Runemarks (39 page)

7

In Netherworld—what was left of it—Loki definitely
wasn’t
where he wanted to be. He’d felt the severing of his Aspect from his physical self, and his quick mind had come to the following conclusions:

First and most importantly, he was dead.

That hadn’t come entirely as a surprise. In fact, as far as Loki was concerned, the real surprise was how far he had managed to get before it finally happened. But the face of Hel’s deathwatch told its own tale—thirteen seconds remained on the clock, which meant that for the first time in the history of the Worlds, Half-Born Hel had broken her word.

All right,
he thought.
Let’s look on the bright side of this. The bright side is that though my body may be dead, my Aspect remains here, in Netherworld.

Not much of a bright side. Still, he thought, the
really
stupid thing at this stage would have been to seek refuge in the Underworld. He’d tried to explain this to Maddy as she dragged him, protesting, toward Hel’s borders, but either she hadn’t heard him or she simply hadn’t understood, because if she’d managed to drag him through, then he would have been Hel’s plaything by now, helpless and forever in her power, like the countless other souls that sighed and keened on the dusty plains of the Land of the Dead.

However (and now we come to the second point), to be trapped against an immovable barrier on one side with Surt on the rampage in his full Aspect on the other—for so he interpreted the sounds coming through from World Beyond—was hardly an enviable position either.

And thirdly, there were the Æsir. He’d managed to evade their attention till now, but as he looked up from the foot of the gate, Loki was uncomfortably conscious of the four familiar Aspects that now flanked him.

Let’s face it,
he thought.
There is no bright side
—

—and bolted.

Predictably he didn’t get far. He shifted to his fiery Aspect only to find himself pinned in on all four sides.

“Not so fast,” said Thor. “You owe us an explanation.”

“He owes us more than that,” said T
ýyr.

Of course, Loki knew that the one-handed god had more than one reason to distrust him, given that it had been his fault that T
ýr lost the hand in the first place. Now he loomed over the Trickster, his signature blazing a fierce orange, his right hand (renewed in Aspect) a miracle of mindweaponry, a gauntlet of glamours that doubled his strength.

“Hit him,” said Sif—whose long hair Loki had once cut off as a joke and who had never allowed anyone to forget it. “Go on, Thor, give him one from me.”

“Oh, give me a break,” said Loki. “I just gave my
life
for you people—”

“How?” said T
ýr.

Loki told him.

“So, what you’re saying is,” said T
ýr, “that it’s actually
your
fault that all this has happened. If you hadn’t been so damn careless—”

“Careless!”

“Well, unless anyone thinks that destroying half of Netherworld doesn’t count as careless, to say nothing of awakening the Destroyer, opening a rift into Chaos, releasing Jormungand back into the Worlds, and basically bringing about the second Ragnarók—”

“Leave him alone.”

That was Frigg, the Mother of the gods, and even the Thunderer hesitated to defy her. A tall, quiet woman with soft brown hair, she might have been unremarkable but for the intelligence in her gray eyes; as it was, her patience and dignity had often overcome trials that even the most powerful weapons had failed to defeat. As one of the few who had visited the Land of the Dead and returned, she had the occasional gift of second sight, and now all eyes were on her as she said, “There may yet be an escape for all of us.”

Thor made a scornful noise. “In this shambles? I say fight…”

Frigg looked out across the swollen river. The armies of the Order could be seen quite clearly now, eerily still on the dead plain.

“This is not a shambles,” she said. “All this was planned very carefully. Our escape from the fortress, the closing of the gate, the destruction of Netherworld, even Hel’s treachery—none of this was random. It suggests that we were brought here for a specific purpose and that the enemy—whoever he is—has a plan in which the destruction of the Æsir is only one part.”

Thor grunted again, but T
ýr was looking interested. “Why?” he said.

“No,” said Frigg. “The question is
who
?”

Everyone thought about that for a moment.

“Well, Surt, I suppose,” said T
ýr at last.

Thor nodded. “Who else is there?”

“Surt was in his kennel, sleeping off Ragnarók. The battle was won. His enemies were dead or imprisoned in Netherworld. What business would he have in the Middle Worlds? And more to the point”—Frigg turned to Loki, indicating with one hand the silent ranks on the far side of the river—“what business would he have with such as these?”

“You’re right,” said Loki. “It isn’t Surt. Chaos is his business, not Order. He wouldn’t know how to raise an army like this. He may be powerful, but behind it all he’s just another guard dog, trained to bite on command. Surt doesn’t do subtleties.”

Sif flicked her hair. “You seem to know a lot about it,” she said. “And
you
do subtleties.”

“Yeah. Like I’ve always wanted to destroy the Nine Worlds while committing suicide.”

“Well, there’s no need to be
rude,
” protested Sif.

“But Loki is right,” said Frigg quietly. “Surt, for all his power, is just a tool of Chaos. A machine. Someone set him into motion. Someone who knew that we’d be here, that our escape would galvanize his rage.”

The gods were looking puzzled now. “But there’s no one else,” protested T
ýr. “There’s no one left after Ragnarók. A few giants, maybe, a demon or two, the Folk…”

But Loki’s hand had gone to his mouth. His eyes widened.

“He knows,” said Frigg gently.

“
Does
he?” said Thor.

“The girl wanted to rescue her father,” Frigg continued. “She knew he was in Netherworld. But who told her that? Who encouraged her? Who led her here at just the right time, and who made sure Loki was with her—Loki, whose presence ensured maximum havoc in Netherworld and who could also be used, among other things, as bait?”

“So it
was
his fault…”

Frigg shook her head. “I said,
who
?”

There was a silence.

All around them the screaming, the rushing, the sounds of rocks tearing away from the sides of the fortress and crashing into each other like worlds—everything came to a stop.

And in the silence Loki began to laugh.

And a blackbird shadow with a corona of fire reared up its head from between the Worlds and began to move across the vastness of Chaos toward them.

8

If Hel’s living eye was merciless, the dead one was like a burial pit. Maddy bore its gaze for seconds before she managed to look away.

“Am I dead?” she said.

“Damn, she’s awake.”

The dry voice was that of the Whisperer, but the figure was one she had never seen: a bent old man, garbed in light, carrying a runestaff that crackled with glam.

“Apparently you’re alive, my dear. Against all expectation you made it in time. Of course, it would have been most inconvenient from my point of view to see you discorporated at this stage. But I’d hoped to do things differently. Still, you’re here, and that’s what counts—”

“What things?” said Maddy.

“Why, my revenge.”

“Revenge against whom?”

“The Æsir, of course.”

Maddy shook her aching head. Still dazed after her wild flight through Netherworld, she stared at the gleaming figure that had blossomed from the Head and tried to understand its ludicrous words.

“The Æsir?” she said. “But—you’re on their side.”

“Their side?
Their
side?” The ancient voice was harsh with contempt. “And what side’s that, you silly girl? Order? Chaos? A bit of both?”

Maddy tried to sit up, but her head was spinning.

“What have the Æsir done for me? They plundered my talents, they got me killed; then, as if that wasn’t enough, they condemned me to this—to be picked up and put away at my master’s whim…” The Whisperer gave a dry little crack of laughter. “And for that,” it said, “I was supposed to feel
grateful
? To let them start all over again?”

“But I don’t understand. You helped me…”

“Well, you’re special,” said the Whisperer.

“And Loki?”

It smirked. “Well—he was a bit special too.”

Maddy looked around abruptly, half expecting to find Loki gone. She’d dragged him as far as the gate, she knew, but beyond that everything was blurred. Had she saved him after all?

He was lying beside her, eyes closed. Pale and still though he was, he looked far better than his battered counterpart in Netherworld, and Maddy was immediately reassured. Of course, if he’d died, she told herself, then his body wouldn’t be there at all and his shade would already be walking Hel’s halls, along with the ghosts of his family.

Maddy took a deep breath. “I thought he was the traitor,” she said.

The Whisperer smiled. “And so did he. In fact, he was merely a pawn in my service, as he has been for the best part of five hundred years. He thought I was his prisoner—never suspecting that he was mine. He tried to trick me, as I knew he would, but even a traitor can serve my plan. He’d served it before, at Ragnarók—which in many ways, incidentally,
I
engineered.”

“Engineered it? How?”

“I manipulated the gods to do as I’d planned: I tempted the weak; I flattered the strong; I guided their enemies, made cryptic pronouncements and secret alliances, entered their minds with treacherous thoughts. Odin never saw how he’d been deceived. Even when his brother turned against him, he never suspected the whisperer in the shadows. And now, once more, they have played into my hands. As of course, my dear, have you.”

Maddy listened in growing horror. In front of her she could see the ranks of the Order, silent now, awaiting the Word. Behind her, a single glance told her that the river Dream was rising to flood level: filaments of raw glam hovered over its teeming waters;
things
moved in its unspeakable deeps. Soon, she knew, it would break its banks and spill its nightmare across the plains of Hel. But beyond the river was even worse. Netherworld was coming apart; the illusion of a fortress—or even an island—was long gone now in the churning mess. Rocks circled each other in air that was clotted with ephemera; souls flitted by like moths around a lamp.

“So Loki was right,” she said softly. “You made a deal with the Order, and you’re keeping control of these men somehow.”

The Whisperer smiled. “A deal?” it said. “Maddy, I
made
the Order. From Chaos I brought it, after the war. I was free then, the gods were imprisoned, and I sought my disciples among the Folk. The Folk have remarkable minds, you know—rivaling the gods in ambition and pride. I gave them the Good Book—a collection of commandments and prophecies and names of power—and they gave me their minds. By the time your friends escaped from Netherworld, my Order had grown to five hundred men. Scholars, historians, politicians, priests. Five hundred pairs of eyes abroad, linked to me through Communion, the beginnings of an army that would change the Worlds. Little by little, but always through me: the still, small voice of the Nameless.”

“The Nameless?” repeated Maddy blankly.

It gave its dry and humorless laugh. “Everything has a name, you know. Names are the building blocks of Creation. And now, at last, My prophecy is fulfilled, and I shall arise as the leader of an invading army. Ten thousand men, all armed with the Word, all loyal to Me and incapable of betrayal. With them I can do anything: raise the dead, reorder the Worlds. This time we’ll win, no doubt about it, and this time we’ll take no prisoners.”

Once more Maddy looked at the Whisperer. It looked insubstantial in this new Aspect, and yet there was no mistaking the power at its fingers; trails of glamour snapped around it, and Maddy knew that just one touch from its staff would be enough to reduce her to a smear of ash.

Where is it getting the power?
she thought.

The answer formed itself almost before the question was posed. It was standing before her, set out in orderly columns across the plain.

Slowly she rose to her feet, keeping a distance between herself and the Nameless. From time to time her eyes went back to the figure of Loki at her feet, eyes closed, hands folded neatly over a chest that neither rose nor fell.

“Forget him; he’s dead,” said the Whisperer.

“No,” said Maddy. “He can’t be.”

“Of course he can,” said the Whisperer. “Dead, done, and good riddance.”

She put out a hand to touch Loki’s face. It was still warm. “But he’s here.” Her voice shook. “His body is here.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Whisperer. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t belong to him anymore. You see, Hel and I had a certain arrangement. A life for a life. A bargain, I think.”

Maddy stared at Hel, who stared back, impassive, her living hand folded over her dead one, both resting on the deathwatch around her neck. Thirteen seconds remained on the clock.

“You broke your promise,” said Maddy in astonishment.

“By a few seconds—”

“
That’s
why he’s still here. You cheated him. You stole his time—”

“Don’t be childish,” said Hel crossly. “A few seconds. He would have died anyway.”

“He trusted you—he spoke of a balance…”

Maddy was almost sure she saw a flush against the dead pallor of Hel’s living profile.

“No matter,” said Hel. “What’s done is done. Thanks to your friend and his pet snake, Chaos has already breached Netherworld, and it cannot be reopened without placing
this
World—maybe
all
the Worlds—in jeopardy. Right or wrong, it cannot be changed. And now, Mimir”—she addressed the Whisperer in an altered tone—“your part of the deal.”

The Whisperer nodded. “Balder,” it said.

“Balder?” said Maddy.

So that was what he’d promised Hel. Balder’s return—in a living body…

“And it
had
to be Loki,” she said aloud. “It couldn’t have been me, for instance, or any other casual visitor, because Balder the Fair, of all the Æsir, would never be party to the death of an innocent…”

“Well reasoned, Maddy,” said the Whisperer in its dry voice. “But as we know, Loki’s no innocent. And so everyone’s happy—well,
almost
everyone. Surt gets Netherworld and everything in it—including our deserters, for whom I imagine he has interesting times in store. Hel gets her heart’s desire. And I?” Once more, it smiled. “My freedom at last. My freedom—from
him.
”

At that the old face twisted in rage, and the eyes, which had always been as cold as glass, blazed with a light from which all sanity had been scoured away.

“Here, in the flesh,” the Whisperer said. “Here on the plain, I’ll meet him—and this time I’ll kill him, and I will be free.”

“But why?” said Maddy. “Odin was your
friend
—”

The Whisperer gave a dry hiss. “Friend?” it said. “He was no friend to Me. He used Me when it suited him, that’s all. I was his instrument, his slave; and tell Me, little girl—what is it a slave dreams of? Do you know? Can you guess?”

“Freedom?” said Maddy.

“No,” said the Whisperer.

“Then what?”

“The slave dreams of being the master.”

“First, Balder,” said Hel, who had been watching the river with her dead eye.

“Ah, yes, of course. How could I delay?” And now the Whisperer raised its staff—red lightning crackled from the tip, and Maddy felt the hairs on her arms and head crackle with static in response.

But the power it raised was not against Maddy. It distressed the air like a storm in a bottle, casting shards of lightning onto the plain; it troubled the sky so that crow-colored clouds gathered overhead, and then the Whisperer opened its mouth to speak the Word.

“Balder,” it said, and the Word it spoke echoed from the mouths of every one of the ten thousand dead.
“Balder,”
it said.
“Come forth.”

Maddy did not hear the Word, but she felt it. Suddenly her nose bled, her teeth ached; a haze seemed to come between herself and the world and she felt a sensation of
drawing,
of
stretching.
And now a light surrounded Loki’s body (she still could not bear to think of it as his corpse) and slowly that Aspect of him began to fade, to alter, so that as she watched, his hair changed color, his lips lost their scars, the angles of his face softened and changed shape, and his eyes opened—not fire green as before, but a sunny, gold-flecked, summery blue.

If she tried, she could still see Loki behind the new Aspect, but it was like looking at a picture against which a lantern show had been projected. Nothing was clear; it was impossible to say where Loki ended and Balder began.

Maddy gave a cry of grief.

Hel’s lips parted in a soundless gasp.

The Whisperer bared its teeth in satisfaction.

And Balder the Beautiful, prisoner of Death these five hundred years, stirred, sleepy at first, and then into wide, blue-eyed, astonished life.

“Welcome back, Lord Balder,” said Hel.

But Balder was scarcely paying attention. “Wait a minute,” he said.

His hand went quickly to his face. Through the gleam of his Aspect Maddy could still see Loki’s features, like something glimpsed through thick ice, and as Balder’s fingers moved tentatively against his forehead, his cheek, his chin, his air of puzzlement deepened.

“There’s something funny about this,” he said. He pressed his fingers once more to his lips. At the pressure, Loki’s scars reappeared briefly, then faded again—reappeared—faded—reappeared…

His hand went to the glam on his arm.
Kaen,
reversed, now glowing white hot.

“Hang on,” said Balder. “I never used to be Loki, did I?”