The Broken Sword Read Online Free

slenderness, and when she danced in the moonlight it was as a white flame to those who watched. She smiled on Skafloc with pale full lips, and the milk that she brought forth by no natural means was sweet fire in his mouth and veins.
    Many lords of Alfheim came to the naming-feast, and they brought goodly gifts: cunningly wrought goblets and rings, dwarf-forged weapons, byrnies and helms and shields, clothing of samite and satin and cloth-of-gold, charms and talismans. Since elves, like gods and giants and trolls and others of that sort, knew not old age, they had few children, centuries apart, and the birth of one was a high happening; still more portentous to them was the fostering of a human.
    As the feast was going on, they heard a tremendous clatter of hoofs outside Elfheugh, until the walls trembled and the brazen gates sang. Guards winded their trumpets, but none wished to contest the way of that rider and Imric himself met him at the portal, bowing low.
    It was a great handsome figure in mail and helm that blazed less brightly than his eyes. The earth shook beneath his horse’s tread. “Greeting, Skirnir,” said Imric. “We are honoured by your visit.”
    The messenger of the Aisir rode across the moonlit flagstones. At his side, jumping restlessly in the scabbard and glaring like fire of the sun itself, was Prey’s sword, given him for his journey to Jotunheim after Gerd. He bore another sword in his hands; long and broad, unrusted though still black with the earth in which it had lain, and broken in two.
    “I bear a naming-gift for your foster son, Imric,” he said. “Keep well this blade, and when he is old enough to swing it tell him the giant Bolverk can make it whole again. The day will come when Skafloc stands in sore need of a good weapon, and this is the Aisir’s gift against that time.”
    He threw the broken sword clashing on the ground, whirled his horse about, and in a roar of hoofbeats was lost in the night. The elf-folk stood very still, for they knew the Rsii had some purpose of their own in this, yet Imric could not but obey.
    None of the elves could touch iron, so the earl shouted for his dwarf thralls and had them pick it up. Led by him, they bore it to the nethermost dungeons and walled it into a niche near Gora’s cell. Imric warded the spot with rune signs, then left it and -avoided the place for a long tune.
    Now some years went by and naught was heard from the gods.
    Skafloc grew apace, and a bonny boy he was, big and merry, with blue eyes and tawny hair. He was noisier, more boisterous than the few elf children, and grew so much faster that he was a man when they were still unchanged. It was not the way of the elves to show deep fondness for their young, but Leea often did to Skafloc, singing him to sleep with lays that were like sea and wind and soughing branches. She taught him the courtly manners of the elf lords, and also the corybantic measures they trod when they were out in the open, barefoot in dew and drunk with moonlight. Some of what wizard knowledge he gained was from her, songs which could blind and dazzle and lure, songs which moved rocks and trees, songs without sound to which the auroras danced on winter nights.
    Skafloc had a happy childhood, at play with the elf young and their fellows. Many were the presences haunting those hills and glens; it was a realm of sorcery, and mortal men or beasts who wandered into it sometimes did not return. Not all the dwellers were safe or friendly. Imric told off a member of his guard to follow Skafloc around.
    Sprites whirled in the mists about waterfalls; their voices rang back from the dell cliffs. Skafloc could dimly see them, graceful shining bodies haloed with rainbows. Of moonlit nights, drawn by the glow like other denizens of Faerie, they would come out and sit on the mossy banks, naked save for weeds twisted into their hair and garlands of water lilies; and elf children could then talk to them. Much could the sprites tell,