Runemarks

Think, Maddy, think.

Once more she drew the protective charm. yr lit at her fingertips, dimming the persuasive glamour of Kaen.

Think, Maddy. Think.

That voice. Those eyes. The silvery crisscross of scars over his lips, as if long ago, someone, armed with something very sharp…

And now at last it came to her: the old tale of how the Trickster had challenged the Tunnel Folk-the master forgers, Ivaldi’s sons-to a test of skill and had wagered his head in return for their treasures and lost. But even as they made to cut it off, he had cried, The head is yours, but not the neck!-and so, outwitting them, escaped with the prize.

At that, the dwarves, enraged at the deception and bent on revenge, had sewn up Loki’s mouth, and from that day forth his smile had been as crooked as his thoughts.

Loki. The Trickster. How could she have missed it? She knew him so well by reputation, had seen his face in a dozen books. One-Eye had given her what warning he could; even Sugar had called him Crookmouth. And the biggest clue was right there on his arm.

Kaen. The fire rune. Reversed.

“I know you,” said Maddy. “You’re-”

“What’s a name?” Loki grinned. “Wear it like a coat; turn it, burn it, throw it aside, and borrow another. One-Eye knows; you should ask him.”

“But Loki died,” she said, shaking her head. “He died on the field at Ragnarok.”

“Not quite.” He pulled a face. “You know, there’s rather a lot the Oracle didn’t foretell, and old tales have a habit of getting twisted.”

“But in any case, that was centuries ago,” said Maddy, bewildered. “I mean-that was the End of the World, wasn’t it?”

“So?” said Loki impatiently. “It isn’t the first time the world has come to an end, and it won’t be the last, either. Thor’s beard, Maddy, didn’t One-Eye teach you anything?”

“But that would make you-” said Maddy, perplexed. “I mean, the Seer-folk-the ?sir, I mean, weren’t they-the gods?”

Loki waved his hand dismissively. “Gods? Don’t let that impress you. Anyone can be a god if they have enough worshipers. You don’t even have to have powers anymore. In my time I’ve seen theater gods, gladiator gods, even storyteller gods, Maddy-you people see gods everywhere. Gives you an excuse for not thinking for yourselves.”

“But I thought-”

“God’s just a word, Maddy. Like Fury. Like demon. Just words people use for things they don’t understand. Reverse it and you get dog. It’s just as appropriate.”

“What about One-Eye?” said Maddy, frowning. “If he’s your brother”-her mouth dropped as she remembered yet another of those old stories-“then that would make him-”

“That’s right,” said Loki with his crooked smile. “The Allfather. The General. Old Odin himself.”

Book Three. The Whisperer

*

1

Ragnarok. The End of the World. According to Nat Parson, it had been a great Cleansing by the Nameless, a single, titanic attempt to rid Creation of evil and to bring Perfect Order to the Worlds, with fire and ice and Tribulation.

Only Noar’s line survived, or so the Good Book said, and the survivors-the demons and heretics that cheated Death-were flung into Netherworld to await the End of Everything.

One-Eye, on the other hand, had told her of the Prophecy of the Oracle and of the last great battle of the Elder Age: of how Surt the Destroyer had joined with Chaos and marched against the gods in Asgard, while the armies of the dead, in their fleet of coffin ships, sailed against them from the Underworld.

On that final plain the gods had fallen, fathoms deep in glamours and blood: Odin, the last general, swallowed by the Fenris Wolf; Thor the Thunderer, poisoned by the World Serpent; T yr the One-Armed; Heimdall of the Golden Teeth; Frey the Reaper; Loki…

“But if they were the gods,” Maddy had said, “then how could they fall? How could they die?”

One-Eye had shrugged. “Everything dies.”

But here was Loki telling her a different story: of how the fallen gods had not been destroyed, but had remained-weakened, broken, lost to themselves-waiting to return even as Chaos swept over the Nine Worlds, taking everything in its wake.

Years had passed; a new Order had come. Its temples were built on the ruins of springs and barrows and standing stones that once were sacred to an older faith. Even the stories were outlawed-There’s nobbut a thread ’tween forgotten and dead, as Crazy Nan used to say-and at last the march of the Order had trampled the old ways into near oblivion.

“Still, nothing lasts forever,” said Loki cheerfully. “Times change, and nations come and go, and the world has its revolutions, just as the sea has its tides.”

“That’s what One-Eye says.”

“A sea without tides will go stagnant,” said Loki, “just as a world that stops changing will stiffen and die. Even Order needs a little Chaos-Odin knew that when he first took me in and swore brotherhood between us. The others didn’t understand. They were out to get me from the start.

“Chaos was in my blood, they said-but they were happy enough to use my talents when it suited them. They despised deceit, hated lies, but were content to enjoy the fruits of them.”

Maddy nodded. She knew what he meant. To be an outsider-a bad-blood-always blamed and never thanked. Oh yes. She understood that very well.

“When Odin took me in,” Loki went on, “he knew exactly what I was. Wildfire that cannot be tamed. So what if I slipped my leash a couple of times? I saved their skins more often than any of them knew. No one was grateful. And in the end”-once more Loki gave his crooked but oddly charming smile-“in the end, who betrayed whom? Was it my fault that I got out of hand? All I ever did was follow my nature. But accidents happen. Something went wrong. High spirits, perhaps; a little understandable friction at a difficult time. And all of a sudden, old friends didn’t seem quite so friendly anymore, and I began to think it might be good to remove myself until the dust had settled. But they came after me and meted out their clumsy vengeance. I imagine you’ve heard the story.”

“Sort of,” said Maddy, who had heard a somewhat different version. “But I rather thought-I mean, I heard you’d killed Balder the Fair.”

“I never did,” snapped Loki crossly. “Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn’t?” Now his face darkened again, and his eyes took on a malevolent gleam. “Odin could have stopped them,” he said. “He was the General; they would have listened to him. But he was weak. He could see the end coming, and he needed all his people on his side. And so he turned a blind eye-’scuse the pun-and delivered me into the hands of my enemies.”

Maddy nodded. She knew the tale-some part of it, anyway: how the ?sir had left him chained to a rock; how Skadi the Huntress, who’d always hated him, had hung a snake to drip venom into his face; how their luck had been bad from that day until the End of the World; and finally, how Loki had broken free on the eve of the battle to play his part in the destruction that followed.

Clearly he had no regrets. He said as much as he told Maddy of the last stand of the ?sir; of the battle One-Eye called Ragnarok.

“Perhaps I could have saved them if they’d stood by me at the end. Who knows, I might even have turned the battle around. But they’d made their choice. He’d made his choice. And so the world ended, and here we are, the dregs of us, hiding in caves or peddling cantrips, trying to figure out what went wrong.”

Maddy nodded again. One-Eye’s voice inside her head warned her that this was Loki-Loki-and that whatever else, she must not be charmed, flattered, or deceived into dropping her guard. She remembered One-Eye telling her that charm comes easily to the children of Chaos and determined to take nothing of what he told her at face value.

But Loki’s tale was dangerously plausible. It explained so many things that One-Eye had refused to tell, although some of it was still hard to digest, and his talk of the gods as if they were human beings-vulnerable, fallible, besieged-was especially difficult to accept. She had grown up with stories of the Seer-folk, had learned to think of them as friends, had dreamed of them in her secret heart, but even in her wildest imaginings had never thought to meet one someday, to talk to one as an equal, to touch a being who had lived in Asgard and have him stand in front of her, with a very human-looking welt across the bridge of his nose-a welt that her own mindbolt had caused…

“So…are you…immortal?” she said at last.

“Nothing’s immortal,” he said, shaking his head. “Some things last longer than others, that’s all. And everything has to change to survive. Why d’you think I carry my glam reversed? Or that Odin does, for that matter?”

Maddy glanced at the runemark on his arm. Kaen-Wildfire-still gleamed there, violet against his pale skin. A powerful sign, even reversed, and Maddy had used it often enough herself to know that she must respect and mistrust its bearer.

“So how was your glam reversed?”

“Very painfully,” he said.