At the mention of cats one of the beasts turned his head and sank his teeth into Jack’s leg. He shouted in surprise. The spell was broken, for spell it had been. Jack had felt the life force strongly, as when he called up fog. Frith’s hair had become more golden, had fallen ever more gracefully. Had fallen.
With the breaking of the spell, Frith’s hair simply detached itself from her head and fell to the floor with a little sigh.
The party guests held their breath. Frith looked uncertain, as though she hadn’t realized what had happened. “It’s sei er !” yelled Thorgil, breaking the silence. “See? There’s his familiar in the rafters!”
Bold Heart croaked balefully and sailed out the door.
“A crow?” Frith said, wondering. She felt her head. Then she screamed, a terrible scream unlike anything human. Her body bulged in a dozen places. Her features rippled and twisted like the beasts carved on the walls. Her head turned pale and bulbous, with gaping eyes and a mournful mouth. She screamed again and again. The hall emptied out, with warriors scrambling over one another and whimpering in a most unheroic way.
Jack tried to reach Lucy, but he was snatched away by Olaf. The giant cleared a path for his wives and friends, while Skakki brought up the rear. Tree Foot and Eric Pretty-Face carried Rune between them. The old warrior was too frail to fight his way through the panic. When they got outside, Olaf marched them to the edge of the forest. He watched as the party guests gathered a respectful distance from the hall.
The screams had stopped. The night was full of stars and a full moon hung at zenith. A faint glow on the horizon showed that even at midnight, the midsummer sun was not far away. No one spoke, and Jack was afraid to ask questions. What would happen now? What would happen to Lucy?
Finally, Rune whispered, “That was the biggest snit I ever saw.”
It broke the tension. Olaf laughed ruefully. “Heide was right. She always is. I shouldn’t have taken the children to the party.”
“It was fated,” Rune said.
“I’m sorry,” said Jack, bracing for a blow, but Olaf was too preoccupied to hit him. He watched the door of Ivar’s hall.
“Should I fetch the thralls, Father?” said Skakki at last.
“Yes,” the giant replied. “Take Jack with you. He can calm the troll-boar while you unhitch the oxen.”
They made their way back to the party guests, and Jack asked people what had happened to Lucy. No one knew and no one wanted to go inside to look for her. Jack wiped tears away as he followed Skakki down a path to Golden Bristles’s cart. Thick Legs, Dirty Pants, and Lump were hiding under it.
“What was that sound ?” whimpered Lump.
“The queen got into a snit. You can come along now,” Skakki said. “Unhitch the oxen. We’re getting out of here.” The men worked with the beasts while Jack sang softly to Golden Bristles inside. All the while he sawed with his knife at the leather straps holding the pen’s door. Finally, Skakki called him away.
“Good-bye, piggy,” Jack whispered. “Good luck.”
They walked in silence through the forest. The full moon marked out the path, and shadows massed under the trees on either side. But it was a clean darkness and not the perverted gloom of King Ivar’s hall. Jack saw a crow cross the face of the moon, keeping pace with Olaf’s party.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Quest
The next morning Olaf sent Cloud Mane to the king. “It may cool his anger. We haven’t a hope of cooling Frith’s rage.”
“We should take ship and escape to Finnmark,” said Heide. “My brothersss will protect us.”
“No offense, dear wife, but I don’t want to live in a smelly tent with your brothers. Nor do I want to be called a coward.”
“Escape is the only sensible thinggg,” Heide said, drawing out the last word.
“It’s shameful. I’m King Ivar’s man, not an oath-breaker.”
“So you’d rather let us get slaughtered than risk your precious reputation.” Heide was capable of standing up to Olaf as no one else could.
“Reputation is all a man is. Anyhow, you won’t die. I know Ivar. He may punish me and certainly Jack, but it won’t go farther.”
Jack would have welcomed the chance to take ship and escape to Finnmark, wherever that was. He wouldn’t have minded living in a smelly tent forever, but he didn’t have a choice. He was confined to the main hall, his slave collar fastened by a leash to a heavy table. As if I were a dog, Jack thought.
Thorgil, too, was confined, but she was trusted to obey. Olaf had been angered by her outburst in Ivar’s hall. “As if things couldn’t get worse,” he’d growled, “you had to accuse Jack of sei er !”
“He talks to crows,” she’d muttered under her breath.
Skakki burst through the door. “You’ll never guess what happened! Golden Bristles smashed open his pen and escaped. The queen is furious about it.”
“Worse and worse,” groaned Olaf. “They say when a man’s fate calls him to death, everything he does goes wrong.”
“The king wants you in his hall,” Skakki said. “He wants Jack and Rune, too.”
“Rune?”
“As a lore-master and expert on skald’s magic. And he wants Thorgil because of her accusation of sei er. ”
“Me?” shouted Thorgil, outraged.
“You haff never known when to keep quiet,” said Heide.
Everyone dressed quickly, and Rune wore his white robe because he was being consulted on affairs of magic. They trudged through the forest, with Olaf holding Jack’s leash. Like a dog, the boy thought again. He wondered how the queen would punish him. Perhaps she’d steal his wits, as she had the Bard’s. Or throw him into Freya’s Fen to sink slowly. Or roast him over a fire. Jack could come up with a dozen possible fates, all of them horrible.
At least Golden Bristles had escaped. True, he was a vicious hog, and true, he probably didn’t deserve mercy, but Jack liked him. It was rather flattering to have even a swine appreciate one’s poetry.
The king and queen were seated on the dais. Their warriors lined the hall, and at the front were the priests of Odin and Freya. “The priests have been unable to reverse the spell,” said the king.
Jack was relieved to see Lucy at the queen’s feet. But when the little girl looked up, he saw that her mind had fled. Her eyes were vacant and she didn’t recognize him. Where was her spirit? Not in the castle, certainly, and not in a fantasy with Frith Half-Troll as her mother.
He glanced at the queen, and at once her eyes caught his and held. He was unable to look away. She’d regained her human shape, but she no longer had her luminous beauty. She looked coarse and lumpy, like dough that hadn’t been kneaded properly. Her hair lay in a basket on the floor, and she wore a shawl over her head.
“I want him punished,” the queen hissed. The air stirred behind her, and Jack saw she’d lost none of her fell power. “I want him to suffer as no one has ever suffered before. I want it to take days. I want him to despair, feel hope, and despair again.”
“If you do that, you’ll never regain your beauty,” said Rune.
“And how could that be? When he’s dead, the spell will undo itself.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Rune. “This isn’t some flimsy conjurer’s trick. Jack was trained by Dragon Tongue.”
“Dragon Tongue!” shrieked Frith. The warriors ducked and covered their ears. King Ivar turned ashen. “He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!” screamed the queen.
“His lore lives on,” said Rune. “He was the most powerful skald in Middle Earth, and Jack is his heir.”
“Now I know I want the boy dead!”
“Great Queen,” said the priest of Odin, “if this is Dragon Tongue’s work, only the person who cast the spell can undo it.”
“That’s right,” agreed the priest of Freya.
Frith paused, seeming to gather her forces. The shadows behind her stopped moving. “Well then, boy,” she said in a voice that was almost sweet, “what
are you waiting for?”
Olaf pushed Jack to the front. The boy felt waves of cold wash over him. “I—uh—I—,” began Jack.
“Go on! Remove the spell.”
“I don’t know how,” Jack muttered.
“What?”
Jack swallowed. “I don’t know how.”
Then the queen did scream, and everyone, even Olaf, dropped to his knees.
“Well, that’s done it,” said the priest of Odin.
“I’m sorry, boy,” groaned Olaf. “I thought we had a chance there.”
“We still do,” Rune said. Thorgil helped him rise and dusted off his knees, for the straw on Ivar’s floor was littered with bone and gristle, not to mention fleas. “Jack may not know the magic now, but he can get it from Mimir’s Well.”
“Mimir’s Well?” The priest was flabbergasted. “That’s in Jotunheim !”
“I didn’t say it would be easy.”
“It is perilous beyond belief to pass into Jotunheim,” said King Ivar. “I know. I’ve been there.”
“And I as well,” said Olaf.
“But with safe-passage, it might be done,” Rune said.
All turned to Frith, who glowered back at them. “I have no love of Jotunheim. My own mother cast me out.”
“She didn’t cast you out,” King Ivar said patiently. “She married you to me.”
“Same thing,” sneered Frith. “I wanted a fine ogre or a goblin, but no. Mother insisted I marry a puny human.” King Ivar passed his hand across his eyes as though he’d had this argument many times.
“It looks like—” Jack cleared his throat as Frith’s attention was drawn to him. Even in her diminished form, she made his mind go blank. “It looks like your only chance to be cured is for me to find this Mimir’s Well and—and—what am I supposed to do with it, Rune?”
“Drink the song-mead it contains,” the old warrior said softly. “It’s the dream of every skald. I’ve wanted it all my life—well, no point regretting what can never be. Song-mead waters the roots of Yggdrassil, the tree that rises through the nine worlds. It’s pure life force, as Dragon Tongue would have said.”
As Rune talked Jack felt a strange sensation. It was like wind over the sea and hawks diving with their wings furled and far-off hills covered in mist. He could see himself walking through a forest of giant fir trees. The air was filled with the smell of ice off a glacier. Good heavens, thought Jack. I think I like this adventure. The feeling was so unusual, he wondered if he was sick.
He opened his eyes and saw Thorgil looking quite sappy about it. “Finding Mimir’s Well,” she said. “What a quest!” Even Olaf had a distant expression.
“It does sound wonderful,” King Ivar said with a sigh. “Alas, I can no longer do it. Well, my little troll-flower. Will you give Jack safe passage so your relatives know he’s a guest and not, um, a two-legged deer?”
Frith scowled and made things difficult. They had to flatter her and plead with her. Ivar promised her many presents, and in the end Frith agreed. From her robe she produced a golden chess piece that she’d stolen from her mother. “It’s the queen,” she said. “I hope it spoiled her set. Anyhow, she’ll recognize it. But I want to be sure you return and don’t go sneaking off like a pack of oath-breakers.”
“We’re not oath-breakers,” growled Olaf.
“The troll-pig broke free in the night,” said Frith. “He’s probably halfway to Jotunheim by now, and that means I have no sacrifice for Freya.”
Tough luck, Jack thought.
“I thought about using Cloud Mane,” the queen said, smiling to see Olaf’s dismay. “Then I had a clever idea. This gift of yours, Thorgil, has turned sour. She won’t talk or anything. She’s boring. So I thought, ‘Why not sacrifice Lucy to Freya?’”
“No!” shouted Jack.
“It’s years since I gave the goddess a human. Lucy’s a pretty mite, and Freya won’t care if she’s stupid.”
“You can’t do that! I won’t let you!” Jack tried to run to the dais. He fell back as the full force of the queen’s malevolence struck him. He gasped for air. He was surrounded by foul darkness and cold. Only the rune saved him from freezing.
“If you kill him, the quest fails,” Rune said.
The dead darkness went away. Jack opened his eyes and saw that his body was covered with ice crystals that melted even as he looked at them.
“I’ll wait until the harvest festival,” said Frith. “That gives you time to reach Jotunheim, find Mimir’s Well, and return. If you are late—or have slunk off with your tails between your legs—I’ll put Lucy into the sacred cart and throw her into Freya’s Fen myself.”
It’s my fault. It’s all my fault, thought Jack as they returned through the forest. The Bard lost his wits because he gave me the rune of protection. I let Lucy get carried off by Northmen, and I messed up the magic with Frith. If I hadn’t freed Golden Bristles, Lucy wouldn’t be headed for sacrifice. Now I’ve caused everyone to go on this stupid quest to a country where people bite off legs. I’ll never find that well. Or I’ll fall into it and drown.
A shadow loomed overhead and settled on Jack’s shoulder. Bold Heart’s claws were sharp. “Ow! Stop it!” Jack cried. The crow transferred to a nearby bush. Olaf, Rune, and Thorgil halted.
“Maybe he does practice sei er ,” said the giant.
“I told you,” Thorgil said.
“Nonsense. He merely talks to animals,” whispered Rune. He’d spoken at length in King Ivar’s court, and now his voice was almost gone. He’d argued for rewards if they returned triumphant from Jotunheim. He had the law on his side and the backing of the priests of Odin and Freya. It was the king’s duty to reward heroism.
If Jack was successful, Rune had argued, he and Lucy should be given their freedom. They should be taken home. “If you want Jack to return, he needs something more than life as a thrall before him.” The queen hadn’t liked this, but she also couldn’t understand why anyone would risk his life for anyone else. The reward—or the “bribe,” as she’d called it—made sense to her.
“I’ve heard dragon’s blood gives you the ability to talk to birds,” Rune whispered now.
“I’ve heard that too,” said Olaf. “Dragon Tongue spoke of a man called Sigurd who killed a dragon. He was putting his sword away when he accidentally pricked his finger and stuck it into his mouth. The finger still had the dragon’s blood on it. Sigurd immediately understood what a pair of larks were saying.”
“I remember that story. Nobody ever accused Sigurd of sei er, ” said Rune.
“And no base thrall ever killed a dragon,” muttered Thorgil as they continued on their way.
Dotti and Lotti were extremely relieved to see Olaf again. They fell on him, hugging and weeping. Even Heide gave him a kiss. “Dear ox-brain! You escaped the wolves!” The wives were not as pleased when they learned about the quest.
“You’ve just come back,” wailed Lotti. “Why do you have to go off after trolls?”
“It’s the king’s orders,” Olaf said, settling Lotti on one knee and Dotti on the other. “We have to find Mimir’s Well so Jack can cure the queen.”
“Who wants to cure her?” pouted Dotti.
“That’s a verrry good question,” said Heide.
“If we don’t do it, little Lucy gets sacrificed to Freya.” Olaf bounced his junior wives up and down as though they were children playing horsey. They squealed and begged for more.
“It will be a great quest,” Thorgil said, her eyes shining. “We’ll meet trolls and goblins and ogres. We’ll raid the forges of the dwarves for gold. I might even fall gloriously in battle.”
“You are sssooo stupid,” said Heide.
“And Jack will drink song-mead from Mimir’s Well,” whispered Rune. “It’s something I always dreamed of.”
“I expected idiocy from the others, but not you.” Heide threw up her hands and went off to work on her weaving. She had a large loom fastened at an angle to a wall. The warp threads w
ere held taut by stones dangling from the ends, and the weft thread was passed through by hand and tamped into place with a long strip of whalebone. The cloth Heide was making was a beautiful red, yellow, and blue plaid, finer than anything Mother had ever attempted.
Mother, Jack thought sadly. He didn’t know whether she or any of the others were alive. His pathway home lay through Jotunheim, where you met goblins and ogres as easily as you ran into sheep on Father’s farm. He was never going to make it. Never.
Chapter Twenty-five
Jotunheim
Olaf had his long, lean karfi pulled out of the water. He caulked the seams with plugs of animal hair and wool. He chipped off barnacles and checked the ropes for signs of wear. Dotti and Lotti repaired holes in the sail. Skakki and Heide took care of provisions. Jack ran around and helped everybody with everything.
They would need only a small crew, for this was no war mission. Six men, including Sven the Vengeful, Eric Pretty-Face, and Eric the Rash, volunteered. At the end of a week they were ready. The dock was crowded with well-wishers, and fishermen aboard small boats cheered as they passed. Before they got out of sight of the village, Bold Heart landed on the deck, cawing loudly.
“I wasn’t trying to leave you behind,” Jack explained. “I only thought the trip was too dangerous for you. We’re going to see trolls and ogres and stuff. It’s not the place for a bird.” For answer, the crow turned his back and deposited a dropping on the deck.
“Stop talking to him. It makes me nervous,” growled Sven the Vengeful.
Thorgil steered them back down the fjord to the open sea, for Jotunheim was not to be reached by land until the last part of the journey. A direct trip over the mountains was far too dangerous for humans, according to Olaf.
“The Sea of Trolls,” murmured Jack as they came out into the gray-green vastness.
“It’s ours now,” said Olaf. “It was theirs when it was covered in ice. Jotuns don’t like deep water, nor do they like sunlight. They were made for ice and winter. Some call them frost giants.”