CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The Fate of the North

If Saga had thought Vigga was old, then this sorcerer was ancient. He was wizened like tree bark, with drooping ears and a silver beard that trailed on the floor. His stare in their direction was as mottled as a cloud, though his ice crystal, dangling from his forehead band, was the largest gemstone Saga had seen, and it shone with the strength of a hundred stars. Something about that made Saga cautious not to underestimate him. If the seer had taught her anything, it was that power did not fade with age – it only grew more potent.

The three children and Bjørn froze in place, waiting for him to speak. Yet no words came.

‘Let’s sneak away. He hasn’t noticed us yet. Maybe he’s blind,’ Canute whispered loudly. Ruvsá gave him a pained look as Saga cringed.

The sorcerer gave a throaty chuckle as he peered closer at the children. ‘There’s still some sight left in this old man yet.’

Canute’s cheeks turned pink.

‘This post has been abandoned – I can’t think why,’ the sorcerer muttered to himself, thickening the shield that rippled over the windows as lightning speared through the sky. It was chased by a deafening boom of thunder. ‘Whatever was Rollo thinking? I haven’t seen a storm such as this since I was a young man.’ Unlike the other sorcerers, he did not use an extra ice crystal, nor carve any rune, but wielded the magic with his bare hands, his palms crackling silver-bright. His pickaxe was made of older wood than those of the other sorcerers, his name engraved in gold like Vigga’s had been, though this one’s runes spelled Baldr.

Saga exchanged a significant look with Ruvsá. They knew exactly where Rollo had gone, and that he had created the storm himself so that he could sneak up to Bifrost and let a frost giant on to the bridge, but did this mean that Baldr didn’t know what was happening in the ice castle?

Baldr whipped back round. ‘Have you noticed that there are no trees on these islands?’

Saga cleared her throat, trying to shift her panic. It didn’t seem like they were in trouble. ‘Yes?’

‘Trees cannot survive here. This land is too wild, too uncontrollable …’ He trailed off as if lost in thought.

‘Well, we’ll be on our way, then,’ Saga said nervously, pulling Ruvsá and Canute towards the narrow ice hallway that held their rooms. Bjørn padded after them.

‘Farewell and good fortune with your next task!’ Baldr replied jovially, his magic fizzing and spitting in his hands.

Closing the door to her room, Saga turned to Ruvsá and Canute, who were lowering their hoods and shrugging their furs off in front of the crackling purple fire. Their faces were reddened from the wind’s vicious bite.

Saga took a deep breath. ‘I have something I need to tell you.’ She pulled her mittens off.

Ruvsá frowned. ‘Your hands are really red – did you take your mittens off up on the peak?’

‘Only to draw the runes –’ Saga flexed her fingers. They were stiff and she couldn’t feel her little finger at all. A fisherman from her village who had lost three fingers to the cold last year popped into her head, and her face flushed hot with panic as she met Ruvsá’s worried gaze.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Canute said, surprisingly reassuring. ‘Let’s go and warm them up in the hot springs.’

Saga sat down on a large rock next to a midnight-blue pool that smelled like a forest and now and then blew huge shimmering bubbles. Dangling her bare feet in the steamy water, she finally told her new friends her secret. ‘I have a magical destiny,’ she cringed; hearing it spoken aloud was every bit as embarrassing as saying it. ‘It doesn’t mean I think I’m extra special or anything,’ she added quickly, ‘but a seer visited my family when I was a baby and told them that they had been foretold about me.’

‘I thought you were special anyway,’ Ruvsá said, nudging her with a smile.

Canute looked as if he really wanted to roll his eyes, but, since they’d become friends, Saga had learned that most of his boasting and annoyingness was just his own shield, protecting the secret of the boy who could turn into a dragon. He settled for asking, ‘What did the seer see?’

This was the part Saga had been dreading. She watched Bjørn floating in the water with only his head and all four paws visible, his eyes sleepily blinking back at her. ‘They said that I would dream magic and that I held the fate of the North in my hands.’

There was a long silence, filled only with bubbling water and happy bear splashes. Saga shuffled on the rock, waiting.

‘Dream magic.’ Ruvsá looked thoughtful. ‘That must be about your rune dreams, Saga.’

Canute nodded. ‘And it explains why you were the one to discover the villagers in the mines and then Rollo speaking to a –’ he lowered his voice, looking around the darkly glimmering cave as if someone might pop out of the shadows – ‘frost giant.’

‘But what does it mean?’ Saga asked. ‘Do all the sorcerers know about the villagers in the mine and the frost giants, or is this Rollo’s secret plan and the others, like Vigga, are trying to stop him?’

‘If we know that Vigga is against Rollo then we know that there are two sides to this,’ Ruvsá said slowly, ‘but we don’t know how many sorcerers are on each side and there’s no way of figuring that out.’

Saga wiggled her fingers in the hot steam. They were tingling now, much to her relief. ‘The sorcerers all go around with those pickaxes when they’re not even the ones working down in the mines. I can’t believe that none of the sorcerers would notice that many villagers and trolls coming and going down there, or that somehow none of the sorcerers are needed down in the mines, even though the ice crystals keep coming –’ She stopped, remembering that Rollo had been handing the frost giant a horn crammed to the brim with ice crystals. ‘The ice crystals!’

‘What?’ Canute asked, alarmed.

‘That’s the missing link between the two mysteries! They’re trying to fill as many ice crystals with magic as possible. That’s why they’re taking villagers to mine more and more.’ Nerves fluttered in Saga’s stomach like a seabird’s wings. ‘So they can give them all to the frost giants.’

Canute made a strange gulping sound. ‘What do they need that much magic for?’

‘And why are they giving them to the frost giants?’ Ruvsá’s brown eyes darkened with fear.

‘That frost giant was standing on Bifrost,’ Saga whispered. ‘The sorcerers must be helping the frost giants march on the gods by arming them with magical ice crystals, and if they do –’

‘Then the worlds will collapse,’ Canute finished.

Bjørn whimpered.

This was an even bigger problem than Saga had imagined – much bigger than saving her afi and Dag. She stood up. ‘Then we have to stop them!’