Runemarks

At the entrance to the Underworld the parson and the Huntress stopped. They had tracked their quarry to the mouth of Hel, and now they stood and watched the plain, where a slight dust rose in the wake of the two figures-one tall, one short-that inched their way across the desert.

It was all too much for Adam Scattergood. The bleak sky where no sky had a right to be, the nameless peaks, the dead, like thunderheads, marching into the blue…Even if this was a dream (and he clung to the idea with all his might), he’d long since given up any hope of awakening. Death would be infinitely better than this, and he followed, incurious, where the Huntress led, hearing the sound of the dead in his ears and wondering when it would come for him.

Nat Parson spared him not a thought. Instead he smiled his wolfish smile and opened the Book of Words at the relevant page. His enemy was within range; even across that vastness, he knew, the canticle would strike him down, and he allowed himself a little sigh of satisfaction as he began to invoke the power of the Word.

I name you Odin, son of Bor…

But something was wrong, the parson thought. When first he had used that canticle, it had been with a sense of gathering doom, a power that increased at every word until it became a moving wall, crushing everything in its path. Now, however he spoke the words, the Word declined to reveal itself.

“What’s wrong?” demanded Skadi, impatient, as Nat faltered midsentence and stopped.

“It isn’t working,” he complained.

“You must have read it wrong, you fool.”

“I did not read it wrong,” the parson said, angered at being called fool in front of his prentice-and by an illiterate, barbarian female at that. He began the canticle again-in his finest pulpit voice-but once more the Word seemed oddly flat, as if something had drained it of its potency.

What’s going on? he thought in dismay, reaching for the comforting presence of Examiner Number 4421974 in his mind.

But Elias Rede was strangely silent. Like the Word, the Examiner had somehow lost depth, like a picture faded by the sun. And the lights, he saw-the signature colors and lights that had illuminated everything-they too were gone. One moment they’d been there and the next-nothing. As if someone had blown out a candle…

Who’s there?

No inner voice replied.

Elias? Examiner?

Once more, silence. A great, dull silence, like coming back one day to an empty house and suddenly knowing that there’s nobody home.

Nat Parson gave a cry, and as Skadi turned to look at him, she noticed that something about him had changed. Gone was the silvery skein that had illuminated his colors, transforming a plain brown signature into a mantle of power. Now the parson was plain again, just one of the Folk, undistinguished and unremarkable.

The Huntress growled. “You tricked me,” she said, and, shifting into her animal form, set off across the drifting sand in snarling pursuit of the General.

Nat thought to follow, but she soon outdistanced him, racing across the endless plain, howling her rage at her enemy.

“You can’t leave me here!” the parson called-and that was when the Vanir, drawn by the sound of the white wolf’s cry, moved out of the shadows at his back and watched him grimly from the tunnel mouth.

5

In animal guise they had tracked the Huntress, with Frey, Bragi, and Heimdall leading the chase. As the passageway broadened, Njord’s sea eagle had joined them, flying low beneath the eaves, and now the four of them resumed their own Aspects, watching intently from their vantage point as the white wolf pursued its distant quarry.

Some distance behind them came Freyja and Idun, turning wondering eyes to the sky of Hel and to the little drama being enacted miles below across the plain.

“I told you Skadi was on our side,” said Njord. “She followed him here; she led us right to him-”

“Did she?” Heimdall glanced at the parson, standing not a dozen feet away. “Then will someone explain to us why he’s here? And what about the Whisperer? If it was close, I’d have seen it by now.”

“It’s obvious,” said Njord. “Loki has it.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Heimdall said. “If Odin and Loki are working together…”

“So they quarreled. He ran. That’s what he does. What does it matter?”

“I need to be sure.”

Heimdall turned on the parson, who had backed away. At his feet Adam Scattergood hid his eyes.

“You, fellow,” said Heimdall. “Where is the Whisperer?”

“Please don’t kill me,” pleaded Nat. “I don’t know anything about any Whisperer. I’m just a country parson; I don’t even have the Word anymore-”

And then the parson stopped and stared, and the Book of Words fell from his hand. He looked like a man having a stroke. His face paled; his eyes bulged; his mouth fell open, but no words came.

His wife was standing at the tunnel mouth. Her hair unpinned, her eyes bright, her plain face very calm.

“Ethel,” said Nat. “But I saw you die.”

Ethel smiled at her husband’s expression. She had expected to feel something when they finally met. Relief perhaps, or anger, fear, resentment. Instead she felt- what was that feeling?

“This is the Land of the Dead, Nat,” said Ethel with a mischievous smile. And now behind her Nat could see…surely that was Dorian Scattergood, and could that possibly be-a pig?

“I asked you a question, fellow,” said Heimdall. “Where is the Whisperer?”

But it was Ethelberta who replied, looking strangely dignified in spite of her ragged clothes and the dust on her face and the fact that she was standing next to a man holding a small black pig under one arm.

“The Whisperer is at the gate,” she said. “I speak as I must and cannot be silent.”

Heimdall gave her a sharp look. “What did you say?”

“This is the time that was foretold,” went on Ethel quietly. “The War of Nine Worlds, when Yggdrasil shall tremble to its roots and the Black Fortress shall be opened with a single Word. The dead shall rise to live again and the living have no place of refuge as Order and Chaos are finally made one, and the Nameless shall be named, and the formless have form, and a traitor be true, and a blind man lead you against ten thousand.”

By this time all eyes were on Ethelberta. Dorian thought how beautiful she was; how luminous and how calm.

“Excuse me,” said Heimdall. “And you are…?”

“We’ve met,” she said.

Heimdall looked at her more closely. For a second he frowned at her colors, brighter by far than those of the Folk.

Then he turned accusingly to Idun. “What did you do to her?” he said.

“She was dying,” said Idun. “I brought her back.”

There was a rather ominous silence.

“Let me get this straight,” said Heimdall. “You brought her back.”

Idun nodded happily.

“You gave…one of the Folk…the food of the gods.”

Idun smiled.

“And you thought that was a good idea?”

“Why not?” said the Healer.

“Why not?” said Heimdall. “Listen, Idun. She came back from the dead. You’ve given her the gift of prophecy.” He gave the rock at his side a kick. “Gods,” he said. “That’s all we need. Another bloody oracle.”

6

“Sir, it’s too late,” protested Sugar-and-Sack as they stumbled across the featureless plain. “The Captain’s stone’s gone black, d’ye kennet, and that can only mean one thing…”

“You’re staying with me,” said the General. “For a start, I’ll need your eyes.”

“Me eyes?”

“Just take my arm-and keep going.”

In the darkness of World Below, Odin had almost welcomed blindness. But here, beneath the false gray sun of the Underworld, he knew that his advantage-such as it was-was at an end. Against the pallor of the desert he and Sugar stood out like two cockroaches on a cake-easy targets for an enemy. Blind, he could still sense that the Vanir were close, and their combined strength was such that even if he’d had the use of his eyes, he would have had little chance against the seven of them at once.

But the Vanir seemed disinclined to attack. Only the white wolf was in pursuit-and so close now that he could hear her panting. But with Sugar as his guide and a wall of broken rock only yards away, he was almost sure he could make it to some place of shelter, some place from which he might, with luck, strike first at the Huntress just as she shifted back into Aspect.

It was a long shot, but Odin took his chance and, feeling rock at the tip of his staff, he turned abruptly, wedged his back against the wall, and fired Hagall as hard as he could into the white wolf’s open jaws.

If Maddy had fired that bolt, it might have finished there and then. But it was not Maddy, and the mindbolt that would have taken out the Huntress’s throat just