The listeners stirred, and Valgrim’s faction eyed each other doubtfully.
“Yet I was wrong before, over Halvdan. Maybe I am wrong again. But not, I think, wholly. As I grow old it seems to me more and more that luck is not a thing that one has or has not, like youth or strength. It is more like light, where a lesser light remains what it was, but cannot be seen any longer when a greater light outshines it. Like a candle still burning in a sunlit room. Except that maybe the greater light steals light from the lesser even, even puts it out.
“I have heard the history of the young man Shef. He brought bad luck to his own king Jatmund. He did not quail before the luck of Ivar. He was rescued, they tell me, by one of the god-born, the king Alfred, descended from Othin. Soon after the rescue that king was a beggar, to be rescued in his turn. I think this young man draws the luck from others. Where he comes, luck goes. He may take it even from my own blood, where I thought the luck of Norway rested—where it did rest, till you brought him here to challenge it.”
“All this is mere talk,” rumbled Valgrim. “We must have proof.”
“Proof comes from a test. Let us test his luck against the luck of Harald and Halvdan, against the queens Asa and Ragnhild.”
“How do we do that?”
“Agree to the test and I will tell you. But agree quickly, before the bale-fire goes out.”
The forty priests looked at the tiny glowing spark that was all that was left, muttered together. Then, slowly, both Thorvin and Valgrim nodded their agreement. As a Tyr-priest knelt down and blew gently on the last remaining ember, King Olaf began to speak. Before he had finished, Valgrim was already shaking his head in dissatisfaction.
“Too unsure,” he growled. “I need a clearer sign.”
“You may get a clearer sign than you wish, Valgrim. I spoke of light and luck. There is another way to see it. Some of you believe that all our lives are spun by the three spinners, Urth, Verthandi and Skuld. But they spin not single threads, rather a great web, the threads crossing over each other. Where the threads cross each other, they fray! Beware the man with a strong life-thread, Valgrim. Especially if that thread crosses yours.”
Vigleik stirred himself to speak. “I have seen the Spinners,” he said. “Their loom-weights are skulls, their shuttles are swords and spears, their web is human gut.”
“That is in the Skuld-world,” said Thorvin flatly. “That is what we mean to change.”
Chapter Twelve
The two men crept cautiously through the dark woods to the edge of the ice. The snow had hampered them badly, lying in uneven drifts in the hollows and forcing them to push through the tangled fir-branches. Yet they had not dared to use the paths through the woods—anyone who saw them might have challenged them, and while they were not forbidden to move around at night, they had no wish to cause stir or comment. Karli had grumbled steadily at first as snow fell from the trees and crawled down his neck, repeating that he knew plenty of places where they could find friendly women without all this trouble. But as Shef pushed on Karli had fallen silent, accepting the expedition as one of the strange preferences for a particular woman that even the sanest of men might have. It would be an exploit, after all, he told himself, to seduce a queen. Maybe there would even be a princess for himself.
Where the wood ran down to the ice, the snow stopped, brushed away by the wind, or melted by the sunlight that got through the fringes of the fir-trees during the lengthening days. Shef and Karli walked forward more easily and stood for a few moments looking out at the scene, considering their course.
They had made a circle away from the college and the town behind it, and were now on the end of a long point jutting out on the western side of the bay. On the far side of the bay, maybe a quarter-mile off, were the chain of islands that led to Drottningsholm. There was no moon, and the sky was covered by thick cloud driven on by a strong wind from the south-west, but even so they could see the tree-covered island nearest the shore standing out black against the murk of the sea and sky. Just visible as a black streak was the long line of logs which led from mainland to island. They could not see the guard-posts at either end, but there was no doubt they were there. The question was, could the guards see two men silhouetted against the ice?