An image began to form before him, not with the usual fierce clarity, but blurred, as if through the poor glass and uneven lens of a far-seer. As it formed, his father's voice talked over it.
“The gods, you see, long long ago, in the time of your namesake, the first King Sheaf. That was when Balder was still in Asgarth. Balder the beautiful. So beautiful that all things on earth, except one, had taken the vow not to harm him. So what did the gods, my father and my brothers, what did they do to amuse themselves?”
Shef could see the answer. The god at the center, so bright-faced that it was impossible to look at him, a blaze of beauty. Tied to a stake. And around him, fierce shapes, mighty arms, hurling weapons at him with all their strength. An axe span away from the side of the god's head, a lance with deadly triangular point rebounded from his heart. And the gods laughed! Shef could see the familiar red-bearded face of Thor turned up to the sky, mouth open in an ecstasy of mirth, as he hurled his deadly hammer again and again at his brother's skull.
“Yes,” said Rig. “Till Loki showed them.”
Another god being brought forward to the throwing line, a blind god, Loki at his elbow. A different Loki, Shef noted. Same face, but without the marks of poison and of rage. Without the look of bitter injustice. Clever and shifty, still, even amused. The brother of Rig, there was no doubt.
Loki put a spear in the blind god's hand, the spear of mistletoe, the plant so weak and so young that the strong gods had not bothered to ask it for its vow not to harm Balder their brother. The gods laughed even louder at the sight of the blind man with the feeble twig lining up to throw, Shef could see Heimdall, Frey, even the grim one-eyed Othin, calling to each other and slapping their thighs in merriment.
Till the dart struck. The god fell. The light of the world dimmed.
“You know what happened then,” said Rig. “You saw Hermoth ride to try to bring Balder back from Hel. You saw what they did to Loki in revenge. They forgot something. They forgot to ask why. But I remembered. I remembered Utgarthar-Loki.”
Utgarthar-Loki? Shef wondered. He was used, now, to the vagaries of English and Norse, still so similar. That means “outyard-Loki.” Where there is an outyard-Loki there should be an inyard-Loki.
“Utgarthar-Loki was the giant who challenged the gods to a contest. And they lost. Thor lost the wrestle against Old Age, failed to drink the ocean, failed to lift the Mithgarth-Serpent. His boy Thjalfi lost the race with Thought. Loki lost the eating-match with Fire.”
In the background, as if through the far-seer again, Shef could see an immense hall, one greater even than Othin's Valhalla, and in it a table piled high with joints of beef and bear, man-meat and walrus: a table stocked from the smokehouse of Echegorgun. At one side of it a god sat gobbling, thrusting the food into his mouth with sweeping movements of the arms, not chewing but snapping like a wild wolf. Down the other side raced fire. Fast and deadly as the fire of the Greeks.
“Which Loki lost?” asked Shef.
“The god Loki. Not the giant Loki. You see, Loki was on our side once. Or at least half of him was. That was what I remembered and the gods forgot. But if you forget… he becomes the other Loki. The Loki outside the home-garth. The monster in the darkness.”
I don't understand, thought Shef. If this all comes from my mind, as Svandis says, then it is some part I do not know. In-Loki and out-Loki? And Loki contesting with Fire? The word for “fire” is logi, though Rig did not say it. Loki against Loki against Logi? In-Logi and out-Logi too? And who is this first King Sheaf?
He shook his head in a kind of exasperation, and as he did so the vision cleared, he saw the far-off mountains beginning to thrust their peaks through the tatters of his dream, of the scene in the giants' hall, devouring god and devouring flame. A hand on his shoulder, pulling him back from the near-precipitous drop in front of him.
“Are you all right?” Svandis's copper hair and bright eyes looking into his own. Shef blinked once and again.
“Yes. I saw something. From a god or from my own mind, I do not know. Whichever it is, I will work it out for myself.”
Shef rose to his feet, stretched. The rest had done him good. The rest and the exhaustion of the morning. He felt as if he had sweated out the soft living and the mental strain of the years of rule. He felt like a drengr again, like a carl of what had been the Great Army: young, strong and cruel.
“Cwicca,” he hailed. “See that barn door over there? Think you can hit it? You and your mates, put four quarrels each into the middle of it, as fast as you can shoot.”
Shef watched impassively as the crossbowmen, not understanding but ready to show their paces, sent iron bolt after iron bolt thudding deep into the middle of the door. The villagers who had been quietly watching, their own bows and spears never far from hand, stared uncertainly.
“Styrr,” Shef shouted when they had finished. “Take your axe. Go chop those bolts out and give them back.”
Grinning, Styrr walked over, axe swinging loosely. He was glad of a chance to show his mettle after the near-collapse of the morning. The axe whirled and struck like the hammer of the gods, chunks of old oak flying with every blow. Shef could see the villagers staring uncertainly at each other. Styrr did not look like a man who could be brought down by a collection of half-armed shepherds. Professional warriors in armor would filter to the rear rather than face his axe.
“They are poor people,” whispered Svandis, “and wood is scarce up here. You are destroying their door.”
“I thought you said they were savages and devil-worshipers? Well, whatever they are, I know this. Time for them to worry about us. Not just us worry about them.”
Shef turned from the demonstration as Styrr walked back to Cwicca with a score of bolts in his enormous Brand-like hand. He patted Svandis gently, still less than decent in her rags. “I am going to sleep now. Come lie next to me.”
The sun was no more than a hand's breadth from the horizon when the guide came for him: a burly man in the sweaty woolens of a mountain shepherd. Svandis snarled at him as he came towards the northerners. “That is the one Thierry,” she muttered.
He looked down at Shef, sprawled on the grass, and said without expression, “Viens.”
Shef rose, reached for his sword-belt standing propped against the barn wall. For this trip he had armed himself with one of the issue weapons of the Fafnisbane, a plain brass-hilted broadsword. The guide shook a finger from side to side. “Non.” The rest of what he said made no sense to Shef, but the tone was unmistakable. Shef put the weapon back, straightened himself, made ready to follow. As the two men walked off, Shef heard a hail from Cwicca. The guide turned, alerted by the menace in the tone. Cwicca stared at him, pointed deliberately first at Shef, then with a sweeping gesture at the village around. He pointed again at Shef, jabbing a finger imperatively. Then swept his arm at the village, and drew the edge of his hand across his throat. “Bring him back,” it meant. “Or else…”
The guide did not respond, but turned again and led Shef at a fast walk away across the little patch of land and immediately up a stony trail into the mountains. Shef followed, his legs stiff from the morning's climb, but working off their pain as he strode out to keep up.
The path, if it could be called a path, led them from stony outcrop to stony outcrop, climbing slightly, but mostly going across the side of the mountain, over patches of boulder, shifting scree, and again and again, round the head of craggy ravines. From time to time the mountain sheep, browsing everywhere as if they were goats, raised a head or bounded away at their passage. It reminded Shef of the path he had taken to the house of Echegorgun, years before. Only here the sun warmed the stone instead of merely casting a pale light on it, and the air was full of the scent of mountain thyme. The sun sank further, touched the horizon and crawled beneath it. Still there was light in the sky, but fading. If he were left alone on the slope, Shef decided, he would make no attempt to return. Find a flat stretch and wait for day. As he walked he began to m
ark possible resting-places near the path. Not a place for explorations in the dark.
His eye left Thierry the guide as he hurried on five or ten paces ahead. The path kinked abruptly left, round the side of yet another stony mass jutting out of the side of the mountain. Shef stepped round it. Found himself alone, on the edge of a steep fall down to dry rocks below. He halted, stood stiff and alert. Where had the man gone to? Was this a trap?
Too complex to be a trap. If Thierry had wanted to push him over an edge he had had a dozen chances already. And Thierry knew he had left hostages behind. Shef looked round carefully. A crack in the stone, a black line in the fading light. Of course, a cave-mouth. And Thierry standing just inside it, watching him. Shef walked over to him, gestured to him to lead on.
Inside the cave-mouth, a mere split in the rock barely three feet wide, someone had left a candle. Thierry struck sparks from flint, lit it, walked on, now moving more slowly. Shef followed the little patch of light. As he walked on he began to feel, through the worn leather soles of his shoes, that he was treading on loose rock. Loose rock with sharp edges. He bent, picked one up, studied it in the faint light of the candle a few feet ahead. It was flint, sure enough. Shaped flint, stone chipped and flaked to produce a kind of point, like a spear-point. Echegorgun had done the same. Only his points and implements were four times the size, made for the race of trolls. Shef threw it down, walked on.
The cave led on and on, with every now and then the black line of some branching passage showing momentarily in the light. Shef began to feel more anxiety than he had done so far. If he were abandoned now, in the dark, the chances were he would never find his way out. Retracing his steps in the dark might seem easy, but he would be feeling his way. Easy, indeed unavoidable, to take a wrong turning. Then he would wander in the blackness till thirst took him. His lips dried at the thought, remembering what thirst had felt like only that morning. Better than the sword would have been a water-skin and tinder-box.
Thierry had paused to let him catch up. In the candlelight Shef saw something else on the walls, signed to Thierry to move the light closer.
Paintings. All over the one flat wall on the left of the passage, paintings of animals, done with perfect fidelity, not like the half-abstract dragon- and beast-shapes of the North. A bull, Shef could see. The sheep of the mountains, just like the ones wandering outside. And there, on its hind legs, what seemed to be a massive bear, a black bear as big as the white ones of the Arctic. A spear jutted from its chest, and round it pranced tiny stick-like man-figures.
“Pintura,” said Thierry in an echoing rumble. “Pintura de los vechios. Nostros padres.” His voice contained in it a note of pride. He walked on. Stopped, at the end of the gallery, at what seemed to be a blank unbroken wall. He pointed at himself, shook his finger negatively. Pointed at Shef, made pushing gestures. “I stop. You go on.”
Shef looked at the blank wall carefully. At its base there was again a black crack, an opening. It did not seem deep enough for a man. But that must be the way through. A crawl, not a walk. As he realized what was meant Thierry began suddenly to walk away, took five paces with Shef beginning to reach out after him, then blew out the candle and vanished.
Instantly Shef stopped dead. If he ran after Thierry in the dark he would lose his bearings, perhaps never come back to the wall and the gap. Yet there must be a way through there. That was safety, or at least the way through to the test. And if there was a test, there was a way to pass it. Better do that than struggle in the dark.
Slowly Shef turned, careful to retrace his movements exactly as he remembered them, groped his way back to the wall, felt till he could touch the edges of the crack. Very faintly he could feel air blowing through. So there was something on the other side. Dropping on to his belly he began to squeeze forward under the lip of rock.
Halfway through, his groping hands met hard rock. He felt to either side. Rock as well, and no opening below. The edge of the rock lip under which he had crawled ground painfully into the small of his back. He did not think he could push himself back now, his ribs would catch. If he did not find a way through he would lie here under the mountain till he moldered away.
But he had been in this situation before. The makers of the old king's barrow from which he had rescued treasure and scepter, they had used the same trick. Maybe all treasure guardians used it. He was in a bend like the shape of the U-rune, and there would be a passageway above his head. Sure enough, the groping hand he could thrust a few inches above him met no resistance. Yet he could not crawl through the way he had begun, or his back would break. He should have gone through on his back, not his belly.
The sweat of fear had begin to break out on him, fear at the thought of lying here trapped for eternity. That was an advantage. And underneath him was not rock but sand or shale. Methodically, Shef began to scrape what he could from underneath his belly, making a little hollow in which to turn. He drew in his breath to reduce his mid-section every inch it would go, rolled, tried to force himself over. Stone dug into his sides, his leather belt seemed to catch on some projection. He twisted with panic force, felt the belt tear and give, felt himself roll over.
After a few seconds he found a purchase with his feet, began to force his back up the rock face behind him. A few painful inches, another moment of seeming immobility. Then he managed to get one knee under the lip of the crawl-ledge, found a better foothold, thrust his head up into the clear.
There was a ledge behind him, breast-high. He turned once more, pushed himself up, got a knee over and crawled out of the pit. As he did so, perfectly clear in the still black air, he heard a long hiss. The scratch of scales on stone. He could see nothing, but somewhere close to him in the blackness, he knew, there was a serpent.
He shuddered involuntarily. The dream of Loki, and the serpent pursuing up the staircase was still with him, and the moment when he found himself in the orm-garth of the gods. Yes, Svandis had explained it. The marks in his flesh where the snake had seemed to strike, they were his own mind playing tricks on him like women believing themselves pregnant. The dream of the climbing feet and the orm-garth, they came from a memory of Brand and a mixture of guilt and fear at the death of Ragnar.
But Shef had seen the death of Ragnar, had seen the adders strike him and the face turn blue and swollen. That had been no dream, and this was no dream either. There was a real snake somewhere in the blackness. Snakes had senses humans did not. It could detect him, could strike before he could raise a hand to defend himself.
There was someone in the blackness close to him as well. Some one, not some beast. Shef's sensitive ears could catch a faint scuff of sole on stone. At the same instant Shef felt around his neck an embrace of cold scales. A snake as thick as his arm had been dropped round his neck.
It was the faint reek of sweat that saved him. If it had not been for that he might have shrieked, clutched unavailingly for the neck of the thing round him, been bitten again and again by the angry rat-snake, and perhaps run fruitlessly into the darkness, there to die, not of poison—for the rat-snake held no more in its fangs than was needed for its rodent prey—but of thirst and despair. But the sweat-stink was that of Thierry. Shef realized in the same instant that Thierry must have come round the rock-wall which he had been made to climb under, had no doubt seen or sensed his progress all the way, was here to administer the next stage of his test. Was waiting for the stranger to flee in panic.
Shef stood stock-still, felt a forked tongue flicker across his face as the snake got its bearings, felt the scales rasp slowly across neck and body and leg as it determined which way to go and slithered down to the ground and off about its business. After it had gone Shef stood for a while motionless. Not from fear. He was beginning to grow angry at the way he was always held at disadvantage, at the thought of Thierry laughing silently in the dark. He mastered the anger, considered what he had already learned.
These people were testing him. They did not mean to kill him, so much was
clear. If they had meant to kill him, he would be dead already. They were testing him. And they wanted him to pass the test. If he did, they would want something from him once he had passed. That did not mean that they would not kill him if he failed.
The sensible thing was to walk slowly forward, and to be alert for the next test. They would try to surprise him. Do not react instantly, whatever they do. He stepped forward, feeling carefully for footing with each step, arms spread wide for balance and warning.
Someone gripped him round the body. Again, he could not repress the jump, the shudder of fear. But this was no hostile attack. The arms that closed round him from in front were warm and naked, an embrace not a grapple. Lips kissed him suddenly on the chest. Automatically he closed his own arms round the person who held him. A woman. He could feel her breasts push against him. A naked woman. He dropped his hands, felt her buttocks, felt her immediately respond and push close against him, moving her groin up and down against his.
A week before, sunk in the doubt of his own impotence, Shef might not have responded. Since then there had been Svandis. She had roused him, had proved to him that the fear and horror that had lain on him since the death of Queen Ragnhild were not of the body, only of the mind. She had shown it to him half a score of times since, his body was roused and full of repressed youth. Before he could so much as think of it, Shef's manhood had responded, was rising urgently. The woman felt it, seized it in her hands with a throaty chuckle of triumph, began to sink backwards. He could roll with her on to the stone, take his fill of her here in the dark, clasp her deep and spurt the seed into her here where the sun never came.
A test. Don't respond. The thought of the dark and the lost passages everywhere around bit cold into Shef's heart. The woman could not escape him now he had hands on her, but once he was done, what then? She would slide into the darkness like the snake, and he would be left, alone and a failure. While the testers, whoever they were, watched and mocked.
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