Runelight

by Joanne Harris

  ‘So it summoned a demon from World Beyond, a being by the name of Svadilfari, and enslaved it with the force of the Word, and gave it the shape of a great Horse. And the Nameless offered to help them complete the Citadel in less than a week – single-handed, except for the Horse – for a price as yet undetermined.

  ‘It seemed too good to be true at first. A task that would have taken the Firefolk years completed in less than seven days – but Odin One-Eye was wary. He’d already paid a high price for his bargain with the Nameless. To enter into a contract without even knowing what it would cost would be the act of a madman. But Loki, his brother in Chaos, persuaded him to make the deal. The job would never be finished in time, he said; the risk was therefore minimal. And so they agreed, and the work began. But Svadilfari was by his very nature an architect of castles in the air, and rune by rune, glamour by glamour, the Sky Citadel began to take shape.

  ‘Five days into the contract, the Firefolk were getting anxious. Odin in particular was uneasy, not least because his people were beginning to whisper that it had been his intention from the first to throw in his lot with the Nameless. Typically, he blamed Loki, who, seeing where the land lay, set out in haste to redeem himself before they threw him from the sky.’

  Maggie hadn’t heard this part of the tale. Even in the Good Book’s Closed Chapters, mention of the Firefolk had been kept to a minimum, and all she knew was that somehow they had taken the First World through trickery, and in so doing had made themselves gods.

  She thought of the Horse they had left in the stables, feeding placidly from a bale of hay. He looked so like any other horse that even she could hardly believe his true Aspect – that thing, half Horse, half spider, that had birthed itself from the side of a Hill with half of Dream in its terrible wake …

  ‘The Red Horse …’ she ventured shyly. ‘Is he – Svadilfari?’

  Adam shook his head. ‘Not quite. Loki knew how to change his shape – an easy task in the First World – and he took the form of a little white mare – a very pretty little white mare – and lured away the demon Horse back into the realm of Dream. The Nameless tried to call him back; but Svadilfari was infatuated, and he and the white mare disappeared for two whole days and two whole nights. And so the seven-day deadline passed, and the Citadel was left unfinished. And the Nameless had to admit defeat, and forfeit Asgard to the gods.’

  ‘And the Horse?’ said Maggie.

  Adam shrugged. ‘No one saw him again,’ he said. ‘But when Loki came back in his natural form, he brought back with him an eight-legged foal, child of the demon and the white mare. He called him Sleipnir, and he gave him to Odin as a bribe, in exchange for being allowed to stay when all the others wanted him out.’

  Maggie stared at Adam, enthralled. ‘So … Loki was his mother?’ she said. ‘How did he manage to do that?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe all the disgusting things that Loki’s managed to do in his time,’ said Adam, taking Maggie’s hand and looking at her earnestly. ‘But now we have him. Odin’s Horse. Sleipnir. The greatest steed in the Nine Worlds.’

  ‘But why?’ said Maggie. ‘Why bring him here? Isn’t he still dangerous? Besides, I thought our job was to wipe out demons, not release them into the Worlds …’

  ‘Patience,’ said Adam with a smile. In fact, by now he was feeling thoroughly impatient with Maggie, but three years of living with the thing in his mind had taught him a measure of self-control. ‘Believe me, I understand how you feel. I was like that myself once. Of course I hate working with demons just as much as you do, but sometimes the end justifies the means, and this time the lesser evil is to bring these creatures into the Worlds, so that a far greater menace can be defeated for ever.’

  ‘The Firefolk,’ said Maggie.

  ‘That’s right,’ Adam said.

  ‘But the Good Book says that the Riders will—’

  ‘Herald Tribulation?’ Adam smiled. ‘That’s right,’ he said again. ‘The End of the Worlds. Ragnarók. Apocalypse. The Winter War. But this time we’ll be calling the shots. We’ll be in charge. We’ll name the date.’ He put his hands on Maggie’s shoulders and looked into her grey-gold eyes. ‘Don’t you see what this means?’ he said. ‘It gives us a chance to do things right. To bring Order out of Chaos. To save the Worlds from the Firefolk.’

  ‘You mean we can stop Tribulation?’

  Adam nodded. ‘Of course we can. You have what it takes to defeat them. You already have the Red Horse. Now all we need is one more thing: an artefact of the Elder Age that will help us destroy them once and for all.’

  ‘An artefact?’ She looked at him.

  ‘People call it the Old Man.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘All I know is we need it.’

  ‘But what about …’ Maggie lowered her voice. ‘What about the Magister, Adam? Who – what – is he? And can’t we get you free, somehow?’

  Adam went pale and shook his head. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said in a low and urgent voice. ‘My master’s here to help us. I know back there it looked different, but you have to believe me. He’s on our side. It’s … complicated. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ said Maggie doubtfully. ‘But tell me – who was that girl on the Hill? The one with the ruinmark, who looks just like me?’

  In Adam’s mind, his passenger uttered a distant warning.

  Leave this to me, Adam said. I know how to handle her.

  You’d better, said his passenger. Or I’ll take you both apart.

  Briefly Adam considered whether a quick prayer to Loki would count as blasphemy at this stage. He knew from the Voice in his mind that the Trickster had once been in similar shoes, had suffered this same communion and had somehow broken free at last …

  ‘Trust me, Maggie,’ he said, and smiled. ‘You asked me once if I were a dream. Well, that’s where everything begins. That’s where you’ll find your answers. Dream. Will you trust me?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  So Adam began his story.

  MAGGIE REDE MISTRUSTED dreams, as she mistrusted dreamers. But Adam explained it all so well; and now she began to understand how Dream had been breached by the Firefolk to unleash Chaos into the Worlds, and how from that Chaos they planned to rebuild the Rainbow Bridge and, from there, take possession of the Firmament itself, the First World of Creation.

  ‘And so you see,’ Adam said, ‘the answer to everything lies in dreams. Your dreams, Maggie – yours and mine. That’s how we freed the Horse of Fire. That’s how we’ll track down the Old Man. And that’s how we’ll vanquish the Firefolk and bring Order back to the Nine Worlds.’

  ‘But why does it have to be me?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Because of who you are,’ Adam said. ‘Because you carry their blood in your veins.’

  ‘But I don’t,’ protested Maggie. ‘My uncle was an Examiner. My parents were Orderly folk. My brothers were both in the Order.’

  Adam touched the nape of her neck, where the runemark Ác, the Thunder Oak, still gleamed beneath her shorn hair. ‘You didn’t get that from Donal Rede. Or from his goodwife Susan.’

  ‘Then who did I get it from?’ Maggie said.

  Adam sighed and took her hand. ‘You asked me about the girl,’ he said.

  Maggie looked at him eagerly. Ever since her return to World’s End she had longed to know more about the girl on the Hill, who looked so like her, and called her by name, and knew about her family.

  ‘This may come as a shock,’ Adam said. In fact, he was enjoying himself. For the first time since his passenger had taken residence in his mind, he was experiencing the joy of wielding power.

  ‘Who is she?’ Maggie said. ‘She told me she wasn’t an enemy.’

  ‘Maybe not to you,’ he said. ‘But to me, to my master, to all the Worlds, to everything we hold most dear—’

  ‘What do you mean? Who is she?’

  He smiled. ‘Her name is Maddy Smith,’ he said. ‘I knew
her – fought her – long ago, before I met my master. She looks ordinary enough, but in fact she is one of the most dangerous and powerful of the Seer-folk. She hates me. She’s always hated me. And …’

  Adam paused for effect.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Maggie – she’s your sister.’

  He’d expected tears – hysterics, perhaps; to Adam, that would have been normal. But Maggie Rede was no ordinary girl, and although her lips tightened momentarily, her expression remained eerily calm. Her shock and disgust at finding the runemark at the nape of her neck now seemed like an eternity away; in fact, Adam thought resentfully, she was just like Maddy herself – pert, stubborn and too clever for her own good.

  ‘How can we be sisters?’ she said. ‘I’ve never even met her before.’

  Adam gave a narrow smile. ‘Of course you haven’t met,’ he said. ‘But you are sisters, nevertheless. You’re the twin children of Thor and Jarnsaxa, of Chaos and the Firefolk. That’s why my master wanted you to kill her while you had the chance. The link that binds you is dangerous, and until it can be severed, your soul will always remain in the balance, and the Seer-folk will never leave you alone.’

  For a long time Maggie said nothing. Could it be that in one world, a person could seem so harmless – even apparently likeable – while in another, they were as devious and destructive as Adam Goodwin seemed to suggest?

  She thought of the Red Horse down in the stables. He seemed such an ordinary beast. And yet, in another world, he was the Red Horse of the Last Days. Could what Adam said be true? Could it be that the enemy was Maggie’s own twin sister?

  Adam put his hand on her arm. ‘I know you don’t want this, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Just as I never wanted it. But all that changed when I met you. Together, we can face anything. Together, with my master’s help, we can change the Nine Worlds, take what was broken and build it anew.’

  ‘Can we?’ said Maggie.

  ‘Of course we can.’

  And at this he looked into her eyes, and all Maggie’s common sense dissolved into a rosy haze. Here was someone who knew her heart; someone who accepted her; someone with whom she could share any secret, however dark.

  Her hand crept to the nape of her neck, where the runemark Ác was glowing like a firebrand.

  ‘You don’t think I’m tainted? By this?’ she said.

  ‘Of course not.’ Adam smiled. ‘In fact – I think you’re beautiful.’

  Maggie looked at him in surprise. She had never been a beauty, of course; not even before she had cut her hair. Too poor to afford the expensive clothes that were the fashion in World’s End, she had always been considered plain – too tall; too boyish; too clever; too pert; unwilling to play the seduction games played by other girls of her age. Her luminous eyes were too direct; her hair, which had been beautiful, was always hidden under a scarf. Now even that was gone, and just at the moment when Maggie, for the first time in her life, had started to care what she looked like.

  Of course, Adam knew this perfectly well. Maggie Rede and Maddy Smith were alike in more than features; they shared a similar temperament, and even their different backgrounds had done little to alter the resemblance. Both had been solitary children – Maddy spending hours alone in Little Bear Wood, Maggie in her underground haunts beneath the old University. Maggie had her sister’s pride; her courage and her confidence. But underneath all that he could see that Maggie longed for someone to trust; for a friend in whom she could confide – or even, perhaps, fall in love …

  Love? Maggie Rede would have laughed at the thought only a few days ago. Now there was something in her eyes; a warmth that touched her plain face with something approaching beauty. Adam Scattergood had changed from the spoiled and sullen young man he’d once been. At seventeen, he was handsome; he had an air of mystery; he knew many things; he was different to all the other young men she had ever en countered. Most importantly of all, he was telling Maggie what she wanted to hear – that he needed her – that he wanted her – and to Maggie, to be needed was the greatest attraction of all.

  He gently pulled at the bergha that covered Maggie’s shorn hair. ‘Must you really wear this? Now that I’ve seen you without it …’

  Once more, and for the last time, Maggie hesitated. ‘But Adam, my hair …’

  ‘I like it this way. It makes you different,’ he said.

  It was the first time Maggie had heard that word used as anything but a negative.

  ‘Different?’ she said, allowing him to undo the headscarf and draw it away.

  Tenderly Adam touched her hair. ‘Beautiful,’ he repeated.

  He drew Maggie towards him; she rested her head on his shoulder. Her forehead seemed made for that cradle; she closed her eyes and settled there.

  ‘I still don’t trust your master,’ she said.

  Adam smiled. ‘Do you trust me?’

  Slowly Maggie nodded.

  ‘Then come with me,’ said Adam. ‘And dream …’

  MADDY KNEW IT only from stories. Nat Parson had been full of tales of the Universal City, with its green parks and its gracious halls, its domes of glass and its spires of gold, its harbour with its tall ships, and the One Sea that stretched out for ever. But Nat Parson had always been prone to exaggeration, and, given that no one else in Malbry was in a position to contradict him (a pilgrimage was a costly thing, and no one had come back from the Universal City in something approaching forty years), Maddy had always assumed that his accounts of the place were much embellished, and that the reality would turn out to be something very different.

  Even so, she found herself unprepared. The dark and eerie catacombs, the tunnels so like those of World Below, the hidden libraries infested with rats, seemed more like the ruins of an empire than any kind of a city. Exploring the labyrinth underneath the ancient buildings, she found herself marvelling at the amazement of riches, seemingly abandoned here: fragments of blackened silverware, cut up and hidden by looters who had lost their way in the darkness and whose bones still littered the catacombs; blocks of marble; toppled archways; uncut gemstones like nuggets of fire; papers and ledgers centuries old; and books – hundreds, thousands of books, some swarming with bookworms, some still intact, some locked, some coded, some lavishly illuminated, some written in foreign languages – some containing maps and charts of the World Beyond the One Sea.

  Maddy would have liked to take time to investigate. Surely among these forgotten things she might be expected to find the Old Man. But she also needed to find Maggie Rede; because if all she suspected was true, then it was only a matter of time before the Seer-folk found their way to World’s End. And Maddy needed the Old Man – not just because Odin had told her so, but because if, as she believed, the Old Man was the Whisperer, she could use it to prove to the other gods that Maggie was an innocent, a pawn in the hands of their enemy.

  But first she had to find her twin; to try and explain the truth to her. That might not be easy, she knew. Maggie was a World’s Ender, brought up under the Order’s regime. For all Maddy knew, her sister might be a believer, devout in the ways of the Good Book, a willing convert to Mimir’s deceptions, a soldier of the Nameless. It had taken One-Eye six years to teach Maddy what she needed to know. Maddy had only days, at best, to ensure that Maggie was prepared.

  The Cradle fell an age ago, but Fire and Folk shall raise her

  In just twelve days, at End of Worlds; a gift within the sepulchre.

  The Æsir had assumed (too fast) that the twelve days of the prophecy referred to the building of Asgard. Now it seemed likely to Maddy that the twelve days were a countdown leading up to Ragnarók, whether the gods were ready or not.

  Two whole days had already passed since Ethel had made the prophecy. Which left nine days to find the Old Man, which could be buried anywhere. Nine days to find her sister, and to persuade her she wasn’t an enemy.

  And so Maddy left the catacombs, and, using Sól to light her way and with one hand fastened in Jorgi’s mane, man
aged to find a way aboveground into the University.

  They emerged just south of the Great Cloister, once a place of mediation, recently converted into a teeming marketplace packed with stalls and businesses. It was lucky for Maddy that she did; for among the crowds of Outlanders, the slaves and the dancers and the entertainers, the veiled women and the painted ones, the thieves and the pickpockets, the cut-throats and the mercenaries, not even a rustic from the North and her strangely unconvincing horse was likely to attract much attention.

  She tried to pass by unnoticed, but found it difficult to ignore a dog with two heads; a dancing snake; a tattooed prophet speaking in tongues; a man selling severed fingers.

  ‘What kind of place is this?’ she said to herself as she wandered from one plundered hall to another, among the cobwebs and chandeliers, avoiding the cracks in marble pavements, hearing the clamour of unknown voices against the ghosts of long ago. She’d expected to find it a shrine to the Order; a monument to her vanquished foes. That would have been appropriate. Ten thousand men had died, after all, in the name of what they believed. Maddy found, to her surprise, that she felt more sympathy for her dead adversaries than she did for these World’s Enders, who seemed to have given themselves up entirely to the pursuit of pleasure and profit now that Law and Order were gone.

  ‘Wanna buy a charm, lady?’

  Maddy turned, and saw a journeyman addressing her, his face almost entirely concealed behind a grubby yellow scarf, his tall figure hidden beneath the coloured robes of the Outlands.

  ‘Charm?’ said Maddy.

  The journeyman grinned, and Maddy thought she saw a glimpse of bright blue eyes above the yellow scarf. ‘Love spell, miss? You look the type.’

  She shook her head. ‘Really. I’m not.’

  ‘Then what about a good-luck charm? Genuine piece of the Elder Age. For you, only two bits.’

  Still grinning, the journeyman held out a tray. It was piled with nuggets of black rock. They looked like the cinders from Jed Smith’s forge – light and sharp-edged and pitted with holes. Some bore tiny crystals embedded in the surface; others, the ghost of a rainbow.