Runemarks (42 page)

4

Now Maddy had heard the prophecy.
I speak as I must,
the Oracle had said—and although it had misdirected them, told fragmentary truths to deceive and delay, she knew that an Oracle could not lie.

I see a death ship on the shores of Hel,

And Bór’s son with his dog at his feet…

And yet as she’d watched the two terribly mismatched opponents, she had never lost the conviction that something, somehow, would happen to turn the battle to One-Eye’s advantage. Some unexpected turn of events, like in her favorite stories.

But now it was over. Her friend was lying facedown on the bone gray sand, his colors so faint that he might have been dead.

No, not you too,
she mourned, and shaking off Balder’s restraining hand, she ran across the blood-spattered sand to where he lay. The Nameless stood over them, its runestaff raised, its face illuminated with triumph, but Maddy hardly noticed it.

She knelt down. Touched his hair. He was still alive.

“Maddy.”

“I’m here.”

Painfully he raised his head. Out of Aspect he looked very old—very
human
—as if a hundred years had passed since their last meeting on Red Horse Hill. He had lost his eye patch during the fight and his ruined face was a mask of blood and dirt. His one eye stared sightlessly, and she realized that he was totally blind. Her heart gave a wrench of pity and grief—but behind it the feelings of anger and hurt that had come to her when she learned the truth were still alive, still crying for release.

“Why did you have to come here?” she said. “I knew that if you came here, you’d die.”

Odin sighed. “Same—impatient—Maddy.” He spoke in a broken, breathless whisper, but she could still hear a trace of the old irritable One-Eye in his voice, and that made her want most terribly to cry.

“I wanted to stop the war,” she said. “I wanted to stop all this from happening. I wanted to save you—”

“Can’t,” said Odin. “Prophecy.”

Maddy began to protest, but Odin shook his head. “Let me—see you—again,” he said as, blindly and with great gentleness, he raised his hand to Maddy’s face.

For a moment Maddy held her breath as his fingers moved from her cheek to her chin, lingered at her forehead; traced the lines of sorrow and stubbornness around her mouth, the slight wetness around her eyes.

A good face,
Odin thought.
Strong but gentle—though perhaps not so wise…

He smiled and lowered his head to the sand.

And behind them the Nameless stepped in to deliver the final blow.

Meanwhile, at last, Nat and the Folk had reached the clearing. Passing unseen through the ghostly ranks, they found themselves mesmerized by the scene unfolding before them.

Ethel recognized it and sighed.

Adam gaped at it, openmouthed.

Dorian clutched Fat Lizzy.

Sugar looked down at the Captain’s runestone resting in the palm of his hand, and his stomach lurched as he saw it pulse with a violet light—just once, and faintly, like a heart that has not quite stopped beating.

Oh no,
Sugar thought.
Surely not. Not
now
…

The runestone flared, a little brighter this time, and a strange little shiver went up Sugar’s spine, almost as if a familiar voice—

You’re beyond reprieve. You said it yourself. There’s nowt I can do.

He made as if to drop the stone. But as he emerged from the Order’s ranks, he found himself still gripping it tightly and pushed it deep into his pocket. Perhaps there
was
something after all. You never did know with runes.

Nat Parson stared in wonderment, his eyes filled with the glory of the Nameless. He had traveled so far—suffered so much for the sake of this moment—that he hardly dared hope that he had reached it at last.

This Being shot through with wonderful lights; this terrible, glorious, all-powerful Being, born in Aspect from the stone Head—could
this
be the Word his heart had longed for? Slowly he began to push his way through air that was curdled with glamours and barbs. No one reached a hand to stop him; no one saw the joy in his eyes as he moved toward the two opponents.

“Don’t cry, My dear,” the Nameless said. “I
told
you that you were special.”

Maddy turned to look at it as it stood over her, lifting its staff. Glamours clung to it like wool to a spindle, spitting sheaves of static into the dead air. It was impressive; Maddy sensed she should have been impressed. But the ground was wet with One-Eye’s blood and the color of it was all she could see; that red, like Harvestmonth poppies, on the desert sand…

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, as once she had told a one-eyed Journeyman long ago, on Red Horse Hill.

The Nameless smiled. “I’m glad,” it said. “Because you and I are going to be very close.”

Now, Maddy had not heard the conversation between Odin and the Nameless as they fought it out across the plain. But she was no fool, and the thought had already crossed her mind that if Loki’s body could be used to make another live again, then perhaps the same was true of hers. An unmarked body was best, of course; One-Eye’s was damaged—perhaps beyond repair—but her own was healthy and, more importantly, her unbroken glam would give its bearer the power of gods…

She narrowed her eyes at the Nameless. “Special?” she said.

“Very special, Maddy,” it said. “You’re going to take us to the stars. Together we’re going to rewrite Creation from the top. Rebuild the Sky Citadel. Remake what the Æsir destroyed through their greed and carelessness. Instead of Nine Worlds in opposition, there will be only One World. Our World. A World where things make proper sense. A World with Good and Evil in their proper places and One God ruling everything, forever and always—”

Maddy gave it a scornful look. “That sounds a lot like something One-Eye used to call
gobshite.
”

The Nameless brightened angrily. “You think you have a choice?” it snapped. “You heard the prophecy.”

Maddy smiled.
“I see an army poised for battle. I see a general standing alone. I see a traitor at the gate. I see a sacrifice.”
She leveled her dark gray eyes at the Whisperer. “I asked you once if you thought
I
was supposed to be the sacrifice.”

No!
said Odin.

No one heard.

Maddy looked around—at Hel, this time standing in silence with her dead profile averted; at Balder, clothed in Loki’s flesh; at the ten thousand troops—minus a few—standing in eerie silence before them.

“Don’t think of it as a sacrifice,” it said in its most soothing voice. “Think of it as a new beginning. You won’t be dead—you’ll just be Me, as everything else will just be Me. I’ll leave My mark on every blade of grass, every drop of water, every human heart—and everything will worship Me, and love Me, and fear Me, and be judged…”

It paused for effect and pulled back its hood. Its Aspect was almost completed, the stone Head it had occupied for so many years now standing forgotten to one side. Maddy could see her own colors swimming faintly behind those of the Whisperer and feel a kind of static in her hair and teeth as the Word gathered all around her.

Ten thousand dead were ready with it; ten thousand corpses drew breath. And in the anticipation of the Word, no one saw the small, cautious figure of Sugar-and-Sack as he left the shelter of his group and moved softly across the dead sand, unremarked and unregarded, in the direction of the two adversaries.

Now, Sugar was far from heroic material. As far as he was concerned, he should never have been a part of this business in the first place. The General was dead—or as good as—the Captain was dead—or worse than—and Maddy was about to be consumed by the Nameless, which made her at least as dead as both of them.

He really didn’t know why he didn’t just run. No rune or cantrip forced him to act. No profit was likely to come to him. Not even the runestone bound him now, though he could still feel the force of its pulse, as if some part of the Captain were still trapped there, urging him on in a soft voice.

It wasn’t even as if he quite understood what he was expected to do—or why—and yet he kept moving, low to the ground, toward the nasty old glam—the Whisperer—that had started all this off in the first place and that now lay forgotten to one side as the thing that had blossomed out of the stone moved closer to Maddy and spoke.

“Dear girl,” said the Nameless. “Listen to Me.”

And such was its glamour that she almost obeyed, almost succumbed to the mellifluous voice. “You’re so tired, Maddy,” the Nameless went on. “You deserve to rest. Don’t fight Me now that we’ve come so close…”

And now the dead began to speak, their voices toneless as the drifting sand.

I name you Modi, child of Thor,

Child of Jarnsaxa, child of wrath.

I name you Aesk,

I name you Ash—

Maddy had fewer names than One-Eye, and she knew that her canticle was likely to be short. Already she could feel it working on her: her head was heavy, her legs half rooted to the ground…

With an effort she shook herself. “Fight you?” she said. “I suppose I could try.” And she pulled out of her pocket not a rune, not a glamour, not a mindsword, but a simple country clasp knife, such as might be carried by any smith or farmer’s boy in Malbry and beyond.

And now Maddy could see something truly surprising—Maddy, who had thought never to be surprised by anything ever again. It might be a mirage, she told herself, but wasn’t that Ethelberta Parson, with Dorian Scattergood at her side, and Adam Scattergood, and Nat Parson—and could that be…
a potbellied pig
?

She was going mad, she thought. It was the only possible explanation. It galled her slightly that in her last desperate moments of life, she should have to endure visions of Nat Parson and Adam Scattergood, but if things went according to plan, she thought, then at least she wouldn’t have to see them for very much longer.

“With that?” said the Nameless, and began to laugh. Ten thousand dead laughed with it, and their voices were like a flock of carrion birds rising into the gunmetal sky.

But Maddy’s gaze stayed straight and true.

“You need my body unharmed,” she said. “If I die here, my spirit stays in Hel, and the rest of me just goes to dust. I can’t kill
you,
but I can do
this
…”

And she raised the knife to her own throat.

5

Once again there was silence in Hel. Everyone watched Maddy, standing in the circle of gods and Folk with the clasp knife held to her own throat.

Loki watched from Netherworld, and in spite of his peril, he grinned.

Thor watched and thought,
That’s my girl.

Odin did not watch, but he knew, all the same.

Balder watched and saw the solution clearly for the first time: not a battle, nor even a war, but a
sacrifice
—

“Maddy! No!” the Nameless howled, and ten thousand voices echoed its cry. “Think what I’m offering—
Worlds,
Maddy—”

Maddy took a deep breath. It would have to be a clean blow—there might not be time for another, she thought. She pictured her blood—a necklace of it—spraying out onto the sand…

Her hand was shaking a little, she saw. She tried to steady it—

And found that neither hand would move.

It was too late. She was paralyzed; at last the Book of Invocations had done its work. And now all she could do was watch in despair as the Nameless closed in, exultant, its poisonous voice whispering in her ears, promising:

Worlds, Maddy. What else is there?

Nat Parson gave a strangled cry. He had no idea what he was doing; no thought of danger crossed his mind. All he could think of was the wretched girl, the girl who had foiled him at every turn, the girl who had laughed at him, thwarted him, ridiculed him, and was now about to take what he himself had longed for: the Word that was rightfully his…

“No!”
He hurtled toward her, knife in hand, head lowered like a charging boar. “She never wanted it! Give it to me!” And, grabbing Maddy by the hair, remembering those hunting parties with his father so many years ago, he pulled back her head to cut her throat.

Sugar reached the discarded Head and, grasping it in both arms, began to run furiously across the open sand. It burned his skin like a sulfur stone, but Sugar held on, dodging and running for all he was worth, eyes squinting almost shut in concentration.

Find it,
the Captain had said.
And throw it into the deepest part…

Well, all of it looked deep enough. The question was, could he reach it in time?

He scuttled through Nat Parson’s legs, going
Ouch-ouch-ouch
from his blistered hands, and, looking for all the Worlds like a squirrel carrying a baked apple, he ran as fast as his short legs would go (which was faster than you might expect, and very quick for his size) toward the river Dream.

Nat was taken by surprise. All his attention had been on the girl, and when the goblin shot between his legs, he tripped and half fell forward onto the sand. He dropped the knife, bent to retrieve it, and found himself face to face with something that hissed and crackled and gleamed and seethed with fury and thwarted ambition. Nat did not pause for a second to think; instead he opened his arms and clasped it, howling, to his chest.

The Nameless had not seen the parson approach, had not given the little party of Folk more than a second’s thought. But first had come this mad creature scuttling in between it and the girl, and now here was the fool parson flailing out of the desert, eyes staring, mouth twisted and shouting,
“No! Take me!”
—reaching out hands already stiffened and blackening from its touch as—

Ten thousand or so troops cried out in alarm and still the parson begged,
“Take me!”
—arching, reaching, yearning,
burning
for Communion, his mouth agape in an
O
of horror and amazement as the Nameless struggled to free itself and the Word blossomed like an early rose…

To Nat it felt like tumbling into a pit of snakes. The Nameless’s mind was nothing like that of Elias Rede—Rede at least had once been human, with human thoughts and aspirations. But there was nothing human—nor even godlike—about the Nameless. No pity, no love; nothing but a sump of hate and fury.

No human consciousness could survive such a blast, and in a second Nat fell to the ground, bleeding from his nose and ears. For if the Word had been violent at a distance, here, at the source, it was cataclysmic. The force made the ventings from the Whisperer’s fire pit seem like nothing more than a milk pan boiling over on the fire; the aftershock knocked the living from their feet and dispersed the dead like motes of dust.

The Nameless gave a howl of rage. Robbed of its victim, suddenly finding itself in the body of the wrong person—a man with neither glam nor training—it acted without thought or restraint. Its first instinct was to annihilate the interloper, its second to regain the safety of its original vessel—

But the stone Head that had contained it since the beginning of the Elder Age was no longer lying on the ground. The Nameless gave another howl—of desperation this time. Without a suitable vessel, it knew, it would be no more than another soul in Hel—Hel’s property and Hel’s slave. Robbed of a leader, its army would disperse like the dust it was; its great plan would remain unfulfilled. Ten thousand troops echoed its cry as the Nameless focused every particle of its glam on a single, frantic, all-important objective:

To possess the girl. Once and for all.

It was then that the river burst its banks. The Word, unleashed and uncontrolled, multiplied by ten thousand and flung out toward the rift in the Worlds, had finally proven too much to contain.

The thing that had been the Ancient of Days wailed aloud—
“Not yet—not yet!”
—as the river Dream, a tidal wave, came rushing across the desert toward them.

Ethel Parson knew what it meant. She didn’t know
how
she knew, but she did, just as she knew that the only hope of the Nine Worlds was beyond that river and that they were almost out of time.

Sugar heard it and dropped the Head before setting off, no less urgently, in the opposite direction.

Odin heard it and thought,
At last.

Across the plain the Vanir heard it and braced themselves for the End of All Things.

In Netherworld the Æsir heard it as the blackbird shadow began once more to descend. Still clinging to the spur of rock—now the only piece of solid matter as far as their eyes could see—they felt the approach of Chaos like a shrieking black wind and fell back once again, still flinging mindbolts into the thing’s lightless maw, until they were actually
pressing against
the gate dividing World from World, feeling its texture hard at their backs.

Loki had time to think,
Damn gate should be charging me rent by now,
when suddenly it gave way and he tumbled backward into the flow.

Hel’s living eye shot open in sudden comprehension to rest upon the hands of the deathwatch as they now began to move together once more. She had just enough time to think,
Gods, what have I done?
when the tidal wave hit and all at once the desert was submerged in Dream.