Runemarks

***

Meanwhile, Odin’s strength was fading. The pull of Loki’s dream had intensified, as if to combat his attempt to escape. Below him Odin could see the rift between the Worlds, now a vortex through which the gulf of Chaos could be glimpsed, like the pupil of a monstrous eye.

Hang on! he said, but his arm was numb, his hand slick with Loki’s sweat, and it was hopeless, he knew; they would both be sucked into the gap between the Worlds, where the blackbird shadow would blot them from existence as if they’d never been at all…

Well, said Loki between gritted teeth. At least you tried, brother-which is more than I was expecting from you, to be totally honest…

Now Loki was clinging to Odin by his fingertips. He could feel them slipping, one by one: index, median, annular…This little piggy went to Chaos, thought Loki with a sudden desperate crack of laughter. This little piggy stayed at home-

Hold on! said Odin one last time. And then the fingers slipped from his grasp and he was left clutching shadows while-

– another hand reached out from behind him and grabbed hold of Loki by the hair.

Got you-said a voice Odin thought he recognized, and he had just enough time to marvel at how very like Balder’s that voice was when there came an almighty crashing sound, as if every door in the Nine Worlds had suddenly been blown shut, and all these things happened at once:

The hands on the deathwatch snapped together.

The rift between the Worlds closed as if it had never been there at all.

The river Dream pulled back, leaving an untold acreage of mudflats of evaporating dreamtime across the deserted plains of Hel.

And the dreamers suspended there awoke with a start, and some awoke to their former selves, and some paused as dancers in the middle of some complicated fugue who find themselves unexpectedly partnered with a total stranger as the music comes to a sudden stop.

Maddy awoke sobbing on the far shore of Dream but could no longer recall exactly why she had wept.

Frigg awoke in the body of a woman who had seemed to her at first both plain and middle-aged but who, with the rune Ethel shining brightly from her arm, made middle age and plainness into virtues far greater than the most transcendent beauty.

Dorian Scattergood awoke to find the sign Thuris emblazoned across his scarred right arm and Ethel watching him with a quizzical expression on her face-a face that was no longer quite hers, but that nevertheless radiated beauty and love.

“Thor,” she said, and held out her hand.

Adam Scattergood awoke feeling perfectly normal-except for the tiny voice that whispered and whined at the back of his head…

Brave T yr awoke to find himself three feet shorter than he used to be.

Sugar awoke to find himself clutching Fat Lizzy desperately in both arms. For a moment they stared at each other, nonplussed, then the potbellied sow gave a squeal of outrage as around her an Aspect began to form-that of a shapely, well-rounded woman with hair the color of ripe corn and a face now twisted with fury and disbelief.

Sif, the Harvest Queen, awoke in a state of rage that, if expressed in the Middle Worlds, would have leveled trees, blighted crops, and killed every flower from Malbry village to World’s End. As it was, there were no trees or flowers, and she was only able to scream in a voice that would have shattered glass had there been any: “A pig? You brought me back as a stinking pig?”

Loki awoke in his own skin and laughed until his guts were aching and-

Hel hissed-Men!-and closed her eyes, while around her the dead settled back like dust, to lie silent and undisturbed for another long age.

7

Silently Maddy let her eyes wander over the mudflats of Hel.

Dreamstuff still littered them, looking like the usual flotsam and jetsam of any river or sea, but the little group that stood assembled on the shore of Dream knew better than to investigate too closely the shining fragments, the not-quite-rocks, the seductive vapors that had been left behind.

The Vanir had joined them from their vantage point in the heart of the desert, and there had been some discussion over what had happened-discussion that had proved for the most part inconclusive. Skadi was particularly resentful, given that Odin was now beyond revenge, and Loki…

“Basically, what you’re saying is that I’m not allowed to kill him,” she said for the fourth time. She had already tried this argument on Njord, Frey, and Bragi, and now it was Heimdall’s turn to try to placate her (none of the others had managed yet).

Heimdall showed his golden teeth.

“Why?” said the Huntress. “Because he saved the world? Well, if that’s your excuse-”

“It’s not.” That was Idun, breaking in, sounding unusually down-to-earth and taking Skadi by surprise. “You can’t kill Loki,” she said simply, “because Balder wanted him to live.”

There was a long silence.

“Balder?” said Skadi.

Idun nodded.

There was another silence, during which Idun thought, with some surprise, that Skadi’s ice blue eyes looked a little misty. It was no secret that Balder had broken hearts while he was alive, but-

“Balder wanted him to live,” repeated Skadi in a doubtful voice.

“He sacrificed his life for him-for all of us,” said Idun.

There was another long and chilly pause.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Skadi. “You’ll be saying he’s in charge next.”

“Well,” said Idun. “Officially, as the General’s second in command-”

“Oh, bite me,” growled the Huntress, and put away her mindwhip before slouching off across the sand.

Adam was watching all this from afar. He felt surprisingly unafraid-he thought that perhaps the events of the past few days had cured him of fear forever-but his eyes were narrowed in hate as he watched, his skinny body curled up beneath a rock some distance from where the gods were standing.

No one had paid him the least attention; no one had searched for him, called, or even noticed that he was missing.

That was good, said Adam to himself; if he took the wide road across the plain, he would be long gone before anyone remembered he’d been there at all.

He moved quickly and with a peculiar confidence quite unlike the Adam Scattergood who had left Malbry half a lifetime ago. He remembered that Adam with some contempt now-that boy who was afraid of dreams. Now he stood reborn-a man, perhaps even the Last Man-and he was aware of a great responsibility. In one hand he held a golden key, and he kept his fist clenched tight around it as he began to run, low and fast, across the colorless expanse of Hel while in his mind that little voice still whispered and coaxed, promising:

Worlds…

The dead gave him a wide berth, which didn’t surprise Adam one bit.

Meanwhile, Maddy was trying to come to terms with recent events. It was hard enough to believe that they had survived at all-and yet more so to accept the four newcomers from across the river, the ?sir, who stood in Aspect among them.

Thor the Thunderer, who also happened to be Dorian Scattergood; Frigg the Mother, who had once been Ethel Parson; Bright-Haired Sif, the Harvest Queen, whose sigil Ar was echoed on the belly of a potbellied sow; and finally T yr, One-

Handed no more, but who seemed to be having problems with his host.

“I can’t be T yr,” protested Sugar-and-Sack. “That’s Brave-Hearted T yr. T yr the Warrior. I mean, do I even look like a warrior? There’s been a bloody mistake. You’ve mistaken me for someone brave.”

“You were brave,” Maddy told him. “You stole Mimir’s head.”

“I didn’t mean to!” said Sugar in alarm. “It was the Captain made me do it! He’s who you want, not me!” Around and above him the Warrior’s Aspect stood tall, and his colors-which were a vibrant red with a hint of goblin gold at the edges-glowed fiercely. On his left palm a runemark burned-T yr, reversed, bright as blood. “Take it off!” said Sugar, holding out his hand.

The Mother smiled. “It isn’t that easy.”

“But I’m not me anymore!” wailed the reluctant Warrior.

“Of course you are,” said Maddy gently. “You’ll carry his Aspect, but you’ll always be you. Just as I’ll always be Maddy Smith, though I’ll also be Modi, child of Thor. Think about it, Sugar. You’ve done a wonderful thing. All of you have.” She looked at Ethel, Dorian, and Fat Lizzy-looking very strange in the Aspect of Bright-Haired Sif-and then at Loki, who was standing alone with his back turned.

Maddy went over to him, but he did not look at her. Instead he watched the river Dream, with its islands, eddies, skerries, and rocks, and for once there was no trace of laughter in his eyes, but only a bleakness that Maddy could not identify.

“Cheer up, you escaped,” she said at last.

Loki kept right on not looking at her. Across the river the Black Fortress of Netherworld was already rebuilding itself, piece by piece, turret by impossible turret.

“Just wondering what else escaped,” Loki remarked, without taking his eyes from the Black Fortress.

“More of the ?sir, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

Maddy thought he didn’t sound particularly convinced.

“Or Balder, do you think?”