Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  And so he regained his bird form and flew to the nearest goatherd’s hut. It was abandoned, but in it he managed to find some clothes—little more than rags, but they’d do—and skins to bind around his feet. The skins smelled of goat and were a poor substitute for the boots he had left behind, but there was a sheepskin jacket, rough but warm, which should keep out the worst of the cold.

  Thus attired, he began to climb. It was slow, but it was safe, and over the last five hundred years Loki had learned to value safety more than ever.

  He had been climbing for nearly an hour when he met the cat. The moon had risen, scything over the frozen peaks and throwing every rock, every spur into sharp relief. He had passed the snow line. Now his feet crunched against the skirt of a glacier, which looked frilly white from a distance, but which closer inspection revealed to be a grim hardpack of snow, stones, and ancient ice.

  Loki was tired. He was also aching with cold; the skins and rags he had stolen from the goatherd’s hut might have served him well enough on the lower slopes but did little against the bitter cold of the glacier. He had tucked his hands into his armpits for warmth, but even so they ached viciously; his face was sore; his feet in their skin bindings had long since lost all sensation, and he stumbled drunkenly across the crust of snow, hiding his trail as best he could.

  Once more he considered reverting to his fiery Aspect, but the cold was already too intense. Shifting to his fire form would simply burn up his glam all the faster, leaving him helpless.

  He needed rest. He needed warmth. He had already fallen half a dozen times and found it harder on each occasion to struggle to his feet. At last he fell and could not stand up again, and he realized that he no longer had a choice: the possibility of his freezing to death by far surpassed the risk of his being seen.

  He cast Sól but clumsily and winced at the pain in his frozen fingers. Shifting to hawk guise was no longer an option; his strength was gone, and he was down to his last cantrips. The rune lit up but gave little heat.

  Loki cursed and tried again. This time the warmth was more focused, a glowing ball the size of a small apple that shone against the dull snow. He held the fireball close, and little by little he felt the life return to his crippled hands. Pain came with it. Loki yelped: it felt like hot needles.

  Perhaps it was this cry that alerted the cat, perhaps the glow; in any case it came, and it was large—five times larger than a common wildcat and brindled brown as mountain stone. Its eyes were yellow and hungry, its claws soft-sheathed steel in the shaggy pads of its feet.

  Further down the slopes, where prey was plentiful, it would most likely have given Loki a wide berth. But here on the glacier prey was scarce. This human—helpless, on his knees in the snow—seemed like a gift.

  The cat moved closer. Loki, who could feel the sensation returning to his feet as well as his fingers, tried to stand up, then fell once more, cursing.

  The cat moved closer still, wary of the fireball between Loki’s hands, wondering in its dim fashion if this were a weapon that might harm it if it sprang. Loki did not see it and continued to curse as Sól sent its knives into his fingers.

  He might be big, the cat thought, but he was slow, he was tired, and more importantly, he was on the ground, where his size would be of no advantage to him.

  All in all, it fancied its chances.

  The cat had never attacked a human before. If it had, it would have gone for the face and would most likely have killed him with a single bite. Instead it leaped onto Loki’s back, caught him by the scruff of his neck, and tried to roll him over.

  He acted fast. Surprisingly fast for a human—though Loki was not precisely human, the cat sensed—and rather than try to grapple with his attacker, the man hauled himself upright, ignoring the claws that gouged into his ribs, and deliberately flung himself as hard as he could onto his back.

  For a second the cat was stunned. Its jaws loosened and Loki broke free, boosting himself away and onto his knees so that now he faced the creature head to head, his fire green eyes reflecting its yellow ones, his teeth bared.

  The cat squalled, a terrible, ratcheting sound of rage and frustration. It faced him, ready to spring if he made the smallest move. Such battles of will could last for hours among the cat’s own kind, but it sensed that the human’s strength would fail him before long.

  Loki knew it too. Numbed as he was with cold, it was hard for him to judge the damage done by the cat’s claws, but he could feel warmth flowing down his back and knew he might collapse at any time. He had to act—and quickly.

  Eyes still locked on those of the cat, he held out his hand. In it shone Sól, fading a little but still alight. Very gently Loki moved from his knees to the balls of his feet, so that now he was squatting on his haunches, the sun rune outstretched. The cat squalled and bristled, ready to pounce.

  But Loki pounced first. With an effort he sprang to his feet, and at the same time, gathering the last of his glamour, he flung Sól—now a white-hot firebrand—at the snarling creature.

  The cat fled. Loki saw it go, a streak against the glacier’s breadth, and heard its cry of defiance as it went. It did not go as far as he would have liked, however, but settled at a distance of about three hundred yards, where the edge of the glacier met a nest of rock.

  Here it waited, immobile. It could smell blood—and that made it growl softly with frustrated hunger—but more importantly, it could smell weakness. The human was wounded. At some point soon he would relax his guard.

  And so it watched, and when Loki began once more to climb, slowly and laboriously, toward the dim blue cleft between the Sleepers, the cat climbed with him, keeping its distance but gradually closing as his steps faltered, his shoulders slumped, and at last he fell, headfirst and senseless, into the moonlit snow.

  6

  The face was buried deep, half obscured by tiny rosettes of white frost. But it was unmistakably a woman’s face, white and remote beneath the ice.

  “Who is she?” said Maddy at last. With her hands she had managed to clear some of the frost. Underneath, the ice was dark and clear, like lake water. Beneath it the woman lay, slim as a sword, hands crossed against her breast, her pale, cropped hair fanning out into ice crystals around her.

  “See for yourself,” said the Whisperer.

  Maddy cast Bjarkán with a hand that shook. The runelight seemed to pick out every gleam, every glamour, every rune carved against the surface of the ice block, with a radiance that hurt her eyes.

  Through it she found she could see the woman clearly: her face was still and coldly beautiful, with the high cheekbones and full lips that were typical of the northern folk. She wore knee-high boots and a tunic, belted at the waist, and at her belt there hung a long white knife.

  But the most startling thing was the woman’s signature. It was a chilly, piercing blue, like the ice itself, and although it was sheathed tight around her body in a sleeping pattern, it was unmistakably alive. Its gleam was only fractionally less than that of the mark on the woman’s right thigh:

  The runemark Isa—Ice.

  Now Maddy could see the glamours that ringed the ice block: a complex chain of runes that strongly resembled the net in which Loki had imprisoned the Whisperer.

  “So he told the truth,” said Maddy softly. “There are more of us.”

  She realized that she had been afraid to believe it. Now the joy of knowing that she was not alone made her want to scream like a savage.

  She did not—remembering that ice cascade poised above her head—but she clenched her fists in fierce delight. And now she could see, further down the hall, more of the ice blocks, their pillars standing out like sentinels in the gleaming hall. Seven of them, all in a line, like four-poster beds, their columns festooned with dripping icicles, their coverlets of frost.

  “Who are they?” said Maddy.

  “The Sleepers,” said the Whisperer. “Though not for long.”

  Once more Maddy thought of the fire pit hall. “Did
Loki do this?”

  “No,” it said.

  “Does One-Eye know?”

  “Oh yes. He knows.”

  “Then why didn’t he tell me?”

  “I’m an oracle,” said the Whisperer, “not a bloody mind reader.”

  Once more Maddy looked at the ice woman. “Who is she?” she said.

  “Ask her,” said the Whisperer.

  “How?”

  “In the usual way.”

  “You mean—wake her up?”

  “Why not?” it said. “You’re going to do it eventually.”

  Maddy was sorely tempted to try. She remembered the Whisperer’s prophecy: how the Sleepers would awake and Thor would be freed from Netherworld—on the other hand, she knew it to be devious, and she didn’t like its superior tone.

  “I’m not doing anything,” she said, “unless you tell me who they are.”

  “They are the Vanir,” the Whisperer said. “Hidden here since Ragnarók. Surt’s shadow had fallen across the Worlds; the Æsir had fallen, one by one. The Vanir, defeated, fell back and hid, and with the last of their glamours they created this half haven, half tomb in the hope that one day they might be reawakened in the new world, the new Asgard.”

  “The new Asgard?” Maddy said. “What happened to that?”

  “Prophecy isn’t an exact science. It will happen eventually. Though maybe not for your friend One-Eye—”

  Maddy gave it a sharp look. “I see a general standing alone?”

  The Whisperer gave its chilly smile. “So you were paying attention,” it said. “It’s nice to be appreciated. Now wake the Sleepers, there’s a good girl, and we can get the rest of my prophecy under way…”

  “Well…” She hesitated. “I’ll need to talk to One-Eye first.”

  “In that case you may have a long wait,” said the Whisperer, and its colors glowed in the pattern Maddy had come to associate with smugness.

  “Why?” she said. “What’s happened to him?”

  So the Whisperer told her of One-Eye’s arrest; of the fight with the possemen and of what had followed. There could be no doubt about it, said the Whisperer. It was attuned to the General; it knew his mind, felt every piece of glam he cast.

  “He fought them,” it said, “but they were too many, and he lost. If he were dead, I would have known. Therefore I suppose that they took him to whatever suitable place of imprisonment you may have in the village—”

  “The roundhouse,” said Maddy.

  “Most likely,” it said. “And there, we must assume, whoever was using the Word back on the Hill will be more than eager to interrogate him.”

  Maddy’s eyes were wide with alarm. “They won’t hurt him, will they?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “Of course!” she said.

  The Whisperer smirked. “Then yes. They will. They will extract every piece of information he possesses, and when they have finished, they will kill him. And after they have killed him, they will go after the rest of you. And they will not stop until every last one of you has been wiped out. I hope this addresses your query.”

  “Oh,” said Maddy. There was a long pause. “Is this a…professional opinion—or is it an actual prophecy?”

  “Both,” said the Whisperer. “Unless, of course, you do something about it.”

  “But what can I do?” said Maddy in despair.

  The Whisperer laughed, a dry, unpleasant sound. “Do?” it said. “My dear, you’ll have to wake the Sleepers.”

  7

  According to the Book of Meditations, there are nine Elementary States of Spiritual Bliss.

  One: Prayer. Two: Abstinence. Three: Penitence. Four: Absolution. Five: Sacrifice. Six: Abnegation. Seven: Assessment. Eight: Arbitration. Nine: Inquiry.

  By this definition Nat Parson had reached the seventh Elementary State and was about to move on to the eighth. It felt good. So good, in fact, that he had begun to wonder if he might soon be permitted to tackle the Intermediary States—those of Examination and Judgment—for which he felt himself to be more than ready.

  The Outlander was guilty—no doubt about that. Nat Parson had already Assessed him on more than a dozen counts of common crime—such as theft, vagrancy, corruption, and vagabondage—but the real meat was on the mortal charges: attempted murder of an officer, conspiracy, conjuration, artifice, and, most promising of all, heresy.

  Heresy. Now that would be something, Nat Parson thought. There hadn’t been a charge of heresy in Malbry for over half a century. World’s End was different—more civilized, more particular. Hangings were common in the Universal City. The Examiners were quick to spot heresy as soon as it reared its ugly head, and their tolerance for all things uncanny was short.

  Odin One-Eye knew that, of course. He knew a great deal, in fact, that would have made the parson’s jaw drop, though to Nat’s frustration he had not spoken a word since his arrest.

  Well, he would be made to talk, thought Nat savagely, and anyway, that ruinmark straddling the scarred socket of the Outlander’s blind eye spoke for itself.

  It had certainly spoken to the Examiner. If the business on the Hill had left him unmoved, the capture of the Outlander now saw him close to agitated. At first he had shown irritation at being called away from his place on the Hill, but as soon as he saw that ruinmark, and the man lounging insolently against the inner wall of the roundhouse, he lost much of his earlier aloofness.

  “Who is this man?” he said in a strangled voice.

  “A vagrant,” said Nat, pleased to have found something at last that impressed the World’s Ender. Until then nothing had—not his own quick thinking, not the menace under Red Horse Hill, not even Ethelberta’s cooking, which was acknowledged to be excellent as far as the Hindarfell and beyond.

  In fact, the previous night, when Ethelberta had gone to the trouble of cooking the Examiner a meal (and it was one of her best, Nat could have told him—spatchcocked quail and fried mushrooms and honey cakes with almonds), the Examiner had refused all nourishment but bread, bitter herbs, and water, reminding both of them of the joys of Abstinence (the second Elementary State of Spiritual Bliss), so that no one had eaten anything much, Ethelberta had thrown a quiet but intense little tantrum in the kitchen, and Nat, in spite of his uncritical admiration of all World’s Enders, had felt quite annoyed with the fellow.

  Now, in the roundhouse, he felt as if he’d got a little of his own back.

  Nat Parson was very pleased with the roundhouse. It was not a large building, barely the size of his kitchen at home, but it was built of good solid mountain granite, and there were no windows. If Matt Law had had his way, there would have been no roundhouse at all—ten years ago there hadn’t been, and generations of Laws had used their cellars to lock up the occasional drunk or debtor.

  Nat Parson, fresh from his pilgrimage, had put an end to that kind of laziness. He was pleased he had; the Examiner considered them a backward enough lot as it was. Still, he was impressed with their prisoner, and Nat felt a brief swell of pride at the efficiency with which the Outlander had been dealt with.

  “A vagrant? By what name?”

  “Goes by the name of One-Eye,” said Nat, who was enjoying his moment.

  The Examiner’s voice was sharp. “I don’t care what he goes by,” he said. “Your true name, fellow,” he snapped at One-Eye, who was still sitting against the wall—in truth, he could hardly do otherwise, given that his feet were chained to the floor.

  “I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours,” said One-Eye, showing his teeth, and the Examiner’s lips tightened, so that his pale mouth almost vanished.

  “This man must be interrogated,” he said, fingering the gold key—his only adornment—that dangled from the cord around his neck.

  “I’ll see to it,” said Nat. “I’m sure that between us, Matt and myself will be able to provide you with all the answers to—”

  But the Examiner cut him short. “You will not,” he said in his scholarly v
oice. “Instead you will follow my instructions to the letter. First, you will have this man fully restrained—”

  “But, Examiner,” protested Nat. “How could he—?”

  “I said fully restrained, fellow, and that’s what I meant. I want him chained. I want him gagged. I don’t want to see him move so much as a fingertip without my permission. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Nat stiffly. “May I ask why?”

  “You may not,” said the Examiner. “Second, no one will hold any conversation with the prisoner unless I myself give the order. You will not address him, nor allow him to address you. Third, guards will be posted outside the door, but no one is to enter without my permission. Fourth, word is to be sent at once to the Universal City, to the Chief Examiner in charge of Records. I shall write the message, to be delivered to him with the utmost urgency. Do you understand?”

  Nat Parson nodded.

  “Lastly, you will call a halt to all activity on the Hill—the machines to be left in place, guards to be posted, but no one to be allowed access to the mound or the earthworks without my express permission. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, and, Parson”—the Examiner turned and favored Nat with a look of distaste—“make up a room for me in your house. I shall need a work space, a large desk, writing materials, a smokeless chimney, adequate light—I prefer wax candles rather than tallow—and complete silence to aid my meditations. I may have to remain here for some weeks, until my…my superiors arrive to take charge of the situation.”

  “I see.”

  Nat’s annoyance at being spoken to in such a fashion was only slightly tempered by his excitement. His superiors, eh? Nat had only the vaguest understanding of the complex system of ranks and seniorities within the Examining body, but it now seemed that his Examiner, lofty official though he undoubtedly was, held only a junior rank in the Order. More officials would come, officials who, if approached correctly, might learn to value the talents of a man like Nat Parson.