What I could make out of the darkened interior of the Refurserkir temple was a lot plainer than I’d expected. No lichen grew within, and the father only had a little handpumped flashlight like they use in bomb shelters in all those Cold War movies. The dim pulse didn’t shine coherently for any more than a meter in front of us, though, and all it revealed was dirty ground and bare gray walls. I had to keep my hand to the surface, and still the occasional crosspaths made me stumble a few times. The stone felt more like plastic than rock. We mostly followed the main tunnel spiraling inward.
“These walls are amazing,” I said.
“They were not made by human hands,” the son told me, his silhouette changing shape as he turned his head. “Before Vanaheim was settled, trolls lived here. The Refurserkir hired a troll to build this temple.”
“You really believe that?”
“It is the story I was told when growing up. When the troll came for his payment, the Refurserkir denied him, so he cursed the temple to darkness. This is why no ormolu grows here. The troll demanded his payment again after this, but the Refurserkir discovered his name, and he became a part of the stone when they said it aloud. There is a place within here where you can see his face in the wall.”
“Wait, he turned to stone just because somebody said his name? That’s a pretty big weakness. I mean, how did anyone ever get his attention?”
“Names are powerful things. They are not to be given lightly.”
“Well, what was this troll’s name?”
“Sometimes he is called Short-Legs, but that is not his name. His name is a secret of the Refurserkir.”
“I see.” I let out an emphatic cough. “So, why didn’t the Refurserkir just pay him for his services in the first place, since he built the temple so well?”
“He was a troll… But you must not ask so many questions about our lore.”
His silhouette seemed genuinely upset.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to offend you,” I said, after a few minutes of silence.
He didn’t say anything for another minute, though his father, leading the way, hadn’t seemed to mind our talking for once.
“I think he was a tricky troll,” the son finally offered. “He probably tricked the Refurserkir into agreeing to an unfair price. So they had to refuse him his payment.”
I wanted to argue, but I figured I’d better just make peace. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Eventually, after another silent minute or so of I don’t know how many left turns, the tunnel opened into a large chamber lit with halogen tubes set in fixtures in the ceiling. An old man and a young woman were sitting on wooden chairs in the far corner, and a bunch of guys dressed in fox fur were hunched about the rest of the room chattering with each other in their weird lilting language. The center of the room was dominated by a big stone lectern.
“This is the Thing Room,” the son told me. “It is where we meet to discuss things.”
“Are these guys the Refurserkir?” I whispered.
“They… No. They are servants. Like I and my father.”
“So, where are all the Refurserkir? This is their temple, isn’t it?”
“This is the Temple of the Refurserkir. They are all around us, though you do not see them. In the shadows, silent but deadly. Invisible like the wind, but even more silent than that.”
This sounded like bullshit to me, and I’m the bullshit king, but I didn’t say anything. The sulphur smell was stronger here than it had been outside, and it was more humid, too. I figured that there must be a steam pool somewhere. Without saying anything, the father went over and squatted with a group of the other servants.
“You wait here,” the son told me, and he went and squatted, too.
I guessed that meant we were staying for a while.
“I guess I’d better stay here with my dad,” I said, coming down from the bedroom where I’d tucked my father in to the living room where Connie was waiting for me. “Garm will have to wait.”
“Was that Dr. Albertine on the phone? Would it be beyond my place to ask what he said?” Constance asked.
“Not to worry, and that it was probably just stress. But I have to bring Pa in tomorrow afternoon. For now I’m just supposed to give him his medicine and let him get some rest… Thanks again for helping me bring him home.”
“I’m always ready to lend my assistance when needed. If there’s any other help I may offer, you’ve only to mention it.”
She was sitting on the couch with her legs curled beneath her. She’d removed her shoes in the mudroom so as not to track in snow. I sat down in a chair across the coffee table from her. Her smile was wide and she kept contact with my eyes.
“Look, Connie, I’m not sure what you think you’re doing here, and I really am grateful to you for helping me out, but if this is about an interview, or in any way connected to Shirley’s death—”
“Of course not! I’m only here to help you, I assure you. And I do believe you could use my help.” The wood-burning stove was beginning to warm the place, but her face was still flushed with cold. She’d had no sweater on beneath her coat.
“Well, if this is about Prescott, then… Thank you, but I’m fine. It’s been six months, and I don’t need a shoulder to cry on or any of that—”
“Naturally. I wouldn’t presume. Especially as you’ve a seeming surfeit of men with whom to drown whatever sorrows you might be suffering. Besides which, by my understanding of things the entire situation was your fault, so I’d be hard pressed to lend a sympathetic shoulder for your tears, even were you to want one.”
“What?”
“I’m only here to—”
“What do you mean it was all my fault? What do you know about it, anyway? Where do—”
“Perhaps I’ve said too much. But I only meant that I spoke with Prescott shortly after his decision to leave, and—from his version of the story—it seemed quite clear who the guilty party was.”
I began to rant. “Oh, so he couldn’t explain himself to me, but he could go talk to you about the whole thing, and you don’t see a problem with that? I mean, that doesn’t signal to you that there was a fundamental lack of communication in our relationship, on his part, and that rather than talk to me, his wife, about whatever problems he had, he went off and confided in you. I mean, you don’t see that as possibly symptomatic of the fact that there was a larger set of issues than whatever watered-down story he fed you? That maybe it wasn’t a case of guilty versus innocent, but that perhaps it was just a bit more complicated than that?”
“I feel the flush of heated discussion in my cheeks. Now we’re getting somewhere. But considering everything Prescott told me, it seems entirely appropriate that he confided in me without a word to you. After all, his decision to leave was directly set off by the fact that he caught you in the act of achieving… conversational catharsis, with Magnus Valison. I think Prescott was particularly hurt by the fact that you specifically mentioned that you could never have such a conversation with him.”
“He—First off, we were talking about writing, and I couldn’t have such a conversation with—”
“…”
“I mean, you make it sound as if I’d been having really boring phone sex.”
“And so I intended. Prescott’s precise concern was that you didn’t find him intellectually sexy.”