THE MAGICIAN.
As he said the last words Atli stooped, and lifting two large logs
cast them on the fire. For a minute he watched them crackle and
spit sparks, bending his brows as he deliberated how he should
begin.
Then he turned to Estein and said,--
"When I saw thee by the shore at Hernersfiord, now some two years
gone, didst thou think then that Atli was a stranger?"
"I thought so indeed," replied Estein, "though some words you let
fall pointed otherwise."
"Yet, Estein," the old man said, "when thou wert no higher than
that bench whereon thou sittest, I dandled thee in mine arms, and
those fingers that now clasp a sword hilt, and, if men say true,
clasp it right firmly, played once with my beard. Less snow had
fallen on it then, Estein. Thou canst not remember me?"
Estein looked at him closely before replying.
"Nay, Atli, my memory carries me not so far back."
"So it was," Atli continued; "but chiefly was I the friend of
thine ill-fated brother Olaf."
"Of Olaf?" exclaimed Estein, with a slight start.
"Ay, of Olaf. Often have I fought by his side on sea and shore,
and dearly, more dearly than I ever loved man or woman since, I
loved the youth. Thou even as a child wert strangely like him in
features, and as I look upon thee now, there comes back memories
of blither days. Wonder not then that I long was fain to see
thee."
"Then why came you not to my father's house?" said Estein. "A
friend of his son's would ever be welcome."
"Thy father and I fell out," replied Atli, "the wherefore I must
still keep behind the shrouding-curtain, but for my present
purpose it matters little. I could not visit Hakonstad; I could
not even stay in the land of my birth. Olaf fell."
His voice trembled a little, and he paused. Estein said nothing,
but waited for him to go on. Then in a brisker tone he continued,--
"For some years I sailed the west seas; but I was growing old and
my strength was wearing away with the wet work and the fighting,
so I hied me home again."
"And my father?" asked Estein. "Knew not of my coming," Atli
replied. "Of friends and kinsmen I had few left in the land, but I
had long had other thoughts for myself than the tilling of fields
and the emptying of horns at Yule. Often at night had I sat out.
[Footnote: To "sit out" was a method of reading the future
practised by sorcerers, in which the magician spent the night
under the open sky, and summoned the dead to converse with him.] I
had read the stars, and talked with divers magicians and men
skilled in the wisdom of things unseen. I wandered for long among
the Finns, I dwelt with the Lapps, and learned the lore of those
folks. Then I came to Jemtland, where cunning men were said to
live."
"Cunning!" exclaimed Estein furiously; "treacherous hounds call them."
"Cunning, indeed, they are," said the old man, "but not wise.
This Jomar here is held a spaeman by the people."
He glanced contemptuously at the sleeping figure on the floor.
"Since I came," he went on, "I have taught him more than he could
have learned in a lifetime here and now, as thou hast seen, he
fears and obeys me as a master. With him I took up my abode,
living in a spot known only to few. Yet my thoughts turned
continually to Norway, and chiefly flew to thee, Estein. I dreamt
of thee often, and at last a voice"--his own sank almost to a
whisper as he spoke--"a voice bade me seek thee. How I fared thou
knowest."
"I would that I had given more heed to your warning," said Estein
gloomily.
"It all came true then?" cried Atli. "Nay, there is no need to
answer. Truth I tell, and truth must happen."
"Have you, then, further rede to give me?"
"Ay, I have heard of this spell and the sore change that has
befallen thee, and in my dreams and outsittings I have seen many
things--an old man habited in a strange garb, and a maid by his
side. Ha! flew the shaft true?"
So carried away was Estein by the seer's earnestness, and so
suddenly did his last words strike home, that the thought never
occurred to him that this might only be the gossip of his
followers come in time to Atli's ears. It seemed to him an
inspired insight into his past, and he started suddenly, and then
said slowly,--
"The shaft indeed flew true."
"For thy brother's sake I owe thee something," the old man went
on; "I might give weighty reason, but I may not. For thine own I
wish to heal thee, and if I cannot cure this spell there is no man
who can.
"Wilt thou trust me with the story?" he added, a little dubiously.
"Ask not that of me," replied Estein. "Tell me what to do, and I
promise I shall follow the rede."
As if afraid that to ask further questions might weaken the force
of his words, Atli fell at once into his mystic manner again.
"For long I wrestled with the visions. The faces of the wizard and
the witch" (Estein's look darkened for an instant), "I could not
see, but at last, in the still night-time, there spoke a voice to
me, and I knew it came from the gods. For three nights it spoke.
On the fourth I sat out, and called to me from far beyond the
mountains and the lakes, even from beyond the grave, thy brother
Olaf. He too spoke to me, and every time the purport of the
message was the same."
"What said the voice?"
"A ship must cross the seas again."
The old man repeated the last words low and slowly, and then, for
a little, silence fell upon the pair. Vague and meagre though the
message was, it accorded exactly with Estein's long-suppressed
desires. So entirely did Atli believe in himself and the virtue of
his counsel, that the young Viking was thoroughly infected with
his faith; and then, too, it was that early and suggestive hour
when a man is quickly stirred.
Estein was the first to speak.
"I accept the counsel, Atli," he cried, springing to his feet.
"With the melting of the snow I shall take to the sea again, and
steer for the setting of the sun."
The old seer laid his hand affectionately upon his shoulder.
"There spoke the brother of Olaf," he said. "And now to sleep. In
the morning I shall send Jomar to warn Ketill, so trouble not
thyself further."
"If I but knew Helgi's fate," Estein began.
"Doubt not my words," said Atli. "His fate is too closely linked
with thine."
He showed the Viking to a pallet bed in the loft, where, worn out
with fatigue and anxiety, he quickly fell asleep.
It was nearly noon when he awoke, and the sun was streaming
through the attic window. He found Atli in the room below.
"I have turned sluggard, it seems," he said.
"Young heads need sleep," replied the old man. "There was no need
to rise before, or I should have roused thee. Jomar has been gone
since daybreak, and till he returns thou canst do naught."
"Naught?" said Estein. "Have I not got my foster-brother to seek
for? Give me but a meal to carry me till nightfall and I will
away."
At first the old man endeavoured to dissuade him, but finding he
was obdurate, he finally gave him a cap and coat of wolf-skin to
be worn over his mail lest he should be seen by any natives, a
good bow and arrows, and copious but perplexing directions
regarding the forest paths. As he sallied forth, and followed the
track by which he had come the night before, his plans were vague
enough. To make for King Bue's hall, and, taking advantage of the
woods that covered all the country, spy out what might be seen,
was the hazardous scheme he proposed. Perhaps, he thought, Helgi
might be wandering the country too, and if fate was kind they
might meet. In any case he could not rest in his state of
uncertainty, and he pushed boldly on. He smiled as he glanced at
his garb: the long wolf-skin coat reached almost to his knees,
over his legs he had drawn thick-knitted hose to keep out the
cold, his helmet was hidden by the furry cap, and the only part of
his original equipment to be seen were the sword girt round his
waist and the long shield that hung upon his back. He had been in
two minds about taking this last, but ere the day was done he had
reason to congratulate himself that it was with him.
Before long he struck the open glade they had gone down by
moonlight, and following it to the end, he found, after a little
search, the opening of another path. This at last divided into two
divergent tracks, and he had to confess himself completely
puzzled.
"I seem to be the plaything of fate," he exclaimed, after he had
tried in vain to recall Atli's directions; "let fate decide, life
is but made up of the castings of a die," and with that he threw
his dagger into the air, crying, "Point right, haft left!" It
landed on its point and sunk almost out of sight in the snow.
"Right let it be then," he said, and turned down the right-hand
path.
It had been so dark and their flight so hurried that nothing
remained in his memory of the night before, to show him whither
the way was leading. He only knew that he had wandered for some
time, when a prospect of white, open country began to show in
peeps through the trees ahead. Presently he came to the edge of
the forest, and saw that the cast of his dagger had led him wide
of his mark. A long stretch of treeless country opened out before
him, getting wider and wider in the distance. Near at hand a
narrow lake began, and stretched for a mile or two down the
snow-fields, and, like the greater lake they had passed, it was frozen
and shining white. Less than a hundred yards from him, between the
forest and the water, there lay a small village. A number of men
stood about among the houses, and from their movements and the
presence of two or three sledges he judged that a party must
either have lately arrived, or be on the point of departing. As
nothing further seemed to happen, he made up his mind that they
must be arrivals; and then, seeing little to be gained by waiting
further, he was about to retrace his steps when his attention was
arrested by the appearance of two women. They came out of a house,
and one, the taller of the two, went up to a group of men standing
near, while the other, who looked like a peasant's wife, hung
behind. The look of the first figure caught Estein's eye at once,
and he felt his heart suddenly beat quickly. He could only see her
back as she talked with the men, but every gesture she made,
slight though they were, brought sharply and clearly before his
mind memories of the Holy Isle.
"By the hammer of Thor and the horse of Odin, this country is
surely bewitched," he muttered. His fancy, he told himself, was
playing him a pleasant trick: he had seen Osla so continually in
his mind's eye, that this girl, for girl she seemed, shaped
herself after his thoughts. That it could be she he loved, there
in the flesh, was almost laughably impossible; yet as she talked,
apparently with an air of some authority, to the men beside her,
the resemblance became at moments stronger, and then again he
would say to himself, "Nay, that is not like her." As the men
gesticulated and answered her their voices came to him
indistinctly, while hers, strain his hearing as he might, he could
not catch. There seemed to be a dispute about something which the
whole party were engrossed in, when suddenly one man gave a cry
and pointed at Estein. Then he saw that in his curiosity he had
stepped outside the shelter of the wood and stood in a space
between the trees.
At the man's cry they all looked round, and he saw the girl's
face.
"It is she or her spirit," he exclaimed.
Instinctively he stepped behind a tree, and at this sign of flight
there was a shout from the men. One shot an arrow, which passed
harmlessly to the side, and then they all came at him. He had only
time to see that more villagers were coming out of the houses, and
that the girl had turned away to join the other woman, when his
wits came back to him, and turning into the path he set off as
fast as he could put his feet to the ground.
For a time the chase was hot: he could hear the men scattering so
as to cover the wood behind him, and once or twice the leaders
seemed near. Estein was fleet of foot, however, and the wood so
dense that it was hard to follow a man for far, and at last the
sound of his pursuers died away, and he felt that, for the time at
least, he was safe. But he had long left the path, and there was
nothing to guide him save glimpses of the sinking sun, the ice
that showed the north side of twigs and stems, and in more open
spaces the lie of the branches to the prevalent wind. And as he
wandered on, his mind hardly grasped the bearing and significance
of forest clues. Twenty times, at least, he dismissed the
resemblance he had seen as the work of fancy. The girl had been
too far off to read her features, her figure was not really like,
and, most weighty argument, it was out of all reason that she
should be in this land of forests, so distant from her island
home. Still each time he dismissed it the resemblance came back
fresh and strong, to be sent away again. He had lost all idea of
where he was, and the sun had already set, when more by good luck
than by good guidance, the trees grew thinner in front, and he
found himself once more in the glade of the stream.