Runemarks

Bjarkan assured himself that this was indeed a common crow and not one of the Vanir in bird Aspect.

Vanir, it said. Parley. No trick.

One-Eye nodded. “Where?” he said.

Parson house.

“When?”

Tonight.

Thoughtfully Odin scattered a handful of scraps for the crow, which flapped down and began to peck at the food. No trick, it had said. But the parson’s house seemed a strange place to meet-could they be thinking of an alliance with the Folk?-and in today’s world, he knew, even old friends were not to be trusted.

Damn them, damn them. He was getting too old for diplomacy. His shoulder was still on fire from Jed Smith’s crossbow bolt; he was worried about Maddy, suspicious of the Vanir, and distressingly weakened by the power of the Word.

The Word. Oh, he’d known of its existence for many years, but he had never encountered its effects firsthand. Now that he had, he feared it more than ever. A single Examiner had bled him helpless. One man-not even a Magister-had come within inches of breaking his mind.

Imagine an army primed with the Word. The Book of Apocalypse didn’t seem quite so far-fetched now that he’d seen what the Word could do. And the Order was strong-in purpose as well as in numbers-while he and his kind were scattered and in conflict. But what could he-what could any of them do against the Nameless? Alone, he might gain a few years’ reprieve-ten, twenty if he was lucky-before the Order finally tracked him down. Together-if he managed to win back the Vanir at all- what could they hope for but defeat?

Perhaps the Examiner was right, he thought. Perhaps my time is over. And yet the thought did not fill him with the despair he might have expected. Instead he was conscious of a strange sensation, a kind of lightening of the spirit, and in that moment he recognized the feeling. He’d felt it before, in the days before Ragnarok, with Worlds colliding and the forces of Chaos awaiting their time. It was the joy of a gambler throwing down his last coin, the knowledge that everything stands or falls on the turn of a card.

Well, what is it to be? he asked himself. A few years’ reprieve or a merciful death? A sliver of hope or a bolt from the blue?

His chances were poor; he knew that already. The Vanir mistrusted him, Skadi had sworn vengeance on him, Loki had fled, Maddy was lost, the Whisperer missing, the Hill wide open, and the Folk on his trail. And without the Oracle the chances of his being able to talk, cajole, negotiate, or outright lie the Vanir into obedience were small indeed.

But Odin was a gambler. He liked those odds. They appealed to his sense of the dramatic. And so once more as the sun tipped westward, he picked up his staff and his battered old pack and made his way down Red Horse Hill.

10

In Skadi’s absence Nat Parson had slept, exhausted after his night’s work. But his sleep had not refreshed him, punctuated as it was with itchy, uncomfortable dreams that left him feeling edgy and dissatisfied.

He woke past noon with an aching head, dizzy with hunger, and yet the thought of eating made him feel sick. Most of all he was terribly afraid that the newly acquired powers he had demonstrated to the Huntress might somehow have seeped away.

To his relief, however, the power of the Word remained undimmed. If anything, he thought it had actually increased as he slept, like some fast-growing creeper feeling its way through his brain. He lit the altar candles on his first try, almost without thinking, and the colors that had so overwhelmed him before now seemed familiar, almost commonplace.

How this had happened he did not know, but somehow, as he’d stepped forward at the very instant the Examiner summoned the Word against One-Eye, their minds had meshed. By accident or design? Had he been chosen to receive this power? With the Order, of course, anything was possible. Perhaps it was simply chance, the aftermath of Communion combined with some more random element-chance or choice, who knows?-but whatever it was, Nat Parson meant to keep it.

He hardly spoke to his wife at all, except to demand the loan of her second-best dress. Her best was already lying discarded somewhere out on Red Horse Hill, and Skadi would need another when she returned from the Sleepers in bird form.

Ethelberta was quite naturally reluctant to part with the cream of her wardrobe in this way, and there was a small unpleasantness, from which Nat escaped to the sanctuary of his study before his desire to use the Word on Ethelberta became too strong to resist.

Meanwhile, the Huntress had returned. It had taken some hours to bring the Vanir around to her way of thinking, and it was early afternoon by the time she reached the village. By then her quarry was already gone: Maddy and Loki into World Below and Odin into World Above, to observe the parsonage and to check the area for a possible ambush.

He did not observe Skadi as, in the guise of a white she-wolf, she explored the intricacies of Red Horse Hill, sniffing out its passageways, calculating its defenses, searching for a fresh trail. Briefly she caught Loki’s scent, but it was faint and soon ran cold, and she could find no trace of Maddy Smith.

Well, that could wait, she told herself.

Today she hunted bigger game.

She turned her attention once more to the Hill. A natural fortress, in normal circumstances it could have withstood a siege of a hundred years or more. But now, with its gates in ruins and its troops deserting, the fortress might yet become a baited trap. Naudr, the Binder, angled just so against the catch of a door, might be set like a snare for an unsuspecting rabbit, to snap shut on whoever passed that way, while the rune Hagall could be left like a powder charge, to explode in the face of the unsuspecting victim.

She entered through the ruins of the Horse’s Eye and spent the best part of the afternoon setting as many of these snares as she could. She dropped them at crossroads and corner stones, at tunnel mouths and around dark bends. She worked the rune Naudr into a net and stretched it across a darkened doorway, and she fashioned the rune T yr into a cruel barb that would hook the victim like a fish.

It might work, the Huntress thought. A man on the run-or even a girl-might well be taken unawares. An unguarded moment, a careless step-and the quarry would be caught or wounded, weakened, helpless; easy prey.

It was nearly four on the town clock when Skadi returned to the parsonage in her wolf Aspect. Ethelberta, who had vowed that this time she would not submit so easily to the woman’s demands, found herself quite at a loss when the Huntress arrived, and soon Skadi was clad in sumptuous white velvet (which would never brush clean, thought Ethel) while Ethel herself was giving orders to prepare the house for six more guests and hoping that they, at least, would arrive decently clothed.

Skadi, however, had other concerns. She had sown some suspicion among the Vanir-and Loki’s involvement had done the rest-but Heimdall and Frey, at least, remained loyal to the General. If Odin had the Whisperer and if Maddy was really Thor’s child, then he might yet be able to talk them round. Of course, if there were to be a casualty…

Coolly Skadi considered the Vanir. Not Heimdall, not yet-he was too powerful to lose. Not Frey, for the same reason. Not Idun-she was not as helpless as she first appeared, and besides, they might need a healer in times to come. Bragi? Njord? She owed him nothing, she told herself. They were no longer married-and yet she was loath to sacrifice the Man of the Sea. He might be useful after all. Freyja, on the other hand…

Skadi considered the goddess of desire.

Oh, she had some powers. She wasn’t useless. She was annoying, however, and Skadi admitted to herself that of all the surviving Vanir, Freyja was the one she would miss the least. Not because of her beauty-everyone knew Skadi despised such things-or even because of their conflicting natures, but because of the discord she spread in her wake. With Freyja around, arguments broke out; friends quarreled; the most peaceable folk turned green-eyed and crotchety. Besides, she and Odin-

But Skadi bit off that thought before it could take proper shape. This was no personal grudge, she told herself. This was a tactical choice, taken for the greater good. The fact that Freyja and Odin had always enjoyed more than a passing intimacy did not enter into her calculations at all. Freyja’s death might grieve him, of course. It might even wound him in a place even the Word could not reach. Should she let that affect her decision? She thought not. Loki might have caused her father’s death, but it had been Odin who ordered it, Odin who afterward had bought her silence with a few compliments and a strategic marriage. And over the years, she had begun to realize how he’d manipulated her, how he’d used her to make a much- needed peace with the Ice People, how long and how cleverly he had misdirected her anger, making her believe that Loki, and Loki alone, was to blame…

And now the brothers were together again.

Skadi clenched her fists against the white velvet of Ethelberta Parson’s second-best gown. No amount of ironing would remove those creases, but Skadi’s thoughts were far away. In her mind clouds gathered, blood spilled, and Revenge, long deferred but all the sweeter for that, opened its sleepy eyes and smiled.

Isa is the only rune of the Elder Script to have no reverse position. As a result, Skadi had lost none of her powers in the wake of Ragnarok. She considered herself a match for almost any of the Vanir, even Frey or Heimdall-but against the six of them together she knew she could not prevail. Unless, of course…

It had been a long time since she’d had the leisure or inclination to create a new weapon, and this one, she knew, must be foolproof. Not large, no, but every thread picked over with runes of concealment, a weapon of elegance-a weapon of stealth.

If she’d had time, she might have fashioned a shirt-even a cloak, barbed in every stitch with runes of ice and poison-but time was short, and instead she made a tiny handkerchief, edged with ribbon lace so fine that you could hardly even see it, so intricate that the glamours that warped and wefted it were hidden between the love knots and the embroidered flowers, so deadly that a single cantrip would be enough to unleash its working. And on it, in plain, bright script, she placed the rune Fe-

Freyja.