Лайон Спрэг Де Камп Array - The Incomplete Enchanter

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 towards 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 greyness gripped them, and he hoped he was keeping the correct angle. Then the grey 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 towards 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 yew

And heavenly dew,

We’ve come to Steinnbjörgen;

Land softly and true!

The broomstick slowed down, and Shea fishtailed it into an easy landing. Heimdall followed, but ploughed 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, Harald, but never like you. I find your methods somewhat drastic.»

«If you don’t want that broom any more,» 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 centre of it. But unlike most rainbows, this one was end-on. It extended slowly down to the very snow at their feet; the colours 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, «Sverres house lies below the clouds; I can see it.»

The rainbow inclined downward, disappearing through the grey. 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 towards the door, where a couple of stalwart blonds stood on guard.

«Hey,» called Shea afrer 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 baidric, «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 Harald. 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 vapour 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 towards 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 he is, 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.»

«Aieeee!» screeched the black-shrouded figure. «I know ye now, Odinn! Woe the day that my tongue —»