Page 55 of The Fanged One

The chamber beyond was like the inside of a hollow hill, roots arching across the ceiling in ribs, and threads of pure light curved around the roots and tangled together in slow rivers. At the center of it all lay a black pool that had no reflection.

A crone stood nearest the pool, leaning on a gnarled staff. A straight-backed woman with silver-streaked black hair sat among the roots with a spindle, drawing threads of light through her fingers. High above them both, in a nest of tangled light, a glowing figure lounged with her flaxen hair woven through the threads themselves.

Urd looked up first. Verðandi nodded without her spindle slowing. Skuld smiled like they were expected.

Tread softly, his wolf warned him. These three measured our chains.

Fenris inclined his head to them in greeting and held his tongue.

"You're quicker than we thought," Urd said to Arne. She thumped her staff on a wooden bucket sitting by the pool's edge. "Good. Bring this."

Arne crossed the chamber and picked up the bucket like a farmhand. Tor opened his mouth, but Ciara stepped on his foot, and he snapped it shut again.

"All of you can work," Urd said, sweeping her staff across the group. "Roots don't water themselves, and you're tracking the cold in with you. Make yourselves useful."

The ritual was simple, and they did it in turns. Arne drew water from the black pool without once looking down, and they carried it through to a side chamber where pale root shoots grew from every surface, tender and colorless. The water went over them gently, a cupped handful at a time, while Urd supervised with a running commentary on their technique.

"Not like that, girl. You're drowning it. It's a root, not a fire."

"Sorry," Layla said with a tentative smile. "This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen."

"I'm pleased you think so. Now, go get more water."

Fenris knelt at the far wall and let the water run off his scarred fingers onto the smallest shoots. New fates, every one of them. Lives not yet lived. The shoots leaned toward the warmth of his hand, but he knew better than to touch them.

Through it all, the Norns made small talk about nothing important. Verðandi asked Arne whether his mother's garden had survived the frost before turning to Von and telling him not to even think about tasting the water. Urd complained about the draft from the lower doors. Skuld hummed in her nest and only chimed in when she was asked a direct question from her sisters.

"May I ask something?" Linnea wiped her hands on her coat and faced the crone. "We are going down to Hel's realm. We know about the trials, but only in vague poetic references. Can you tell us anything else about them?"

Urd cackled, a dry sound like sticks breaking. "Nothing, child."

"Of course not," Linnea said. "Silly of me to ask."

"Don't sulk. It's for your benefit." Urd shuffled past her, patting her arm with one knotted hand on the way. "Besides, they are Hel's doing, not ours. She designed them to work best when the heart can't prepare for them. Walk in knowing, and they teach you nothing. Walk in blind, and they show you what you are. You'll thank us one day. Well, perhaps not, but you should."

"Can I thank you now, just to be on the safe side?" Von asked, making Urd cackle.

"You are smart for a shaman," she said and pinched his cheek.

Fenris looked at the three of them, the hands that had spun his thread and measured his years in the dark. There was so much he wanted to ask about what the dark of Ragnarök really was, why Vili was made to forget, and why Vidar had to leave his home and family. He forced himself to swallow every question on his tongue. Some debts weren't worth it. He would find Loki, and they would hopefully get all the answers they needed to stop what was coming.

Verðandi's eyes lifted from her spindle and rested on him with an all too knowing look in her eye. Fenris smiled back politely and kept his tongue safely behind his teeth.

"The way down is through here," Urd said, pointing with her cane. "Follow me. You'll want to be through this passage soon before the roots decide to shift again."

She led them around the pool to a place where two roots crossed over a slab of dark stone. She struck the slab once with her staff. The roots shivered and rose, twisting together to form a doorway and a staircase falling away into more darkness beyond it.

The cold that greeted them made Fenris's hackles rise. It wasn't a winter breeze but the stale cold of corpses and still water.

They all shifted uneasily, staring ahead and not moving. Not even Von dared to crack a joke to hide his uneasiness.

"Little singer." Skuld's voice drifted down from the nest of light, making Fenris's head snap toward her. The name was his for Linnea. Hearing it in this creature's mouth made his fangs drop.

"Yes?" Linnea asked, looking up.

The glowing Norn leaned out over the threads. She looked down at Linnea with a terrible tenderness.

"Listen to your wolf when she speaks, little singer," Skuld said sweetly. "She knows things you do not. Sometimes the beast inside of us is the wisest voice when eyes and ears will lie."