Runelight

by Joanne Harris

  Heimdall thought this only too likely, but wisely kept the thought to himself. Sigyn was welcome to come, he said, as long as she didn’t get in the way. Loki agreed, rather sullenly – but an acorn on a bracelet was better than a ball and chain, and besides, he told himself as he flew, who knew what inspiration a few days on the Roads would bring?

  For the present, however, he simply tried to concentrate on the immediate problem: that of conveying seven gods, five goddesses, three wolves, a person of Chaotic origin, two ravens and a hammer through four counties in less than a week without expending too much glam or attracting undue attention. Not the easiest of tasks, he knew; but he did have a plan, and with Heimdall’s help …

  He grinned to himself, and his colours brightened as he flew. Whether the plan worked or not, it promised to be a lot of fun.

  And if he failed?

  He banished the thought. He’d burn that bridge when he came to it.

  IT WAS ALMOST noon at the Moon and Stars, which was how long it had taken for Heimdall and Ethel to persuade the gods that trusting Loki was their best chance. Thor and Freyja were particularly resistant to the idea: both had good cause to remember the last time Loki had tried something like this – an occasion that had ended up with Freyja betrothed against her will and Thor, posing as the bride, ready to break up the party.

  Skadi too would have protested most violently, if she had been consulted at all. But with runemarks reversed and glam running short; with little money and fewer supplies; with Sugar and Jolly still in gaol; with the lawman and his posse pressing for information and the Wolf Brothers locked up in the barn with Skadi and Njörd, the remaining gods were beginning to understand the value of a little subterfuge.

  ‘Well, I’m not dressing up as a woman again!’ declared the irate Thunderer.

  ‘Why not? It was fun. You looked so cute.’

  Thor lunged at the Trickster, but Heimdall intercepted the blow. ‘I told you. No one touches him,’ he said, and gritted his golden teeth. ‘At least, not until the seventh day – after which you can hit him all you like.’

  The subject under discussion grinned and settled himself more comfortably into Mr Mountjoy’s favourite armchair. He had arrived in his hawk Aspect, but planned to return with more fanfare later, and had sent Frey out in wolf form to make the necessary arrangements.

  ‘So I’ll need some paper and ink,’ he said. ‘And paint, canvas, glue, wood, and – oh, some little bottles of water.’

  Having provided these supplies, the gods left him alone for an hour, whereupon he emerged, slightly inkstained, but pleased with himself, and brandishing a number of carefully lettered pages. Ethel took one and peered at it.

  ‘Lucky’s Pocket Pan-daemonium Circus!’ she read aloud. ‘A Paragon of Excellence! Beasts and Marvels! Wonders and Freaks! Brought to you from the Wacky Wilderlands, come see’ – she raised an eyebrow – ‘Mr Muscles, the Strong Man! The Amazing Wolf Boys! Queen of the Pigs!’

  Sif’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘Queen of the what?’ she said.

  Loki looked modest. ‘Catchy, huh? Plus there’s Helga and her Huskies, Dancing Dunhilde and her Dwarves, Biddy the Bird Charmer – plus we’ll be selling Professor Pinkerton’s All-Purpose Purgative Potion (bottles of water, to you and me), the Cure for Anything at All, from baldness to incontinence – especially when we’ve got Idun standing nearby with a healing charm hidden up her sleeve.’ Loki shot them his brilliant smile. ‘So? Am I a genius, or what?’

  For a few minutes the noise was too great to make out any individual responses, and Heimdall was too fully occupied in shielding his unrepentant protégé from the rain of mindbolts and missiles that ensued to give anything else much attention.

  Safe behind the rune Yr, the cause of all this disruption just sat and watched in a bored way, and played with the gold acorn that dangled from the chain on his wrist. It was a very delicate chain, though stronger by far than it appeared, and although it still linked Loki’s hands together, it gave him freedom of movement without ever allowing him to forget that it was there.

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Bragi, when the noise had died down. ‘We’re trying to keep a low profile, and you want us to pose as a circus!’

  Loki shrugged. ‘Best way,’ he said. ‘No one questions a travelling show. The freakier the better. You’ll be welcomed with open arms. And as long as folk are entertained, they’ll pay our way in food and supplies and wave us through the outposts. Besides, you’ll get to play your guitar.’

  ‘Really?’ Bragi looked hopeful.

  ‘Queen of the Pigs?’ repeated Sif.

  ‘Unless you’d rather be the Bearded Lady—’

  ‘The bearded what?’

  Ethel smiled. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it might just work.’

  ‘Queen of the Pigs!’ protested Sif.

  ‘Let me hammer him,’ said Thor.

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Ethel said. ‘He’s under my protection now.’ She paused to allow the din to subside. ‘Think about it, all of you. If he is a traitor, then the best thing to do is keep him with us, where he can’t do any harm. And if he’s not’ – her expression darkened – ‘well, it won’t really matter to any of us unless we get to World’s End in time.’

  Loki gave Ethel a wary look. The Seeress had never been fond of him, not even before Balder’s death, and he was mightily surprised that she should speak in his defence.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  She smiled at him. But it was a curious, troubling smile, which did nothing to reassure him. ‘And you, of course, would be Lucky,’ she said. ‘Ringmaster, manager … general?’

  Loki grinned. ‘Of course. Who else?’

  Ethel kept on smiling.

  And so the Trickster got his way, and it was with the keenest enjoyment that he now set about allocating parts, going over details, and making sure that everyone knew precisely what he wanted of them. Few of the gods warmed to the idea. But short of charming every lawman, every outpost guard, every suspicious innkeeper between the Hindarfell and the Universal City, short of keeping their Aspects for seven whole, impossible days without the chance to replenish their glam, they had to agree – reluctantly – that Loki’s way was the fastest way.

  Ethel remained as serene as before, saying little, but always alert. Loki found it unnerving. Still, he thought, the Seeress had always been an enigma to him, and this new Aspect of her was doubly so. Besides, he didn’t really care; he wasn’t planning to stay around for long. As for Tribulation …

  Loki had already seen one Ragnarók, and wanted no more to do with it. War with Chaos … the End of the Worlds – this time around he meant to be far away when all Hel broke loose. Maybe on a ship somewhere, on his way to the Outlands. There were islands there, Loki knew, where no flake of snow had ever fallen; where tropical fruit grew all year round; and where the most strenuous thing a man did all day was pour himself another drink, or decide which of the local girls was prettiest, or choose from a laden table precisely which delicacy he wanted to taste next.

  He deserved this, Loki thought. He’d already saved the Worlds once. This time around, he promised himself …

  The Æsir could manage without him.

  FOUR WHOLE DAYS had already passed since Maddy and Jorgi arrived in World’s End. In that time she had come to realize that her task was far from straightforward. The Universal City was much larger than any town she had imagined or dreamed. It stretched out like a patchwork quilt of squares and streets and alleyways; of arches, cobbled courtyards, minarets, walled gardens and little fountains. There were shops and markets, traders and thieves, street performers and animal shows and off-duty sailors with money to burn. There were colleges and cathedrals, which, though never as huge as Nat Parson claimed, nevertheless managed to rise twice as high as the tallest tree, scraping the sky with their gilded glass spires. There were statues of ancient dignitaries, long since stripped of their gilding and streaked with soot and bird-lime. There were canals with rows
of houseboats crowded in their moorings; there were filthy slums standing alongside gracious houses surrounded by trees. In one square was a marble plinth on which stood a giant warlord of the Sea riding on a serpent, both intricately carved in stone and surrounded by little jets of water that rose and fell at intervals. Looking more closely, Maddy was almost sure that she recognized Njörd’s features in the marble, though Perth assured her that this was one of the great kings of old – a king of the Elder Age called Knut, whose power had been so great that he could hold back the waves of the One Sea and raise its beasts at his command.

  Perth was full of stories. Maddy had no way of knowing whether any of them were true, but all the same she was very aware of how much she needed his guidance in this city of perilous wonders. She had not been there above an hour before she realized that finding her sister would not be the simple task she had assumed; with the truesight, it soon became clear that the city was filled with signatures – some bright, some dim, all shuttling ceaselessly like threads in an intricate tapestry. It might take weeks to find Maggie Rede – if, indeed, she found her at all.

  ‘Ah – why do you need to look for her?’ Perth had been asking the same questions over the course of the past four days. ‘Can’t we just do business here? With your skills and mine, we could reach for the sky.’

  Even in such a short time, Perth had proved himself a very apt pupil in the use of the runes, picking up the fingerings with the same effortless ease that he brought to picking pockets and palming coins. His own glam was almost as bright as Maddy’s own, which led her to think that the rune he bore must be one of the New Script. She named it simply Perth, and hoped that maybe Ethel could help identify it more clearly, if ever she managed to bring the two of them together.

  But teaching Perth the runes took time. So did keeping him out of trouble. Left to his own devices, Perth’s new skills would probably have landed him in gaol within the week, and when she caught him cheating at cards by using the rune Bjarkán to look at his opponents’ hands, she had to explain to her new friend that runes were not to be trifled with.

  Glam was a dangerous gift, she said, to be used only rarely, and in secret. The days of the Order might be over, but there were still hangings in World’s End.

  Perth listened to the lecture with every sign of contrition, then went back to doing precisely what he had before, using Fé to make fool’s gold or Kaen to cheat at knucklebones, so that much of Maddy’s time was taken up in trying to keep him under control.

  Might as well try to tame Wildfire, she thought, and realized, with an aching heart, how badly she missed Loki. The others too – all of them. She only hoped they would understand – assuming she survived to explain – why she had misled them, and why, when she could have gone to them for help, she had chosen to act alone.

  Teaching Perth was one of the reasons why Maddy had made so little progress in the Universal City. The second reason was simpler. For the first time in her life Maddy Smith was afraid. Oh, not of the dangers of the big city, or of what she might encounter on her quest; but of what she might have to do when she finally tracked down her sister.

  Raised by a man who resented her for her mother’s death in childbirth; the younger, plainer sister of Mae, the prettiest girl in the village, Maddy had spent her childhood dreaming of finding her true family, the tribe that would accept her for what she was. She had found it in the Æsir. She’d discovered a father in Thor, a grandfather in Odin. But ever since Loki had told her the truth, Maddy had longed for her unknown twin with a silent, desperate yearning. The thought that she might have a sibling out there, born into the wrong family, dreaming the same dreams and waiting for Maddy to find her, had sustained her throughout the past three years. Even after the attack on Red Horse Hill Maddy had never lost that hope. So instead of alerting the Æsir to the danger that threatened them all, she had let the Trickster take the blame and fled alone to World’s End.

  Now Maddy’s greatest fear was that her instinct had been wrong, that Maggie was the enemy, and that by her actions she herself might bring about the End of the Worlds. She wished that Odin’s ravens would come and tell her what to do next. Or that Odin himself would speak to her again through Dream – but the only birds she had seen so far had been the drab-looking pigeons that infested the city, and her only dreams had been troubled, broken things that made no sense when she awoke.

  And so she stayed with the only friend she had managed to find in World’s End. Perth knew the place like the back of his hand; plus, his work in the city markets meant that Maddy would have the opportunity to watch lots of folk go by. Some day soon, she told herself, one of them would be her sister.

  Never give a sucker an even break.

  Old Inlandic proverb

  MEANWHILE, ON THE Ridings road, a spectacle the like of which had not been seen since the Elder Age was making its way to World’s End just in time for Ragnarók. Travelling briskly day and night, changing horses at every stop – six hundred miles in seven days would be no small feat for those horses, even with runes of endurance sewn into their harness – and with two performances daily, Lucky’s Pocket Pan-daemonium Circus, now in its third day of existence, made its way down from the Hindarfell, through the North Ridings towards World’s End, performing in villages along the way – to wonder and applause from the Folk.

  A circus – even a pocket-sized one – tends to attract attention, and when it boasts such enticements as (for instance) a Wolf Boy, a Queen of the Pigs, Helga and her Huskies and the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, going unnoticed generally ceases to be an option. Loki had understood this from the start, but he knew that sometimes to hide in plain sight was easier than trying to pass unseen.

  Loki was enjoying it immensely, of course. He was a natural showman. His words kept the audience mesmerized, and with clever lighting and a handful of cantrips he had them in the palm of his hand. He would have been happier still if Sigyn had not been with him, but in spite of his efforts to free himself, she had remained by his side, linked to him by the fine gold chain; either in her own Aspect, or in the shape of the small golden acorn that she had assumed during her flight from Malbry.

  However, not even this could detract from Loki’s enjoyment. Add to the main attractions Jolly and Sugar, in colourful costumes, driving in a little car drawn by a pair of turkeys; the Wolf Brothers and Angie, in Aspect; the Strongest Man in the World (that was Thor); Heimdall, in his hawk guise, in a double-act with Njörd’s sea-eagle, and (or so the Trickster claimed) Lucky’s Pocket Pan-daemonium Circus seemed guaranteed for success.

  The gods and their associates had rather more mixed feelings. Freyja, in her current role as the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, was naturally more than satisfied. Lounging in full Aspect inside a gold-and-white tent, she held court to a string of admirers who, with the help of a surreptitious charm or two, were more than willing to donate supplies, money, gifts or whatever it was that Freyja (or more often Loki) desired. Bragi, now billed as the Human Nightingale, was delighted to spend his days singing and making music to a crowd of adoring womenfolk. Even Skadi, in her role as Helga, with her Huskies, was willing to tolerate the foolishness to a certain extent, although she was sure that, even with horses at every post and the continued support of the Folk, Loki would fail to get them to World’s End on time, and she was rather enjoying the prospect of seeing the Trickster bite the dust – as he would, at dawn on the seventh day, if by then they had not reached the gates of the Universal City.

  Sif, however, was less pleased. Petula, Queen of the Pigs, had proved almost as popular as Freyja herself, especially with the children, who always brought along baskets of food, for Loki had assured the awe-stricken crowds that the Queen of the Pigs consumed no fewer than fourteen loaves of bread per day, as well as six bushels of apples, a side of beef, a leg of lamb, a smoked trout, a raised chicken pie, a seed cake, a plum cake, five dozen jam tarts (Loki was partial to jam tarts), a quart of milk and a dozen bottles of finest ale
– and this, of course, was winter-time, which, so Loki told them, was a time of fasting for the Queen of the Pigs; otherwise she would be so heavy that even a team of oxen would find it impossible to carry her.

  This convenient story ensured that Lucky’s Pocket Pan-daemonium Circus was always well-provisioned; although, of course, it also meant that Sif had spent the past three days in a state of perpetual fury, during which time Thor had wisely kept out of her way – that is, when he was not already engaged in lifting hay-trucks, wrestling bulls, juggling anvils and performing all the other feats expected from the World’s Strongest Man.

  Their journey had been going so well. The roads had been mostly clear of snow. Since passing the Hindarfell, they had managed to cover a hundred and ninety miles – excellent going for northern roads – and by evening of their third day were nearing the border into the Lowlands.

  This border was marked by the river Vimur, and the only crossing place within fifty miles was through a town called Rhydian. This was a trading centre of some importance, an industrial market town filled with journeymen, farmers, weavers, stonemasons, tanners, bargemen moving their cargo downriver towards World’s End; and spanning the river at its narrowest part was the marvellous Rhydian Bridge, known throughout Inland as one of the wonders of the Age.

  No one remembered how old it was. Some claimed it was the work of Jonathan Gift, the genius who had designed the cathedral of St Sepulchre. Almost four hundred feet in length, suspended from four great stone pylons by sixteen cables of twisted steel, the bridge had spanned the Vimur since before anyone could remember, almost untouched by the passage of time. Legend had it that there were ancient runes embedded in the bridge’s foundations that kept the stones from crumbling, the sleek steel cables from weakening. Be that as it might, the skills required to design and build such a marvel had long since been lost in the mists of time, with the result that over the centuries Rhydian had become the greatest town outside World’s End, a centre of trade and industry second only to the Universal City itself.