The Complete Compleat Enchanter Read Online Free PDF Page A

caught him in the chest. He yelped, managing to choke out, “Glup . . . stop . . . that’s enough!”
    Somewhere in the watery world a couple of girls were giggling. It was not till his eyes cleared that he realized it was they who had drenched him, and that he was standing between them without his protecting blanket.
    His first impulse was to dash back into the steam room. But one of the pair was holding out a towel which it seemed only courtesy to accept. Sverre was approaching unconcernedly with a mug of something. Well, he thought, if they can take it, I can. He discovered that after the first horrible moment his embarrassment had vanished. He dried himself calmly while Sverre held out the mug. The girls’ clinical indifference to the physical Shea was more than ever like Gertrude.
    “Hot mead,” Sverre explained. “Something you don’t get down south. Aud, get the stranger’s blanket. We don’t want him catching cold.”
    Shea took a gulp of the mead, to discover that it tasted something like ale and something like honey. The sticky sweetness of the stuff caught him in the throat at first, but he was more afraid of losing face before these people than of being sick. Down it went, and after the first gulp it wasn’t so bad. He began to feel almost human.
    “What’s your name, stranger?” inquired Sverre.
    Shea thought a minute. These people probably didn’t use family names. So he said simply, “Harold.”
    “Hungh?”
    Shea repeated, more distinctly. “Oh,” said Sverre. “Harold.” He made it rhyme with “dolled.”
    ###
    Dressed, except for his boots, Shea took the place on the bench that Sverre indicated. As he waited for food he glanced round the hall. Nearest him was a huge middle-aged man with red hair and beard, whose appearance made Shea’s mind leap to Sverre’s phrase about “the red bear.” His dark-red cloak fell back to show a belt with carved goldwork on it. Next to him sat another redhead, more on the sandy order, small-boned and foxy-faced, with quick, shifty eyes. Beyond Foxy-face was a blond young man of about Shea’s size and build, with a little golden fuzz on his face.
    At the middle of the bench two pillars of black wood rose from floor to ceiling, heavily carved, and so near the table that they almost cut off one seat. It was now occupied by the gray-bearded, one-eyed man Shea had followed in from the road. His floppy hat was on the table before him, and he was half-leaning around one of the pillars to talk to another big blond man—a stout chap whose face bore an expression of permanent good nature, overlaid with worry. Leaning against the table at his side was an empty scabbard that could have held a sword as large as the one Shea had noticed on the wall.
    The explorer’s eye, roving along the table, caught and was held by that of the slim young man. The latter nodded, then rose and came round the table, grinning bashfully.
    “Would ye like a seat companion?” he asked. “You know how it is, as Havámal says:

    “ ‘Care eats the heart If you cannot speak
    To another all your thought.’ ”

    He half-chanted the lines, accenting the alliteration in a way that made the rhymeless verse curiously attractive. He went on: “It would help me a lot with the Time coming, to talk to a plain human being. I don’t mind saying I’m scared. My name’s Thjalfi.”
    “Mine’s Harold,” said Shea, pronouncing it as Sverre had done.
    “You came with the Wanderer, didn’t ye? Are ye one of those outland warlocks?”
    It was the second time Shea had been accused of that. “I don’t know what a warlock is, honest,” said he, “and I didn’t come with the Wanderer. I just got lost and followed him here, and ever since I’ve been trying to find out where I am.”
    Thjalfi laughed, then took a long drink of mead. As Shea wondered what there was to laugh at, the young man said: “No offense, friend Harold. Only it does seem mighty funny for a man to say he’s lost at the