I heard his quick step coming from the throne toward me. Still pinned down by Fenris' huge weight, I saw Loki reach down and smack the wolf stingingly on its great muzzle.
Fenris whimpered apologetically to his master. The wolf backed off hastily. As Loki went back and seated himself again on the black throne, the huge animal again crouched down beside it. But his feral, blazing eyes never left my face. Shaking, I stumbled to my feet. I saw amusement in the brilliant blue eyes and angelic face of Loki as he sat regarding me.
"Do you still wish to kill me, outlander?" he asked with a shockingly sweet laugh. "I might not be able to hold Fenris from your throat, next time."
Hearing his name, the monstrous wolf growled deep in his throat, snarling and baring his great fangs as he watched me. Hot resentment at the mocking devil who was regarding me with such amusement made me stiffen and clench my fists.
"If you are going to have me killed, why not get it over with?" I demanded.
"I am not sure that I shall take your life, outlander," said Loki, searching my face. "After all, I owe you much. It was you who brought back into this land the rune key that finally gave me and my pets our freedom."
"I wish I had died before your hideous mental commands seduced my brain!"
"Now why should you wish that?" Loki asked with deep interest. "Why should you hate me so?"
"Because I know that you are evil and that your plans are vicious," I said harshly. "For twenty centuries in the outside world, the name of Loki has been synonymous with treachery, even though no one in that outer world dreams that a real Loki ever existed."
Loki nodded his golden head thoughtfully.
"That is true. Yet what evil have I done to you, Jarl Keith? Have I not brought you into a land that no other of your race has ever seen? Have I not given you new and undreamed-of adventure? What more could I do for you? You see, I know that in your soul you are an adventurer, a seeker of the new and the strange."
"It's what you plan to do to the Aesir that makes me hate you," I retorted. "I admire them — and you plot to use the Jotuns to destroy them."
Loki's beautiful face darkened, like the Sun when a storm cloud veils it. His wondrous eyes throbbed with an age-old hate.
"I loved the Aesir, too, Jarl Keith," he said broodingly. "Yes, long ago when we dwelt in deep Muspelheim and I was second to Odin himself, I did much for my race. I delved into scientific secrets that had been hidden from them, and I found new truths. I would have done much more for them, had they made me their ruler in Odin's place. For I was never satisfied, as Odin was, with a static, stagnant well being.
"I burned with the desire to acquire all knowledge that man could acquire, to know the reason for every phenomenon in the world and in the sky. I longed to acquire every power that man ever could acquire, so that we should be unchallenged masters of all nature. It was I who freed the Aesir from sickness and age. I made them almost immortal, by kindling the atomic fires whose radiation prevents disease and age. Was that not a great gift I made to my people?"
As a scientist, I could not help feeling a certain sympathy with Loki. Yet I realized that he was presenting merely his own side of the case.
"Yes," I admitted. "But in making the Aesir that gift of near-immortality, you almost destroyed them. You brought catastrophe on the subterranean world of Muspelheim, and forced them to flee up here. No wonder Odin forbade you to carry on such dangerous researches!"
Loki shrugged. "There can be no great victory without great danger, outlander. I had a vision of leading the Aesir to undreamed-of heights of power and wisdom, though by a road beset with vast perils. I was willing to risk those perils, to be great or to die. But dull Odin blocked my path. He said: 'It is not good to endanger all the world to gain power and learning for ourselves.'
"The Aesir agreed with him, and turned from me and my vaulting dreams. I would have made them like eagles soaring into the sky. But they preferred to follow Odin and live out their lives in dull, accustomed routine."
Loki's eyes blazed, and his graceful form stiffened on the black throne as he spoke. And I could not help feeling sympathy with him. No real scientist could willingly submit to suppression of his desire to know, his yearning to master the laws of nature. Loki's blue eyes fastened on me, and he smiled thoughtfully, his passion fading.
"I read your mind, Jarl Keith," he said quickly, "and I see that you think the same as I."
"Not your lust for power," I snapped.
"Do not deny it," he said. "You are of my own breed, Jarl Keith. We are more alike than any others in this land. For just as I risked my own fate and that of my people to win new knowledge and power, so you, who are also a scientist and searcher after truth, came northward into danger and hardship to search for new, strange truth. Yes, we two are of the same minds."
Though his voice rang with sincerity, I fought mentally against his seductive thoughts.
"It is because we are so much alike," he continued, "that I was able to fling the web of my suggestion into your brain. Though you were far away on your ship beyond the ice, yet I could direct you to recover the sunken rune key."
"How could you do that, Loki?" I asked with intense interest. "How could your will range far when your body was held in suspended animation in that prison-cave?"
"You outlanders have concentrated more on mechanical devices than on the subtler forces of science. Otherwise, you would understand better the nature of the mind. The brain is really an electro-chemical generator, and thought is the electric current it generates. A brain which has developed the power can fling its web of electric thought-impulses abroad and into another brain. It can see with the senses of that other brain and even somewhat direct its physical body.
"Thus, during the centuries that I lay prisoned and helpless, I sent the web of my thoughts far afield, seeking a means of escape. At long last, I located the rune key where the Aesir had thrown it in the outer ocean. I could not send any of the Jotuns to secure it, for they could not cross the vast ice without perishing. But at last your ship came north and was near the sunken rune key.
"I seized the opportunity to influence you to have the rune key dredged up. And once you had it, and were in the air in your flying ship, I sent a mental message to the princess Hel, my pupil, I commanded her to operate the storm-cones in my laboratory, which would cause a tempest to blow you hither."
"Storm-cones?" I repeated. "What device could be used to cause such a tempest?"
Loki smiled and rose to his feet.
"Come, Jarl Keith, I'll show you. I think you, a scientist like myself, will be interested in my laboratory."
Chapter XII
The Laboratory
He led the way across the vast, many-pillared hall. The giant wolf, Fenris, rose and followed us on padding feet, its feral green eyes never leaving me. Loki brought me into a smaller stone chamber. It was indeed a laboratory — the strangest I had ever seen.
Two small, blazing suns of radioactive matter, suspended in lead bowls, illuminated the dusky room. The intense white radiance glittered off an array of unfamiliar mechanisms and instruments.
I saw another of the complex instruments of remote vision, with a square quartz view-screen, such as Loki, Utgar and Hel had been using in the great hall. And I noticed devices which appeared to be similar to the transmutation apparatus used by the Alfings. But these were greatly refined in design. Using concentrated beams of radioactive energy shot from leaden funnels, they could effect even more rapid transmutation of small metal objects.
Loki led the way to the most striking feature of this array of alien scientific instruments. Proudly he gestured at a row of big objects which looked like heavy nozzles of fused quartz mounted on swivels above square, copper-shielded mechanisms. The interior complexities I could not see. Loki laid his hand on one of the nozzles of quartz.