Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  2

  According to legend, the world beneath the Middle World is divided into three levels, linked by one great river. World Below is the realm of the Mountain People, the goblins, trolls, and dwarves. Beneath that is Hel’s kingdom, traditionally given over to the dead, then Dream, one of the three great tributaries of the Cauldron of Rivers, and lastly, at the very door of Chaos, Netherworld, known to some as the Black Fortress, where Surt the Destroyer guards the gate and the gods themselves have no dominion.

  Maddy already knew this, of course. One-Eye’s teachings had been thorough on all matters concerning the geography of the Nine Worlds. But what she had not suspected was the monstrous scale of World Below: the countless passageways, tunnels, alcoves, and lairs that made up the underside of the Hill. There were rifts and fissures and crannies and nooks; and dugouts and dens; and side passages, storerooms, walkways, and potholes, burrows and warrens and larders and pits. And after what seemed like hours of searching through these, Maddy’s excitement at actually being in the fabled halls was starting to fade visibly as she began to understand that, even with Sugar’s reluctant help, she was unlikely to be able to cover even the hundredth part of them.

  They found goblins only on the top level of the great gallery. Cat-faced, golden-eyed, squirrel-tailed, all dressed in mail and rags and leather, they paid little attention to Maddy or to her companion.

  They were not the only inhabitants of that level. As she hurried along the crowded passageways, Maddy passed dozens of other creatures, all as busy and incurious as the goblins themselves: Tunnel People, colored like the clay of their native earth, with great jaws and tiny, lashless eyes; Mountain People; Sky People; Wood People; even a couple of men of the Folk, hooded and furtive, with traders’ packs on their shoulders and staves in their hands.

  “Aye, miss, there’s always some that’ll trade with the Gødfolk,” said Sugar when Maddy commented on this. “You don’t think you’re the only one what’s found their way down here, do yer? Or that the Eye’s the only gateway under the Hill?”

  Below that there was less traffic, fewer spells. Here were storerooms, vaults, sleeping quarters, food stores. Maddy, who was growing hungry, was tempted to raid these, but goblins are not especially particular about what they eat, and she had heard too many tales to take the risk. Instead, searching her pockets, she found an apple core and a handful of nuts and made a small, unsatisfying meal of these, a decision she was to regret later.

  They moved down toward the river, and here at last were stone lanes packed with spoils and takings. Remembering what One-Eye had told her, Maddy cast Bjarkán and searched, but among the webwork of little spells and signatures that crisscrossed the tunnels, among the bundles of feathers, chests of rags, pots and pans, and broken daggers and battered shields, she could find no sign of anything resembling a treasure of the Elder Age.

  Goblins, of course, are terrible hoarders and, unlike dwarves, will steal anything that comes to hand, regardless of its value. But Maddy was not discouraged. Somewhere in all this, she was sure she would find the Whisperer. Rather an odd name for a treasure, she thought, but then she remembered the Dropper, Odin’s ring; his spear, Fear-Striker; and Mjølnir, the Pounder, the hammer of Thor; and told herself that the treasures of the Elder Age had often borne such mysterious names.

  And so she searched on: through old mattresses, dry bones, and broken crockery; through sticks and stones and dolls’ heads and partnerless shoes and loaded dice and fake toenails and scraps of paper and tasteless china ornaments and dirty handkerchiefs and forgotten love poems and balding oriental rugs and lost schoolbooks and headless mice.

  But still, as One-Eye had warned her, she found nothing of value—no gold, no silver, not even a nickel penny.

  “There’s nowt here.” The goblin had grown increasingly restive as they proceeded deeper into the belly of the Hill. “There’s nowt down here and it’s not bloody safe.”

  Maddy shrugged and kept on going.

  “Now if I knew what you were looking for…,” said Sugar.

  “I’ll tell you when I’ve found it.”

  “You don’t even know what it looks like, do yer?” he said.

  “Shut up and watch where you’re going.”

  “You don’t bloody know!”

  As Maddy followed Sugar deeper and deeper into the Hill, she began to fear that the goblin was right. The Hill was a ragman’s paradise, stuffed from seam to seam with worthless trash. There was nothing resembling treasure here; nothing magical, nothing precious, nothing approaching One-Eye’s description.

  Also it was clear to Maddy that Sugar was as baffled by their search as she was herself. He had repeatedly denied that there was any kind of treasure beneath the Hill, and after consideration she was inclined to believe him. Goblins don’t really understand wealth and are just as likely to steal a broken teapot as half a crown or a diamond ring. Besides, she just couldn’t imagine how a treasure of the Elder Age—a thing of such importance that One-Eye could spend years trying to locate it—would remain for long in the hands of Sugar and his friends.

  No, the more Maddy thought about it, the less likely it seemed that the Good Folk had anything to do with this. The secret—if it was there at all—lay deeper than the goblins’ lair.

  In the hours that passed, she twice cast Naudr on her reluctant companion, with slightly less effect each time. She was very hungry and wished she had taken advantage of the goblins’ food stores, but these were far behind her now and hunger, fatigue, and the strain of controlling the goblin, casting and recasting Sól, and passing unseen through the labyrinth of spells were beginning to take their toll. Her glam was weakening like a lamp fast running out of oil. Soon it would be used up.

  Sugar was not unaware of this, and his gold eyes gleamed as he trotted tirelessly down one passage after another, leading Maddy further and further under the Hill, away from the storerooms and into the dark.

  Maddy followed him recklessly. The webwork of signatures that had so baffled her on the earliest levels had mostly thinned out and disappeared, leaving her with one single persistently bright and powerful trail that overwhelmed everything else and filled her with curiosity. It was an unusual color—a pale and luminous violet shade—and it lit the darkness, crossing and re-crossing as if someone had passed there many, many times. Maddy followed—thirsty now and numb with fatigue, but with a growing sense of excitement and hope that blinded her to her own weakening glam as well as to the furtive glint in the goblin’s eye.

  They were passing through a large, high-ceilinged cavern with a chandelier of stalactites that picked up the glow of Maddy’s runelight and threw it back at her in a thousand wands of fire and shadow. Sugar trotted ahead, ducking automatically beneath a protruding ledge of stone that brought Maddy up short and gasping. “Slow down!” she called.

  But Sugar did not seem to have heard. Maddy followed him, lifting up her hand to light his trail, only to see him vanish behind an outcrop of gleaming lime.

  “I said wait!”

  As she hurried forward, Maddy realized that she was beginning to see more clearly. There was light coming from somewhere ahead; not runelight, nor a signature, nor the cool phosphorescence of the deep caves, but a warm, red, comforting glow.

  “Sugar?” she called, but either the goblin could not hear or he was maliciously ignoring her, because there was no reply but the echo of her own voice—sounding small and very lost—rebounding glassily between the great stalactites.

  All at once a shudder went through the ground, and Maddy lurched forward, holding out her hands to steady herself. Dust and stone fragments, dislodged by the upheaval, pattered onto her back. She was just straightening up again when a second tremor struck, and she was flung against the wall as a slab of rock the size of a haunch of beef dropped from the ceiling.

  Instinctively Maddy threw herself into a connecting tunnel. Stalactites fell like spears from the roof of the main chamber as the whole mountain seemed to shudde
r to its roots. But although Maddy was showered with dust and particles of rock, the tunnel roof held, and as the tremor died away—sounding to Maddy like the rumble of a distant avalanche over the Seven Sleepers—she put her head out of the tunnel mouth and looked around.

  Maddy, of course, knew all about earthquakes. It was the World Serpent at Yggdrasil’s Root—or so Crazy Nan had always maintained—grown too large for Netherworld to contain, shaking out his coils into the river Dream. In time, said Nan, he would grow so large that he would circle the world, as he had in the days before Tribulation, and he would gnaw right through the World Tree’s roots, causing the Nine Worlds to collapse one by one, so that Chaos would have dominion over all things forever.

  Nat Parson had a different tale: according to him, the tremors were caused by the struggles of the vanquished in the dungeons of Netherworld, where the wicked (meaning the old gods) lay in chains until the End of All Days.

  One-Eye denied this and spoke of rivers of fire under the earth and avalanches of hot mud and mountains boiling over like kettles, but this seemed to Maddy to be the least likely explanation of all, and she was inclined to believe that he had exaggerated the tale, as he did so many things.

  Nevertheless, she was sure that an earthquake had caused the tremors, and it was very cautiously that she left the safety of the tunnel mouth. The stalactite chandelier had partly collapsed, leaving a treacherous rubble of shattered pieces in the center of the chamber. Beyond it was nothing but stillness and silence, apart from the distant after-echo and the dust that filtered from the trembling walls.

  “Sugar?” called Maddy.

  There was no reply, but she thought she heard a scuffling sound, far away to her right.

  “Sugar?”

  Once more there was no reply. Stepping out into the hall, Maddy thought she saw him, just for a moment, about a hundred steps ahead; then he dodged beneath a broken archway and was gone.

  Quickly she cast Naudr again, but her concentration had been broken by the earthquake, the light was failing, her feet suddenly felt too far away, and she realized, too late, as the shadows rushed in, that she had fallen victim to the goblins’ oldest trick.

  Sugar had never meant to guide her toward anything. Instead, without ever quite disobeying her, he had allowed her to move deeper and deeper into the perilous passages under the Hill, sapping her strength and waiting until her endurance gave way and her power over him failed and he was able to seize an opportunity to make his escape, leaving her alone, exhausted, and lost in the tumbled passageways of World Below.

  3

  It was lucky for Maddy that she was a sensible girl. Anyone else might have tried to feel their way through the unlit passageways, moving blindly further and further into the tortuous guts of the Hill. Or called for help, bringing who knows what from the darkness.

  But Maddy did not. Though she was afraid, she kept her head. Her glam was used up, which was bad enough, but she was almost sure that sleep would replenish it—sleep and (if she could get it) food. The short tunnel in which she had taken shelter seemed safe enough; it was warm and there was a sandy floor. Groping her way, she found it again and settled there to rest.

  She had no idea what time it was. It could be night in World Above or even morning. But here there were no days, and time seemed to have a life of its own, stretching like a weaver’s thread into a loom that wove nothing but darkness.

  Tired as she was, Maddy was certain she wouldn’t sleep. Every few minutes the floor trembled beneath her, dust fell from the ceiling, and there were other sounds, rustlings and patterings just outside the tunnel mouth that to her overstretched imagination sounded like giant rats or great cockroaches chittering over the fallen stones. Still, at last, her fatigue got the better of her fears. Curled up on the floor with her jacket around her, she slept.

  It might have been three, or five, or even twelve hours later; there was no way of telling. But she felt rested; Sól at her fingers shone out without a moment’s hesitation, and although she was hungry—and fiercely stiff from lying on the floor—she felt a rush of pleasure and relief as the colors sprang to life around her once again.

  Standing up, she looked out from the tunnel’s mouth. She could see that the darkness was not complete. There was no phosphorescence in the walls at this lower level, but the red glow from the caves was more noticeable now, like a reflection of fire against a bank of low cloud, and the violet signature she had followed so far was brighter than ever, leading straight toward the distant glow.

  Of Sugar there was no sign, except for a signature too dim to be of use. It was likely that on his return, he might give the alarm, but that couldn’t be helped. No, thought Maddy; the only thing she could do was continue downward, following the direction of the violet trail, and hope that she might find something to eat—her last frugal meal seemed a very long time ago now.

  Beyond the cavern the passage branched out into two forks, one larger than the second, still lit with that dim, fiery glow. Without hesitation Maddy followed it; it was warmer than in the higher caverns, and as she moved gradually downward—the incline was small but unmistakable—she thought she could hear a sound, far below her, like the low hishhh in the shells One-Eye brought her from the shores of the One Sea.

  Coming closer, she realized that the sound was not constant. It came and went, as if carried on a gusting wind, at intervals of five minutes or so. There was a smell too, which grew stronger as she neared its source, a curiously familiar laundry smell with an occasional whiff of sulfur, and now there was a film of steam on the walls of the passage and a new slickness to the floor, which suggested that she was approaching its source.

  Even so, she must have been walking for almost an hour when the passage came to its end. During that time there had been several small earth tremors, which had caused no damage, the rushing sounds had grown progressively louder, and the air was fugged with steam and fumes. The glow came brighter now—bright as sunlight but bloodier and less constant—bright enough to obscure any colors, if there had been any to follow.

  Instead Maddy followed the light, and as the passage opened out, she found herself entering a cavern larger than any she had ever seen or dreamed of.

  She guessed it to be close to a mile in width, with a ceiling that soared away into shadow and a floor of cindery, tumbled rock. A river ran through it—she could see a gully at the far end of the cavern into which the water disappeared—and in the center, there was a round pit with a furnace at its heart, clearly the source of the reddish light.

  As she stepped into the cavern, there came a rushing sound, and a great plume of steam, like the boiling of a million kettles, erupted from the fire pit, sending her scurrying for the safety of the passageway. The laundry smell intensified; sulfurous steam enveloped Maddy in a burning shroud, and the fissures and passageways of World Below shrieked and bellowed like the pipes of a giant organ.

  It lasted a minute, maybe less. Then it was over.

  Cautiously, over half an hour, Maddy crept closer to the pit.

  The eruptions occurred at regular intervals—Maddy guessed every five minutes or so—and she was soon able to recognize the signs and get under cover when danger threatened. Even so, the going was not pleasant; the air was scarcely breathable, and soon Maddy’s shirt and hair were stuck to her skin with steam and sweat. There must be an underground river, she thought—maybe even the river Dream on its way down to Netherworld—meeting the cauldron of fire as it passed, each element fighting to dominate the other until at last they burst forth together in a spume of superheated air.

  Still, she never thought of giving up. There was something in the fire pit, some force that drew her as surely as a fish on a line. This was no trick, she told herself, nor was its power anything she had encountered before. Whatever it was, it was very close, and Maddy had to curb her impatience as she inched her way forward.

  Once more the geyser burst forth. Maddy, now less than twenty feet away, felt the blast in the
small of her back and, as soon as it began to die down, crossed the remaining stretch of rocky floor toward her goal. She stepped up onto the lip of the well and, shielding her face with a fold of her jacket, looked straight into the eye of the pit.

  It was smaller than she had expected, no wider than a foot across, and as round and regular as a water well. Her eyes had been deceived into thinking it larger by the intensity of the furnace within, and it was lucky for Maddy that she had covered her face, for already her vision was blurred, like that of someone who has looked into the noonday sun.

  Jed Smith’s forge was a candle in comparison; here, metals and rocks bubbled like soup a thousand or more feet below the lip of the pit, and the stench of sulfur came to Maddy on a column of air so hot that it crisped the hairs in her nose and raised blisters on her unprotected hands.

  She bore it for less than five seconds. But in those seconds Maddy saw the heart of the mountain, burning brighter than the sun. She saw the sink through which the river drained and the meeting of forces within the pit. And she saw something else in that fiery throat: something blurred and difficult to see but that spoke to her as plainly as the signatures she had followed through the passageways.

  The thing was not large—the size of a watermelon—and was roughly rounded in shape. It might have been a lump of glowing rock, suspended by who knew what forces in the gullet of the pit.

  Surely there could be little hope of recovering anything from such a hiding place. The most skilled climber could not reach it; even assuming he could somehow withstand the blaze, the geyser would shoot him back out of the pit like a cork from a bottle before he had covered half the distance.

  Besides, any fool could see that the thing was caught fast: a flexible webwork of glamours and runes bound it tighter than the strongest of chains.

  As she watched, the rock seemed to glow even brighter, like an ember beneath the blacksmith’s bellows. A thought as absurd as it was troubling struck her—It sees me—and looking down into the pit, she could almost believe she heard it now—a strong, soundless call that seemed to drill into her mind.