The Wizard And The Warlord (12 page)

Across the room, Mikla made a sudden gesture, and Sigurd was seized with such a fit of coughing and choking that the tears ran down his face and he could scarcely breathe. Rolfr thumped him on the back, taking his breath away further. Mikla brought him a drink and led him to the door for some fresh air.

“I think you’d better go home,” Mikla muttered with a scowl. “You didn’t remember what I said. Take your box and find another hiding place for it, but whatever you do, don’t bring it here.”

Sigurd replied with a wheezy snort. “I’ll do with it what I please. You nearly strangled me then, Mikla. I won’t forget that.”

“Good. I hope you don’t. Maybe you’ll be more sensible if I choke you now and again. Good night, Rolfr. I’ll watch you until you get safely home.”

“I might have died,” Sigurd grumbled as Rolfr laboriously unlocked a cumbersome old lock he had affixed to their door as a precaution against the sending. As he stepped inside at Rolfr’s heels, Rolfr suddenly fell back against him with a shout of alarm. A huge black shadow rose up against the faint red glow of the coals and made a pounce at them. Sigurd dived for the door, but it was hopelessly jammed shut with Rolfr’s complicated locking device.

“Hullo, Rolfr! Did you forget me in such a short time?” a strident voice cried, adding a rusty cackle of mirth. “And who’s this? A Scipling, by my soul and buttons! I knew I had good reason to hurry back so precipitately. My, isn’t it cold in here!” Briskly rubbing his hands together, Adills blew on the fire and brought it into a blinding, scorching bonfire.

“Adills, I’m glad you’re here,” Rolfr greeted him, while Adills moved his chair closer to the fire, winking like an old salamander at Sigurd. “It’s a good thing you’re back. Sigurd has a sending after him, Mikla’s saying some strange things about Jotull, and Jotull and Halfdane are quarreling dreadfully. Everyone’s nerves are wrung so tight there’s bound to be an explosion. And Ragnhild is perfectly insufferable. She stole a fine shirt one of the servants made and gave it to Halfdane as her own work, and I haven’t decided yet how to let her know that I know—”

“I’m glad I came home when I did,” Adills said hastily. “I had the feeling something was wrong. Is Sigurd the disturber of Hrafnborg’s shaky peace?” He beckoned Sigurd closer and looked into his face with a harmless smile, but his sunken eyes were as hard and bright as garnets. “Hah! You’re not happy here, I see. Is it such a bad place as all that?”

Sigurd tried to stare down the old wizard, but he had to look away. “It’s pleasant enough, although I’m rather bored with endless lessons and the day watch. Except lately, that is. Without the sending to add some excitement to our lives, I don’t know what I’d do.” He glanced uneasily at Rolfr and back at Adills, who hadn’t removed his friendly gaze from Sigurd or abated his congenial smile one degree.

“You might try escaping,” Adills said. “Have you never thought of that, my friend?”

“I’ve thought of it,” Sigurd confessed uncomfortably. “Jotull seems to—no, never mind. But the sending makes it difficult to stay, endangering all the hill fort. If I left, it would follow and I might find something more exciting than lessons in archery. No, what I meant to say—” He tore his eyes away from Adills and tried to formulate some half-truths to screen himself.

“Siggi, you wouldn’t leave, would you?” Rolfr demanded reproachfully. “Is that what you and Jotull talk about when I’m not listening? I hope you wouldn’t think of going without me.”

Sigurd clenched his teeth, wondering how he had ever let out his and Jotull’s unspoken agreement. Something about the gentle old wizard Adills made him confess his inmost thoughts. It was a spell, he thought suddenly, looking at Adills attentively, determined to resist with all his might.

“It was just homesickness for Thongullsfjord, I suspect,” Adills said. “A way of passing the time. Yet there’s nothing to go back to, is there, Sigurd?”

Sigurd relaxed. Adills thought he wished to return to Thongullsfjord, and that suited his plans exactly. Jotull had told him of Bjarnhardr’s fine halls and liberal jarls who gave away gold rings by the hundreds to those who were loyal to them.

“No, nothing,” Sigurd replied, “but it was home to me for more than twenty years, and my grandmother’s bones lie there.”

“Bones, indeed,” Adills said. “I saw gold in your eyes. Rolfr, stir me up something to eat and drink; I’m almost perishing. You’ve no idea how hard it is to beg your way around Bjarnhardr’s jarls. They’re as close and frightened as a pack of sheep with the wolves howling in the crags above them. And the worst wolf is Halfdane.”

“That’s splendid,” Rolfr said. “We’ve seen his gauntlet, Adills. He blasted Jotull halfway across the hall with it.”

“Did he now! Serves that upstart right.” Adills rubbed his skinny knees and put his toes a little nearer the flame. “What was the cause of this stupendous argument?” His bright little eyes fastened themselves upon Sigurd knowingly.

“I was,” Sigurd said unwillingly. “Jotull wanted to teach me magic—or rather, he wanted to catch my natural power and confine it. What they actually were fighting over lies right under your feet. Adills, you sly old trickster, take this spell off me so I’ll stop telling you all my secrets.” He glared at the old wizard, more than half angry.

Adills raised his eyebrows and clasped his hands together. “Oh dear, surely you don’t think I’d put that sort of a spell on you? I’m not at all an unscrupulous wizard; in fact, I abhor the sort of wizard who picks people’s brains without their consent. If you’re telling me your secrets, it must be because you trust me with them. Secrets are sometimes rather unpleasant to keep, like slivers, and one feels better once they are out from under one’s skin. If you think you’ll feel better, you can show me whatever it is you’ve got hidden under the hearthstone, but you needn’t produce it if you’d rather not.”

Sigurd knelt and pried up the stone. “I have to move it anyway. It seems that everyone in Hrafnborg knows where I’ve hidden it.”

“Very likely,” Adills said, leaning forward expectantly as Sigurd uncovered the little box, wrapped in an old shirt of Rolfr’s. “What a nice bit of carving you’ve got here. It looks like something done by the Dvergar. Wherever did you get it?” He took it and admired it, looking closely at the carved figures.

“My grandmother had it hidden in a trunk when she died. It was the only thing I took with me when I left the Scipling realm. I don’t know what’s in it, I don’t know why she had it, and I don’t know how she got it. I don’t know anything about it, except that Halfdane would like to have it and so would Bjarnhardr, if Halfdane is to be believed.” Sigurd stared at the box, thinking suddenly that Jotull wanted it, too, if he had read his suggestions properly that night.

“I believe Halfdane is truthful,” Adills said. “I taught him to be straightforward when he was a child and a young man. A difficult life has made him rather gruff and grim, but I think he is honest. He could have simply taken it from you, you know.”

Sigurd shook his head and scowled. “It’s mine. It was my legacy from my grandmother. Whatever it is, I won’t give it away. What I’d like to do is open it and see what I’ve inherited that has the Alfar realm in such an uproar.”

Adills turned the box over several times, looking at it closely. “Well, you won’t be doing that unless you have the key to its lock. It’s magical, dwarf magic at that, which makes it next to impossible to force. You’ll have to take it to the jolly old fellow who made it, Bergthor of Svartafell.” He held up the box and tapped significantly at the runic signature on the bottom.

“Bergthor of Svartafell! Do you think we could find him, after all these years?” Excitedly Sigurd took the box and stared at the signature. It had never seemed significant to him before.

“Where has he to go? Svartafell is his home,” Adills said, looking perplexed.

“He might be dead,” Sigurd said. “My grandmother has had this box for at least twenty years.”

Adills smiled and smoothed down his beard so the cat could curl up in its usual place. “Twenty years is almost nothing to a dwarf. Of course, we don’t know how long the box has been in your family though, do we?”

Sigurd paused to think. “My grandmother said it belonged to my mother, Ashildr, so it must not have been an heirloom—”

Adills overflowed the cup he was pouring tea into, spilled the hot fluid on himself, and scalded the cat. With a trembling hand, he set down the pot. “Will you look at this mess! My eyesight certainly isn’t what it once was. Ah, poor Missu, she’ll never forgive me.” He looked vaguely under the table for the cat, then stood up rather unsteadily. “Rolfr, I think I shall pay a call on Halfdane while you’re fixing more tea and toast. He hasn’t been blessed with my presence for a very long time. Not long enough to suit him, no doubt; we always disagree frightfully with one another, but we’re bound by mutual respect, despite it all. I daresay he’s in more than one muddle without me here to advise him. He—he, ah, my wits are obfuscated. I’ll be back shortly.“

Sigurd rose, handing Adills the staff he seemed to be absentmindedly searching for. “You might mention Bergthor to him, Adills, and inquire about the possibility of going to find him.”

Adills was tapping his way toward the door through a maze of saddles, lances, and chairs. “What? Oh, yes, Svartathor of Bergfell, I shall mention it to be sure.” He fumbled with the door, muttering wrathfully at Rolfr’s lock. As Rolfr plunged forward to explain its intricacies, the old wizard blasted it with a small gout of fire. Bits of hot metal showered around Rolfr, and acrid black smoke roiled around him, smothering his indignant protests. Adills vanished in the smoke, waving his staff to clear it before him.

“That’s a wretchedly inefficient lock, Rolfr. I suggest you clear it away immediately,” Adills growled huffishly.

Rolfr busied himself making feeble attempts at the mounds of tack and lumber obscuring Adills’ bed. Sigurd sat looking at the box and the signature on the bottom with renewed zeal. “I never guessed this bit of runic scratching might mean the answer to my great riddle. 1 feel certain that once I open this box, I’ll know who my father was. He must have been someone important if he possessed something so valuable that men even now are trying to get it. I’ll never rest until I solve the mystery.”

Rolfr quit his work and came to look at the box, reaching out to touch it and quickly changing his mind. “Those carvings look as if all the figures have the bellyache,” he said. “I don’t like the look of them. In fact, I don’t like that box at all. It gives me a dreadful feeling, Siggi.”

“A bellyache?” Sigurd asked with a grin.

“No, no, you idiot. Just a bad impression. Pay attention, this may be the only time you see me in a serious mood. We Alfar are entitled to our premonitions, you know.” Rolfr looked at the box and shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll be very happy when you finally get it open, Sigurd.”

Sigurd looked at the box and felt a trembling chill in the pit of his stomach. “Nonsense,” he said, to himself as much as to Rolfr. “There’s nothing I want more than to see what’s inside this box, whether or not it answers my own personal questions. Maybe I’ll never know who my father is—maybe it would be better not to know,” he added in an attempt at a joke, but Rolfr didn’t smile.

Rolfr said, “Put it back under the stone. I’ll ask Adills to put a spell on the stone so forty men couldn’t lift it. How do you like the old fellow, by the way?”

“There’s no deceiving him,” Sigurd said slowly. “Nor does he attempt to deceive anyone else.”

When Adills returned, Sigurd and Rolfr were waiting for him by the fire. They had his chair within roasting range and his fleece slippers were almost fried. The old wizard winced pleasurably as he thrust his aged toes into his slippers and accepted a cup of stewed tea from Rolfr. Sigurd waited politely for as long as he could, then he impatiently demanded, “Well? What did Halfdane say to our idea of going to find Bergthor?”

Adills looked considerably less happy. “He didn’t like the idea. In fact, he would hear nothing of it. I’m dreadfully sorry, Sigurd, to have led your hopes on as I did.”

“I can’t confess to any great astonishment,” Sigurd said with bitter sarcasm. “Halfdane wouldn’t for a moment let that box out of his control, he’s so anxious to get it for himself. He’s the creator of that sending against me, intending for it to kill me, just as his sendings and trolls drove the people out of Thongullsfjord and even killed a few of them. He keeps me here, little better than a prisoner, waiting for his opportunity to kill me and seize that box. I knew from the beginning that he wished me no good. My grandmother warned me about a hostile warlord, and my grandmother never lied to me.”

“Perhaps not,” Adills replied, elevating one eyebrow, “but she didn’t tell you everything she ought to have told you, and therein lies our problem. Are you certain Halfdane is the warlord she had in mind? There are hundreds of them, both Ljosalfar and Dokkalfar.”

Sigurd stubbornly shook his head. “It has to be Halfdane. He’s the one who was there, and he’s the one who’s holding me captive and making sendings against me, so that’s all the proof I need, and very good proof it is, too.”

Adills sighed and rubbed his temples with both hands. “We shall talk at length about it later. Right now I’m rather tired.”

Rolfr too was nodding and yawning. “Well then, good night, Adills. You’ll be glad to know you’re back in time for Ragnhild’s birthday.”

“Indeed. What shall you give her, a bottle of vinegar and a garland of nettles? You still cherish her dearly, I suppose?” Adills asked with a smile.

Rolfr achieved a grin of pure spite. “Oh yes, more than ever. We’ve got a splendid present for her from Siggi and me. It promises to offer a lot of sport.”

“Not nearly as much as a sending would,” Sigurd muttered blackly.

His gloom lasted for several days, relieved only slightly by the anticipation of Jotull’s gift to Ragnhild. On the day before her birthday, a pack train from another hill fort arrived with supplies and a fresh string of twelve horses, which the riders had been desperately needing. Rolfr eyes them covetously and said, “You can bet they won’t go to underlings like you and me. I’ll be lucky to have passed down to me a horse only half as broken down as my own nag. The best horses for the best men is the rule.” He sighed gloomily. “I remember stories about how fine our Alfar horse herds used to be, before Bjarnhardr.”