Runemarks (14 page)

7

In a corner of Little Bear Wood, Loki’s head was still aching. Wildfire was his name and wildfire his temper, and in World Below he had given it rein, cursing in his many tongues and breaking a number of small, valuable objects that just happened to be lying around.

He had blundered; that he knew. He had misjudged Maddy not once, which was forgivable, but twice, which was not; he had been careless and complacent; he had been tricked—and by a girl!—and worst of all, of course, he had let her get away with the Whisperer.

The Whisperer. That thrice-damned bauble. It was his pursuit of the Oracle, and not his fear of the Folk on the Hill, that had brought him out of his stronghold, though now that he was here, watching the Hill from a suitable tree, he was unsettled to see the numbers of people gathered around the Horse’s Eye.

There was the constable; the mayor in his official hat; several hundred men and women, armed with pitchforks and hoes (
How rustic,
thought Loki); a clutch of assorted brats; some ox-drawn digging machines; and the parson, of course, very smart in his ceremonial robes, with his prentice beside him, riding a white horse and reading aloud from the Book of Tribulation.

All this in itself was not so unusual. Every once in a while there was unrest among the Folk, often after a bad harvest, a cattle plague, or a bout of the cholera. The Faërie tended to get the blame for anything that went wrong, and over the years their legend had built, so that now most of the villagers believed—as Nat Parson did—that the Hill was the abode of demons.

Loki had never discouraged this. On the whole, it was fear that kept people away, and when they did march against him (every twenty years or so), waving flags and relics, swearing to burn out the vermin once and for all, they rarely stayed long. A couple of days—and a gaudy glamour or two—was usually enough to cool their evangelism. And besides, the Eye was securely shut. Sealed by runes, it was surely proof against any attempt at entry by the Folk.

Still, this time he could not help feeling a little uneasy. The digging machines were a new development, and in all his years under the Hill he had never seen such a large and well-organized gathering. Something had happened to excite them thus. A raid, perhaps? Some trick carried out by the goblins in his absence? Too late he told himself that he should have paid more attention to what was going on in World Above. The parson, especially, should have been watched. But, as always, there had been the Whisperer to deal with. The thing seemed to have boundless energies, and over the years most of Loki’s strength had gone into keeping it subdued. Then Maddy had arrived, and all his attention had suddenly turned toward her.

This—this almighty shambles—was the result.

Loki sighed. Of all the times to lose the Whisperer, this was perhaps the worst. He was not unduly afraid of the Folk. His glam might be reversed, but that didn’t make him helpless. Even the machines were not much of a threat; it would take them weeks—maybe months—to reach him.

What he
did
fear, though, was their fanaticism. Left alone, it would burn itself out, but at the right time, and with the right kind of leader—a leader who awakened it, nurtured it, fanned it, fed it on a diet of prayer and Tribulation…

He had heard the tales, of course. He employed an efficient network of spies from his stronghold in World Below, and over the past few hundred years the word from World’s End had been getting stronger. Word of the Order, followers of the Nameless, of the conflict building between Folk and Fiery, and of the last, the greatest, Cleansing, the holy war that would sweep the Fiery from the faces of all the Worlds.

In World’s End, the rumors said, there were cathedrals tall as mountains, large as cities, where the Examiners held court and their prentices copied out endless invocations on scroll after scroll of illuminated parchment.

In World’s End, Order reigned; bad blood had already been mostly erased, and goblins and other vermin were dealt with efficiently and without mercy. In World’s End, if a sheep or a cow was born with a ruinmark, then the whole herd was swiftly destroyed, and if—Laws have mercy—it was a human child that bore the mark, then that child would be taken away and given into the guardianship of the Examiners, never to be heard of again.

There were other tales too, of hills and barrows once given over to the old gods, now emptied of their original occupants and made holy once again in preparation for the Great Cleansing. And there were other, darker tales of demons caught and bound by the power of the Word; demons who were dragged, screaming, to the scaffold and the pyre; demons who looked like men and women but were in fact the servants of the enemy and therefore had no souls to save.

In World’s End prayer was compulsory; Sundays were fallow; mass was twice daily and anyone refusing to attend—or indeed, exhibiting unnatural behavior of any sort—was likely to face Examination and Cleansing if they failed to renounce their ways.

Of course, thought Loki, that was all a very long way from the valley of the sleepy Strond. But his many informants spoke ever more loudly of the coming of the Examiners, and it was whispered on the Roads and reported in World Below that even the Ridings had become infected by rumor and tales.

Tales of the
Word,
that power given only to the highest rank of priests (though Loki could recognize a cantrip sure enough, and as far as he was concerned, their incantations were just cantrips under a new coat of paint). Tales of the Nameless, which, according to the Book of Tribulation, rose from the dead at the End of the World and will come again at the hour of need to save the righteous and strike down the blasphemers.

Loki was in no doubt that he counted as one of the blasphemers. Reviled by the new gods as a demon, loathed by the old gods as a traitor—his position had never been good. But now he had lost the Whisperer—the single ace in an indifferent hand—without which he would have nothing to bargain with when the time of reckoning came.

He had to get it back, he thought, before it reached the General. The Oracle would have guessed that, of course, and Maddy would be on her guard. Still, he thought, he was not beaten yet. He knew all the exits to Red Horse Hill, and from his hiding place in the wood he could watch for the fugitives unobserved. In World Below, without knowing their destination, he might lose them among the thousands of tunnels that lined the Hill, but here, in World Above, Maddy’s colors and those of the Whisperer would shine out like beacons for miles around. True, so did his own colors, but still, it was worth the risk, he thought. Besides, at the first sign of danger he could open the doorway under the Hill and be safe underground in a matter of seconds.

Loki’s sharp eyes traveled all around the valley, from Red Horse Hill to Farnley Tyas, to Forge’s Post and Fettlefields and even as far as the Hindarfell, where distant smoke from a hayrick or a cook-fire smudged the horizon into a haze. There was as yet no trace of a signature, but he felt sure Maddy would show herself soon. He watched and waited, taking his time—it had been decades since he’d last ventured into World Above, and in spite of the urgency of his task he could not help but take pleasure in the feel of the sun and the blue of the sky.

It had been a good falltime, but the season was almost done, and soon would come the long, bleak winter. He could smell it: the wild geese had flown; the fields were bare after that busy Harvestmonth and the stubble burned in time for the next seeding. Wherever Maddy and Odin were planning to meet, they would surely not venture out of the valley at such a time. So far, it was still warm in the afternoon sun, but there was a sharp edge to the air that would soon turn to ice and a long, slow five-month before spring’s awakening.

Awakening!
The thought came to Loki with sudden certainty, and he froze, his eyes fixing on the hazy sky, the distant pass, and the seven peaks that guarded the valley. There were tales about those peaks, he knew. He had spread many of them himself in the hope of discouraging attention from the glacial halls under those mountains and from the seven deadly inhabitants that slumbered beneath the ancient stone.

The Sleepers.

“No. They wouldn’t
dare.
”

In his alarm he spoke aloud, and birds flew cackling out of the scrub at the sound of his voice. Loki scarcely heard them. Already he was sliding down the tree trunk, sending leaves and fragments of bark showering onto the forest floor. Surely, he thought, they wouldn’t dare! The General himself had never dared—after Ragnarók, Odin could no longer assume the Sleepers were his to command.

Unless he knew something that Loki did not. Some new rumor, some warning sign, some omen that Loki’s spies had failed to read. Perhaps, at last, Odin
had
dared.

Loki’s mind raced furiously. If the Sleepers were awake, he thought, then surely he would have known by now. Their presence would have launched echoes and alarms throughout World Below. No reason to panic just yet, then. The General was above all a tactician, and he would not risk unleashing the Sleepers without first ensuring his absolute authority.

But with the Whisperer in his hands…

A distant shudder ran through the ground. It must have been the digging machines—though for a second Loki had been almost sure that he sensed something else: a convulsion that passed over the skin of the valley like a tremor on the skin of an old dog.

He shivered.

Surely not! There must still be time
…

If the Sleepers awoke, he was as good as dead.

Unless he recovered the Whisperer…

If Maddy was heading for the Sleepers, he thought, then the quickest way was underground. It might take her four hours to reach the place—that gave her quite a lead on him—but Loki knew World Below better than anyone. He had shortcuts through the Hill that no one else knew and, with luck, perhaps he could still cut her off. If not, then at least he could be sure that Odin would not have ventured underground. So the General would be traveling overland toward the mountains, which gave him a journey twice as long—and over some rather rough terrain. Which left Maddy and the Whisperer alone.

Loki grinned. In a fair fight he knew he had no chance, but Loki was not accustomed to fighting fair and had no intention of starting now.

Well, then—

With a flick of the fingers he cast
ýr
at the ground and prepared to re-enter World Below.

Nothing happened.

The door that should have slipped open at his command remained sealed.

Loki cast again, frowning a little.

Still the doorway declined to reveal itself.

Loki cast
Thuris,
then
Logr,
Water, and finally
Úr,
the Mighty Ox, a rune of brute force, which was his equivalent of kicking the door hard in his impatience.

Nothing worked. The door stayed shut. Loki sat down on the forest floor, angry, puzzled, and breathing hard. He had flung those runes with all his glam. Even if the door had been magically sealed, surely
something
should have happened.

It was shielded, then, whatever it was. He cast
Bjarkán
as hard as he could.

Still there was nothing. Not a gleam, not a twinkle. The door was not just sealed; it was as if it had never been there.

That shudder,
he thought. He’d taken it for the work of those digging machines, but now that he thought about it more carefully, he realized he’d made a mistake. That was the echo of powerful glam—a single working, likely as not—and World Below had shifted accordingly, going into total lockdown against a potential intruder.

He tried to think what kind of assault might have triggered such a response.

Only one thing came to mind.

Now he began to feel afraid. He was locked out of World Below, alone and with enemies on either side. Time was short, the Sleepers might already be awake, and every second lost brought Maddy and One-Eye closer together. The solution was a dangerous one, but he didn’t see that he had a choice. He would have to go after them overland.

He uttered a cantrip, cast
Kaen
and
Raedo,
and if anyone had been there to see, they would have been amazed as the young man with the scarred lips and the harried expression dwindled, shrunk, shed his clothes, and became a small brown bird of prey that looked around for a second or two with bright, unbirdlike eyes before taking wing, circling the Hill twice in a widening arc, and soaring away into the thermals and off toward the Seven Sleepers.

Anyone with the truesight, of course, would not have been fooled for a minute. That violet trail was far too distinctive.

8

Nat Parson was enjoying himself. It wasn’t just the robes, or the ceremony, or the knowledge that everyone was watching him, majestic on his white horse, with Adam Scattergood standing beside him with the incense pot in one hand and a fat church candle in the other. It wasn’t the close attention of the visitor from World’s End, who watched him (with admiration, Nat thought) from his position in the Eye of the Horse. It wasn’t the noble sound of his own voice as it rolled over the Hill, or the roar of the digging machines, or the smoke from the bonfires, or the Fair Day firecrackers that popped and flashed. It wasn’t even the fact that that tiresome girl was for it at last—her and the Outlander too. No, all these things were pleasing, but Nat Parson’s happiness ran deeper than that.

Of course, he’d always known he was destined for greatness. His wife, Ethelberta, had seen it too—in fact, it had been her idea to embark on that long and dangerous pilgrimage to World’s End, which had led to his subsequent awakening to the stern duties of the Faith.

Oh, there was no denying that he had been dazzled by the sophistication of the Universal City: its abbeys and cathedrals, its solemn passageways, its Laws. Nat Parson had always respected the Law—what there was of it in Malbry—but World’s End had opened his eyes at last. For the first time he had experienced perfect Order, an Order imposed by an all-powerful clergy in a world where to be a priest—even a country parson—was to command hitherto unimaginable authority, respect, and fear.

And Nat had discovered that he
liked
to command authority. He had returned to Malbry with a craving for more, and for ten years following his return, through sermons of increasing violence and dire warnings of terrors to come, he had built up a growing clique of admirers, devotees, worshipers, and prentices in the secret hope that one day he might be called upon in the fight against Disorder.

But Malbry was a quiet place, and its ways were lax and sleepy. Common crime was infrequent enough, but
mortal
crime—the kind that would enable him to appeal to the bishop, even the Order itself—was almost unheard of.

Only once had he exercised this authority, when a black-and-white sow had been convicted of unnatural acts—but his superiors had taken a dim view of the matter, and Nat’s face had been red as a beet when he had seen the reply from Torval Bishop from over the pass.

Torval, of course, was a Ridings man and took every opportunity to sneer at his neighbor. That rankled, and ever since, Nat Parson had been on the lookout for a way to settle the score.

If Maddy Smith had been born a few years later, he often told himself, then his prayers might well have been answered. But Maddy had been four years old when Nat returned from World’s End, and although it might have been possible to take a newborn child into custody, he knew better than to try it then, just as he sensed that World’s End Law would have to be adapted to suit the needs of his parishioners, unless he wanted trouble from the likes of Torval Bishop.

Still, he’d kept his eye on the Smith girl, and a good thing too—this present matter was far too serious for Torval to dismiss, and it had been with a feeling of long-delayed satisfaction that Nat had received the visitor from World’s End.

That had been luck indeed for Nat. That an Examiner from World’s End should agree to investigate his little parish was cause enough for excitement. But by chance, for that same Examiner (on official business in the Ridings) to have been within only a single day’s ride of the Hindarfell pass—well, that was beyond anything Nat could have hoped for. It meant that instead of waiting weeks or months for an official to ride over from World’s End, the Examiner had been able to reach Malbry in only forty-eight hours. It also meant that Torval Bishop could not interfere, however much he wanted to, and that in itself was enough to fill Nat Parson’s heart with a righteous glow.

The Examiner had had a number of complimentary things to say to Nat: had praised his devotion to duty; had shown a flattering interest in Nat’s thoughts on Maddy Smith, the one-eyed peddler who had been her companion, and the artifact they had called the Whisperer—which Adam had heard them discussing on the hillside.

“And there has been no sign yet of the man or the girl?” the Examiner had said, scanning the Hill with his light-colored eyes.

“Not a sign,” the parson had replied, “but we’ll find them, all right. If we have to raze the Hill to the ground, we’ll find them.”

The Examiner had given one of his rare smiles. “I’m sure you will, brother,” he had said, and Nat had felt a little shiver of pleasure move up his spine.

Brother,
he had thought.
You can count on me.

Adam Scattergood was also enjoying himself. In the short time following Maddy’s disappearance he had almost completely forgotten his humiliation at the witch girl’s hands, and as the frenzy had spread, so had Adam’s self-importance. For a young person of such limited imagination, Adam had found plenty of tales to tell, aided by Nat and by his own desire to sink Maddy once and for all.

The result had been far more than either of them could have hoped for. The tales had led to searches, alarums, a visit from the bishop, an Examiner—an
Examiner,
forsooth!—and now this wondrous combination of Fair Day and fox hunt, with himself as the youthful hero and man of the hour.

He shot a quick glance over his shoulder. There were four machines on the Hill now, giant screws made of wood and metal, each one drawn by two oxen. From four drill points, two at each end of the Horse, came forth clots of red clay. Around these points the animals’ hooves had made such deep ruts in the earth that the outline of the Horse was barely visible, but even so, Adam could see that the entrance was still as closely sealed as ever.

Boom-boom-boom!

Once more one of the drilling machines had hit stone. Still the oxen strained and lowed. Nat Parson raised his voice above the squeal of the machine. A minute passed, and then another. The oxen kept on moving, the drill gave half a turn, and then there was a
crack!
—and the mechanism spun free.

Two men went to the beasts’ heads. Another climbed into the hole to inspect the damage to the drill. The three remaining machines went on, inexorably. Nat Parson seemed unmoved by the setback. The Examiner had warned him it might take time.