Or maybe these priests and priestesses were simply wizards who put not only the rulers but also Marcovefa to shame. Marcovefa might have thought the same thing. “If you can give me that spell without my knowing it, why don’t you rule the world instead of staying under a lake?” she asked.

“Because we have enough sense not to want to rule it,” the priest answered. The priestess beside him nodded.

Hamnet Thyssen hoped the man in the golden robe spoke the truth. If the fellow didn’t . . . Well, what can you do about it? Hamnet asked himself. He didn’t see anything. What could a butterfly do about a mammoth? Try not to be there when its feet came down, that was all.

Ulric Skakki still held a small, tight smile on his face—the smile, perhaps, of a man fighting hard not to be impressed, or not to show how impressed he was. “Now you’re in trouble,” he told the priest. “Now you don’t have ice or water covering you up any more. Now all the cursed fools in the world will make tracks for this place, expecting you to show them how to be wise.” His grin grew even tighter and more self-mocking as he added, “We’re here, after all.”

“They will be disappointed,” the priest said.

“Fools often are,” the priestess agreed. “But not all of you here are fools. If you were, you would not have done what you did.”

Not all of us? Hamnet wondered. He also wondered—and knew he would wonder for the rest of his life—how much they’d really done themselves. He couldn’t know for certain, and he couldn’t blindly accept whatever answers he got here. He knew he was a fool, but he hoped he wasn’t that kind of fool.

“Here is one thing more for you to think about,” the priest said. “No one takes away from the Golden Shrine even a barleycorn more than he brought to it.”

“I knew a verse to that effect,” Eyvind Torfinn exclaimed proudly.

Ulric bowed to the man in the golden robe. One of his eyebrows quirked as he straightened. “You can say that. I may even believe you when you do. But do you think it will do you any good? Do you think fools will pay any attention? If they did, by God, they wouldn’t be fools.”

“Well, we will worry about that when the time comes.” The priest’s voice stayed mild. “It has not come yet.”

Eyvind Torfinn had gone over to another priest and was doing his best to talk the man’s ears off. Hamnet had never seen him so excited. Well, here he had his heart’s desire. With some men, that was one particular woman. With others, it was gold and jewels piled high. All Earl Eyvind had wanted was to find the Golden Shrine. He’d never dreamt he would, but now he had.

Gudrid could also see that women weren’t the first thing on Eyvind’s mind. More particularly, she could see she wasn’t the first thing on his mind, or on anyone else’s. Hamnet could tell she didn’t fancy that. If she wasn’t the center of attention, she had trouble believing she was real.

Liv and Audun Gilli were talking with a priestess. The woman in the gold robe nodded and gestured. Liv looked entranced, Audun astonished. Maybe they wouldn’t take a barleycorn away with them, but Count Hamnet would have bet they were gaining something.

Hamnet laughed, not altogether pleasantly. To the priest and priestess before him, he said, “Good thing you’re up here on the Bizogot steppe and not in Raumsdalia. Emperor Sigvat would try to tax you or make you tell him whatever you know or try to close you down.”

To his surprise, they looked amused. “Some things never change,” the priestess said. “I don’t suppose we expected this to be different from the way it was in the old days.”

“In the old days . . .” Hamnet echoed. What did that mean to these people? “Are those the days before the Glacier moved south this last time?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What were things like then? Do you know what things were like before the Glacier came forward time before last?” Hamnet wasn’t Eyvind Torfinn, but if you weren’t curious about ancient days in a place like this, you probably had no pulse.

“There were empires and kingdoms and wandering tribes. People were people,” the priestess said. “And when the Glacier moved, a lot of them died.”

“So we’re the descendants of the ones who lived,” Hamnet said.

“You would be unlikely to derive from anyone else.” The priestess’ smile didn’t keep Hamnet from blushing.

“Do you remember those days yourself? Were you here for them?” he persisted. “How did this place survive when the Glacier came down on top of it?”

“I was here for some of those days: the worst time, when people saw they couldn’t stop the Glacier and despaired,” she answered. “But, as I said, I have not been here for all the days since, not in the usual sense of the word. Those days went around me, not through me—that is the best way I can put it.”

“But the Glacier didn’t go around the Golden Shrine. The Glacier went over it. Then Sudertorp Lake covered it,” Hamnet said.

“That is so,” the priestess agreed.

“Then how—?” He’d already asked once. Would asking twice do any good?

Marcovefa touched his arm. “Let it go,” she said. “I know more shamanry than your folk do. These folk know more than that much more than I do. They will not be able to explain it. Could you explain taming a horse to a baby making messes in its drawers?”

“I am not a baby,” Hamnet Thyssen said stubbornly.

“Your friend may have said that. I did not,” the priestess assured him. “I—” She broke off. Suddenly, she didn’t look mild or amused. Her eyes flashed. That wasn’t aimed at Hamnet. He would no more have wanted it to be than he would have wanted a longbow aimed at his bare chest from five paces. “Where is the woman who came in with you?” the priestess demanded.

Marcovefa stood beside Hamnet. Liv and Audun were still talking with that other priestess. A sinking feeling filled Hamnet. “Gudrid?” he asked.

“If that is her name.” The priestess sounded impatient—and angry. “Where is she? She has gone where she is not welcome.”

The garden courtyard had several entrances. One, of course, opened onto the outside world. Who could guess where the others led? The priests and priestesses here already knew. If they didn’t want strangers around, who could blame them? Hamnet Thyssen wouldn’t have left the courtyard without getting someone’s leave first. But Gudrid always assumed she was welcome anywhere.

“I’m sure she meant no harm,” Hamnet said, though he wasn’t sure of any such thing. He wondered why he defended his former wife, even knowing she wouldn’t have done the same for him. The only answer he found was that the two of them belonged to the same time. He might have put in a good word for a Ruler who’d wandered away from the crowd.

“You may be sure of that. I am not.” The priestess turned away from him and spoke to her colleagues. All of a sudden, Hamnet stopped being able to understand her. He looked over at Marcovefa. She shrugged—she couldn’t follow what the priestess was saying, either.

An irate squawk came echoing out of one of the dark entranceways. Hamnet sighed quietly—yes, that was Gudrid. “Take your hands off me!” she said. “I didn’t do anything!”

Two priests steered her back out into the courtyard. One had hold of each elbow. She tried to kick one of them, but his leg wasn’t there when her foot swung through. Hamnet couldn’t seen how she missed him, only that she did. He could also see that he wouldn’t have tried antagonizing those men. Their faces warned—warned him, anyway—they had no patience for foolishness.

The priestess gestured. The two priests let go. Gudrid came forward all the same. Plainly, she didn’t want to. As plainly, she had no choice. “I didn’t do anything!” she repeated, louder this time.

“Why did you go off where you had no business going?” the priestess asked in a voice like beaten bronze.

Gudrid looked innocent. She did it very well—certainly well enough to have fooled Hamnet before. That made him distrust it now. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to,” she said, wide-eyed. “I was just looking around.”