Runemarks

“Oh,” said Maddy. There was a pause. “Well, what about the Fieries? Fieries, Furies, whatever they are…”

“Well, we’re all Furies now,” he said with a shrug. “Like anything that’s been touched with the Fire. Demons, as your parson might say. Of course, I always was-comes of being a child of Chaos-but it can’t be easy for the General, who was always so set on Law and Order.” He grinned. “Must be hard for him to accept that-to the new gods, at least, to the Order-he’s the enemy now.”

“The new gods?”

Loki nodded, for once not smiling.

“You mean, all that’s real too? The Nameless and everything Nat Parson preaches from the Book of Tribulation?”

Loki nodded again. “As real or imaginary as any of us,” he said. “No surprise your parson’s so gloomy about the old ways. He knows who the enemy is, all right, and he and his kind will not be safe until ours is Cleansed from the Nine Worlds: every tale forgotten, every glam subdued, every Fiery extinguished, to the last spark and flame.”

“But-I’m a Fiery,” said Maddy, opening her hand to look at her own runemark, now glowing like an ember.

“That you are,” said Loki. “No question about it, with that glam you carry. No wonder he kept so quiet about you. You are something quite unique-and that’s worth more than Otter’s Ransom to him, or to me, or to anyone who can keep you on their side.”

Maddy’s runemark was burning now, sending tendrils of thin fire snaking toward her fingertips.

“The Oracle predicted you,” said Loki, watching, fascinated. “It predicted new runes for the New Age, runes that would be whole and unbroken, with which to rewrite the Nine Worlds. That rune of yours is Aesk, the Ash, and when One-Eye saw it on your hand, he must have thought all his Fair Days and Yules had come at once.”

“Aesk,” said Maddy softly, flexing her fingers into a cat’s cradle of fire. “And you think One-Eye knew this all along?”

“I should think so,” Loki said. “It was to Odin that the prophecy was made.”

Maddy thought about that for a moment. “Why?” she said at last. “What does he want? And what’s this…Whisperer he needs so badly? Did the Oracle mention that at all?”

“Maddy,” said Loki, beginning to smile, “the Oracle is the Whisperer.”

2

There was a flask of dark mead hidden in the cave. Loki gave Maddy a sip and drank the rest as he told his tale.

“The Whisperer,” he said, “is an ancient power, even older than the General himself, though he doesn’t enjoy being reminded of that. It’s a story that goes back to the very beginning of the Elder Age, to the first wars between Order and Chaos, and-if you ask me-it’s one that doesn’t reflect too well on either side. Of course yours truly was completely neutral at that time-”

Maddy raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Listen, do you want to hear this story or don’t you?”

Maddy nodded.

“All right. In the old, old days of the General’s youth, Asgard was a stronghold of perfect Order, and there wasn’t a spark of magic there. The Vanir-enchanters from the borders of Chaos-they were the keepers of the Fire, and they and the ?sir waged war for years, until at last they realized that neither of them was ever going to win. And so they exchanged hostages as proof of good faith, and the ?sir got Njord and his children, Frey and Freyja, and the Vans got Honir-nice lad, but not bright-and a wily old diplomat called Mimir, who stole their glam, gave them his counsel, and reported back home in secret.

“But the Vans soon realized they had a couple of spies on board, and in revenge they killed Mimir and sent his head back to Asgard. By then, though, the General had already got what he needed: the runes of the Elder Script, the letters of the ancient tongue that created the Worlds.”

“The language of Chaos,” Maddy said.

Loki nodded. “And Chaos was not best pleased at the theft. So Odin used his new skills to keep the Head alive and gave it glam to make it speak. Not many folk return from the dead, and what they have to say is usually worth hearing. It gave old Mimir the gift of prophecy, invaluable to the General. But the gift came at a high price. Odin paid for it with his eye. And as for Mimir’s Head, or, as he called it, the Whisperer”-Loki finished the bottle of mead-“I don’t imagine it cared much for us then, so I wouldn’t count too far on its goodwill now. I’ve tried to talk to it, but it never was fond of me, not even in the old days. And as for getting it out of here-”

“But what do you want with it?” said Maddy. “Why is it so important?”

“Please, Maddy,” said Loki with some impatience. “The Whisperer’s not just some bauble. It’s an oracle. It knows things. It predicted Ragnarok and a number of other things I wish I’d known at the time. If Odin had paid more attention to its prophecy instead of trying to prove it wrong, then perhaps Ragnarok wouldn’t have turned out as it did.”

There was a pause as Maddy took in the implications.

“But why go after it now?” she said.

“A second chance?” Loki gave his twisted smile. “Listen, Maddy, Odin put half of himself into that old glam. Half of the General in his prime; think what he could do with it now. Powers you can’t imagine, just waiting to be tapped. Powers from the realms of Chaos.” He sighed. “But the damn thing has a mind of its own, and it isn’t bound to cooperate. Nevertheless, there are folk out there who would give anything to lay their hands on it. And others, of course, who would give anything to stop them.”

“Gods,” said Maddy.

“Amen,” said Loki.

He had found the Whisperer on one of his exploring trips, he said, some hundred years after the end of the war. Everything else was Chaos and slaughter. Many had fallen; some lost forever, some buried in ice, some consumed by the fires of Chaos. The survivors were thrown into Netherworld, but Loki, slippery as ever, had somehow managed to escape.

“You escaped the Black Fortress?” Maddy said.

Loki shrugged. “Eventually.”

“How?”

“Long story,” said Loki. “Suffice it to say that I found…alternative accommodation in World Below. And it was there at last that I found the Whisperer,” he went on, “though I soon realized it was useless to me. It recognized me, of course, but it wouldn’t talk except in gibes and insults, wouldn’t lend me so much as a spark of glam, and certainly wouldn’t prophesy. I thought maybe to get it out of the pit, to use it as a bargaining tool with one of the surviving ?sir-”

“The surviving ?sir?” said Maddy quickly.

“Rumors, that’s all. I had a feeling Odin might still be around. It would certainly have helped my position if I could have brought him the Whisperer. And of course, with the General back on my side, I’d have been safe from any former colleagues with an ax to grind. Or even a hammer.”

Since then, he said, he had tried many times to retrieve the Whisperer from its fiery cradle. But he had not yet found a way to break the glamours that held it in the fire pit-glamours left over from Ragnarok, which his reversed and thus weakened glam could not hope to combat.

Failing that, he had made the Hill impregnable, putting together an army of goblins, a webwork of glamours, and a labyrinth of passages to hide the Whisperer from the world.

“And maybe it’s best left hidden,” he said. “Unless Odin gave you something to help? A glam, a tool-perhaps a word?”

“No,” said Maddy. “Not even a cantrip.”

Loki shook his head, disgusted. “In that case, forget it. Might as well try to catch the moon on a string.”

Maddy thought about that for a while. “So you think it’s hopeless?” she said at last. “There’s really no way of bringing it out?”

Loki shrugged. “Believe me, I’ve tried. If the General wants to talk to it, he’ll have to come down here himself.”

“Perhaps.” Maddy was still thinking hard.

“You should tell him, you know. Ragnarok’s over. And as far as the Order is concerned, we’re all of us the enemy. Perhaps we should rethink our allegiances. Bury our grudges. Start again.”

“You betrayed the ?sir,” said Maddy. “You’re crazy if you think he’ll ever take you back.”

“The ?sir!” Unexpectedly her words had struck home; for a moment Loki’s eyes flared with unfeigned anger. His colors flared too, from ghostly violet to fiery red. “All they ever did was use me when it suited them. When there was trouble, it was always Please, Loki, think of something. Then when it was over, it was Back to your kennel, without so much as a thank-you. I was always a second-class citizen in Asgard, and not one of them ever let me forget it.”

“But you fought against them at Ragnarok,” said Maddy, who had begun to feel more sympathy for this dangerous individual than she dared admit.

“Ragnarok,” said Loki scornfully. “Whose side did they expect me to take? I had no side. The ?sir had abandoned me, the Vanir always hated me, and as far as Chaos was concerned, I was a traitor who deserved to die. No one would take me, so I looked after number one, as always. All right, maybe I settled a few scores on the way. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s all history. The General has nothing to fear from me.”

“What are you saying?” Maddy said.

Loki gave his crooked smile. “Maddy,” he said, “I’ve been hiding out in World Below for the best part of five hundred years. All right, it’s not the Black Fortress, but it’s hardly bliss. It stinks, it’s dark, it’s overrun by goblins, and I’m constantly having to watch my back…Besides, if I read the signs correctly, there will come a time very soon when none of us are safe, when even the deepest hole will not be enough to hide us from our enemies.”

“So?”

“So I’m tired of hiding,” Loki said. “I want to come home. I want to see the sky again. More importantly, I want the General to make it clear to any of the others who might still harbor a grudge that I’m officially back on the side of the gods.”

He paused, and a wistful look came over his face. “There’s a war on the way. I can feel it,” he said. “I don’t need an oracle to tell me that. The Order is already on the march, spreading the Word through the Middle World. Odin knows-according to my sources he’s spent the last century or so traveling between here and World’s