The Wizard

Chapter 35. Down

Time passed, until there came a day of excitement outside my little window, of men shouting and cursing, and horses and mules blowing and stamping. Then silence.

I spoke to my gaolers, and the one called Ged told me Arnthor was to lead an army against the Osterlings. He was taking the other gaolers with him to look after prisoners, and Ged alone would be in charge of the dungeon.

“I wouldn’t expect you to help, My Lord, but it’s going to be a lot of work.”

“You’re right,” I told him, “I won’t help you with that. But perhaps we can find help for you just the same.”

We began with the two barons whose cells were in the same corridor as my own. I introduced myself, which I had not done previously, explained that no menial work would be required of them, and offered to free them from their cells to supervise other prisoners if they would pledge themselves not to escape. Both agreed.

After that, we enlisted ten commoners, choosing the healthiest and strongest. We promised them clean straw, blankets, and better food; but when I got better acquainted with the misery the rest suffered, I gave them all those things. Their old straw, crawling with lice, we burned in the courtyard one night. One had been a barber; I stole a razor for him, scissors, and other things. He cut and shaved their heads and beards, and we burned the hair, too.

Wistan came, bringing my helmet and mail. “I’m sorry, Sir Able. They wouldn’t let me in before, only Lord Colle did today. Is he really a lord?” I said he was, and explained.

“Pouk and Uns are working or they would have come, too. They’re terribly concerned about you. So was I. I—we don’t really have to work. We’ve got some money.”

I asked what they were doing, and Wistan said he was helping the Earl Marshal’s clerks, while Pouk and Uns were working on a wall being built around the city.

Two men-at-arms were my next visitors, if they can be called that. They had come, they said, “To take me to the queens,” from which I assumed that Gaynor and Morcaine were jointly charged with governing Kingsdoom. I was corrected, and told that there were Frost Giants in the city, huge women who frightened the good burghers.

Gaynor and Idnn received me in the throne room. I knelt and was allowed by both to rise. Gaynor spoke. “You were my champion, Sir Able. Are you my champion still?”

I said I would be if I could.

“You must think I abandoned you. So I did, because my husband ordered it. He ordered me not to free you while he was away as well.”

“I understand, Your Majesty.”

“Do you also understand why he gave that order?”

“I think so, Your Majesty.”

“That is why I am seeing you like this.” She waved at her courtiers: women and old men. “These are my witnesses. I believe you know Lord Escan?”

“I have that honor.”

“He will speak on my behalf, my royal sister on her own behalf. You will be under guard the entire time, and will die if you try to escape.” She made a small, futile gesture and cooed, “I hope it won’t be necessary. I really do.”

“If my escape would displease Your Majesty, I shall not escape,” I said.

Idnn rose. “Come with me, in that case. Lord Escan?”

We spoke in the Red Room, a room of business that held a writing desk and a worktable, with a dozen or more bureaus for documents. An armchair with a footrest, prettily made, was carried in for Idnn; the Earl Marshal sat in the big oak chair that had been before the writing desk, and I on one of the clerk’s stools.

“You should be free this moment,” Idnn declared. “The way things are, it was all I could do to get my sister queen to order you brought up here. It’s a—it’s the worst sort of luck that you’re a prisoner.”

“For him it is,” the Earl Marshal agreed, “for us it is good fortune. I thank Skai for it.”

“I’ve seen him fight, My Lord, as you have not.”

“I fled the sight, Your Majesty. Harrumph! He may help us now because he’s not free. If he’d never been imprisoned, he’d be with the king and we wouldn’t have him.”

“I’ll free you,” Idnn promised me. “I’ll contrive some slight. My sister queen is not unwilling.”

“But fearful,” the Earl Marshal added. “At the moment, however, we require your brains, not your sword. Her Present Majesty has persuaded Queen Gaynor—and me—that we ought to consult you. She was much impressed by you in Jotunland.”

I said that I was honored, and meant it.

“Are you hungry? Lord Escan will order food for you if you wish it, I’m sure.”

Thanking her, I declared that I was not.

“He’s well fed, Your Majesty. He’s the monarch of the dungeon, and gets whatever he wants. I’ve had to forgo my usual inspections, so I may say I saw nothing amiss. Perhaps Your Majesty would enjoy dainty fare while we confer?”

He rang, told Payn what he wanted, and turned to me. “I don’t know how much you know of our situation, Sir Able. His Majesty is in the east with the army. Were you aware of it?”

I said I knew he had marched away, but no more.

“We raided them this fall, slew their Caans and gained much plunder. Now the Black Caan will have vengeance, if he can.” The Earl Marshal smiled. “Every knight fit to ride has gone off with the king, and most of the nobility. His Majesty left Her Majesty in titular charge of his realm. I am her chief advisor. I am to supply remounts to his army, and fresh troops as they can be raised, and do a dozen other things. Among them, I’m to fortify this city.”

Idnn said, “For centuries, Kingsdoom has boasted that the shields of its knights were its walls. Now the east is stronger than ever, and hungrier. The king sent my father to pacify the Angrborn so he might march into Osterland with his full strength. Surprise and a crushing defeat would leave the old Caan’s plans in ruins—or so it was hoped.”

The Earl Marshal nodded.

“The surprise was achieved as planned,” Idnn continued, “the crushing defeat inflicted, and the old Caan killed. But Celidon’s triumph seems to have united the Osterlings around his last son, the Black Caan, and hastened their attack.”

I said, “A hasty attack may fail.”

“We hope so. They’ve taken the passes, and that’s bad. My father’s gone to join the king. So has Duke Marder.”

“Yet we’re reinforced with a hundred Daughters of Angr,” the Earl Marshal added, “Her Majesty Queen Idnn’s bodyguard.”

I said, “As long as the weather’s cold, that’s no small reinforcement.”

“Lord Escan engaged men learned in such matters to plan fortifications.” Idnn sighed. “They’ve presented the plan to my dear sister queen. It’s an excellent plan, I’m sure, but will take years. You’re no builder. I realize that. Do you know anything about siegecraft?”

I shrugged. “I was at the siege of Nastrond.”

The Earl Marshal leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “Where’s that? I never heard of it.”

Idnn overrode him. “We must have something that can be done in a month or less. If the king triumphs, we can make merry. But battle will be joined before the next new moon, and if he returns with a beaten army, the Osterlings will be at their heels. What can you suggest?”

“Nothing,” I said, “‘til I’ve seen the ground.”

The Earl Marshal shook his head. “I have maps.”

“They’d mean zip to me. Most likely they’d lead me wrong. I need to ride around the city. A day at least, and two’d be better.”

The Earl Marshal wiped his face and his bald head with his hand, but said nothing.

Silence filled the room, a silence none of us seemed willing to break. I rose and examined its crimson hangings, and the bureaus of waxed wood the color of wild roses, and their enameled fittings.

At last Idnn said, “I want to tell you about Lady Linnet and her daughter. May I? We may not get another chance.”

I said of course that she might. Payn returned while she was speaking, carrying a tray loaded with dainties, a bottle of wine, and glasses. He filled them, and we ate and drank while we talked.

“She has reclaimed Goldenlawn,” Idnn said. “This was on our way south, of course, and we stayed there with her for a few days to help, all of us. She and Vil intend to rebuild it, and are wed. They—I’m sorry. You will win her.”

I agreed and asked Idnn to continue.

“He’s no nobleman, but what nobleman would have her now? He’s Etela’s father, too—or they say he is—and he loves her.” When I said nothing, Idnn added, “Lynnet’s still mad, though not so mad as she was. She talks more at least.”

“That’s good.”

“She thinks there’s another woman with her, a woman she calls Mag.”

I cannot say how well I controlled my face, though I strove to remain impassive.

“A woman no one else can see.” With a smile full of pity, Idnn spoke to the Earl Marshal. “Her husband’s blind, so he says that there is, too.”

I asked, “Are Berthold and his wife still with you, Your Majesty? I didn’t see them in the throne room.”

“No, I gave them leave to revisit their village.”

“It’s been destroyed.”

Idnn shrugged. “I didn’t know that. Doubtless they’ll return quickly in that case.”

“Perhaps it’s been rebuilt. I wish I could go there and see. Did Bold Berthold believe in Lady Lynnet’s friend?”

“Ah, I see.” Idnn spoke to the Earl Marshal again. “Berthold is a servingman of mine. He’s blind, too.”

I said, “But did he say the woman was there?”

“I don’t know, I never asked. Perhaps my sister queen could—could accept your parole. I’ll urge it.”

The Earl Marshal shook his head. “She will not dare.”

I escaped that night, although I did not think of it as escaping. Cloud’s thought guided me to her, and told me long before I reached her stall that Uns was with her; I woke him, and we soon found him a sturdy cob, saddled, and rode out. After circling the city by moonlight—it took a good three hours—we went to the inn, got Pouk, and ate breakfast.

They went to their work after that, and I went with them. A big ditch was being dug on the land side of the city for the foundation of the wall. Pouk and Uns were diggers, and it was already ten paces wide and so deep that ladders had to be used to carry the hard red clay out. We tied Uns’ cob so he could return it to the stable after work, and I began the circuit of the city again, seeing by daylight what I had ridden over a few hours before. I had completed about a third of it when I met a patrol.

We fled, Cloud and me. An arrow struck her neck, and she turned on them, terrible as Gylf. Two died. I was trying to control her when I was knocked from her saddle.

I was taken to a guardroom in Thortower, kept tied up there for three days, robbed, and kicked when I objected. After that I was brought before Gaynor. She was in mortal fear of Arnthor, and ordered that I be chained in a cell on the lowest level of the dungeon.

Strictly speaking, her orders were not obeyed. Neither Ged nor the men-at-arms would go below the twelfth level; nor did they know how many might lie below it, for Thortower had been built upon the ruins of an older structure, and that twelfth level was as wide as Forcetti. A smith was brought, a silent, hardbitten man who did me no intended hurt but would not speak to me. He puffed his charcoal, put gyves on my wrists and ankles, and welded them shut. Then began my true imprisonment, because I swore that I would make no effort to free myself until Thortower fell or Arnthor triumphed, if triumph was the Valfather’s will.

As for him, not one hour passed in which I did not hope he would appear and free me from my oath. At first I felt sure he would, and I planned everything we would do before we returned to Skai—how we would set the whole world right.

Days passed in which I shivered, hour after hour, in the cold, and burrowed in Colle’s straw, and at last had Org sit with me, savage and silent in my cell, so I could warm myself from his heat; he hungered, and I gave him leave to kill any man whose name he did not know.

From time to time he went out; and from time to time he returned with bloodied jaws to crouch and warm me as before. Until at length a day came when no one brought me food.

I waited, telling myself that at the next meal they would come again, and that if they did not come, I would call Baki and have her free me. They did not. I called her, and called again until I had called a score of times, and she did not come. And at last I realized that chained as I was she no longer feared me. The service she had entered on the stair of the Tower of Glas was done, and she whose love I had so often refused was free at last. She would live the life of a Fire Aelf now, and give no thought to me, dead in the dungeon of Thortower.

What I would have done then, I cannot say. I might have broken my oath and saved myself. I would like to think I would have come to that in the end. I might have died, as I resolved to; I was not much tormented by thirst in that cold, and hunger had ceased to trouble me.

I might also have asked Org to bring me whatever meat he could find and united myself with the Osterlings, who eat the flesh of their foes, and howled in my madness.

Lights in that utter darkness, and the clank of weapons. I told Org to hide himself, but it was already too late. My cell door opened, and the glare of torches blinded me.

A remembered voice: “By the Lady’s crotch...”

The king’s: “What’s that by him?”

I laid my hand on Org’s arm. “Something it were better you had not seen, Your Majesty.” I choked, for my mouth was dry. “Go back up the steps. Return, and you won’t see it.”

There was excited talk, to which I paid scant attention. They left, and I told Org I had, to have water. He brought a little, warmed in his cupped hand; I drank and sent him out.

The torches and the knights who bore them returned. I stood, fell, and stood again with Beel helping me.

The king looked me in the face, for we were of a height. “I love my queen,” he said.

Perhaps I smiled. “And I don’t. Your Majesty, I ask no leave to speak freely. Those who ask leave of you do it out of fear of your displeasure or worse. Your displeasure means nothing to me, and any torture you might inflict would be a relief. I speak for Aelfrice and myself. You are a tyrant.”

“I love her,” Arnthor repeated. “I love Celidon more.”

“You treat them the same. You abandoned Aelfrice and taught your folk to. No doubt Queen Gaynor wishes you had abandoned her as well, and Celidon is blessed every moment you neglect her. You’re of royal birth. Queen Gaynor is of noble birth, and your knights boast their gentle birth. I’m a plain American, and I’ll say this if I die. Your villages are ravaged by outlaws, by Angrborn, and by Osterlings, because they’ve been abandoned too. The Most High God set men here as models for Aelfrice. We teach it violence, treachery, and little else; and you have been our leader.”

He nodded, which astounded me. “You say you’re of low birth. Are you not a knight? I let you keep your spurs.”

I nodded. “I am.”

The knights who had come with him stood silent, though I knew that if the chance came they would kill me. I smelled their torches, and saw in the hard, flat planes of Arnthor’s face, the cold and filthy cell where I had shivered so long and in which I shivered still.

Beel said, “I had hoped to free you, Sir Able.”

If Arnthor heard, he gave no sign of it. “You are a knight. A knight of my kingdom?”

“I am.”

“You worked wonders in Jotunland, and only wonders will save us.”

“Strike off these chains,” I told him, “and I’ll try.”

He spoke, and my chains fell clanking to the floor.

My story has almost ended; before I end it, I want to say that had it not been for Org, whom Arnthor glimpsed in my cell and whose terror was such that even Arnthor retreated, I do not believe he would have freed me.

I was bathed, dressed, and fed. “I’m to send you to His Majesty as soon as you can ride,” the Earl Marshal told me. “Meanwhile, I’m to arm you. What would you like?”

“For you to leave. I’ve my helmet and mail, which our king lets me keep. My sword he lost trying to regain the passes, when the army was overwhelmed.”

“Wait,” the Earl Marshal told me, and hurried away.

In his absence I plotted against him—against Gaynor and Idnn, too. Plotted, and mocked myself for plotting, for I was too weak to stand.

Days passed in which boys waited on me, pages scarce old enough to hold bows. Once they asked whether the Osterlings would conquer us, and what would become of them if they did; I told them I had no doubt they would, but if they wanted to escape I would take them to the dungeon, where they would be devoured at once. “It would be better for Celidon,” I told them, “if it were left to the trees. There’s an isle called Glas. There the great dragon Setr put lovely women to lure seaman ashore. The women died, killed by one another or the seamen they tricked. The last took poison, and it’s a place of beauty, silence, and clear light. Have you poison?”

Swearing they had none, they fled.

The Earl Marshal returned, bearing the sword Baki had found for me. He was as fat as ever, with fear in his shrewd eyes. “It does me honor,” he said, “to give you this.” He bowed as he held it out.

I took it and belted it on. “For this,” I said, “we’ll go to Aelfrice.”

He cannot often have been surprised; but he was then, astonishment that showed plainly in his face.

“It won’t take long,” I promised him, “though time runs slowly there. Come with me.”

He would have argued for an hour. I drew the sword he had just given me and pricked him with it, and although he shouted for guards, none came.

“The king has taken every man fit to hold a spear,” I told him, “from the castle and the city too. Leaving you.”

“Someone must be in charge,” he said.

“Why, no. Where’s Queen Gaynor, who sentenced me? The boys said she had gone, but they did not know where.”

“She’s with the king.” The Earl Marshal’s voice shook. “There’s no one left to protect her here.”

“Besides,” (I urged him forward with my sword) “I’m free again, and he fears I’ll lie with her. Move!”

“Where are we going?”

“To Aelfrice as you wished,” I said. “To Aelfrice, as I promised. It’s down those stairs, and you’ll go quicker than your age and weight permit or feel my point.”

I took him to the dungeon, discovering in the process that I was more afraid of it than he was. It seemed to close around me like the grave. If the Earl Marshal’s face was white, mine was whiter; I kept him moving, so he could not see it.

Dandun had gone; Colle remained, locked in his cell. I freed him, and with his help freed such other prisoners as we could find until we had cleared the twelfth level.

“They don’t go down there,” Colle said, as the Earl Marshal and I started down. “There’s no one there.”

“That’s not the same thing,” I told him, and prodded the Earl Marshal with my sword.

“Please,” he said. “I’m twice your age, and there is no railing.”

“You’re four times my age,” I told him, “and there’s no railing.”

“If I had known the conditions under which you were being held, I would have come to your rescue, believe me.”

“Sure you would have. You were careful not to know.”

There was a fourteenth level, and a fifteenth below that. After it, I did not count; but we soon stepped out onto a rocky plain where the breeze smelled of the sea.

“There is a draft,” the Earl Marshal said. “The dungeon must connect with caverns larger still.”

“There’s a wind,” I told him.

“Didn’t Lord Colle come with us?” The Earl Marshal looked behind us. “I thought he was coming, too.”

“Only as far as the twelfth level. Walk that way.”

“There are no more stairs.” He sounded happy. He had been frightened as we descended and descended, and must have thought that having reached bottom we would go up again.

“There must be more stairs.” I was speaking mostly to myself, and I prodded him again with my point. “But there aren’t!”

“This is Aelfrice,” I explained. “So there are worlds that are lower still, Muspel and Niflheim.”

“The realms of fire and ice.” He sounded awed.

“You wished to go to Aelfrice,” I told him. “You are here. It will soon be day.”

We walked on and heard the lapping of waves. “Winds are rare here,” I explained, “but there’s a breeze at dawn and at twilight, near the sea.”

“This is the air that I’ve longed to breathe,” the Earl Marshal said; it seemed to me that he addressed me even less than I had addressed him.

Night was gray as we strolled down the shingle to the water’s edge. I sheathed my sword, for I had no more need to prod him.

“Where will the sun rise?” he asked.

I knew he was thinking of the sea of Mythgarthr, in which he must often have seen the sun set. “It won’t,” I said. “We are their light. You’ll see.” His silence told me he did not understand. “The worlds get smaller as you descend. Aelfrice isn’t as big as our world, though I think it must be bigger than Celidon.”

“There is a geometric progression,” the Earl Marshal told me, and tried to explain what a geometric progression was, a thing I could not understand and that I doubt anyone can understand. “The highest world, the world of the Most High God, is infinite. The world below his is one hundredth as large. But a hundredth part of infinity is infinity still, though so much smaller. The world below that—”

“Skai.”

“Yes, Skai, is a hundredth the size of that, and so a ten-thousandth the size of Elysion. Still infinite. May I sit on this stone?”

“Of course, My Lord.”

“Very kind of you, Sir Able. Harrumph! Kindness to a prisoner. Knightly. You got little yourself.”

“I did the first time, My Lord, but not the second. I’d escaped—so Her Majesty chose to take it.”

“We’d been defeated.” The Earl Marshal wiped his face. “We have been, as I ought to say. They are less than human, those Osterlings.”

“I fought them at sea, My Lord, and they are not. The Angrborn often seem very human. King Gilling did in his love for Idnn. But they aren’t. The Osterlings don’t look as human as King Gilling, yet they’re what we may become.”

The air grew brighter. There is no air anywhere like the air of Aelfrice. That of Skai is purer than the purest air we know in Mythgarthr, so pure no distance can haze its crystal transparency; but the air of Aelfrice seems luminous, as if one breathes a great gem. Day came, and we saw before us the sea that is like no other, as blue as sapphire and as sparkling, stretching to island realms unguessable. A league overhead Mythgarthr spread itself as stars do on a cloudless night. Jotunland lay north, wrapped in snow. Above us was Celidon, where green shoots peeped from tree and field. All around us, Aelfrice, white where it was not green, rejoicing in the silver light, forests of mystery and cliffs of marble.

“I could stay here forever,” the Earl Marshal muttered. “Give up fortune, castle, horses—everything. They’re all lost anyway if the Osterlings prevail.”

“Maybe you will,” I said, because I was thinking of leaving him there; but soon I said, “Follow me,” for I had spied a crevice in the base of the cliff to our left.

He did. “Where are we going?”

“To look at that, and go down farther if we can. I have—you don’t understand my nature. I don’t either, though I understand much more than you do. I can’t use the powers my nature confers. I’ve given my oath. But I can’t change this nature that neither of us understands. What do you smell?”

He sniffed the air. “The sea, and I think these meadow flowers.”

“I smell sulfur, and I wish Gylf were with us.”

We descended into the crevice, I eagerly, he more slowly behind me. Fumes billowed about us at times so that we could scarcely breathe, at others vanished, leaving air that would have suited the desert, lifeless, dusty, and scorching.

The Earl Marshal took my arm. “This is dangerous. We must be nearing Muspel.”

“We’re there,” I told him. I had glimpsed a dragon in the darkness.

It seemed to hear the hiss of my blade and came at us, silent at first, then roaring. The Earl Marshal tried to flee and fell, rolling down the stony slope into darkness. The dragon struck at me, and I put my point into its eye.

How long I searched for the Earl Marshal I cannot say. It seemed a minute or two, but may have been much longer. No matter which way I turned, the ground sloped down. It grew cooler, then cold, and air as clotted as phlegm held pitiless white light that drew the color from the gems on my scabbard and the skin of my own hands.

“Able! Sir Able!” The Earl Marshal came waddling so rapidly that I knew he would have run if he could. “There’s a—a giant—a monster...” He pointed behind him. “We—go. We must! It—it—”

I told him I wanted to see it, thinking it might be Org.

“No, you don’t! Sir Able, Sir Able, listen. I—I—I’ve seen it.” He fell silent, gasping for breath.

“Yes, you’ve seen it, My Lord. I want to see it, too.” His fear had infected me, and I added, “and afterward go.”

“I’ll go now.”

“And face the dragons alone? If you won’t come with me, I’ll go with you and save your life, if I can.”

We started up the slope, walking easily. After some while I realized we were not walking up it, but down. I corrected our course. We reached a ridge, and had to descend or turn back. Great sheets of ice hung like curtains from a dark sky; the ground was hard as ice, and slick with frost.

“This cannot be Muspel,” the Earl Marshal gasped.

A voice before, behind, and all about us answered him. “You call this Niflheim.” It was weary, yet resonated with such power as no Overcyn possesses, not even the Valfather.

Trembling, the Earl Marshal fell to his knees.

“You wished to see me, Able. You have only to look.”

It surrounded me. I cannot write it in a way that will make it clear if you have not seen it. I was in it, and it scrutinized me from above as from below, huge and stronger than iron. Hideous in its malice. I tried to close my eyes, feeling that I walked in a nightmare. It was there still.

“Call me God, Able.”

Pride woke in me; that pride did not still my fear, but shouldered it aside as the weak thing it was. I said, “Call me Sir Able, god.”

“You come near the secret that lies at the heart of all things, Able. Worship me, and I will tell it.”

The Earl Marshal worshipped, but I did not.

“Learn it, and you will have power such as men and gods scarcely dream of, easily obtained.”

I said, “This lord is worshipping you. Tell him.”

“You behold me as I am, Able. It may be the sight is too much.” As it spoke, it no longer surrounded me. Instead there sat before me upon a throne of ice a creature grossly great. Toad and dragon were in it. So was the Earl Marshal, and so was I. “Worship me now. You shall know the secret.”

I said, “I don’t wish to know this secret, but to return to Muspel and from there to Aelfrice.”

“Worship me!”

“Lord Escan is worshipping you,” I repeated. “If you’d tell me, why won’t you tell him?”

It lifted the Earl Marshal before I had finished, held him close, and whispered; Niflheim trembled as it whispered, and a sheet of ice miles long fell with a deafening crash.

“Now you know me,” it said to the Earl Marshal, but his eyes were shut tight and would not look.

“I know you, too,” I told it. “This is the seventh and lowest world, the final world, and you are the most low god.”

“I will tell you, and you will worship me, seeing that it is right and good that you do so. Come nearer.”

I did not, yet the distance between us diminished.

Its voice fell to a whisper, and that whisper was the worst thing I have heard. The voice of Grengarm was as pure as the wind beside it. “Know the great secret, which is that the last world is the first—”

Niflheim shook again. Its frozen earth groaned.

“You stand in Niflheim, and Elysion.”

The tremors became more violent. A pillar of ice fell; and its ruin sent ice shards flying, and a cloud of sparkling crystals, like snow. The thing that spoke looked about it, and I glimpsed its fear.

“You see my face,” it whispered, and seemed to hear my thought. “If you could see my back, you would see the Most High God—”

Niflheim broke as it spoke. A crack opened between the place where it sat and the place where I stood. I helped the Earl Marshal rise; I cannot say why I did, but I did.

Perhaps he could not have said why he rose. “For He is me—”

Ice and stones rained all around the thing that spoke. A stone as big as an ox struck it.

“And I am He!”

Even as it spoke it fled, with the frozen earth rolling under its feet like the sea, and stones, ice, and fire of Muspel nearly burying it. I saw its back then, and the back of its head, and they were covered with lumps and running sores.

When we regained Aelfrice at last, we sat surrounded by its beauty, we two, and Aelf came from the forest and the sea with food and gifts. We ate, and an aged Aelf whose beard was of those fall leaves that remain streaked with green drew me aside and whispered, “Our queen is waiting for you.”

“I know,” I said. “Tell her that I’ll come as soon as I have illustrated her message, as she and the kings wished.”

I returned to the Earl Marshal and sat with him, and ate an apple and a wedge of cheese.

“You’re wise,” he said, “and I, who thought myself wise for so long, am a fool.”

“By no means.”

“I couldn’t attain this world of Aelfrice. Harrumph! Not in thirty years. You did it easily, and followed the worlds to the end.”

I nodded.

“I’ve never heard of anyone’s doing that. No one but you. And I, because I came with you.”

I said that someday I would like to go to Kleos, the world above Skai; but it would be years before I tried.

“I wish I could sit here forever,” he told me solemnly “watching these waves and this sky, and eating this food.”

I paid little heed when he said it; but when we rose to return to Mythgarthr, I chanced to look behind us. There he sat with food before him, staring out over the sea, his face rapturous. I stopped to point, and he whispered, “I know.” There are things in Aelfrice I still do not understand.