Runemarks

End, charting its progress, trying to learn how much time we have left. My guess is, it just ran out. That’s why he needs the Whisperer. As for myself”-Loki grinned and put down the bottle-“Maddy, I can’t help it. It’s the Chaos in my blood. If there’s a war, I want to fight.”

For a long time Maddy said nothing. “Then tell him so,” she said at last.

“What, meet him aboveground?” Loki said. “You must be out of your tiny mind.”

“You really think One-Eye’s going to come to you?”

“He’ll have to,” said Loki. “If he wants the Oracle. With that on his side there isn’t a secret, scheme, or strategy that the Order can keep from him. He can’t hope to win the war without it. And he certainly can’t afford to let it fall to the other side.” Loki grinned. “So you see, Maddy, he has no choice but to accept my terms. Bring Odin to me, and I’ll let him talk to the Whisperer. If not, then frankly, I don’t rate his chances when the Order gets here.”

Maddy frowned. It all sounded just a little too slick. She had already experienced Loki’s charm, but she knew his reputation too, and she knew that his motives were rarely pure. She looked at him and saw him watching her with a dangerous gleam in his fiery eyes.

“Well?” he said.

“I don’t trust you,” said Maddy.

Loki shrugged. “Few people do. But why not? You’re strong. You’ve already beaten me once before.”

“Twice,” said Maddy.

“Whatever,” he said.

Maddy considered the point for a moment. She realized-rather late-that she didn’t actually know very much about Loki’s powers. Certainly she had beaten him-or had she? It hadn’t been a fair fight. She had taken him by surprise. Or maybe he’d let her surprise him, she thought. Maybe that too was part of his plan.

Now Maddy’s mind began to race. What did she know of the Whisperer? It was an oracle, Loki had said. A power of the Elder Age, an old friend of One-Eye, an enemy of Chaos. Loki had said it hated him, would not speak except in gibes. But One-Eye had said it would come to her, and could it be, she thought suddenly, that Loki somehow knew that too…

Could it be that he had misdirected her? That far from wanting to rescue the Whisperer, he was actually trying to keep it from being rescued?

Could it even be possible that it was Loki himself who had trapped the Whisperer in the fire pit, having failed to make it work for him?

Fire was his element, after all. Could it be that all this was a carefully constructed trap, its aim to lure One-Eye into World Below, where Loki had had centuries to prepare himself for their eventual showdown?

“Well?” said Loki impatiently.

Well, it was far too late to waste time with questions. Yesterday’s ale is nobbut this morning’s piss, as Crazy Nan used to say, which meant, Maddy supposed, that if anyone was going to get her out of this mess, it probably wasn’t the king’s guard.

“Well?”

Maddy sighed. A shadow of a plan was beginning to form in her mind. It was a rather desperate plan, but it was all she could think of at such short notice. “All right,” she said. “But first you have to show me.”

“Show you what?”

“The Whisperer.”

3

She followed him back to the fire pit hall, taking care not to let him out of her sight. He had agreed to her demand with apparent good cheer but with a trace of sullenness in his colors that suggested that he was far from pleased. She knew he was tricky-indeed, if he was Loki, he was trickery itself-and if he already suspected what she meant to do, there was no telling how he might react.

They stepped to the lee of the fire pit, sheltering behind a spur of rock until the geyser had spent itself. Then, in the brief lull between two ventings, Loki stepped forward and came to stand on the lip of the well.

“Stand back,” he told Maddy. “This can be dangerous.”

Maddy watched as he stood motionless, his colors flaring with sudden intensity and the first and little fingers of his right hand pronged to form the runeshape yr.

His face was streaming with sweat, she saw; his fists were clenched, his eyes screwed shut as if preparing for some painful ordeal. This part at least was no act, she thought. She could feel the effort he was making, see the trembling of his muscles and the strain in every part of his body as he waited, tensed, for the Whisperer.

Even when the geyser began to reawaken, the low rumble rising to become a muted roar, Loki did not stir, but seemed to wait, regardless of his peril, as patiently as a fisherman snaring a trout.

Two minutes had already passed, and now Maddy could hear the eruption building, like a furious howl in a giant’s throat.

Then, almost imperceptibly, he moved.

If Maddy had not been watching very carefully, she would have missed it altogether, for Loki’s style of working was very different from hers. Under One-Eye’s instruction Maddy had learned to value caution and accuracy above all things, to coax the runes rather than to fling them, to handle them with care, as if without it they might explode.

But Loki was fast. Balancing like a rope-dancer on the edge of the pit as the column of steam came rushing toward him, he raised his head and made a curious quick fluttering movement of his hand. At the same time, he shifted to his fiery Aspect, his features just discernible in the twisting flames, and skimmed runes at the column like a handful of firecrackers.

Maddy had scarcely time to read them all. She thought she recognized Isa and Naudr-but what was that shuttling rune that spun like a sycamore key into the boiling flow, or the one that broke into a dozen shining pieces as it skimmed the flame?

She had little time to ask herself the question, though, for it was then that the geyser blew. The column of steam punched into the ceiling, hurling fragments of rock into the scorched air. And in the column, suspended for a moment in that massive splurge of cloud and flame, Maddy saw something that popped up like an apple in water and half heard, half felt its silent call-

(?)

(?)

– as it dropped once more into the pit.

Loki had fled in fiery Aspect, taking refuge behind a slab of rock. Now he returned to his true form. His face was flushed, his hair lank with sweat, and a reek of burning came from his clothes. Nevertheless, he seemed exhilarated; in the afterglow his eyes were pinned with weird fire. He turned to Maddy. “You saw it, then?”

Uneasily she nodded, recalling the quick way it had bobbed to the surface, and how the light had seemed to shine right through it, and how it had called to her…

“That was the Whisperer. Ouch,” he said, blowing into his scorched hands.

“But it’s alive!”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Now Maddy could see just how much this effort had cost him: in spite of his careless words he was shaking, breathless, and his colors were dim. “It really doesn’t like me,” he said. “Though to be fair, I don’t think it likes any of us very much. And as for getting it out of there-you’ve seen what it’s like. If Odin wants to consult the Oracle, then he’ll just have to do it the hard way.”

There was a silence as Maddy stared at the fire pit and Loki’s breathing returned to normal. Then she stood up cautiously. She could feel the next eruption preparing itself; beneath her feet she sensed rather than heard the ripping of fiery seams under enormous pressure.

“What are you doing?” Loki said. “Didn’t you hear what I just told you?”

Maddy stepped up to the fire pit. Beneath her, it gargled molten fire. Loki followed, uneasy now, but hiding it well-except for his colors, which betrayed his anxiety and his fatigue. Whatever he had done to the Whisperer, it had already robbed him of much of his glam-an advantage Maddy intended to use.

Now she was standing at the edge of the pit.

“Watch your step,” said Loki casually, “unless you care for a Netherworld hotfoot.”

“Just a second,” she said, looking down into the fiery throat. The pit was very close to venting. Maddy could smell the burnt-laundry fume; she could feel the fine hairs in her nose begin to crackle. Her eyes stung; her hands were trembling as she too formed the runeshape yr.

“Maddy, be careful,” Loki said.

At the bottom of the pit, hot air began to roar as the subterranean river gushed out into the flow of boiling rock. In a second steam would obscure the pit; then, a second later, the column of flaming gas and ash would erupt.

Maddy just hoped she had timed it right.

Now she was balanced on the very edge of the fire pit. The stones beneath her feet were slick with sulfur and the glassy residue of many, many ventings. She tried to recall how Loki had done it-balancing on the rim like a dancer on a rope, his hands shuffling runes so fast that Maddy could hardly see them before they sank into the cloud at his feet.

He was right behind her now; her skin prickled at his closeness, but she did not dare turn-he must not see what she was planning. Inside the pit, the furnace glow brightened from orange to yellow, from yellow to almost white, and as the power began to build, Maddy turned the full force of her concentration on the Whisperer.