one great hand he sifted a handful of dust into Isolf's outstretched apron.
When she returned to the scullery, she poured the dust into a large cauldron and filled it with water. One did not question a jotun's wisdom with puny mortal objections. When she heated the kettle of dust and water, she discovered that the dust had reorganized itself into boiled fowls, fish, mutton, cabbage, spices, and other things to make a feast for their uninvited guests.
Isolf, from then on when company came, wordlessly accepted a handful of dust and took it to the scullery, where a pinch of it in the dough trough became bread, or ale in the ale barrel, or soup in the cauldron, meat on the hook, or whatsoever she desired to place on the guest table.
Try as she might to keep them locked up, the kettir always managed to misbehave when visitors arrived. Dogs they would not tolerate a moment, sending them howling back into the cold dark corridors. The kettir then took possession of the hearth in the main hall and the space beneath the table, where guests were always wont to throw bones and scraps when they were done with them, or liable to spill or drop something tasty. The guests laughed when the kettir fought with the dogs, laughed when their boorish laughter frightened the kettir, laughed when an impudent kettir stealthily snagged a toothsome tidbit off someone's plate. The feasting always attracted a horde of rats, and the ferocity of the kettir in killing them never failed to excite the admiration of the travelers. Thus stuffed with food, the kettir posted themselves on the hearthstones like furry, purring hummocks of assorted colors, or showed off their amiability by climbing into the nearest cooperative lap to be petted. Frequently after a feasting, a bristling warrior crept self-consciously into the scullery to inquire if Isolf could spare a couple of kettlingur for a faraway wife or mistress. Though Isolf grieved at parting with her pretty kettlingur, she was pleased to see them carried away to far places to win fame and the admiration of mankind.
There were some guests, however, who would as soon make a kettir into a pair of gloves as look at it. Their hatred of kettir dawned upon them at first glance, much the same as some people loathe snakes.
Raud Airic was one of these kettir-haters, and fancied himself quite the wizard besides.
'What horrid little beasties!' he declared furiously, after the fearless Fantur made off with a well-nigh empty bone from his plate, adroitly dodging a cup Airic threw after him. To show his disdain, Fantur stopped a moment in the middle of the table to sit down and extend one hind foot for a quick licking, as if a few deranged hairs might seriously impair his retreat to the hearth.
'It only shows,' continued Airic slyly, as if he thought Isolf could not hear him from her lonely position on the dais at the end of the hall, 'that the skill of the Ancient Ones is declining with the rise of the New People. Once they created mountains and oceans and huge beasts with rending tusks and claws. Now we get kettir, sly and slinking little thieves, able to kill nothing larger than a rat. The last gasp of a once-noble race-'
He might have gone on, but his speech was sundered by a series of explosive sneezes. This, too, Isolf had noticed before. Kettir possessed the amazing ability to make some people sneeze and weep at the mere sight of them.
Unfortunately, the sneezing and weeping occasioned by the kettir did nothing to discourage Airic's visits to the mountain hall. Each time he came with more questions and insolence, bringing his warriors and apprentices with him to devour piles of food and generate a mountain of garbage.
'I don't know how you tolerate him!' flared Isolf to Skrymir. 'He comes and demands the answers to his questions and scarcely has the manners to thank you for them. And we know he doesn't put his answers to happy uses, Wise One. Yet last time you let him have the secret for predicting the eclipses of sun and moon, as well as the mysteries of the herbs, both good and deadly. Who knows what he wants now?'
Skrymir chuckled. 'Airic doesn't even know what it is he ought to be asking for. Herbs and astrology ought to make him feel very important for awhile. We shan't worry about Airic until he learns the right questions.'
To Isolf s dismay, it was not half a year before Airic returned, alone this time, and she instinctively knew that he had come with the right questions at last. His elegant wizard's robes were ragged now, his boisterous companions forgotten, and his eye gleamed with the light of dawning meaningfulness.
'What have you come for this time?' Skrymir's question hung in the air, like runes etched with fire, though his voice was soft and gentle. He had not bothered to alter his form to a more impressive one; he still looked like Isolf's grandfather, who had spent his early days as a renowned Viking and his latter days puttering about in the vegetable garden, growing useful plants that no one had ever seen before. He, too, had known the secrets of the jotun race.
'I have come for the honey mead,' said Airic.
'I have never been loath to share it before,' said Skrymir. 'You yourself have tasted it already, many times.'
'Yes, but not your oldest and most potent honey mead. This is where your best knowledge lies hidden. All that you have given mankind until now has been merely the stuff of survival. We have come to you seeking to become great, and you have sent us away with simple skills, and we considered them marvelous because we had not seen them before. Brewing, cheesemaking, forging of metals, all this has become ordinary to us now. I have learned, jotun, that humankind can be as great as the Elder Race-maybe greater, since we are destined to rule the world. You have held something back from us. We are entitled to all your knowledge, not just trivial scraps.'
'What would this knowledge accomplish in human hands? Would all men have it, or just a chosen few?'
'These powers are not suitable for all men. I have seen you form living creatures from a pinch of dust. I have seen you summon life into them. You can heal the dying, call the life back to the dead, and you are invulnerable to wounds or death. All this is done with the powers of the mind, not of sword or formulae written down in a book. You have pretended to enlighten us, Skrymir, but we are as much in the dark as animals when it comes to real knowledge.'
'Mankind is not done with warfaring yet. When he is tired of the sword and the fetter, he will come naturally into the hidden powers of his mind. Be assured, Airic, they are waiting for the right time to blossom.'
'This is the right time,' said Airic. 'We need those powers now to subdue our enemies, to know when they are plotting to attack, to see and hear them from afar for our own protection. Give me the honey mead and I will keep it safe for mankind.'
'What are you prepared to give?' asked Skrymir. 'Great gifts have high prices. Sometimes they take a great deal of time. Human possessions for the most part are nothing but trash and trouble. And I have no use for any more firstborn children.'
'Time to a mortal is the only thing of true value. Let us make a wager, my life against your wisdom. I shall prove my worthiness.'
A wager. Isolf sighed and rolled her eyes. For a moment, she had almost believed Airic more clever than the rest who had come swaggering and wagering to Skrymir's mountain. Usually Skrymir feigned defeat, letting them carry away a bellyful of honey mead and some trifling enchanted cup or sword in heroic self-congratulatory zeal. Once the cup or sword was taken out of Skrymir's enchanted presence, it would soon lose its powers and become as uncooperative as any other cup or sword. The mead itself would be pissed against some wall somewhere, but with luck, the pinch of wisdom contained in it might lodge within the bearer's mind and become useful.
'A wager. Very well,' said Skrymir. 'What do you wish? Three questions? A quest? A challenge to combat?'
Isolf heaved a short impatient sigh and made a disdainful clucking sound. The warriors who challenged Skrymir were perhaps the most pathetic of all, swaggering into the hall, sleek and bulging with muscle, exuding all the confidence and intelligence of an ox being led to the butcher's stall. Tiresome indeed for Skrymir, who tried to meet their furious attacks as creatively as possible, after thousands of years of the same glinty-eyed heroes seeking aggrandizement by killing a being they did not understand. Skrymir obligingly conjured a monster for such characters to fight, and then sent them packing with a trunkful of gold or jewels.
'A quest,' said Airic. 'Send me in search of treasure and power, and if I return successful, all the honey mead will be mine. I shall supplant you in wisdom. Men shall come to me for a sip of mead.'
'And if you fail?'
'Then you get to keep everything you've got, and I shall probably be too dead to trouble you further.'
'Well enough. As a jotun, I never lose a serious wager with a mortal, unless it's a mere trifle, or something your race needs anyway. I warn you, mortal, I shall not let you win this time. The gifts you desire are the greatest knowledge I possess.'
'You won't need to allow me to win,' said Airic. 'I shall succeed on the merit of my own skill and wisdom, and I shall have the mead.'
'Very well. I shall send you on a journey. Return to me with three magical objects, and you shall have what you
