The thrall, Sawtooth, became reserved. "You must not admit that fact to anyone," he advised the Viking. "The men who were summoned from across the northern ocean all have a price on their heads. Should it be determined, by our governor, that you fought at the side of the Torymorton family, surely you will be put to death or sent to prison."
"Like my leader, Thorvald, I wish to aid in restoring Liana Torymorton to her rightful place as the ruler of Aboregale," continued Landregal, "and I realize those are treasonous words, but look here."
Landregal showed the book on magic to Sawtooth. "I picked this up at a castle in Southern Aboregale after I was captured by Forkbeard. It tells of the power of a staff, belonging to Nicholas Torymorton, and a cross which belongs to the Viking's keeper of the dead."
Sawtooth showed a certain skepticism toward Landregal's belief in the credibility of Lardock's book. Swayed by influences of Christianity, like many of his countrymen, Sawtooth looked upon magic as both disreputable and unholy. "They say that the master of Dormanquest Castle is practiced in the black arts," prevailed Sawtooth. "A dark cloud seems eternally to surround his palace. None that go into her dungeons ever return. I have heard men say that Volki is clairvoyant, that he reads other people's minds and is able to effect destruction of his enemies over great distances."
"And very possibly it is true," consented Landregal. "Do you know how to read the runic passages contained in this volume?" The poor slave looked over a few of the faded pages then passed the leather bound volume back to the hunter.
"No," replied Sawtooth, "but I may be able to help you escape, if you are so willing." Landregal looked at the man with anxious hope. Over the next few months, with visible optimism, he planned his escape from Saoel Forkbeard's farm and the city of Obrian.
That year, winter descended upon Trome with disturbingly quick fury. Weather, most severe, left the southern country so snowbound that transportation, even between cities, became impossible. This unexpected predicament waylaid Saoel Forkbeard and his plan to return to Aboregale with the companies of men promised him by Feydor Volki.
Forkbeard skulked over this hapless inconvenience and passed time in a warm house, delightfully counting his gold. At the same time, his slaves froze in flimsy shelters. The life of thralls was a pathetic existence. So forlorn a condition was it that Landregal became, both, sick and scrawny from exposure to the cold and malnutrition.
Through the long winter months he planned his escape, attempting to maintain enough strength so that once the time arrived he would be able to journey north again to Aboregale. Biting numbness of frostbitten fingers and toes hampered his daily activity in the winter. Lardock's book remained secure in a hiding place on the farm. On rare occasions he unearthed the volume to study it's written trances and incantations.
Lardock Lagarias Trappler's book on magic, however, was somewhat meaningless to mortals like Landregal and Sawtooth. Three existing wizards: Marmalock Arabolis, Lardock Trappler and Feydor Volki were the only men, during that time, capable of properly effecting the book's sorcery. With Hel's key, Feydor Volki could view the Vikings' dead and tell which of his enemies still existed to bring him torment. While Landregal struggled with the many verses' meanings, his attempts to effect their magic, thus far, was ineffective.
In the power of the ansate cross lay the owner's capabilities to view living beings from within early Scandinavians' provinces of death. Hel was a female warden, the Vikings' attendant to people dead from accidents, old age and sickness. To her adherent disciples, she was more a voracious host than a gentle servant. Beings who were dying, or close to annihilation, could be drawn unwillingly, by use of Hel's key, into her perpetual orb of anguish and affliction. From it, there was no escape. And so, as Feydor Volki sat engrossed in meditation, he strained the reflection of his thoughts into that sphere of unquenchable plight, seeking out enemies who were close at hand with obliteration.
A man who had suffered a severe chest wound during Thorvald Barbidal's conflict with one of Volki's ships, the boat which had followed him across the northern ocean from Aboregale, now lay in one of Midgard's lodges. Marmalock's use of Nicholas Torymorton's scepter, to relieve the man's pain and cure his wound had been effective. But without his constant and close attention, the stricken Viking lapsed into an incognizant unconsciousness. At first the man's loss of perception was manifested only in the cloaked disguise of a light sleep. As a menacing power seized him, however, the coercion of Volki's spell overcame Marmalock's magic. The stricken Viking twisted in agonizingly painful convulsions and let out a long baleful scream.
Liana Torymorton, close at hand, moved to the man's aid. Feeling for pulse, cautious of quick or adverse reaction to her delicate touch, she compassionately held his hand. The extremity was peculiarly cold. She examined the man more closely and saw in his eyes a look of horrifyingly helpless fright. Unexpectedly, his respiration had stopped. Eradication of the sailor's life, mirrored in that man's eyes, a sudden, disruptive, collapse of awareness. The sudden lapse into death frightened Liana. At the same time, within the corrupt walls of Dormanquest Castle, Feydor Volki sneered victoriously to himself and loosened his triumphant grip on the engraved cross.
Across the room, in Midgard, Marmalock could sense the Dark Lord's enchantment. He rushed to effect a remedy for Thorvald's crewman but his skillful treatment, to alleviate Volki's sinister spell, was too late. Augmented by faculties of Trome's villainous lord, the man's soul was pulled turbulently and unexpectedly into Hel's domain. Force, which had been the man's life, was contained as though it had been tugged by her diabolical gravity into a crowded sphere. Like atmosphere sucked into a vacuum, energy which constituted the man's existance was trapped and combined with the sickening woe of restive uncomfort inside Hel's impatient realm.
Liana Torymorton's apprehension of that man's distress, before he died, sent her into a profoundly tonic discussion with the wizard, Marmalock Arabolis. Over her own sentiment, regarding his use of magic in effecting the supernatural, Liana emotionally pleaded. "Did you see what happened to him?" she asserted. "He was completely well. It was as though the most precious of God's gifts, a man's life, very solidly present, was stolen."
"Liana," Marmalock alleged calmly. "Within the progressions of history, of this world and others, there have been men and beings, able to so alter perception that crowds believed what they were witnessing was, indeed, magic; one in perhaps a million people are able to do it effectively, and perhaps one in every one hundred thousand of those men, the rarest of our soothsayers, is able to so modify what other people think, that societies are positive what they discerned was some unusually predigious form of magic. But I will tell you this: that every elusive form of power in the universe, no matter how beguiling and mysterious that force may seem to people of the time, has its own logical explanation. The elements of some forces are so complex, however, that their explanations would take years to unravel, even to the most briliant men. Other energy, divine dynamism I shall call it, is above explanation to the limited capabilities of corporeal beings; it is manifested, fundamentally, in the universal powers of destruction and creation which dictate how much substance can exist and how actuality appears to have come into being from nothingness."
"Christ knew the answer then," insisted Liana. "He knew the answers to some underlying questions about the universe before other men knew about them. He was aware of most of what was going to come into being before it happened. He predicted our future and warned humanity about the requirements for its own salvation."
"You are right about his being a man," Marmalock agreed, "and his living a life that would shame ethics of even the purest beings; he too, like myself, had use of some creative powers, then unexplained and incomprehensible to those existing around him during the time. He proved through his own bravery and esteem, when confronted by death, the importance of our living righteous lives. But you see, Liana, there are exceptions to all absolutes, flaws in even the most, apparently, perfect laws and people."
"I see your point then, in existing morally in the middle somewhere, and leaning only slightly toward the side of virtue and benevolence," sided Liana. She looked on with warmth and admiration at the wizard, Marmalock. Frightened by the sailor's death, Liana wished, still, to pass on more of her own pragmatic faith to the Vikings.
In that way our survival on the earth, or at least as human beings, prevails in a midst of forces that seek to destroy it," surrendered Marmalock, in his prophetical overview to Princess Liana. "It is not my hope that evil conquers good, for the final aim of man's own degeneracy is, ultimately, to return to nothingness this quality of existence we experience as living beings. For time, Liana, is a perpetual phenomenon and the alteration of substance, such as are all living things, an eternally evolving process. You see there exists a celestial driving force, I referred to earlier, that brought us into being. And that force powers the formation of life. The energy which powers the universe is much older than gods, giants or human beings. It is a conforming form of power only in that it is substantially more definable than the, apparently, total oblivion through which it acts. Believing in those powers, that go beyond even our own natural laws, links our consciousness with intelligence. While desiring a void, where there is an absence of anything perceptible, suggests stupidity to me---a lack of both comprehension and intelect."
"And that void of consciousness is just what the lord of Dormanquest wants!" Marmalock continued to warn Liana. With resentful respect for the Dark Lord, Feydor Antonavich Volki's, power. "His is as uniting a resolve as those divine powers that brought us into being."
Liana, with all her alertness and perception began to weaken from the efforts of physical stress. Her own mental activity dragged slowly into a state of mediocrity where she was able to deal only with the most unsophisticated tasks at hand. Changing bandages, caring for the men and preparing food kept her busy, while Marmalock fought to confuse a distant counterclaim to his power deep from within the southern realm of Trome.
As the vehement winter set in, Saoel Forkbeard sat restlessly within a reserved confine of his conventionally comfortable home. In Obrian, thinking about winter and the untimely misfortune of being snowbound, he rested from the long journey into Aboregale with his two partners. That winter set in on the country with such unexpected furry, enforced his inward conviction. No return would be possible, to Aboregale, until the following spring.
As he stared at his warm fireplace, Saoel recalled the bloody battles in which he fought for the glory of Trome. He could see in each self-justified recollection of his own violent action an ill-disposed confidence. His achievement, ultimately, had gained him wealth, respect and security. Within the country in which he now lived he had all the essential ingredients required to reign comfortably through a sustained winter.