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any other business to conduct?” he asked sarcastically. “I thought I was

supposed to work in the mine, not stand around listening to a lot of

useless chatter.”

Sorkvir folded his arms across his chest and moved a few paces

to the side. “Many’s the time, Fridmarr, in the old, pleasant days

when you were my acolyte, that I wondered if you would be worth all

the trouble of teaching and retraining you in the ways of the Dokkalfar.

You were in so many ways a bright and eager pupil, but somehow I

always suspected you lacked the true, single-minded devotion that a

student of mine would require. Indeed, when I killed your brother,

Bodmarr, I learned where your true loyalties dwelt—with the Ljosalfar

and their dying cause. I wonder how many years you will have to

reflect upon your wisdom in choosing that cause instead of mine. Five

years? Ten? Thirty?”

Leifr shook his head doggedly, weary but determined to sustain

his passion for survival. “I think of it as five or ten or thirty years to

escape,” he replied.

“I thought you would say that.” Sorkvir beckoned again to

Greifli, who again unsheathed his sword with a ringing hiss and a

broad, evil smirk. “Are you certain you’ve reconciled yourself and

Hroaldsdottir to such a despairing fate? Think of those five or ten or

thirty years filled with the agony of the eitur slowly devouring your

vitals from the inside out. Not a pleasant prospect, is it, Fridmarr? A

dose of the eitur would do you good now, after the beating you’ve

taken. Come now, I’m offering you a painless way out of your

situation.”

He produced the small blue vial from the tail of his sleeve and

uncorked it. The tantalizing fumes drifted lazily through the musty

smell of the room.

Leifr shook his head doggedly. “Take yourself and your poison

out of here.” In vain he groped for a stray thread of memory from

the carbuncle, but its voices were all distant and faint now. Searching,

he caught a faint clue. “I took the eitur once to prove my loyalty to you

—or so you would think. It was a small price, if I had succeeded in

destroying you then. I deceived you, Sorkvir. Do with me what you

will, but carry that thought with you.”

Sorkvir’s face darkened with fury. “I’m not likely to forget your

treachery. However, the sting of it will be greatly soothed by picturing

you here, slowly dying from the eitur.” He nodded toward Greifli and

stepped back. “But first there’s a small matter of unfinished business

I want attended to before you depart for your labors.”

Greifli stared at Leifr with a tight little smile, his eyes large and

black like a cat’s, about to pounce on its quarry. His sword gleamed

sharp and deadly in the torchlight.

Skrof whimpered in protest, “Have you decided to kill him after

all, Sorkvir? You’ll owe me two marks!”

With a quick thrust of his blade, Greifli slashed the tendons

behind Leifr’s knee. Leifr doubled over, clutching the wound with both

hands to stop the bleeding, and pitched to the ground, his meager

strength suddenly exhausted by this new insult to his weakened

condition.

Pandemonium erupted as Raudbjorn’s furious bellow echoed

through the underground vault. Swinging his halberd, Raudbjorn came

after Greifli with a roar of red-eyed fury and challenge.

Sorkvir raised one hand, and an ice bolt shattered with a loud

explosion on the wall behind Raudbjorn. Halting his weapon’s

downward swoop, Raudbjorn froze a moment, with his eyes widening

as he contemplated the black mark on the wall, realizing how near it had

come to him.

“This is your last warning, you ignorant ox,” Sorkvir said.

“The next time, the bolt may not miss its target. This is what comes of

trying to make use of a day-faring killer. I fear you will come up

lacking, Raudbjorn.”

Raudbjorn’s face furrowed in thought and the halberd wavered

uncertainly. He let its butt drop to the floor with a clank and leaned

upon its handle to calm his furious breathing.

“Not a fair way to fight,” he grumbled in an abashed tone,

retreating toward the shadows, watching the Dokkalfar warily. Greifli

made a feint at him, and all the Dokkalfar chuckled unpleasantly when

Raudbjorn whirled around to defend himself.

Sorkvir beckoned silently and started to leave, his cloak swirling

around his heels. Skrof risked seizing the moment to dart a quick scowl

over the rock that sheltered him. “That was a treacherous thing to do,

Sorkvir,” he quavered indignantly. “I could make a grievance of it at the

next Althing, if I was of a mind to. You lamed my thrall, and after I

paid you good money, too, when nobody could tell if he would live or

die.”

Sorkvir turned and tossed a small pouch to Skrof, who

opened it up feverishly and gasped at the contents.

“Now I have bought him from you,” Sorkvir said, “and at a far

better price. I want you to take care of him for me and keep him alive

and as healthy as you can in a place like this, but not so healthy he’ll

think of trying to escape. If such an accident should occur and Fridmarr

comes up missing, your head will be the first to fall. You do understand

me, don’t you, Skrof?”

As he talked, Sorkvir caught a shred of Skrof’s raiment. The

thrall-driver sidled back and forth, nodding and shaking his head in an

ecstasy of self- abnegation. Sorkvir wound up the shred of cloth,

drawing Skrof unwillingly nearer, like a gasping, glassy-eyed,

unwholesome species of fish.

With a last, intimidating glower, Sorkvir thrust Skrof from him

and stalked away, calling to his warriors to follow. He bestowed a

last triumphant sneer upon Leifr; then he and his men were swallowed

up by the cavern amid the tramping of boots and the rattling of

weapons.

Skrof smote his brow and stooped to look at Leifr’s

wound with an exasperated, proprietary air. Leifr at once knocked him

sprawling.

“Mind your own business, you maggot,” he snarled. “Now get

me a bandage for my leg.”

Skrof picked himself up, shaking his head in disbelief. Backing

away from Leifr cautiously, he went out into the corridor and

underwent an astonishing transformation from abject worm to towering

tyrant, all in the space of a few moments, shouting in a mighty voice for

a cart and a horse and someone to bandage a wound. When the objects

of his desires were slow in presenting themselves, he flew into a terrible

fury, taking care to stay out of Leifr’s sight. When he came back, his

shoulders sagged and his belligerence left him.

“I’m glad I sold you to Sorkvir,” he muttered. “I’m not looking

for trouble, but trouble always seems to find me. I knew poor old Skrof

would catch it in the neck when Sorkvir arrived.”

When his leg was bandaged, Leifr climbed into a cart behind a

bony wreck of a horse and Skrof glumly drove him down the tunnel on

the most miserable journey of his life. He tried to remember the turns,

but he lost track when the torches became too few to see much. They

passed groups of wretched thralls, chipping at the rock and tossing the

pieces into carts and sledges. The journey ended in a large, dank room

where another troop of prisoners was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion

and deprivation. One of the guards pointed to an empty pallet by the

wall, where Leifr lay down gratefully, without wondering much what

had become of the former occupant. He did not suppose it would lift his

spirits any if he knew.

They put him to work with a heavy pickaxe, since he was taller

and stouter than most Ljosalfar or Dokkalfar. The only light he had to

work by was a small whale-oil lamp wedged in a crack, and the food

portion was inadequate, as he soon discovered. Perhaps worst of all was

the constant threat of rockfalls and cave-ins, when the mountain shook

under their feet and all they could do was crouch helplessly and wait for

the tremor to cease, hoping their tunnel would not collapse.

“Skrymir feels the pain,” they would say when the mountain

trembled. But there was no choice except to work or starve, as Leifr

soon discovered.

After six days of watching for his opportunity, he managed to slip

out of the prisoners’ quarters after a long day’s work and threaded his

way almost to the main portal. Each dragging step of his injured leg

was an agony. If he had possessed two good legs, he might have

eluded his captors and escaped, but they recognized him and hauled

him back to Skrof. To discourage any further departures from duty,

and to save his own throat, Skrof fastened a shackle around Leifr’s

leg and chained him to a large stake pounded into the ground.

For several days Leifr enlivened his existence by refusing to

work and menacing Skrof whenever he came near, so Skrof left him

alone in the dark in the prisoners’ quarters to do nothing until his

pride subsided. The involuntary abstinence from eating did as much

as the boredom to convince him that working was better than

doing nothing, so he promised that he would behave himself and

received his pickaxe and resumed his mindless battering at the rock

walls. At present he could do nothing but wait for another opportunity,

all the while giving the appearance that he had reconciled himself to his

fate.

As near as he could guess, there were twelve days left before

Hjaldr’s alog took effect. Every clank and rattle of the chain

reminded him of his captivity, and he berated himself for not trying

harder to escape before. In a fury, he attacked the chain with his pick,

hoping to break free, but the metal defied all his efforts. Skrof caught

him at it and he lost the privilege of eating his share of stale black

bread and rancid dried fish that night. The other prisoners offered

their silent sympathy by slipping him bits of their own meager fare,

which fired his resolve to deliver them all safely from Dokholur.

Although talking was strictly forbidden, everyone seized any

opportunity for a few moments of whispering; by this means, Leifr

learned that Dokholur was the final stop in the lives of hundreds of

thralls and wanderers who had fallen upon bad times. Even a cripple

such as Leifr could swing a pick or shovel ore into the carts. Every

year, dozens of thralls died from cave-ins, falling down deep shafts,

or getting lost in the maze of tunnels. Lungs gave out in the cold, damp

air, and occasionally the miners encountered deadly vapors. If nothing

else menaced the lives of the prisoners, trolls could always be counted

upon to seize victims in the dark tunnels, particularly in winter.

A prisoner might last a day at Dokholur or many years, but

eventually Dokholur and its hazards won. When a thrall died at his

work, his companions silently loaded the body onto a full ore cart

and it was burned with the next batch of molten ore at the nearest

furnace, so the thrall’s final contribution to the mines of Dokholur was

the remains of his own poor husk. From the least, scruffy orphan

child that dragged food and water to the prisoners, to the sickest old

beggar, everyone was expected to give his all to the mine. Leifr

encountered old thralls, outlaws, wanderers, and many others who

had fallen into disfavor with either fate or Sorkvir.

With ten days left, Leifr saw Ljosa for the first time since his

arrival. Rising water had made further work impossible in their

tunnel, so Leifr’s troop was being taken to another place until the

water was dammed up. As the captives shuffled wretchedly past the

furnace area, he saw her in the red light, throwing fuel onto the fire.

Sensing his eyes upon her, she straightened and looked around,

spying him towering over his bent, skinny companions. A brilliant light

of recognition suddenly illuminated her weary features, and Leifr could

see that she was calling something to him, but it was lost in the roaring

of the furnaces.

Leifr started toward her, ignoring Skrof’s frantic attempts to drive

him back by prancing around him menacingly and brandishing a staff.

Keeping his eyes upon Ljosa, Leifr seized the staff and broke it over

one knee, tossing it away in contempt. Skrof scuttled away in alarm.