“Where is she?” Oddny said, hand tightening on her sheathed knife. “If I have to ask you again, you won’t like how I do it.”
Something had changed in Thorbjorg at her companion’s words. She dropped her hands to her side, giving Oddny a look that was part pity, part annoyance. “She’s gone beyond your reach. And you’re about to go somewhere else.”
Thora chuckled. “If it’s any consolation, I liked you very much, Oddny Ketilsdottir. If you’d only left well enough alone and stayed away, we would’ve let you live. Thorbjorg—be a dear and finish what you started at Winternights, would you?”
Thorbjorg drew her antler-handled blade and struck before Oddny could draw her own weapon. Oddny managed to dodge, but the knife ripped her sleeve—and when she stumbled back she was stunned to realize that not only was her old yellow-green dress ripped where the other witch had struck, but her arm was bleeding from the shallow cut, and it hurt.
“Oh, please. Don’t look so surprised—you must remember this from the ritual at Winternights,” Thora tittered. “What happens to you in this place also happens to you up there.”
Oddny drew her knife at last. “Is that what you did to Gunnhild? Trapped and killed her down here?”
“No, no,” Thora said, waving a hand. “I’m afraid the queen’s fate is much worse than that. Hers is the long, slow death of the lost. Yours won’t be nearly as bad.”
Above them, the singing voices grew louder, the drumming faster. More urgent. Saeunn, Runfrid, and Ulla must’ve seen her wound. The sounds filled her chest with such hope, gave her so much courage, that she felt her own power flare. But where was Signy? Oddny didn’t have time to think as Thorbjorg moved in for another strike, which Oddny barely avoided.
Oddny took a defensive stance, her own tiny blade at the ready. She tried to hide how much she was shaking, how afraid she truly was—
“Finish her, Thorbjorg,” Thora commanded. “Now. Or—”
And then she made a choking noise, grappled for a moment at the tip of the blade sticking out of her chest, and crumpled.
Behind her stood Signy.
Oddny gasped. High above them, the song faltered, but the drumbeat continued on.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” said her sister as she bent to slide her bone-handled knife from the body of King Harald’s latest wife. “I lost my way.” Her eyes moved to Thorbjorg. “That’s her, isn’t it? The fox?”
Whatever confidence Thorbjorg had gained from Thora’s presence was gone now. She backed away, eyes wide and fearful, dropping her knife as she sank to her knees and dug her hands into her hair. “No, no, no, no . . .”
It seems the fox, not the wolf, was toothless in the end, Oddny thought. She’d lost track of Olaf in the chaos of the ship battle, but wondered if Thorbjorg’s master had any idea how badly things were going for her.
Signy started toward the witch, bloody knife raised. But Oddny got to Thorbjorg first and grabbed her by the hair, put her own knife to the woman’s throat. “Where. Is. Gunnhild?”
“Below,” Thorbjorg bit out. “Down. Deep, deep down. Thora severed Gunnhild’s thread when she flew out over the water to dispel Katla’s fog. Gunnhild is foolish and bold, and we knew she’d do exactly what she did. Thora was waiting for her in the fjord—she cast the charm, leapt right out of the water, and snapped the thread between her teeth. Don’t you understand? You’ll never find Gunnhild, you fools, because there’s nothing to find. She no longer exists.”
“We made short work of Thora, as you can see.” But when Oddny looked over at the woman’s body, it had disappeared. Not pausing to wonder about this, she turned back to Thorbjorg and pressed the knife so hard against the witch’s throat that blood welled on the edge of the blade. “And Katla, too. How do we bring Gunnhild back? How do we repair her thread?”
“You’re a fool if you think you can,” said Thorbjorg, but it was clear that hearing of Katla’s death had rattled her, for she trembled now. “Severing a person’s thread separates their mind from their shape. It’s one of Odin’s charms. And it’s a cruel one: a slow death of the mind and the body, until both are lost.”
“You still haven’t answered the question,” Signy said from behind Oddny. “How do we get her back?”
“You don’t,” Thorbjorg spat. “Fools. She doesn’t exist. Whatever made Gunnhild herself is gone. Broken apart. She is nothing.”
“There are worse things than drowning,” Gunnhild had told Oddny on the ship on the way to Hordaland, when she’d asked Oddny to pull back her thread at the first sign of trouble. “If they manage to sever my thread, I die, and I die slowly.”
“She’s not dead yet,” Oddny insisted. “Her body isn’t dead, so her mind can’t be, either. We can still bring her back. We just have to . . . go deeper. Correct?”
Thorbjorg wrinkled her nose, but when Oddny’s hand tightened in her hair and the knife bit into her neck, she snarled, “Yes. In theory. But it hasn’t been done before. You’re no witch, Oddny Ketilsdottir. You’ll not survive this.”
“You don’t know the first thing about me,” said Oddny.
Signy took off her belt and used it to roughly tie Thorbjorg’s hands together. “And if she doesn’t survive it, neither will you.” She ripped the cap off Thorbjorg’s head and stuffed it into the witch’s mouth so she couldn’t protest.
Once Thorbjorg was bound, Signy and Oddny looked at each other.
“I’m coming with you,” Signy said.
“No,” said Oddny. “I think, if traveling down there is the same thing as traveling down here, then I need you to sing the warding songs for me. Call her back, and I’ll do the rest.”
For once Signy didn’t argue. Instead, she sang.
Oddny closed her eyes. The same as before, she waited for a sensation to hook her, but it didn’t come from her chest: It came from the scar on her palm, a tug, bidding her come down. She imagined herself light as a feather and followed the sensation, felt herself begin to drift.
The space behind her eyelids was white, and she reached forward, groping at nothing. She knew that her mind was still in the dark place, still in the void with Signy and Thorbjorg, but she felt as though she were reaching into a mist.
“Gunnhild,” she called out. “Where are you?”
A hum, a whisper in the distance: Who?
“It’s me. It’s Oddny.”
The voice that replied was distinctly Gunnhild’s, but she felt so very far away. Who . . .? Is . . . Oddny? Who . . . am I?
I have to pull her back together, she realized. I have to remind her who she is.
“Your name is Gunnhild Ozurardottir,” Oddny said. “You were born in Halogaland, the last daughter of Ozur and Solveig. Your brothers are Alf and Eyvind and your sisters are many.”
Gunnhild, the mist whispered, and Oddny felt something start to coalesce around her groping hand—something she couldn’t quite touch, but something.
“Your husband is Eirik Haraldsson,” Oddny said. “You’re here because you tried to help him win a battle. You took a big, foolish risk. And you’ve paid for it. Now it’s time to come back.”