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smallest and most timid among them.” He put his hand on Helmut’s shaggy blond head. “Have patience,” he said, in another tone. “Your term of imprisonment runs almost to its end. Soon you will, should you desire it, have action enough for even the blood of Sigrieth that runs in your veins. Now, keep in mind all I have said. Waddle—”
    At his command, the huge beast crouched. Like a man much younger, Sandivar mounted, and Waddle arose. “Farewell,” said the sorcerer, and the bear shambled to the water’s edge and splashed in. Sandivar turned in the saddle and waved as Waddle edged through the shallows; and Helmut returned the gesture. Then Waddle was swimming, with great strength, Sandivar’s legs crossed over his back to avoid wetting. Helmut stood and watched until they were only a dark blot on the glassy surface of the marsh and then were lost to sight behind reeds and cane. It was the first time he had been alone in four months, and he felt a strange melancholy as he turned and entered the tower.
     
    That night was an eerie one.
    Come sunset, he bolted the huge oaken door, as Sandivar had directed, and lit the flambeaux bracketed to the walls. In their murky, flickering light, he ate a simple meal, and then, as he had been assigned to do by Sandivar, read for a while in a book of great antiquity, one dealing with good and evil and vast wars between great armies using strange weapons—prelude to the Worldfire.
    But the tower was full of life. The birds nesting in its upper levels stirred and quorked; sometimes a bat fluttered down into the light. Outside, too, life seemed to be stirring; once something bumped against the door and careened off. Helmut’s left hand drew the shortsword, but the sound did not come again. Another time, he thought something snuffled about the base of the tower, but he could not be sure; and he quailed at the idea of opening the door to see and challenge it. Presently, he laid the book aside and wandered aimlessly about the room.
    It was as full of clutter as the day he had first seen it. Never, in his vision, did Sandivar use the curious apparatus on the table, the weird contraptions of glass and iron and clay, nor had Sandivar ever explained to him the contents of the apothecar’s jars, which were labeled in a script foreign to the boy. Now, his curiosity piqued, he opened each in its turn, sniffing its contents. Many of them were fragrant and some so sharp his head swam, and then there were others which were indescribably foul, the very reek of them evoking waking nightmares in his brain, their stench somehow burdened with death and worse than death, filling the room with obscenities of odor. These latter cured him quickly of meddling; presently he flung himself down on the bed and tried to sleep.
    But odd words kept trampling through his brain like galloping stallions—Rage, Vengeance, Death, Destruction. He would return to Boorn, Sandivar had said, and all these would accompany him as servants and companions. No, that was beyond understanding. Then he remembered something else: action enough even for the blood of Sigrieth —
    Suddenly his father’s name conjured up in him a host of memories. Sigrieth, the bearded giant, the warrior-king, armored and helmed; yet, with gray-blue eyes that could turn gentle as spring rain, hands that could caress as well as chastise. Two years now had he been dead, of a sickness no physician could diagnose, the enormous frame wasting to a skeleton, the fierce eyes glazing and dulling. Helmut felt remembered grief clog his throat: he had worshipped his father, and never had Sigrieth hesitated to display his own love for his sons—but, of the two, poor Gustav had pleased him least and Helmut most.
    But there had never been any question of Helmut’s succeeding to the throne. “These things,” he remembered the soft, deep voice saying, “are difficult to explain to one so young. But kings must marry the daughters of kings, and it is the