Runemarks

Two hours later, and at last the passageway had broadened out, a faint gleam reflecting dully against mica-spackled walls. The sour cellar smell that suffused the Hill no longer troubled Maddy at all. In fact, now that she thought about it, the air seemed sweeter than before, although it was growing perceptibly colder.

“We’re getting close to the Sleepers,” she said.

“Aye, miss,” said Sugar, who had been getting more and more nervous as they approached their goal. “Not long now. Well, that’s my job done, then, and if I could just be on me way…”

But Maddy’s eye had lit upon something, a point of luminescence too pale to be firelight, too bright to be a reflection on the stone. “That’s daylight,” she said, her face brightening.

Sugar considered putting her straight, then he shrugged and thought better of it.

“That’s the Sleepers, miss,” he said in a low voice, and that was when his courage, already tried to its breaking point, finally gave way. He could withstand many things, but enough was enough, and there comes a time for every goblin to take the better part of valor and run.

Sugar-and-Sack turned and ran.

Maddy ran toward the light, too excited to think either about Sugar’s desertion or about the fact that it didn’t really look like daylight at all. It was a cool and silvery light, like the pale edge of a summer pre-dawn. It was faint but penetrating. Maddy could see that it touched the sides of the passageway with a milky gleam, picking out the fragments of mica in the rock and lighting the plumes of steam that came from Maddy’s mouth in the cold air.

It was a cavern. She could see that now. The passage broadened, became funnel-shaped, and then opened out, and Maddy, who had considered herself accustomed to marvels after her time under the Hill, gave a long sigh of amazement.

The cavern was beyond size. Maddy had heard tales of the great cathedrals of World’s End, cathedrals as big as cities with spires of glass, and in her imagination they might have been something like this. Even so, the sheer hugeness of the space almost defeated her. It was a bristling vastness of luminous blue ice, its ceiling vaulted in a thousand bewildering swirls and fantails, its height lifted unimaginably by glassy pillars as broad as barn doors.

It stretched out forever-or so it first seemed-and the light seemed trapped within the ancient ice, a light that shone like a distillation of stars.

For a long time Maddy stared, breathless. The ceiling was open in part to the sky; a fragment of moon stood outlined against a patch of darkness. From the gaps in the vaulting, icicles fell, tumbling and plunging hundreds of feet to hang, crystalline, above her head. If I threw a stone, thought Maddy with a sudden chill, or if I were to even raise my voice…

But the icicles were the least of a thousand wonders that filled the cavernous hall. There were strands of filigree no thicker than a spider’s web; there were flowers of glass with leaves of frozen gauze; there were sapphires and emeralds growing out of the walls; there were acres of floor smoother than marble, fit for a million dancing princesses.

And the light: it shone out from everywhere, clean and cold and pitiless. As her eyes adjusted, Maddy saw that it was made from signatures; thousands of them, it seemed, crisscrossing the rapturous air. Maddy had never, never in her life seen so many signatures.

Their brightness left her speechless. Gods alive, she thought, One-Eye’s is bright and Loki’s is brighter, but this makes them look like candles in the sun.

She had been moving, wide-eyed, bewildered, further into the cavern. Every step showed her new marvels. She could hardly breathe-hardly think-for wonderment. Then in front of her she saw something that momentarily eclipsed everything else: a raw-edged block of blue ice with thin columns at its four corners. Maddy peered closer-and gave a cry as she saw, embedded deep beneath the ice, something that could only be…

A face.

4

In the fields to the west of Little Bear Wood, Odin One-Eye was watching birds. One bird in particular, a small brown hawk, flying fast and low across the fields. Not in a hunting pattern, he thought-although there was surely plenty of prey. No, this hawk flew as if it sensed a predator, though there were surely no eagles this far from the mountains, and only an eagle would bring down a hawk.

A hawk, but what kind?

That was no bird.

He had sensed rather than seen it almost at once. Its movement, perhaps, or the speed of its course, or its colors scrawled across the sky-half obscured by the setting sun but as familiar to One-Eye as his own.

Loki.

So the traitor had survived. It came as no great surprise to him-Loki had a habit of beating the odds, and that hawk had always been a favorite Aspect of his. But what in Hel’s name was he doing here now? Loki, of all people, should have been fully aware of the recklessness of flaunting his colors in World Above. But here he was, in broad daylight-and in too much of a hurry even to cover his tracks.

In the old days, of course, Odin could have brought down the bird with a single mindrune. Today, and at such a distance, he knew better than to try. Runes that had once been child’s play to him now cost him an effort he could ill afford. But Loki was a child of Chaos; its harmonies were in his blood.

What could have forced him to leave the Hill? The Examiner and his invocations? Surely not. No single Examiner could have flushed out the Trickster from his stronghold, and Loki wasn’t the type to panic. Besides, why would he leave his base? And why, of all places, make for the Sleepers?

One-Eye left the fields by a gap in the hedge and, skirting the edge of Little Bear Wood, squinted after the fleeting hawk. The western road was completely deserted; the sun’s rays shone low across the brindled land, sending his long shadow sprawling behind him. On the Hill a bonfire was lit: the folk of Malbry were celebrating.

Briefly One-Eye hesitated. He was reluctant to leave Red Horse Hill, where Maddy would surely look for him. But Loki’s presence in World Above was much too disturbing to ignore.

He took out his bag of runestones and cast his fortune quickly, there on the side of the western road.

He drew Os, the ?sir, reversed-

– crossed with Hagall, the Destroyer-

– with Isa and Kaen in opposition-

– and finally his own rune, Raedo, reversed, crossed with Naudr, the Binder, rune of the Underworld-rune of Death.

Even in the best of circumstances such a fortune would not have made for cheerful reading. Now, with an Examiner of the Order on Red Horse Hill, with Loki in the world again, with the Whisperer in unknown hands, and with Maddy still missing in World Below, it seemed like a taunt from the Fates themselves.

He gathered the runestones and stood up. It would take him the best part of the night to reach the Sleepers unobserved. He guessed Loki could do it in less than an hour. That couldn’t be helped, and staff in hand, One-Eye began the long trek toward the mountains.

It was then, just then, that the possemen struck.

He should have known, One-Eye told himself later. That little wood, so convenient and well placed on the edge of the fields, was the perfect site for an ambush. But he had been preoccupied with thoughts of Loki and the Sleepers; blinded by the sinking sun, he never saw them coming.

A second later they were out of the trees, running low to the ground, a posse of nine, armed with staves.

One-Eye moved surprisingly fast. T yr, the Warrior, shot out like a steel dart from between his fingers, and the first man-it was Daniel Hetherset, one of Nat’s prentices-fell to the ground with his hands clasped to his face.

Time was when that would have been enough. This time it was not, and the eight remaining posse members barely halted, exchanging rapid glances as they fanned out across the road, staves at the ready.

“We don’t want a fight.” It was Matt Law, the constable, a large, earnest man not built for speed.

“I can tell,” said One-Eye softly. At his fingertips T yr was a blade of light, rather short for a mindsword but keener than Damascus steel.

“Come quiet,” said Matt, whose face was cheesy with fear. “I give you my word you’ll be fairly treated.”

One-Eye gave a smile that made the lawman shiver. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I think I’d rather be on my way.”

That should have ended it. As it was, the possemen drew back a little. Matt, however, stood his ground. He was fat but not soft, and under the gaze of his fellow villagers he was very conscious of his duty as an officer of the Law.

“You’ll come with us,” he said, “whether you want to or not. Be reasonable. You’re outnumbered. I’ve given you my word that your case will be treated according to due process and with every…”

One-Eye had been watching Matt and had missed the man who shifted-oh, so slyly-into the line of his blind eye.

The others stayed where they were, spread out against the sun, so that One-Eye’s vision was blurred and their faces, which might have given them away, were lost