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thunderous growl, taking two ponderous steps forward.

“The Rhbus have betrayed me again,” he rumbled. “They

mock me even from their graves. Look to yourself, Scipling, and

don’t let that sword out of your hand if you wish to live much

longer. My claws and teeth may not harm you because of the Rhbu

spell, but you must come closer than that, if you want to kill me. I

won’t die without taking at least one of you with me on Hel’s journey.”

Leifr swung his sword invitingly. “Then come on and fight,

Sorkvir. We’ll see who celebrates tonight and who lies in a cold bed.”

From behind, Leifr heard the flurry of running paws and throaty

snarls as something burst into the hall from the door behind the dais.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw two white, furry forms streaking

across the rough floor. Farlig threw back his head in a joyous howl,

which was echoed by Kraftig and Frimodig. Circling Sorkvir with

annoying barks and yaps, they took turns diving in to worry at him,

dodging his furious blows almost tauntingly.

Leifr risked glancing behind him and saw Raudbjorn striding into

the hall with Thurid slung around his neck like a muffler. Raudbjorn put

Thurid down hastily. With a wide grin, he unslung his vicious halberd

and strummed its edge with his thumb with an approving nod.

“Now Sorkvir ready to die,” he said with a rumbling chuckle of

pleasurable anticipation.

Sorkvir strode forward to meet his adversaries, his jaws gaping

open in a savage roar of challenge. The dogs leaped all around him,

snapping at his ears and face. Reaching over their clicking teeth,

Sorkvir raked at Raudbjorn’s shield, almost tearing it out of his grasp.

Leifr retaliated, but the bear whirled on him instantly, slashing at the

sword with both murderously armed paws and losing two long claws as

a consequence.

Between them, Leifr and Raudbjorn baited the bear back and

forth, dealing him small injuries that served only to enrage him further.

None of his wounds bled, and none seemed to weaken him in the least.

In his rage, the bear seemed to increase in size and his eyes blazed

with a fanatic light. The dogs kept a wider distance, exercising more

caution in their attacks as they garnered more powerful wallops from

Sorkvir’s paws.

Leifr’s leg felt like an inert mass of red-hot lead. Clenching

his teeth, he stood his ground as Sorkvir made a furious rush, which

Raudbjorn deflected at the last moment so Leifr could make

another attempt to shove the sword between Sorkvir’s ribs into his

heart. Each time, however, Sorkvir was faster than Leifr and managed

to block the attack and save himself. With each failure, Sorkvir’s

confidence seemed to increase. He initiated more of the attacks than

Leifr and Raudbjorn, until they were on the defensive, backing away

gradually toward the dais.

Leifr’s eyes sought out Ljosa, standing beside the great hearth

watching as if entranced. “Ljosa! Run!” Leifr called out to her. “Get

out of here while you can!”

She certainly could have made a dash for the door, with Leifr and

Raudbjorn to hold Sorkvir back from giving chase. She looked toward

the doorway, then shook her head.

“I belong here,” she replied. “No one can run away from his

fate.”

The bear gathered itself for another rush, charging through the

shoal of snapping dogs straight for Raudbjorn, dealing him a

tremendous swat with one paw and following it up with another blow

that destroyed his shield and sent him reeling. The dogs instantly

leaped on the bear’s back in an attempt to delay the murderous rush,

and Leifr lunged forward with a mighty two-handed blow to Sorkvir’s

head.

It was no use. Sorkvir had determined to eliminate Raudbjorn

from the fight. He clamped his teeth onto Raudbjorn’s leg, shook him

like a dog killing a rat, and threw him aside into a pile of rocks.

Then he turned toward Leifr once more, ignoring the frantic sallies of

the dogs.

“This is the end,” Sorkvir growled. “You have failed, Scipling.

You can’t kill me. You’re too weak. A pity your Rhbu magic won’t

help you now.” He tossed his head contemptuously toward Thurid,

who lay stiff and stark, staring toward the ceiling above. A faint beam

of sunlight had crept over one shoulder, thawing the ice spell into a dark

puddle.

Leifr fought away his doubts, knowing that to fear was to go

down in defeat. “We’re not finished yet, Sorkvir. Not as long as the two

of us are still alive.” A slender shadow crept around the pile of

groaning and grunting like a fallen

rock where Raudbjorn lay

warhorse. Straightening, Ljosa lifted Raudbjorn’s axe with both

hands.

“There are still three of us,” she said. “Two of us may die, but

one of the two will be Sorkvir, and that is all that matters now.”

Leifr had no time to protest, only time for an indignant,

despairing glance at Ljosa, who returned him a sweet and peaceful

smile. For the first time Leifr saw that the dark and troubled expression

in her eyes was calmed, as if an inward storm had gone out of her. She

thrust at the bear with the pike on the head of the axe to good effect,

turning back Sorkvir’s first charge.

Shaking his head, Sorkvir backed away a few steps and fixed his

murderous gaze upon Leifr. Then he lunged forward, ignoring the

attacking dogs, and struck a diving blow at Leifr’s faulty leg. The leg

collapsed instantly, as if it had been waiting for such an excuse to

give up the pretense of strength beyond natural endurance, and Leifr

fell backward on the marble pavement. The dark hulk of the bear

blotted out the dim light from above. A heavy paw came down like a

hammer on his sword arm, and another stroke sent the sword clattering

across the floor into the rocks, far beyond Leifr’s reach. For an instant

all Leifr saw was the huge, dark maw of the bear gaping in his

face, reeking of troll meat. Then the teeth closed on his helmet with a

rending screech. Sorkvir crushed him to the ground and began to gnaw

through the helmet at his leisure. Ljosa screamed and battered at the

bear’s skull with her axe. Then she dropped the axe and turned to look

for the sword. At the same instant, Sorkvir lashed out with a wicked

blow to stop her, shredding her cloak from top to bottom and jerking

her back within reach of his deadly claws. Ignoring Leifr’s struggles to

escape, Sorkvir hooked at Ljosa as she scrambled away, pinning one of

her feet to the ground with his paw.

Nearly deafened by the growling so close to his ears and half-

smothered by the stench of the bear’s fur, Leifr struggled desperately to

escape from the bear’s clutch, but he was hopelessly pinned. The dogs

made no headway against Sorkvir’s thick fur and tough hide.

Ljosa twisted and kicked at the claws holding her foot, her face

white with pain. Sorkvir growled, grinding his teeth on Leifr’s helmet

until its seams began to pop.

“You were wrong,” he said to Ljosa in a guttural snarl. “You are

the two who will die. Three counting that idiot Raudbjorn, and four,

after I’m finished with Thurid. Killing this Scipling will be pure

pleasure. I’ll rid myself of an intolerable nuisance.” He bit Leifr’s

helmet again, and this time one of his sharp teeth punctured the metal.

Ljosa seized the axe she had dropped and attempted to wedge the

handle between Sorkvir’s grinding teeth. With a splintering sound,

Sorkvir’s teeth sank into the wood, snapping it easily, and Leifr heard

another great fang puncture his helmet. The thick fur and loose skin of

the bear’s neck defied his attempts to discover its windpipe.

Sorkvir suddenly released his death grip with a suspicious

grunt, and lifted his paw to let Ljosa escape. Thurid, mostly unthawed

but still stiff in the joints, stood with his staff propping him up,

extending one shaky hand in a sorcerous gesture, although his blue lips

were still too stiff to form the words he wanted.

“Fool,” Sorkvir snorted, closing his teeth around Leifr’s helmet

once more, scoring long, bright gouges in the metal. “Your powers

will be depleted for days. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Let him go,” Thurid grated stiffly. “He’s not Fridmarr. This isn’t

his fight.”

“I wish he were Fridmarr,” Sorkvir snarled, biting the helmet

“It’s his fault Fridmarr escaped from me, so he’ll taste my

vindictively.

wrath, as an example to those craven Ljosalfar waiting outside.”

Ljosa glided from behind a block of stone. “The Ljosalfar are

not craven!” she said, her eyes flaring and brilliant with resolve. “And

since you did not put me under your ice spell, thinking I could not

escape or harm you in any way if I did, my Alfar powers are not

depleted.”

She took Thurid’s staff from him and advanced toward Sorkvir,

leaving Thurid to steady himself against a rock. She held the staff

upright in both hands and touched her forehead to it. Sorkvir kept his

eyes on her, shifting his teeth to the other side of Leifr’s helmet.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he growled. “Hawthorn won’t

damage me unless I grasp it in my hands.”

“Get the sword, Ljosa!” rasped Thurid. “You can use it! There’s

no bear crushing you!”

Ljosa shook her head. “It’s not for me to use the sword. I’ll use

the powers that all Ljosalfar possess to save them from deadly peril.”

“You can’t,” Thurid spluttered. “You haven’t been instructed.

You’ll destroy yourself—and Leifr with you!”

Ljosa raised her arms and tilted her face upward to the sun

filtering in through the distant roof. Sorkvir paused a moment in

his casual gnawing to listen to the faint murmur of words she was

speaking, then he redoubled his efforts to crush the helmet and Leifr’s

skull inside it. Thurid uttered a despairing howl, staggering forward and

gripping the bear’s jaws in a vain attempt to pry them apart.

Contemptuously, Sorkvir shook him off, taking a murderous swipe at

Thurid with one paw.

While he was thus distracted, he did not observe the sudden

radiance that suffused the staff in Ljosa’s hands and traveled from her

fingers into her arms. She trembled, as if lifting a great weight, then

suddenly the bear’s jaws snapped shut on empty air with a jarring clash,

and Leifr had vanished. Sorkvir glared beneath his paws, disbelieving

that Leifr was not securely crushed beneath him, awaiting his

destruction. Whirling around warily, he saw where the girl’s spell had

dropped his quarry. Then he moved swiftly in retaliation against her

interference.

With the screeching of Sorkvir’s teeth on his helmet still in his

ears, Leifr found himself sprawling in the rocks safely out of the bear’s

reach. Every bone and muscle reverberated with the fiery tingle of

magic, made familiar to him by the influences of the carbuncle..

Scrambling to his feet, he saw Ljosa still holding the staff, reeling from

the power of her spell, while the bear strode toward her, his eyes

smoldering vengefully.

“Ljosa! Run!” he bellowed, hurling himself forward with all his

might, yet feeling that he moved with dreamlike slowness. The bear

reached her in two lumbering strides, towering over her, mouth agape in

a triumphant roar. In an instant the cruel fangs would close upon her

unprotected, fragile body.

Ljosa’s eyes turned upward, calculating the bear’s rush. When the

dripping jaws seemed inches away from her face, she thrust the knob

of Thurid’s staff into Sorkvir’s roaring maw. Instantly a white light

exploded inside the dim cavern, setting off the echoes into a series of

thundering reports. Leifr plowed to a halt as the flames washed over

him like a monstrous hot breath. He tumbled backward, smelling his

own singed hair and clothing, his dazzled eyes retaining the image of

Sorkvir standing upright, clawing at the staff even as it spun away like a

straw in a tempest, with shreds of bearskin flying apart in flaming

tatters. The figure of Sorkvir stood inside the fireball, slapping at the

remains of his disguise in a frantic and futile attempt to extinguish it.

Leifr barely noticed the form of a small gray cat shooting away from