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torture you.”

Raudbjorn’s reason departed. With a terrible bellow, he

drew his sword, raised it aloft with both hands, and thrust it through

Sorkvir to the very hilt. Planting his foot on his enemy’s chest, he

yanked the sword out and lashed off Sorkvir’s head. Then he began to

chop the rest of Sorkvir to pieces.

The Dokkalfar forgot Leifr and Thurid and rushed at Raudbjorn.

They fastened themselves to his arms and legs like ants trying to

debilitate an angry bear.

“Now you’ve done it, you great fool!” the eldest of the Owl

counselors shouted. “He’s going to change form!”

The Dokkalfar surged backward, away from Raudbjorn,

and beat a disorderly retreat. Raudbjorn was too intent upon his

mayhem to notice as Leifr and Thurid came out of the shadows and

slipped toward the doorway.

Suddenly Raudbjorn staggered back in astonishment from

his work, coughing and snorting. Instead of fresh blood, Sorkvir’s

body oozed dust and corruption. As if that weren’t astonishment

enough, a ghostly image was rising and swelling until it was as large as

Raudbjorn. It was a massive, shaggy bear, with silvered fur, humped

shoulders, and an enormous, broad head with small eyes that glowed

redly. The bear’s teeth parted in a low, menacing growl.

Raudbjorn sheathed his sword, gripped his halberd, and backed

away as the bear’s form solidified. The wooden dais creaked as it

padded forward slowly.

At the same moment, Leifr and Thurid plunged for the doorway,

with Raudbjorn bringing up the rear. The bear charged after them,

clouting aside a heavy table and hurling two benches after them.

Raudbjorn took the brunt of the assault, which enabled Leifr and Thurid

to get outside first, tumbling almost into the arms of a crowd of yelling

Dokkalfar. Seizing Bodmarr’s sword from Thurid and brandishing it,

Leifr opened a path for their escape. Thurid shoved him around the

corner of the horse barn, directing him along the edge of a small

creek and over a low green hill. He stopped at a crude ring of rocks.

Leifr watched with growing concern as Thurid dashed around the circle

as if he were demented, touching all the stones and muttering excitedly.

“Now we’re ready,” Thurid said in a voice that shook slightly.

“Hang onto my arm. We’re going for a sledge ride—I hope.”

“You must be joking,” Leifr replied indignantly. “I don’t see any

sledge.” He started to walk away, disgusted, but Thurid grabbed his arm

and pointed back at Gliru-hals.

“We haven’t a lot of time,” he said.

The Dokkalfar had freed the troll-hounds. In a dark wave, the

beasts poured over the walls and rocks after their quarry, howling and

barking with fearsome eagerness.

“Thurid, this isn’t going to work, whatever it is,” Leifr tried to

protest as Thurid started to run down the hillside, towing Leifr after

him, with longer and longer strides until Leifr was certain they would

end up at the bottom in a tangle of arms and legs and possibly broken

bones.

“Nonsense! It will work!” Thurid panted fiercely, giving an

extraordinary leap into the air. Leifr’s legs went out from under him,

churning frantically in mid-air.

Incredibly, they hurtled over a stretch of rocks and thistles at

the bottom of the hill, bounced once on some hummocks in a green,

boggy area beyond, and landed on their feet, running. Thurid gave

another amazing bound.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” he shouted. “We’re almost flying! Pick

your feet up, Leifr!”

They sailed over a spring pool, gathering speed, although they

were running uphill. When they reached the top, Leifr barely had time

to note an excavation of some sort and an upright stone, white nearly to

the ground, where it was blackened as if by a fire and glowing in a

red-hot ring just above ground level. Its hot breath fanned Leifr’s face

as they plummeted past.

With an exuberant yell, Thurid propelled himself into midair

off the top of the hill, keeping a tight grip on Leifr’s wrist. Leifr closed

his eyes. The air whistled in his ears as they descended; then they were

climbing again to another rocky hilltop, where Leifr glimpsed a

complete ring of standing stones, all glowing red-hot at their bases.

Thurid scarcely touched the ground, except to get a running start

when their speed slowed at the summit of a hill. “I think we’ve

gone far enough,” he shouted to Leifr. “We’re in the fells above Dallir.

They’ll never know what became of their mysterious visitor from

Djofullholl.”

He began dragging his feet, braking with his heels, but the

force that had them in its grip did not relinquish its riders easily. Thurid

muttered at it and swore and cajoled, but it carried them up yet another

hill and started down the other side, where he somehow managed to

break its hold about halfway down. They rolled the rest of the way, and

arrived at the bottom with Thurid coasting along like a toboggan,

still clutching his staff in one hand. He stood up recent

experience.

Leifr felt his bruises. He stood up, feeling shaken and slightly

sick and turned to look behind him at the hill, notched long ago by

unknown hands to mark the path. “I don’t know what just happened,

Thurid,” he croaked hoarsely.

Thurid preened himself like a large, disreputable crow. “We

flew,” he smirked, “or very nearly so. This is a ley line. The ancient

straight way of travel. The only safe way to get through the trolls,

Dokkalfar, and giants. Elbegast and his armies will follow these lines

one day in the last great battle with the Underground. A great force is

conducted through these stones and mounds and notched hills. There

are standing stones that men could not have possibly moved without the

aid of powerful magic. Whole mountains have been moved away, piled

up into mounds and rings and earthworks. It is all terribly ancient,

and none of the modern wizards pay much attention to early magic. Too

primitive, they say, and difficult to control. But now I can control

the powers of the ancient Rhbus.”

Leifr shook his head. “This didn’t happen,” he muttered,

looking at Bodmarr’s sword in his hands.

Thurid removed a dowsing pendulum from his satchel with a

flourish and began dowsing, with his eyes screwed earnestly shut and

one hand extended as a pointer. “Ah,” he breathed. “The Dokkalfar

influence is all to the west of us. West is a favorable direction for me.

We shall go north to Dallir.”

“Is Sorkvir dead?” Leifr asked.

Thurid snorted. “Dead a dozen times over; and each time, he

gathers strength from Hel. Raudbjorn merely freed a more evil force

temporarily. He’ll put his body back together. He can do far more evil

with the help of the Dokkalfar than he ever could as a poltergeist.” He

tittered.

Leifr saw nothing to laugh at. He held up the pitted, wretched

blade of Bodmarr’s sword. “What do we do with this now? I can’t

believe it was worth all the trouble.”

“The grindstone, my lad, the grindstone.” Thurid’s eyes gleamed.

“When we find that, we can sharpen the sword. And with the sword,

Sorkvir can be killed beyond his power to return.”

Leifr shivered from the cool night breeze fanning his dew-soaked

clothing, and the distant yowls of trolls disturbed by the troll-hounds

did nothing to add to his peace of mind. Thinking of Sorkvir changing

forms right before his eyes turned his shivering into a shudder. The

Alfar realm was more eerie than he had known.

Glancing at Thurid as they strode toward Dallir, he suddenly

inquired, “What happened to your Dokkalfar finery?”

Thurid waved one hand carelessly. “It went when I dispersed the

glamour spell, of course. The horse I left behind will create an

amusing uproar. It was that old, bony creature of Latvi’s with the

walleye.” He chuckled appreciatively, trailing a plume of smoke from

his staff.

“It won’t take Sorkvir long to realize it was you,” Leifr said. “He

must know sooner or later that there was no new house thrall.”

Thurid stopped his gloating and said. “I can see you’re

determined to worry. Well, we may have to hide out in the fells for a

few days—depending upon how much time your father has left. I’d

venture to guess that the truce won’t be worth much after this. We

can’t leave Fridmundr to die alone, however.”

“What will happen to Dallir when we are gone?”

Thurid knit his brows in a scowl. “I don’t like to think about it. I

only hope that Sorkvir will be routed before it falls into a hollow

ruin. You won’t have much time for farming, now that we’ve taken that

sword.”

It was near dawn when they walked into the yard at Dallir. A

lone goose sifted the muddy area near the still house, and all the bars to

the folds and paddocks were down. The earth had been churned by

many iron-shod hooves into a muddy bog hole in the yard before the

house.

“The Dokkalfar were here last night!” Thurid said grimly,

striding toward the house. “You see how Sorkvir keeps truces!”

They cut across the wall into the yard. The barns with their doors

standing open struck Leifr as ominous; when he looked more

attentively, he saw the spiral marks burned into the wood in fresh,

vicious, charred scars.

“We’ve been marked for doom,” he said.

Thurid stared rigidly, turning slowly toward the house. The doors

there, too, had all been marked, but none had been broken down. Yet

Dallir was finished. The barns with their doors standing agape lent an

atmosphere of desolation that seemed to have been undisturbed for half

a century. The only sign of life was a faint wisp of smoke coming out

the smoke hole in the roof of the kitchen annex.

They crossed the dooryard boldly and slipped along the wall

to the kitchen door. The heaps of grassy debris and crumbled walls,

grown so familiar to Leifr, now seemed alien and desolate. Glancing

toward the long barn suspiciously, Leifr thought he heard a faint,

mocking whimper.

The kitchen door was locked from within, so Thurid tapped

urgently with his staff. Pressing his lips to a crack he called, “Snagi,

you old fool, it’s Thurid and Fridmarr. Come and let us in!”

Inside, heavy objects grated over the floor, then the door

opened a small crack, and Snagi’s pale, suspicious eye scrutinized

them for a long moment. “Hurry up and let us in,” Thurid ordered.

Gliru-hals looking for us.”

“We’ve got every Dokkalfar in

The door grumbled open barely enough for them to squeeze

through; then Snagi hurled his bony form against it to close it as

quickly as he could. Slightly breathless, he shoved a heavy chest against

the door and sat down on it weakly. “Thank goodness, someone is

here,” he panted. “My wits are nearly gone daft. We’ve had Dokkalfar

half the night, besides worrying about you—then there’s the master.”

Leifr, not stopping to talk, strode toward Fridmundr’s private

quarters, with

Snagi pattering in his wake, making anxious chirps of distress.

“That wretched Gotiskolker is still here,” he wheezed. “I tried

to send him off, but he’s not afraid of me. He said that someone has to

sit beside poor old Fridmundr until the last and that he’s the one to do

it.”

Leifr raised his hand for silence, halting in the doorway.

Fridmundr lay on his bed, dressed in his finest clothes, with boots on

and his weapons lying beside him. At his feet lay many of his favorite

possessions; his cloak lay ready, and he wore a fine battle helmet, as if

he were about to embark upon a journey. Gotiskolker did not look up

from his work, piling offerings of new clothing and fine weavings

beside Fridmundr so he would not enter the next world impoverished.

Fridmundr’s transparent eyelids fluttered slightly. The wondrous

light was almost gone from him now, flickering like the last of a dying

candle. His expression was peaceful, almost pleasant, as if he found all

the funeral preparations satisfactory and anticipated only the prospect of

getting on with his journey.

“A pity we’ve no ship to burn with him,” Gotiskolker said to no

one in particular. “I think the four of us can carry the bier out to the