by Andre Norton
“What would this knowledge accomplish in human hands? Would all men have it, or just a chosen few?”
“These powers are not suitable for all men. I have seen you form living creatures from a pinch of dust. I have seen you summon life into them. You can heal the dying, call the life back to the dead, and you are invulnerable to wounds or death. All this is done with the powers of the mind, not of sword or formulae written down in a book. You have pretended to enlighten us, Skrymir, but we are as much in the dark as animals when it comes to real knowledge.”
“Mankind is not done with warfaring yet. When he is tired of the sword and the fetter, he will come naturally into the hidden powers of his mind. Be assured, Airic, they are waiting for the right time to blossom.”
“This is the right time,” said Airic. “We need those powers now to subdue our enemies, to know when they are plotting to attack, to see and hear them from afar for our own protection. Give me the honey mead and I will keep it safe for mankind.”
“What are you prepared to give?” asked Skrymir. “Great gifts have high prices. Sometimes they take a great deal of time. Human possessions for the most part are nothing but trash and trouble. And I have no use for any more firstborn children.”
“Time to a mortal is the only thing of true value. Let us make a wager, my life against your wisdom. I shall prove my worthiness.”
A wager. Isolf sighed and rolled her eyes. For a moment, she had almost believed Airic more clever than the rest who had come swaggering and wagering to Skrymir’s mountain. Usually Skrymir feigned defeat, letting them carry away a bellyful of honey mead and some trifling enchanted cup or sword in heroic self-congratulatory zeal. Once the cup or sword was taken out of Skrymir’s enchanted presence, it would soon lose its powers and become as uncooperative as any other cup or sword. The mead itself would be pissed against some wall somewhere, but with luck, the pinch of wisdom contained in it might lodge within the bearer’s mind and become useful.
“A wager. Very well,” said Skrymir. “What do you wish? Three questions? A quest? A challenge to combat?”
Isolf heaved a short impatient sigh and made a disdainful clucking sound. The warriors who challenged Skrymir were perhaps the most pathetic of all, swaggering into the hall, sleek and bulging with muscle, exuding all the confidence and intelligence of an ox being led to the butcher’s stall. Tiresome indeed for Skrymir, who tried to meet their furious attacks as creatively as possible, after thousands of years of the same glinty-eyed heroes seeking aggrandizement by killing a being they did not understand. Skrymir obligingly conjured a monster for such characters to fight, and then sent them packing with a trunkful of gold or jewels.
“A quest,” said Airic. “Send me in search of treasure and power, and if I return successful, all the honey mead will be mine. I shall supplant you in wisdom. Men shall come to me for a sip of mead.”
“And if you fail?”
“Then you get to keep everything you’ve got, and I shall probably be too dead to trouble you further.”
“Well enough. As a jotun, I never lose a serious wager with a mortal, unless it’s a mere trifle, or something your race needs anyway. I warn you, mortal, I shall not let you win this time. The gifts you desire are the greatest knowledge I possess.”
“You won’t need to allow me to win,” said Airic. “I shall succeed on the merit of my own skill and wisdom, and I shall have the mead.”
“Very well. I shall send you on a journey. Return to me with three magical objects, and you shall have what you wish. Bring to me the diamonds of Borkdukur, the captive princess of Fluga, and the sacred Orb of Ekkert, and then the last secrets of the Elder Race shall be yours.”
“Then I shall be off upon my expedition. Would you mind pointing me in the proper direction for Borkdukur?”
“Certainly not. Anything to be of service. You simply go south until you reach the land of giant trees. You must climb up one of them until you reach the land of clouds. You’ll know you are there when the landscape turns white, and scarcely anything grows upon the ground,”
“Thank you. I shall return quite soon, I’m certain.”
“Good day to you, sir.”
Airic bowed mockingly low, chuckling in a very superior way. In the midst of his bowing, Skrymir flicked one hand and Airic suddenly vanished with an unsavory-smelling puff of murky smoke. It smelled like hog-rendering days back in Holm. Isolf wrinkled her nose and looked for the greasy spot that must have been Airic. Instead, what she saw was a little creature about the size of a dung beetle tumbling around in a violent tussle with a linty length of worsted thread that must have come unraveled from the hem of Isolf s gown, trailing as it did across the rough flagstones of Skrymir’s cave.
A closer look revealed that the beetle-creature was Airic, shrunken down to a less troublesome size.
“Hah, now all that remains is to step upon him and our troubles are over,” said Isolf cheerfully.
“No, no, we must allow him his chance to prove himself,” said Skrymir tolerantly. “Besides, he’s going to have a great adventure, which will be handed down from generation to generation, gathering embellishments each time it’s told, until Airic will be quite a hero. Who are we to deny him his moment of fame?”
“Compared to him, we are gods,” said Isolf. “We can do anything we please to him. See, now it is nighttime.”
She inverted a bowl over him, putting an end to his manful battle with the string. “You shall win, of course,” said Isolf.
“There’s no way out of it, I fear.”
“Why would you wish to lose? Why didn’t you just give Airic the mead and the wisdom?”
“Mortals learn best by opposition at every turn and obfuscation of their simplest desires. He would be suspicious and unappreciative of an unearned gift.”
Skrymir rose to his feet and stepped over the bowl, treading as carefully as he could. “I’ve become so weary of my burden, child. Mortalkind is almost ready to carry itself, instead of riding upon my shoulders. I shall welcome the day when no one believes in jotuns. Then I shall take my walking stick and disappear into the mountains. Watch out for him awhile, won’t you? Do what you wish to make his journey as uncomfortable as possible, short of killing him outright.”
Isolf considered the bowl a moment, then removed it from over Airic. She was amused to discover that he had hacked the string into a hundred pieces, then he had curled up and gone to sleep in a fissure in the floor, with a tiny spark of a fire glinting like a jewel.
For the fun of it, Isolf blew on him, buffeting him around awhile like a grain of wheat on a skillet.
“Wake up and get along your journey, you lazy dolt,” she said.
For an hour or more he scuttled around among various obstructions, sticks of firewood, ashes, dead coals. Once he blundered into a dropped glove, and Isolf turned it around to face another direction when he came out, in case he had begun to get his bearings somewhat. True to her suspicions, he wandered out and became lost in a forest of chairs and stool legs. Isolf became tired of him after watching him laboriously climb several chair legs, so she put the bowl over him and went on her way.
Remembering Airic some hours later, she returned and took off the bowl. After climbing a few more chair legs, he ran into the well-picked skeleton of a chicken in the twilight land beneath the table. It must have seemed a land of death; bones from the table had been tossed under there from the previous night’s feasting. The kettir had taken what they wanted, leaving the rest for the mice and rats.
Isolf scraped off a few plates and trenchers. Attracted by a sudden squealing and squeaking, she peered beneath the table and spied a mouse kicking around in death throes, with something like a pin stuck in its throat. The tiny figure of Airic put its foot on the monster’s shaggy neck and pulled out his sword. Busily he wiped it on his pants and put it away, drawing out his knife to begin skinning the creature. He worked industriously, skinning a beast that was at least the size of a horse to him. When he had
the skin off, he built a fire and carved off some choice steaks, which he cooked over the fire. Using the mouse skin for a small tent, he climbed beneath it and went to sleep probably exhausted, but his troubles were far from over. Attracted by the smell of blood, the rats came out of hiding, lumbering along with twitching whiskers in hope of a fresh meal for once, instead of the usual humble table leavings. One of them made off with the mouse carcass and another set its teeth in the skin, but Airic came charging out in defense of his hard-won property, and stuck his sword into the rat’s nose. With a startled squeak, it shook away a drop of blood and rubbed its nose. Gritting its teeth menacingly, the rat charged at this unfamiliar little animal challenging him for his deserved scavenging rights.
Isolf watched the battle with interest. The rat attacked and fell back rebuffed twice. Eyes glaring, it paused to consider its opponent, then it rushed again. This time, a puff of flame engulfed the rat, setting its fur on fire. Isolf blinked, amazed and curious, but Airic was, after all, a wizard of sorts. After a few more puffs and bursts of flame, the rat collapsed upon its back and expired, no doubt a great deal astonished to find itself killed by such a minute opponent.
Next Airic made an assault upon a table leg, which would have led him to the land of Borkdukur -or Tablecloth, in the old language of the jotuns. However, Airic stopped for the night in a knothole in the table leg, after first evicting a large spider from her nesting place. The spider blindly insisted upon her knothole, until Airic used some spell or other and fried her into a sizzled knot of crisped legs and withered carapace.
Isolf settled down with some sewing while she watched him, with several kettir and kettlingur for company. The kettir went to sleep, too full and lazy to do more than eyeball the occasional rat under the table. The kettlingur romped and wrestled themselves to exhaustion, then fell asleep in Isolf s lap, trusting her to catch them when they were about to slide off on their brainless little heads.
Meanwhile, Airic made it to the top of the table and commenced a perilous journey across the wasteland of eating untensils, crockery, jugs, and the other natural hazards left over after a meal. Once he stepped into a small pool of spilled honey and had a wretched time extricating himself. Then he climbed onto a large slice of bread and nearly broke his leg stepping into unsuspected air pockets. With the worst sort of judgment possible, he discovered the entire loaf and wandered into quite a large tunnel, and finally emerged a few inches away, coughing and sputtering after hacking his way through part of the loaf like a maggot. Obviously feeling out of sorts at the experience, Airic dusted off his cloak and conjured a great sheet of flame that browned the slice of bread as nicely as if it had been done on a toasting fork. Isolf frowned upon this veiled insult to her breadmaking skills. Her mother had always told her she mixed a very fine loaf, with excellent flavor and a dainty crumb.
Presently Airic ran up against the saltcellar, with its accompanying sprinkling of salt crystals surrounding it. For a short while he seemed stunned by his success, holding up the crystals and examining them with reverential awe. Then in a disgusting display of avarice, he scuttled about gathering the salt crystals into heaps. When he was almost done, an ant strolled out from behind the milk jug, waving its antennae curiously. Airic evidently perceived himself endangered by this armored newcomer, and commenced battering the little creature with his sword. The ant had only the most vague notions of defense, and did not imagine itself imperiled until Airic managed to sever its back end from the rest of its body. Enraged, the creature went after him with clashing jaws, until its strength gradually deteriorated into mindless spasms, evidently lacking some vital communications available only from its severed hindquarters. Some last desperate plea for assistance must have escaped the dying ant; no sooner had it beetled away and dropped off the table than half a dozen replacements appeared on the scene. Immediately the ants were fascinated by the salt crystals and commenced carting them off in all directions, running back and forth, seizing and dropping salt with no discernible plan to their activity. The more Airic hacked and slashed and tore off legs and feelers and hinderparts, the more ants came swarming across the table to see what the fuss was, and to get themselves hacked and dismantled until the tablecloth was strewn with ant parts and wounded ants staggering around in headless, legless disarray.
Airic mounted a blistering defense behind a lump of potato, with a heap of salt crystals at his back. One of the ants suddenly discovered the treacherous pool of honey, and before long the rest of the attackers had forsaken Airic completely for the privilege of becoming thoroughly mired in the honey, after first drinking themselves delirious in their final revels before their inevitable and sticky death.
Airic meanwhile gathered up his salt crystals and fell down in an exhausted sleep. Isolf considerately put the bowl over him, in case any more ants felt the call to the battle of the dinner table.
Isolf removed a few more platters and took them to the scullery to be washed. When she returned, she removed the bowl to see what adventures Airic would stumble into next. Busily he gathered up his salt, or diamonds, and set off across the tablecloth, first in the direction of a wet place where Isolf had spilled her ale. Airic forged his way into the heart of the spill, where he bogged down eventually and stopped. Listening closely, Isolf could hear a faint tinny voice uplifted in riotous song. From the looks of him, he had no intention of getting on with anything but getting thoroughly drunk. Isolf shook her head and clucked her tongue in disapproval. Well, if that was all the better he could do, he had done for himself until the tablecloth dried. She took out a basket of mending and measured a length of thread.
Airic might have wallowed there in the pool of ale until he shriveled up, neatly preserved like a dead insect in alcohol, but a small yellow moth happened on the scene, hatched from some forgotten clutch of eggs in a protected niche, left after its progenitors had extincted themselves in the candle flames, or sputtered out in molten wax. For want of a candle to die in, the moth delicately teetered on the edge of the gravy bowl, hovered yearningly over the lip of the milk jug, staggered around the rim of the honey pot, and finally settled on the spilled ale, fanning its dainty wings as it sampled the heady fare.
Airic roused himself from his stupor and wobbled after the little moth, thinking perhaps he was being subjected to a most holy vision. Unheeding, the moth skipped away, with Airic running after it in a frenzy of visionary zeal. Tilting fore and aft, port to starboard, the moth skimmed drunkenly over the table, circling rapturously over a half-smothered candle flame, with Airic in hot pursuit. It had got Airic out of the ale, at least, Isolf noted with satisfaction, as she nipped off her thread between her teeth. Self-indulgence was not seemly in a questing hero.
Somewhat burdened down by his diamonds, Airic pursued the moth through a forest of scattered cutlery, and over a mountain range of crumpled cloth in pursuit of his vision. Next he climbed up into the meat platter, which had just been discovered by a flock of wasps and honeybees. The fickle moth settled down on an island of meat in a swamp of congealing grease, opening and shutting its wings tantalizingly. Airic plunged into the grease, not realizing how deep it was going to get by the time he reached the meat scrap where the moth rested. Considerately, Isolf threw in a raft of bread, which enabled him to reach the island. By this time the wasps and bees had settled on this juicy bit of choice property. One wasp darted at Airic in defense of their meal, buzzing menacingly. Catching it amidships, he exploded it in a sooty conflagration of wing and leg parts. The wasp kited about in a furious, disabled manner before plummeting out of control into a cup, where it flamed out in the last drops of remaining ale. Another mindless battle commenced, and it might have turned out rather badly for Airic if Isolf hadn’t tired of wasps and bees falling into the leftover food, which she thriftily planned to feed to Airic when he returned from his adventure. The scraps she calculated to make soup of, and to take a pot of it to old Hrafnbogi’s housekeeper, an ancient little crone down with a spring chill. Dead bees an
d wasps would not enhance the soup, so she scattered the insects by flapping a cloth at them, swatting some of them down and crushing them efficiently with a butter paddle. The charred carcasses she flipped out of the grease, thinking to save it for soap-another skill which Skrymir had taught her people.
Airic captured his moth at last, securing it with a raveled thread from the tablecloth. Hearing a suspicious crash from the scullery, Isolf threw down her mending and hurried to see what mischief the kettir were causing. It was nothing more than Fantur and Silki overturning a pot to see what might be inside; it had been foolish of Isolf to ever have put the lid on, knowing as she did that such a mystery was irresistible to kettir. An open pot would have been investigated or perhaps napped in or hidden in during a play-battle, but a closed kettle invited trouble.
Scolding them gently, she righted the kettle and left the lid off, thereby removing the dread kettir enigma of the unknown.
When she returned to the eating hall, she discovered Airic surrounded by a circle of curious kettlingur. He had taken refuge inside an overturned cup, and the kettlingur took turns poking their paws in after him, adroitly springing away when he popped sparks at them. When they weren’t occupied with Airic, they batted about a small glass bead from Isolf s belt, which she intended to mend. Airic also had designs upon the bead, and made heroic forays out to attempt to secure it, a circumstance with delighted the young kettlingur to no end. They reared up and pounced at him, titillated by the sparks he threw and the desperate fluttering of the moth still trapped in the cup by its string tether. Once Airic was seized in two paws and carried aloft toward some very sharp and inquisitive little teeth, but Isolf distracted the kettling from its intended feast by tweaking its stumpy tail. With a hiss, it dropped Airic in the butter and jumped over the water jug, upsetting it and creating a brief but lively flood across the table top. The kettlingur scuttled for safety the moment their feet got wet. Airic slid down off the butter and at once took possession of the glass bead.