For a few moments, we stared at the three fiends in silence.
"Frey, are they really only in suspended animation?" I whispered. "They seem to be dead."
"They are alive," Frey assured me. "Only the functions of Loki's physical body are suspended. His mind is conscious, even at this moment. Just as a man can be paralyzed and still be fully conscious, so it is with Loki."
"But even if he's conscious, how could he have influenced me from afar to keep the rune key? How could he have raised the storm that blew me here, and given orders to the Jotuns to be waiting for me?"
"In his researches, Loki had developed the power to send telepathic messages," Frey explained tautly. "Do your scientists have that power?"
"They're just beginning to find out about it. They call it extra-sensory perception."
"Loki had developed that power to great lengths," Frey said. "Though his body is prisoned here, his conscious mind can send forth powerful thought messages. Such commands he sent into your mind, Jarl Keith, from here. And such messages he must have sent to the Jotuns, ordering them to operate his strange mechanisms. They can raise tempests such as blew you here."
"And he's been held here for centuries, with his mind awake and conscious!" I muttered in horror, shuddering. "What is that vapor drifting about the chamber?"
"That contains the secret of suspended animation," Frey told me. "Odin devised the vapor, which freezes and halts the chemical activity of the body's cells, at the same time preserving each cell unharmed. The vapor alone holds Loki and his pets frozen. If the radiant door were opened and the vapor escaped, the arch-traitor and his pets would awake—"
"Listen!" I hissed suddenly, clutching Frey's arm.