Bakrauf ground her big square teeth. It was steamy and hot here in her throne chamber. She hated heat. Signy's broken cage lay on the floor. The straw plait and old riding dress had been torn to pieces. "If I get my hands on them they will die by the slowest and most awful means I can devise," she said through gritted teeth.
"Send the wild hunt to fetch them," he said. "We dare not go any farther than we have."
She raised her eyes to the roof. "Fool. You made me use them to cross the river to consult with Jagellion. I have used up all the debts they owe me for this year. If I called them again, before yuletide, they'd come. They'd come for me. I need to take Signy and the Frank prince in some other way."
"Well, you can't." Her son almost seemed to enjoy her fury. "The black dwarves will have them now and they're not going to part with them. Not cheaply anyway."
She made throttling movements with her square hands. "Those . . . thieving twisters. The pipes and mechanisms that are wrecked in the geyser . . . The dwarves will make us pay and pay to fix them. And who else could have helped those snot kobolds to cheat us?"
Her monster son paced. "We dare not go against the dwarves. You know what happened last time."
"I know. I know," she said, angrily. "Even those cursed Ás make deals with them rather than fight the tricky little rats." She smashed her fist into her palm. It sounded like a gunshot. "What I want to know is, who was the fourth one? Where did he come from? How was he able to get in? How was he able to free her?"
"The thrall who was left bound said that he was a new thrall."
"Those are few enough. A kobold? Or a gnome?"
"A human, Mother. A human from Midgard. Dark of skin and with curly dark hair, like a black dwarf. Does that bring anyone to mind?" he asked, sarcastically.
Her green eyes narrowed. "That's not possible! Simply not possible. He was just a messenger. A thrall. And I used the lightest of enamor entrapment spells on him. Merely a glamour onto his memory of her. Enough to make a thrall do what a thrall would not dream of doing."
He snorted. "Your spell had a far stronger effect on that one than you realized," said the beast. "Sometimes, Mother, you're too devious for your own good. My way—direct and brutal—would not have had these consequences."
"Your way would have had the arm-ring exerting magical forces against us. Just like the raid that the great Vortenbras talked his foolish men into," she said, sarcastically.
"A raid that brought back the slave you foolishly used," he replied. "He must have been besotted with her already, and you had to put an entrapment on top of that."
She was silent for a while. Then she said, "The other slaves taken on that viking . . . they were all men from the League lands. He was the only one even taken in waters to which the Holy Roman Empire lays claim. The truce-oath was broken. He is a curse brought down by that act."
"You attribute the arm-ring far too much power," snorted the beast disdainfully.
She rubbed her heavy jaw pensively. "Maybe not. Maybe I underestimated it. It's a symbol of an old religion, much tied to the land. It was old before Odin worship came to Telemark. I am beginning to think that there is more to it than we realized. I think Chernobog may have misled us deliberately."
"Letting rivals seek their own destruction you mean?" he said, scratching his heavy brow.
"Exactly," she said, her voice grim and cold as ice rime.
"Then I do not think we will tell him of our setbacks. Not until we have recovered the prisoners from the dwarves."
"At least we can be sure that they will not let them go," she said. "They never do."
"But they always offer a way out," he said, meditatively.
She twisted her thick lips into a sneer. "And no one ever succeeds in the dwarf challenges, curse their tricksy little selves. I hate them. I hate them nearly as much as humans."