Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  Hel opened both eyes. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “Don’t you?” said the Whisperer.

  The seconds passed. Six minutes.

  “Don’t you?” said the Whisperer.

  “I can’t,” said Hel, but her voice was faint.

  “Oh, but you can,” wheedled the Whisperer. “One little cut—a snip, no more—and everything you’ve ever wanted can be yours. A life for a life, Goddess. Loki’s life—all five minutes of it—and in exchange you could have Balder back again. Imagine that. Balder, alive. Warm. Breathing. And yours, Goddess. All yours.”

  For long seconds more Hel was silent. “I can’t break my word,” she said at last. “The balance between Order and Chaos depends on my neutrality.”

  “With or without you,” said the Whisperer, “the balance between Order and Chaos may soon be challenged.”

  Hel’s living eye was all hunger in her pallid face. “How so?” she asked.

  The Whisperer allowed itself the luxury of a smile. “Do we have a deal, Goddess?”

  “Tell me how, damn your eyes!”

  Glowing, it told her.

  Across the river Loki shot like a flaming missile toward the gates of Netherworld. Hel could see that he was almost burned out now, his signature like that of a guttering flame, his face twisted with effort and concentration.

  Behind him came Thor, Maddy, the serpent with Old Age still clinging to its tail, and, behind that, the dreamers. Dreamers in their hundreds—in their thousands—trailing them in shoals as the fortress disintegrated, all of them making for the river.

  And now a tremor went through the Underworld, a deep tremor that rocked all of Hel to its foundations, moving rocks that had lain still since the beginning of the world and sending shock waves through the ranks of the dead, making bones dance, dust fly, mist scatter, and a howl of outrage rise from Hel’s parched throat.

  “What is going on here?” shrieked the goddess of the Dead. The deathwatch in her hand showed barely eighty-five seconds remaining.

  “That’s Chaos itself, knocking at your door. Chaos, in search of its prisoners. If Loki escapes, it will break through—”

  “Loki did this?”

  “Kill him now. Save your kingdom and yourself.”

  “What if you’re wrong, Oracle?”

  “You’ll still have Balder—will you refuse?”

  “Balder.” For the second time in five hundred years Hel gave an involuntary sigh.

  “Seventy seconds.”

  “But I—”

  “Sixty seconds, and you’ll see Balder alive. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven—”

  “All right! All right!” Hel stretched out her dead hand—the fingers were bones, brittle and yellow in the eerie light. In its spidery shadow Loki slept, one arm flung out across Hel’s sandy floor, a tiny smile on his scarred lips. The silver thread that linked him to Netherworld gleamed like a skein of spiderweb.

  “Do it, lady. Take his life.”

  Hel reached out her dead hand and snapped the thread.

  And at that very moment there came a terrible ripping, splitting, splintering sound—as of Worlds being torn apart at the seams—and all of these things happened at once:

  Sugar’s runestone turned black as pitch.

  Odin felt a wave of energy rush past him as ten thousand of the newly dead poured over him into the Underworld.

  In Netherworld, Jormungand cleared the gates and plunged headlong toward the river Dream.

  Loki followed, with seconds to spare—and ran full tilt into an invisible barrier that sent him into a deadly spiral, plummeting out of control back into the pit.

  And in World’s End, Magister Number 262, a man who in another life had answered to the name of Fortune Goodchild, had time only to ask himself, How can we possibly march to Netherworld? before the Nameless spoke a single Word and he fell, stone dead, onto the floor of the Council of Twelve.

  “It’s beginning,” said the Whisperer.

  “What’s beginning?” said Hel.

  “The end,” said the Whisperer, glowing softly. “The last meeting between Order and Chaos. The final End of Everything.”

  And now Hel saw it starting to change: the stone Head sprouted like a ghastly flower, the air was taking a definite shape, and now she could see its true Aspect, spectral at first but brightening visibly. A shining figure, slightly bent; hooded eyes in a lean face; a staff of runes that gleamed and spun.

  “Who are you?” said Hel.

  The Whisperer smiled. “My dear, I’ve been so many things. I was Mimir the Wise. I was Odin’s friend and confidante. I was the Oracle who predicted Ragnarók. My name is Untold, for I have many. But as we’re friends, you may call me the Ancient of Days.”

  1

  Everyone felt the psychic blast that slammed throughout the Nine Worlds, so that a hundred miles from the epicenter, purple clouds gathered, doors slammed, dogs howled, ears bled, and birds fell screaming from the sky.

  The Vanir felt it and quickened their pace. Frey took the form of a wild boar, and Heimdall that of a gray wolf, and Bragi that of a brown fox, and all three of them set off at a gallop down the tunnels while Njörd protested and Freyja wailed and Idun sensibly picked up their clothes in case they needed them later.

  Fat Lizzy felt it and knew they were close.

  And at the mouth of the Underworld, as the parson and the Huntress gazed in wonderment at the scene unfolding on the plain below, Examiner Number 4421974 heard it and gave a long, harsh sigh of deliverance before slipping gently out of his host and down the passageway into Hel.

  It had begun, as the Good Book had foretold.

  The dead were on the march. Ten thousand of them.

  Silently Hel considered the multitude standing before her on the plain. So many souls, but where was their homage? Why were they ranked like an army? What was this Order, where men could be dead but where Death herself had no authority?

  She turned her terrible half face upon the ten thousand. “Be dead,” she ordered.

  The men did not move.

  “I command you to disperse,” said Hel.

  Still no one moved; ten thousand men stood like sheaves, their eyes turned toward Netherworld.

  She turned on the Whisperer. “Is this your doing?”

  “Of course it is,” said the Whisperer. “Now make haste and give me the girl.”

  “The girl?” In the commotion she’d almost forgotten.

  Hel looked at the deathwatch. Thirty seconds remained. She’d broken her word to Loki, and the balance between the Worlds had been shaken to its roots. Break it again, and she dared not think what might happen. Already she could feel the river rising, and beyond it Chaos, like a sick heart beating.

  “Quickly,” snapped the Whisperer. “Every moment she spends in Netherworld is an unnecessary risk.”

  “Why?” said Hel.

  She looked down at the sleeping girl, tethered to life by a skein of silk. Until now she had spared her hardly a thought; between Loki and the Whisperer there had been no time to notice a fourteen-year-old girl.

  Now she watched her most carefully: noted her rust red signature; once more searched her memory for the resemblance—a family likeness, perhaps, from the days when the Æsir ruled the Worlds…

  “Who is she?” said Hel.

  “No one,” said the Whisperer.

  “Funny, that’s what Loki said.”

  The Whisperer brightened fretfully. “She’s no one,” it said. “Just give her to me. Cut the thread—do it now, while you can…”

  Hel’s profile was unreadable as she gently reached out with her dead hand. She touched Maddy’s face lingeringly.

  “Do it now,” urged the Whisperer. “Do it, and I’ll make Balder yours…”

  Hel smiled and touched the thread that still linked Maddy to her life. It shimmered faintly at her touch; it glowed like the runemark on her hand—

  “That runemark…,” said Hel.

&nb
sp; Eighteen seconds.

  “Please! There’s no time!”

  She took the girl’s hand in her living one. Aesk shone there, a violent red—and in that moment Hel understood. The World Ash. The Lightning Tree. The first rune of the New Script. And now she remembered who Maddy reminded her of—not her Aspect, but her signature—and she leveled on the Whisperer the smile that had withered gods.

  “So that’s why you wanted her,” she said. “That’s why you brought her into Hel. And Loki—I see why you wanted him too.”

  The Whisperer grimaced desperately. “I’ll build a hall for you, Hel,” it said in its most honeyed voice. “When Balder rises from the dead, you’ll lie together in the Sky Citadel.”

  Hel put her fingers to her lips. It was a peculiar sensation, bringing a flush to her living side. She’d thought herself beyond this. Aeons old, dry as dust, she had not expected this rush of feeling, this almost girlish surge of hope…

  She reached out her hand to break the thread.

  2

  The World Serpent cleared the gates at twice the speed of Dream. Maddy and Thor had just enough time to jump clear before Jormungand hurled itself headlong into the river, Old Age still clinging to its tail. A wall of water rose up; clouds of ephemera exploded in all directions; some of the dreamers were already through and Maddy, now seeing the silvery thread that joined her Aspect to her physical self, made to follow them through the narrowing gap…

  Behind her the countless dreamers approached. Some were human, some visibly demonic; some bore the runes and colors of gods; others marched like engines, lurched like nightmares, oozed, verminous, toward their freedom.

  Thor kept the monstrosities at bay. The inhabitants of Netherworld—dreams and dreamers, creatures of Chaos, engines of destruction, serpents and changelings and any other vermin that might want to breach the gap—mostly gave him a wide berth, and although it was not possible for him to keep every one away from the gate, it was only the quickest and the most capable that managed to follow Jormungand from Netherworld into Dream.

  Before him the Æsir, in their Aspects, had gathered. They were pitifully few—just three of them—shocked into silence by what they saw. Frigg, the Mother, wife of Odin, tall, gray-eyed, and with the rune Sól on her left arm; Thor’s wife, Sif, the Harvest Queen, golden-haired and bearing the runesign Ár; and T ýr, the Left-Handed, god of battle, burning like a brand in his fiery colors, his spear in his left hand, his right hand like a ghost of itself sketched in fire against the night.

  The Thunderer had hoped for more, but the rest had either failed to escape or fallen into Chaos or plunged into Dream, because he could see no trace of them. Counting himself, a total of four.

  Five, if he counted Maddy.

  He gestured to Maddy to pass through the gate. Only she could cross into Hel; the others would have to escape through Dream as, all around them, the Black Fortress started to tear itself apart. Every few moments some creature—god or demon, she could not tell—lost its grasp on Netherworld and was sucked, screaming, into the emptiness. The noise was apocalyptic, and from the throat of the abyss came a sinister sucking, snickering sound that grew louder and louder with every second that passed.

  “Maddy! Go now!” insisted Thor.

  But Maddy had seen something moving below. It—he—was a long way down, obscured by the mists and the parasites of Netherworld, now swarming like deadly motes through the air. But the signature, though faint, was unmistakable. It was Loki, and he was falling. Beneath him and all around, rifts into Chaos were opening fast, revealing glimpses of the dead starry gulf of World Beyond.

  “Go, Maddy!” yelled Thor at her side. “Through the gap! There isn’t much time!”

  “But that’s Loki,” she cried, pointing at the falling figure.

  Thor shook his shaggy head. “There’s nothing you can do—” he began.

  But Maddy was already in pursuit.

  Before Thor could protest, she had dived, not through the gap to the Underworld but into the cauldron of sizzling air, heedless of ephemera, heedless of the fact that the world she occupied was busily eating itself into oblivion like a serpent swallowing its own tail.

  Thor moved to follow her—he wasn’t sure why she needed Loki, but there was no time for argument—then he caught sight of what lay behind him and stopped and gazed with widening eyes at the scenes unfolding beyond Dream.

  It was as if Hel, for the first time in a thousand years, had blossomed into a kind of life. Clouds gathered in its false sky; a hot, dark wind blew. But that was not why the Thunderer faltered, even though with its gathering clouds and dead sun the plain seemed almost the twin of that other battlefield beyond World’s End.

  It was the dead at which he stared. Not the dead of Underworld—those lost and pitiable souls, numerous as grains of sand—but a column of dead, just like an army, that reached interminably out of the desert to stand, motionless, ten thousand strong, against the might of Netherworld.

  Ten thousand to a man; a magical figure, often mentioned in accounts of the Last Battle. It was also, as it happened, precisely the number of the Order’s membership, a calculated sacrifice of its men—Examiners, Magisters, Professors all—gathered together in a Communion stronger than Death…

  And now Thor believed he knew that sound—that inhuman sucking, as if Chaos were taking a deep breath—and his face paled beneath his fiery beard. He’d heard it before, at Ragnarók. They’d been outnumbered then, but not as badly; he’d still had his glam—and his hammer too—but even so that sound had struck ice into his heart.

  Why, that’s— he thought. At which point there came a terrible crash across the Worlds—Thor just had time to think, Uh-oh, here it comes—and in the final seconds of Maddy’s life the legions of the Order began their march, inexorably, across the plains of Hel.

  3

  She caught up with Loki some thousand levels into Netherworld. He was falling rapidly now, eyes shut, still clasping the deathwatch in his hands. He opened his eyes as Maddy approached, then closed them again with a shake of his head.

  “Maddy, I’m dead. Leave me alone.”

  “What?” For a moment, with the cacophony of Netherworld in her ears, she’d been sure he had said, I’m dead. Then she saw the time on the watch, and her mouth opened in a silent cry.

  Forty-five seconds.

  “Leave me alone.”

  Forty-two seconds.

  Forty-one.

  “You have to get out,” Loki said.

  “We can both get out. Just take my hand…”

  Loki swore as the rune Naudr fastened itself around his wrist. “Maddy, believe me. You’re wasting your time.”

  Thirty-nine seconds.

  Maddy began to drag him upward. “I’m not going to leave you here,” she said. “I was wrong about you. I thought you were the traitor at the gate—”

  And now they were hurtling upward again, Maddy hauling him with all her glam, Loki trying to reason with her over the deafening sound of the World’s unmaking.

  “But I was the traitor at the gate!” Loki protested.

  “Now you’re being noble,” Maddy said. “You want me to leave you and save myself, so you’re trying to make me believe—”

  “Please!” yelled Loki. “I am not being noble!”

  Thirty seconds left to go. And now their speed rivaled that of the World Serpent at his fastest, crossing what seemed like miles in a fraction of a second, half deafened by the sucking roar of Chaos.

  “Listen,” said Loki. “D’you hear that noise?”

  Maddy nodded.

  “That’s Surt coming through,” said Loki.

  Twenty-four seconds.

  “Lord Surt? The Destroyer?”

  “No, another Surt—what do you think?”

  Twenty-two seconds: they could see the gate. The opening looked no greater than a lancet now, and Thor was holding it with both hands, his face dark with the effort, his shoulders bunched like an ox’s as they raced toward the
narrow slit.

  Twenty seconds.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make it—”

  “Maddy—no…”

  Now Maddy’s heart was close to bursting as she plunged toward the closing gate, dragging Loki—still struggling—behind her.

  “Listen to me! The Whisperer lied. I know what it wants; I’ve seen into its mind. I’ve known it since our journey began. I didn’t tell you—I lied—I thought I could use you to save myself—”

  Fifteen seconds…

  Maddy wrenched at Loki’s arm—

  Naudr, the Binder, gave way with a snap—

  And then three things all happened at once:

  Hel’s deathwatch cracked right across the face, freezing the time at thirteen seconds.

  Netherworld crashed shut with a clang.

  And Maddy awoke in her own skin and found herself looking into Hel’s dead eye.

  4

  At the entrance to the Underworld the parson and the Huntress stopped. They had tracked their quarry to the mouth of Hel, and now they stood and watched the plain, where a slight dust rose in the wake of the two figures—one tall, one short—that inched their way across the desert.

  It was all too much for Adam Scattergood. The bleak sky where no sky had a right to be, the nameless peaks, the dead, like thunderheads, marching into the blue…Even if this was a dream (and he clung to the idea with all his might), he’d long since given up any hope of awakening. Death would be infinitely better than this, and he followed, incurious, where the Huntress led, hearing the sound of the dead in his ears and wondering when it would come for him.

  Nat Parson spared him not a thought. Instead he smiled his wolfish smile and opened the Book of Words at the relevant page. His enemy was within range; even across that vastness, he knew, the canticle would strike him down, and he allowed himself a little sigh of satisfaction as he began to invoke the power of the Word.

  I name you Odin, son of Bór…

  But something was wrong, the parson thought. When first he had used that canticle, it had been with a sense of gathering doom, a power that increased at every word until it became a moving wall, crushing everything in its path. Now, however he spoke the words, the Word declined to reveal itself.