CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The Frost Giant

Vigga the frost giant roared again. It shook the turret so hard that Saga was scared it would snap off from the ice castle.

‘Please tell me that you have a plan worked out and this was not just some valiantly foolish effort that you two girls undertook alone,’ Rollo shouted across to Saga, shielding his face from the frost giant as she tossed off the last bits of her sorcerer skin. The giant beneath had pale blue, leathery skin and white eyes, with wickedly curved talons and stubby horns.

‘Of course, I have a plan!’ Saga shouted back.

‘Good. Off you go, then.’ Rollo gestured at the open door. ‘And I’ll finish what you started in here.’ He gestured at the ice crystals, though he kept his eyes on the frost giant. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this.’ His sharkish smile reappeared, making Saga glad that it was directed at the frost giant and not at her for once.

Vigga the frost giant suddenly turned round, fixing her attention on Saga and Rollo. A predator before the pounce. ‘How dare you destroy the magic I was promised?’ she bellowed.

‘Go!’ Rollo shouted, and Saga fled.

As she ran through the doorway, she felt the collision between Rollo and Vigga the frost giant thunder around the turret. A deep crack appeared, running through the ice at her feet. Saga leaped over it without thinking, landing awkwardly on her knees and then skidding further along the icy passageway, gathering speed until she collided with something big and fluffy.

‘Bjørn!’ Saga cried out, throwing herself into his paws.

He snuffled into her hair, holding her tight against his fur.

‘Oh, Ruvsá sent you my way, didn’t she? I am so happy to see you again.’

An ominous creak rippled through the passageway and Saga clung tighter to Bjørn, who whined anxiously.

‘We need to go,’ Saga said, climbing back to her feet and breaking into a run, Bjørn at her side. ‘It’s not enough to destroy the ice crystals,’ she panted as she raced through the castle towards the ring of ice crystals that would send them soaring up to the peak. ‘We need to get rid of their equipment so they can’t make any more. That will slow them down enough for us all to get back home and spread the word of what we’ve witnessed up here.’

Then maybe the Jarls would band together and send an army up to make sure that this could never happen again. But, most importantly, Saga would be back in her favourite place, with her favourite people. She wondered how the others were getting on, if Torben and his raiders had managed to free the villagers yet or if they were still battling the trolls, if Afi and Dag had left the mines. There was another creak. This one sounded like a huge crust of sea ice breaking apart. It was chased by a roar.

Saga ran faster.

She leaped up into the ring of light, Bjørn right behind her, and burst out on to the mountain peak in time to see Canute standing on top of the turret. His scales were glistening darkly, more like black silk than crimson in the never-ending night. As she watched, he whipped his head back and roared again, summoning an answering roar from the frost giant inside. With the combined weight of the dragon and giant, several deep fractures had appeared where the turret was connected to the castle.

‘It’s going to fall,’ Saga realized. She waved her arms over her head, trying to catch Canute’s attention. ‘Rollo is still in there!’ she screamed up to him. When he snapped his head down, she thought he’d heard her. Instead, he breathed fire on to the turret.

The narrow ice bridge attaching the turret to the castle melted. And the turret slid away from the castle, falling past the outer ice walls and further down the mountain until there was a mighty crash as it collided with the ground as if a god had reached out and thrown it. A cloud of snow and ice flew out from the impact. It was too far away for Saga to see if anyone had crawled out of the wreckage, but, as she watched, an eruption of light and song danced out of the turret, the magic rippling from the smashed ice crystals in one glittering wave.

Saga tore herself away and forged through the snow along the narrow, wind-torn passage that led up to the jagged peak at the tallest point of the mountaintop. Here Bifrost burned a rainbow across the sky to the world of the gods, and the ancient set of instruments were bolted to the mountain rock.

Though Saga squinted at Bifrost, its blazing light thundering with magic, she couldn’t see anyone standing on or near it. Its sheer power sent her stomach crawling with nerves, as if her old fear of magic had cracked an eye open after slumbering for days and days. She gritted her teeth and turned her back to it, concentrating on the set of instruments.

They looked as if they could have come from the metal crafting workshop in her village. They were a collection of bottles and pipes and other instruments for which she had no name, and they were made of a strange material she’d never seen before, a blend of metal and glass that shimmered like a pearl yet was as fine as a moth wing. Saga reached out a hand to touch them, confused by how they could possibly be strong enough to stand on top of the mountain without shattering. They were silver-streaked where they had been scorched by raw magic.

‘You are drawn to them, are you not?’ an old voice creaked behind her.

Saga whirled round.

She was met with Baldr’s unseeing stare. Bjørn shuffled uneasily at Saga’s side as she tried to work out how the ancient sorcerer had seen her. He was dressed in his robes, missing the thick, fur-lined blue cloak that the other sorcerers wore when venturing outside, but he didn’t seem cold even though his silver beard was frozen all the way down to his feet.

‘It’s perfectly natural,’ Baldr chuckled. ‘Do you know how I lost my sight?’

‘No,’ Saga said, fretting that he was about to begin a long, winding tale that would have been boring even by firelight, but unbearable up on the blisteringly cold mountaintop, where she was itching to destroy the magical equipment so that she could race back down and find her afi. She didn’t even know if she could break this structure, but up here, where the only ice crystals were the horns of empty gemstones, she could use her own magic as a weapon without accidentally destroying anything else.

‘I was a mortal who stared at the sun,’ Baldr said. He gestured at Bifrost. ‘I had just been welcomed at the ice castle – many, many years ago – when I was shown the wonder of the rainbow bridge for the first time. The other sorcerers in training and I were then ushered down to the great hall for our first feast, where their minds turned to stew and roast meat and fresh fruit, and all the foods we had not eaten in our villages since summer. Yet I could not forget what I had seen. I returned alone, later that night, and I did what no mortal ought ever to do.’

‘What did you do?’ Saga was drawn into his story even as she itched to move.

The large ice crystal at Baldr’s forehead gleamed brighter. ‘I stepped on to Bifrost.’

Saga was too stunned to speak.

Baldr chuckled again. ‘I managed to walk several steps along it before it spat me out. I thought I had fallen face-first into the snow since everything was white. It wasn’t until later that I realized what price I had paid for being tempted by that burning light, that incandescent power.’ His voice dipped. ‘Though I don’t need to tell you how that much magic tempted me.’

A shiver darted down Saga’s spine. Sensing it, Bjørn growled under his breath.

‘What do you mean?’ Saga asked.

‘Do not mistake my blindness for lack of sight,’ Baldr told her. ‘Since my gaze turned inward that day, I have seen all. I am able to peer between the branches of the great Yggdrasill tree that holds all the worlds together, seeing into other realms and minds and times.’ His feet crunched into the snow as he trod closer to Saga. Her shield hummed to life, Bjørn raising his hackles. ‘Yes, I saw your parents’ great sacrifice. And further back too, to when you were a tiny mewling thing, scarcely bigger than a kitten, and a seer journeyed across the fjords because she had seen your prophecy written in the stars. She will hold the fate of the North in her hands.’

Saga couldn’t move or think to speak.

Baldr gestured at the structure behind her. ‘Your destiny awaits you. But I do wonder which one you will choose.’