for ever keeping watch, until the time shall come for me to rouse the Sleepers and send them forth against the malice of Nastrond.”
“But, Cadellin,” asked Susan, “in these days how can you hope to win a fight with only a hundred and forty men on horseback?”
“Ah,” said the wizard, “you must remember that the hour of Nastrond is not yet at hand. It was prophesied that these few could prove his desolation, and I have faith: the wheel may turn full circle ere that day will come.”
This cryptic reply was hardly satisfying, but by the time Susan had tried to make sense of it and found that she could not, the wizard had resumed his tale.
“Now it happened that, at the Sealing of Fundindelve, there were not more than one hundred and thirty-nine pure white mares, in the prime of life, to be found anywhere. Therefore I was forced to wait for that one horse to complete my company, and when at last such a horse came my way, I little knew that it would be so dearly bought.
“But now I must leave this matter and speak of Nastrond. Word of what we had done at Fundindelve soon reached him, and he was both angry and afraid: yet his black art was of no avail against our stronghold. So he too devised a plan.
“In the next chamber to that of the Sleepers had been stored jewels and precious metals for the use of the king to help put right the ills of the world, if he should conquer Nastrond. This treasure, since it lay in Fundindelve, was safe as long as the spell remained unbroken; and although Nastrond had no thought for the treasure, he did desire most furiously to break the spell, for, if this were achieved, the Sleepers would wake and become normal men, who would grow old, and die, and pass away centuries before his return, since there would no longer be magic left upon the earth powerful to hold them once more ageless in Fundindelve.
“To this end he summoned the witches and warlocks of the morthbrood, and the lords of the svart-alfar, together with many of his own ministers, and put greed and a craving for riches in their hearts by telling them of the treasure that would be theirs if they could only reach it. And from that hour they have striven to find a way to break the spell. At first I had no need to fear, for the sorcery of the morthbrood, though powerful, and the hammers and shovels of svarts could have no effect where the art of Nastrond had failed. But then, on the day that I found the last white mare, disaster fell upon me.
“This light around us is the magic that guards all here, and its flames are torment to the followers of Nastrond: and the source of the magic, as I have said, rests in the stone Firefrost. While Firefrost remains, and there is light in Fundindelve, the Sleepers lie here in safety. Yet each day I dread that I shall see the flames tremble and give way to shadows, and hear the murmur of men roused from sleep, and the neigh of horses. For I have lost the weirdstone of Brisingamen!”
Cadellin’s voice trembled with rage and shame as he spoke, and he crashed the butt of his staff against the rock floor.
“Lost it?” cried Susan. “You can’t have done! I mean, if it’s a special stone it should be easy to find if it’s lying around somewhere in here … shouldn’t it?”
The wizard smiled grimly. “But it is not here. Of that, at least, I am certain. Come, and I shall show you proof of what I say.”
He beckoned the children towards an opening in the wall and into a short tunnel not more than thirty feet in length, and halfway down Cadellin stopped before a bowl-shaped recess about six inches high and a yard above the level of the floor.
“There is the throne of Firefrost,” he said, “and you will see that it is now vacant.”
They passed through into a cavern similar to the last, and Colin and Susan halted in awe.
Here lay the treasure, piled in banks of jewels, and gold, and silver, which stretched away into the distance like sand dunes in a desert.
“Oh,” gasped Susan, “how beautiful! Look at those colours!”
“You would not think them so beautiful,” said Cadellin, “if you had run through your fingers every diamond, pearl, sapphire, amethyst, opal, carbuncle, garnet, topaz, emerald, and ruby in the whole of this all too spacious cave, in search of a stone that is not there!
“I spent five years labouring in this cave, and as many weeks scouring every gallery and path in Fundindelve, but without success. I can only think that that knave of a farmer was a greedier and more cunning rogue than he appeared, and that, as he followed me from here, laden as he was with wealth, his eyes fell upon the stone, and he slyly took it without a word. Perhaps he thought it was merely a pretty bauble, or he may even have seen me replace it after I had tethered his horse with sleep while he crammed his pockets here.
“Seldom have I need to visit these quarters, and it was a hundred years before I next came this way and found that the stone had gone. First I searched here; then I went out into the world to seek the farmer or his family. But, of course, by this time he was dead, and I could not trace his descendants; and although my quest was discreet the morthbrood came to hear of it, and they were not long in guessing the truth. Throughout the region of the plain they coursed, and even to the bleak uplands of the east, towards Ragnarok, but neither they nor the ferreting svarts found what they sought. Nor, for that matter, did I.
“Should Firefrost come into Nastrond’s hand my danger would be great indeed; for although he is powerless against the magic it contains, if he could destroy the stone then the magic, too, would die away.
“Firefrost was an ancient spellstone of great strength before the present magic was sealed within, and it would not readily suffer destruction; so while the light shines here I know that somewhere the stone still lives, and there is hope.
“There you have the story of my troubles, and, I trust, the answer to your questions. Now you must return to your home, for the hour is late and your friends will be anxious – and they may have ample cause for worry if we cannot solve this evening’s problems soon!”
They went back into the Cave of the Sleepers, and from there climbed upwards by tunnels and vast caverns till the way was blocked by a pair of iron gates, behind which the tunnel ended in a sheer rock wall. The wizard touched the gates with his staff, and slowly they swung open.
“These were wrought by dwarfs to guard their treasures from the thievish burrowings of svarts, but without magic they would be of little use against what seeks to enter now.”
So saying, Cadellin laid his hand upon the wall, and a dark gap appeared in the blue rock, through which the night air flowed, cold and dew-laden.
It looked very black outside, and the memory of their recent fear made Colin and Susan unwilling to leave the light and safety of Fundindelve; but, keeping close to the wizard, they stepped through the gap, and stood once more beneath the trees on the hillside.
The gates and the opening closed behind them with a sound that made the earth shake, and as they grew used to the moonlight the children saw that they were standing before the tooth of rock that they had striven to reach as they floundered in the depths of the beech wood, with svart-claws grasping at their heels.
Away to the left they could make out the shape of the ridge above the dell.
“That’s where the svarts attacked us,” said Colin, pointing.
“You do not surprise me!” laughed the wizard. “Saddlebole was ever a svart-warren; a good place to watch the sun set, indeed!”
They walked up the path
