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That night for the longest tirew clear overhead and stars dazzled down upon us as the te frozen razors of air intoI shivered despite the furs, despite layers and more layers And when at last drea

In soht the silence wokeaway to nothing I cracked open an eye and stared into the darkness TheIn onethrough the colours, first red, then an eerie green, next a blue I’d not seen before And always shifting, from one serpentlike form to the next The silence and the scale of it kept the breath in my chest The whole sky overwritten, a hundred lory to soels hear

I kno that it must have been a dream, but in that moment I believed it with allbefore or since haser than mountains, played out above an empty wasteland to no audience but nificant

In theFimm did not rise

“Now it issack with a long bone needle and gut thread

“Will he rise?” I eyed the sack, half-expecting it to move

Snorri shook his head, soleu rubbed his eyes Of all of us the quins, now quads, seemed least moved

“He’s frozen,” Snorri said

“But” My face felt too solid for frowning “But you found a deadafter a day or more in a snowbank”

“The necro of oils and salts, the Broke-Oar said It keeps the solid” Snorri had told me this before, but the cold had frozen my memory

“This ar’s men—will need to thaw theics it doesn’t see them frozen to the south, or to bear sufficient fuel north” I thought of the other part to the tale Snorri had told The key that would open the frost giants’ gates—Loki’s gift The key that would open anything “Perhaps all they ever wanted was Rikeson’s key That one thing” And for soht worriedfrom the ice

• • •

Snorri had aimed west of the fort so that the line of the Bitter Ice could lead us east towards it If he had steered us wrong, then alking away from the fort into the ice-bound wastelands of the interior, where ould all die without the least inconvenience to anyone Death see back alone offered even the slightest hope of survival, then I would have been off without delay Unfortunately, as Tuttugu had discovered in battle, running away is so was the last thing I wanted to do, dying by myself seemed somehoorse

I staggered on, across the unending whiteness, wondering if the Silent Sister had already watchedwhen she looked beyond to filling my head Had she counted out each frozen step or just seen the great white shape of our trek across the snows? How many possibilities had lain strewn across the future for her? And how many of the by degrees Perhaps in soht and destroyed me before I even reached Snorri; in others he may have killed me as I ran into him Did she know for certain that her spell would find a hoe of the Bitter Ice? Did she knohether her row into more than they had been? Was she certain, or was she ambler always ready to roll those dice one time too many? I saw her narrow smile in my mind’s eye, and it did little to warm me Foot before foot Endlessly on

• • •

Just as Snorri had described, the Black Fort took me by surprise The landscape offered no clues, no buildup, no growing promise of journey’s end One moment it was a featureless white wasteland, bounded on one side by the Bitter Ice; the next moment it was the same featureless wasteland, except there was a feature, a black dot

The trek had worn us to our final strength—Fimm it had worn past even that—but ere none of us the sha, frostbitten wreck that Snorri had been when he had last stuht in us, some final reserve to draw upon And, as little as I wanted to battle anyone, I knew for sure that without the chance to rest and restock in the shelter offered by the Black Fort, I for one would not survive a return journey