’s a bad idea as well?’ Saga asked her in a quiet voice.

‘It’s not even a plan, really,’ Canute continued as if Saga hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s a plan to make a plan.’

Saga whirled round. ‘Do you have a better idea, then?’ she demanded.

‘Yes,’ Canute said. ‘We go back to focusing on the contest and when one of us wins that horn of magic ice crystals, we use it to free the villagers. Then we go home. We can tell our Jarls about the sorcerers and then they can investigate anything strange happening up here in the Far North while we sit by the fire, telling stories of how we bested a sledge-load of raiders and warriors to the prize.’

‘If you ignore the fact that none of us might win, what would you do after that?’ Saga asked. ‘When the villagers are free and all the magic is used up and maybe we’ve defeated the trolls but we’re still here, in the ice castle, facing a horde of angry sorcerers? What happens then?’

Canute fell silent.

‘The seer told me to come here, to enter the contest – this has to be the reason why!’ Saga cried out.

‘Knowledge is always useful,’ Ruvsá added. ‘Saga’s right. We can’t plan properly if we don’t know what the sorcerers are actually doing.’

‘Thank you.’ Saga sighed in relief.

‘But Canute has a good point too,’ Ruvsá carried on, ignoring Saga’s frown. ‘It’s too risky to go creeping around the castle for a second time tonight. Especially with all the sorcerers on alert with this storm. Maybe tomorrow night will be better if it’s calmed down.’

Saga stood up. ‘No. I’ve journeyed to the Far North, carved my first runes, walked into a white-bear den and plunged deep into the sea for a lost whale tusk. All that time, I’ve been waiting and worrying about how to find my afi and Dag. Wondering if I was too late, if I was doing all of this for nothing. But I wasn’t and now they’re here and I am not going to let them spend a day longer down there than they have to. Not them nor any of the villagers. And if you won’t come with me because you’re scared of the sorcerers or being thrown out of the contest, that’s fine, but don’t ask me to stay.’ Ruvsá and Canute were silent after Saga had finished. ‘Come on, Bjørn,’ she said, grabbing her furs and leaving the room. Ruvsá and Canute didn’t follow her. Saga felt their absence like a shard of ice, piercing and cold.

Saga crept along the glittering ice passageway, Bjørn at her back. The night had deepened and she hoped there was enough time left to investigate before another dark day dawned. She tiptoed into the great hall, casting a wary eye about her in case Rollo had reappeared. But he was nowhere to be seen. The storm still laid siege to the thick castle walls, with vicious winds and hail whipping past the windows in a howling haze. If Saga wanted to learn what was happening, she needed to go straight to the heart of the mystery: she needed to discover what Rollo was doing up by Bifrost that Vigga and the other sorcerers were worried about. But that would mean finding a way up to the mountaintop, teetering above the castle in a terrible magical storm.

Just the thought of it was enough to make her knees shake, but if Rollo had done it that meant it wasn’t impossible, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do to save her afi. That flame inside her burned a little brighter.

Saga peered into a handful of different passageways before she found the route that would take her up, higher than the castle. A ring of ice crystals was embedded in rune-inscribed ice, their light forming a dazzling circle. When Saga looked up, she saw the stars. ‘This must be it, then,’ she told Bjørn, who pressed close to her side, refusing to let her enter the ring of light by herself. As soon as they reached the centre, Saga felt as if she’d stepped into water. Her weight was supported as the magic gently lifted both her and Bjørn, higher and higher, until her ears popped, and they emerged at the top.

They were left standing on the great frozen peak of the mountain, high above the ice castle, where the storm was demonstrating its full power. Saga clung on to Bjørn before the wind stole her off the mountain. Hail hammered into her, she was soaked wet already, and she didn’t dare move in case she fell. She only hoped that venturing up here might help her figure out what was happening in the castle and its mines – if Vigga had left it guarded from Rollo, there must be something important up here, and she needed to find out what.

‘The guard.’ Saga panicked. ‘Bjørn, I forgot about the guard!’ She couldn’t see anyone up on the mountaintop. There was too much thick grey haze and ice hurtling down into her face. The storm was like a pack of ghosts that had descended on the castle in attack, and no lantern could cut through the gloom. But … there. A flash of light and colour. It was too stormy for the Northern Lights to appear on a night – or day – like this, but beyond the highest peak of the mountain was a sliver of air with a fatal drop. And, beyond that, the twinkling first step of Bifrost, the shimmering rainbow bridge that led to other worlds. Saga stared at it, moving forward as if she was drawn to it, but Bjørn growled a warning and caught the back of her furs in his teeth, drawing her away from the edge and to safety. As he did, Saga squinted through the storm, desperate to peek at the bridge, to see if she could catch a glimpse of another world.

Then she spotted something else.

She and Bjørn were not the only ones on the mountaintop; a lone sorcerer stood on the peak.

Saga couldn’t make out who it was, but they were right on the edge, facing Bifrost, their blue cloak snapping in the storm.

‘Is that the guard?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Or is that Rollo and has he got past the guard? Oh, I wish the others were here. Maybe they’d know what to do!’ She sucked in a breath, curious to see whether the sorcerer was going to try to step on to Bifrost, and what might happen if they did, until she focused on the bridge itself. It was burning bright with light and, even through the ferocious weather, a glimpse of it was dazzling. As her eyes adjusted, she spotted a second figure, standing on Bifrost itself.

Saga gasped. The sorcerer was speaking to someone from another world. Nobody else could have stood on that burning bridge without consequences.

‘I was right,’ she told Bjørn over the screaming wind. He growled his agreement. ‘Something strange is going on here. We need to hear what they’re saying. Maybe if I –’ She yanked off a mitten. At once, the bitter temperatures seized her hand, turning it red and numb, but she ignored that, reaching down to the snow piled around her boots and inscribing a rune: a few short lines that looked like two mountains on their sides, their peaks meeting. Dagaz: the moment when light breaks through darkness and understanding clears a murky head. Saga shoved her hand back into her mitten. It was stiff and she couldn’t feel her little finger any more, but she couldn’t think about that now. She needed her rune to work. She stared at it, willing it to hum to life and make her understand what was happening. Nothing.

Just when Saga was about to give up on her rune, it gave a dull twinkle and for a brief moment the thundering ice and wind stopped, giving Saga a clear view of the mountain peak. There was one narrow path that wound along the peak, from the magical entrance to the ice castle up to the highest tip of the mountain, where a set of strange instruments was bolted to the rock. Empty ice crystals waited beneath. So this was how the sorcerers sucked the magic from the Northern Lights, then. It was impossible to see unless you stood on the top of the mountain and she guessed that she was the first person who wasn’t a sorcerer to come here in a long time, maybe ever. No wonder nobody knew how they did it. She could also see straight through the window of the turret just below, where shelves of filled ice crystals glimmered.

But the most terrifying sight of all was the figure standing on Bifrost.

It was a frost giant. As huge as a god, with frosted blue skin and three times as tall as the biggest troll she’d ever seen. Saga gulped back a scream – the world of the frost giants was not one that was attached to the rainbow bridge, so if a frost giant was standing on it now, something terrible had gone wrong.

She quickly inscribed another rune without thinking. This time, she carved the two mountains into the snow again, but she added a window and a sun.

A beam of light almost as bright as Bifrost shot out. Dazzled, Saga scrambled back from it on her hands and feet, her magical shield crackling and spitting around her. The sorcerer and frost giant both reared back from the light, and all at once Saga realized her colossal mistake: she’d wanted illumination that came in the form of understanding, not pure light.

With the shield protecting her eyes, she looked directly into the light as the sorcerer turned round, a hand above his eyes. It was Rollo. In his other hand was a horn of ice crystals that he was holding out to the frost giant. A couple fell to the snow as the sky cracked in two with thunder, tossing more wind down until the mountaintop swirled with snow. Saga yelped. Before Rollo could seize an ice crystal to fight against the light and set eyes on Saga, a flock of Arctic terns descended. They swooped low and fast, cutting through the storm to hide Saga with their white wings, their feathers aflutter.

Two pairs of arms reached for Saga.

Canute and Ruvsá dragged her away from the shining rune, running back along the narrow path and jumping down the hole back to the ice castle, Bjørn butting his head into her side to hurry her along.

The magical ring of ice crystals caught them in mid-air, slowing their fall to a controlled float until their boots and paws were all safely back on solid ice inside.

Saga blinked hard to clear the bright spots from her eyes. ‘You came!’ she said happily.

‘We couldn’t let you go alone.’ Ruvsá hugged her.

‘Did you call the birds down?’ Saga asked, hugging her back.

‘Of course.’

A smile peeped across Canute’s face. ‘We knew you’d need us, and we were right,’ he teased and Saga grinned.

With a flash of clarity, she remembered the seer’s words, back in her witch-cave. That the bravest hero did not tread their path alone. That had been before the seer had sent Saga on her way to enter the contest and she suddenly wondered if the seer had known Ruvsá and Canute would be waiting for her, their destinies interwoven like thread. This was followed by a pinch of anger: the seer must have known all along exactly where Afi and Dag were, and had sent Saga to the ice castle not for the contest but to discover the secret hidden down in the mines. She really wished seers would just tell you what was happening without all the mysterious advice.

‘Was that a god I saw?’ Canute asked, more seriously.

Saga shook her head. ‘That was no god – that was a frost giant.’ She’d heard enough of Afi’s stories to be able to tell the difference.

‘So Rollo was talking to a frost giant?’ Ruvsá pushed her fur hood back to listen better. Her brown hair slipped free around her face. ‘What happened to Vigga’s guard?’

Saga shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but I have more to tell you. Not here, though.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Let’s hurry in case he follows us!’

They fled back through the ice castle, only slowing when they reached the great hall.

There, they were met by another sorcerer.