lost sagas and worlds beyond man. Darkness came to Freda.
XI
She awoke on a couch of carved ivory, spread with furs and silks. She had been bathed and dressed in a white samite shift. By her bedside stood a curiously wrought table bearing wine, water, clustered grapes and other fruits of the southland. Save for this she could see only an endless deep-blue twilight.
For a time she could not remember where she might be or what had happened. Then recollection rushed back and she fell to wild sobbing. Long she wept. But peace was in the very air she breathed; and when she had wept herself out and taken some of the wine, it was more than heady, it was like a calming hand laid on her heart. She fell into dreamless sleep.
Awakening again, she felt marvellously rested. As she sat up, Skafloc came striding through the blue spaciousness to her.
No sign of his wounds remained, and he bore an eager smile. He wore a brief, richly embroidered tunic and kilt that showed the muscles alive beneath his skin. Sitting down beside her, he took her hands and looked into her eyes.
“Do you feel better?” he asked. “I put into the wine a drug that helps heal the mind.”
“I am well, only-only where am I?” she answered.
“In Imric’s castle of Elfheugh, among the elf-hills of the north,” said Skafloc, and as her eyes grew wide with alarm:
‘No hurt shall be done you, and all shall be as you wish.”
“I thank you,” she whispered, “next after God Who-”
“Nay, speak not holy names here,” Skafloc warned her, “for elves must flee from such things, and you are a guest of theirs. Otherwise you free to do whatever you like.”
“You are not an elf,” said Freda slowly.
“No, I am human, but raised here. I am foster son to Imric the Guileful, and feel more akin to him that to whoever my real father was.”
“How came you to save us? We had despaired-”
Skafloc told briefly of the war and his raid, then smiled afresh and said, “Better to speak of you. Who could have had so fair a daughter?”
Freda flushed, but began telling him her story. He listened without understanding what it meant. The name of Orm carried naught to him, for Imric, to break his fosterling’s human ties, had given out that the exchange of babes was made far off in the west country; furthermore, by means that he knew, he had raised Skafloc so as to kill any curiosity about parentage. As for Valgard, Freda knew naught save that he was her brother gone mad. Skafloc had sensed an inhumanness about the berserker, but with so much else to think over-especially Freda-did not search deeply into the matter. He decided that Valgard might well be possessed by a demon. The likeness to himself he supposed must be due a mirror spell; Illrede could have put one on Valgard for any of a dozen reasons. Besides, none of the elves to whom Skafloc chanced to speak of the matter had noticed it. Was that because they had been too busy staying alive, or because Skafloc had mis-seen? Imric’s fosterling shrugged off the whole question and forgot about it.
Nor did Freda ponder on the likeness of the two men, for she could never have mistaken them. Eyes and lips and play of features, gait and speech and manner and touch and thought, were so different in them that she scarcely noticed the sameness of height and bone and cast of face. She wondered fleetingly if they maybe shared a forebear-some Dane who spent a summer in England a hundred years ago-and then herself forgot about it.
For there was too much else. The drug she had taken might dull but could not hide the starkness of what had happened. As she talked, the bewilderment and the following wonder that had hitherto kept grief at bay yielded before its onrush; and she ended her tale weeping on Skafloc’s breast.
“Dead!” she cried. “Dead, all dead, all slain save Valgard and me. I … I saw him kill Father and Asmund when Ketil was already dead, I saw Mother stretched at his feet, I saw the axe go into
XI
She awoke on a couch of carved ivory, spread with furs and silks. She had been bathed and dressed in a white samite shift. By her bedside stood a curiously wrought table bearing wine, water, clustered grapes and other fruits of the southland. Save for this she could see only an endless deep-blue twilight.
For a time she could not remember where she might be or what had happened. Then recollection rushed back and she fell to wild sobbing. Long she wept. But peace was in the very air she breathed; and when she had wept herself out and taken some of the wine, it was more than heady, it was like a calming hand laid on her heart. She fell into dreamless sleep.
Awakening again, she felt marvellously rested. As she sat up, Skafloc came striding through the blue spaciousness to her.
No sign of his wounds remained, and he bore an eager smile. He wore a brief, richly embroidered tunic and kilt that showed the muscles alive beneath his skin. Sitting down beside her, he took her hands and looked into her eyes.
“Do you feel better?” he asked. “I put into the wine a drug that helps heal the mind.”
“I am well, only-only where am I?” she answered.
“In Imric’s castle of Elfheugh, among the elf-hills of the north,” said Skafloc, and as her eyes grew wide with alarm:
‘No hurt shall be done you, and all shall be as you wish.”
“I thank you,” she whispered, “next after God Who-”
“Nay, speak not holy names here,” Skafloc warned her, “for elves must flee from such things, and you are a guest of theirs. Otherwise you free to do whatever you like.”
“You are not an elf,” said Freda slowly.
“No, I am human, but raised here. I am foster son to Imric the Guileful, and feel more akin to him that to whoever my real father was.”
“How came you to save us? We had despaired-”
Skafloc told briefly of the war and his raid, then smiled afresh and said, “Better to speak of you. Who could have had so fair a daughter?”
Freda flushed, but began telling him her story. He listened without understanding what it meant. The name of Orm carried naught to him, for Imric, to break his fosterling’s human ties, had given out that the exchange of babes was made far off in the west country; furthermore, by means that he knew, he had raised Skafloc so as to kill any curiosity about parentage. As for Valgard, Freda knew naught save that he was her brother gone mad. Skafloc had sensed an inhumanness about the berserker, but with so much else to think over-especially Freda-did not search deeply into the matter. He decided that Valgard might well be possessed by a demon. The likeness to himself he supposed must be due a mirror spell; Illrede could have put one on Valgard for any of a dozen reasons. Besides, none of the elves to whom Skafloc chanced to speak of the matter had noticed it. Was that because they had been too busy staying alive, or because Skafloc had mis-seen? Imric’s fosterling shrugged off the whole question and forgot about it.
Nor did Freda ponder on the likeness of the two men, for she could never have mistaken them. Eyes and lips and play of features, gait and speech and manner and touch and thought, were so different in them that she scarcely noticed the sameness of height and bone and cast of face. She wondered fleetingly if they maybe shared a forebear-some Dane who spent a summer in England a hundred years ago-and then herself forgot about it.
For there was too much else. The drug she had taken might dull but could not hide the starkness of what had happened. As she talked, the bewilderment and the following wonder that had hitherto kept grief at bay yielded before its onrush; and she ended her tale weeping on Skafloc’s breast.
“Dead!” she cried. “Dead, all dead, all slain save Valgard and me. I … I saw him kill Father and Asmund when Ketil was already dead, I saw Mother stretched at his feet, I saw the axe go into
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