Runemarks (6 page)

—and
Logr,
to find water underground.

By the time she was ten years old, she knew all sixteen runes of the Elder Script, various bastard runes from foreign parts, and several hundred assorted kennings and cantrips. She knew that One-Eye traveled under the sign of
Raedo,
the Journeyman—though his rune was reversed and therefore unlucky, which meant that he had undergone many trials and misfortunes along the way.

Maddy’s own runemark was neither broken nor reversed. But according to One-Eye, it was a bastard rune, not a rune of the Elder Script, which made it unpredictable. Bastard runes were tricky, he said. Some worked, but not well. Some worked not at all. And some tended to slip out of alignment, to tipple themselves in small, sly ways, to
warp,
like arrows that have been left in the rain and will rarely, if ever, hit straight.

Still, he said, to have any runemark at all was a gift. A rune of the Elder Script, unreversed and unbroken, would be too much for anyone to hope for. The gods had wielded such powers once. Now folk did what they could with what was left; that was all.

But bastard or not, Maddy’s runemark was strong. She quickly surpassed her old friend, for his glam was weak and soon exhausted. Her aim was as good as his, if not better. And she was a fast learner. She learned
hug-rúnar,
mindrunes, and
rísta-rúnar,
carven runes, and
sig-rúnar,
runes of victory. She learned runes that One-Eye himself could not work, new runes and bastard runes with no names and no verses, and still, he found, she wanted more.

So he told her tales from under the Hill and of the serpent that lives at Yggdrasil’s Root, eating away at the foundations of the world. He told her tales of standing stones, and of lost skerries, and of enchanted circles, of the Underworld and Netherworld and the lands of Dream and Chaos beyond. He told her tales of Half-Born Hel, and of Jormungand, the World Serpent, and of Surt the Destroyer, the Lord of Chaos, and of the Ice People and of the Tunnel Folk and of the Vanir and of Mimir the Wise.

But her favorite tales were those of the Æsir and the Vanir. She never tired of hearing these, and in the long, lonely months between One-Eye’s visits, the heroes of those stories became Maddy’s friends. Thor the Thunderer with his magic hammer; Idun the Healer and her apples of youth; Odin, the Allfather; Balder the Fair; Týr the Warrior; falcon-cloaked Freyja; Heimdall Hawk-Eye; Skadi the Huntress; Njörd the Man of the Sea; and Loki the Trickster, who on different occasions had brought about both the deliverance and the dissolution of the old gods. She applauded their victories, wept for their defeat, and, unnatural though it might be, felt more kinship with those long-vanished Seer-folk than she had ever felt for Jed Smith or Mae. And as the years passed, she longed ever more for the company of her own kind.

“There must be more of us
somewhere,
” she said. “People like us, Fieries”—
family,
she thought—“if only we could find them, then maybe, perhaps…”

In that, however, she was disappointed. In seven years she had never so much as glimpsed another of their kind. There were goblins, of course, and the occasional cat or rabbit born with a ruinmark and quickly dispatched.

But as for people like themselves…They were rare, he told her when she asked, and most of them had no real powers to speak of anyway. A glimmer, if they were lucky. Enough to earn them a dangerous living.

And if they were unlucky? In World’s End, where Order had reigned for a hundred years, a runemark, even a broken one, usually led to an arrest—and after that an Examination, and then, more often than not, a hanging (or Cleansing, as they preferred to call them in those parts).

Best not to think of it, One-Eye said, and reluctantly Maddy took his advice, learning her lessons, retelling her tales, waiting patiently for his yearly visits, and trying hard not to dream of what could never be.

This year, for the first time, he was late. Maddy’s fourteenth birthday was two weeks gone, the Harvest Moon had worn to a sliver, and she had begun to feel anxious that perhaps this time her old friend would not make it back.

The previous year she had seen changes in One-Eye: a new restlessness, a new impatience. He had grown leaner over that past twelvemonth, drank more than was good for him, and for the first time she’d seen that his dark gray hair was touched with white. His yearly journeys to World’s End were taking their toll, and after seven such reckless pilgrimages, who knew when the net might fall?

The runes had given her little by way of reassurance.

Maddy had her own set of fortune stones, made from river pebbles from the Strond, each painted with a different rune. Casting them upon the ground and studying the patterns into which they fell, she discovered, was sometimes a means of divining the future—though One-Eye had warned her that runes are not always simple to read or futures always set in stone.

Even so, a combination of
Raedo,
the Journeyman—

—with
Thuris,
Thor’s rune, and
Naudr,
the Binder, had filled her with misgivings.

One-Eye’s runemark. A thorny path? And the third rune—the Binder, the rune of constraint. Was he a prisoner somewhere? Or could that final rune be Death?

And so when Mrs. Scattergood had said he was there—there at last, nearly two weeks late—a great relief and a greater joy had swept her up, and now she ran toward Red Horse Hill, where she knew he would be waiting for her as he always waited for her, every year—as she hoped he would every year, forever.

5

But Maddy had reckoned without Adam Scattergood. The landlady’s son rarely troubled her when she was working—it was dark in the cellar, and the thought of what she might be doing there unsettled him—but he sometimes lurked around the tap, awaiting an opportunity to comment or to jeer. He had pricked up his ears at the commotion in the kitchen—wisely keeping his distance from any danger of work to be done—but when he saw Maddy leaving through the kitchen door, his eyes gleamed and he determined to investigate.

Adam was two years older than Maddy, somewhat taller, with limp brown hair and a discontented mouth. Bored, sulky, and doted upon by his mother, already a parson’s prentice and a favorite of the bishop, he was half feared and half envied by the other children, and he was always causing mischief. Maddy thought he was worse than the goblins, because at least the goblins were funny as well as being annoying, whereas Adam’s tricks were only ugly and stupid.

He tied firecrackers to dogs’ tails, swung on new saplings to make them break, taunted beggars, stole washing from clotheslines and trampled it in the mud—although he was careful to ensure that someone else always got the blame. In short, Adam was a sneak and a spoiler, and seeing Maddy heading for the Hill, he wondered what business she might have there and made up his mind to spoil that too.

Keeping hidden, he followed her, staying low to the bushes that lined the path until they reached the lower slopes of the Hill, where he crept quietly up on the blind side and was in a moment lost to sight.

Maddy did not see or hear him. She ran up the Hill, almost stumbling in her impatience, until she caught sight of the familiar tall figure sitting among the fallen stones beneath the flank of the Red Horse.

“One-Eye!” she called.

He was just as she had seen him last, with his back to the stone, his pipe in his mouth, his pack on the grass beside him. As always, he greeted Maddy with a casual nod, as if he had been away for an afternoon and not a twelvemonth.

“So. What’s new in Malbry?” he said.

Maddy looked at him in some indignation. “Is that all you have to say? You’re two weeks late, I’ve been worried sick, and all you can say is
What’s new in Malbry?
as if anything important was
ever
going to happen here…”

One-Eye shrugged. “I was delayed.”

“Delayed? How?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Maddy gave a reluctant grin. “You and your news. I suppose it never occurs to you that I might worry. I mean, it’s only World’s End you’re coming from—and you never bring me news from there. Doesn’t anything ever happen in World’s End?”

One-Eye nodded. “World’s End is an eventful place.”

“And yet here you are again.”

“Aye.”

Maddy sighed and sat down next to him on the sweet grass. “Well, the big news here is…I’m out of a job.” And, smiling as she remembered Mrs. Scattergood’s face, she told the tale of that morning’s work, of the sleeping goblin trapped in the cellar and how in her clumsy haste she had summoned half of World Below in trying to capture him.

One-Eye listened to the tale in silence.

“And, Laws, you should have
heard
the noise she made! I could hear it all the way from Little Bear Wood—honestly, I thought she was going to burst—”

Laughing, she turned to One-Eye and found him watching her with no amusement at all, but with a rather grim expression. “What
exactly
did you do?” he said. “This is important, Maddy. Tell me everything you remember.”

Maddy stopped laughing and set herself to the task of recalling precisely what had happened in the cellar. She repeated her conversation with the goblin (at mention of the goblins’ captain she thought One-Eye stiffened but could not be sure), went over every rune she had used, then tried to explain what had happened next.

“Well—first of all I cast
Thuris,
” she said. “And then I just…pointed at the hole and sort of…shouted at it—”

“
What
did you say?” asked One-Eye quickly.

But Maddy was feeling anxious by now. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Just tell me, Maddy. What did you say?”

“Well, nothing, that was it. Just noise. Not even a cantrip. It happened so fast—I can’t remember—” She broke off, alarmed. “What’s wrong?” she repeated. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” he said in a heavy voice. “I knew it was only a matter of time.”

“What was?” she said.

But now the Outlander was silent, looking out at the Horse with its mane of long grass illuminated in the morning sun. Finally he began to speak. “Maddy,” he said, “you’re growing up.”

“I suppose so.” Maddy frowned. She hoped this wasn’t going to turn out to be a lecture, like the ones she sometimes got from well-meaning ladies of the village about
growing into womanhood.

One-Eye went on. “Most especially, your powers have grown. You were strong to begin with, but now your skills are coming to life. Of course, you’re not in control of them yet, but that’s to be expected. You’ll learn.”

It
was
a lecture, Maddy thought. Perhaps not quite as embarrassing as the womanhood talk, but—

One-Eye continued. “Glam, as you know, may lie sleeping for years. Just as this Hill has lain sleeping for years. I’ve always suspected that when one awoke, the other would not be far behind.”

He stopped to fill his pipe, and his fingers shook a little as he pressed the smoke weed into the bowl. A string of geese passed overhead, V-shaped, toward the Hindarfell. Maddy watched them and felt a sudden chill against her skin. Summer was gone, and falltime would soon give way to winter. For some reason, the thought almost brought tears to her eyes.

“This Hill of yours,” said One-Eye at last. “For a long time it lay so quiet that I thought perhaps I’d misread the signs and that it was—as I’d first suspected—just another nicely made barrow from the Elder Days. There have been so many other hills, you see—and springs, and stone circles, and menhirs and caves and wells—that showed the same signs and came to nothing in the end. But when I found you—and with that runemark—” He broke off abruptly and signaled her to listen. “Did you hear that?”

Maddy shook her head.

“I thought I heard—”
Something like bees,
One-Eye thought.
A hive of bees trapped underground. Something bursting to escape…

Briefly Maddy considered asking him what he meant by
with that runemark.
But it was the first time she had ever seen her old friend so nervous and so ill at ease, and she knew it was best to give him time.

He looked out again over Red Horse Hill and at the rampant Horse in the morning sun.
Such a beautiful thing,
the Outlander thought.
Such a beautiful thing to be so deadly.

“Beats me how any of you can live in Malbry,” he said, “with what’s hidden under here.”

“D’you mean—the treasure?” breathed Maddy, who had never quite given up on the tales of buried gold under the Hill.

One-Eye gave his wistful smile.

“So it’s really there?”

“It’s there,” he said. “It’s been buried there for five hundred years, awaiting its chance to escape. Without you I might have turned my back on it and never thought of it again. But with you, I thought I might have a chance. And you were so young, so very young. With time, who knew what skills you might develop? Who knew, with that rune, what you might one day become?”

Maddy listened, eyes wide.

“And so,” he said, “I tutored you. I taught you everything I knew and kept a careful watch on you, knowing that the stronger you became, the more likely it was that you might accidentally disturb what lay sleeping under the Hill.”

“Do you mean the goblins?” said Maddy.

Slowly One-Eye shook his head. “The goblins—and their captain—have known about you since the day you were born. But until now they had no reason to fear your skills. Count on this morning’s escapade to change all that.”

“What do you mean?” said Maddy anxiously.

“I mean that captain of theirs is no fool, and if
he
suspects we’re after the—treasure—”

“You mean the goblins might find the gold?”

One-Eye made an impatient noise. “Gold?” he said. “That old wives’ tale?”

“But you said there was treasure under the Hill.”

“Aye,” he said, “and so there is. A treasure of the Elder Age. But no gold, Maddy; not an ingot, not a nugget, not even a nickel penny.”

“Then what sort of treasure is it?” she said.

He paused. “They call it
the Whisperer.
”

“And what is it?” Maddy said.

“I can’t tell you that. Later, perhaps, when we have it safe.”

“But you know what it is, don’t you?”

One-Eye kept his calm with some difficulty. “Maddy,” he said, “this isn’t the time. This—treasure—may turn out to be as dangerous as it is valuable. Even speaking of it has its risks. And in many ways it might be safer for it to have stayed sleeping and forgotten.” He lit his pipe, using the fire rune
Kaen
and a clever little flick of the fingers. “But now it’s awake, for good or ill, and the greater danger would be if someone else were to find it—to find it and put it to use.”

“What kind of someone?” Maddy said.

He looked at her. “Our kind, of course.”

Now Maddy’s heart was beating faster than one of her father’s hammers. “
Our
kind?” she said. “There are others like me? You know them?”

He nodded.

“How many?” she said.

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me,” said Maddy fiercely. There were others, and One-Eye had never mentioned them. Who were they?
Where
were they? And if he’d known of their existence all this time, then—

“Maddy,” he said, “I know it’s hard. But you have to trust me. You have to believe me when I tell you that whatever I may have hidden from you, however I may have misled you at times—”

“You lied to me,” Maddy said.

“I lied to you to keep you safe,” One-Eye told her patiently. “Wolves of different packs do not hunt together. And sometimes they even hunt each other.”

She turned to him, her eyes burning. “Why?” she demanded. “What is the Whisperer? Why is it so important to you? And how do you know so much about it, anyway?”

“Patience,” said One-Eye. “The Whisperer first. Afterward I promise I’ll answer all your questions. But now—please—we have work to do. The Hill has not been opened for hundreds of years. There will be defenses to keep us out. Runes to find. Workings to break. Here…you’ll need this.” He pulled a familiar object out of his pack and handed it to Maddy.

“What’s this?” said Maddy.

“It’s a shovel,” he said. “Because magic, like leadership, is one-tenth genius and nine-tenths spadework. You’ll need to clear the outline of the Horse to a depth of maybe four or five inches. It may take some time.”

Maddy gave him a suspicious look. “I notice there’s only one shovel,” she said.

“Genius doesn’t need a shovel,” said One-Eye in a dry voice, and sat down on the grass to finish his pipe.

It was a long, laborious task. The Horse measured two hundred feet from nose to tail, and centuries of weather, abuse, and neglect had taken their toll on some of the finer work. But the clay of the Hill was dense and hard, and the shape of the Horse had been made to last, with wards and runemarks embedded at intervals to ensure that the outline would not be lost. There would be nine of them, One-Eye guessed, one for each of the Nine Worlds, and they would need to find all of them before they were able to gain entry.

It was One-Eye who discovered the first, scratched on a river stone and buried beneath the Horse’s tail.

“
Madr,
the Middle World. The Folk. A good start,” he said, touching the rune to make it shine. He whispered a cantrip—

Madr er moldar auki

—and at once, a place at the Horse’s head lit up with a corresponding gleam, and almost at once under the turf, Maddy found the rune
ýr.

“
ýr.
World Below. The Fundament. Things will move faster now.”

They did:
ýr
lit the way to
Raedo,
the Outlands, tucked underneath the Horse’s belly, then
Logr
—the One Sea—in the Horse’s mouth—