Runemarks

calm, she perceived astonishingly little fear.

“I can help you, lady,” he said. “In fact, I think we can help each other.” And he held out his hand, wherein lay a key, its teeth still red with its master’s blood.

***

Now, the parson had always been an ambitious man. The son of a potter of modest means, he had decided at an early age that he had no wish to follow in his father’s footsteps and had become a parson’s prentice at a fortunate time, taking over from his erstwhile master just as the old man was growing too feeble for the task.

He’d married well-to Ethelberta Goodchild, the eldest daughter of a rich valley horse-breeder. To be sure, she was nine years older than Nat, and there were some who considered her a trifle muffin-faced, but she came with a handsome settlement and excellent connections, and her father, Owen Goodchild, had once had high hopes of promotion for his new son-in-law.

But years passed, and promotion never came. Nat was already thirty-one years old, Ethelberta was childless, and he told himself that unless he took matters into his own hands, the chance of achieving something more than a simple parish in the mountains seemed distant indeed.

It was at this point that Nat began to consider the Order as a possible career. Knowing little about it except that it was for the spiritual elite, he set out on a pilgrimage to World’s End-officially to replenish his faith, in reality to discover how he might access the secrets of the Order without having to devote too much of his time to study, abstinence, or prayer.

What he found in World’s End filled Nat with excitement. He saw the great cathedral of St. Sepulchre, with its glass spire and brass dome, its slender columns, its painted windows. He saw the Law Courts, where the Order dispensed justice, and the Penitents’ Gate, where heretics were led to the gallows (though sadly the Cleansings themselves were not open to the public, for fear the canticles might be overheard). And he frequented the places where the Examiners went: he walked in their gardens, ate in their refectories, drank in their coffeehouses, and spent hours watching them in the streets, black gowns flapping, discussing some element of theory, some manuscript they had studied, waiting for his moment to discover the Word.

But of the Word itself he received no sign. The elderly Professor to whom he finally voiced his ambition told him that a prentice must study for a full twelve years before reaching the level of Junior in the Order, and that even at Examiner level it was by no means certain that a member would ever be granted the golden key.

His hopes dashed, Nat had returned to his parish in the mountains. But the image of the key had never left his mind. It became an obsession, the symbol of all that life had denied him. And when Maddy Smith had refused to break the charm upon the golden lock…

Nat looked at the key in his hand and smiled-and Skadi wondered briefly how such a fatuous smile could also appear so wolfish.

“You? Help me?” She began to laugh, an unsettling sound.

The parson watched her patiently. “We can help each other,” he said again. “The Seer-folk have something both of us want. You want revenge against those who attacked you. I want the Smith girl brought to justice. Each of us has something the other needs. Why not cooperate?”

“Gods,” said the Huntress. “I’ll give you this: I haven’t laughed so much since I hung the snake above Loki’s head. If you never make it as an Examiner, there’s a career in comedy waiting for you. What in the Worlds could you have that I need?”

Nat indicated the ravaged Book, pages scattered on the roundhouse floor. “Everything we need is in this Book. Every name, every canticle, every invocation of power. With your knowledge and the words in this Book, we could bring down every one of the Seer-folk, we could make them do whatever we want…”

Skadi picked up one of the scorched pages.

So, this Word was a kind of glam-a series of cantrips and incantations available even to the Folk. Loki had known of it, she recalled. He had feared it too, she told herself, although the Huntress could not imagine any magic of the Order being more powerful than that of the Ice People.

She scanned the page, expressionless, then dropped it back onto the ground. “I need no books,” she said.

It was then that Nat had an inspiration. Something in her eyes, perhaps, or the contemptuous way she had said books, or the way she’d held the page upside down…

“You can’t read, can you?” he said.

Skadi faced him with eyes like knives.

“Don’t worry,” the parson said. “I have the key. I can read for the both of us. Your powers combined with those of the Word-together we could succeed where the Order has failed. And then they’d have to take me in-I’d be an Examiner, maybe even a Professor…”

Skadi’s lip curled a little. “I have no use for a book or a key. But if I did, what’s to stop me from taking them both-and then killing you, just for fun-like this?” And she grasped hold of the parson’s hand and forced the fingers back one at a time. The key fell; there was a sound like that of a small twig snapping-

“Please! You need me!” Nat Parson screamed.

“Why?” she said, moving in for the kill.

“Because I was there!” the parson cried. “I was there when the Examiner cast the Word on the one-eyed Journeyman!”

The Huntress paused. “So?” she said.

“So I’ve seen inside the General’s mind…”

The Huntress stood as if transfixed, her eyes shining like distant glaciers. Next to her, Nat nursed his broken finger, whimpering a little in pain and relief. He had told her everything-not quite in the way that he’d envisaged it (over sherry, in the parsonage), but in a scrambling, squealing way, in terror for his life.

Lucky for him that she had believed his tale. But glam, as she knew, is volatile-and the fellow’s description of what had happened left her in no doubt. He had trespassed into the path of the Word and in doing so had glimpsed Odin’s thoughts-thoughts and plans regarding the ?sir.

Coldly the Huntress considered the ?sir. Though she had joined them for strategy’s sake, she felt no loyalty to Odin’s clan. Her father and brothers had died at their hands, and Odin himself, who had promised her full recompense, had somehow managed to renege on his deal, to trick her into marriage with Njord when Balder the Fair had stolen her heart, and to rob her of her revenge on Loki, who had lured her kinsmen to their deaths.

The Vanir were no better, she thought, following blindly where Odin led. Skadi’s allegiance was still to the Ice People, in spite of her marriage to the Man of the Sea, and she’d always been happiest in the Ice Lands, living alone, hunting, taking eagle form and soaring over the dazzling snow.

If war were to be declared, she thought, then this time there would be no alliance. The General had betrayed her, Loki was her sworn enemy, and Maddy Smith- whoever she was-had planted her colors in the enemy camp.

She turned to Nat, who was watching her, his broken finger in his mouth. “So what did you see?” she asked him softly.

“First your word. I want the girl-and the power in that Book.”

Skadi nodded. “Very well,” she said. “But at the first sign of treachery or if I even suspect you of trying to use your book against me…”

The parson nodded.

“Then we have a deal. What did you see?”

“I saw her,” he said. “I saw Maddy Smith. When the Examiner asked, Where are the Seer-folk?-that’s what I saw in your General’s mind. That’s what he was trying to hide. And he was ready to die rather than give up her name-”

“Name?” said Skadi.

“Modi,” said the parson. “That’s what he called her. Modi, the Lightning Tree, first child of the New Age.”

2

Meanwhile, under Red Horse Hill, Maddy was thinking furiously. One-Eye and Loki had left her alone, One-Eye to sleep and regain his strength before setting off to recover the Whisperer, Loki on some nefarious business of his own. The hall was lit only by a branch of candles, and Maddy’s shadow pranced and sprang against the stony walls as she paced repeatedly up and down.

Her initial reaction to One-Eye’s disclosure had been an immediate and overwhelming feeling of anger. That he could have kept such a secret from her for so long, only now revealing the truth at a time when battle lines were already drawn, with Maddy-like it or not-firmly on his side.

She hated the deceit of it, and yet, she thought as she paced, hadn’t a part of her longed for this? To have a purpose, a clan-a family, for gods’ sakes? Hadn’t the signs been there from the start? Hadn’t some part of her always known that Jed Smith and Mae were none of her blood and that Odin, for all his strangeness, was?

She did not hear Loki enter the hall. He had changed the clothes he had stolen from Audun Briggs for a fresh tunic, shirt, and soft-soled boots, and it was only when he touched her arm that she realized he was there at all. By then her agitation was so great that she almost hit him before she recognized who he was.

“Maddy, it’s me,” he protested, seeing T yr half formed between her fingers.

Listlessly she banished the rune. “I don’t feel like talking, Loki,” she said.

“Can’t say I blame you.” Loki sighed. “Odin should have told you the truth. But try to see it from his point of view…”

“Is that why he sent you? To argue his case?”

“Well, of course he did,” said Loki. “Why else?”

Maddy couldn’t help feeling a little disarmed at his unexpected frankness. She smiled-then remembered his legendary charm.

“Forget it,” she said. “You’re as bad as he is.”

“Why? What did I do?”

Maddy gave an angry sniff. “Everyone knows what’s going on except me,” she said. “What am I, a child? I’m sick of it. I’m sick of him. And I’m sick of being treated as if I don’t matter. I thought he liked me.” She sniffed again, more fiercely than before, and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. “I thought he was my friend,” she said.

Loki gave his crooked smile.

“So what does he want? A war with the Order? Is that why he needs the Whisperer?”