Runemarks (23 page)

1

Outside the roundhouse Nat Parson stood up on legs that felt like wet string. Audun Briggs had almost passed out—whether from fear or from too much ale he could not say—but Jed the smith was sober enough and grasped the implications of what he had just seen with commendable agility.

“Did you see her?” demanded Nat. “Did you see the girl?”

Jed nodded.

Nat felt some of his agitation recede. He was aware that Maddy had been in his thoughts rather often in the past few days and had secretly feared that his obsession might have clouded his mind. Now he felt vindicated. The girl was a demon, and there could be nothing but praise for the man who brought her to justice.

That he himself should be that man was never in doubt. With the Examiner dead, Nat Parson unilaterally proclaimed himself in charge and appointed Jed Smith (for want of anyone else) his second in command. Besides, thought Nat, Jed had every reason to want an end to the bad blood that shamed his family, and when the reinforcements from World’s End finally arrived, he would want to make it clear that his loyalties had been with Law and Order from the very beginning.

He turned to Jed, who had moved back toward the roundhouse building and was watching the fallen Huntress through the open door. Jed had never been a perceptive man, being blessed with more muscle than most but somewhat less brain, and it was clear from his expression that events had left him at a loss. Examiner dead, lawman injured, and here they were, outside a building wherein lay a demon who might awake at any time.

Jed’s eyes found his crossbow, which had fallen to the ground during his flight. “Shall I go in and finish her?”

“No,” said the parson. His head was spinning. Ambitions that had once seemed as distant as the stars now lay almost within reach. He thought fast and saw his chance. He would have to be quick. And it would be dangerous, aye—though the rewards could be great. “Leave me here. Get clothes for the demon woman. You’ll find some in my house—borrow one of Ethelberta’s gowns. Take Briggs home and sober him up. Don’t speak of this to anyone. Either of you. Understood?”

“Aye, Parson. But will you be safe?”

“Of course I will,” said the parson impatiently. “Now off you go, fellow, and leave me to my business.”

Skadi awoke and found herself in darkness. The roundhouse door was shut, the Æsir were gone, she was mysteriously clothed, and she had a headache. Only the runes she carried had prevented it from being worse—her attacker had taken her entirely unawares.

She snarled a curse and raised her glam, and in the sudden flare of light she saw the parson sitting there, looking pale but quite calm and watching her through the spyhole of the rune
Bjarkán.

In a second she had reached for her glam, but even as it took shape in her hand, the parson spoke. “Lady,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed.”

For a second Skadi was astonished at the fellow’s presumption. To imagine that she feared him—
him
! She gave a crack of laughter like splitting ice.

But she was also curious. The man seemed so singularly unafraid. She wondered what he had seen and whether he could identify the person who had knocked her down. Most of all she wondered why he had not killed her when he’d had the chance.

“Did
you
put this on me?” She indicated the gown she was wearing, a blue velvet with a bodice of stitched silver. It was one of Ethelberta’s best, and although Skadi despised a lady’s finery, preferring the skins of a wild wolf or the feathers of a hunting hawk, she was aware that someone, for some reason, had attempted to please her.

“I did, lady,” said Nat as the Huntress slowly lowered her runewhip. “Of course, you have every reason to be suspicious of me, but I assure you, I mean you no harm at all. Quite the reverse, in fact.”

Using the truesight, the Huntress looked at him once more with curiosity and contempt. Surprisingly his signature—which was a strangely mottled silver-brown—showed no attempt to deceive or betray. He genuinely believed what he was telling her, and although she now saw him to be wildly excited beneath his appearance of calm, she perceived astonishingly little fear.

“I can help you, lady,” he said. “In fact, I think we can help each other.” And he held out his hand, wherein lay a key, its teeth still red with its master’s blood.

Now, the parson had always been an ambitious man. The son of a potter of modest means, he had decided at an early age that he had no wish to follow in his father’s footsteps and had become a parson’s prentice at a fortunate time, taking over from his erstwhile master just as the old man was growing too feeble for the task.

He’d married well—to Ethelberta Goodchild, the eldest daughter of a rich valley horse-breeder. To be sure, she was nine years older than Nat, and there were some who considered her a trifle muffin-faced, but she came with a handsome settlement and excellent connections, and her father, Owen Goodchild, had once had high hopes of promotion for his new son-in-law.

But years passed, and promotion never came. Nat was already thirty-one years old, Ethelberta was childless, and he told himself that unless he took matters into his own hands, the chance of achieving something more than a simple parish in the mountains seemed distant indeed.

It was at this point that Nat began to consider the Order as a possible career. Knowing little about it except that it was for the spiritual elite, he set out on a pilgrimage to World’s End—officially to replenish his faith, in reality to discover how he might access the secrets of the Order without having to devote too much of his time to study, abstinence, or prayer.

What he found in World’s End filled Nat with excitement. He saw the great cathedral of St. Sepulchre, with its glass spire and brass dome, its slender columns, its painted windows. He saw the Law Courts, where the Order dispensed justice, and the Penitents’ Gate, where heretics were led to the gallows (though sadly the Cleansings themselves were not open to the public, for fear the canticles might be overheard). And he frequented the places where the Examiners went: he walked in their gardens, ate in their refectories, drank in their coffeehouses, and spent hours watching them in the streets, black gowns flapping, discussing some element of theory, some manuscript they had studied, waiting for his moment to discover the Word.

But of the Word itself he received no sign. The elderly Professor to whom he finally voiced his ambition told him that a prentice must study for a full twelve years before reaching the level of Junior in the Order, and that even at Examiner level it was by no means certain that a member would ever be granted the golden key.

His hopes dashed, Nat had returned to his parish in the mountains. But the image of the key had never left his mind. It became an obsession, the symbol of all that life had denied him. And when Maddy Smith had refused to break the charm upon the golden lock…

Nat looked at the key in his hand and smiled—and Skadi wondered briefly how such a fatuous smile could also appear so wolfish.

“
You?
Help
me
?” She began to laugh, an unsettling sound.

The parson watched her patiently. “We can help each other,” he said again. “The Seer-folk have something both of us want. You want revenge against those who attacked you. I want the Smith girl brought to justice. Each of us has something the other needs. Why not cooperate?”

“Gods,” said the Huntress. “I’ll give you this: I haven’t laughed so much since I hung the snake above Loki’s head. If you never make it as an Examiner, there’s a career in comedy waiting for you. What in the Worlds could you have that I need?”

Nat indicated the ravaged Book, pages scattered on the roundhouse floor. “Everything we need is in this Book. Every name, every canticle, every invocation of power. With your knowledge and the words in this Book, we could bring down every one of the Seer-folk, we could make them do whatever we want…”

Skadi picked up one of the scorched pages.

So, this Word was a kind of glam—a series of cantrips and incantations available even to the Folk. Loki had known of it, she recalled. He had feared it too, she told herself, although the Huntress could not imagine any magic of the Order being more powerful than that of the Ice People.

She scanned the page, expressionless, then dropped it back onto the ground. “I need no books,” she said.

It was then that Nat had an inspiration. Something in her eyes, perhaps, or the contemptuous way she had said
books,
or the way she’d held the page upside down…

“You can’t read, can you?” he said.

Skadi faced him with eyes like knives.

“Don’t worry,” the parson said. “I have the key. I can read for the both of us. Your powers combined with those of the Word—together we could succeed where the Order has failed. And then they’d
have
to take me in—I’d be an Examiner, maybe even a Professor…”

Skadi’s lip curled a little. “I have no use for a book or a key. But if I did, what’s to stop me from taking them both—and then killing you, just for fun—like
this
?” And she grasped hold of the parson’s hand and forced the fingers back one at a time. The key fell; there was a sound like that of a small twig snapping—

“Please! You need me!” Nat Parson screamed.

“Why?” she said, moving in for the kill.

“Because I was
there
!” the parson cried. “I was there when the Examiner cast the Word on the one-eyed Journeyman!”

The Huntress paused. “So?” she said.

“So I’ve seen
inside the General’s mind…
”

The Huntress stood as if transfixed, her eyes shining like distant glaciers. Next to her, Nat nursed his broken finger, whimpering a little in pain and relief. He had told her everything—not quite in the way that he’d envisaged it (over sherry, in the parsonage), but in a scrambling, squealing way, in terror for his life.

Lucky for him that she had believed his tale. But glam, as she knew, is volatile—and the fellow’s description of what had happened left her in no doubt. He had trespassed into the path of the Word and in doing so had glimpsed Odin’s thoughts—thoughts and plans regarding the Æsir.

Coldly the Huntress considered the Æsir. Though she had joined them for strategy’s sake, she felt no loyalty to Odin’s clan. Her father and brothers had died at their hands, and Odin himself, who had promised her full recompense, had somehow managed to renege on his deal, to trick her into marriage with Njörd when Balder the Fair had stolen her heart, and to rob her of her revenge on Loki, who had lured her kinsmen to their deaths.

The Vanir were no better, she thought, following blindly where Odin led. Skadi’s allegiance was still to the Ice People, in spite of her marriage to the Man of the Sea, and she’d always been happiest in the Ice Lands, living alone, hunting, taking eagle form and soaring over the dazzling snow.

If war were to be declared, she thought, then this time there would be no alliance. The General had betrayed her, Loki was her sworn enemy, and Maddy Smith—whoever she was—had planted her colors in the enemy camp.

She turned to Nat, who was watching her, his broken finger in his mouth. “So what did you see?” she asked him softly.

“First your word. I want the girl—and the power in that Book.”

Skadi nodded. “Very well,” she said. “But at the first sign of treachery or if I even suspect you of trying to use your book against me…”

The parson nodded.

“Then we have a deal. What did you see?”

“I saw
her,
” he said. “I saw Maddy Smith. When the Examiner asked,
Where are the Seer-folk?
—that’s what I saw in your General’s mind. That’s what he was trying to hide. And he was ready to die rather than give up her name—”

“Name?” said Skadi.

“Modi,”
said the parson. “That’s what he called her. Modi, the Lightning Tree, first child of the New Age.”

2

Meanwhile, under Red Horse Hill, Maddy was thinking furiously. One-Eye and Loki had left her alone, One-Eye to sleep and regain his strength before setting off to recover the Whisperer, Loki on some nefarious business of his own. The hall was lit only by a branch of candles, and Maddy’s shadow pranced and sprang against the stony walls as she paced repeatedly up and down.

Her initial reaction to One-Eye’s disclosure had been an immediate and overwhelming feeling of anger. That he could have kept such a secret from her for so long, only now revealing the truth at a time when battle lines were already drawn, with Maddy—like it or not—firmly on his side.

She hated the deceit of it, and yet, she thought as she paced, hadn’t a part of her longed for this? To have a purpose, a clan—a
family,
for gods’ sakes? Hadn’t the signs been there from the start? Hadn’t some part of her always known that Jed Smith and Mae were none of her blood and that Odin, for all his strangeness, was?

She did not hear Loki enter the hall. He had changed the clothes he had stolen from Audun Briggs for a fresh tunic, shirt, and soft-soled boots, and it was only when he touched her arm that she realized he was there at all. By then her agitation was so great that she almost hit him before she recognized who he was.

“Maddy, it’s me,” he protested, seeing
T
ý
r
half formed between her fingers.

Listlessly she banished the rune. “I don’t feel like talking, Loki,” she said.

“Can’t say I blame you.” Loki sighed. “Odin should have told you the truth. But try to see it from his point of view…”

“Is that why he sent you? To argue his case?”

“Well, of course he did,” said Loki. “Why else?”

Maddy couldn’t help feeling a little disarmed at his unexpected frankness. She smiled—then remembered his legendary charm.

“Forget it,” she said. “You’re as bad as he is.”

“Why? What did
I
do?”

Maddy gave an angry sniff. “Everyone knows what’s going on except me,” she said. “What am I, a child? I’m sick of it. I’m sick of
him.
And I’m sick of being treated as if I don’t matter. I thought he
liked
me.” She sniffed again, more fiercely than before, and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. “I thought he was my friend,” she said.

Loki gave his crooked smile.

“So what does he want? A war with the Order? Is that why he needs the Whisperer?”

Loki shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“But he doesn’t have a chance!” she said. “Even with the Vanir on our side, it would still be the ten of us against
all
of the Order, and anyway”—she lowered her voice—“the Whisperer practically
told
me he’d lose.”

Loki’s eyes widened. “You mean it made a prophecy? It made a prophecy and you didn’t think to tell anyone about it?”

“Well, it didn’t make sense,” said Maddy awkwardly. “I don’t even know if it was a prophecy at all. It just kept saying things like
I speak as I must and—
”

“Gods,” said Loki, disgusted. “It made a prophecy. To
you.
After all these years I’ve been trying to persuade it to say something—
anything.
” Eagerly he leaned closer. “Did it mention me at all?”

“It wanted me to kill you. Said you’d turn out to be nothing but trouble.”

“Ah. That figures. What else did it say?”

“Something about a terrible war. Thousands dead at a single word. Something about waking the Sleepers…a traitor…and a general—a general standing alone…”

“And when were you planning to tell him all this?”

Maddy was silent.

“Well?”

“I don’t know.”

Loki began to laugh softly. But Maddy was scarcely paying attention. Dry-mouthed, she recalled the Whisperer’s words, struggled to remember the exact phrasing. It sounded more like verse to her now, bleak verse in the language of prophecy.

I see an army poised for battle.

I see a general standing alone.

I see a traitor at the gate.

I see a sacrifice.

The dead will awake from the halls of Hel.

And the Nameless shall rise and Nine Worlds be lost,

Unless the Seven Sleepers wake

And the Thunderer be freed from Netherworld…

“It’s coming true,” she said at last. “The Sleepers are awake. The Order is coming. It said the Nine Worlds would be lost…” Maddy swallowed, feeling sick. “And I can’t help thinking it’s all my fault.
I
was the one who woke the Sleepers.
I
was the one who recovered the Whisperer. If I’d left it in the fire pit—” She broke off and frowned. “But why is the General standing alone? Why aren’t we with him?” Once more Maddy began to pace up and down in the dark hall.
“This isn’t what I wanted!”
she yelled.

“Believe it or not,” said Loki sourly, “I’m not altogether thrilled to be here, either. But I have no choice—without Odin I’m already dead. The fact that I have a very good chance of ending up dead anyway doesn’t
exactly
fill me with enthusiasm.”

“Then
tell
me,” said Maddy urgently. “Tell me the truth. Who am I really? And why am I here?”

Loki watched her with a little smile across his scarred lips. “The truth?” he said.

“Yes.
All
of it.”

“The General won’t like that,” he said.

All the more reason to tell her,
he thought, and deep in his stomach, Loki grinned.