“Who, me?”

“I’ll be watching you.” She smiled. “Like a hawk.”

Ten minutes later an eagle and a small brown hawk were on their way to the village of Malbry. It would take them an hour to cross the valley. Without wings, Loki said, it was pointless to follow-and yet Maddy hated the thought of leaving One-Eye at the mercy of the Huntress when she realized (as she inevitably would) that she had been deceived.

Idun, as she soon discovered, was no help. She listened attentively enough to Maddy’s story but seemed to feel no sense of urgency or danger at all.

“Odin will think of something,” she said, and appeared to feel that ought to reassure her.

But Maddy was not reassured. “There must be some way,” she said. “It’s my fault. I took the Whisperer…”

Idun was sitting on a block of ice, singing to herself. At the mention of the Whisperer she stopped, and a look of mild anxiety crossed her features.

“That old glam?” she said. “Best leave it alone. It never did give us anything but bad news.” She pulled a comb from her hair and examined it, then began to sing again, her voice a thin filament of sweetness in the chilly air.

It was clear to Maddy that whatever powers Idun possessed would be of little use to her in their present situation. Wild thoughts of mindblasting her way out of the cavern were attractive but impractical, and she knew that however much she tried, she could never walk to the village in time.

One solution remained, and as she examined it from all angles, weighing the benefits and disadvantages, she became more and more convinced that it was her only hope.

“There’s no choice,” she said at last. “I’ll have to wake another Sleeper.”

Idun smiled vaguely. “That would be nice, dear. Just like old times.”

Maddy had a feeling that reviving old times was the last thing they needed right now, but she didn’t see any alternative. The question was, whom to wake? And how could she be sure that waking someone else wouldn’t just make matters worse?

With a heavy heart, and with Bjarkán gleaming at her fingertips, Maddy went over to the remaining Sleepers. Idun followed her through the caverns like a lost child, singing to herself and wondering at the lights and colors. Maddy noticed that wherever Idun went, the ice melted briefly, reconfiguring itself into frost flowers and ice garlands in her wake. More than once she looked anxiously at the chains of icicles suspended above their heads and tried not to think of what might happen if Idun stopped moving for too long.

Instead she concentrated on the Sleepers. There they lay in their beds of ice, still and gleaming beneath the bindwork of runes. Five remained of the original seven-four men and one woman-and for some time Maddy went from one to the other and back again, trying to determine which one to choose.

The first was a man of powerful build, with shaggy hair and a beard that curled like foam. His signature was ocean blue; he wore the rune Logr beneath a tunic of something that looked like close-linked scales, and his feet, which were large and shapely, were bare.

Maddy had no difficulty recognizing him from One-Eye’s accounts and decided at once that there was no question of waking him. That was Njörd, the Man of the Sea, one of the original Vanir and onetime husband of Skadi the Huntress. Their marriage had failed, due to irreconcilable differences, but all the same Maddy felt it wiser to keep Njörd out of the situation for the moment.

The second Sleeper was like Njörd, with the fair skin and pale hair of the Vanir, though Maddy sensed a warmth coming from him that had been absent in the Man of the Sea. He too was a warrior, with the rune Madr on his chest and a spyglass around his neck. It took Maddy some time to decide who he was, but she finally made up her mind that he must be golden-toothed Heimdall, messenger of the Seer-folk and wakeful guardian of the rainbow bridge; even beneath the ice, his bright blue eyes remained open and fiercely aware.

Maddy passed him by with a shiver of unease. She knew from the stories that Heimdall, though loyal to Odin and to the Æsir, hated Loki with a passion and was unlikely to be sympathetic to anyone trying to help him.

The third was Bragi, husband of Idun, a tall man with the rune Sól on his hand and a crown of flowers around his head. He looked gentle (Maddy knew him mainly as a champion of songs and poetry) and she would have liked to have chosen him, but Bragi, she knew, was no friend of Loki’s, and she didn’t like the idea of having to explain his role-or, indeed, her own-in what was becoming a very tortuous mess.

The fourth Sleeper was armored in gold and his long hair gleamed with it; the rune Fé shone out from his brow and a broken sword lay at his side.

Next to him, close enough to touch, was the last Sleeper, a woman of bright and troubling beauty. Fé adorned her as well; her hair was fretted and woven with gems, and a necklace of twisted gold circled her throat, catching the light even through the ice. She bore a striking resemblance to the Sleeper beside her, and Maddy knew them at once to be Frey and Freyja, the twin children of Njörd, who had joined the Seer-folk with him in the time of the Whisperer.

With her hands Maddy swept the loose snow from the face of the last Sleeper. Freyja slept on, beautiful and impassive, giving nothing away.

Dared she wake her? Could she even be certain that Freyja-or any of the Vanir-would be any more helpful than Skadi or Idun? Of course, Skadi was only one of the Vanir by marriage; she came from the Ice People of the north, a savage race with whom the gods had held an uneasy truce. Surely it had been pure bad luck that she had woken Skadi first, and surely the other Vanir would be keen and ready to rescue their general.

Rapidly Maddy went over in her mind all that she remembered about Freyja. The goddess of desire, Freyja the Fair, Freyja the Fickle, Freyja the Falcon-Cloaked-

Ah. That was it.

Sudden excitement surged through Maddy. Now she could see a glimmer of hope-not much, but enough-that once more set her heart beating fast.

The runes felt familiar now, kindling quickly beneath her fingers. Here too the net that contained them seethed with impatience; the bindings itched; the glamours shone out with an imperious light.

Maddy reached for them with one hand, a bunch of colored ribbons like those on a maypole. She pulled-

– and the whole assembly came loose with a ripping and tearing and a great flare of colors and hues.

This time the ice did not shatter, but instead melted away, leaving the Sleeper damp but unharmed, dabbing at her eyes and yawning delicately.

“Who are you?” she inquired when the operation was complete.

Maddy explained as quickly as she could. One-Eye’s capture, Skadi’s awakening, the Examiner, the Whisperer, the Word. Freyja listened, her blue eyes wide, but as soon as Maddy mentioned Loki’s name, they narrowed again.

“I’m warning you now,” said Freyja stiffly, “I have…certain issues…with Loki.” (Maddy wondered briefly whether there was anyone in the Nine Worlds who didn’t have issues with Loki.)

“Please,” she urged. “Lend me your cloak. It’s not as if I’m asking you to come with me.”

Freyja looked Maddy over with a critical eye. “It’s my only one,” she said. “You’d better not damage it.”

“I’ll be really careful.”

“Hmm. You’d better.”

Moments later it was in Maddy’s hands, a cloak of tricks and feathers, light as an armful of air. She pulled it around her shoulders, feeling the delicious whispery warmth of the feathers against her skin, and at once it began to shape itself to her form.

The thing was alive with glamour, it seemed. Runes and bindings stitched it through. Maddy could feel them, delving, painlessly taking root in her flesh and bone, transforming her into something other.