Runemarks

said. So you see, if you help me get it back-”

Loki gave a mocking laugh. “Impeccable logic, as always, Maddy.” He turned away in seeming regret. “I’m sorry. I’m not getting involved.”

“Please, Loki. I saved your life…”

“And I’d like to keep it, if that’s all right with you. The General would tear me limb from limb-”

“One-Eye’s asleep. He’ll be out for hours. Besides, I wouldn’t let him hurt you.”

Loki’s eyes flashed fire green. “You mean you’ll give me your protection?” he said.

“Of course I will. If you’ll help.”

Loki looked thoughtful. “Swear it?” he said.

“On my father’s name.”

“It’s a deal,” he said, and finished the wine.

And so keen was Maddy’s excitement and so eager was she to begin their search that she quite failed to see the look in the Trickster’s eyes or the grin that slowly formed across his scarred lips.

4

In the Hall of Sleepers there was confusion among the Vanir. All were now fully awake, all were present except for Skadi, but neither Idun, who had spoken to the Huntress, nor Freyja, who had not, was able to give a satisfactory account of what had actually occurred.

“You said Loki was there,” said Heimdall through his golden teeth.

“So he was,” said Idun. “He was in a bad way.”

“He’d have been in a worse way if I’d been there,” muttered Heimdall. “So what’s he up to, and how is it that Skadi let him live?”

“And who was the girl?” said Freyja, for the third or fourth time. “I tell you, if I hadn’t been so sleepy and confused, I would never have lent her my feather dress-”

“Nuts to your feather dress,” said Heimdall. “I want to know what Loki’s doing in all this.”

“Well,” said Idun, “he did mention the Whisperer…”

Five pairs of eyes fixed upon the goddess of plenty.

“The Whisperer?” said Frey.

So Idun told him what she knew. The Whisperer at large, Odin imprisoned, Loki possibly in league with him, and rumors of the Word, not to mention a mysterious girl who could unlock the ice and who had gods knew what glamours of her own…

“I say we get out while we still can,” said Frey. “We’re too exposed here if an enemy tries to mount an ambush.”

“I say wait for Skadi,” said Njord.

“I say go after Loki,” said Heimdall.

“What about the General?” said Bragi.

“What about my feather dress?” said Freyja.

Idun said nothing at all but simply hummed to herself.

And in the passageway leading into the cavern, two figures standing in the shadows exchanged glances and prepared to put their plan into action.

Loki cast yr and held his breath. So far, so good-he and Maddy had reached the Sleepers without incident and, more importantly, without alerting the Vanir to their intention.

From the Hall of Sleepers he could already hear a rumor of voices-and through the rune Bjarkan he could glimpse their colors: gold, green, and ocean blue. He noted with satisfaction that the Huntress was not among them. Good.

Now for the tricky part, the part that would place him in the most danger. They needed a diversion-something to draw the Vanir and to give Maddy the chance to recover the Whisperer. In other words, bait.

And so Loki took a deep breath and began to walk, quickly but casually, toward the entrance to the Sleepers’ Hall.

It was gold-armored Frey who saw him first, and for a few moments he squinted through the daze of glamours that crisscrossed the cavern, trying to decipher the intruder’s colors.

There were none that he could see, and that in itself was enough to make him a little wary. However, the figure that stood at the cavern’s mouth looked very small to be a cause of alarm. As the others turned to look, the intruder, a little girl of three or four, raised a face of such innocent entreaty in their direction that even Heimdall was taken aback.

“Who are you?” he snapped, recovering quickly.

The child, barefoot and clad only in a man’s shirt, smiled prettily and held out her hand. “I’m Lucy,” she said. “Do you want a game?”

For a moment the Vanir watched her in silence. It was clear to them all (except perhaps for Idun) that this was some trick: a reconnaissance, a diversion, maybe a trap. Warily they scanned the hall: there was no sign of anyone else, just the curly-headed infant standing alone.

Heimdall bared his golden teeth. “That’s no child,” he said softly. “If I’m not very much mistaken, that’s-”

“You’re It,” said Loki, grinning.

And before Heimdall could react, he slipped his disguise, shifted at speed to his wildfire Aspect, and fled for his life across the open hall.

The Vanir wasted no more time. In less than a second the air was shot through with mindbolts, flying daggers of runelight, flung nets of barbed blue fire. But Loki was fast, using the frills and crannies of the ice cavern to dodge, feint, and bewilder his attackers.

“Where is he?” yelled Heimdall, squinting through the runelight.

“Peekaboo,” said Lucy from behind a pillar of ice at the other side of the cavern.

Isa, cast from four different angles, shattered the pillar into a drift of diamonds, but by then the Trickster was already gone. In wildfire Aspect he led them toward the far side of the hall, dodging glamours and runes, twice more reappearing as Lucy from behind one of the fabulous constructions of ice. As the Vanir closed in on all sides, he pretended to falter, turning an expression of anguished appeal to the group of angry gods.

“Got him!” said Frey. “There’s no way out-”

“Tag,” said Lucy, and shifted again, to bird form this time, and made straight for the ceiling and its colossal central chandelier. At the hub, the small opening made by Loki’s fall gaped palely at the approaching dawn.

Too late the Vanir saw his plan.

“After him!” yelled Frey, and shifted into a harrier hawk, rather larger than Loki’s bird Aspect. Njord became a sea eagle, white-winged and dagger-clawed, and Heimdall shifted into a falcon, yellow-eyed and fast as an arrow. The three of them made straight for Loki, while Freyja shot missiles at the gap in the roof and Bragi took out a flute from his pocket and played a little saraband that peppered the air with fast, deadly notes, scorching Loki’s feathers and almost bringing him down.

Loki spun in midair, lost control for a moment, then recovered and made for the sky. The sea eagle saw its chance and closed in, but its wingspan was too large for the cavern; it dodged a volley of semi-quavers, wheeled round, and clipped an ancient column of ice, shattering its core, before flying out of control into the nest of icicles that made up the main part of the ceiling. The frozen chandelier trembled, shook, and finally began to disintegrate, throwing down shards of ice that had hung intact for five hundred years into the Hall of Sleepers.

For a time confusion reigned. A cataract of frozen pieces, some knife-edged, others as large as bales of hay, had begun to tumble, slowly but with increasing momentum, from the bright vaulting. Some smashed onto the polished floor, flinging up fragments that were as sharp and deadly as pieces of shrapnel. Others pulverized before they reached the ground, snowing steely particles into the air.

It was so sudden, so cataclysmic, that for a few crucial seconds the Vanir lost interest in the winged fugitive and scattered to the far corners of the Hall of Sleepers in their various attempts to escape the avalanche:

Bragi played a jig so merry that the ice melted into gentle rain long before it reached his head.

Freyja flung up yr and created a mindshield of golden light against which the falling fragments rebounded harmlessly.

Idun simply smiled vaguely and the particles of ice turned into a shower of apple blossoms that drifted quietly to the ground.

Heimdall, Njord, and Frey beat their wings in angry confusion, trying to dodge the falling ice as their prey vanished, with no more injury than a few scorched feathers, through the grinning gap.

And in all the confusion Maddy simply strolled into the hall, quietly retrieved the Whisperer from its hiding place under the loosened snow, then calmly strolled out again-unobserved and unsuspected-into the tunnels of World Below.

5

Now Loki was flying for his life. He’d bought himself some time, of course: the three hunters had been slowed down, both by the collapse of the ice chandelier and by their greater size, which had made it less easy for them to leave through the small gap in the roof.

As it was, he had fifteen minutes on them before he spotted his three pursuers: the falcon, the sea eagle, and the harrier hawk, circling the valley in a hunting pattern, searching for him in the early morning sunlight.

At once Loki dropped his hawk Aspect and came to rest behind a small copse just outside Forge’s Post; here stood a tiny log cabin, with a line of washing behind it and an old lady dozing in a rocking chair on the porch.