«Ah! Then we really have something. Now, tonight —»
* * *
When the cockroach races began that night, Heimdall reversed the usual process sufficiently to allow Snögg to lose several races in succession. The long winning streak he later developed was accordingly appreciated, and it was while Snögg was chucking over his victories, snapping his finger joints and bouncing in delight that Shea insinuated softly: «Friend Snögg, you have been good to us. Now, if there’s something we could do for you, we’d be glad to do it. For instance, we might be able to remove the obstacle that prevents your return to Elvagevu.»
Snögg jumped and glared suspiciously. «Not possible,» he said thickly.
Heimdall looked at the ceiling. «Great wonders have been accomplished by prisoners,» he said, «when there is held out to them the hope of release.»
«Lord Surt him very bad man when angry,» Snögg countered, his eyes moving restlessly.
«Aye,» nodded Heimdall, «Yet not Lord Surt’s arm is long enough to reach into the troll country — after one who has gone there to stay with his own troll-wife.»
Snögg cocked his head on one side, so that he looked like some large-beaked bird. «Hard part is,» he countered, «to get beyond Lord Surt’s arm. Too much danger.»
«But,» said Shea, falling into the spirit of the discussion, «if one’s face were altogether changed by the removal of a feature, it might be much easier and simpler. One would not be recognized.»
Snögg caressed his enormous nose. «Too big — You make fun of me!» he snapped with sudden suspicion.
«Not at all,» said Shea. «Back in my own country a girl once turned me down because my eyes were too close together. Women always have peculiar taste.»
«That’s true,» Snögg lowered his voice till it was barely audible. «You fix nose, I be your man: I do all for you.»
«I don’t want to guarantee too much in advance,» said Shea. «But I think I can do something for you. I landed here without all my magic apparatus, though.»
«All you need I get,» said Snögg, eager to go the whole way now that he had committed himself.
«I’ll have to think about what I need,» said Shea.
The next day when Stegg had collected the breakfast bowls, Shea and Heimdall lifted their voices and asked the other prisoners whether they would cooperate in the proposed method of escape. They answered readily enough. «Sure, if «twon’t get us into no trouble.» «Aye, but will ye try to do something for me, too?» «Mought, if ye can manage it quiet.» «Yngvi is a louse!»
Shea turned his thoughts to the concoction of a spell that would sound sufficiently convincing, doing his best to recall Chalmers’ description of the laws of magic to which he had given so little attention when the psychologist stated them. There was the law of contagion — no, there seemed no application for that. But the law of similarity? That would be it. The troll, himself familiar with spells and wizardry, would recognize an effort to apply that principle as in accordance with the general laws of magic. It remained, then, to surround some application of the law of similarity with sufficient hocus-pocus to make Snögg believe something extra-special in the way of spells was going on. By their exclamation over the diminishing size of Snögg’s nose the other prisoners would do the rest.
«Whom should one invoke in working a spell of this kind?» Shea asked Heimdall.
«Small is my knowledge of this petty mortal magic,» replied Heimdall. «The Evil Companion would be able to give you all manner of spells and gewgaws. But I would say that the names of the ancestors of wizardry would be not without power in such cases.»
«And who are they?»
«There is the ancestor of all witches, by name Witolf; the ancestor of all warlocks, who was called Willharm. Svarthead was the first of the spell singers and of the giant kindred Ymir. For good luck and the beguiling of Snögg you might add two who yet live — Andvari, king of the dwarfs, and the ruler of all trolls, who is the Old Woman of Ironwood. She is a fearsome creature, but I think not unpleasant to one of her subjects.»
When Snögg showed up again Shea had worked out his method for the phony spell. «I shall need a piece of beeswax,» he said, «and a charcoal brazier already lit and burning; a piece of driftwood sawn into pieces no bigger than your thumb; a pound of green grass, and a stand on which you can balance a board just over the brazier.»
Snögg said: «Time comes very near. Giants muster — when you want things?»
Shea heard in the background Heimdall’s gasp of dismay at the first sentence. But he said: «As soon as you can possibly get them.»
«Maybe tomorrow night. We race?»
«No — yes,» said Heimdall. His lean, sharp face looked strained in the dim light. Shea could guess the impatience that was gnawing him, with his exalted sense of personal duty and responsibility. And perhaps with reason, Shea assured himself. The late of the world, of gods and men, in Heimdall’s own words, hung on that trumpet blast. Shea’s own fate, too, hung on it — an idea he could never contemplate without a sense of shock and unreality, no matter how frequently he repeated the process of reasoning it all out.
Yet not even the shock of this repeated thought could stir him from the fatalism into which he had fallen. The world he had come from, uninteresting though it was, had at least been something one could grasp, think over as a whole. Here he felt himself a chip on a tossing ocean of strange and terrible events. His early failures on the trip to Jötunheim had left him with a sense of helplessness which had not entirely disappeared even with his success in detecting the illusions in the giants’ games and the discovery of Thor’s hammer. Loki then, and Heimdall later had praised his fearlessness — ha, he said to himself, if they only knew! It was not true courage that animated him, but a feeling that he was involved in a kind of strange and desperate game, in which the only thing that mattered was to play it as skillfully as possible. He supposed soldiers had something of that feeling in battle. Otherwise, they would all run away and there wouldn’t be any battle —
His thoughts strayed again to the episode in the hall of Utgard. Was it Loki’s spell or the teardrop in his eye that accounted for his success there? Or merely the trained observation of a modern mind? Some of the last, certainly; the others had been too excited to note such discordant details as the fact that Hugi cast no shadow. At the same time, his modern mind balked over the idea that the spell had been effective. Yet there was something, a residue of phenomenon, not accounted for by physical fact.
That meant that, given the proper spell to work, he could perform as good a bit of magic as the next man. Heimdall, Snögg, and Surt all had special powers built in during construction as it were — but their methods would do him, Shea, no good at all. He was neither god, troll — thank Heaven! — nor giant.
Well, if he couldn’t be a genuine warlock, he could at least put on a good show. He thought of the little poses and affectations he had put on during his former life. Now life itself depended on how well he could assume a pose. How would a wizard act? His normal behaviour should seem odd enough to Snögg for all practical purposes.
The inevitable night dragged out, and Stegg arrived to take over his ditties. Snögg hurried out. Shea managed to choke down what was sardonically described as his breakfast and tried to sleep. The first yell of «Yngvi is a louse!» brought him up all standing. And his fleabites seemed to itch more than usual. He had just gotten himself composed when it was time for dinner again and Snögg.