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be cautious. With the rune sticks, I’m certain to get the spells right—

most of the time. Without them, I have no guarantee and I don’t much

like relying on my memory alone.”

“You’re just looking for excuses not to rely more upon your

powers,” Leifr retorted. “Ready or not, you’re going to have to stand up

to the test now.”

“I’m ready!” Thurid snapped, with an icy glare as he stepped into

the shadow of the arch.

A dark figure waiting in the gloom suddenly lurched forward.

Thurid gasped and the knob of his staff flared with a brilliant burst of

alf-light. Leifr lowered his raised mace, and Gotiskolker winced in the

bright glare of the staff.

“It’s only me,” he grumbled. “I got locked out, so I waited for

you here.”

“We’ve been wondering what had happened to you,” Leifr said

the dogs crowded at his heels, urging him to hurry.

chidingly, as

“Where have you been all day? We could have used some help in

planning this escapade.”

“I was doing some planning of my own,” Gotiskolker replied,

and Thurid responded with a withering snort.

“Our plan,” Thurid said, “is to attack him when he comes out

tonight. Fridmarr and the dogs will keep him occupied, while I blast

him with fire magic.”

“That’s not the way to hunt bears,” Gotiskolker said. “You must

trap them inside their dens, where they can’t maneuver so well, and

pierce them with your lance.”

“We’re not hunting bears,” Thurid retorted, “or hadn’t you

heard?” He damped down the glow of his staff and motioned to Leifr.

“Let’s carry on, shall we?”

When they reached the well, Leifr sent the dogs down to draw

Ognun out. Thurid paced up and down uneasily, going over his rune

sticks. Gotiskolker squatted with his back against a stone and studied

the stars. Leifr listened impatiently, growing more uneasy the longer he

waited.

“They should have found him by now,” Leifr said at last. “We

should have heard a big uproar.”

“Maybe he found them first,” Gotiskolker suggested.

“He’s probably hungry.”

“Shh! There’s something!” Thurid warned.

A faint howl, questioning in tone, floated out of the well. Leifr

whistled and called, but got no response from the dogs. There was no

sound at all, except the drip of the ice melting around the top.

Leifr gripped his mace and stepped over the well curbing

onto the steps.

Grimly he said, “Come on, we’re going bear hunting.”

As Leifr started down the well, Gotiskolker followed at his heels

like a black shadow. Thurid quickly ignited his staff’s end with a puff of

alf-light and hastened to join them. Inside the well, the alf-light glowed

on the icy walls with a fiery blue phosphorescence. When they neared

the bottom, the pool of ice below radiated like a frosty eye, growing

larger with each descending spiral.

“No troll,” Leifr said, when they had a good view of the bottom

of the well. The stone steps ended at a small landing, where the pilgrims

had knelt to drink the water. Now there was nothing but ice, polished

smooth by Ognun’s filthy carcass and littered with bones, hair, and

rubbish.

“Maybe he got out earlier than usual,” Thurid said, shining his

light around and beginning to sound hopeful.

“Someone would have seen him,” Leifr answered. “People were

watching from the walls before the sun went down.”

Gotiskolker slipped past Leifr and began a circuit around the

wall, which was festooned with pillars of ice where the water had

dripped down for many years.

“No dogs,” Leifr continued, as Thurid’s beam traveled around the

well again. Feeling the breath of an air current on his face, he turned

toward it and saw Gotiskolker vanish into a fissure behind a thick

column of ice. Quickly he followed, trusting Thurid to notice where he

had gone.

Thurid was gazing elsewhere and did not notice that he was alone

for several moments. He stepped onto the ice warily, stamping on it to

sound its thickness. When he looked up, he perceived that he was by

himself. In a hoarse whisper he called, “Fridmarr! Where are you?”

A hand reached out of the fissure behind him and gripped his

arm, startling him. He staggered back with a whoop, and his alf-light

surged halfway to the top of the well in a bellowing roar of flame that

caused several columns of ice to collapse in a thunderous avalanche.

Thurid dived into the fissure, narrowly avoiding a falling slab of ice.

“Are you trying to burn the place down?” Leifr cried.

“You startled me,” Thurid protested. “My magic always

overdoes itself when I’m frightened. Fortunately, it happens so

seldom that it isn’t usually a problem.” As he talked, he peered

around him, poking his alf-light into the dark tunnel leading upward

from the bottom of the well. “Very clever of the Rhbus to have a secret

tunnel into the well. Those stairs winding around and around are fine

for pilgrims, but I’d hate to use them as a daily chore.”

“Hurry up with the light,” Gotiskolker whispered. “Ognun is

somewhere ahead of us.”

The tunnel angled upward, rising with short flights of steps, now

nearly obliterated by accumulating soil and rocks from the ceiling

above. In places, the fissure had been widened and enlarged and, in

other places, it widened naturally into cavernous rooms, where bats

hung in clusters from the lofty ceiling, twittering in protest at the

unwelcome intrusion of the light into their inky realm. Underfoot,

the earth was moist and soft, and Leifr discerned the three sets of

hound prints and the large, three-toed track of Ognun, slowly filling

with water.

The character of the underground chambers changed suddenly

as the three passed through a pair of large doors, torn from their hinges

long ago, rudely shattered by some powerful engine of destruction.

Beyond the doors were the remains of smooth stone floors, graceful

carved pillars, and stone galleries ascending upward, tier by tier.

Thurid gazed around in awe. “This was the assembly hall of the

Rhbus,” he whispered, with a tremor in his voice. “Imagine so many

Rhbus that they filled a place like this! And now there are only three

left.”

“And not as many Ljosalfar as there once were,” Gotiskolker

added. “If wizards like Sorkvir have their way, we shall become

extinct, too.”

Halfway across the assembly hall, Leifr halted and listened

intently for a moment to the distant baying of the hounds, echoing

through the underground chambers.

“They’ve cornered him,” Leifr said, striding forward. “Hurry up

with the light, Thurid. You’re crawling along like a snail.”

“A cornered troll is a nasty situation,” Thurid hastened to

explain, firing up his alf-light with a quick, muttered spell and

scuttling after Leifr and Gotiskolker. “Perhaps he’s leading us on this

merry chase deliberately. I don’t know what advantage we’ve got over

him down here in the dark where we can’t see and he feels perfectly at

home. Hasn’t it crossed your mind yet that he might have some dreadful

surprise in mind?”

Gotiskolker retorted, “He wouldn’t be a troll if he didn’t. He’s

got a number of bolt holes leading out of here to the outside; if we

corner him before he gets out, we’ll have a better chance of killing

him. We’ve got to keep close to him, or he’s likely to become the

hunter and we’ll become the prey.”

Thurid hastened his pace, glancing around nervously.

As they picked their way down a jumbled corridor, the distant

reflected light of the staff suddenly illuminated several sets of

glowing eyes that came bounding through the shadows toward them.

Heavy paws pounded over the rubble, and eager yelps echoed from

the damp walls as the troll-hounds burst into view. For a moment,

they caracoled around Leifr, leaping up to lick his face and nipping at

his heels to encourage him to hurry; then they raced away down the

corridor again.

“They’ve got him treed!” Thurid exclaimed. “Those worthless

mutts are forgiven all their crimes if they help kill Ognun!”

They found the dogs at a rockfall, barking up at the distant roof

and dodging the rocks that came hurtling down. Thurid threw

himself backward into the safety of the overhanging ceiling of the

corridor as a large rock whistled past his head and crashed into the

wall with an explosion of particles. The alf-light flaring upward

dimly illuminated a hulking dark shape, clawing its way up the rocky

dome of the vast vault above.

“He’s going to get away from us,” Gotiskolker snapped.

“There are more tunnels up above, and if he gets into them, he’ll be

stalking us.”

“Is there another way up?” Leifr demanded.

“If there is, I didn’t find it,” Gotiskolker replied. “It would take

days to map out this place completely. I was down here only a few

hours.“

“Thurid, knock him down with a spell,” Leifr commanded.

Thurid rattled among the runesticks. “This is the one,” he

muttered, taking out one of his new rune sticks. “I hope so, anyway.”

Raising his arms, he recited the words of the spell. At once a hundred

small barbs of flame leaped from the ends of his fingers and

ricocheted around the vault like a swarm of deadly, bright bees.

Thurid dived for cover, and one of the hissing darts pierced the tail of

his cloak with a puff of acrid smoke. Leifr and Gotiskolker and the

hounds all cowered in a heap as the last of the darts fizzled and died,

leaving the cavern in blackness.

“I didn’t write that one down properly,” Thurid said in a

bemused tone. “My fire bolt is badly frayed. Perhaps it was only a lack

of concentration—”

From above came the rumbling voice of Ognun, and another

thunderous crash as a rock came down, shattering on impact. “You’d

better go back while you can, you fools,” he called in a hollow roar.

“These halls are long and dark; when I’m here, they’re even more

dangerous. Worse things than rocks falling can happen to you.”

The dogs replied with a chorus of savage barking, until Leifr

hushed them. He crept out far enough to peer upward, with the aid of

Thurid’s alf-light. Reaching for the bow slung at his back, he strung it

and nocked an arrow.

“More light,” he said to Thurid in a whisper and slipped out

of his hiding place.

Thurid spluttered indignantly, “Fridmarr! Don’t be an idiot! Get

back under here before he brains you!”

“I said more light, you dolt!”

Thurid responded with a brilliant flare that outlined Ognun

clinging to the rocks and the dark mouth of a tunnel just above his

clawing fingers. Ognun’s shadow loomed huge and threatening as he

flung one arm over his eyes when the light swept over him.

“Die, you filthy bag of carrion!” roared Thurid, upping the

intensity of his light until the cavern roared with flame and heat, and

even he was forced to squint.

Leifr bent his bow until its sinew reinforcing creaked ominously,

then sent the arrow flying upward. It lodged in Ognun’s humped

shoulder, where no amount of twisting and clawing would allow him to

reach it. With a bellowing roar, he hurled more rocks down, his eyes

blazing with fury.

Leifr dived for refuge until the rocks stopped falling, then

signaled to Thurid to fire up the light again. Thurid grimaced and

shook his head furiously, but Leifr ignored him and pulled back his

bowstring for another shot.

This time the arrow lodged in Ognun’s leg, nearly causing him to

slip off his precarious perch on the rock face. Seizing the opportunity,

Leifr fired off two more arrows, one of which flew wide in his

haste, but the other stuck in Ognun’s back. Ognun began to slip,

clawing frantic score marks on the stone wall and roaring with rage.

Leifr placed two more arrows before Ognun finally arrived at

the bottom, still bellowing and lashing around with his deadly claws at

the arrows in his flesh. His glaring eyes searched the shadows for his

tormentors. When he saw them crouching behind a fallen slab, he

rushed at them in a frenzy of hatred. Somewhat impaired by his

wounds, he was not able to reach them before they raced away down