Runemarks

“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 yr.

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

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

– then, for each of its legs, Bjarkan, for the world of Dream, Naudr, for the Underworld-

– Hagall, for Netherworld, and Kaen, for Chaos or World Beyond-

– and finally, right in the middle of the Eye itself, the rune of the Sky Citadel-

– Os, the ?sir, brightest of all, like the central star in the constellation of Thiazi, the Hunter, which hangs over the Seven Sleepers on clear winter nights.

Os. The ?sir. The Firmament. Maddy looked at the rune in silence. This was the moment of which she had dreamed, and yet now that she was so close, she felt a curious reluctance to proceed. It angered her a little, and yet she was conscious of a tiny part of her that wanted above all to step away from the threshold and walk back to Malbry and the safety of its familiar cleft.

One-Eye must have sensed it; he gave a little smile and put his hand on Maddy’s shoulder. “Not afraid, are you, girl?”

“No. Are you?”

“A little,” he said. “It’s been so long…” He took out his pipe, relit it, and drew in a mouthful of sweet smoke. “Foul habit,” he said. “Picked it up from the Tunnel People on one of my trips. Master smiths, you know, but terrible hygiene. I think the smoke helps them disguise the smell.”

Maddy touched the final rune. It flared opal colors like the winter sun. She spoke the cantrip:

Os byth ordfruma…

The Hill opened with a sliding crash, and where the Eye had been there was now a narrow, raw-sided tunnel sliding downward into the earth.

6

Five hundred years ago, around the dawn of the New Age, there had been few strongholds more secure than the castle on Red Horse Hill. Built on a steep mound overlooking the valley, it commanded the entire plain, and its cannon were forever pointed at the Hindarfell pass, which was the only possible place along the Seven Sleepers ridge from which an enemy could attack.

In fact, it was a mystery to the people of Malbry how the castle had fallen at all, unless it was by plague or treachery, because from the broken stone circle, you could see all the way to Fettlefields to the north and, to the south, to Forge’s Post, at the foot of the mountains.

The road was wide open, barely shielded by gorse and sparse scrubland, and the sides of the Hill itself were too steep for men in armor to climb.

But Adam Scattergood wore no armor, the cannon had long since been melted down, and it had been fully five hundred years since a lookout had stood on Red