Runemarks

minds that are imprisoned here. That includes our friend…” Loki indicated the World Serpent. “Now, you and I both know that I’m not fond of snakes. And this being Netherworld, and nightmares being more or less coin of the realm, what could be more natural than to appoint a snake-and not just any snake, but the World Serpent-as my guard? And so, in a way, I brought him here-or at least I summoned this Aspect of him. And until I free it-back into the real world-then he’s just another prisoner. Here forever. Just like the rest of them.”

As he spoke, the snake gave a louder hiss, and droplets of venom clouded the air.

“Oh, stop it,” said Loki. “I mean, did you really think I was going to let you loose after what happened last time? Last time,” he told Maddy, “not only did he change the tides of the One Sea, flood the Middle World, swallow the Thunderer, hammer and all, but by the time they got him under control, the whole Nine Worlds were full of his wormholes, with the armies of Chaos passing through like mice through a piece of Ridings cheese…” He leveled his devastating smile at the World Serpent. “Still, Jormungand, old son,” he said brightly. “Or can I call you Jorgi for short? I like Jorgi. It sounds cheerful and unthreatening. Friendly, even. What do you say?”

Across the dizzy space that separated them, the World Serpent spat a stream of venom that missed Loki but took a chunk out of the rock wall.

Loki gave Maddy a nervous grin. “He’s fine.”

“Look,” said Maddy. “Fascinating though this tour of your relatives may be, I thought we were here to rescue my father…”

“And so we are, with Jorgi’s help.”

Maddy looked at the giant snake as it circled, still chained to its rock. “You thought that would help us?”

“He helped me. If we can get Thor into Dream-”

“Dream?” said Maddy in surprise. “But I thought-”

“Well, he can’t escape through Hel,” he said. “You’d need a body for that, of course, and as far as I know, we don’t have a spare.”

“Oh.” For a moment Maddy was at a loss. She’d focused so strongly on the idea of rescue that such practicalities had never occurred to her.

Loki knew it; had counted on it, in fact, in his dealings with the Whisperer. Thor freed into Dream was one thing, but Thor re-embodied and out for revenge-that he could definitely do without. Still, first things first, he told himself. It was a long way out of Netherworld, and even Dream was not without risk.

He gave Jormungand his cheeriest smile. “Better late than never,” he said.

The creature gave a silent hiss.

“But you can’t free it,” protested Maddy. “Quite apart from the damage it could do, ripping holes between the Worlds, won’t it rip you apart the moment you-”

“Thanks for that,” said Loki dryly. Even in Aspect, his face was pale. “Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind. But with”-he glanced at the deathwatch around his neck-“forty-three minutes left to go, I’m running short of good ideas. As for damage, I’m hoping that can work to our benefit.”

“How?”

“Well, for a start, we could use a diversion. Netherworld isn’t going to sit quiet forever, you know, and as soon as it senses the disruption we’ve caused, it’s going to send something-someone-to investigate. I’m hoping that by the time that happens, Jorgi here will have covered our tracks. If I’m right, it should at least buy us a little time.”

“I see,” said Maddy. “And if you’re not?”

“If I’m not,” he said, “it shouldn’t trouble either of us for long. Now take my hand.”

Maddy took it and felt his fingers clamp down on hers. There was a brief sensation of sidestepping-

“Don’t let go,” Loki warned. “You’re not going to want to be around when Jorgi gets loose.”

On the circling rock the World Serpent writhed and tore at its chains. The stench of its venom redoubled; the air was mulled with its secretions.

And then, quite suddenly, the chains weren’t there.

It was almost comic. For a second Jormungand struggled against thin air, its jaws arcing into nothingness, its leaden coils slipping into the pit…and then its eyes fixed on Loki. It opened its jaws, seemed to stiffen-and then it struck.

It struck repeatedly, knocking slabs from the rock wall as big as oliphants to drop and circle into the gulf. The air swam with venom, crackled with electricity. In seconds the ledge on which they had been standing was nothing but a nubbin of rock overlooking the void. Nothing else was left alive. Nothing could have survived that strike; nothing remained but the World Serpent in the dark, deserted cell.

11

“Of course, you know he’s following us,” gasped Loki, out of breath.

“Wasn’t that the plan?”

“What plan?”

They were running hand in hand down a broad passageway lined with doors, lit now with a lurid phosphorescence that seemed to come from everywhere. Except that running wasn’t quite the word, and the ground beneath them felt insubstantial, as in dreams, and as they ran, the scenery changed, the doors shifting from Gothic oak monstrosities to lead-paneled archways to holes in the wall vaulted with bones.

“How far now?” said Maddy.

“We’re almost there. Just making sure…”

The light too was changing fast, now red, now green, and there was a sound-a sound that pressed like a thumb onto their eardrums-the sound of a million dreamers locked inside a million dreams.

“How did you do that?” shouted Maddy above the din.

“Do what?”

“You know. Get out of the cell.”

“Shortcut,” he said. “An Aspect-shift I picked up from Jorgi. Now hang on…” He stopped at a door that was red and black and studded all over with glamours and runes. “You might find this a bit…upsetting.”

Maddy looked at him. “My father?”

Loki nodded. He looked tired behind his Aspect; much of the brightness had gone from his colors. Around his neck Hel’s deathwatch indicated that they had thirty- eight minutes left.

He flung a handful of runes at the door; the inscription upon it brightened, but the door stayed shut.

“Damn.” Loki steadied himself against the closed door and took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m nearly done,” he said. “You’ll have to do it.”

Maddy studied the locked door. Thuris should move it, she decided, and hit the door as hard as she could. It trembled but did not yield. Once more she hit it-with Os and T yr-once more it trembled, and the passageway trembled with it, shaking beneath their feet.

“It’s coming,” said Loki.

“Yes,” she agreed. “One more hit, and I think I’ll-”

“I wasn’t talking about the door.”

He was looking beyond her, and for a second Maddy didn’t understand. Then she looked up and saw what was coming and in that same instant hurled Hagall at the door as hard as she could while Loki, with what remained of his strength, flung Isa in the path of the World Serpent, which seemed to fill the passage some fifty yards behind them.

Isa froze in midair, creating a solid barrier against which Jormungand hurled itself in a frenzy. It held, though the first blow cracked the ice; clearly it would not hold the serpent long. But it was enough: in front of Maddy the door did not open, it simply vanished and, with another of those sickening sidesteps, they were inside.

12

From the other side of the river Dream, Hel was watching the proceedings with interest. The deathwatch served a number of purposes-not least to keep her suitably informed-and now, in a room deep in her bone white citadel, she watched the progress of the two trespassers through the darkened mirror of her dead eye.

How odd, she thought. How very odd. Of course, Loki was never entirely predictable, but this was the last place she would have expected him to return. She felt reluctant curiosity as to what his plan might be. She assumed he had a plan-whatever else he was, he was no fool- though she wasted no anxiety over his probable fate. Hel would weep no tears if Loki fell-in fact, she thought, to witness his destruction might give her the first true fleeting twinge of pleasure she had felt since Balder’s death, centuries before.

Not that it would last-nothing did. And yet Hel, incurious as she usually was, watched rapt as the seconds ticked by. Her dead eye saw Netherworld, churning with dreams, and her living eye was fixed upon the two figures lying side by side on the shore of the river, their physical bodies linked to their Netherworld counterparts by a skein of runelight finer than silk.

To sever the skein was to cut short their lives-but she had promised them an hour inside, and such an oath, even to Loki, must not be broken. Still, she was intrigued-not least by the glam he had left behind. A powerful glam, some relic of the Elder Days, that gleamed and shone like a forgotten sun. She couldn’t imagine why Loki had brought it-or why he had pretended to hide it away, knowing that she would spot it at once.

And now it was calling to her from its place in the desert, in a soft and coaxing voice that seemed-almost, but not quite-familiar.

It’s a trap, thought Hel. Whatever it is, he wants me to take it.

Through her living eye she observed the Trickster. He looked asleep; occasionally he twitched and frowned, as if in the throes of some nightmare. She could see