Runemarks

If you call it, it will come to you.

She felt it, heard it in her mind-

(?)

And now she called it, not in words, but in glam-what Loki had called the language of Chaos. It was no language she had ever learned, and yet she could feel it linking her with the Whisperer, joining with it like notes in a long-lost chord.

At last she could see in the depths of the pit something like a cat’s cradle of light, a complicated diagram in which many, many runes and signatures crossed and recrossed in strands of increasing complexity.

A net, she thought, and for the second time she felt a response-a glimmer, a cry-from the object in the pit. A net just like the one Loki had used to trap his fish-

(!)

And it was a net that she meant to use against him. But Loki’s runes did not play fair, straining and twisting between her fingers. Naudr, the Binder; Thuris, the Thorn; T yr, the Warrior; Kaen, Wildfire; Logr, Water; Isa, Ice.

Loki’s runes, Loki’s trap. Even as she drew them, she could feel them moving, turning slyly out of alignment, waiting for her concentration to break.

“Maddy!” said Loki’s voice behind her, and she needed no runes now to sense his fear. His hand brushed her shoulder; Maddy swayed, uncomfortably aware of the pit at her feet. One push, she thought…

She called out again to the thing in the fire and, with a cry that echoed across the cavern, wrenched the net with its catch of glamours up and toward her out of the pit.

It was just then that the geyser blew.

The steam, a great hot hammer of air, came punching out of the narrow gauge. For a second everything went white; the laundry smell filled the cave and Maddy was sheathed in a scalding cloak. But for that second Loki flinched back and at the very same time Maddy cast the net, not at the Whisperer in its fiery column, but directly behind her, at Loki’s face.

He had no time to shield himself. The runes of the Elder Script flickered out-Naudr, Thuris, T yr, and Os, Hagall and Kaen, Isa and Ur. The net fell, snaring Loki as neatly as any fish, and finally Aesk, Maddy’s own rune, hurled the Trickster across the cavern as the fiery column burst free, showering them both with ash, sulfur, and shards of volcanic glass.

The blast was greater than any thus far. It threw Maddy forward twenty feet, and she fell to her knees, half stunned. Behind her the geyser was reaching its climax: ash and cinders filled the air; flaming rocks fell all around her; something heavy crashed to the ground only yards from where she had been standing.

“Loki?” Maddy’s voice resonated flatly against the seeping walls. Half blinded by the scalding steam, she lay behind a flat rock, gasping for breath. The unaccustomed working had all but exhausted her glam. If he were to attack right now, she wouldn’t have much more than a cantrip to throw back at him.

“Loki?” she called.

There was no reply.

A minute later the blast had abated; now sulfurous fumes filled the cavern. Maddy risked a glance around, but in the sickly yellow mist there was nothing to be seen.

Then, as the mist cleared and the extent of the damage became apparent, Maddy realized why. The ceiling above them had partly collapsed. A mound of debris obscured the pit; one huge slab of rock, its near side studded with pieces of stalactite, lay atop the mound like a gauntleted fist.

And Loki?

And the Whisperer?

There was no sign of either in the ruined cavern.

4

It was a few minutes more before Maddy could stand. She did so shakily, brushing cinders out of her hair. Her vision was still cloudy from looking into the fire pit; her face and hands were sore, as if they were sunburned.

The aftershock was over now, and in its wake the cavern was eerily still. Dust trickled from the broken ceiling onto the giant mound of rocks and rubble, completely obliterating the end of the cavern where Loki and his net had been thrown.

Congratulations, Maddy, said a dry voice inside her head. Now you’re a murderer.

“No,” whispered Maddy, horrified.

She’d never intended to hurt him, of course. She’d only meant to keep him at bay, to hold him while she claimed the Whisperer. But everything had happened so fast. She’d had no time to measure her strength. And if now, by her fault, he was under there-smashed beneath that fist of rock…

And now it was not just the fumes from the pit that were making it hard for Maddy to breathe. The mound of stones, so like a barrow from the Elder Age, almost seemed to fill the cavern. Slowly, reluctantly, she moved toward it. A small part of her protested against all hope that Loki might be trapped but unhurt, and fitfully she began to turn over the smaller rocks, searching in vain for a scrap of sleeve, a boot, a shadow-

A signature.

That was it! Maddy could have kicked herself with frustration. Casting Bjarkan with a trembling hand, she found his at once, that unmistakable wildfire trail. No two light-signatures are ever the same, and Loki’s, like One-Eye’s, was unusually complex and alive.

Alive!

A good tracker may tell the age of the wolf he hunts, whether it limps, how fast it was running, and when it made its last kill. Maddy was not so skilled a tracker, but she spotted the fragments of the net and traces of the mindrune she had cast.

There had been tremendous power in that final rune, power enough to collapse the ceiling as Maddy dragged the Whisperer out of the pit. Pieces of Aesk still littered the floor, like shards from an exploded bottle, and here was where the rune had thrown him, pinning Loki like a moth as the ceiling collapsed on top of him.

But then…

There it was, against all hope, leading away from the mound of stone: not a back-trail, not a fragment, but a signature, scrawled fleetingly in that characteristic lurid violet against the rock.

She guessed from its faintness that he had tried to hide, but either he was too weak to shield his color-trail or the falling rocks had taken up too much of his concentration, because there it was, unmistakably, leading toward the cavern mouth.

It was there at last that Maddy found him. He had fallen behind a block of stone; one arm was up to cover his face, his motionless fingers still pronged into the runeshape of yr, the Protector. He was very still, and there was blood-an alarming amount of it-on the rock behind him.

Maddy’s heart did a slow roll. She knelt down, shaking, and held out a hand to touch his face. The blood, she saw, came from a narrow slash just above his eyebrow. A rock must have caught him as he ran, unless it was the fall that had knocked him unconscious. In any case, though, he was alive.

Relief made Maddy laugh aloud; then, hearing her voice rattle eerily across the ruined cavern, she thought better of it.

He was alive, she reminded herself-but as soon as he awoke, doubly dangerous. This was his place. Gods knew what resources he might have at his command. She needed to get out, and quickly.

She looked around. The cavern was still acrid with the stench of the fire pit, but at least the air was cooler now that the shower of debris had stopped. It had been a close shave, she saw now: a chunk of volcanic glass the size of a hog’s head had flown through the air, missing her by inches, and now lay, still glowing, by her feet.

Thinking fast, Maddy assessed the situation. It looked bad: she had failed-she had lost the Whisperer-her strength was exhausted, and she was buried in the tunnels of World Below with miles and miles of passages and galleries between herself and the surface.

Still, she thought, it had been a good plan. It should have worked. For a second there had been a contact between them. The Whisperer should have answered her call. It almost had-but, as Crazy Nan used to say, “Almost” never wins the race.

Maddy looked around in desperation. What was she to do now?

“Kill him,” said a voice behind her.

Startled, Maddy turned around.

“Go on. He deserves it.” It was a man’s voice, dry and rather fussily disapproving, like Nat Parson in mid-sermon. But there was no one in sight; around her the shadows swelled, red-tinged, as the fire pit drew breath.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

“Just kill him,” said the voice again. “Do the Worlds a favor. You’ll never get a better chance.”

Maddy looked left and right but saw no one.

Had she imagined it? Was she so addled by smoke and fumes? Somewhere at the back of her mind she was conscious of a small, persistent voice telling her to run, that the geyser was about to vent again, that she was already half poisoned from the fire pit fumes, and that unless she got out into breathable air, she would collapse, but none of that seemed very important now. So much easier to ignore it, to close her eyes, to think of nothing.

“Stop that,” said the voice sharply. “What are you, an imbecile? Look down, girl, look down!”

Maddy dropped her gaze.

“Lower.”

“But there’s nothing-” began Maddy, then stopped short, her eyes widening as she finally saw-really saw-the thing that had crash-landed almost at her feet, still glowing from the heat of its fiery cradle.

“Ah, at last,” said the Whisperer in a weary tone. “Now, if you can possibly bear a little more exertion, you might at least give that bastard a kick from me.”