Greta Gunnarsdóttir knelt in the snow and touched the weeping stone. For forty years she had kept these wards clean. Now black rot seeped down its runes, sticky as tar. She was the Bjornspeaker, the voice of the bear god, and no stain had ever beaten her carvings before. She scraped at the corruption with her thumb. It spread wider. Her visions had warned her, and here was the proof in her hands. She was only fifty-five. Her arms were still strong, her sling still true. But she had seen the thing that was coming in her dreams, and she knew one old woman could not face it alone. She needed to pass her voice to another. She needed a successor, and she needed one now. Greta leaned on her rune-carved staff and walked to the hidden lake. Pale roots arched over the still water. Crystals ringed the shore. This was where the bear god showed truth to those who would listen. She had come here as a girl. She had not come in many years. She planted the staff in the mud and pressed its bear tooth to her forehead. "Show me who follows me," she said. "Show me the one who can hear you." The water went black. Then a face rose in it. Greta leaned close, hungry for it. She expected a strong young hunter or a steady girl from the valley. Instead she saw a thin child with a crooked shoulder, maybe ten years old, sitting alone outside a shuttered house. The child's mouth moved. No sound came, but Greta felt the bear god's growl answer from deep in the ice. Her breath caught. The lake had never lied to her. This child, whoever it was, could hear Ursrime. Then the vision turned. Behind the child, the great crystalline tree stood over the whole forest. Its light flickered like a dying lamp. The black rot she had touched climbed its trunk. Greta understood at last what the weeping stone had been trying to tell her. The sickness was not creeping toward the mother tree. It had already reached it. The water cleared. Greta's knees shook. She gripped her staff and stood. She had her answer, but it gave her no comfort. Her successor was a crippled child she had never met, in a place the vision had not named. And she did not have years to search. The light in the tree was failing fast. Greta pulled the staff from the mud and wrapped her coat tight. She would carry the tooth to the child herself. If the child could grip it and still hear the growl, the choice was made. She turned from the lake and walked into the dark trees. Somewhere ahead, a child was waiting who did not yet know her own name meant the voice of a god.

Greta followed the vision's thread out of the dark trees and down to a village. A wall of broken wagons and shattered doors ringed the houses. Stacked chairs and barrels filled every gap. She had seen many hard winters, but never a village sealed like a tomb. She pressed forward anyway. The child was inside. A man climbed onto the wagons before she reached them. He was broad and gray-bearded, with a sword at his belt and gold catching the dim light on his armor. He did not greet her. He raised one scarred hand to stop her where she stood. "Turn back, old mother," he said. "No strangers pass. The weeping sickness takes whole houses now. It took my own captain. I bury more every day." His voice was tired, like a man fighting something he could not strike. "You are the Jarl here," Greta said. It was not a question. "Brom Ardson." He nodded, surprised she knew. "Then you know I cannot open the wall for you." "Tell me the sickness," Greta said. "Black tears. Black sores that weep and stink." Brom's jaw tightened. "You have seen it." "I have seen its root." Greta gripped her staff. "The same rot eats the sacred stones in my forest. It is one evil, Jarl. The sickness in your people and the stain on my wards come from the same dark thing. I am the Bjornspeaker. I am looking into how to stop it." Brom studied her a long moment. He wanted to believe her. She saw it in his eyes, the hunger of a man with no other hope. "If that is true," he said slowly, "then help us." "I will. But I need something from you first." Greta stepped closer to the wall. "A child lives in your village. A girl, near ten years. Hair like burnished gold. One shoulder crooked, broken wrong and healed wrong. Have you seen her?" Brom frowned. He scratched his beard. "No child of any house I know." Then his face changed. "But there is a thief. Fire-haired, quick. My people grumble that she steals bread and eggs. Nobody can catch her. She hides somewhere in the empty houses." He shrugged. "That is all I have. I never set eyes on her myself." Greta's heart knocked hard. Fire hair. A hiding child. The vision had shown her a girl outside a shuttered house. "That is enough," she said. "Let me in, and I will search for her and your cure both." Brom stared down at her a long moment. Then he turned and shouted. Men dragged a wagon aside, grinding wood on stone. A narrow gap opened in the wall. "Find your child, witch," Brom said. "And find mine a cure. I am trusting a stranger because I have nothing left to trust." Greta ducked through the gap into the silent village. Somewhere in these boarded houses, a fire-haired thief was hiding. Now she only had to catch her.