The Incomplete Enchanter

you.»

«I don’t want to guarantee too much in advance,» said Shea. «But I think I can do something for you. I landed here without all my magic apparatus, though.»

«All you need I get,» said Snogg, eager to go the whole way now that he had committed himself.

«I’ll have to think about what I need,» said Shea.

The next day when Stegg had collected the breakfast bowls, Shea and Heimdall lifted their voices and asked the other prisoners whether they would cooperate in the proposed method of escape. They answered readily enough. «Sure, if «twon’t get us into no trouble.» «Aye, but will ye try to do something for me, too?» «Mought, if ye can manage it quiet.» «Yngvi is a louse!»

Shea turned his thoughts to the concoction of a spell that would sound sufficiently convincing, doing his best to recall Chalmers’ description of the laws of magic to which he had given so little attention when the psychologist stated them. There was the law of contagion — no, there seemed no application for that. But the law of similarity? That would be it. The troll, himself familiar with spells and wizardry, would recognize an effort to apply that principle as in accordance with the general laws of magic. It remained, then, to surround some application of the law of similarity with sufficient hocus-pocus to make Snogg believe something extra-special in the way of spells was going on. By their exclamation over the diminishing size of Snogg’s nose the other prisoners would do the rest.

«Whom should one invoke in working a spell of this kind?» Shea asked Heimdall.

«Small is my knowledge of this petty mortal magic,» replied Heimdall. «The Evil Companion would be able to give you all manner of spells and gewgaws. But I would say that the names of the ancestors of wizardry would be not without power in such cases.»

«And who are they?»

«There is the ancestor of all witches, by name Witolf; the ancestor of all warlocks, who was called Willharm. Svarthead was the first of the spell singers and of the giant kindred Ymir. For good luck and the beguiling of Snogg you might add two who yet live — Andvari, king of the dwarfs, and the ruler of all trolls, who is the Old Woman of Ironwood. She is a fearsome creature, but I think not unpleasant to one of her subjects.»

When Snogg showed up again Shea had worked out his method for the phony spell. «I shall need a piece of beeswax,» he said, «and a charcoal brazier already lit and burning; a piece of driftwood sawn into pieces no bigger than your thumb; a pound of green grass, and a stand on which you can balance a board just over the brazier.»

Snogg said: «Time comes very near. Giants muster — when you want things?»

Shea heard in the background Heimdall’s gasp of dismay at the first sentence. But he said: «As soon as you can possibly get them.»

«Maybe tomorrow night. We race?»

«No — yes,» said Heimdall. His lean, sharp face looked strained in the dim light. Shea could guess the impatience that was gnawing him, with his exalted sense of personal duty and responsibility. And perhaps with reason, Shea assured himself. The late of the world, of gods and men, in Heimdall’s own words, hung on that trumpet blast. Shea’s own fate, too, hung on it — an idea he could never contemplate without a sense of shock and unreality, no matter how frequently he repeated the process of reasoning it all out.

Yet not even the shock of this repeated thought could stir him from the fatalism into which he had fallen. The world he had come from, uninteresting though it was, had at least been something one could grasp, think over as a whole. Here he felt himself a chip on a tossing ocean of strange and terrible events. His early failures on the trip to Jotunheim had left him with a sense of helplessness which had not entirely disappeared even with his success in detecting the illusions in the giants’ games and the discovery of Thor’s hammer. Loki then, and Heimdall later had praised his fearlessness — ha, he said to himself, if they only knew! It was not true courage that animated him, but a feeling that he was involved in a kind of strange and desperate game, in which the only thing that mattered was to play it as skillfully as possible. He supposed soldiers had something of that feeling in battle. Otherwise, they would all run away and there wouldn’t be any battle —

His thoughts strayed again to the episode in the hall of Utgard. Was it Loki’s spell or the teardrop in his eye that accounted for his success there? Or merely the trained observation of a modern mind? Some of the last, certainly; the others had been too excited to note such discordant details as the fact that Hugi cast no shadow. At the same time, his modern mind balked over the idea that the spell had been effective. Yet there was something, a residue of phenomenon, not accounted for by physical fact.

That meant that, given the proper spell to work, he could perform as good a bit of magic as the next man. Heimdall, Snogg, and Surt all had special powers built in during construction as it were — but their methods would do him, Shea, no good at all. He was neither god, troll — thank Heaven! — nor giant.

Well, if he couldn’t be a genuine warlock, he could at least put on a good show. He thought of the little poses and affectations he had put on during his former life. Now life itself depended on how well he could assume a pose. How would a wizard act? His normal behaviour should seem odd enough to Snogg for all practical purposes.

The inevitable night dragged out, and Stegg arrived to take over his ditties. Snogg hurried out. Shea managed to choke down what was sardonically described as his breakfast and tried to sleep. The first yell of «Yngvi is a louse!» brought him up all standing. And his fleabites seemed to itch more than usual. He had just gotten himself composed when it was time for dinner again and Snogg.

The troll listened, twitching with impatience, till Stegg’s footfall died away. Then he scurried out like a magnified rat and returned with his arms full of the articles Shea had ordered. He dumped them in the middle of the passage and with a few words opened the door of Shea’s and Heindall’s cell.

«Put our all but one of the torches,» said Shea. While Snogg was doing this the amateur magician went to work. Holding the beeswax over the brazier, he softened it enough to work and pressed it into conical shape, making two deep indentations on one side till it was a crude imitation of Snogg’s proboscis.

«Now,» he whispered to the popeyed troll, «get the water bucket. When I tell you, pour it into the brazier.»

Shea knelt before the brazier and blew into it. The coals brightened. He picked up a fistful of the driftwood chips and began feeding them onto the glowing charcoal, They caught, little varicoloured flames dancing across them. Shea, on his haunches and swaying to and fro, began his spell:

«Witolf and Willharm,

Stand, my friends!

Andvari, Ymir,

Help me to my ends!

The Hag of the Ironwood

Shall be my aid;

By the spirit of Svarthead,

Let this spell be made!»

The beeswax, on the board above the brazier, was softening. Slowly the cone lost its shape and slumped. Transparent drops trickled over the edge of the board, hung redly in the grow, and dropped with a hiss and spurt of yellow flame into the brazier.

Shea chanted:

«Let wizards and warlocks

Combine and conspire

To make Snogg’s nose melt

Like the wax on this fire!»

The beeswax had become a mere fist-shaped lump. The trickle into the brazier was continuous: little flames rose yellowly and were reflected from the eyes of the breathlessly watching prisoners.

Shea stuffed handfuls of grass into the brazier. Thick rolls of smoke filled the dungeon. He moved his arms through the murk, wriggling the fingers and shouting:

«Hag of the Ironwood, I invoke you in the name of your subject!»

The waxen lump was tiny now. Shea leaned forward into the smoky half-light, his eyes smarting, and