Free The Complete Compleat Enchanter by Fletcher Pratt, L. Sprague deCamp

shelter with ludicrous haste—the mighty Thor included.
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    The rain had ceased. Ragged serpents of mist, pearly against the darker gray of the clouds, crawled over the hills. Outside, the travelers looked back at their shelter. There was no question that it was an enormous glove.
    Skrymir grasped the upper edge of the opening with his left hand and thrust the right into the erstwhile dwelling. From where he stood, Shea couldn’t see whether the big glove had shrunk to fit or whether it had faded out of sight and been replaced by a smaller one. At the same time he became suddenly conscious of the fact that he was wet to the skin.
    Before he had a chance to think over the meaning of these facts, Thor was bellowing at him to help get the chariot loaded.
    When he was sitting hunched up on the chest and swaying to the movement of the cart, Thjalfi murmured to him: “I knew Loki would get around the Hairy One. When it’s something that calls for smartness, ye can depend on Uncle Fox, I always say.”
    Shea nodded silently and sneezed. He’d be lucky if he didn’t come down with a first-class cold, riding in these wet garments. The landscape was wilder and bleaker around them than even on the previous day’s journey. Ahead Skrymir tramped along, the bag on his back swaying with his strides, his sour sweat smell wafting back over the chariot.
    Wet garments. Why? The rain had stopped when they emerged from that monstrous glove. There was something peculiar about the whole business of that glove. The others, including the two gods, had unhesitatingly accepted its huge size as an indication that Skrymir was even larger and more powerful than he seemed. He was undoubtedly a giant—but hardly that much of a giant. Shea supposed that although the world he was in did not respond to the natural laws of that from which he had come, there was no reason to conceive that the laws of illusion had changed. He had studied psychology enough to know something of the standard methods used by stage magicians. But others, unfamiliar both with such methods and the technique of modern thought, would not think of criticizing observation with pure logic. For that matter, they would not think of questioning the evidence of observation—
    “You know,” he whispered suddenly to Thjalfi, “I just wonder whether Loki is as clever as he thinks, and whether Skrymir isn’t smarter than he pretends.”
    The servant of gods gave him a startled glance. “A mighty strange word is that. Why?”
    “Well, didn’t you say the giants would be fighting against the gods when this big smash comes?”
    “Truly I did:

    “High blows Heimdall. The horn is aloft;
    The ash shall shake And the rime-giants ride
    On the roads of Hell—

    “leastways that’s what Voluspö says, the words of the prophetess.”
    “Then isn’t Skrymir a shade too friendly with someone he’s going to fight?”
    Thjalfi gave a barking laugh. “Ye don’t know much about Oku-Thjor to say that. This Skrymir may be big, but Redbeard has his strength belt on. He could twist that there giant right up, snip-snap.”
    Shea sighed. But he tried once more. “Well, look here, did you notice that when Skrymir put his gloves on, your clothes got wet all of a sudden?”
    “Why, yes now that I think of it.”
    “My idea is that there wasn’t any giant glove there at all. It was an illusion, a magic, to scare us. We really slept in the open without knowing it, and got soaked. But whoever magicked us did a good job, so we didn’t feel the wet till the spell was off and the big glove disappeared.”
    “Maybe so. But how does it signify?”
    “It signifies that Skrymir didn’t blunder into us by accident. It was a put-up job.”
    The rustic scratched his head in puzzlement. “Seems to me ye’re being a little mite fancy, friend Harold.” He looked around. “I wish we had Heimdall along. He can see a hundred leagues in the dark and hear the wool growing on the sheep’s back. But