At that thought, I clutched the hilt of my sword with wild passion. The Alfings had given us back our weapons. Upon these two blades we must depend to vanquish the Jotuns who would come with the rune key to release and awaken Loki. It was a desperate course we had charted. But if Frey was right, upon our swords rested the only hope of thwarting the release of the prisoned arch-devil.
Andvar led us into a narrow split in the rock. We squeezed through it in single file, bruising our limbs. From this crevice, we emerged into a silent, tomb-like gallery, piled with rocks in fantastic shapes.
"We go no farther!" quavered Andvar. Tremblingly he pointed toward the far end of the great gallery. "There lies the door of Loki's prison!"
I peered between the masses of fallen rock that filled the gallery. Far away, something like a web of shimmering radiance closed a gap in the rock wall.
"Aye, it is the door of the arch-traitor's prison," Frey whispered. "Well do I remember when Odin placed it there, long centuries ago."
"The Jotuns haven't come yet with the key!" I breathed eagerly. "We're in time!"
"Now we leave you, for we will not go nearer Loki," Andvar muttered fearfully. He handed us one of the torches. "If you succeed in preventing Loki's release, you will rescue our friend, the lady Freya?"
The dwarf king's anxiety softened me.
"Be sure we will, Andvar," I promised. "Somehow we'll get her out of Jotunheim."
"She has always been kind to us, as her mother and mother's mother were before her," Andvar declared. "You are lucky to have won her love, stranger."