Prologue

One day, some years ago, a seer walked into a village. The village had been carved out between mountains and sea, on lands that were born on the winds of magic. As the seer passed through, her staff thumping into the snow, people stepped back, afraid of her power.

It was said that she could see a thousand years into the future and could tell you the day you’d die … whether you wanted to know or not.

Just beyond the village square, she stopped before a wooden house shaped like a ship, and when she knocked on the door of the longhouse with her staff it opened with a creak. A tall man stood in the doorway, taking in her clouded eyes and hands gnarled like roots. He nodded sadly. ‘I knew she was special,’ he murmured.

The seer made her way over to a fire crackling and spitting in the centre of the room. On a fur before the flames lay a baby and a bear cub, curled up together like two crescent moons.

The seer peered down at them milkily. ‘The seers speak of a girl,’ she said. ‘A girl braver than a raider and fiercer than an eagle, who will ride a bear over the tundra during the dayless night.’

The man watched as his baby granddaughter opened her eyes and smiled up at him, her gaze as blue as the oldest glacier. ‘You have a magical destiny, Saga,’ he told her, filled with pride and worry.

The seer turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ called out Saga’s grandfather. ‘Why have you come to tell us this?’

The seer hesitated before the door. ‘The girl will dream magic.’ Her lined face drooped. ‘And she holds the fate of the North in her hands.’