The Path of the King | Page 7

probing her craft and get but surly
answers. To the boy's question she was kinder. "Let the dead things be,
prince," she said. "There's small profit from foreknowledge. Better to
take fates as they come sudden round a turn of the road than be
watching them with an anxious heart all the way down the hill. The
time will come soon enough when you must stand by the Howe of the
Dead and call on the ghost-folk."

But Leif coaxed and Biorn harped on the thing, as boys do, and one
night about the midsummer time her hour came upon Katla and she
spoke without their seeking. There in the dim hut with the apple-green
twilight dimming the fells Biorn stood trembling on the brink of the
half-world, the woman huddled on the floor, her hand shading her eyes
as if she were looking to a far horizon. Her body shook with gusts of
passion, and the voice that came from her was not her own. Never so
long as he lived did Biorn forget the terrible hour when that voice from
beyond the world spoke things he could not understand. "I have been
snowed on with snow," it said, "I have been beaten with the rain, I have
been drenched with the dew, long have I been dead." It spoke of kings
whose names he had never heard, and of the darkness gathering about
the Norland, and famine and awe stalking upon the earth.
Then came a whisper from Leif asking the fortune of the young prince
of Hightown.
"Death," said the weird-wife, "death--but not yet. The shears of the
Norns are still blunt for him, and Skuld has him in keeping."
There was silence for a space, for the fit was passing from Katla. But
the voice came again in broken syllables. "His thread runs
westward--beyond the Far Isles . . . not he but the seed of his loins shall
win great kingdoms ... beyond the sea-walls.... The All-Father dreams....
Nay, he wakes ... he wakes . . ."
There was a horrible choking sound, and the next Biorn knew was that
Leif had fetched water and was dashing it on Katla's face.
It was nearly a week before Biorn recovered his spirits after this
adventure, and it was noticeable that neither Leif nor he spoke a word
to each other on the matter. But the boy thought much, and from that
night he had a new purpose. It seemed that he was fated to travel far,
and his fancy forsook the homely life of his own wicks and fells and
reached to that outworld of which he had heard in the winter's talk by
the hall fire.
There were plenty of folk in Hightown to satisfy his curiosity. There
were the Bearsarks, who would spin tales of the rich Frankish lands and
the green isles of the Gael. From the Skridfinns he heard of the bitter
country in the north where the Jotuns dwelt, and the sun was not and
the frost split the rocks to dust, while far underground before great fires
the dwarves were hammering gold. But these were only old wives' tales,

and he liked better the talk of the sea-going franklins, who would sail in
the summer time on trading ventures and pushed farther than any
galleys of war. The old sailor, Othere Cranesfoot, was but now back
from a voyage which had taken him to Snowland, or, as we say, Iceland.
He could tell of the Curdled Sea, like milk set apart for cheese-making,
which flowed as fast as a river, and brought down ghoulish beasts and
great dragons in its tide. He told, too, of the Sea-walls which were the
end of the world, waves higher than any mountain, which ringed the
whole ocean. He had seen them, blue and terrible one dawn, before he
had swung his helm round and fled southwards. And in Snowland and
the ports of the Isles this Othere had heard talk from others of a fine
land beyond the sunset, where corn grew unsown like grass, and the
capes looked like crusted cow-pats they were so thick with deer, and
the dew of the night was honey-dew, so that of a morning a man might
breakfast delicately off the face of the meadows.
Full of such marvels, Biorn sought Leif and poured out his heart to him.
For the first time he spoke of the weird-wife's spaeing. If his fortune lay
in the west, there was the goal to seek. He would find the happy
country and reign over it. But Leif shook his head, for he had heard the
story before. "To get there you will have to ride over Bilrost, the
Rainbow Bridge, like the Gods. I know of the place. It is called