‘He will if you tell him,’ I said with a smile. ‘Are you going to tell him?’

The Oracle’s colours brightened. ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t,’ it said.

‘Because you hate him,’ I went on. ‘Because he used you from the start, and lied to you, as he lied to me. And because you want to tell me something.’

‘Do I?’ said the Oracle.

‘Don’t you?’ I said, and smiled again.

The Oracle glowed a little brighter. ‘Knowledge can be a dangerous thing, Trickster,’ it told me. ‘Are you sure you want to know what the future holds for you?’

‘I like to be prepared,’ I said. ‘Now talk. You know you want to.’

And that’s how I was made privy to the Prophecy of the Oracle. Not that it helped me much in the end; prophecies tend to be incomplete, and Oracles have a habit of telling you things you only fully understand after the crisis is over.

Of course, it’s all public knowledge now – Ragnarók, and what happened next. It’s been public knowledge for so long that it’s hard to remember what it was like, hearing it for the first time; the details of the terrible war that would tumble the gods and their citadel, and rewrite their story in bright new runes.

Now comes the final reckoning.
Now come the folk of Netherworld.
Now comes the dragon of darkness, Death,
Casting his shadow-wing over the Worlds.

The Dragon of Darkness. Surt. Oh, crap. In my concern for the immediate future, I’d missed the bigger picture. Surt meant Chaos; which meant Ragnarók, the dissolution of Order. That was why the World Ash was shedding its leaves; that’s what happens when seasons change. I told you all that was a metaphor, but the truth of it was clear enough: the time was coming when Odin’s world would be swept aside, leaving nothing but Chaos behind, from which a new Order would one day emerge . . .

All very poetic, of course, but as a renegade from Chaos, I had some idea of what to expect if Surt ever got hold of me, and it wasn’t mercy. As for the gods, it looked as if the side I’d chosen was set to lose. Where did that leave me? Should I run? Could I hope to escape the carnage?

‘What happens to me?’

‘Be patient,’ said Mimir. ‘I haven’t got to the good part yet.’

‘There’s a good part?’

‘Oh, yes.’

And as I listened in silence to the whispering from Mimir’s spring, I felt a gradual coldness creep like death along my spine, and recognized the sensation as fear – a fear I’d never felt before.

‘Odin would do that? To me?’ I said.