“You Raumsdalians have a saying, don’t you, about true words spoken in jest?” Trasamund said. “I think you did that here. You are a clever Raumsdalian. Sometimes you are too clever for your own good. I know you think Bizogots are nothing but a pack of fools.”

“I never said that,” Ulric protested.

“I don’t care what you said. I wasn’t talking about what you said. I know what you think here,” Trasamund said. Ulric Skakki looked innocent. It wasn’t easy, not when he was bound to be guilty as charged, but he brought it off. Hamnet Thyssen thought the Bizogots could be fools, too, and he knew his opinion of them was higher than Ulric’s. Trasamund went on, “You think we are fools, yes. But without magic, could we be fools enough to ignore an enemy already beating our clans and stealing our grazing grounds?”

By the look on Ulric’s face, he saw nothing too improbable in that, even if he didn’t come right out and say so. But the way Trasamund put the question made Hamnet Thyssen wonder. Yes, the Bizogots could be fools, especially from a Raumsdalian point of view. Were they likely to be idiots?

“Maybe we ought to find out, if we can,” he said.

Audun Gilli blinked. Liv said, “Not you, too!” Even Odovacar looked at Count Hamnet in surprise, and Hamnet was convinced the Red Dire Wolves’ shaman had no idea what was going on.

“It’s possible Ulric’s right without meaning to be,” Hamnet said stubbornly. “If the Bizogots farther south would rather believe in mystic mushrooms than in the Rulers, don’t you think that says something’s wrong with them?”

Liv looked exasperated. Odovacar went on looking blank. But Audun Gilli looked thoughtful. “It could be so,” he said. “I don’t say it is, but it could be.” He turned to Liv. “Do you know a spell for seeing if someone is using magic?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “We need a charm like that, for we often have claims that someone is bewitching someone else. We need to find out where the truth lies.”

“If the truth lies, how do you find it?” Ulric Skakki inquired.

Audun Gilli didn’t get the pun. Liv did, and winced. Trasamund muttered something under his breath. “We use that kind of spell in Nidaros, too,” Audun said, taking no notice of what he couldn’t follow. “Maybe we ought to try it here.”

Liv sighed. “I think it’s a waste of time, but if it makes you happy.. . .”

“Happy?” Trasamund spoke before Hamnet, Ulric, or Audun could. “Wise lady, nothing that has passed here since we traveled south into the Empire makes me happy. But if we find here a tool to use against our foes, or a way to keep them from using a tool against us, then I say we have done something worthwhile. Is this so, or is it not so?”

“If we find something, Your Ferocity, it is so,” Liv answered. “Otherwise, we do nothing but waste time and strength. This last strikes me as more likely.”

“Sometimes finding out the enemy isn’t doing something counts for as much as finding out he is would,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “If he isn’t spreading confusion – ”

“Then our neighbors truly are as idiotic as you Raumsdalians make them out to be,” Trasamund broke in.

“You said it. I didn’t,” Hamnet said. “But if the Rulers are fuddling the rest of the Bizogots, we need to know that. And if they are, we need to stop them if we can.”

“I said I would make the spell. I will,” Liv said. “But I wouldn’t bother if Trasamund hadn’t decided Ulric Skakki meant what he said when he was only making one of his jokes.” She sent the adventurer a severe stare.

Ulric looked embarrassed, a startling and unnatural expression on his face, whose normal bland expression could conceal anything. “I said I was joking,” he protested. “No one wanted to believe me.”

“See what happens when you tell so many lies?” Trasamund said. “Nobody wants to hear the truth from you.”

“I’ll find the truth, whatever it is.” Liv nodded to Audun Gilli. “Tell me about your magic-sniffing spells.” When he did, in a mixture of her tongue and Raumsdalian, she frowned for a moment, considering. Then she nodded to herself. “Those are not bad, but I think I’ll use one I already know. It’s simpler, and I won’t have to worry about slipping with something new and unfamiliar.”

“That makes sense,” Audun agreed.

“She’ll do it anyhow,” Ulric Skakki said, as if to prove he didn’t intend all his words to be taken seriously.

Then Liv explained to Odovacar what she intended to do. That took so much shouting, she might almost have told the Rulers what she had in mind, too. At last, the Red Dire Wolves’ shaman said, “Anybody would think you figured the Rulers were using magic to make us stupid.”

Liv sighed. “Yes. Anyone would think that.”

She took from a pouch on her belt an agate, dark brown banded with white. Audun Gilli suddenly grinned when he saw the stone. “Oh, very nice!” he said. “Agate overcomes perils, strengthens the heart, and helps against adversities.”

“We have them, sure enough,” Trasamund said.

Her face a mask of concentration, Liv took no notice of either of them. She drew forth the dried foot of a snowshoe hare, bound it to the agate with a length of sinew, and tied them both to her left upper arm. “This to help me go where I will, in our world or that of the spirit, and to return without peril,” she said.

“May it be so,” Hamnet Thyssen murmured. He worried whenever she worked magic, for he knew the danger it put her in. That it was needful only made him worry more, since that meant he couldn’t stop her.

She began to chant. Some of the strange little tune was in the Bizogot language. The rest might have been in the speech mammoths used among themselves – if mammoths used any speech among themselves.

As magic had a way of doing, the spell seemed to reach Odovacar. He pricked up his ears and followed her charm with all the attention he had in him. That his ears pricked was literally true; even in human shape, they were unusually large, unusually pointed, and unusually mobile. A bit later, he began to chant. His tune was much like the one Liv used, though not identical. Some of what he sang was in the Bizogot tongue. The rest might have been the speech dire wolves used among themselves – if dire wolves used any speech among themselves.

“The truth!” Liv and Odovacar sang the same thing at the same time, perhaps by chance, perhaps . . . not. “We must have the truth!” Then their songs went different ways again, into mammoth maunderings for Liv and dire-wolf woolgathering for Odovacar.

Both shamans began to dance, Liv plodding after the truth and Odovacar chasing with lolling tongue and hungry eyes. Hamnet Thyssen watched Audun Gilli watching them in fascination. The Raumsdalian wizard seemed altogether absorbed in the workings of a sorcery from a tradition different from the Empires. If Liv was a mammoth and Odovacar a dire wolf, he might have been a bright-eyed mouse, taking everything in.

“We must have the truth!” Odovacar called again.

“Do lies and deceit stalk the Bizogots?” Liv sang, and then something muffled and mammothy that, Hamnet felt, somehow meant the same thing.

“Quite a show, isn’t it?” Ulric Skakki whispered to Hamnet. “I never thought a bad joke could go so far.”

“That should teach you to think before you let your tongue flap,” Hamnet whispered back. “It probably won’t, but it should.” Ulric sent him an aggrieved look. He took no notice of it.

The two Raumsdalians might have quarreled then, even though the Bizogot shamans were still busy with their magic. But then Odovacar let out a sudden, startled yip. Liv gasped in surprise. Hamnet Thyssen and Ulric Skakki stared at them, their own disagreement forgotten. Audun Gilli s eyes got wider yet.

“They do!” Liv said. “By God, they do!” She sounded astonished. She also sounded outraged. “This must not be!”

“Banish the lies!” Odovacar bayed. “Banish the deception!”