Runemarks (36 page)

14

As it happened, Loki was waiting in a cell in Netherworld as Maddy prepared to meet the Thunderer.

This cell was entirely different from the one Loki had occupied. For a start, it looked neat and comfortable: there was a bed with sheets and a thick quilt, there was a standard lamp with a fringed lampshade, a small flowered rug, a window looking out onto green fields. On the window ledge there was a vase of flowers. A small occasional table stood by the bed, on which Maddy could see something that looked very like a tray of tea and biscuits. And beside the table was a rocking chair, in which a very small, very old lady was working on a piece of knitting.

Behind her Loki began to laugh. “So
this
is Thor the Thunderer’s cell,” he said. “Gods, Thor, I knew you were twisted, but this is ridiculous.”

Maddy turned to him, bewildered. “I thought you said my father was here.”

“And so he is,” said Loki, grinning.

“I don’t understand.”

Loki indicated the old lady, still rocking and knitting in her chair. “Meet Ellie,” he said. “Otherwise known as Old Age.” Once more he began to laugh, his eyes gleaming with mischief and amusement.

Ellie looked up from her knitting and fixed Maddy with a pair of eyes as black and bright as a bird’s. “Be quiet,” she said. “My husband’s asleep.”

Maddy stepped quietly up to the bed. Sure enough, there was someone lying under the quilt; she could just make out the curve of a shoulder, the baby growth of white hair across a skull that was as fine and delicate as a robin’s egg.

“You stop that,” said Ellie, standing up with the aid of a walking stick. “Have some respect for your elders and betters.”

“I’m sorry,” said Maddy. “I’m looking for my father…”

“Your father, eh?”

“Thor, son of Odin. The one they call the Thunderer.”

Now the old lady’s apple-doll face split into a thousand wrinkles. “You must have made a mistake, my dear,” she said. “There’s only me and my man here—and he’s sick, poor fellow, almost to the grave…”

Maddy turned to Loki. “You lied,” she said. “My father’s not here.”

Loki shook his head. “Remember what I told you, Maddy,” he said. “In the Black Fortress each man makes his own cell; each prisoner appoints his own jailer from the ranks of his deepest, most inescapable fears.”

“His fears?”

“With me, as you know, it was snakes. With him it’s Old Age and a comfortable bed. Each to his own.”

As he spoke, Loki had moved across to the other side of the bed, and now Maddy could see him fingering small runes into his left hand like darts, ready to cast. He was still smiling, but his eyes were narrowed with concentration.

“Now you stop that,” snapped Ellie, grabbing her stick and hobbling quickly to the far side of the bed. “I’ll not have you waking my husband.”

Loki stepped out of her way. She was old, but she was fast, and the stick that she carried crackled with runelight.

“Stand clear,” he told Maddy, and at wildfire speed cast the first of his runes—she recognized
Ós
—at the sleeping figure. Loki’s colors dimmed a little more; the old man flinched and muttered; a thin hand clutched at the sheets.

Ellie was looking distinctly menacing now. Her button black eyes gleamed with rage; her crone’s face was a distorted mask. “Young man, I’m warning you,” she said.

Now Loki flung a second rune—it was
Naudr,
reversed—once more his colors dimmed, and the old man gave a cry, as if in the throes of a fearsome dream.

Ellie gave a squawk of outrage and hit out at Loki with her runestick.

He stepped back in haste, and the blow missed him by a hairsbreadth, pulverizing the table that lay between them. She struck again—missed—and the last flickering handful of runes shot out from between Loki’s fingers and struck the old man squarely in the chest.

“What are you
doing
?” shouted Maddy above the shrill cries of the angry crone.

Loki said nothing but stood there and smiled. His signature was fading fast; the violet glow was ghostly pale. But the room was changing. Gone was the window with its pleasant view; now a slit in the wall looked out onto the void of Netherworld. The rest too—chair, curtains, flower vase—had vanished, leaving only the bed—now a simple stone ledge decked with rotting straw—and its single occupant.

And on the ledge, before their eyes, the old man shifted and flexed, grew muscle, grew bulk and more bulk, grew hair as red as Loki’s own, grew a red beard that bristled furiously, opened eyes as hot and dark as embers.

The Thunderer awoke in full Aspect, and the ground shook beneath his tread.

“Now’s the time to keep your promise,” Loki told Maddy, backing as far away from the menacing figure as the dimensions of the tiny room would permit.

Thor followed him in a single step, sweeping Ellie aside as he came, and stopped twelve inches away, standing fully two feet taller than Loki, his hands crackling with crimson runelight.

“What promise?” said Maddy.

“Your promise to intercede on my behalf if any family members happened to—shall we say—take umbrage at my continued survival.”

“Oh,” said Maddy. “
That
promise.”

Thor clamped a fist the size of a Midwinter goose around Loki’s neck.
“You,”
he said in a thunderous voice. “I’m going to break every bone in your body, starting with your miserable neck. And then I’m going to break them all over again, just to make sure I haven’t missed any. And then I’m going to grind all the broken bits together. And after
that
”—he gave a large, red, friendly grin—“I’m going to have to hurt you a bit.”

“I may have omitted to tell you,” said Loki, “that our friend here and I have certain…
issues
—”

Thor’s fingers tightened over his throat, cutting off his remaining air supply.

“Help—”
said Loki.

And as Maddy put her hand on the thunder god’s arm and said,
“Father—”
there came a sudden unimaginable sound at the door of the cell and the World Serpent came crashing through it, its massive coils filling the room.

Thor looked at Maddy. “What d’you mean,
Father
?”

He had loosened his grip on Loki, who was now flattened against the cell wall as far from Jormungand as he could manage while Ellie, incensed at this latest invasion, lashed out at the serpent with her walking stick.

“Terrific,” said Loki under his breath. “Come to Netherworld. Meet the kids.”

Thor, no quick thinker, was having difficulty coming to terms. “You’re my daughter?” he said slowly. “Surely I’d have remembered that.”

Behind them the crone was holding out gamely against the World Serpent. Old Age conquers everything in the end, of course, and although the blows that fell against Jormungand were comparatively feeble, Ellie seemed impervious to the serpent’s venom.

“I hate to butt in,” said Loki, “but if we could keep this to the point…? Thor, this is Maddy. She’s come to break you out of here. As have I. Not that you’ll appreciate
that,
of course—you’re far too busy planning to smash every bone in my body to feel an ounce of gratitude—but we now have
nineteen
minutes left, and personally I’d rather go into this some other—”

“Nineteen minutes for what?” said Thor. In the face of danger he seemed happier and more alert; his beard bristled; in fact, his whole Aspect was that of a thunder god preparing for war and enjoying every minute of it.

“Listen,” said Loki impatiently. “This is the heart of Netherworld. Just being here creates a disruption you can’t imagine. I mean, we’ve hardly gone out of our way to be discreet. We’ve already punched holes in a hundred dreams, let a hundred demons escape, including Old Age
and
the World Serpent, so if we’re going to get out of here, we’ll have to rely on brains, not muscle. Which, let’s face it, old friend—”

Thor’s face darkened. He shot out his fist—

“You need me,” said Loki, ducking.

“Need you why?”

“Because I know how to free the gods.”

Maddy’s eyes were very bright as the Trickster explained his latest plan. She was beginning to think she’d misjudged Loki, and she was suddenly ashamed at her past belief that he was the traitor at the gate.

She wanted to tell him so, but there wasn’t time. The deathwatch stood at sixteen minutes, and between them, Ellie and Jormungand seemed determined to tear the room apart. Runelight crackled around them both, and the air was so thick with venom that Maddy’s eyes burned and stung.

“Now listen,” said Loki urgently. “You’ll have to protect me—both of you. My glam’s almost out, and I don’t stand a chance if it comes to a fight. Plus we’ll have to be very fast.”

The Thunderer rumbled his assent.

“Well, as we know,” Loki went on, “our friend Jormungand moves through dreams. Beneath that uncouth exterior he’s really just another worm, sliding his way down toward his lair. Or in this case, as it happens, the river Dream. Are you with me so far?”

“Get on with it,” growled Thor.

“Until now,” Loki explained, “we’ve done what we could to slow him down. A creature his size attracts attention, makes holes in the fabric of Netherworld like the holes in Ridings cheese. But what if we
wanted
to make those holes? Let Jorgi run amok in the right place, and we could engineer a breakout the like of which has never been seen in all of Chaos. All we need is to lay the bait—”

“Bait?”
said Thor. “What is this, a fishing trip?”

“Fifteen minutes,” said Loki, looking at Maddy. “Just follow the snake. And don’t stop for
anything.
”

Thor’s beard bristled dangerously. “Tell me, runt. What bait do you use?”

But Maddy had already understood. A chill went down her spine as Loki, corpse-pale in his diminishing colors,
sidestepped
through the cell wall into nothingness.

“Bait?” she said. “Himself, of course.”

15

In a second Jormungand was after him, Old Age still clinging to its sweltering coils. Stone fell away from the damaged wall; a second assault punched right through, giving Thor and Maddy a sudden, dizzying perspective into the next cell. The serpent made for the hole at once, and for what seemed an age they watched its oil-black length squeeze and press itself through the crumbling gap.

“Hang on,” said Maddy to Thor, and flinging her arms around the serpent’s tail, she prepared to follow it into the unknown. Beside her, Thor was doing the same: his fingers dug into Jormungand’s coils, his knees pressed into the creature’s flanks. It was something like riding a bareback horse, Maddy told herself—albeit a legless horse three hundred feet long that oozed a venomous pus. It stank, and yet she held on tight, eyes shut against the poison mist that came from the serpent’s mouth.

For an instant she opened them—and found herself flying for the second time above the sickening vista of Netherworld. Cries of torment rose from below; rags of dream fell away beneath her like clouds. And then they were falling into the pit; above them the air was aswarm with ephemera. Maddy closed her eyes—

—and opened them again as the World Serpent shrieked through a tunnel of lights at the end of which a single figure—a man, she thought—seemed to hang, turning, on a wheel of stars. Beneath them some creature that seemed all eyes snapped at Jormungand—and then they were through again into open space, where pits of fire released a sulfurous stench and a blond-haired woman wrestled with a giant spindly armored cockroach above a crater lined with human bones.

Beside her she was conscious of Thor flinging missiles at the ephemera below. His strength was colossal, and when he struck, the aftershock was great enough to rip holes in the barren land beneath them and to send great chunks of Netherworld spinning wildly into space.

They passed in this way over a dozen vistas, through a dozen cells and a dozen tunnels. In their wake dreams were shattered, cell walls broken, dreamers roused. Maddy could only guess at most of this—her eyes were burning from the serpent’s venom and she needed all her strength simply to hold on.

The Thunderer, at least, was enjoying himself. He’d picked up the general idea by now, although the subtleties had more or less passed him by. Thor was not a great thinker, but he knew a demon when he saw one, and this place was filled with them. Back in Aspect, hurling mindbolts, he felt almost happy again, and the memories of five hundred years slipped gently away like a distant dream.

There was no sign at all of Loki. His fading signature was lost among the multitude of ephemera and trails of light, and his figure—desperately small next to the huge bulk of the serpent that pursued him—had long since been lost to Maddy’s sight. She could only hope he was still alive; beneath her Jormungand’s coils lashed ferociously as the serpent gained strength, cutting and slashing as it went, a machine chopping into the dream fortress like hay.

Pieces of Netherworld sheared away in its wake; dreamers broke free—though whether they were Æsir or not, Maddy had no way of telling; ephemera were scattered to the winds like chaff. Once Maddy even thought she glimpsed what lay
behind
the walls of Netherworld: a spiraling, sucking darkness knitted with dead stars. A chill went through her.

My gods, is that Chaos?

She closed her eyes and held on.

16

Hel’s Guardian was watching through the shutter of her dead eye.

“He’s really done it this time,” she said, not without a kind of admiration. “That snake is definitely getting bigger. Of course, if his fears are giving it strength…”

In her hands the Whisperer glowed fiercely. “Just kill him,” it said. “The girl too.”

“I can’t,” said Hel. “I swore an oath.”

The deathwatch in her hand—the identical twin of the one Loki still wore around his neck—showed the time at fifty-one minutes. He might well make it. He was close: through her all-seeing dead eye she could see him coming, blazing through the air like a comet, with the snake on his tail and a trail of dreamers in his wake. Nine minutes—less now—and if he failed to cross the river, then his body and Maddy’s would cease to exist, leaving them trapped in a Netherworld that was already coming apart at the seams, showing the dead light of World Beyond.

“What difference does nine minutes make?” said the Whisperer. “Go on, kill him, before he does any more damage.” Its voice was urgent, and it pulsed now with a greenish light, throwing restless shadows onto Hel’s face.

“You’re asking me to break my word.”

“Your
word
?” snapped the Whisperer. “What’s your word to such as him? Go on, he’s helpless—kill him now, for gods’ sakes, kill him before it’s too
late
…”

“I can’t.” Hel looked at the deathwatch. “My word binds me for another…eight minutes.”

The Whisperer glowered, and its colors flared like dragonfire. It had known, of course, that Hel would be difficult to bargain with, even with Loki’s full cooperation. But Loki—freed from its influence, restored to his Aspect in Netherworld—Loki had taken Maddy’s side, had actually dared to try to
free the gods
…

Did you think you could earn their forgiveness, Trickster? Win back your place among the Æsir? Did you think even Thor could protect you from me?

With an effort the Whisperer curbed its rage. The gods might escape, but where would they go? To enter the Underworld would mean only death for all of them—for bodiless, they were Hel’s property, to do with what she pleased.

Of course, they could always escape into Dream, though this too was not without its perils. For to enter Dream so close to its source was a risk that even the damned might think twice about taking.

Seven minutes remained, and with a wrench the Whisperer turned its gaze from the scene across the river. “I can help you, lady,” it said in a voice that was suddenly all honey. “I know what you want, and only I can give it to you…”

Hel opened both eyes. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Don’t you?” said the Whisperer.

The seconds passed. Six minutes.

“
Don’t
you?” said the Whisperer.

“I can’t,” said Hel, but her voice was faint.

“Oh, but you can,” wheedled the Whisperer. “One little cut—a snip, no more—and everything you’ve ever wanted can be yours. A life for a life, Goddess. Loki’s life—all five minutes of it—and in exchange you could have Balder back again. Imagine that. Balder, alive. Warm. Breathing. And
yours,
Goddess. All yours.”

For long seconds more Hel was silent. “I can’t break my word,” she said at last. “The balance between Order and Chaos depends on my neutrality.”

“With or without you,” said the Whisperer, “the balance between Order and Chaos may soon be challenged.”

Hel’s living eye was all hunger in her pallid face. “How so?” she asked.

The Whisperer allowed itself the luxury of a smile. “Do we have a deal, Goddess?”

“Tell me
how,
damn your eyes!”

Glowing, it told her.

Across the river Loki shot like a flaming missile toward the gates of Netherworld. Hel could see that he was almost burned out now, his signature like that of a guttering flame, his face twisted with effort and concentration.

Behind him came Thor, Maddy, the serpent with Old Age still clinging to its tail, and, behind that, the dreamers. Dreamers in their hundreds—in their
thousands
—trailing them in shoals as the fortress disintegrated, all of them making for the river.

And now a tremor went through the Underworld, a deep tremor that rocked all of Hel to its foundations, moving rocks that had lain still since the beginning of the world and sending shock waves through the ranks of the dead, making bones dance, dust fly, mist scatter, and a howl of outrage rise from Hel’s parched throat.

“What is going
on
here?” shrieked the goddess of the Dead. The deathwatch in her hand showed barely eighty-five seconds remaining.

“That’s Chaos itself, knocking at your door. Chaos, in search of its prisoners. If Loki escapes, it will break through—”

“
Loki
did this?”

“Kill him now. Save your kingdom and yourself.”

“What if you’re wrong, Oracle?”

“You’ll still have Balder—will you refuse?”

“Balder.” For the second time in five hundred years Hel gave an involuntary sigh.

“Seventy seconds.”

“But I—”

“Sixty seconds, and you’ll see Balder alive. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven—”

“All right! All
right
!” Hel stretched out her dead hand—the fingers were bones, brittle and yellow in the eerie light. In its spidery shadow Loki slept, one arm flung out across Hel’s sandy floor, a tiny smile on his scarred lips. The silver thread that linked him to Netherworld gleamed like a skein of spiderweb.

“Do it, lady. Take his life.”

Hel reached out her dead hand and snapped the thread.

And at that very moment there came a terrible ripping, splitting, splintering sound—as of Worlds being torn apart at the seams—and all of these things happened at once:

Sugar’s runestone turned black as pitch.

Odin felt a wave of energy rush past him as ten thousand of the newly dead poured over him into the Underworld.

In Netherworld, Jormungand cleared the gates and plunged headlong toward the river Dream.

Loki followed, with seconds to spare—and ran full tilt into an invisible barrier that sent him into a deadly spiral, plummeting out of control back into the pit.

And in World’s End, Magister Number 262, a man who in another life had answered to the name of Fortune Goodchild, had time only to ask himself,
How can we possibly march to Netherworld?
before the Nameless spoke a single Word and he fell, stone dead, onto the floor of the Council of Twelve.

“It’s beginning,” said the Whisperer.

“What’s beginning?” said Hel.

“The end,” said the Whisperer, glowing softly. “The last meeting between Order and Chaos. The final End of Everything.”

And now Hel saw it starting to change: the stone Head sprouted like a ghastly flower, the air was taking a definite shape, and now she could see its true Aspect, spectral at first but brightening visibly. A shining figure, slightly bent; hooded eyes in a lean face; a staff of runes that gleamed and spun.

“Who are you?” said Hel.

The Whisperer smiled. “My dear, I’ve been so many things. I was Mimir the Wise. I was Odin’s friend and confidante. I was the Oracle who predicted Ragnarók. My name is Untold, for I have many. But as we’re friends, you may call me the Ancient of Days.”