"You have a good face, and a fair one," said Thorberg, "and yet you will not kiss my hands." Gudrid coloured and looked down. "Perhaps the day will come when you will kiss them," Thorberg said. "It would be no shame to you to do it."
Gudrid then said, "I will do it now if you will let me." But Thorberg patted her cheek and said, "By and by." The people thought that Gudrid had shown good manners by offering and that Thorberg was pleased with her.
They spread the table for the feast, and Gudrid served the guests with the other girls of the house. Thorberg sat by Heriolf, and said very little, which was all to the good, since it made men treasure what she did say, and find more in it than may have been there. Then, when the tables had been cleared, Heriolf stood up and asked her if she had been well-treated. Thorberg said, "You have given me your best, Franklin. No one can look for more."
"Would it please you, then, to reveal certain things to the company?"
She stared before her. "What do you desire to know?"
"Why," said Heriolf, "we should like to know how it stands with this house, and with those who are in it, and those who are of it; and how long these plagues of sickness and death are to oppress us; and other things which you may read out of the dark, and be moved to tell us."
She thought for a while, looking down the hall above the heads of those who stood to hear her. Just below the dais Gudrid was standing with the house-girls.
After a time Thorberg said, "Set me the spell-seat," and remained abstracted while it was being done.
Heriolf set up the spell-seat, and then Thorberg opened her pouch of magic and took out certain small flat stones covered with writing, and some tufts of feathers, a lump of brown amber, a ring of jet, and some teeth of a great sea-beast. All these she laid round the seat in a circle, except the ring of jet, which she kept in her hand. Then she sat upon the spell-seat, and said to Heriolf, "Bring me the woman who is to sing the Ward-locks." Those were the charms which had to be sung, not so much to invoke the spirits with whom she was familiar as to keep away those who were adverse.
Every man looked at his neighbour; the women whispered together, but all shook their heads. In and out among his guests Heriolf ran in a great taking. "Heard any one the like of this, that I should think of everything, and fail for one?" But nobody knew the songs. In his naked bed behind the wall lay old Thorbeorn with the blanket up to his nose, and jerked his thin legs, losing not one tittle of all this.