Near the turning of the year, a thing happened stranger than aught that men had ever heard of.
The evening meal in the great hall had been early, as short as the days at this season were. Darkness had fallen outside. Fires, lamps, and rushlights cast a ruddy glow, but shadows were everywhere, uneasy, black above the crossbeams, misshapen upon the walls. Servants went to and fro with drink. Along the seats, rings, pins, brooches, and necklaces gleamed athwart the richness of furs and brocade on the well-born men, their ladies, and the warriors. Talk and laughter rolled like surf. The very hounds lolling on the floor were as cheerful.
Hadding and Ragnhild sat in the honor seat, across from her father and his wife in the high seat. Between these pairs a fire burned on its hearthstone. Though the newlyweds kept the bearing that behooved their rank, now and then they glanced at one another and smiled.
Then without warning or sound, before them near the hearth a head came out of the floor. It rose until half a woman’s body was there. They could not see whether she had the uncovered hair of a maiden or wore the kerchief of a wife, for a hooded blue cloak darkened sight of her face. But she seemed to be tall and gaunt. What showed of her dress sheened ghostly. Her arms held up her front apron panel. In it lay a sheaf of hemlocks with green leaves and white flower heads.
A roar went up. Men sprang to their feet. None moved farther. They stared, stiff and daunted. As cries died away, hard breathing rasped through the fire-crackle. Hounds that had hunted wild boar cringed back. One howled.
Hadding stood lynx-taut. The woman’s head turned. Her eyes found his. For a span they two were thus frozen, and stillness deepened throughout the hall. She showed the hemlocks forth to him as if she asked where in the world such fresh herbs might grow at the dead of winter.
He made a step toward her. “She beckons me,” he mumbled. Ragnhild gripped his arm. He shook her off and moved on over the strewn rushes. Afterward he said he felt himself adream, bound off with no thought of doing otherwise. Yet he knew by every red glimmer of firelight, whiff of smoke, rustle underfoot, that this was real.
“Yes,” he said aloud, his look never leaving the woman’s, “I would like to know.”
Helpless, Ragnhild saw him reach her. She rose up fully; her height matching his, and cast her cloak about than both. They sank from sight. The floor there bore no mark of having been touched.
He came to rest in thick gloom. Fog swirled cold. Unseen, the woman nudged his elbow. At that slight urging, he walked forward beside her. She strode as if they were not blinded. He• thrust aside fear of stumbling and kept beside her. Their footfalls sounded hollow.
It seemed to him that they went a long way, slowly downward, before the mist thinned out. When they were clear of it, he found himself under a gray overcast. Dull light seeped across a waste of rocks. Air lay windless, without heat or cold. The path they were on was dry but deeply worn. He thought that many feet must have trodden it before him.
Still she walked unspeaking. He thought he had better not say anything either. Stealing a look at her, he saw a bony face, unsmiling, ivory white, as if she had never been out beneath the sun. She herself always gazed straight ahead.
He knew not how much longer they had gone, for he had lost feeling for time or span, when he came in sight of some men standing near the wayside. They were very big, handsome, magnificently clad in red and purple. Golden shone the rings on their arms and the brooches at the breasts, even in this dreary light; and the head of the spear that one held gleamed steely blue. Another gripped a heavy, short-handled hammer. A sword hung at the hip of a third, who was missing his right hand. A fourth held a sickle. A fifth had a bow and quiver on his back. A sixth clasped a harp. Slung from the shoulder of the seventh was a horn like the horn of a huge ram; his skin was the whitest, his hair the fairest, and his cloak was banded like the rainbow.
They did not watch the wayfarers, but Hadding felt they must be aware of him. Nor did the woman halt. Still she led him onward.
Boulders and rubble yielded to grassy soil. The gray overhead went blue, though no sun was in it. Warmth breathed forth. The smell it awakened became harsh, for the way passed through a meadow full of hemlock like that which the woman bore. She tossed hers aside. Hadding thought it had served the end of bringing him underground. He remembered that hemlock is deadly. It came to him that somebody wanted him to see what no living man ever had seen. He could not think why. Dreamlike, his way took him on.
After another long while a noise of rushing water waxed ahead. A ringing and clatter went through it. Ever louder it grew, until the woman and Hadding reached the bank of a mighty river. Leaden-hued, it flowed as swiftly as if it were plunging straight down to the bottom of the world. Weapons floated crowdingly upon it, swords, spears, axes, whirling, tumbling, banging together as the stream bore them away. The water roared deafening. The spray that flew up made a mist wherein the daylike light was lost. Where it struck skin, the cold of it stung like an adder’s bite.
A bridge crossed it. The woman beckoned and trod onto that narrow span. Hadding could not but follow. It swayed and shuddered beneath him. Often he nearly fell. Only the quickness he had learned in woods and war saved him.
Beyond the
