“Hold a moment, please, Countess,” Tiamak said, his usual shyness pushed aside by his curiosity. “Engby, your home, is far east of where we sit here in Elvritshalla—east even of Kaldskryke, is it not? Why would Norns travel so far that direction? Nothing lies to the east of the Dimmerskog forest except snow and emptiness.”

“I am not meaning to take offense where I am suspecting none was meant,” said Binabik a bit sternly, “but by ‘nothing’ I hope you are not speaking of Yiqanuc, land of our people?”

Tiamak was dismayed. “Forgive me, no! Of course not, Binabik. But the mountains of Yiqanuc are far away, many, many leagues, and I had not heard of the Norns being seen in the Trollfells.”

“They are not,” Binabik admitted. “Not since the most ancient of days, before great Tumet’ai vanished in the ice.”

“That truly is puzzling,” said Eolair. “The two ways the Norns have always traveled to the south, at least when mustered for war, are down the old Northern Road in the shadow of the western mountains or down the wide Frostmarch Road, that leads past this city and through the eastern heart of Rimmersgard on the way south.”

Simon was a bit dazzled. “All this map-reading and such. I don’t understand. Miriamele, does this make any sense to you?”

“A little, I think,” she said, “but I am still waiting to hear Alva’s story.”

“And me,” said Simon. “It’s only that I’ve had too much drink for patience. Go ahead, Lady Alva, please.”

“I hope you will be patient enough for this,” she told them. “Because I must tell you of a dream I had when I was a girl.”

“Tell, then,” Simon said. “I have had many dreams myself that turned out to be true.”

“Then we have that in common,” Alva said. “I have always had dreams of things that later come to pass. Small matters, mostly—things that are lost, visitors unlooked-for, messages from those who have passed on that make sense only to those who knew them.”

“It is true,” said Sludig. “All in Engby know of Lady Alva’s dreams.”

“Once when I was but a girl,” she went on, “I dreamed that St. Helvard himself came to me, dressed in robes of white, as I had seen him portrayed on the walls of our church. He led me out of my parents’ house and through the snows. In the dream there was a great storm, but I could hear other voices in the wind, singing and laughing. They were beautiful, but also frightening, and somehow I knew I was hearing the White Foxes, the ice demons I had been taught to fear since I was old enough to understand.

“In the dream, Helvard led me up a hill and across its crest to the far side, so that I could look down and see the Refarslod laid out below me. A ghostly army walked it, barely visible through the hard-blown snow, but what I could make out was spiky with spears and banners. In truth, all I could see clearly were their eyes glowing like the eyes of beasts, and they were beyond counting.

“‘They march to a city that never was,’ the saint told me. ‘They seek to win the everything that is nothing.’ And then I woke up, shivering in my bed.”

Simon was shaking his head. “I don’t understand,” he said at last. “You say this dream came to you when you were a girl?”

“I used to have many strange dreams,” Alva said. “But no other like that one.”

“Why do you look so puzzled, husband?” Miriamele asked.

“The wise woman Geloë used to say I was closer to the Road of Dreams than many people, Miri, but I don’t . . . of late I haven’t . . .” Simon paused. “I’ve just realized something. I’ve stopped dreaming.”

“What?” The queen was not the only one who stared at him as though he had begun babbling nonsense.

“It’s true! I only realized it now. I can’t remember the last time I dreamed. It’s been days—no, weeks!” Simon turned back to the baroness. “Lady Alva, I apologize for being distracted. I will try to make sense of it later. But I still do not understand—you said this dream came to you when you were a child. Why do you tell us now?” He looked from her to Sludig. “Am I misunderstanding?”

“No, Majesty,” said Alva. “Because I have not finished. We were going to wait and tell you this later, but it seems the moment is now.” She gave a little shrug. “Here is the rest. I have remembered that dream of St. Helvard all my life, with no sign of it ever coming true. In truth, the Norns seemed to have entirely stopped using the Refarslod they had traveled for generations. But just in the last few years such stories have begun to be told again. People are once again seeing strange things around and on the ancient fairy road. Then, scarcely a month before Sludig and I came to Elvritshalla, one snowy night several dozen cattle escaped from one of our barns. My good husband took several men and went in search of them. Nearly half of the cows were found wandering, but the others had simply vanished.”

“I started back with some of the men,” Sludig said, “leading back such cattle as we had found. My foreman, my wife, and several of our men stayed behind, searching for stragglers.” He nodded to his wife. “Now you speak, Alva.”

Sludig’s squire re-entered the chamber, but stood patiently waiting while his master and mistress continued their story. Simon could see the young man was carrying a bundle of cloth, handling it with the exaggerated diffidence of someone tasked to bear something foul-smelling or foul-feeling.

“It does not matter who tells the tale—the end is the same,” said Lady Alva. “We could ill afford to lose so many cattle, so we searched long after we should have gone back. As twilight fell, we came upon a group of strangers at the far eastern edge of our lands. It was snowing and hard to see well, but at first it seemed as though they were all sleeping—an odd thing to be doing in a snowstorm, you will agree. But when we got closer we saw that they were all dead, several of them besmeared in blood. More surprisingly, though, they were not men.”

“Norns?” asked Simon. “Were they White Foxes?”

“Yes, but not all of them. Some of the dead were equally strange in face and form, but golden-skinned.”

“Golden?” Simon looked at Miri, then at Binabik. “You mean they were Sithi?”

“Perhaps, but I cannot say it certainly, since I had never seen any of the Fair Ones before,” Lady Alva told him.

“But your husband has—he most definitely has!” said Simon. “What were they, Sludig?”

“I never saw the bodies, Majesty. My wife and the men hurried back to fetch me, but when we went back to where they had found the dead, they were all gone.”

“Gone?”

“Someone had come while we went to fetch the rest of the men,” explained Lady Alva. “They had carried away all the bodies and brushed away most of the tracks. But they had not had time to remove all traces—blood could still be seen in the snow. And something else as well, half covered in the drifts.” She turned to Sludig. “You show them, husband,” Alva said. “I cannot bear to hold it, myself.”

Sludig took the bundle from his squire and unfolded the thick cloth. “This is what we found.” What he held out was a dagger of strange design, with a faint coppery sheen, its hilt made from a single piece of polished stone. At the top, just below the pommel, was a thin ring of what Simon at first thought was another kind of stone, shiny and gray. Then he saw that the gray stone had a grain. “God’s Bloody Tree,” he swore, pointing at the gray stuff with a trembling finger. “Is that . . . witchwood?”

“A bronze Nakkiga dagger, that is being,” said Binabik, peering at it. “And, yes, the decoration is witchwood.”

The Aedonites all made the sign of the Tree. Sisqi touched her hand to her heart, as did her husband.

“I know what that marking on the witchwood signifies,” said Tiamak. “Do you see it carved there?” He was obviously reluctant to touch the dagger, and only pointed at the ring of gray stone below the pommel and the tiny spiral rune carved there. “I have seen it in old books. It identifies the Order of Song—the Norn Queen’s chief sorcerers.”