Once again Sigurd paused, his last words hanging in the air. Now the northmen leaned forward with almost palpable tension.
"I know the isle. So do many of you. We have kin there, and I thought sure someone would come to meet me. But no one did, and at last I set out to look around. Near to where I touched shore were several huts, and these I went to visit." Sigurd looked full into the eyes of the king.
"I approached with caution, sire, feeling the presence of a great evil lurking somewhere within the mist and fog," Sigurd explained carefully.
"Yes, man-tell the tale!" barked the king, sharing the tension that had spread about the room like a smoky incense.
"Strangely, the door of the hut stood open. I entered, calling aloud for one who might live there, but there was no answer."
Sigurd cast his pale eyes, set in the midst of a face weathered for many years by the lashing of the sea, around the room. The northmen's attention was rapt.
"Each of the houses, sire, I entered-and found no one. Finally I came upon a dwelling-I had previously thought it to be a pile of wreckage-and discovered charred timbers. Within, there were four bodies-a man, a woman, two children."
A growl passed around the lodge, rumbled from a hundred warlike hearts. Sigurd paused again, his expression smug.
"Well, my lord, caring little for my own safety, I pressed onward. I found another village-a dozen houses by a larger cove. These, too, were empty, several destroyed. I noticed other things, then. Their boats were still there, apparently at rest along the shore. When I looked closely, I found that the hull of each had been holed. They were useless!
"Here, too, I found bodies in the burned huts. But more-at one of them, I found these!"
Now Sigurd raised the pouch he had worn at his side throughout his tale. Reaching within, he pulled forth an object of steel and several circular shapes of bronze.
"A broken sword, sire-and see, here? The hilt bears the mark of Callidyrr!"
The growls surged upward in force, becoming hoarse cries of outrage. Some warriors stamped their feet, while others shouted their fury.
"Treachery!"
"Betrayal!"
"War!"
"Aye!" Sigurd continued, raising the bronze circles. He had one other bracelet, of gold, but that he would keep hidden from the eyes of all the others, knowing his king would claim it as his due if he but saw it.
The fisherman concluded with a dramatic flourish. "A neck torque and a warrior's bracelet. They bear the symbols of the Ffolk!"
Now Brandon of Gnarhelm stood on his feet. In his hand, he held his keen steel axe, raised high over his head. "Northmen of Gnarhelm!" he cried. "We cannot let this treachery pass unavenged! Follow me to war! We shall take this butchery of the Ffolk and return it to Callidyrr tenfold!"
The rest of his words vanished, lost in the thunderous accolade of his warrior kin.
Earl Blackstone led them into the mountains on horseback, up a winding and rock-strewn trail. Alicia, Tavish, and Keane accompanied the nobleman and his second son, Sir Hanrald, as well as a squad of mounted men-at-arms. Sir Gwyeth, the elder son, had not ventured into the hall that morning. Alicia thought that the bluff knight still suffered from the humiliation of the previous night. In any event, she had not minded his absence in the slightest.
The day was chill, the sky leaden, but at least there was no rain.
"Why such protection?" Alicia had asked, indicating the dozen swordsmen.
"Gold," the earl replied simply. "It does strange things to men. Though we carry none with us, the effects of its presence in these hills cannot be ignored. The hills aren't safe from bandits now that there is wealth about."
"Besides," Hanrald added, with a gruff look at Keane, "despite my brother's boasts, a few trolls and the like remain at large in these hills."
"Yes, well-that bit of knowledge should keep me from slumbering in my saddle," Keane said, acknowledging the obscure apology. Alicia decided that perhaps Hanrald was not quite the boor that his brother was.
She rode beside the earl's son on the trail, and as the horses carried them easily along, she turned to him. "Your father told us in Callidyrr about the madman that came to your estate. I wonder-had he ever been seen around here before?"
Hanrald shook his gruff, black-maned head. "Not before that night. The raving fool was some dark sorcerer, I think. May the gods curse his. ." He stopped suddenly. "Forgive me, Princess. I am not used to polite conversation."
"You don't offend me," Alicia told him. "I know, too, that your brother perished on that night."
"Aye. Currag and I had our differences, but he didn't deserve that! I believe it was the stranger's sorcery that drove him to his death!"
Alicia thought Hanrald's remark about his brother a curious one. She remembered the young noble's earlier answer. "You said he hadn't been seen before that night. Do you mean that he was seen prior to his arrival at the estate?"
"Indeed, Princess." Hanrald gave her a gruff smile. "In the cantrev itself-Blackstone, as we learned later. He shuffled along the main street and went into each of the taverns there. Got himself thrown out of each one, too!"
"What did he do to bring that about?"
"The same thing he did at Caer Blackstone-he threatened everyone with doom, told them they were all going to die. Called these miners 'corrupters of the land,' or some such nonsense. I don't know if you've seen the men and dwarves who work our mines, Lady, but they're a rough and snarly lot. Talking to them like that is asking for a beating, or worse."
"Did they? Beat him, that is-or just throw him into the street?" Alicia was curious about this mysterious stranger, and Hanrald seemed to know more about him than anyone else she had talked to.
"Kind of funny, that. From what I hear, no one hurt him-just 'encouraged' him to move on. You know, it never struck me before how odd that is, but some of those fellows would just as soon slit a man's throat as talk to him."
"Does anyone know where he came from?"
Hanrald shrugged. "Not as I've heard. I suppose he could have been a deranged hermit come down out of the mountains. The gods know that a solitary life up there, watching for trolls and firbolgs around every hill, would be enough to drive a man to madness!"
"Lady Princess," called Earl Blackstone, turning to look over his shoulder at her from his position at the lead of their column of horses. "I would speak with you if that meets your pleasure."
"Certainly, my lord." She turned to Hanrald. "Thank you. It sounds a most mysterious circumstance!"
"Aye-mysterious, and fatal," replied the young lord as Alicia's mare trotted forward to Blackstone's side.
"This whole block here is the Granite Ridge," the earl said, gesturing to a huge gray mass of rock that rose to their right and extended along the horizon like the backbone of some spiny lizard. The trail had gradually climbed away from the cantrev and the earl's estate.
All along the ridge, the riders saw the black mouths of tunnels, all leading toward the interior of the great block of stone.
"Where you found gold," Alicia added.
"Indeed." The memory obviously pleased the earl, and well it should, for the discovery of the yellow metal had made him the wealthiest man in the kingdom.
The trail took them around a great shoulder of the ridge, and all at once Alicia felt the onslaught of a great sadness, like a heavy cloak that fell across her shoulders, one that she was unable to shake free. She noticed at the same time that none of the tunnel mouths, with their rust-colored drool of tailings spilling downward in wide fan patterns, marked this face of the rock-studded landform. It looked oddly barren, in contrast to the heavily excavated slopes they had passed, yet Alicia knew that this was in fact its natural state.