Runemarks (35 page)

11

“Of course, you know he’s following us,” gasped Loki, out of breath.

“Wasn’t that the plan?”

“What plan?”

They were running hand in hand down a broad passageway lined with doors, lit now with a lurid phosphorescence that seemed to come from everywhere. Except that
running
wasn’t quite the word, and the ground beneath them felt insubstantial, as in dreams, and as they ran, the scenery changed, the doors shifting from Gothic oak monstrosities to lead-paneled archways to holes in the wall vaulted with bones.

“How far now?” said Maddy.

“We’re almost there. Just making sure…”

The light too was changing fast, now red, now green, and there was a sound—a sound that pressed like a thumb onto their eardrums—the sound of a million dreamers locked inside a million dreams.

“How did you do that?” shouted Maddy above the din.

“Do what?”

“You know. Get out of the cell.”

“Shortcut,” he said. “An Aspect-shift I picked up from Jorgi. Now hang on…” He stopped at a door that was red and black and studded all over with glamours and runes. “You might find this a bit…upsetting.”

Maddy looked at him. “My father?”

Loki nodded. He looked tired behind his Aspect; much of the brightness had gone from his colors. Around his neck Hel’s deathwatch indicated that they had thirty-eight minutes left.

He flung a handful of runes at the door; the inscription upon it brightened, but the door stayed shut.

“Damn.” Loki steadied himself against the closed door and took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m nearly done,” he said. “You’ll have to do it.”

Maddy studied the locked door.
Thuris
should move it, she decided, and hit the door as hard as she could. It trembled but did not yield. Once more she hit it—with
Ós
and
T
ý
r
—once more it trembled, and the passageway trembled with it, shaking beneath their feet.

“It’s coming,” said Loki.

“Yes,” she agreed. “One more hit, and I think I’ll—”

“I wasn’t talking about the
door.
”

He was looking beyond her, and for a second Maddy didn’t understand. Then she looked up and saw what was coming and in that same instant hurled
Hagall
at the door as hard as she could while Loki, with what remained of his strength, flung
Isa
in the path of the World Serpent, which seemed to fill the passage some fifty yards behind them.

Isa
froze in midair, creating a solid barrier against which Jormungand hurled itself in a frenzy. It held, though the first blow cracked the ice; clearly it would not hold the serpent long. But it was enough: in front of Maddy the door did not open, it simply vanished and, with another of those sickening sidesteps, they were inside.

12

From the other side of the river Dream, Hel was watching the proceedings with interest. The deathwatch served a number of purposes—not least to keep her suitably informed—and now, in a room deep in her bone white citadel, she watched the progress of the two trespassers through the darkened mirror of her dead eye.

How odd,
she thought.
How very odd.
Of course, Loki was never entirely predictable, but this was the last place she would have expected him to return. She felt reluctant curiosity as to what his plan might be. She
assumed
he had a plan—whatever else he was, he was no fool—though she wasted no anxiety over his probable fate. Hel would weep no tears if Loki fell—in fact, she thought, to witness his destruction might give her the first true fleeting twinge of pleasure she had felt since Balder’s death, centuries before.

Not that it would last—nothing did. And yet Hel, incurious as she usually was, watched rapt as the seconds ticked by. Her dead eye saw Netherworld, churning with dreams, and her living eye was fixed upon the two figures lying side by side on the shore of the river, their physical bodies linked to their Netherworld counterparts by a skein of runelight finer than silk.

To sever the skein was to cut short their lives—but she had promised them an hour inside, and such an oath, even to Loki, must not be broken. Still, she was intrigued—not least by the glam he had left behind. A powerful glam, some relic of the Elder Days, that gleamed and shone like a forgotten sun. She couldn’t imagine why Loki had brought it—or why he had pretended to hide it away, knowing that she would spot it at once.

And now it was
calling
to her from its place in the desert, in a soft and coaxing voice that seemed—almost, but not quite—familiar.

It’s a trap,
thought Hel.
Whatever it is, he wants me to take it.

Through her living eye she observed the Trickster. He looked asleep; occasionally he twitched and frowned, as if in the throes of some nightmare. She could see the thread that joined him to his dreaming self, a transparent wisp of violet light. She fingered it delicately and smiled to think that in another world she was sending a shiver down Loki’s spine.

Could it be a trap?
she wondered. It wasn’t like Loki to be so obvious. And yet—if he
didn’t
want her to take the thing, then why had he left it so obviously?

Loki wasn’t obvious. Loki was subtle. And so, whatever he was planning, the obvious answer must be false. Unless he’d known she would think this way. In which case the obvious answer
was
the right one. Unless—

Unless,
she thought,
he had no plan.

Unless the carelessness was a bluff designed to make her think he had something clever up his sleeve. Some kind of protection, some backup in case of a hostile reception. But what if he hadn’t? What if, as she’d first suspected, he was running on nothing but wits and bravado?

If so, then he was at her mercy. And the glam he carried—that tantalizing bauble—was hers for the taking.

With a word she summoned it. The glam was hiding in his pack, so bright now that she could almost see it through the worn leather. She opened it, and the Whisperer’s light blazed out, almost blinding Hel with its intensity.

Hel had never seen the Whisperer. Mimir’s time was before her birth, and the Æsir had never been generous with their secrets. But she knew a glam when she saw one, and now she held it in her hands, feeling its energy run through her, its voice now deafening in her mind.

Kill them,
said the Whisperer.
Kill them both.

13

A problem shared is a problem solved,
or so the saying goes. Fortunately for Sugar-and-Sack, he was quite unaware that he now shared the problem of his journey to Hel with Odin, the six Vanir, the Huntress, Nat Parson and a dead Examiner, Adam Scattergood, the parson’s wife, a farmer from the valley, and a potbellied pig, and even if he
had
known, it is doubtful whether the knowledge would have cheered him.

He’d been checking the runestone every five minutes or so, and either his imagination was working overtime or in that short time it had darkened still further. Sugar didn’t think it was his imagination. And he knew what he was supposed to do.

“The Underworld,” he muttered feverishly. “He must be madder than I thought. Wants me to go to the Underworld, eh? Wants me to find a Whisperer? What’s a Whisperer? I sez. And all
he
sez is—”

Don’t let me down.

The goblin shuddered. It looked bad—but the Captain, he knew, had a knack for getting himself out of tight corners. And if he did and Sugar betrayed him…

He stared half hypnotized at the runestone, noting the way its color deepened from vermilion to crimson to ruby.

The stone would show him the way, the Captain had assured him. Sugar had seen such stones before, although he’d never used them. Rune magic was for Seer-folk, not goblins, and Sugar felt uncomfortable just
touching
the stone, let alone using it.

But it
had
shown him the trail so far: every broken cantrip, every signature. And now at last the trail had run out, and it would open up the way to Hel, a road that no one living should take—not if they wanted to stay that way.

If it turns red, then you’ll know I’m in mortal peril.

He cast the stone against the ground, just as the Captain had told him to. And a passageway that had not been there a moment before forked out like lightning at his feet. It was dark in the passage, steps that seemed to be made of black glass staggered down into the gap, and below it, he knew, lay the final stretch—to the Underworld and the Whisperer.

He looked down at the Captain’s charm, which had darkened once more from ruby to oxblood and now to the midnight gleam of a very good claret.

If it turns black…

Gods,
he thought.

And whimpering with fright, Sugar pocketed the stone and set off once again at a brisk trot down the narrow steps and along the path to the Land of the Dead.

It had been almost three days since Odin had entered World Below on the trail of the fugitives. In that time he had moved gradually and carefully downward, favoring the smaller passageways and always keeping the river between himself and his pursuers. In this way he had crossed the Strond twice, approaching the Underworld by an oblique route that he hoped would put Skadi and her parson off his scent.

In that time he had barely eaten, barely slept. He still traveled in darkness but found that his sense of direction had improved beyond measure and that his reading of colors had become honed to a degree of accuracy he had not known since before the war.

He had sensed the presence of the Vanir in World Below, as he had sensed the presence of the Huntress. It was tempting to try to contact them, but in his present condition he dared not approach. Later he would, in full Aspect, once the Whisperer was his again—that is,
if
the Whisperer was ever his again.

Till then he concentrated on reading the signs—and there were many, stretching across World Below like the strings of a harp, tuned to exquisite pitch. It took concentration, it took glam, but at every new sign his foreboding grew.

Finally he cast the runes. He cast them blind, but it didn’t matter; their message was clear enough. First he drew
Raedo,
reversed—his own rune—crossed with
Naudr,
the rune of Death—

Then
Ós,
the Æsir;
Kaen,
reversed;
Hagall,
the Destroyer; and finally
Thuris,
rune of Victory—

—
But for whom?
Odin wondered.
For Order or Chaos? And on whose side do the Æsir stand?

So it begins,
Odin thought. Not aboveground, as he’d imagined, but deep in the belly of Chaos itself. Not the war—surely not yet—but war would follow as winter follows fall. Loki was part of it—Maddy too. What had started the chain of events? The waking of the Sleepers? The discovery of the Whisperer? Something else? He could not tell. But he knew this: he had to be there.

Someone else who had to be there was Ethelberta Parson. Why this was so she could not say, but as she and Dorian approached their goal, she sensed it with growing urgency. They had endured cold and discomfort, their feet were blistered, their food was gone but for a few raw potatoes they kept aside for the pig, they were out of lamp oil, and still Ethelberta was undaunted, following the squat snuffling form of Fat Lizzy through the labyrinth of World Below.

Dorian Scattergood had long since given up hope of finding anyone in that endless maze. Even the idea of finding his way home seemed impossible now, though that was not the reason he continued to move on. Ahead of him Ethel was a dim shape against the phosphorescent walls. Patient, tireless, as unafraid of the rats and goblins they had encountered on the upper levels of World Below as she was now of the passing dead.

“We do not need to fear them,” she had told Dorian as the first whispering wave of spirits brushed by them—he had been flattened against the wall, shaking with terror, but she had simply parted the flow and moved on, ignoring the mournful voices all around them—ignoring even the familiar voices of Jed Smith and Audun Briggs as they followed them to the Land of the Dead.

The road into Hel had been bad enough for Maddy. But for Odin it was much worse:
he
could not close his blind eyes to the presence of the dead nor his ears to their pleas and curses. They sensed it, and for what seemed like miles he was carried along, feet hardly touching the floor of the passage, on wave after wave of the marching dead.

It was not the first time he had risked that journey. Each time had been unpleasant, but this time he felt that something had changed. There was a sense almost of expectancy among the crowd, a knowing quality that made him uneasy. And for the first time they spoke to him—they called him by name.

Blind man on the road to Hel—

(I prayed to you, you let me die)

Odin No-Eyes, still alive? Not.

For.

Long.

When at last he heard a living voice, sensed the colors of a living being, he almost missed them both among the clamor and commotion. The voice rose and fell plaintively, seeming to argue with itself at length before falling silent for a moment, then resuming its one-sided argument.

“I tell you, I can’t—

“I can’t an’ I won’t, d’ye kennet, it’s unnatural, you can’t make me, all right, p’raps you can but—

“Mortal peril, he sez—

“Mortal peril…

The signature was goblin gold, tinged now with the colors of uncertainty and fear. There was something else in its vicinity—a token, perhaps, imbued with glam—that bore a very familiar sign.

Now, Odin was not in the least bit interested in Sugar-and-Sack, but he knew Loki’s sigil well enough, and it was easy enough, using
ýr
and
Naudr,
to approach the goblin unseen and to grab him before he could make his escape.

A few seconds later Sugar was dangling forlornly from Odin’s fist.

“Why, General, Your Honor,” he began. “What a surpr—”

“Save your blather,” said Odin. He sat down on the rocky floor, keeping a firm hand on Sugar. “In a moment I’m going to say a name, and you are going to tell me everything you know. You are going to tell me clearly, quickly, truthfully, and without a single superfluous word. Otherwise I’ll have to break your neck. I may break it anyway. I’m not at my best right now. Understand?”

Sugar nodded so vigorously that his whole body shook.

“Are you ready?”

Once more Sugar nodded.

“Right,” said Odin.
“Loki.”

Sugar swallowed. Recalling Odin’s threat, he delivered his information in a single gabbling breath:
“Netherworldrescuemission maddysfathermortalperiltimerunningout—”

“Wait.” Odin’s fingers tightened fractionally around Sugar’s neck. “Again. Slowly.”

Sugar nodded. “Netherworld,” he said in a strangled voice. “Rescue mission. Maddy’s father. Mortal peril. Time running out.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying,” snapped Odin.

“That’s because you’re throttlin’ me, sir,” said Sugar.

Odin loosened his grip.

“Thank you, sir,” said Sugar apologetically, sitting down on the floor. “Only it’s bin a while since I wet my whistle, sir, and it’s a tricky tale. I’d do better telling it in me own words, beggin’ yer pardon, and with me neck in one piece. Kennet?”

Odin sighed.
Goblins,
he told himself.
Might as well interrogate the dead as expect a sensible answer from a goblin.
He curbed his impatience and began again.

“Now tell me,” he said. “Where’s my brother?”