Aselma and Armen walked quickly through the entry but the wooden gate to the lift was closed. They could see the bare hairy legs of the Mountain Giant drawing the wooden platform up to the castle. They could see the bottom of the platform, and Aselma’s sharp ears could hear her sister’s voice as the lift rose higher.

“You could have waited for us!” she shouted, tilting her head up.

Narda’s head looked down over the platform’s rail. “Is that you, Aselma?” she called out in a deceptively sweet voice. “I didn’t realize you were that close behind us. It seemed to me your vessel was still in the middle of the fjord when we disembarked. I’ll meet you in the family hall, dear.”

“Old cow!” Aselma muttered.

Above them the lift came to a stop, and then it was quickly lowered again. Aselma and her husband stepped onto the platform, which was raised once again to the correct level of the castle. The couple exited into the brightly lit corridor, following it to the family hall. Entering, they found Narda sobbing in her mother’s arms. Not to be outdone in her grief Aselma screamed, and ran to her parent weeping. Tostig and Armen shook hands, and would have stepped into the background but that Lara, coming into the chamber, beckoned them from it.

In the corridor again she greeted them cordially. “Please come with me, my lords. There is a matter I wish to discuss with you.”

They followed her down another hallway and into a beautiful library with tall arched windows looking out over the fjord. There they found their other brother-in-law, Corrado, Sirvat and the young Dominus awaiting. They greeted one another. Both Tostig and Armen noted that their sister-in-law looked drawn with her grief. Lara was, it seemed to them, as beautiful as ever. Her faerie green eyes, however, were swollen with her sorrow.