He sat still because she was the alpha.

The mallet fell again, the chisel bit, the block calved. More chunks of stone crashed to the floor, first in wedges and then shards and chips and finally a shower of grit.

Garm's figure was taking shape.

Eir stepped back from the sculpture and dragged an arm over her sweating brow. Her face was statuesque, her eyes moss green. She had drawn her mane of red hair back out of the way, bound by a leather thong. The leather work-apron she wore freed her arms but protected her chest and legs against stone shards. An intense look grew on her face, eyes etching out the shape in the stone. "This could be my masterpiece."

Garm looked around the log-hewn workshop at her other sculptures-a rearing ice-bear, a great elk with sixteen-foot antlers, a coiling snow serpent that stretched from floor to rafters, and of course her army of norn warriors captured in stone and wood. They hadn't started out as an army, but individuals who had come to be immortalized before going off to fight the Dragonspawn-the champion of the Elder Dragon Jormag.

Now only their statues remained.

"Hail, house of Stegalkin!" came a shout at the door. A norn warrior thrust his head in-long hair like a horse's tail and a face like what might be beneath. "By the Bear, the place is packed!"

Someone behind the man hissed, thumping his shoulder, "Them's statues!"

The warrior in the lead nodded, his hair flicking as if to shoo flies. "Course they are. Statues. That's why we're here." He paused to hiccup. "Soon, one of them will be me. I mean, I'll be one of them. I mean, I'll get my own. By the Raven, you brew it strong, Uri."

Eir stood there unmoving except for the vein that pulsed in her temple. "Patrons." With mallet and chisel in hand, she strode toward the door.

Garm broke from his pose to lope at her heels.

The man in the doorway nearly stumbled off the threshold.