Runemarks

Skadi was pleased. Normally she disdained the homely art of needlework, but as a daughter of the Ice People she was skilled in it nevertheless. Carefully she folded the tiny handkerchief and put it into a drawer of the elegant escritoire. The Vanir would be here before nightfall. Smiling, the Huntress awaited their arrival.

***

Odin saw them coming from his vantage point beneath a stand of trees, half a mile from Malbry village. It was six o’clock in the evening, and against the last of the sunset he could just make out their signatures moving across the fields, arching into the smoky sky. Skadi’s colors were not among them-but it was possible that she was hiding in ambush nearby, using the others as bait to draw him in. Of Maddy and Loki there was no sign, and only now did he admit to himself how much he had been hoping to see them there.

He cast yr and ducked behind a hedge. There they were: the Reaper, the Watchman, the Poet, the Healer, the Man of the Sea, and finally the goddess of desire, trailing far behind. Why had they chosen to come on foot? What was their business at the parsonage? And exactly how much did they know?

Through Bjarkan he tried to detect the Whisperer. There was no sign of it, nor could he hear its voice as yet. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. He moved in closer along the hedge, circling behind the little group so that he stood the least chance of being spotted. It felt so wrong, to be hiding thus from his friends, but the world had changed, and not even old friendships could be taken entirely on trust.

Njord was speaking. “I know she’s reckless-maybe even a little wild-”

“A little wild!” That was Freyja, her long hair shining like frost, the links of her necklace catching the light. “She’s an animal, Njord-all that prowling around as a wolf and an eagle…”

“She was always loyal. At Ragnarok-”

Frey said, “We were at war then.”

“If Skadi’s right, we’re at war now.”

“With the Folk. With the Order, perhaps,” said Heimdall. “But not with our people.”

“The ?sir are not our people,” said Njord. “We might all do well to remember it.”

Behind the hedge Odin frowned. So that was where the land lay. Of course, Njord was the oldest of the Vanir, father to the twins, and it was understandable that his allegiance should belong to the Vanir first and the ?sir second. Besides, he’d long suspected that Njord still felt tender toward his estranged wife, and as Odin knew, there could be no reasoning with a lover. He himself was not immune: there had been times-quite a few of them-when even Odin the Far-Sighted had shown himself as blind as the next man…

He glanced at Freyja, still dragging behind, her blue dress black to the knees with mud. “How far now?” she wailed. “I’ve been walking for hours, I’ve got a blister, and just look at my gown-”

“If I hear any more about your gown, or your shoes, or your feather dress…,” muttered Heimdall.

“We’re nearly there,” said Idun gently. “But I can give you some apple if your foot hurts-”

“I don’t want an apple. I want some dry shoes, and a clean dress, and a bath-”

“Oh, shut up and use a cantrip,” said Heimdall.

Freyja looked at him and sniffed. “You don’t have a clue, do you, Goldie?”

From his hiding place, Odin smiled.

11

In World Below, Maddy and Loki had hit trouble. Trouble in the form of a vertical shaft slicing down through the levels-no path downward, no alternate route, and a hundred-foot leap to the far side.

It lay at the end of a long, low passage, through which they had half crawled, half clambered for close on three laborious hours. Now, looking down into the ax- shaped rift and listening to the tumbling water some four hundred feet below, Maddy was ready to wail with despair.

“I thought you said this was the best way down!” she cried, addressing the Whisperer.

“I said it was the quickest way down,” it replied waspishly, “and so it is. It’s hardly my fault if you can’t handle a little climb.”

“A little climb!”

The Whisperer glowed in a bored way. Once more Maddy looked down: below them the river churned like cream. It was the river Strond, Maddy knew, swollen with the autumn rains, probing and battering its way between the rocks toward the Cauldron of Rivers. It seemed to fill the chasm completely, and yet as her eyes became accustomed to the deeper gloom, she saw a break in the rock on the far side-just visible across the gap.

She gave a long, exhausted sigh. “We’ll have to double back,” she said. “Find some other route down.”

But Loki was looking at her with a strange expression. “There isn’t another route,” he said. “Not unless you want to share it with a couple of thousand goblins. Besides…”

“Besides,” said the Whisperer, “we’re being followed.”

“What?” said Maddy.

“He knows.”

“Knows what?”

Loki glared at the Oracle. “I spotted a signature an hour ago. Nothing to worry about. We’ll lose them further down.”

“Unless he’s leaving some kind of trail.”

“A trail?” said Maddy. “Why would he do that?”

“Who knows?” it said. “I told you he was trouble.”

Loki gave a hiss of exasperation. “Trouble?” he said. “Listen, I’m already risking my skin. It happens to be rather a nice skin, and I’m in no hurry to see it damaged. So why would I want to leave a trail? And why in Hel’s name would I want to slow us down?”

Maddy shook her head, abashed. “It’s just that the thought of turning back-”

Once more he gave her a puzzled look. “Who said anything about turning back?”

“But-”

“Maddy,” he said, “I thought you understood. Chaos blood on your mother’s side, ?sir on your father’s. Did you really think that climbing down that cliff was the best option?”

Maddy considered that for a moment. “But I don’t know any glamours-” she began.

“You don’t need to know any glamours,” said Loki. “Glamour is a part of you, like your hair or your eyes or the fact that you’re left- handed. Did Odin have to teach you to throw mindbolts?”

Frowning, Maddy shook her head. Then she remembered Freyja’s feather dress and her face lit up. “I could use Freyja’s cloak,” she suggested.

“No chance. No bird could carry the Whisperer. And besides, I’m getting tired of losing my clothes.”

“Well, what do you suggest?” she said, and then she saw how it might be done. A rope-a thread, even-woven from runes, stretching from the top of the gully to the cave entrance. Ur, the Ox, would make it strong. Naudr, the Binder, would hold it in place. It would need to last a moment only-just long enough for them to swing down safely-and then it could be banished as quickly and easily as a spider’s web. She thought it might work, and yet, looking down into the seething water, she began to feel afraid. What if it didn’t? What if she fell, like a fledgling too eager to leave the nest, and was swept away into the Cauldron of Rivers?

Loki was watching her with amusement and impatience. “Come on, Maddy,” he said. “This is child’s play compared to what you did by the fire pit.”

Slowly she nodded, and then she opened her hand and looked at Aesk inscribed on her palm. It was glowing dully, but as she watched, it brightened, as the embers of a fire may brighten when air is blown over them. Closing her eyes, she began to tease out the runes to suit her purpose, as she had once teased the raw wool of newly shorn lambs, thread by thread, around a spindle. She could see it now, growing at her fingertips, a double skein of runelight that was as strong as steel-linked chain and as light as thistledown, and she spun it into the dusky air as a spider spins a web, until it reached the ground by the river’s edge and was securely anchored to the rock.

She tested the line with her careful weight. It held. It felt like corn silk between her fingers. Now for the Whisperer. Tucked into her jacket, it was heavy, but not unbearably so, and she found that with a little adjustment, she could carry it against her chest as she grasped the line with all her strength and jumped into the darkness.

Loki was watching her with a curious, half-admiring expression on his sharp features. In truth, he was feeling very uneasy. It was a simple working, to be sure, but untutored as she was, Maddy had been very quick to find the technique. He wondered how long it would be before she discovered her other skills and how much power she carried in that seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of glam. He himself was growing weak from the effort of resisting the Whisperer’s intrusions into his thoughts. And as Loki in his turn grasped the line, he thought he could see trouble ahead-

And why would that be? said a voice in his mind.

Loki flinched at its unexpected presence. With the distractions of their downward journey he had found it harder and harder to keep his thoughts his own. Below him the river seethed and spat, and he suddenly wished that he was carrying the Whisperer-as it was, he was too helpless, he thought, strung out in the air like a bead on a thread. The thing in his mind caught his discomfort and grinned.

Get out of my head, you old voyeur.

What’s wrong? Guilty conscience?

Guilty what?

Silently it laughed. To Loki its laughter felt like dead fingernails scraping the inside of his skull. He began to sweat. Maddy had reached the far side of the river, but Loki was barely halfway there, and already the runes were beginning to fail. His arms hurt, his head ached, and he was all too aware of the drop below. And the