Siegfried’s Horn-call
CHAPTER II
HATE HOLE
To Hate Hole, in the dark time before dawn, came the Wanderer, and found Alberich waiting and watching near the entrance. The Dwarf was fearfully enraged at the sight of the old god, whom he hated with all the strength of his wicked Nibelung soul. He burst into a torrent of abuse and anger as Wotan drew near, speaking of the broken promise of the giants and the deceit by which the Gold had been obtained from the Nibelungs, and again threatening the downfall of the gods when the Ring should come back to his hands. The Wanderer answered quietly that a hero was even then drawing near through the woods—a hero fated to kill Fafner and obtain the Gold; and, with hidden sarcasm, he bade the Dwarf attempt to use the youth for his own ends.
The King God believed in the workings of Fate. The Norns wove continually, and all that they wove came to pass. No one could change the histories wound into their golden cord, until the Dusk of the Gods had come, when they also would, in the Last Twilight, be gone forever. So, feeling as he did, it mattered very little whom he aided, whom he harmed. He even went so far as to arouse Fafner for Alberich, and ask him to give the Dwarf the Ring. The old Dragon snarled and yawned and went to sleep again. The Wanderer turned to the Nibelung, with a great laugh.
“Listen!” he said. “Remember, O Alberich, what I say. All things work in nature’s course. You can alter nothing.”
And, so saying, he vanished in the dark woods, and a faint, pale flicker of lightning shot through the forest as he went. Alberich crept hastily into a crevice in the rocks on one side, and the dawn broke just as two figures came into the little green glade by Hate Hole.
The figures were those of Siegfried and Mime; for the Nibelung, true to his word, had led the boy to the place where he was to learn to fear.
“If you do not hastily discover fear here, my dear boy, you never will anywhere,” said the Dwarf, with a chuckle. And he described at great length the means which Fafner would use to teach the art, saying that the Dragon’s breath was fire, and his twisting tail strong enough to crush any hero. But Siegfried merely laughed, and said that he would find the great worm’s heart and strike Nothung into that; and then he bade Mime be gone. The Nibelung crept away out of sight among the trees, and as he went he muttered, in an exasperated undertone:
“Fafner and Siegfried! Siegfried and Fafner! Oh, that each might kill the other!”