"You think a bearskin vest, badly made, buys you access to seithr?" she said. Her name was Iord, he suddenly remembered. Forgot who had told him that, long ago. In daylight.

Bern cleared his throat. "It isn't badly made," he protested. She didn't bother responding, stood waiting.

He said, "I have no other gifts to give. I am a servant to Arni Kjellson now." He looked at her, standing as straight as he could. "You said… many had reason to hate Halldr. Was he… generous to you and the women here?"

A guess, a gamble, a throw of dice on a tavern table among beakers of ale. He hadn't known he would say that. Had no idea whence the question had come.

She laughed again. A different tone this time. Then she was silent, looking at him with those hard eyes. Bern waited, his heart still pounding.

She came abruptly forward, moved past him to the table in the middle of the room, long-striding for a woman. He caught a scent about her as she went: pine resin, something else, an animal smell. She picked up some of the herbs, threw them in a bowl, took that and crossed to the back table for something beside the raised chair, put that in the bowl, too. He couldn't see what. With the hammer she began pounding and grinding, her back to him.

Still working, her movements decisive, she said suddenly, "You had no thought of what you might do, son of Thorkell, son of Frigga? You just stole a horse. On an island. Is that it?"

Stung, Bern said, "Shouldn't your magic tell you my thoughts—or lack of them?"

She laughed again. Glanced at him briefly then, over her shoulder. The eyes were bright. "If I could read a mind and future just from a man entering my room, I'd not be by the woods on Rabady Isle in a cabin with a leaking roof. I'd be at Kjarten Vidurson's hall in Hlegest, or in Ferrieres, or even with the Emperor in Sarantium."

"Jaddites? They'd burn you for pagan magic."

She was still amused, still crushing herbs in the stone bowl. "Not if I told their future truly," she said. "Sun god or no, kings want to know what will be. Even Aeldred would welcome me, could I look at any man and know all of him."

"Aeldred? No he wouldn't."

She glanced back at him again. "You are wrong. His hunger is for knowledge, as much as for anything. Your father may even know that by now, if he's gone raiding among the Anglcyn."

"Has he? Gone raiding there?" He asked before he could stop himself.

He heard her laughing; she didn't even look back at him this time.

She came again to the near table and took a flask of some-thing. Poured a thick, pasty liquid into the bowl, stirred it, then poured it all back into the flask. Bern felt afraid still, watching her. This was magic. He was entangling himself with it. Witchery. Seithr. Dark as the night was, as the way of women in the dark.

His own choice, though. He had come for this. And it seemed she was doing something.

There was a movement, from over by the fire. He looked quickly. Took an involuntary step backwards, an oath escaping him. Something slithered across the floor and beneath the far table. It disappeared behind a chest against that wall.

The seer followed his gaze, smiled. "Ah. You see my new friend? They brought me a serpent today, the ship from the south. They said his poison was gone. I had him bite one of the girls, to be sure. I need a serpent. They change worlds when they change skin, did you know that?"

He hadn't known that. Of course he hadn't known that. He kept his gaze on the wooden chest. Nothing moved, but it was there, coiled, behind. He felt much too warm now, smelled his own sweat.

He finally looked back at her. Her eyes were waiting, held his. "Drink," she said.

No one had made him come here. He took the flask from her hand. She had rings on three fingers. He drank. The herbs were thick in the drink, hard to swallow.

"Half only," she said quickly. He stopped. She took the flask and drained it herself. Put it down on the table. Said something in a low voice he couldn't hear. Turned back to him.

"Undress," she said. He stared at her. "A vest will not buy your future or the spirit world's guidance, but a young man always has another offering to give."

He didn't understand at first, and then he did.

A glitter in her coldness. She had to be older than his mother, lined and seamed, her breasts sunken on her chest beneath the dark red robe. Bern closed his eyes.

"I must have your seed, Bern Thorkellson, if you wish seithr's power. You require more than a seer's vision, and before daybreak, or they will find you and cut you apart before they allow you to die." Her gaze was pitiless. "You know it to be so."

He knew it. His mouth was dry. He looked at her.

"You hated him too?"

"Undress," she said again.

He pulled his tunic over his head.

It ought to have been a dream, all of this. It wasn't. He removed his boots, leaning against the table. She watched, her eyes never leaving him, very bright, very blue. His hand on the table touched the skull. It wasn't human, he saw, belatedly. A wolf, most likely. He wasn't reassured.

She wasn't here to reassure. He was inside another world, or in the doorway to it: women's world, gateway to women's knowing. Shadows and blood. A serpent in the room. On the ship from the south… they had traded during the banned time, before the funeral rites. He didn't think, somehow, they would be troubled by that here. They said his poison was gone. He felt whatever he had just drunk in his veins now.

"Go on," said the seer. A woman ought not to watch like this, Bern thought, tasting his fear again. He hesitated, then took off his trousers, was naked before her. He squared his shoulders. He saw her smile, the thin mouth. He felt light-headed. What had she given him to drink? She gestured; his feet carried him across the room to her bed.

"Lie down," she said, watching him. "On your back."

He did what she told him. He had left the world where things were as they… ought to be. He had left it when he took the dead man's horse. She walked about the room and pinched shut or blew out the candles and lamps, so only the firelight glowed, red on the farthest wall. In the near-dark it was easier. She came back, stood over against her bed where he lay—an outline against the fire, looking down upon him. She reached out, slowly—he saw her hand moving—and touched his manhood.

Bern closed his eyes again. He'd thought her touch would be cold, like age, like death, but it wasn't. She moved her fingers, down and back up, and then slowly down again. He felt himself, even amid fear and a kind of horror, becoming aroused. A roaring in his blood. The drink? This wasn't like a romp with Elli or Anrida in the stubbled fields after harvesting, in the straw of their barn by moonlight.

This wasn't like anything.

"Good," whispered the volur, and repeated it, her hand moving. "It needs your seed to be done, you see. You have a gift for me."

Her voice had changed again, deepened. She withdrew her hand. Bern trembled, kept his eyes tightly closed, heard a rustling as she shed her own robe. He wondered suddenly where the serpent was; pushed that thought away. The bed shifted, he felt her hands on his shoulders, a knee by one hip, and then the other, smelled her scent—and then she mounted him from above without hesitation and sheathed him within her, hard.

Bern gasped, heard a sound torn from her. And with that, he understood—without warning or expectation—that he had a power here, after all. Even in this place of magic. She needed what was his to give. And it was that awareness, a kind of surging, that took him over, more than any other shape desire might wear, as the woman—the witch, volur, wise woman, seer, whatever she would be named—began rocking upon him, breathing harder. Crying a name then (not his), her hips moving as in a spasm. He made himself open his eyes, saw her head thrown back, her mouth wide open, her own eyes closed now upon need as she rode him wildly like a night horse of her own dark dreaming and claimed for herself—now, with his own harsh, torn spasm—the seed she said she needed to work magic in the night.