Chapter 1: Leaving Winterheart Castle

I am here because you called me – Dani – to Guide you more surely to your place in Freya’s court. Sit and listen awhile, itchy one, and I will tell you my story.

Like you, I am a daughter of the stars, and my parents could neither understand nor accept who I became. Many centuries ago, they ruled a small kingdom in Midgard – a violent place in a violent world, where safety lay in Fear and Attack: Fear to control and manipulate others into their service, and Attack against those whom they could not manipulate through Fear.

There were alliances, too, of course – mostly with others who understood the Uses of Fear. As alliances formed and broke, they took their toll on my mother’s health in particular. Subject herself to Fear, she tried to master it instead. In the end, though, Fear brought along his most powerful ally, Death. Ever the politician, my mother went to work...

The room was dim: heavy tapestries in colors long darkened by the soot of fires lit in all but the warmest summer months to keep away the chill that dwelt within the thick stone walls. My mother was frail and pale beneath heavy covers and shrouded by the heavy curtains that adorned her bed. A priestess attended her constantly, and kept a stream of handmaidens hurrying to and fro on errands for her comfort. There was no surprise in the priestesses eyes, however, when two shadowy figures came into the room: a fearsome ginger cat with white face and golden eyes, moving silently on giant tufted paws with muscled grace; and mounted on its back, a darkly cloaked rider who carried a long-handled scythe.

My mother, for her part, blanched, then set her face in steely resolve. All her life she had struggled to tame, to mount and ride this nightmare, whose name was Fear; and Fear had allowed her a long ride in her turn, but in the end had returned with his True Master, whose name was Death.

I, too, saw the dark visitors, but the others in the room seemed unaware of their presence.

My mother sat up with an effort of will that I detected, but which was well disguised by many years of long habit. “Never show weakness,” I heard my mother’s voice chiding me in my mind, even as she lay before me in extremis. In the dark of the room, her voice cut through with all of its customary authority:

“How good of you to come at last, Lord Death,” she said, as though welcoming a long-awaited visitor.

“And how good of you to receive me, Lady Winterheart,” was Death’s reply.

“I offer you the hospitality of my humble home,” she said, indicating with a wave of her hand the dark but sumptuous chamber that did, indeed, seem a fitting place for Death’s visit. She hurried on before Death could speak again, and her gesture came to rest where I sat at a small loom in the only patch of sunlight the room admitted: “And may I also present my daughter Dani?”

Death inclined his head graciously in my direction, but I could not make out his expression beneath the shadow of his great hooded cloak. I was surprised, however, to sense no violence in him – only peacefulness – as his gaze rested on me for a bit. Greater peacefulness, in fact, than I had ever known in the constant turmoil of my family’s unending wars and alliances and betrayals of state. I had always assumed that Death would be the most violent of all, and the slight tremor I heard in my mother’s voice certainly betrayed the same expectation. But in that moment when his attention fell on me, I sensed something like an afterthought of violence, of a deep sadness dwelling in one who came only to heal the damage that had been done.