The Complete Compleat Enchanter

by L. Sprague deCamp

  That meant that, given the proper spell to work, he could perform as good a bit of magic as the next man. Heimdall, Snögg, and Surt all had special powers—built in during construction as it were—but their methods would do him, Shea, no good at all. He was neither god, troll—thank Heaven!—nor giant.

  Well, if he couldn’t be a genuine warlock, he could at least put on a good show. He thought of the little poses and affectations he had put on during his former life. Now life itself depended on how well he could assume a pose. How would a wizard act? His normal behavior should seem odd enough to Snögg for all practical purposes.

  ###

  The inevitable night dragged out, and Stegg arrived to take over his duties. Snögg hurried out. Shea managed to choke down what was sardonically described as his breakfast and tried to sleep. The first yell of “Yngvi is a louse!” brought him up all standing. And his fleabites seemed to itch more than usual. He had just gotten himself composed when it was time for dinner again and Snögg.

  The troll listened, twitching with impatience, till Stegg’s footfall died away. Then he scurried out like a magnified rat and returned with his arms full of the articles Shea had ordered. He dumped them in the middle of the passage and with a few words opened the door of Shea and Heimdall’s cell.

  “Put out all but one of the torches,” said Shea. While Snögg was doing this the amateur magician went to work. Holding the beeswax over the brazier, he softened it enough to work and pressed it into conical shape, making two deep indentations on one side till it was a crude imitation of Snögg’s proboscis.

  “Now,” he whispered to the popeyed troll, “get the water bucket. When I tell you, pour it into the brazier.”

  Shea knelt before the brazier and blew into it. The coals brightened. He picked up a fistful of the driftwood chips and began feeding them onto the glowing charcoal. They caught, little varicolored flames dancing across them. Shea, on his haunches and swaying to and fro, began his spell:

  “Witolfand Willharm,

  Stand, my friends!

  Andvari, Ymir,

  Help me to my ends!

  The Hag of the Ironwood

  Shall be my aid;

  By the spirit of Svarthead,

  Let this spell be made!”

  The beeswax, on the board above the brazier, was softening. Slowly the cone lost its shape and slumped. Transparent drops trickled over the edge of the board, hung redly in the glow, and dropped with a hiss and spurt of yellow flame into the brazier.

  Shea chanted:

  “Let wizards and warlocks

  Combine and conspire

  To make Snögg’s nose melt

  Like the wax on this fire!”

  The beeswax had become a mere fist-shaped lump. The trickle into the brazier was continuous: little flames rose yellowly and were reflected from the eyes of the breathlessly watching prisoners.

  Shea stuffed handfuls of grass into the brazier. Thick rolls of smoke filled the dungeon. He moved his arms through the murk, wriggling the fingers and shouting:

  “Hag of the Ironwood, I invoke you in the name of your subject!”

  The waxen lump was tiny now. Shea leaned forward into the smoky half-light, his eyes smarting, and rapidly molded it into something resembling the shape of an ordinary nose. “Pour, now!” he cried. Swoosh! went the water into the brazier, and everything was blotted from vision by a cloud of vapor. He struggled away and to an erect position. Sweat was making little furrows in the dirt along his skin, with the sensation of insects crawling.

  “All right,” he said. “You can put the light back on now.” The next few seconds would tell whether his deception was going to work. If the other prisoners did not fail him—

  Snögg was going along the passage, lighting the extinguished torches from the one that remained. As the light increased and he turned to place one in its bracket on the opposite side of the wall, Shea joined involuntarily in the cry of astonishment that rose from every prisoner in the cells.

  Snögg’s nose was no bigger than that of a normal human being.

  Harold Shea was a warlock.

  “Head feel funny,” remarked Snögg in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Nine

  The troll put the last torch in place and turned to Shea, caressing the new nose with a scaly hand. “Very good magic, Harold Warlock!” he said, chuckling and dancing a couple of steps. “Hai! Elvagevu, you like me now!”

  Shea stood rooted, trying to absorb events that seemed to have rushed past him. The only sound he could utter was, “Guk!”

  He felt Heimdall’s hand on his shoulder. “Well and truly was that spell cast,” said the Sleepless One. “Much profit may we have from it. Yet I should warn you, warlock, that it is ill to lie to the gods. Why did you tell me, at the Crossroads of the World, that you had no skill in magic?”

  “Oh,” said Shea, unable to think of anything else, “I guess I’m just naturally modest. I didn’t wish to presume before you, sir.”

  Snögg had gone off into a ludicrous hopping dance around the hall. “Beautiful me!” he squealed. “Beautiful me!”

  Shea thought that Snögg, with or without nose, was about the ugliest thing he had ever seen. But there seemed little point in mentioning the fact. Instead, he asked, “How about getting us out of here now, friend Snögg?”

  Snögg moderated his delight enough to say: “Will be do. Go your cage now. I come with clothes and weapon.”

  Shea and Heimdall exchanged glances. It seemed hard to go back into that tiny cell, but they had to trust the troll now, so they went.

  “Now it remains to be seen,” said Heimdall, “whether that scaly fish eater has betrayed us. If he has—” He let his voice trail off.

  “We might consider what we could do to him if he has,” grinned Shea. His astonishing achievement had boosted his morale to the skies.

  “Little enough could I accomplish in this place of fire magic,” said Heimdall, gloomily, “but such a warlock as yourself could make his legs sprout into serpents.”

  “Maybe,” said Shea. He couldn’t get used to the idea that he, of all people, could work magic. It was contrary to the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. But then, where he was the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology had been repealed. He was under the laws of magic. His spell had conformed exactly to those laws, as explained by Dr. Chalmers. This was a world in which those laws were basic. The trick was that he happened to know one of those laws, while the general run of mortals—and trolls and gods, too—didn’t know them. Naturally, the spells would seem mysterious to them, just as the changing color of two combined chemicals was mysterious to anyone who didn’t know chemistry. If he had only provided himself with a more elaborate knowledge of those laws instead of the useless flashlights, matches, and guns—

  A tuneless whistle cut across his thoughts. It was Snögg, still beaming, carrying a great bundle of clothes and something long.

  “Here clothes, lords,” he grinned, the tendrils on his head writhing in a manner that no doubt indicated well-being, but which made Shea’s skin crawl. “Here swords, too. I carry till we outside, yes?” He held up a length of light chain. “You put round wrists, I lead you. Anybody stop, I say going to Lord Surt.”

  “Hurry, Harold,” said Heimdall, as Shea struggled into the unfamiliar garments. “There is yet hope, though it grows dim, that we may reach the other Æsir before they give my sword away.”

  Shea was dressed. He and Heimdall took the middle and end of the chain, while Snögg tucked the other end in his belt and strode importantly before them, a huge sword in either hand. They were as big as Hundingsbana, but with plain hilts and rust-spotted blades. The troll carried them without visible effort.

  Snögg opened the door at the end of the dungeon. “Now you keep quiet,” he said. “I say I take you to Surt. Look down, you much abused.”

  One of the prisoners called softly, “Good luck go with you, friends, and do not forget us.” Then they were outside, shambling alon
g the gloom of the tunnel. Shea hunched his shoulders forward and assumed as discouraged an expression as he could manage.

  They passed a recess in the tunnel wall, where sat four trolls. Their tridents leaned beside them, and they were playing the game of odds-and-evens with their fingers. One of the four got up and called out something in troll language. Snögg responded in the same tongue, adding: “Lord Surt want.”

  The troll looked dubious. “One guard not enough. Maybe they get away.”

  Snögg rattled the chain. “Not this. Spell on this chain. Goinn almsorg thjalma.”

  The troll seemed satisfied with the explanation and returned to his sport. The three stumbled on through the dimness past a big room hewn out of the rock, full of murky light and motion. Shea jumped as someone—a man from the voice—screamed, a long, high scream that ended with gasps of “Don’t . . . don’t . . . don’t.” There was only a glimpse of what was going on, but enough to turn the stomach.

  The passage ended in a ledge below which boiled a lake of molten lava. Beside the ledge sat a giant with one of the flaming swords. As he looked up, his eyes were pits beneath the eyebrow ridges.

  Snögg said: “Prisoners go to Lord Surt. Orders.”

  The giant peered at them. “Say,” he said, “ain’t you the troll Snögg? What happened to your nose?”

  “I pray Old Woman of Ironwood. She shrink him!” Snögg grinned.

  “Okay, I guess it’s all right.” As they passed, the giant thrust a foot in front of Shea, who promptly stumbled over it, in sickening fear of going down into the lava. The giant thundered, “Haw, haw, haw!”

  “You be careful,” snapped Snögg. “You push prisoners in, Surt push you in, by Ymir.”

  “Haw, haw, haw! Ga wan, Scalyface, before I push you in.”

  Shea picked himself up, giving the giant a look that should have melted lead at twenty paces. If he could remember that face and sometime—but, no, he was romancing. Careful, Shea, don’t let things go to your head.

  They turned from the ledge into another tunnel. This sloped up then leveled again where side tunnels branched in from several directions. Snögg picked his way unerringly through the maze. A tremendous banging grew on them, and they were passing the entrance of some kind of armory. The limits of the place were invisible in the flickering red glare, through which scuttled naked black things, like licorice dolls. Heimdall whispered: “These would be dark dwarfs from Svartalfheim, where no man nor As has ever been.”

  They went on, up, right, left. A sultry glow came down the tunnel ahead, as though a locomotive were approaching around the curve. There was a tramp of giant feet. Around the corner came a file of the monsters, each with a flaming sword, marching and looking straight ahead, like somnambulists. The three flattened themselves against the wall as the file tramped past, their stench filling the passage. The rearmost giant fell out and turned back.

  “Prisoners to Lord Surt,” said Snögg. The giant nodded, cleared his throat, and spat. Shea got it in the neck. He retched slightly and swabbed with the tail of his cloak as the giant grinned and hurried after the rest.

  They were in the upper part of the stronghold now, moving through forests of pillars. Snögg abandoned his bold stride, put a finger to his lips and began to slide softly from pillar to pillar. The tread of a giant resounded somewhere near. All three squeezed themselves into a triangle of shadow behind a pillar. The footsteps waxed, stopping just on the opposite side, and all three held breath. They heard the giant hawk, then spit, and the little splat! on the floor. The footsteps moved off.

  “Give me chain,” whispered Snögg. He rolled it into a tight ball, and led the way, tiptoeing into another maze of passages. “This is way,” he whispered, after a few minutes. “We wait till passage clear. Then I go, make giant chase. Then you go, run fast. Then—ssst! Lie down on floor, quick!”

  They fell flat at the word, next to the wall. Shea felt the floor vibrate beneath him to the tread of invisible giants. They were coming nearer, toward them, right over them, and the sound of their feet was almost drowned for Shea in the beating of his own heart. He shut his eyes. One of the giants rumbled heavily: “So I says to him, ‘Whassa matter, ain’tcha got no guts?’ And he says—” The rest of the remark was carried away.

  The three rose and tiptoed. Snögg motioned them to stop, peering around a corner. Shea recognized the passage by which they had entered the place—how long before? Snögg took one more peek, turned and handed Shea one sword, giving the other to Heimdall. “When giant chase me,” he whispered, “run; run fast. Dark outside. You hide.”

  “How will you find us?” asked Shea.

  Snögg’s grin was visible in the gloom. “Never mind. I find you all right. You bet.” He was gone.

  Shea and Heimdall waited. They heard a rumbling challenge from the sentry and Snögg’s piping reply. A chain clanked, the sound suddenly drowned in a frightful roar. “Why, you snotty little—” Feet pounded into the night, and shoutings.

  Shea and Heimdall raced for the entrance and out past the door, which swung ajar. It was blacker than the inside of a cow, except where dull-red glows lit the under sides of smoke plumes from vents in the cones.

  They headed straight out and away, Shea, at least, with no knowledge of where they were going. It would be time enough to think of direction later, anyway. They had to walk rather than run, even when their eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and even so, narrowly missed a couple of bad falls on the fantastically contorted rock.

  The huge cone of Surt’s stronghold faded into the general blackness behind. Then there was a hiss in the dark and they were aware of Snögg’s fishy body smell. The troll moved light and sure, like a cat. He was chuckling. “Hit giant in nose with chain. Should see face. He, he, he!”

  “Wither do you lead us, troll?” asked Heimdall.

  “Where you want to go?”

  Heimdall thought. “The best would be Sverre’s house, the Crossroads of the World. Or failing that, the gates of Hell, where one may hope to find even yet the Wanderer at his task. He must know, soon as ever, what we have seen. That were a fortnight’s journey afoot. But if I could get to some high cold place, where this fire magic is not, I could call my horse, Gold Top.”

  “Look out!” said Snögg suddenly. “Giants come!”

  A flickering yellow light was showing across the lava beds. Snögg vanished into a patch of shadow, while Shea and Heimdall crouched under the edge of a dyke in the lava flow. They heard the crunch of giant feet on the basalt. The shadows swayed this way and that with the swinging of the fiery swords. A giant voice rumbled, “Hey, you, this is a rough section. There’s enough pockets to hide fifty prisoners.”

  Another voice: “Okay, okay. I suppose we gotta poke around here all night. Me, I don’t think they came this way, anyhow.”

  “You ain’t supposed to think,” retorted the first voice, nearer. “Hey, Raid!”

  “Here,” growled a third, more distant, giant.

  “Don’t get too far away,” shouted the first.

  “But the other guys are clear outta sight!” complained the distant Raid.

  “That don’t matter none. We gotta keep close together. Ouch!” The last was a yell, mixed with a thump and a scramble. “If I catch those scum, they’ll pay for this.”

  The light from the nearest giant’s sword grew stronger, creeping toward Shea and Heimdall inch by inch. The fugitives pressed themselves against the rock at their backs as if they could push themselves right through it. Inch by inch—

  The giant was clearly visible around the end of the lava dyke, holding his sword high and moving slowly, peering into every hollow. Nearer came the light. Nearer. It washed over the toes of Shea’s boots, then lit up Heimdall’s yellow mane.

  “Hey!” roared the giant in his foghorn bass. “Raki! Randver! I got ’em! Come, quick!” He rushed at a run. At the same time there was a thumping behind them and the nearest of the other two leaped up out of nowhere, swinging his sword
in circles.

  “Take that one, warlock!” barked Heimdall, pointing with his sword at the first of the two. He vaulted lightly to the top of the dyke and made for the second giant.

  Shea hefted his huge blade with both hands. You simply couldn’t fence with a crowbar like this. It was hopeless. But he wasn’t afraid—hot dog, he wasn’t afraid! What the hell, anyway? The giant gave a roar and a leap, whirling the fiery sword over his head in a figure eight to cut the little man down in one stroke.

  Shea swung the ponderous weapon up in an effort to parry that downstroke. He never knew how, but in that instant the sword went as light as an amusement park cane. The blades met. With a tearing scream of metal Shea’s sword sheared right through the flaming blade. The tip sailed over his head, landing with a crackle of flame in some brush behind. Almost without Shea’s trying, his big blade swept around in a perfect stop-thrust in carte, and through the monster’s throat. With a bubbling shriek the giant crashed to earth.

  Shea spun around. Beyond the lip of the dyke Heimdall was hotly engaged with his big adversary, their blades flickering, but the third giant was coming up to take a part. Shea scrambled up on the dyke and ran toward him, surprised to discover he was shouting at the top of his voice.

  The giant changed course and in no time was towering right over him. Shea easily caught the first slash with a simple parry carte. The giant hesitated, irresolute; Shea saw his chance, whipped both blades around in a bind in octave, and lunged. The giant’s flaming sword was pushed back against its owner, and Shea’s point took him in the stomach with such a rush that Shea almost fell onto the collapsing monster’s body.

  “Ho, ho!” cried Heimdall. He was standing over his fallen opponent, terrible bloody slashes in the giant’s body showing dim red in the light of the burning swords on the ground. “Through the guts! Never have I seen a man who used a sword as he would a spear, thrust and not strike. By Thor’s hammer, Warlock Harold, I had not expected to find you so good a man of your hands! I have seen those do worse who were called berserks and champions.” He laughed, and tossed his own sword up to catch it by the hilt. “Surely you shall be of my band at the Time. Though in the end it is nothing remarkable, seeing what blade you have there.”