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morning of the third day the helmsman sighted land, and as the sun reached its height they came at last to the port of Alebu.
    Far to the south of them, in the kingdom of Wessex, the king’s advisor, Aagard, stepped back from his fire, shaken by the images he had seen there. He was too old, he thought despairingly: wise enough to see the threat and know it for what it was, but without the strength of vision to follow it – or to challenge it.
    ‘Loki goes south; that’s certain,’ he muttered. ‘And our friends pursue him but are blind to the truth. The demon-god has split himself into more than one and walks in many guises and travels faster than a mist through the land.’
    The destroyer was still fettered in some way, Aagard was sure of that. Years ago, he had caught a glimpse of that mind, and seen the fires there. Nothing but total annihilation would satisfy Loki if he were free.
    His aim now must be to free himself completely, then. And he would work through trickery, or by bending others to his will . . . as he had done before, here in Wessex. The mad sorcerer Orgrim still lived, confined in the king’s strong-house, blind and barely able to speak, now that his masterhad abandoned him. But when he had served Loki, he had controlled the kingdom.
    ‘Trickery; deceit; working through others,’ the old man said aloud. ‘But which others?’
    His divination was over: there would be no more visions tonight. But as he stared, unseeing, into his small fireplace, he thought he saw fire like a red cloud, spreading to engulf the world, and black smoke that quenched the sun.

Chapter Four
    The port of Alebu was more familiar to Elspeth than any place she had seen in the Snowlands: a harbour town, busy even on the winter evening when they arrived: its docks scattered with sailors, merchants rich and poor, and the drifters who came to find a day’s work or to fleece unwary travellers. The people spoke Dansk, as Fritha and her father had done, but their accent was closer to the one that Elspeth had heard when she first learned the language aboard the
Spearwa
. She felt she should be at ease in a town like this, with one foot in the sea; but she could find none of it reassuring. The three days aboard the boat, even with a foolish crew who would not recognise her as a fellow sailor, had felt like a return to her old life with her father, when there had been no sword, no demons to fight, and no constant, nagging sense of failure and guilt. With her first step on land, all that heaviness returned, and with it her sense of urgency. Loki was here somewhere. She had no idea how to find him; still less how to stop him – but she
must
! She looked down at her right hand,healed now but for the wedge-shaped band of red across the palm, and thought she felt an answering throb there. Her head swam suddenly, and she stumbled, throwing out her arms for balance.
    ‘Elspeth!’ Edmund was beside her in a moment, his face filled with concern. Cluaran came up on the other side to take her arm.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she told them. ‘Just not used to being on land.’ The cobbles under her feet did feel strange to her, as they left the harbour and made their way past the first houses.
    ‘We’ll find an inn,’ Cathbar said. ‘You need to get your strength back.’
    They left the sailors who brought them standing on the quay, arguing. The men had been alarmed to find their own boat – the newly made and newly rescued pride of their village, which had carried the hero here – abandoned at the quayside, with no sign of its master or crew. Their enquiries brought little result: the boat had arrived more than three days ago with eight men aboard; all eight had walked into the town the same day, and had not returned.
That means they sailed here in only a day!
Elspeth thought. It was too fast to be natural.
    It seemed there were a number of visitors to the town just now: the only inn of any size was crowded, with barely space for the five of