«What you want him for?» asked Snogg.
«I may be able to work a magic trick.»
Snogg thought. «In thrall’s house, two mile east, maybe brooms. Thrall he get sick, die.»
«Lead on,» said Shea.
They were off again through the darkness. Now and then they glimpsed a pinpoint of light in the distance, as some one of the other giant search parties moved about, but none approached them.
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.
«Snogg,» asked Shea, «can you take a little of the spell off this sword so we can have some light?»
He held it out. Snogg 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 filer. There ought to be some around.»
«On roof, I think,» said Snogg. «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.
«Verdfolnir, 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 Steinnbjorg soon enough.»
Snogg 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 Snogg, 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.»
Snogg 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 Steinobjorgen
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 upon 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 Helmdall. 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 towards Shea, the latter noted it looked paler than he had ever seen it. Then As called: «How to control this thing, oh 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 towards Ragnarok!»
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 Steinnbjorg 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.
