Page 80 (1/2)

And she’ll sail the brine another day

An orphan will find her, a bear-cub will bind her

And the ill lead them astray

And hand in hand they’ll co home

The ray

Through the shining white foam,

The red ship will roam

And the wolf shall lead them astray

And the ill lead her astray

The Sigrid’s voice was rough and low, like an oar pulling through dark water When she opened her eyes, there seeentle and sad I understood then that this Sigrid was a secret heretic, and I san to believe the heresy, and worse, I began to believe that I was the one destined to find her—did not The Book of Carrion contain the sah they must refer to me?

Nothing in my life has birthed more pain than the faith I conceived in that moment

There was no light left, then, and the Sigrid was silently replaced by another wouard thus changed, the spice-skinned Sigrid took rid for the first time

I did not leave it again for seven years

“AND THAT IS ALL I CAN TELL YOU OF MY FIRST years in Al-a-Nur,” Sigrid said, fingering dark patterns on the tavern table where decades of s had left their rids, and I could no more tell an uninitiated soul of the joys I suffered and the terrors I adored wit

hin those walls than I could tell a deaf woman how the sea sounds before a storm I was accepted into the Sainthood—I received a narids, but we have our own titles The Saint who is the Mother of us all is Saint Sigrid of the Nest The woman who told rid of the Shallow Keel I arid of the Ways”