Mani and Sol now went further up the hill, and soon they reached the first terrace, where the first forest-clearing opened in front of them.
As Mani went one step further towards the clearing, a sudden cold waved at her so bitterly, that she stepped back immediately.

In the center of the clearing giant masses of ice and snow piled up sky-high, and she felt as if taken right back to the ice mountains of her boat-ride.
In the bright light of the moon Mani saw a very unusual scene.

To the right of the clearing she noticed a young man, clothed white as snow, blowing icy cold against a flood of water that rushed toward him, so that it reared up before him like a cobra and froze.
The young man held a silvery shield towards the icy masses as if to prevent them from plunging down on him.

On the other side Mani saw another young man in a blue coat driving the huge flood ahead of him with a silvery whip that scintillated in many colours.
Blowing into it he roused a storm over the excited sea so furiously that the surge crashed onto the ice masses with immeasurable violence, breaking deep crevasses into the towering rocks of cold.

Twelve radiant men and women sat around the place on silvery chairs of judgement and watched the exercises attentively.

Behind the frost-builder, on a hoar-frosted rock, sat a man, who seemed to be frost itself.
His clothes were gleaming like snow, like flowing ice, white as milk.

His grey-white beard was a piece of art, structured from many fine icicles; and all the frost of the world seemed to stream from this beard.
With brilliant blue, kind eyes the man observed the work of his pupil.

“This is a powerful relative of the frost-giant Hymir,” Mani heard her brother say.
“The line of the hoarfrost-giants administrates the forces of cold in nature, and this is why these giants direct all those exercises in which the disciple tests his mastery over the frost.”