Egmond could forge metals that never rusted, fashion nails that would never bend, carve stone into fantastical shapes—slender columns that somehow supported mighty beams, spheres of smooth perfection that balanced as if suspended in the air, magical beasts so detailed they seemed about to snarl or take flight. He was called upon by wealthy men and nobles to build their homes, but the results were never what they had commissioned.
Someone would order the construction of a winter palace to be three stories high, at least twelve feet taller than their neighbor’s, and with twice as many rooms. Egmond would deliver a house of one hundred rooms, built to look like the thick-tentacled arms of a kraken crushing a ship.
Instead of a silo, he would build a tower of stone branches hung with impossible gems.
Instead of a sensible rectangular schoolhouse, he would build an orb of glass and stone with windows for each student to gaze through that made the surrounding landscape seem alien as a faraway land.
Eventually, one of Egmond’s frustrated clients decided he’d had enough. When the grand summer home he’d commissioned turned out to be an orchard of residences built to look like hollowed-out trees—all of them hidden behind an immovable wall of mist—he accused Egmond of fraud. Egmond was thrown into the dungeons of the royal castle, high on the cliffs above Djerholm.
If one had to stay at the castle, the dungeons were actually not a bad place to be. The cells were cold and damp but protected from the wind that blew through the cracks in the walls of the rooms high above.
As the ruthless storms of the Fjerdan coast roared, the princes and princesses, kings and queens huddled by fires they could not keep burning. The storms never paused for breath; they howled and howled, beasts that would never tire. The castle’s watchtower toppled. Water poured through the beleaguered roof, pooling in the royal chambers, and the queen woke to see her crown floating down the hall.
The royal family brought engineers and architects to court, but they all had the same thing to say: This place is cursed. Leave the high cliffs and relocate the capital.
The night of Hringkälla, when its rooms should have been full of people drinking and dancing, the castle was nearly empty. All the courtiers who could flee had done so, seeking sanctuary in the town below. All the guests who had been invited had regretfully declined. The wind came wailing off the sea like an infant torn from its mother’s breast, and the castle walls swayed to and fro.
“Can no one save us?” cried the king.
“Will no one help us?” wept the queen.
Down in the dungeon, Egmond placed one hand in a puddle of rainwater and one hand upon the castle wall, where the tiniest tendril of a root had begun to find its way through the gaps in the stone. A great rumbling was heard, and for a moment, it seemed the whole building would fly apart. Then a final thunderous roar echoed through the night, and a massive ash tree shot from the ground up through the very center of the castle.
Silence fell. True silence. The wind had stilled. Rain no longer dripped from the roof. The ash tree’s roots had sealed up the floors, crowded through the cracks in the stone, and buttressed the castle walls. Its bark was white and shone like new snow.
A guard had seen what Egmond had done in the dungeons, and he had the prisoner brought before the king and queen.
“Are you the boy who saved our castle?” asked the king.
“Yes,” said Egmond. “And if you let me, I will build you a great palace that will stand for all eternity, never to be breached.”
“Do this and you will be rewarded,” said the king. “Fail us and you will be put to death as a thief and a fraud.”
The palace Egmond built was unlike any seen before it. A stone serpent guarded its high towers, its bridge of glass and moat of floating frost, its silver clock tower, and the sacred ash at its heart. Ever since, the Ice Court has stood, its walls unbreached by any army.
Sankt Egmond is the patron saint of architects.
SANKT ILYA IN CHAINS
There was a gifted healer and inventor who lived on the outskirts of a farming village. Ilya was a recluse, happiest to remain in his workshop and keep to himself, but he could be counted on for a tonic or help with a plow when asked. He was only seen in the village when trading his cures or the pelts of animals he had trapped for food. On these rare occasions, he was usually scribbling away frantically in an old leather book.
Once a man asked him, “Ilya, what great wonders are you imagining in those pages?” But Ilya only scowled and continued down the road, eager to return to his experiments. What he hoped to accomplish in his workshop was a mystery, and many suspected that Ilya had long since passed from ambition to madness.
Then, one day, deep in his books and potions, Ilya heard screaming from the fields beyond his home. He followed the terrible sound and found a farmer and his wife wailing over the body of their young son. The child had been nearly cut in half by a plow blade and his blood had soaked into the soil, making a red halo around his body. His eyes were gray and glassy; no breath stirred his chest. No one could recover from such a wound.
But Ilya knelt and, head bent, placed his hands upon what should have been a corpse. To the shock of all who stood watching,
