Here, on this side of the black stone doorway and down the long passage they weren't—strictly speaking—prisoners, or slaves. The captivity in Aurvagar was a little more subtle, if far more effective. They were free to leave at any time. The black dwarf had cheerfully showed them the open doorway to the cave chamber he'd escorted them to. "Feel free to pass through," he'd said with a giggle, pointing at the landscape outside that doorway.
And then he'd left them. By the time they looked around he was gone.
Somewhere of course must be the entryway that the sniggering black dwarf had showed them through, but none of them had been able to find it. You could hear the sounds of industry: hammering and clanking. But the labyrinthine passages never led to it, just back to this solitary cave room. Company—like food and drink—was remarkably scarce. The volcanic landscape outside the door showed no sign that anything had—or ever could have—lived out there.
Perhaps the dwarves liked an endless aspect of ash and glassy black rock. Erik was sure that he didn't. "We shouldn't have let them take the horses," he said.
"How could we have stopped them? And what would we have fed the horses on?" asked Manfred. "They seemed friendly enough."
He was not referring to horses.
"As friendly as someone who is in total control can afford to be," said Cair, sitting cross-legged against the wall. "I suppose they're waiting for us to ask for help. There will be a price, of course."
Erik was sure that the corsair admiral was right. And if childhood stories were to be believed, the price would be high . . . and tricky. "They have a reputation," he said in Frankish, "of playing games. Of deceptions."
"What else can we do but to play along?" said Cair.
"Force," said Manfred, looking around in a fashion which indicated that he thought they were being spied on.
Signy snorted and looked at him scornfully. But she said nothing. Just looked down at her feet again.
"Um. I gather that's really not a good idea," said Manfred, looking chastened. Or, thought Erik, doing his best to.
"I don't think it would be wise," said Erik, carefully reverting to Norse. "We really wouldn't want to fight with them. We'd do better to bargain for our freedom."
"Very much wiser," said the black dwarf, grinning and leaning against the wall—where he definitely hadn't been a moment ago. "Come and talk to the others." He led them out along the same passage that they'd tried at least five times before and through into a smithy. There were two other dwarves at work there. One, thought Erik, looked like the dwarf who had led them into this trap in the first place.
"Still here?" he asked, looking up from his engraving. "I thought you were just passing through. Seems like they've got a bit delayed eh, Sjárr?"
The other dwarf slipped a shimmering sword into an annealing bath with a hiss that almost, but not quite, hid his guffaw.
"We seem to have got a little lost. We could use some assistance," said Manfred evenly.
The dwarves looked at each other and chortled. Erik might have been tempted into something premature and foolish if it hadn't been for the way the dwarf still held that hammer. You do not pick fights with a blacksmith, not even a small one, if he uses a hammer that size, one-handed. "Really? And how would you pay for such assistance? We do not provide anything for nothing. And we do not accept payment in promises," said one of the three.
This, thought Erik, is where things get difficult. He and Manfred had not a brass farthing between them. He doubted that the others did either. Mind you, you never could tell with Cair Aidin. "You seem to have already relieved us of our horses," he said mildly.
"Your horses?" The dwarf grinned. "You can have them back—if you pay for their feed. Food is pricy around here."
"And horses eat such a lot," said one of the others with mock sympathy. "Now, what skills do you have to offer us? Or money or rare gems or precious metals will do."
"All I have are these," said Signy, holding something out. "I offer them for free passage to safety for my man here."
Cair saw how Signy held out the narrow bands of silver. So: he was still "her man," and she was offering her only jewelry to free him. He recognized them as the bracelets she'd always worn. "They are supposed to be protective and magical."
One of the dwarves took the broken silver bracelets into a calloused hand. "Our work," he said professionally. "But it has been broken." He sounded surprised by that. He handed it on to the one who had been engraving. "Here, Fjalarr. What do you think?"
That dwarf held it up to the light. And then placed it into a solution in a glass beaker. Cair noticed the glassware. His eyes had already roamed across most of the equipment in this room. They were master metalworkers; that he could tell. But the glasswork looked of poor quality—greenish and barely translucent. A fine tracery of bubbles formed about the silver. The two dwarves shook their heads in unison. "Not worth much anymore, halfling," said the one called Fjalarr. "The runes are rubbed out, most of the enslavement and the leeching spells are gone. It would cost more to fix again than they're worth."
He hauled it out of the liquid with a pair of forceps, shook it off, dipped it in what Cair decided was probably water, and tossed it back to her. She fumbled the catch. The dwarves laughed, setting Cair's teeth on edge. Now that he understood the problem of her long-sightedness . . .
"We'll give you their value in silver," said Sjárr. "The work is worthless now. We'll pay to know how you got free of them, though. They were supposed to never come off."
"And what did you do to the runes?" said the third dwarf, the one with the long nose.
Signy had the honor of a long line of Norse jarls and kings, and, regrettably, the business sense of a rabbit, decided Cair, as she answered: "I broke them on the rowan-wood cage. And I tried to cut through the wood with them."
The dwarves nodded. "Ah. That stuff is poison to your kind. We never thought that you'd go near it."
It might be superstition, thought Cair, but at least she could have sold it! What else was superstition for?
"And you?" said the dwarves to Manfred. "Going to offer us an ox, are you? Like yourself, hee, hee, hee."
Cair could not help but appreciate the irony of it. Manfred of Brittany was trapped in the same way that he had been. If he were to give them any indication of his true worth, they'd keep him very securely indeed. Or . . . sell him to a worse enemy. "I have my sword. I'm a good armsman," said Manfred. "So is Erik."
"We've no use for those. Who would fight with us?" said the fourth dwarf, dismissing this out of hand.
"I am a maker of glassware," said Cair. He had blown glass before out of curiosity, when visiting a glassworks. It hadn't been that successful, but he could do at least as well as whoever made that lopsided bowl. It also had their interest.
"A valuable trade," said the engraver, Fjalarr, approvingly. That was good. "We'll have to make your challenge harder." That sounded bad.
"Challenge?" asked Cair cautiously.
"It's tradition," explained Fjalarr. "We agree to cancel your debts and let you go, if you succeed at a task we appoint you to. An interesting task. Draining a lake or something."
"Perhaps with a thimble?" enquired Cair, who felt he was getting to understand the dwarves. He'd also picked up on the fact that they were prisoners.
"Yes," said Sjárr "That's one we've had before."
"I'll take it," said Cair eagerly.
"Ah. No, we'll think of something else this time," said the engraver, thoughtfully. "We'll show you to your jobs in the meanwhile. And you, halfling, what can you do for us? You Alfar do fine work, if you can be brought to it, although we don't like to admit that anyone does anything as good as us. Weaving perhaps? You like living materials, usually. Not good with metals."
She stamped her foot. "No. I am tired of being called 'Alfar' and I don't weave, spin, embroider, or anything like that."
This amused the dwarves even more. "But you are Alfar, or at least a half-blood," said Fjalarr. "Now, come with us." It was distinctly an order.
Cair was led to a small cave that had a furnace and various tools. "The last glassworker we had was a kobold. He wasn't very good. He was also too ambitious in his challenge. Out-eating Eldr . . . He burst." The two dwarves who had accompanied him roared with laughter.
Cair looked at the tools, the furnace, the materials. He was hard-pressed not to giggle himself. The one thing he wasn't seeing was a blowpipe.
"To make good glassware I will need certain other things," he said calmly. "A short iron pipe for starters."
"Make yourself one. The ironworks are through there." Vitr, the long-nosed dwarf, pointed.
Cair looked shocked. "I'm a glassworker. I can't work with iron." He'd probably be more comfortable with the stuff than glass, the truth be told. But he had a feeling that the truth might just serve him badly.
"We have something suited to your talents, half-blood." The shortest, and plainly oldest of the dwarves was mocking, but there was just a trace of wariness in his voice, in the way he looked at her, as he led her down the passages. He'd said least in their foundry room, but þekkr was plainly the senior dwarf, along with Fjalarr—the dwarf who had brought them through the serpent wall. (She recognized it. Perhaps the Icelander also had. To her thrall and Manfred it had just been rock, not a monster.)
Signy wondered why they should treat her any differently. There had been no sign of respect in the way they treated anyone else. Perhaps this was something she could make work for her, and the others. She was still terribly confused about Cair. He was a thrall . . . branded and clearing dung. He was also a captain of raiders, a jarl, by the least comparative reckoning. Yet he'd been content to be her thrall. It was easier to think about this "Alfar" that they flung at her head. Her stepmother had called her that, too. So had the troll-wife. "Why do you call me 'Alfar' all the time?" she said, stopping.
The dwarf shrugged. "You use glamour. We can see through it, of course. But we can see you as you really are, lady. You cannot hide from us."
Glamour. A magical ability to appear as something you were not. But she remained inherently truthful. "I don't, as far as I know, use any such thing. I am myself. I have no skills at any form of magic, although you all seem to think I have. Everything anyone ever tried to teach me went wrong."
"Midgarders' teaching?" said the dwarf with a curious lift to his shaggy eyebrows. "Humans?"
"Who else?"
"And you say that they kept telling you that you were Alfar and could do magic? And you didn't want to?" asked the dwarf, grinning evilly. "You do realize that you were bespelling yourself, don't you? You willed it thus. Alfar magic doesn't work quite like Midgarder spells. Clumsy things. Full of words to focus their puny powers, which mostly come from interbreeding with nonhumans anyway. But few Midgarders have as much Alfar blood as you, lady. Alfar need only the will, not the words and symbols. Those can help of course . . . but not if you do not want them to work. Besides, those thrall bracelets would have channeled most of your power straight to your owner."
"Thrall bracelets?" she asked, fearing that she knew the answer.
"The silver bracelets you tried to sell us. Those who wish to keep Alfar as slaves use them."
The idea shocked her. A slave? She was of the royal house! "You say that you made them. Why do you not put more on me?" she demanded imperiously, holding out her wrists.
The dwarf shrugged. "It is not necessary. You're not a slave here. You can leave if you fulfil your challenge, lady. To the Alfarblot that should be simple. We'd have to let you go home. We want no quarrel with your kin. But we have to honor our traditions."
"Let me and my companions go home to Telemark," she said uncompromisingly. The dishonor of having been tricked into a 'thrall bracelet' still rankled.
"Telemark?" said Þekkr, curiously. "Not Alfheim? We have little to do with Telemark. The arm-ring protects it." The dwarf tugged his beard. "Very well. If your Midgarder companions win their challenges they may accompany you over the bridge. Otherwise, we'll just let them go." He seemed to find that funny.
With sudden insight she understood. "You enslave them with hope."
"Of course," admitted Þekkr. "The strongest chains are the intangible ones."
"The sound of a cat's footfall, a woman's beard, a mountain's roots, a bear's sinews, a fish's breath, and a bird's spit," she quoted, remembering the ingredients that had gone into the chain that bound Fenrir, which Odin had sent his servant to fetch from the dwarves.
The dwarf nodded. "Gleipnir. The open one, because belief is a strong chain. That was one of ours."
They'd resumed walking and had come to a place where, suddenly, the torch-lit passages opened into a hall with sunlight streaming in through the crystal roof. A stream kept the air moist.
At one time the raised beds in here must have been verdant. Now, straggly and sickly plants sparsely populated them. Þekkr gestured at the beds. "Our skills lie with metals and rare gems. We do not make things grow."
That, thought Signy, was obvious. Someone, once, had set this up as a herbiary. Someone who knew and loved plants. The biggest problem that she could see was straight neglect. "I see," she said neutrally.
It obviously didn't fool the dwarf. He grimaced, which did nothing to improve his ugly countenance. "Yes, Alfarblot. We know. But you are good with live things. We are not. Plants should stay dealt with, not need constant fussing. Sjárr and Vitr were all for making them out of bronze and emeralds instead. But they do not cure as well."
"This is my challenge? To make this grow?" She could perhaps do that. The idea made her feel strangely eager, actually.
She plucked a weed and absently shredded it between her fingers, reducing it into three stems and plaiting them. The dwarf looked at her. And at the plait. "No," he said, "That is just a little repayment our guests could do for us." He pointed to an archway. "Come, I will show you your challenge."
He led her down the passage to a small cavern opening out onto the bleak landscape.
What Signy saw there made her blood run cold. She could face axe-wielding trolls or a view of Hel and its freezing mists, but this frightened her.
It was a tambour frame, with a half-finished piece of Nué gold-thread embroidery on it. From here, halfway across the chamber, she could see that it was set with perfect, neat little stitches.
She knew that from close up, it would be a blur.
"Our last guest left with her work unfinished," said the dwarf. "Considering that Alfar lasses are so good with their fingers, and that you want to return to Telemark of all places—I thought it would be appropriate."
Signy looked at the untidy plait in her fingers and realized that she'd entrapped herself. And then she looked at the tambour frame, seeing the stitching and the cartoon, really seeing them properly and not just as a terrifying task, and absorbing what the picture being stitched was of.
It was a grove of young oaks. In front of them sat various magical creatures of the woods, all staring intently at a slab of stone . . . and at a fissure in the great rock beyond it, which had smoke issuing from it.
She was horrified to realize that she recognized the fissure.
The temple, so ancient, blackened and smoke-impregnated and filled with carvings that looked as if they'd been old when Odin was a boy, was not there.
However, on the altar stone, the great arm-ring was in its correct place. That part of the embroidery had been finished. The arm-ring shone with the finest of gold thread. The embroidery was masterful, and that part was perfection itself, down to the shadows.
She'd seen it lying on the stone, just like that, gleaming as if from some inner light.
In this embroidery it was, however, aggressively unadorned. Simply a plain band of heavy hammered and polished gold without the runes.
She looked at the cartooned outline of the rest. And blushed, despite the situation.
The scene was bluntly erotic. The cartoon had not minimized the huge phallus. The male did not look human . . . in other details as well.
"A family portrait, perhaps," said the dwarf, sardonically.
"It's been stolen," she said, slowly.
"What? Your ancestor's picture?" said the dwarf. "I promise you it's ours. The artist got that far with our gold."
"I mean the arm-ring. It is the arm-ring of Telemark, isn't it?"
"What else could it be?" said Þekkr. "And it can't be stolen any more than you could pick up a country and slip it in your pocket. It has too much magic hammered into the metal."
"The altar stone is empty. I saw that myself," insisted Signy.
"Ho! It's a neat trick, if you can do it," said the dwarf, and vanished himself. She heard him snigger, but could not see him.
That evening Cair found his way back to the chamber—somehow the passages had led back there. There were a fair number of other "guest workers" in the labyrinthine workshops of the dwarves, but once they'd been called to the kitchens to get their food, the others had all gone their way, walking as if they were going somewhere—and then they had just not been in the passage when he turned a corner. Cair was tired of the tricks. Tired of his attempts at making glass, too. He'd had some success once he remembered that glassmakers added potash to lower their melting temperatures. He'd been quick enough to remember that they'd used arsenic to clarify their glass. He recalled finding it amusing at the glassworks in Oran, that a poison should lurk—apparently harmlessly—in fine, transparent drinking glasses.
He'd burned himself several times today, but not quite as badly as his clever mouth had. Why had he picked on glasswork? He was a dabbler. A man of wealth and power who had found science more amusing than philosophy or religion, the other fields open to a man who wanted slightly more intellectual pastimes than drinking and fornication. Too late he'd established that there was a big difference between watching and doing it yourself, under pressure.
He saw that Erik and Manfred were back already, organizing bedding for themselves.
"I got our saddlebags back," said Erik. "Yours and the princess's too. Trust you to organize a cushy job, Cair." He didn't sound angry or suspicious about it, anyway. "I'm working furnace bellows."
"And I am carrying ore to the smelters," said Manfred. "So what sort of 'challenge' have they given you, sailor from Lesbos?" He seemed to find that title funny.
"An impossible one, naturally," said Cair, sitting down, and stretching out his tired limbs. "I have to make a bird out of cold iron."
"Doesn't sound impossible," said Manfred with some interest. "I know more about blacksmith work than a prince should." He grinned. "I ran tame in the smithy in the castle at Carnac. Smithing is still reckoned near-noble work among the Celts, no matter what they think among the Franks. We're primitive and proud of it."
"The catch is that it has to fly and sing," said Cair, sourly.
"Hmm. Tricky little devils, aren't they," said Manfred. "I'm supposed to get into a cave . . . The entry is a hole the size of my fist. The rock around the hole is slightly chipped and pitted. They said that the last challengee was a troll who hit it with a mattock for forty years. They said I'd have to do a powerful lot of ore carrying to sweat down enough. They seem to find it very funny," he said with a dead straight face that Cair had learned meant he didn't find it in the least amusing.
"Mine is a rock that even Manfred could not lift, if I told him that there was strong drink underneath it," said Erik. Cair read something in that tone, too. Erik very carefully wasn't saying something. The tall Icelander came and sat next to him. And wrote on the cave floor with a piece of charcoal, Pulley.
Cair nodded. And rubbed it out. "They're fine artisans, but their equipment is a little primitive," he said, reaching for the charcoal.
"Magic," said Manfred stretching his limbs. "Which I know you don't believe in, my skeptical friend. But it makes them lazy."
Cair nodded. "It certainly makes people's wits weak, my trusting friend from Brittany," he said. He wrote Explosive for Manfred on the cave floor. Even if they were watched—as seemed likely, considering, the Frankish words and alphabet should disguise things well. Also, perhaps as a measure of their power, the dwarves seemed to care little if their "guests" did try to escape or explore. That was a lot more frightening to Cair than physical chains had been.