Runemarks

“Sugar. You deaf? Short for Sugar-and-Sack. Well? You don’t think any of us go round tellin’ folk our real names, do you?”

“Sugar-and-Sack?” repeated Maddy.

Sugar scowled. “Godfolk names are like that,” he said. “Sugar-and-Sack, Peck-in-the-Crown, Pickle-Nearest-the-Wind. I don’t go round laughin’ at your name, do I?”

“Sorry. Sugar,” said Maddy, trying to keep a straight face.

“Right. No harm done,” said Sugar with dignity. “Now, what exactly can I do you for?”

Maddy leaned closer. “I need a guide.”

“You need yer bleedin’ head seein’ to,” said the goblin. “The minute the Captain learns you’re here-”

“Then you’ll have to make sure he doesn’t,” she said. “Now, I can’t possibly find my way around this place on my own-”

“Look,” said the goblin, “if it’s the ale you’re after, then I can get it back, no trouble-”

“It isn’t the ale,” said Maddy.

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But you’re going to help me find it.”

It took some minutes to convince Sugar that he had no choice. But goblins are simple creatures, and he was not blind to the fact that the sooner Maddy had what she wanted, the sooner she would be out of his way.

However, he was clearly very much in awe of the individual he called the Captain, and Maddy soon realized that it would be best if she did not confront her new ally with too great a conflict of loyalties.

“So who is he, this captain of yours?”

The goblin sniffed and looked away.

“Oh, come on, Sugar. He must have a name.”

“Course he has.”

“Well?”

The goblin shrugged expressively. It was a shrug that began at the tips of his furry ears and went all the way down to his clawed feet, making every link of his chain mail shiver.

“Call him Sky Trekker, if you like, or Wildfire, or Crookmouth, or Hawk-Eye, or Dogstar. Call him Airy, call him Wary-”

“Not his nicknames, Sugar. His real name.”

The goblin made a face. “You think he’d tell me?”

For a while Maddy thought hard. One-Eye had warned her that he might not be the only one with interests under the Hill, and the webwork of glamours she had encountered on her way in confirmed his suspicions. But the goblins’ captain-most likely a goblin himself, or maybe a big cave-troll-could he be the one of which her friend had spoken? It seemed unlikely-no goblin had woven those spells.

Still, she thought, it was worth finding out more about this captain person and any threat he might represent. But Sugar was annoyingly vague; his attention span was catlike at the best of times, and as soon as the conversation turned to details of where, why, and how, he simply lost interest.

“So, what’s your captain like?” she said.

Sugar frowned and scratched his head. “I think the word is volatile,” he said at last. “Yeh, that’s the word I’m lookin’ for. Volatile and narsty. Tricky too.”

“I meant, what does he look like?” persisted Maddy.

“Just pray you don’t see him,” said Sugar darkly.

“Great,” said Maddy.

In silence, they moved on.

2

According to legend, the world beneath the Middle World is divided into three levels, linked by one great river. World Below is the realm of the Mountain People, the goblins, trolls, and dwarves. Beneath that is Hel’s kingdom, traditionally given over to the dead, then Dream, one of the three great tributaries of the Cauldron of Rivers, and lastly, at the very door of Chaos, Netherworld, known to some as the Black Fortress, where Surt the Destroyer guards the gate and the gods themselves have no dominion.

Maddy already knew this, of course. One-Eye’s teachings had been thorough on all matters concerning the geography of the Nine Worlds. But what she had not suspected was the monstrous scale of World Below: the countless passageways, tunnels, alcoves, and lairs that made up the underside of the Hill. There were rifts and fissures and crannies and nooks; and dugouts and dens; and side passages, storerooms, walkways, and potholes, burrows and warrens and larders and pits. And after what seemed like hours of searching through these, Maddy’s excitement at actually being in the fabled halls was starting to fade visibly as she began to understand that, even with Sugar’s reluctant help, she was unlikely to be able to cover even the hundredth part of them.

They found goblins only on the top level of the great gallery. Cat-faced, golden-eyed, squirrel-tailed, all dressed in mail and rags and leather, they paid little attention to Maddy or to her companion.

They were not the only inhabitants of that level. As she hurried along the crowded passageways, Maddy passed dozens of other creatures, all as busy and incurious as the goblins themselves: Tunnel People, colored like the clay of their native earth, with great jaws and tiny, lashless eyes; Mountain People; Sky People; Wood People; even a couple of men of the Folk, hooded and furtive, with traders’ packs on their shoulders and staves in their hands.

“Aye, miss, there’s always some that’ll trade with the Godfolk,” said Sugar when Maddy commented on this. “You don’t think you’re the only one what’s found their way down here, do yer? Or that the Eye’s the only gateway under the Hill?”

Below that there was less traffic, fewer spells. Here were storerooms, vaults, sleeping quarters, food stores. Maddy, who was growing hungry, was tempted to raid these, but goblins are not especially particular about what they eat, and she had heard too many tales to take the risk. Instead, searching her pockets, she found an apple core and a handful of nuts and made a small, unsatisfying meal of these, a decision she was to regret later.

They moved down toward the river, and here at last were stone lanes packed with spoils and takings. Remembering what One-Eye had told her, Maddy cast Bjarkan and searched, but among the webwork of little spells and signatures that crisscrossed the tunnels, among the bundles of feathers, chests of rags, pots and pans, and broken daggers and battered shields, she could find no sign of anything resembling a treasure of the Elder Age.

Goblins, of course, are terrible hoarders and, unlike dwarves, will steal anything that comes to hand, regardless of its value. But Maddy was not discouraged. Somewhere in all this, she was sure she would find the Whisperer. Rather an odd name for a treasure, she thought, but then she remembered the Dropper, Odin’s ring; his spear, Fear-Striker; and Mjolnir, the Pounder, the hammer of Thor; and told herself that the treasures of the Elder Age had often borne such mysterious names.

And so she searched on: through old mattresses, dry bones, and broken crockery; through sticks and stones and dolls’ heads and partnerless shoes and loaded dice and fake toenails and scraps of paper and tasteless china ornaments and dirty handkerchiefs and forgotten love poems and balding oriental rugs and lost schoolbooks and headless mice.

But still, as One-Eye had warned her, she found nothing of value-no gold, no silver, not even a nickel penny.

“There’s nowt here.” The goblin had grown increasingly restive as they proceeded deeper into the belly of the Hill. “There’s nowt down here and it’s not bloody safe.”

Maddy shrugged and kept on going.

“Now if I knew what you were looking for…,” said Sugar.

“I’ll tell you when I’ve found it.”

“You don’t even know what it looks like, do yer?” he said.

“Shut up and watch where you’re going.”

“You don’t bloody know!”

As Maddy followed Sugar deeper and deeper into the Hill, she began to fear that the goblin was right. The Hill was a ragman’s paradise, stuffed from seam to seam with worthless trash. There was nothing resembling treasure here; nothing magical, nothing precious, nothing approaching One-Eye’s description.

Also it was clear to Maddy that Sugar was as baffled by their search as she was herself. He had repeatedly denied that there was any kind of treasure beneath the Hill, and after consideration she was inclined to believe him. Goblins don’t really understand wealth and are just as likely to steal a broken teapot as half a crown or a diamond ring. Besides, she just couldn’t imagine how a treasure of the Elder Age-a thing of such importance that One-Eye could spend years trying to locate it-would remain for long in the hands of Sugar and his friends.

No, the more Maddy thought about it, the less likely it seemed that the Good Folk had anything to do with this. The secret-if it was there at all-lay deeper than the goblins’ lair.

In the hours that passed, she twice cast Naudr on her reluctant companion, with slightly less effect each time. She was very hungry and wished she had taken advantage of the goblins’ food stores, but these were far behind her now and hunger, fatigue, and the strain of controlling the goblin, casting and recasting Sol, and passing unseen through the labyrinth of spells were beginning to take their toll. Her glam was weakening like a lamp fast running out of oil. Soon it would be used up.

Sugar was not unaware of this, and his gold eyes gleamed as he trotted tirelessly down one passage after another, leading Maddy further and further under the Hill, away from the storerooms and into the dark.

Maddy followed him recklessly. The webwork of signatures that had so baffled her on the earliest levels had mostly thinned out and disappeared, leaving her with one single persistently bright and powerful trail that overwhelmed everything else and filled her with curiosity. It was an unusual color-a pale and luminous violet