Meanwhile, on my rock in World Below, a surrogate, an ephemeron made from runes and glamours, suffered torment in my place – just in case Skadi or one of the others came along to check on how I was doing. The ephemeron was not alive in any real sense of the word. It was simply an assemblage of thoughts and images selected by Heidi during my imprisonment, then given just enough substance – not difficult, so near to Dream – to deceive the eyes of the casual observer. Closer investigation, of course, would reveal the deception, but soon that wouldn’t matter. War was coming; and before long the Aesir would have more on their hands than dealing with Yours Truly.

The plan was in three stages. One: preparation. Two: subjugation. Three: confrontation. Nice and clean. The first (and rather tedious) stage was actually almost complete, which meant that when I joined Gullveig’s camp, the fun was just about to begin.

And it was fun – Wildfire, unleashed, bigger and badder than ever. Heidi and I had set up camp at the edge of Ironwood, where we could observe Bif-rost unseen. It was safe; there was plenty of game, and the river Gunnthrà that ran through the wood led straight down into World Below, providing a conduit for all kinds of beings to enter the Worlds through the River Dream.

This was the place from which our army would come, led by Heidi’s incantations. Beings of all kinds would be summoned there, from the fears and dreams and tears of the Folk. You see, the human race had become a reservoir of power. Unsuspected by the gods, who still viewed them as little more than a fanbase, the Folk had an almost inexhaustible capacity to dream; to imagine; to conjure up the most intricate, the most explicit, the most enduring of fantasies – all of which the Sorceress could weave into the makings of the most advanced army the Worlds had ever known.

This was what she’d been doing during the years that I had searched for her. Living half in and half out of Dream, she knew how to surf its waters; how to coax them with her mind; how to ride the rapids that would have destroyed a lesser being. Gullveig-Heid was the most powerful manipulator of dreams that the Worlds had ever known, and it was through Dream that she planned to bring about the subjugation of the Worlds.