The air was heady with some scent, so dense it felt like breathing liquid. Above them a lattice of sunbeams criss-crossed at the base of the great dome, dancing on particles of dust. As she looked she was struck with a strange, preternatural feeling – a sense that the gap between gods and men was narrow here, as if Bifrost, the rainbow bridge to Asgard, were somehow redundant. One had only to reach out and touch. . .

There were other folk in the great temple. Some standing, some kneeling. She heard singing, too, floating down from the vaulted galleries above. Sweet voices that filled the scented abyss, climbing and falling, weaving between them harmonies as intricate as the tapestries that hung in her father’s hall.

She had never heard anything so beautiful in her life.

The music ended, and behind that exalted emotion, she felt a sudden urgent impulse to leave, to run away. ‘Can we go?’ she said to Gerutha.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I just. . . I must.’

Not waiting for an answer, she turned and fled outside, through the enormous doorway and the cavernous atrium into the courtyard beyond. She felt dizzy.

Gerutha caught her up. ‘Are you all right, Lilla?’

‘I need water.’

Gerutha took her hand. ‘Look, there.’

They sat together on the stone lip of a fountain in the centre of the courtyard and Lilla scooped up a handful of water. ‘So clean,’ she said, gazing into her palm. ‘But where’s the stream?’ She poured it down her throat. It tasted fresh as mountain meltwater. ‘Don’t you feel terribly stupid, Grusha?’

‘Stupid?’ Her servant chuckled. ‘No. Small? Definitely.’

‘I used to think myself half-wise.’ Lilla shook her head. ‘Gods, if only. Can you imagine our folk building such a thing?’ The great hall stood as backdrop to her servant, a monumental witness to the backwardness of her people. ‘I keep thinking – what is their secret? What do they have that we do not?’

‘Sunshine,’ smiled Gerutha.

Lilla laughed. ‘Aye – that’s one blessing I envy.’

Gerutha scooped up a handful of water and cooled her face and neck. ‘Do you think Einar is all right?’

The three had agreed to split up. As he put it: they would go high, he would go low. To every tavern and brothel and gaming house in the city if he had to, starting with the military district which they learned was called the Strategion. ‘That’s where a warrior would go,’ he had said.

‘You mean that’s where you would go,’ Gerutha had replied.

‘I guess we all find our level.’ He’d winked.

‘He’ll cope,’ said Lilla in answer to Gerutha’s question. ‘He’s probably happy to be on his own for a while. I got the feeling he was rather sick of the sight of me.’

‘Never.’