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entered and saw that Dane had helped himself to some bread and cheese. He gave them a boyish grin and said, “What’s the matter—think I wouldn’t make it back?”
    â€œNever doubted it,” William said. Then they laughed and vigorously greeted each other warrior style, grasping each other by the forearms.
    â€œWhere are the others?” Lut asked.
    â€œWe were starving,” Dane said between bites. “We rode all night without stopping. Jarl, Drott, and Fulnir went home to eat, but I came directly here with that.” He nodded to the table where something was wrapped up in his cloak. Something large.
    â€œA present for me?” Lut inquired.
    Dane went to the table and gently unwrapped it. “I found it beneath Yggdrasil.”
    Lut came forward and with growing awe gazed at the massive book, covered in leather that looked as old as the gods themselves. “Are you mad, boy?” he gasped, once he had regained his powers of speech.
    William’s eyes popped. “Yggdrasil? You took a book from the Norns?”
    â€œNot a book,” Lut said. “ The book.”
    Lut had beheld many incredible sights in all his years, but nothing quite like this, nothing that filled him with such curiosity and dread. Dane had stolen the Norns’ Book of Fate! And it was here in his hut, right in front of him.
    Dane quickly spilled out the whole story, ending with how he’d returned to earth with the book concealed in his cloak. He had found Mist and his friends where he had left them. She had exploded in fury and, wasting no time, had mounted her sky horse and flown off, cursing the human race—and particularly Dane—for all the trouble they caused.
    The old man ran his fingers lightly over the book’s cover, worn smooth by centuries of handling. All his adult life he had been a famed seer, a reader of the mystical runes, interpreting the divine messages or, as he called them, the “whispers of the gods . ” Rarely were messages as clear as “Don’t marry Bjorn Thorgilsson,” or “If you go fishing today, you’ll drown.” Often they were confusing, and it would take a runemaster like Lut to make sense of it. Sometimes even he could not deduce the meaning of it, such were the perplexities and mysteries of his craft, and in these few cases he would cheerfully refund his fee.
    But now before him lay the future straight from the Fates themselves. How curious he was about the secrets it held. Nearing the end of his life’s thread, he still yearned to know what surprises lay ahead. He could feel his feeble heart thumping.
    â€œThey’ll pay plenty to get this back,” Dane said.
    â€œAnd your price is Astrid’s freedom,” Lut concluded. “The Norns may not take kindly to bartering with a trifling human.”
    â€œMaybe it’s time we stood up to them,” Dane said. “They make our lives miserable and we’re supposed to pray to them so they won’t make our lives more miserable? Well, now I have the upper hand, and they either give me what I want or . . .” Dane hesitated, weighing a dreadful option.
    â€œOr what?” Lut asked.
    â€œOr I’ll burn the book.”
    Lut rose, aghast. “ Burn it? You’ll do no such thing!”
    â€œIt would break their control over us!”
    â€œWe don’t know what it would do,” Lut said. “Destroying the book could destroy the future of humankind. I want Astrid back as much as you do, but I will not allow you to take such a risk.”
    â€œAll right,” Dane said, adopting a more reasonable tone. “But if we don’t make the Norns believe we’ll destroy it, they won’t take us seriously.”
    The young man had a point. No doubt the Norns would threaten to rain down scorpions and fill their insides with putrid fish guts unless the book was returned. But if they held firm and made the Norns truly believe