Odin and Loki emerged from the tunnel’s mouth and dragged their prisoner a little way from the hillside. They stood in a grassy valley ringed by mountains whose peaks gleamed white with snow. Not far away beyond a fringe of trees rose the smooth bright curve of Bifrost. Odin dropped Albric to the ground beneath a young pine tree and sank onto a nearby stone. The fears and uncertainty of the journey had driven his growing feebleness from his thoughts, but now that they had emerged, he found himself laboring for breath, unable to go on without a rest. He sat and drew great gasping breaths, trying to calm the irregular pounding of his heart.

  At length he regained strength enough to look up. Albric sat with his back to the tree, his knees drawn up as if he were in pain, his eyes squeezed shut against the pale sunlight. Loki stood watching him with the end of Gleipnir in his hand. Albric opened one eye a slit, caught sight of Odin, and snarled at him.

  “Here come some of our comrades,” said Loki with a nod at Bifrost. His eyes glittered with amusement. “Their health has not improved during our absence— The charming Frigga can scarcely hobble along, and there comes Freyr, limping in the rear. And look at Thor! He appears determined to outlast his bones.” Odin glanced at the approaching Aesir, and saw that they were indeed advancing with the halting steps of age, Thor driving himself hard as if to deny any difficulty. “A pity to interfere,” Loki murmured. “The Aesir age so gracefully.”

  “Be quiet,” commanded Odin. “And silence that wretched caterwauling,” he added irritably, for Albric had begun to whine and complain.

  “Silence, you!” Loki said with a jerk on the cord, but Albric only drew breath to moan louder. With a shrug he said, “I fear he is not amenable to courteous treatment. I could stuff his mouth with grass and gag him.”

  “Never mind,” growled Odin. “We have business to discuss.” He rose to his feet with difficulty, leaning hard on his spear shaft, feeling as if all his muscles had grown stiff in the little time he had been sitting. As he gained his feet the three Aesir reached him.

  Freyr paused for breath, sparing a glance at Albric. “Ugly little brute,” he said. “Does he have what we need?”

  “We will see,” Odin said. “How are the other Aesir?”

  “They are as we are,” Freyr said, as he helped Frigga to a seat on a stone. She sank down in silence, but her gaze was bleak as it rested on Odin. She drew her cloak close about her with a thin blue-veined hand.

  “Sif has taken to her bed and will see no one,” Thor said with a black scowl. “Your scheme had better succeed, Loki.” He looked with distaste at Albric. “What’s to be got out of this elf?”

  Odin strode to the dwarf, who glared up at him. He had ceased his whining, but was clutching his stomach and shivering, and his sallow face was pale and greenish as a toad’s underbelly. Odin could almost have pitied him, if he had not heard his plans for Asgard’s destruction.

  “You will kill me,” moaned Albric. “Get me out of this cursed sunlight.”

  “In good time,” said Odin. “If you wish to be released, there is a price to pay.”

  “Spoken like a true Aesir!” spat Albric. “What do you want for your filthy ransom?”

  “Little enough to you. The treasure hoard that your dwarves have heaped up.”

  Albric squinted up at him in suspicion. “It is true they can always dig more gold. Very well, you can have it. If that was all you wanted you could have bargained for it.”

  “I do not bargain with toads like you.”

  “Who is a toad?” Albric hissed. “It is not I who goes about with an ill wind like Loki, or breaks my oaths as if they were made of glass.”

  “Watch your tongue, dwarf,” said Odin sharply. “You are not free yet.”

  Albric gave a sullen shrug. “Well, the hoard is yours. Do you expect me to haul it up with my own hands?”

  “I will summon your miners, and you shall give them the order.” Odin struck his spear butt on the ground, and a low reverberation echoed away under the earth.

  Not many moments later Mimir emerged from the tunnel entrance. He crouched in the shadow of the opening, blinking painfully at the light, and called, “What is it?”

  “Are you blind?” Albric snarled. “I am being held captive by these noble lords. They demand our hoard as ransom. See to it. Bring it up quickly, or you know what will happen.”

  “Very well,” said Mimir gloomily, and vanished into the hole again.

  They waited in silence, while the wind went searching through the dry yellow stubble of the meadow with a rustling sound. Odin felt as if moment by moment he was growing weaker, so that at last he would be nothing but a dry crackling skin for the wind to rustle like the dead leaves. He roused himself with an effort and said to Frigga, “Has Brynhild returned yet from Jotunheim?”

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  “Some time ago,” she replied. “The giants are on their way.” In her eyes he read the same bleak realization; if Freya could not be regained, it meant the waning of their strength, the end of the Aesir. He dropped his gaze before her.

  It was not long before they heard a scratching and scrambling sound in the tunnel. A gnarled miner appeared, squinting around fearfully, his back bent under the bulging sack he carried.

  “Drop it under the tree,” said Albric. “And be quick about it!”

  The miner deposited his burden, jerked the sack free of the glittering pile of wealth, and hurried back into the tunnel. Another dwarf followed him, and another and another; the pile of treasure grew. Odin opened his eyes wide at the splendor laid bare in the sunlight, hidden until that hour in the darkness underground. Armbands, bracelets, necklaces, rich brooches, ruby-hilted daggers, and golden cups sparkled among the pine needles, shining with redoubled glory.

  At length the last dwarf disappeared. “Are you satisfied?” asked Albric resentfully. “You have it all.”

  “Not quite all.” Loki picked up the tarnhelm, fallen to the grass beside Albric, and threw it on the pile.

  Odin drew near the dwarf, his eye on the ring he wore. For some time he had been drawn to it; it seemed to him as if the ring were shining for him alone, crying out to be rescued from the dwarf’s gnarled bony hand. It was a rich and precious thing, too beautiful to be abandoned to the darkness of Svartalfheim. “I will take your ring as well,” he said in a voice that sounded hoarse and strange in his own ears.

  The resentment faded from Albric’s face as he looked up, leaving him pale and stricken. “No!” he cried in horror, writhing away, trying to hide the ring. “No, you cannot have it. It is mine! It is everything to me; you might as well take my life.”

  “I will take that too, if need be,” said Odin sternly. “But I will have the ring.”

  “It is not yours. Thief!” Albric began to shake with rage, tears spilling down his cheeks.

  Odin gazed at him in pitying contempt, but he hardened his heart; implacable desire for the ring rose in him. “Take your choice,” he said. “Your freedom in exchange for the ring, or death.”

  “You cannot take it,” said Albric, tears wetting his beard. “I paid a terrible price for it. In a moment of passion I renounced all of life’s sweetest hope, all chance of happiness in love. Will you take advantage of my pain, and leave me nothing for all my agony but an empty heart?”

  “I am touched,” said Odin acidly. “But I will have the ring.”

  Albric narrowed his eyes to dark slits. “Beware, Odin. I gambled my own soul for it, but you are lord of the Aesir; you do not sin for yourself alone. If you succumb to greed, you will pull down earth and heaven in your downfall.”

  Odin tightened his lips in exasperation. “Be silent, dirt eater. You speak of things you know nothing of, and soil the words in your mouth.”

  “Deeds are more potent than words,” Albric spat. “A thief is a thief, no matter how exalted a name he wears.”

  “Give me the ring.” Odin knelt, stretching out his hand.

  “No!” Albric tried to squirm away, but Gleipnir bound him tightly. At a gesture from Odin, Loki jerked the dwarf upright and held him while Odin seized the ring, twisting and pulling it over his swollen knuckle. As he did so Albric let out a cry of such piercing agony that Odin paused, shuddering. But the ring lay in his palm; intent on it, he dropped the dwarf and straightened, turning it to admire the smooth lustrous curves, the rich gold. He slipped it on his finger and stood oblivious to all else, captivated by its shining purity.

  The dwarf crouched on the ground, rubbing his hand and blinking up at the ring with red-rimmed, despairing eyes.

  “Is he free to go?” Loki asked.

  “Yes, set him free,” said Odin absently, scarcely glancing at him.

  Loki loosened the fetter and unwound it from the dwarf. “You have our leave to go, dwarf lord,” he said with a mocking gesture of dismissal.

  “Free, am I?” Albric rose with a peal of hysterical laughter. “Thank you, noble lords. Now that you have stripped me naked, I am free to crawl away and die.”

  “You will not die,” said Odin with contempt. “You still rule your dwarves, and they will mine new treasures for you. You have lost nothing that belonged to you.”

  “And you have gained nothing that belongs to you!” spat Albric. “In return for my freedom, Odin, I will give you a gift: a little gift, the only one in my power. I lay a curse on the ring of the dark elves, and on all who come to possess it. May he who does not have it be consumed by envy, and may he who has it be eaten up by fear. Whoever owns it shall gain his heart’s desire, and it will turn bitter as gall in his mouth. Whoever gloats over lordship of the ring shall die enslaved to the ring; and the one gift of the ring to all who own it shall be death! I wish you joy of your treasure, noble Odin. Guard it well!”

  Odin gazed into the dwarf’s face, twisted with malice and hate, and his heart turned cold within him. For a single instant the ring burned in his palm and seemed an intolerable weight. He glanced down at it; it was cool and bright once more, and held its gaze with its golden beauty. The enraged dwarf shrank to insignificance.

  Thor strode toward Albric, Mjollnir swinging from his hand, his brow thunderous. Even in his advancing age the lord of storms was formidable, and Albric backed away, then scurried like a hare into the dark mouth of the tunnel. They could hear his sobbing laughter echoing from the rocks for a long time after he had vanished.

  There was silence among the Aesir when he had gone. Odin stood caught up in his treasure. The others looked on one another with somber, aghast faces. Loki said at last, “A sweet-tongued imp. Did you hear his love song, Odin?”

  Odin looked up frowning, “He is a misbegotten dunghill cock. Let him curse as much as he likes; the ring is mine.” With a deliberate gesture, he drew it on his finger. Already he could feel in it the pulse of power, that once he learned to use would bring all creation on its knees before him. He meant to use it only for the protection of the Aesir, to stave off as long as possible the dread day of Ragnarok. In the service of that great ambition, no risk was too grave to take. The words of the dwarf echoed faintly in his mind: if you succumb to greed— but he flung them from him with rough pride. He was Odin, Father of Charms, lord of the hanged, who had himself hung nine days and nights in agony to gain wisdom, and the burden of the doom of the Aesir lay heavy on his heart.