Runemarks

Freyja was looking thoughtful. “A poison handkerchief,” she said. “It doesn’t really seem like Odin’s style.”

“And what about Skadi?” Bragi said. “If she’d wanted to do us harm, she could have done it in the Hall of Sleepers, when we were helpless. Why turn against us now?”

“Perhaps she was waiting for something,” said Frey.

“I don’t believe she means us harm.” Njord was looking stubborn now, his sea blue eyes shining dangerously.

“No, really?” said Heimdall, losing his temper. “You old idiot, what does she have to do to make you believe? She could have her hands round your throat and you’d still think it a sign of affection.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous. You think that because you were together once-”

“You leave my marriage out of this.”

“Your marriage was over before it began…”

As discussion erupted once more among the Vanir, Idun, who had taken no part in the battle, wandered over to its only casualty. Ethel Parson was lying in the yard, facedown in her nightdress, the wisp of glamours that had been the handkerchief already dissolving in the first rays of dawn. Her hair had come unpinned, there was a smudge of earth on her cheek, and she looked small and discarded, just a footnote to the real business at hand.

Kneeling quietly beside her, Idun considered, with pity and some wonderment, the mysterious resilience of the Folk. Such frail creatures they were, she thought, with such short lives and such a depth of misery to endure. And yet a blow that might have annihilated a goddess had failed to extinguish the life in this woman. Oh, she was dying-but there was some spark in her yet, and when the Healer touched her face, her eyelids moved, just a little.

Some distance away the remaining Vanir were still arguing. The cause of the argument did not interest Idun. Too many people seemed dissatisfied too much of the time and, for the most part, for a trivial cause. Death alone was not trivial. She glimpsed its mystery in Ethel’s blurry eyes and wondered whether she should let it come. The woman was troubled and in pain. Very soon she would be at peace. And yet she fought it-Idun sensed this very strongly-with every particle of her being.

Passive Ethel had always been: obedient to her husband, dutiful to her father, modest and self-effacing throughout her life. Such a woman facing death submits quietly, without a struggle. But there was steel in Owen Goodchild’s daughter. She wanted to live-and so Idun reached into the pouch at her waist and brought out a tiny sliver of dried fruit. It was no larger than her little fingernail, but it was the food of the gods, and she laid it under Ethelberta’s tongue and waited.

A minute passed. Perhaps it was too late, thought Idun; not even the apples of youth could save her if her spirit had already been accepted into Hel’s domain. Very gently she turned Ethelberta onto her side, pushing away the soft brown hair to uncover her face. It was a plain face, to be sure, and yet death had given it a kind of dignity, a stillness that was almost regal.

“I’m sorry,” murmured Idun. “I tried to save you.”

And it was at that very moment that the dead woman opened her eyes, that her colors came to life once more, flaring from autumn brown to pumpkin orange, that she leaped up with her hair wild and the colors flying in her cheeks and announced in a ringing voice to Freyja: “I’ll be taking my dress back now, my lady!”

3

Odin had fled the moment his meeting with the Vanir had begun to go wrong. Red Horse Hill was the nearest refuge, and, skirting Adam and the sleeping possemen, he made it inside fifteen minutes ahead of the Huntress and the parson, but in his haste he forgot to check his path and ran straight into one of Skadi’s traps.

At any other time he would have seen it: a thin band stretched across the tunnel mouth, ready to snap shut on any trying to pass through. This time he didn’t, and the trap-a primitive thing, but primed with Hagall-caught him straight in the face, and he went out like a light.

Coming to his senses a few seconds later, Odin found himself in darkness. He cast Sol to light his way, but no light shone from his fingertips, and not even the faintest gleam of phosphorescence came from the tunnel’s rocky walls. It was not an absence of glam, he thought; there was plenty of power in him still, and it was only when he tried the rune Bjarkan that, reluctantly, Odin conceded the truth. There must have been more to Skadi’s trap than a simple device to wound or kill.

He was blind.

In haste Odin considered his options. Certainly he could not stay where he was. He had not seen the outcome of the fight at the parsonage, but he guessed that the Huntress would be on his trail. He had to assume that Loki had fled. Maddy, who might have helped him, was gone. The Whisperer was lost. And it went without saying that any further contact with the Vanir was out of the question-at least until his sight returned.

If it returned.

For now he needed to get away. Skadi could track him in wolf form, and his first concern was to throw her off the scent.

His shirt was still bloody from Jed Smith’s crossbow bolt; carefully he took it off and felt his way down the tunnel until he came to a narrow crossroads, trailing the shirt behind him. He took it some distance down the left-hand passageway and abandoned it there, wedged under a rock. Then, retracing his steps, he took the right fork, walked thirty paces, flung the rune Hagall at the roof hard enough to collapse it in part, and ran down the passage as fast as he could.

Blind as he was, he tripped and fell, though luckily out of range of the falling roof. He hoped the rockfall had blocked the tunnel: acrid dust fretted the air, and if his ruse worked, then at least it would slow the Huntress down, or at best send her off on a false trail while he found refuge under the Hill. Even so, she would have caught up with him if the instinct to stop and feed had not been so strong, but as it was, she lost precious minutes, and by the time she entered the Hill, the trail was blurred and the true quarry had fled.

Now, Odin was nothing if not resourceful. He was blind but not helpless, and as he fled toward the Strond, he began to rediscover skills he had not used for centuries. The passageway was obstacle-free, the few loose rocks that littered the ground easy to kick aside, and he had his staff to help him along, tapping first one side of the wall and then the other, probing ahead to warn him of anything on the ground that might trip him or stand in his way.

He found that he could tell when the passage forked, could tell from the movement of the air-its temperature, its dampness or otherwise, its sweetness or foulness-which direction he ought to take, which passage led up, which led down, which passed over water, and which was a dead end.

Exploration of the rock at his fingertips proved equally fruitful. Damp, porous rock indicated a good air supply; smooth, well-polished rock suggested a well-traveled route; the patterns of dust on the ground, the distribution of rock litter, the sound made by his staff as he rapped it against a hollow wall-all these showed him things that might not have been apparent to a man accustomed to relying upon the evidence of his eyes. In these passages, at least, he was not so much at a disadvantage.

Then there was the truesight. The injury to his good eye had not affected his inner vision; with Bjarkan he could still see the colors, the footprints of magic, and the muted glow that indicated the presence of life.

In this way, and quite by accident, Odin discovered the Whisperer’s trail. He had reached the heart of Red Horse Hill at about the same time as Loki and Maddy crossed the Strond and found no recent sign of them there. But as he approached the central chasm from one of the tunnels leading down, his truesight showed him a fugitive gleam and he caught his first scent of the Whisperer.

Someone had tried to erase it, he saw, but its signature was very strong, and in places it overwhelmed the workings, spilling out at intervals along the passage. Once it was joined by a faint signature of a familiar violet, another time by a bright fragment that was unmistakably Maddy’s. They were moving fast, Odin could tell. And they were heading straight for the Underworld.

But why would they risk the Underworld? Hel had no reason to welcome Loki-in fact, she was more likely to kill him on sight or, better yet, hand him over to Netherworld, where Surt the Destroyer still kept the ?sir captive and would be more than interested to learn how one of his prisoners had managed to escape.

Unless he had something to bargain with, thought Odin. A weapon, perhaps? A glam?

In the darkness he smiled grimly. Of course. He was not the only one to covet the Whisperer. Surely Hel could have little use for such a glam, but beyond Hel’s world, where the balance was set, in Netherworld, or even beyond-

For a moment he stopped. Could that be Loki’s aim? he thought. To use the Whisperer as a bargaining tool-not with the ?sir, or the Vanir, or even with the Order, but with the very Lords of Chaos?

Odin’s mind reeled at the thought.

That power combined with the power of Chaos, destabilizing the Worlds, rewriting reality…

It could mean, quite simply, the Worlds’ unmaking. Not another Ragnarok, but a final dissolution of all things, a breakdown in the laws of Order and Chaos, a terminal upsetting of the balance.

Surely even Loki would not dare to set in motion such a chain of events. But if not, then what exactly did he expect to gain? And even if he was innocent of malice, then did he really understand the risk he was taking-not only with his own life, but with the whole of existence?

4

Above One-Eye, at last, the hunt was on. Three hunters, to be exact: a woman who was a Fury, a goddess, and also a wolf; a man who was two men in a single body; and Adam Scattergood, who was beginning to think that even death at the wolf woman’s hands might be more merciful than the terror of these endless passages with their sounds and their smells.

Skadi had wanted to kill him at once. Reverting to her natural form, she had leveled her ice blue gaze at Adam and given a wolfish-and still bloodstained- smile.

But Nat had other plans for Adam. And here he was now, miles below the demon mound, carrying the parson’s Book and pack. Fear had made him surprisingly docile, and although the pack was heavy, he made no complaint. In fact, thought Nat, it was easy to forget him altogether, and he did, for long periods, as they followed