Ten
The thrall’s hut proved a crazy pile of basalt blocks chinked with moss. The door sagged ajar. Inside it was too black to see anything.
“Snögg,” asked Shea, “can you take a little of the spell off this sword so we can have some light?”
He held it out. Snögg ran his hands up and down the blade, muttering. A faint golden gleam came from it, revealing a pair of brooms in one corner of the single-room hut. One was fairly new, the other an ancient wreck with most of the willow twigs that had composed it broken or missing.
“Now,” he said, “I need the feathers of a bird. Preferably a swift, as that’s about the fastest flier. There ought to be some around.”
“On roof, I think,” said Snögg. “You wait; I get.” He slid out, and they heard him grunting and scrambling up the hut. Presently he was back with a puff of feathers in his scaly hand.
Shea had been working out the proper spell in his head, applying both the Law of Contagion and the Law of Similarity. Now he laid the brooms on the floor and brushed them gently with the feathers, chanting:
“Bird of the south, swift bird of the south,
Lend us your wings for a night.
Stir these brooms to movement,
O bird of the south
As swift as your own and as light.”
He tossed one of the feathers into the air and blew at it, so that it bobbed about without falling.
“Verdfölnir, greatest of hawks, I invoke you!” he cried. Catching the feather, he stooped, picking at the strings that held the broom till they were loosened, inserted the feathers in the broom, and made all tight again. Kneeling, he made what he hoped were mystic passes over the brooms, declaiming:
“Up, up, arise!
Bear us away;
We must be in the mountains
Before the new day.”
“Now,” he said, “I think we can get to your Steinnbjörg soon enough.”
Snögg pointed to the brooms, which in that pale light seemed to be stirring with a motion of their own. “You fly through air?” he inquired.
“With the greatest of ease. If you want to come, I guess that new broom will carry two of us.”
“Oh, no!” said Snögg, backing away. “No thank, by Ymir! I stay on ground, you bet. I go to Elvagevu on foot. Not break beautiful me. You not worry. I know way.”
Snögg made a vague gesture of farewell and slipped out the door. Heimdall and Shea followed him, the latter with the brooms. The sky was beginning to show its first touch of dawn. “Now, let’s see how these broomsticks of ours work,” said Shea.
“What is the art of their use?” asked Heimdall.
Shea hadn’t the least idea. But he answered boldly. “Just watch me and imitate me,” he said, and squatting over his broom, with the stick between his legs and Hundingsbana stuck through his belt, said:
“By oak, ash, and broom
Before the night’s gloom,
We soar to Steinnbjörgen
To stay the world’s doom.”
The broom leaped up under him with a jerk that almost left its rider behind.
Shea gripped the stick till his knuckles were white. Up—up—up he went, till everything was blotted out in the damp opaqueness of cloud. The broom rushed on at a steeper and steeper angle, till Shea found to his horror that it was rearing over backward. He wound his legs around the stick and clung, while the broom hung for a second suspended at the top of its loop with Shea dangling beneath. It dived, then fell over sidewise, spun this way and that, with its passenger flopping like a bell clapper.
The dark earth popped out from beneath the clouds and rushed up at him. Just as he was sure he was about to crash, he managed to swing himself around the stick. The broom darted straight ahead at frightening speed, then started to nose up again. Shea inched forward to shift his weight. The broom slowed up, teetered to a forty-five-degree angle and fell off into a spin. The black rock of Muspellheim whirled madly beneath. Shea leaned back, tugging up on the stick. The broom came out of it and promptly fell into another spin on the opposite side. Shea pulled it out of that, too, being careful not to give so much pressure this time. By now he was so dizzy he couldn’t tell whether he was spinning or not.
For a few seconds the broom scudded along with a pitching motion like a porpoise with the itch. This was worse than Thor’s chariot. Shea’s stomach, always sensitive to such movements, failed him abruptly and he strewed Muspellheim with the remains of his last meal. Having accomplished this, he set himself grimly to the task of mastering his steed. He discovered that it had the characteristics of an airplane both longitudinally and laterally unstable. The moment it began to nose up, down, or sidewise the movement had to be corrected instantly and to just the right degree. But it could be managed.
A thin, drawn-out cry of “Haaar-aaald!” came to him. He had been so busy that he had had no time to look for Heimdall. A quarter-mile to his right, the Sleepless One clung desperately to his broom, which was doing an endless series of loops, like an amusement park proprietor’s dream of heaven.
Shea inched his own broom around a wide circuit. A hundred yards from Heimdall, the latter’s mount suddenly stopped looping and veered straight at him. Heimdall seemed helpless to avoid the collision, but Shea managed to pull up at the last minute, and Heimdall, yellow hair streaming, shot past underneath. Shea brought his own broom around, to discover that Heimdall was in a flat spin.
As his face came toward Shea, the latter noted it looked paler than he had ever seen it. The As called: “How to control this thing, O very fiend among warlocks?”
“Lean to your left!” shouted Shea. “When she dives, lean back far enough to level her out!” Heimdall obeyed, but overdid the lean-back and went into another series of loops. Shea yelled to shift his weight forward when the broom reached the bottom of the loop.
Heimdall overdid it again and took a wild downward plunge, but was grasping the principle of the thing and pulled out again. “Never shall we reach Odinn in time!” he shouted, pointing down. “Look, how already the hosts of Surt move toward Ragnarök!”
Shea glanced down at the tumbled plain. Sure enough, down there long files of giants were crawling over it, the flaming swords standing out like fiery particles against the black earth.
“Which way is this mountain?” he called back.
Heimdall pointed toward the left. “There is a high berg in that direction, I think; though still too strong is the fire magic for me to see clearly.”
“Let’s get above the clouds then. Ready?” Shea shifted back a little and they soared. Dark grayness gripped them, and he hoped he was keeping the correct angle. Then the gray paled to pearl, and they were out above an infinite sea of cloud, touched yellow by a rising sun.
Heimdall pointed. “Unquestionably the Steinnbjörg lies yonder. Let us speed!”
Shea looked. He could make out nothing but one more roll of cloud, perhaps a little more solid than the others. They streaked toward it.
“There must be an arresting!” cried Heimdall. “How do you stop this thing?” They had tried three times to land on the peak; each time the brooms had skimmed over the rocks at breathless speed.
“I’ll have to use a spell,” replied Shea. He swung back, chanting:
“By oak, ash, and yews
And heavenly dew,
We’ve come to Steinnbjörgen;
Land softly and true!”
The broomstick slowed down, and Shea fish tailed it into an easy landing. Heimdall followed, but plowed deep into a snowdrift. He struggled out with hair and eyebrows all white, but with a literally flashing smile on his face. “Warlocks there have been, Harold, but never like you. I find your methods somewhat drastic.”
“If you don’t want that broom anymore,” Shea retorted, “I’ll take it and leave this old one. I can use it.”
“Take it, if it pleases your fancy. But now you, too, shall see a thing.” He put both hands to his mouth and shouted. “Yo hoooo! Gulltop! Yo hooooo, Gulltop! Your master, Heimdall Odinnsson, calls!”
For a while nothing happened. Then Shea became aware of a shimmering, polychromatic radiance in the air about him. A rainbow was forming and he in the center of it. But unlike most rainbows, this one was end-on. It extended slowly down to the very snow at their feet; the colors thickened and grew solid till they blotted out the snow and clouds and crags behind them. Down the rainbow came trotting a gigantic white horse with a mane of bright metallic yellow. The animal stepped off the rainbow and nuzzled Heimdall’s chest.
“Come,” said Heimdall. “I grant you permission to ride with me, though you will have to sit behind. Mind you do not prick him with Hundingsbana.”
Shea climbed aboard with his baggage of sword and broom. The horse whirled around and bounded onto the rainbow. It galloped fast, with a long reaching stride, but almost no sound, as though it were running across an endless feather bed. The wind whistled past Shea’s ears with a speed he could only guess.
After an hour or two Heimdall turned his head. “Sverre’s house lies below the clouds; I can see it.”
The rainbow inclined downward, disappearing through the gray. For a moment they were wrapped in mist again, then out, and the rainbow, less vivid but still substantial enough to bear them, curved direct to the bonder’s gate.
Gold Top stamped to a halt in the yard, slushy with melting snow. Heimdall leaped off and toward the door, where a couple of stalwart blonds stood on guard.
“Hey,” called Shea after him. “Can’t I get something to eat?”
“Time is wanting,” shouted the Sleepless One over his shoulder, disappearing through the door, to return in a moment with horn and sword. He spoke a word or two to the men at the door, who ran around the house, and presently were visible leading out horses of their own.
“Heroes from Valhall,” explained Heimdall, buckling on his baldric, “set to guard the Gjallarhorn while the negotiations for my release were going on.” He snatched up the horn and vaulted to the saddle. The rainbow had changed direction, but lay straight away before them as Gold Top sprang into his stride again.
Shea asked: “Couldn’t you just blow your horn now without waiting to see Odinn?”
“Not so, Warlock Harold. The Wanderer is lord of gods and men. None act without his permission. But I fear me it will come late—late.” He turned his head. “Hark! Do you hear—Nay, you cannot. But my ears catch a sound which tells me the dog Garm is loose, that great monster.”
“Why does it take Odinn so long to get to Hell?” said Shea, puzzled.
“He goes in disguise, as you saw him on the moor, riding a common pony. The spae-wife Grua is of the giant brood. Be sure she would refuse to advise him, or give him ill advice, did she recognize him as one of the Æsir.”
Gold Top was up out of the clouds, riding the rainbow that seemed to stretch endlessly before. Shea could think only how many steaks one could get from the huge animal. He had never eaten horseflesh, but in his present mood was willing to try.
The sun was already low when they pierced the cloud banks again. This time they dropped straight into swirls of snow. Beneath and then around them Shea could make out a ragged, gloomy landscape of sharp black pinnacles, too steep to gather drifts.
The rainbow ended abruptly, and they were on a rough road that wound among the rock towers. Gold Top’s hoofs clop-clopped sharply on frozen mud. The road wound tortuously, always downward into a great gorge, which reared up pillars and buttresses on either side. Snowflakes sank vertically through the still air around them, feathering the forlorn little patches of moss that constituted the only vegetation. Cold tore at them like a knife. Enormous icicles, like the trunks of elephants, were suspended all around. There was no sound but the tread of the horse and his quick breathing, which condensed in little vapor plumes around his nostrils.
Darker and darker it grew, colder and colder. Shea whispered—he did not know why, except that it seemed appropriate—“Is this Hell of yours a cold place?”
“The coldest in the nine worlds,” said Heimdall. “Now you shall pass me up the great sword, that I may light our way with it.”
Shea did so. Ahead, all he could see over Heimdall’s shoulder now was blackness, as though the walls of the gorge had shut them in above. Shea put out one hand as they scraped one wall of the chasm, then jerked it back. The cold of the rock bit through his mitten into his fingers like fire.
Gold Top’s ears pricked forward in the light from the sword. They rounded a corner, and came suddenly on a spark of life in that gloomy place, lit by an eerie blue-green phosphorescence. Shea could make out in that half-light the tall, slouch-hatted figure of the Wanderer, and his pony beside him. There was a third figure, cloaked and hooded in black, its face invisible.
Odinn looked toward them as they approached. “Hai! Muginn brought me tidings of your captivity and your escape. The second was the better news,” said the sonorous voice.
Heimdall and Shea dismounted. The Wanderer looked sharply at Shea. “Are you not that lost one I met near the crossroads?” he asked.
“It is none other,” put in Heimdall, “and a warlock of power is he, as well as the briskest man with sword that ever I saw. He is to be of my band. We have Hundingsbana and Head. Have you won that for which you came?”
“Enough, or near enough. Myself and Vidarr are to stand before the Sons of the Wolf, those dreadful monsters. Thor shall fight the Worm; Frey, Surt. Ullr and his men are to match the hill giants and you the frost giants, as already I knew.”
“Allfather, you are needed. The dog Garm is loose and Surt is bearing the flaming sword from the south with the frost giants at his back. The Time is here.”
“Aieee!” screeched the black-shrouded figure. “I know ye now, Odinn! Woe the day that my tongue—”
“Silence, hag!” The deep voice seemed to fill that desolate place with thunder. “Blow, son of mine, then. Rouse our bands, for it is Time.”
“Aieeee!” screeched the figure again. “Begone, accursed ones, to whatever place from whence ye came!” A hand shot out, and Shea noticed with a prickling of the scalp that it was fleshless. The hand seized a sprinkle of snow and threw it at Odinn. He laughed.
“Begone!” shrieked the spae-wife, throwing another handful of snow, this time at Heimdall. His only reply was to set the great horn to his lips and take a deep breath.
“Begone, I say!” she screamed again. Shea had a blood-curdling glimpse of a skull under the hood as she scooped up the third handful of snow. “To whatever misbegotten place ye came from!” The first notes of the roaring trumpet sang and swelled and filled all space in a tremendous peal of martial, triumphant music. The rocks shook, and the icicles cracked, and Harold Shea saw the third handful of snow, a harmless little damp clot, flying at him from Grua’s bony fingers. . . .
###
“Well,” said the detective, “I’m sorry you can’t help me out no more than that, Dr. Chalmers. We gotta notify his folks in St. Louis. We get these missing-person cases now and then, but we usually find ’em. You’ll get his things together, will you?”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Reed Chalmers. “I thought I’d go over the papers now.”
“Okay. Thanks. Miss Mugler, I’ll send you a report with my bill.”
“But,” said Gertrude Mugler, “I don’t want a report! I want Mr. Shea!”
The detective grinned. “You paid for a report, whether you want it or not. You can throw it away. So long. ’Bye, Dr. Chalmers. ’Bye, Mr. Bayard. Be seein’ you.” The door of the room closed.
Walter Bayard, lounging in Harold Shea’s one good armchair, asked: “Why didn’t you tell him what you think really happened?”
Chalmers replied: “Because it would be—shall I say—somewhat difficult to prove. I do not propose to make myself a subject of public ridicule.”
Gertrude said: “That wasn’t honest of you, Doctor. Even if you won’t tell me, you might at least—”
Bayard wiggled an eyebrow at the worried girl. “Heh, heh. Who was indignantly denying that Harold might have run away from her maternal envelopment, when the detective asked her just now?”
Gertrude snapped: “In the first place it wasn’t so, and in the second it was none of his damn business, and in the third I think you two might at least cooperate instead of obstructing, especially since I’m paying for Mr. Johnson’s services!”
“My dear Gertrude,” said Chalmers, “if I thought it had the slightest chance of doing any good, I should certainly acquaint your Mr. Johnson with my hypothesis. But I assure you that he would decline to credit it, and even if he did, the theory would present no—uh—point of application for his investigatory methods.”
“Something in that, Gert,” said Bayard. “You can prove the thing in one direction, but not the reverse. If Shea can’t get back from where we think he’s gone, it’s a cinch that Johnson couldn’t. So why send Johnson after him?” He sighed. “It’ll be a little queer without Harold, for all his—”
Wham! The outward rush of displaced air bowled Chalmers over, whipped a picture from the wall with a crash of glass, and sent the pile of Shea’s papers flying. There may have been minor damage as well.
If there was, neither Gertrude nor Chalmers nor Bayard noticed it. In the middle of the room stood the subject of their talk, swathed in countless yards of blanketlike woolen garments. His face was tanned and slightly chapped. In his left hand he held a clumsy broom of willow twigs.
“Hiya,” said Shea, grinning at their expressions. “You three had dinner yet? Yeah? Well, you can come along and watch me eat.” He tossed the broom in a corner. “Souvenir to go with my story. Useful while it lasted, but I’m afraid it won’t work here.”
“B-but,” stammered Chalmers, “you aren’t going out to a restaurant in those garments?”
“Hell, yes; I’m hungry.”
“What will people think?”
“What do I care?”
“God bless my soul,” exclaimed Chalmers, and followed Shea out.