Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  “The new gods?”

  Loki nodded, for once not smiling.

  “You mean, all that’s real too? The Nameless and everything Nat Parson preaches from the Book of Tribulation?”

  Loki nodded again. “As real or imaginary as any of us,” he said. “No surprise your parson’s so gloomy about the old ways. He knows who the enemy is, all right, and he and his kind will not be safe until ours is Cleansed from the Nine Worlds: every tale forgotten, every glam subdued, every Fiery extinguished, to the last spark and flame.”

  “But—I’m a Fiery,” said Maddy, opening her hand to look at her own runemark, now glowing like an ember.

  “That you are,” said Loki. “No question about it, with that glam you carry. No wonder he kept so quiet about you. You are something quite unique—and that’s worth more than Otter’s Ransom to him, or to me, or to anyone who can keep you on their side.”

  Maddy’s runemark was burning now, sending tendrils of thin fire snaking toward her fingertips.

  “The Oracle predicted you,” said Loki, watching, fascinated. “It predicted new runes for the New Age, runes that would be whole and unbroken, with which to rewrite the Nine Worlds. That rune of yours is Aesk, the Ash, and when One-Eye saw it on your hand, he must have thought all his Fair Days and Yules had come at once.”

  “Aesk,” said Maddy softly, flexing her fingers into a cat’s cradle of fire. “And you think One-Eye knew this all along?”

  “I should think so,” Loki said. “It was to Odin that the prophecy was made.”

  Maddy thought about that for a moment. “Why?” she said at last. “What does he want? And what’s this…Whisperer he needs so badly? Did the Oracle mention that at all?”

  “Maddy,” said Loki, beginning to smile, “the Oracle is the Whisperer.”

  2

  There was a flask of dark mead hidden in the cave. Loki gave Maddy a sip and drank the rest as he told his tale.

  “The Whisperer,” he said, “is an ancient power, even older than the General himself, though he doesn’t enjoy being reminded of that. It’s a story that goes back to the very beginning of the Elder Age, to the first wars between Order and Chaos, and—if you ask me—it’s one that doesn’t reflect too well on either side. Of course yours truly was completely neutral at that time—”

  Maddy raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Listen, do you want to hear this story or don’t you?”

  Maddy nodded.

  “All right. In the old, old days of the General’s youth, Asgard was a stronghold of perfect Order, and there wasn’t a spark of magic there. The Vanir—enchanters from the borders of Chaos—they were the keepers of the Fire, and they and the Æsir waged war for years, until at last they realized that neither of them was ever going to win. And so they exchanged hostages as proof of good faith, and the Æsir got Njörd and his children, Frey and Freyja, and the Vans got Honir—nice lad, but not bright—and a wily old diplomat called Mimir, who stole their glam, gave them his counsel, and reported back home in secret.

  “But the Vans soon realized they had a couple of spies on board, and in revenge they killed Mimir and sent his head back to Asgard. By then, though, the General had already got what he needed: the runes of the Elder Script, the letters of the ancient tongue that created the Worlds.”

  “The language of Chaos,” Maddy said.

  Loki nodded. “And Chaos was not best pleased at the theft. So Odin used his new skills to keep the Head alive and gave it glam to make it speak. Not many folk return from the dead, and what they have to say is usually worth hearing. It gave old Mimir the gift of prophecy, invaluable to the General. But the gift came at a high price. Odin paid for it with his eye. And as for Mimir’s Head, or, as he called it, the Whisperer”—Loki finished the bottle of mead—“I don’t imagine it cared much for us then, so I wouldn’t count too far on its goodwill now. I’ve tried to talk to it, but it never was fond of me, not even in the old days. And as for getting it out of here—”

  “But what do you want with it?” said Maddy. “Why is it so important?”

  “Please, Maddy,” said Loki with some impatience. “The Whisperer’s not just some bauble. It’s an oracle. It knows things. It predicted Ragnarók and a number of other things I wish I’d known at the time. If Odin had paid more attention to its prophecy instead of trying to prove it wrong, then perhaps Ragnarók wouldn’t have turned out as it did.”

  There was a pause as Maddy took in the implications.

  “But why go after it now?” she said.

  “A second chance?” Loki gave his twisted smile. “Listen, Maddy, Odin put half of himself into that old glam. Half of the General in his prime; think what he could do with it now. Powers you can’t imagine, just waiting to be tapped. Powers from the realms of Chaos.” He sighed. “But the damn thing has a mind of its own, and it isn’t bound to cooperate. Nevertheless, there are folk out there who would give anything to lay their hands on it. And others, of course, who would give anything to stop them.”

  “Gods,” said Maddy.

  “Amen,” said Loki.

  He had found the Whisperer on one of his exploring trips, he said, some hundred years after the end of the war. Everything else was Chaos and slaughter. Many had fallen; some lost forever, some buried in ice, some consumed by the fires of Chaos. The survivors were thrown into Netherworld, but Loki, slippery as ever, had somehow managed to escape.

  “You escaped the Black Fortress?” Maddy said.

  Loki shrugged. “Eventually.”

  “How?”

  “Long story,” said Loki. “Suffice it to say that I found…alternative accommodation in World Below. And it was there at last that I found the Whisperer,” he went on, “though I soon realized it was useless to me. It recognized me, of course, but it wouldn’t talk except in gibes and insults, wouldn’t lend me so much as a spark of glam, and certainly wouldn’t prophesy. I thought maybe to get it out of the pit, to use it as a bargaining tool with one of the surviving Æsir—”

  “The surviving Æsir?” said Maddy quickly.

  “Rumors, that’s all. I had a feeling Odin might still be around. It would certainly have helped my position if I could have brought him the Whisperer. And of course, with the General back on my side, I’d have been safe from any former colleagues with an ax to grind. Or even a hammer.”

  Since then, he said, he had tried many times to retrieve the Whisperer from its fiery cradle. But he had not yet found a way to break the glamours that held it in the fire pit—glamours left over from Ragnarók, which his reversed and thus weakened glam could not hope to combat.

  Failing that, he had made the Hill impregnable, putting together an army of goblins, a webwork of glamours, and a labyrinth of passages to hide the Whisperer from the world.

  “And maybe it’s best left hidden,” he said. “Unless Odin gave you something to help? A glam, a tool—perhaps a word?”

  “No,” said Maddy. “Not even a cantrip.”

  Loki shook his head, disgusted. “In that case, forget it. Might as well try to catch the moon on a string.”

  Maddy thought about that for a while. “So you think it’s hopeless?” she said at last. “There’s really no way of bringing it out?”

  Loki shrugged. “Believe me, I’ve tried. If the General wants to talk to it, he’ll have to come down here himself.”

  “Perhaps.” Maddy was still thinking hard.

  “You should tell him, you know. Ragnarók’s over. And as far as the Order is concerned, we’re all of us the enemy. Perhaps we should rethink our allegiances. Bury our grudges. Start again.”

  “You betrayed the Æsir,” said Maddy. “You’re crazy if you think he’ll ever take you back.”

  “The Æsir!” Unexpectedly her words had struck home; for a moment Loki’s eyes flared with unfeigned anger. His colors flared too, from ghostly violet to fiery red. “All they ever did was use me when it suited them. When there was trouble, it was always Please, Loki, think of some
thing. Then when it was over, it was Back to your kennel, without so much as a thank-you. I was always a second-class citizen in Asgard, and not one of them ever let me forget it.”

  “But you fought against them at Ragnarók,” said Maddy, who had begun to feel more sympathy for this dangerous individual than she dared admit.

  “Ragnarók,” said Loki scornfully. “Whose side did they expect me to take? I had no side. The Æsir had abandoned me, the Vanir always hated me, and as far as Chaos was concerned, I was a traitor who deserved to die. No one would take me, so I looked after number one, as always. All right, maybe I settled a few scores on the way. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s all history. The General has nothing to fear from me.”

  “What are you saying?” Maddy said.

  Loki gave his crooked smile. “Maddy,” he said, “I’ve been hiding out in World Below for the best part of five hundred years. All right, it’s not the Black Fortress, but it’s hardly bliss. It stinks, it’s dark, it’s overrun by goblins, and I’m constantly having to watch my back…Besides, if I read the signs correctly, there will come a time very soon when none of us are safe, when even the deepest hole will not be enough to hide us from our enemies.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m tired of hiding,” Loki said. “I want to come home. I want to see the sky again. More importantly, I want the General to make it clear to any of the others who might still harbor a grudge that I’m officially back on the side of the gods.”

  He paused, and a wistful look came over his face. “There’s a war on the way. I can feel it,” he said. “I don’t need an oracle to tell me that. The Order is already on the march, spreading the Word through the Middle World. Odin knows—according to my sources he’s spent the last century or so traveling between here and World’s End, charting its progress, trying to learn how much time we have left. My guess is, it just ran out. That’s why he needs the Whisperer. As for myself”—Loki grinned and put down the bottle—“Maddy, I can’t help it. It’s the Chaos in my blood. If there’s a war, I want to fight.”

  For a long time Maddy said nothing. “Then tell him so,” she said at last.

  “What, meet him aboveground?” Loki said. “You must be out of your tiny mind.”

  “You really think One-Eye’s going to come to you?”

  “He’ll have to,” said Loki. “If he wants the Oracle. With that on his side there isn’t a secret, scheme, or strategy that the Order can keep from him. He can’t hope to win the war without it. And he certainly can’t afford to let it fall to the other side.” Loki grinned. “So you see, Maddy, he has no choice but to accept my terms. Bring Odin to me, and I’ll let him talk to the Whisperer. If not, then frankly, I don’t rate his chances when the Order gets here.”

  Maddy frowned. It all sounded just a little too slick. She had already experienced Loki’s charm, but she knew his reputation too, and she knew that his motives were rarely pure. She looked at him and saw him watching her with a dangerous gleam in his fiery eyes.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I don’t trust you,” said Maddy.

  Loki shrugged. “Few people do. But why not? You’re strong. You’ve already beaten me once before.”

  “Twice,” said Maddy.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  Maddy considered the point for a moment. She realized—rather late—that she didn’t actually know very much about Loki’s powers. Certainly she had beaten him—or had she? It hadn’t been a fair fight. She had taken him by surprise. Or maybe he’d let her surprise him, she thought. Maybe that too was part of his plan.

  Now Maddy’s mind began to race. What did she know of the Whisperer? It was an oracle, Loki had said. A power of the Elder Age, an old friend of One-Eye, an enemy of Chaos. Loki had said it hated him, would not speak except in gibes. But One-Eye had said it would come to her, and could it be, she thought suddenly, that Loki somehow knew that too…

  Could it be that he had misdirected her? That far from wanting to rescue the Whisperer, he was actually trying to keep it from being rescued?

  Could it even be possible that it was Loki himself who had trapped the Whisperer in the fire pit, having failed to make it work for him?

  Fire was his element, after all. Could it be that all this was a carefully constructed trap, its aim to lure One-Eye into World Below, where Loki had had centuries to prepare himself for their eventual showdown?

  “Well?” said Loki impatiently.

  Well, it was far too late to waste time with questions. Yesterday’s ale is nobbut this morning’s piss, as Crazy Nan used to say, which meant, Maddy supposed, that if anyone was going to get her out of this mess, it probably wasn’t the king’s guard.

  “Well?”

  Maddy sighed. A shadow of a plan was beginning to form in her mind. It was a rather desperate plan, but it was all she could think of at such short notice. “All right,” she said. “But first you have to show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “The Whisperer.”

  3

  She followed him back to the fire pit hall, taking care not to let him out of her sight. He had agreed to her demand with apparent good cheer but with a trace of sullenness in his colors that suggested that he was far from pleased. She knew he was tricky—indeed, if he was Loki, he was trickery itself—and if he already suspected what she meant to do, there was no telling how he might react.

  They stepped to the lee of the fire pit, sheltering behind a spur of rock until the geyser had spent itself. Then, in the brief lull between two ventings, Loki stepped forward and came to stand on the lip of the well.

  “Stand back,” he told Maddy. “This can be dangerous.”

  Maddy watched as he stood motionless, his colors flaring with sudden intensity and the first and little fingers of his right hand pronged to form the runeshape ýr.

  His face was streaming with sweat, she saw; his fists were clenched, his eyes screwed shut as if preparing for some painful ordeal. This part at least was no act, she thought. She could feel the effort he was making, see the trembling of his muscles and the strain in every part of his body as he waited, tensed, for the Whisperer.

  Even when the geyser began to reawaken, the low rumble rising to become a muted roar, Loki did not stir, but seemed to wait, regardless of his peril, as patiently as a fisherman snaring a trout.

  Two minutes had already passed, and now Maddy could hear the eruption building, like a furious howl in a giant’s throat.

  Then, almost imperceptibly, he moved.

  If Maddy had not been watching very carefully, she would have missed it altogether, for Loki’s style of working was very different from hers. Under One-Eye’s instruction Maddy had learned to value caution and accuracy above all things, to coax the runes rather than to fling them, to handle them with care, as if without it they might explode.

  But Loki was fast. Balancing like a rope-dancer on the edge of the pit as the column of steam came rushing toward him, he raised his head and made a curious quick fluttering movement of his hand. At the same time, he shifted to his fiery Aspect, his features just discernible in the twisting flames, and skimmed runes at the column like a handful of firecrackers.

  Maddy had scarcely time to read them all. She thought she recognized Isa and Naudr—but what was that shuttling rune that spun like a sycamore key into the boiling flow, or the one that broke into a dozen shining pieces as it skimmed the flame?

  She had little time to ask herself the question, though, for it was then that the geyser blew. The column of steam punched into the ceiling, hurling fragments of rock into the scorched air. And in the column, suspended for a moment in that massive splurge of cloud and flame, Maddy saw something that popped up like an apple in water and half heard, half felt its silent call—

  (?)

  (?)

  —as it dropped once more into the pit.

  Loki had fled in fiery Aspect, taking refuge behind a slab of rock. Now he returned to his true form. His face wa
s flushed, his hair lank with sweat, and a reek of burning came from his clothes. Nevertheless, he seemed exhilarated; in the afterglow his eyes were pinned with weird fire. He turned to Maddy. “You saw it, then?”

  Uneasily she nodded, recalling the quick way it had bobbed to the surface, and how the light had seemed to shine right through it, and how it had called to her…

  “That was the Whisperer. Ouch,” he said, blowing into his scorched hands.

  “But it’s alive!”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Now Maddy could see just how much this effort had cost him: in spite of his careless words he was shaking, breathless, and his colors were dim. “It really doesn’t like me,” he said. “Though to be fair, I don’t think it likes any of us very much. And as for getting it out of there—you’ve seen what it’s like. If Odin wants to consult the Oracle, then he’ll just have to do it the hard way.”

  There was a silence as Maddy stared at the fire pit and Loki’s breathing returned to normal. Then she stood up cautiously. She could feel the next eruption preparing itself; beneath her feet she sensed rather than heard the ripping of fiery seams under enormous pressure.

  “What are you doing?” Loki said. “Didn’t you hear what I just told you?”

  Maddy stepped up to the fire pit. Beneath her, it gargled molten fire. Loki followed, uneasy now, but hiding it well—except for his colors, which betrayed his anxiety and his fatigue. Whatever he had done to the Whisperer, it had already robbed him of much of his glam—an advantage Maddy intended to use.

  Now she was standing at the edge of the pit.

  “Watch your step,” said Loki casually, “unless you care for a Netherworld hotfoot.”

  “Just a second,” she said, looking down into the fiery throat. The pit was very close to venting. Maddy could smell the burnt-laundry fume; she could feel the fine hairs in her nose begin to crackle. Her eyes stung; her hands were trembling as she too formed the runeshape ýr.