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“You’re lucky,” whispered Thurid. “Usually he’s not much aware

of his surroundings.”

“Thurid? Who’s that with you? A messenger?” Fridmundr’s

voice, still deep and mellow, reminded Leifr of his real father, and

his throat constricted, rebelling against the lies.

“I have news. It’s Fridmarr, your banished son,” Thurid said

somberly, relishing his role as the bearer of news, whether good or bad.

Fridmundr stiffened. “Not dead, I hope,” he said with a tremor in

his voice.

“No, no. Fridmarr is here, as poor and ragged as a traveling

come to beg your forgiveness for his past crimes

beggar. He has

and bring joy to your household once more.” The last words

bore a spiteful sting, and Thurid bestowed a sharp glance upon

Leifr and a nudge to urge him forward.

“Fridmarr!” The foxfire glow intensified to an amazing, pure

radiance. “The Rhbus are kind to me in my last days. Is it true? Speak,

if it is so!”

“It’s true,” Leifr croaked reluctantly. “I am here.”

Fridmundr reached out with his long leathery hands. “Come

closer and let me touch your face, my dear boy, so I can know you’re

really here. I think it is another dream.” His voice quivered, and a tear

started its tortuous course down his eroded cheek, disappearing swiftly

into a hundred channels.

“It’s not a dream. I have returned.” Leifr knelt beside the

old Alfar’s footstool and let trembling fingers touch his face lightly,

never having experienced a more uncomfortable moment in his

recent history.

Fridmundr’s gaze faltered upward and seemed to fasten

on a point somewhere among the dark rafters overhead. He slowly

sank back in his chair, his strength ebbing.

“You are changed,” he said softly. “You have endured much, but

your travels have left you wiser. Your influence no longer leaps out like

a flame to disorder your life. It has gone inward to some far, deep place

of darkness and doubt—” His voice trailed away and his brow knotted

in consternation. “Thurid, you must do something to help Fridmarr. His

powers are all beyond his reach. Promise me you’ll stay by him to

protect him. He has a great endeavor before him. He is going to reclaim

the honor of his name.”

Thurid flashed Leifr a skeptical glance. “My lord, I shall be most

happy to help Fridmarr in any way I can. In spite, I might add, of some

of his past performances.”

“He has changed,” Fridmundr whispered.

“Changed, yes, I daresay that’s so,” Thurid replied in an agitated

tone. “But Sorkvir hasn’t changed. He won’t be glad to see Fridmarr

back again. I don’t see how Fridmarr can extricate himself from his old

troubles, especially if he’s let his powers slip away from him—and

after all the lessons I gave him as a boy. It must have been your

dealings with Sorkvir that robbed you of your powers, Fridmarr. Didn’t

I warn you a thousand times what would happen to you? Of course

you never listened.”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Leifr said, thinking he had never

spoken truer words. “The past is better left buried. Let new deeds cover

old wrongs.”

Fridmundr uttered a ghost of a chuckle. “Thurid, he’s going to

keep you in your place when I’m gone. You might come to regret all

those thrashings you gave him as a boy.”

Leifr eyed Thurid with cold dislike, and Thurid tried

unsuccessfully to stare him down.

“You won’t hold that against me, I hope,” he muttered. “I was

only doing my duty. I can see that all these years of fighting, looting,

and high living seem to have added a great deal of bulk and girth to

your frame, while I have grown thinner, if anything. You can see that I

no longer pose a threat to your peace of mind. Maybe I was rather hard

on you when you were a child, but never in my life have I seen such an

obstinate, ill-tempered, bull-headed, deceitful young fool, who—“

Seeing Leifr’s expression hardening into wrathful lines, he hastily

added, ”I think I’ll wait in the kitchen. Surely no one in there will object

to my presence. I know when I’m not wanted.“

He sailed out of the room in high dudgeon, leaving Leifr

gazing at Fridmundr in considerable alarm at being left alone with that

glowing, unearthly prescience. With his head inclined forward,

Fridmundr sat clutching the arms of his chair, as if listening to Leifr’s

deepest thoughts.

“Do not be afraid,” Fridmundr said softly. “I am the one who is

dying, not you. This is the last, bright sputter of a dying flame. For a

short while, this old wick will burn brighter than it ever did in life. A

small but worthwhile compensation for going out completely.”

“I wish that it weren’t so,” Leifr said. “It seems cruel to lose

your sight so near the end.”

“My sight is all inward—and forward. I see the task that lies

before you, my lad, and it is immense and filled with danger. At any

step you could fail, and Sorkvir’s curse would remain unabated. My

heart aches for you in your desperate courage, but I am also filled

with pride that you have come to put an end to the battle with Sorkvir.

For many years it has gnawed at my heart that my son’s name is an

anathema to all of Solvorfirth, when I knew that it could not be true.”

His head drooped forward wearily onto his chest, and his gaze wavered

over Leifr sightlessly as he extended one frail hand. “It grows late, and I

must rest. I hope to open my eyes again and know you are here. It

strengthens me to know you will take the burden off my shoulders. I

feel much lighter now.”

He clasped Leifr’s hand in a silent benediction that sent a shiver

of invisible strength up Leifr’s arm. For an instant Leifr felt as if he

were swirling in a vortex of powers and memories, and the mysteries

of the Alfar realm were suddenly revealed to him in a blinding

glimpse, as if every atom in the carbuncle were thrilling in response

to Fridmundr’s handclasp. Then the frail hand was withdrawn, leaving

Leifr once again in his void of Scipling darkness, relieved only by faint

impulse from the carbuncle. No wonder Fridmundr’s eyes burned with

light, if such powers were consuming the fragile old flesh with their

flaming energy.

Leifr silently withdrew, Fridmundr’s consciousness had drifted

away into a remote area that excluded his immediate surroundings.

Pausing to look back, Leifr saw the old Alfar sitting in an expectant

attitude, facing the outside doorway. Leifr peered into the shadows,

thinking he had glimpsed something there—an old dog, perhaps—but

now he could discern nothing. Uneasily he went, in search of the

kitchen, following a dim glow down the long corridor.

Leifr found Thurid sulking before the fire, clutching a cup of tea

and staring stonily into the glowing coals, with his back still stiff

and straight from the recent outrage to his pride. Leifr sat down on a

stool, wondering where he was expected to stow his scanty belongings

and his person for the night.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to leave,” Thurid said suddenly

in an accusing tone, fixing his disapproving eyes upon Leifr and

hitching up his cloak around his shoulders.

“I never said anything of the kind,” Leifr replied, mystified.

“You’ll be wanting to go to bed, I presume, in your favorite lair.”

Thurid nodded curtly toward the shadowy end of the room, where a

couple of ancient sleeping platforms built against the walls were now

used mostly for storage. Leifr arose to investigate, discerning that this

part of the house was by far the oldest. With the additions of the larger

annexes, it had been reduced from the main hall to the kitchen. Its

mellow ancientness seemed to radiate a homely welcome to Leifr,

reminding him of his own ancestral roots at Landslag.

“I don’t know why you’d want the kitchen, where the thralls and

dogs sleep, when you could have any of the choice rooms in the

household,” Thurid grumbled, scrutinizing Leifr mercilessly from under

a skeptically arched black brow while pretending to find something of

great significance in the pattern of his tea leaves. Quickly he sloshed the

tea into the fire and stood up.

“Bah, I don’t believe evil tidings in a teacup are as bad as the

Rhbus would have us believe. I, for one, am willing to forgive old

enemies and let the past perish. One can certainly give someone else a

second chance to prove himself, wouldn’t you say, Fridmarr?“ He

spoke with a pompous sneer, barely concealed by his patronizing

manner.

“Certainly, Thurid.” Leifr suddenly knew exactly how Fridmarr

would have thought and spoken to him. “I’ll never give up the hope that

you’ll change into a decent, likable fellow, even when hope seems so

futile. Goodnight, Thurid.”

The speech produced a pleasant tingle of imminent danger, and

its effect on Thurid was most gratifying. Thurid glowered, drawing deep

breaths to swell himself up like an indignant cat. Shaking his finger in

self-righteous wrath, he cried, “You wouldn’t be so arrogant if you had

a true appreciation for what I’ve gone through on your account. One

of these days you’ll know me for what I truly am and you’ll regret

your impudence. You haven’t forgotten that old satchel and rune

sticks you gave me, have you?” He dropped his voice to a significant

whisper, his eyes darting around as if the shadows were alive and

listening. “All I can say now is—beware!” He strode away with a final

insulted sniff, letting his cloak billow majestically.

Leifr spent a few days cautiously acquainting himself with Dallir

and its inhabitants. In addition to Snagi, the aged house thrall, there

were two ruffians who looked after the few sheep and cows, a couple of

girls, and a great buzzard of an old woman who ran the dairy and did

the cooking. Thurid was supposed to oversee them all and give them

their directions, but mostly they went their own ways and the work was

done haphazardly, if at all.

“You’d think they were running this farm,” Thurid grumbled at

breakfast, after reciting a long list of the servants’ shortcomings to Leifr.

He stared blackly at the bread. To Leifr’s surprise, it moved across

the table with a jerk to rest beside Leifr’s plate. Gingerly Leifr

prodded it back to its rightful place in the middle. It stayed there a

moment, until Thurid reached for it; then it slithered toward Leifr

again before he could touch it.

“Still up to your old tricks to torment me, I see,” Thurid snarled.

“I’d hoped you’d grown out of that.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Leifr protested.

Thurid stood up and reached for the bread. As he did so, his chair

levitated several inches off the floor, to come down with a crash when

he sat on it. Thurid bent a slow, angry glare upon Leifr.

“I don’t know what’s happening.” Leifr gaped at the milk jug

quietly overflowing itself and running onto the floor, while a shelf full

of kettles rattled and danced merrily over Thurid’s head. Thurid

glimpsed a heavy mug just as it slipped over the edge; he dodged its fall

barely in the nick of time.

With his thin nostrils quivering, Thurid stood up to his full height

and composed his clothing, keeping his eyes upon Leifr.

“Do you recall the thrashings you got during the snake

episode? You conjured snakes in people’s food, in their beds, in their

pockets—”

“I did no such thing,” Leifr interrupted indignantly. “And as

for all this—” He motioned to the room, where other objects were

jiggling and rattling, “I don’t have the powers. Fridmundr himself

said my powers were locked away someplace where I couldn’t use

them. How could I be doing this?”

“Very easily, for a malicious young troublemaker,” Thurid

retorted. “I know you, Fridmarr, and this is exactly the sort of thing you

used to do years ago. If you don’t stop it immediately, I shall have to

take counteraction.”

His blustering tone began to annoy Leifr. “If you think you’re

going to frighten me, you’re mistaken,” he said, looking straight into

Thurid’s eyes and picturing what he could do to him if his temper got

the best of him.

Thurid’s eyes flew open in consternation, as if he had received

the picture perfectly. With a thoughtful grunt, he summoned up a deep

interest in finishing his breakfast, which he kept well-seasoned with a