Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  But Maddy’s gaze stayed straight and true.

  “You need my body unharmed,” she said. “If I die here, my spirit stays in Hel, and the rest of me just goes to dust. I can’t kill you, but I can do this…”

  And she raised the knife to her own throat.

  5

  Once again there was silence in Hel. Everyone watched Maddy, standing in the circle of gods and Folk with the clasp knife held to her own throat.

  Loki watched from Netherworld, and in spite of his peril, he grinned.

  Thor watched and thought, That’s my girl.

  Odin did not watch, but he knew, all the same.

  Balder watched and saw the solution clearly for the first time: not a battle, nor even a war, but a sacrifice—

  “Maddy! No!” the Nameless howled, and ten thousand voices echoed its cry. “Think what I’m offering—Worlds, Maddy—”

  Maddy took a deep breath. It would have to be a clean blow—there might not be time for another, she thought. She pictured her blood—a necklace of it—spraying out onto the sand…

  Her hand was shaking a little, she saw. She tried to steady it—

  And found that neither hand would move.

  It was too late. She was paralyzed; at last the Book of Invocations had done its work. And now all she could do was watch in despair as the Nameless closed in, exultant, its poisonous voice whispering in her ears, promising:

  Worlds, Maddy. What else is there?

  Nat Parson gave a strangled cry. He had no idea what he was doing; no thought of danger crossed his mind. All he could think of was the wretched girl, the girl who had foiled him at every turn, the girl who had laughed at him, thwarted him, ridiculed him, and was now about to take what he himself had longed for: the Word that was rightfully his…

  “No!” He hurtled toward her, knife in hand, head lowered like a charging boar. “She never wanted it! Give it to me!” And, grabbing Maddy by the hair, remembering those hunting parties with his father so many years ago, he pulled back her head to cut her throat.

  Sugar reached the discarded Head and, grasping it in both arms, began to run furiously across the open sand. It burned his skin like a sulfur stone, but Sugar held on, dodging and running for all he was worth, eyes squinting almost shut in concentration.

  Find it, the Captain had said. And throw it into the deepest part…

  Well, all of it looked deep enough. The question was, could he reach it in time?

  He scuttled through Nat Parson’s legs, going Ouch-ouch-ouch from his blistered hands, and, looking for all the Worlds like a squirrel carrying a baked apple, he ran as fast as his short legs would go (which was faster than you might expect, and very quick for his size) toward the river Dream.

  Nat was taken by surprise. All his attention had been on the girl, and when the goblin shot between his legs, he tripped and half fell forward onto the sand. He dropped the knife, bent to retrieve it, and found himself face to face with something that hissed and crackled and gleamed and seethed with fury and thwarted ambition. Nat did not pause for a second to think; instead he opened his arms and clasped it, howling, to his chest.

  The Nameless had not seen the parson approach, had not given the little party of Folk more than a second’s thought. But first had come this mad creature scuttling in between it and the girl, and now here was the fool parson flailing out of the desert, eyes staring, mouth twisted and shouting, “No! Take me!”—reaching out hands already stiffened and blackening from its touch as—

  Ten thousand or so troops cried out in alarm and still the parson begged, “Take me!”—arching, reaching, yearning, burning for Communion, his mouth agape in an O of horror and amazement as the Nameless struggled to free itself and the Word blossomed like an early rose…

  To Nat it felt like tumbling into a pit of snakes. The Nameless’s mind was nothing like that of Elias Rede—Rede at least had once been human, with human thoughts and aspirations. But there was nothing human—nor even godlike—about the Nameless. No pity, no love; nothing but a sump of hate and fury.

  No human consciousness could survive such a blast, and in a second Nat fell to the ground, bleeding from his nose and ears. For if the Word had been violent at a distance, here, at the source, it was cataclysmic. The force made the ventings from the Whisperer’s fire pit seem like nothing more than a milk pan boiling over on the fire; the aftershock knocked the living from their feet and dispersed the dead like motes of dust.

  The Nameless gave a howl of rage. Robbed of its victim, suddenly finding itself in the body of the wrong person—a man with neither glam nor training—it acted without thought or restraint. Its first instinct was to annihilate the interloper, its second to regain the safety of its original vessel—

  But the stone Head that had contained it since the beginning of the Elder Age was no longer lying on the ground. The Nameless gave another howl—of desperation this time. Without a suitable vessel, it knew, it would be no more than another soul in Hel—Hel’s property and Hel’s slave. Robbed of a leader, its army would disperse like the dust it was; its great plan would remain unfulfilled. Ten thousand troops echoed its cry as the Nameless focused every particle of its glam on a single, frantic, all-important objective:

  To possess the girl. Once and for all.

  It was then that the river burst its banks. The Word, unleashed and uncontrolled, multiplied by ten thousand and flung out toward the rift in the Worlds, had finally proven too much to contain.

  The thing that had been the Ancient of Days wailed aloud—“Not yet—not yet!”—as the river Dream, a tidal wave, came rushing across the desert toward them.

  Ethel Parson knew what it meant. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did, just as she knew that the only hope of the Nine Worlds was beyond that river and that they were almost out of time.

  Sugar heard it and dropped the Head before setting off, no less urgently, in the opposite direction.

  Odin heard it and thought, At last.

  Across the plain the Vanir heard it and braced themselves for the End of All Things.

  In Netherworld the Æsir heard it as the blackbird shadow began once more to descend. Still clinging to the spur of rock—now the only piece of solid matter as far as their eyes could see—they felt the approach of Chaos like a shrieking black wind and fell back once again, still flinging mindbolts into the thing’s lightless maw, until they were actually pressing against the gate dividing World from World, feeling its texture hard at their backs.

  Loki had time to think, Damn gate should be charging me rent by now, when suddenly it gave way and he tumbled backward into the flow.

  Hel’s living eye shot open in sudden comprehension to rest upon the hands of the deathwatch as they now began to move together once more. She had just enough time to think, Gods, what have I done? when the tidal wave hit and all at once the desert was submerged in Dream.

  6

  The World of Dream is barely a world at all but more an accumulation of possible worlds, a world in which landmasses come and go as easily as sandbanks in a fast-flowing river and nothing is ever as it seems to be.

  The river itself is really nothing like a river. Although the eye gives it a river’s length and breadth, what flows along it is strangely volatile, shining, mercurial, almost alive, ready to take shape whenever it touches a stray thought.

  There is little sense of distance in Dream, little sense of scale or time. Dream’s territory is strictly neutral, like Death’s; it exists equally in Order and Chaos; no rules apply, or all of them. Like Netherworld, it is beyond these things, and, like Netherworld, it is different for every creature that falls under its influence.

  Here, at the source, it can be deadly.

  Loki fell into a dream of snakes and went under struggling and gasping.

  Thor fell into a dream of being stark naked at an important function at which a beautiful woman with flowers for eyes and two mouths, both of them ringed with carnivorous teeth, made a speech in a language he
did not understand but to which he was expected to reply.

  Frigg dreamed of a woman neither beautiful nor young, but gentle, and with a quiet strength. She wore a simple homespun gown; one cheek was scratched and marked with dirt. She pulled up her sleeve, and the Mother of the gods saw a glam on her arm, still faint as yet but growing steadily more clear. She held out her hand…

  Maddy dreamed of a floating rock and climbed aboard into another dream. She was back in Malbry, on Red Horse Hill, and the gorse was in bloom on the hillside. One-Eye sat next to her—not Odin, but the old One-Eye as she had first known him—watching her with his rare smile.

  One-Eye! she cried out in relief—and suddenly she knew that everything that had happened over the past few days had simply been another dream, a nightmare from which she had now awoken. She reached out her arms to her old friend, but he warned her away with an outstretched hand.

  Be careful, he said. You’re safe here. But don’t touch anyone you meet—that is, if you want to stay yourself. There’s a few odd things in the air today…

  Maddy said, I dreamed you were dead…

  One-Eye shrugged. It wouldn’t be the first time. Now I have to go—there’s a harvesting at Pog Hill I promised to attend—

  But you’ll be back, won’t you? she said.

  Aye, between Beltane and Harvestmonth. Look for me then—in dreams.

  Odin dreamed of his son Thor. He was aware it was only a dream, and yet he saw Thor very clearly and slipped under the surface into a dream in which he sat under a tree in Asgard as it was and watched the clouds race past—and Odin still had both his eyes, and Loki was not yet in disgrace (well, no more than usual, anyway), and Maddy, though as yet unborn, stood close by, and Frigg was there, and Erda, Thor’s mother, and Thor himself, looking just the same as they had five hundred years ago.

  That’s because you’re dead, Dad, said Thor, as if he’d read his mind.

  Dead? said Odin. But this is—

  Look at the facts, said Thor kindly. Your eyes—this place—us—what other explanation could there be?

  Well, I could be dreaming, Odin said.

  You always were a dreamer, said Thor.

  And now, as Odin slipped deeper into the dream, he seemed to hear Loki’s voice crying for help. And he understood that Loki was in another dream and that Loki’s dream was killing him.

  I have to help him, Odin said.

  Leave him, said Thor. He deserves to die.

  He freed you from Netherworld, Odin said.

  Freed us only to save his skin!

  That sounded typical enough, thought Odin. Since the beginning of the Elder Age, Loki had helped the gods only inasmuch as he’d usually caused the trouble in the first place. And yet hadn’t Odin himself known this from the start? And in his arrogance, hadn’t he always been shamefully eager to blame Loki for his own mistakes?

  In the dream next door, Loki was screaming. He sounded so close, Odin thought. All he had to do was reach out his hand…

  If you do, said Thor, then I can’t answer for the continued integrity of this place. I mean, wouldn’t you rather die here, surrounded by your loved ones, in a place that can only exist now in dreams, or would you rather die in Hel, defeated, as the world comes to an end around you? Your choice, Dad—but is he worth it?

  He’s my brother, Odin said.

  You never learn, do you? said Thor.

  Odin smiled and reached out his hand.

  Sugar dreamed of pork roast and kept an eye open in case Fat Lizzy should happen to drift by.

  Dorian dreamed of Ethel Parson. You always were too good for me, he thought, and now—Now Ethel was two women in one—one the dowdy parson’s wife, the other the woman of almost blinding beauty he’d glimpsed at intervals as they drew closer to their goal. They stood, faces back to back, like the January Man: Ethel looking forward, the other looking sweetly behind.

  Don’t leave me, said Dorian.

  Then take my hand, said the two-in-one.

  And as Dorian reached to take her hand, he saw a man standing in her place: a big red-bearded man whose hands, though large, were far from clumsy and whose face he felt he should know. For a second he paused…

  Fat Lizzy dreamed of Dorian Scattergood and sighed.

  Hel the Half-Born never dreamed. Dreaming was for lesser folk, and anyway, she had lived alongside Dream for too long to be affected by its tides and vagaries. With a word, she conjured her citadel and repaired with Balder to one of its higher turrets, the better to observe what happened next.

  Time acts differently in Dream. Though hours seemed to have passed since then, the gate between the Worlds had been open for a mere six of the thirteen seconds remaining on the face of Loki’s deathwatch.

  Six short seconds—but the damage was done. The Black Fortress was now no more than a foundering patch of rubble against the rising swell of the river. Demons, prisoners, and pieces of ephemera thrashed and tumbled in the hectic flow. And now the space between the Worlds looked just like a waterspout, sucking obscenely and at random, sending chunks of flotsam—some as large as skerries—lurching into the filthy air.

  “It has to be stopped,” said Balder to Hel. “Any more of this and Chaos will find its way into the other Worlds.”

  Hel shot him a glance from her living eye. “It’s safe enough in here,” she said. “Even Surt knows better than to mess with Death.”

  “And the others?”

  She shrugged. “They knew the risks when they came here. Anything happens to them, I’m not responsible.”

  How tiresome he was, thought Hel. For the first time in centuries she had Balder to herself, and all he could think about was the possible disruption to the other Worlds. To be sure, she had made a stupid mistake—

  You broke your word. You cheated Loki out of thirteen seconds…

  And now the time had come for Hel to pay.

  Balder the Beautiful looked down from his turret, and though his eyes were blue as summer skies, they were far from dreamy. He saw Odin far below, struggling with some dream of drowning.

  He saw Ethel and Dorian holding hands and Fat Lizzy perched on a spur of rock. He saw Adam Scattergood, lost in a dream of giant spiders, and Loki, surrounded by poisonous snakes.

  He saw Nat Parson and knew he was dying.

  He saw the thing that had been the Nameless, its face twisted with rage and chagrin, as it stood hip-deep in the river and screamed at the rising tide, like the Fool King in the old tale: STOP, I SAY! I COMMAND YOU, STOP!

  But words—even Words—have no power in the realm of Dream. Dream has no rulers, no servants, no kings. Dream cannot be summoned, commanded, or banished. And as the Nameless ranted and raved, Nat Parson—Nathaniel Potter, as was—fell into a dream of his own, a dream in which he was a young boy again in his father’s house, watching his father at work in the shop.

  Look at the clay, his father said.

  I see it, said Nathaniel. The clay was blue and smelled of the riverbed from which it had been gathered. Nat’s father cupped it between his hands like a bird that might otherwise fly away. The potter’s wheel turned as he pumped the treadle, and the lump of clay began to take shape.

  A fat-bottomed pot, with a neck that grew slim as the wheel went around. Nat thought he had never seen anything as delicate as his father’s big hands cupping the clay: teasing it round, making it smooth.

  You try, said Fred Potter.

  Nat cupped his fingers around the pot.

  But he was only a boy, not even a prentice, and the beautiful pot with its swan’s neck and gracious curves wobbled, leaned, and collapsed on the wheel.

  Nathaniel began to cry.

  Don’t cry, said Fred, and put his arm around the sobbing boy’s shoulders. We can always make another one.

  He began to pump the treadle again, and the pot began to rise anew, to become, if anything, more beautiful than before.

  Fred Potter turned and smiled at his son. See, son? he said. Our lives are like these thing
s I make. Turn ’em, build ’em, bake ’em in fire. That’s what you’ve been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don’t have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have.

  This was where Nat realized—to his sorrow—that this was all a dream. Fred Potter could never have voiced such thoughts. And yet Nat, who hadn’t thought about his father more than twice since the old man’s death, now found himself wanting to believe.

  It’s too late, Dad. It’s all gone wrong.

  It’s never too late. Come on, take my hand…

  And as Nat Potter took his father’s hand, he found himself at peace for the first time in many years and slipped quietly away to a place where even the Nameless could not find him.

  The Nameless gave a roar of frustration as it plunged, bodiless, into Dream. At the same time there came a kind of rushing sigh—like the sound of the sea coming in on the sand. Ten thousand souls gave a single gasp as Dream struck them with a giant wave and they were lost in a moment, like grains of sand, rolling, roiling, sifting, seething, drifting, drowning, marveling—for so few of them had ever dreamed, and here they were, at Dream’s very source…

  Some wept.

  Some ran splashing into it, like children at the seaside.

  Some went insane.

  The dead of Hel, which had gathered like dust and ash and smoke and sand on the deserts of Hel for centuries, were drawn to the movement and flocked like birds to the edge of Dream…

  And Elias Rede, the Examiner once known as 4421974, had time to think, No more numbers for me, as he plunged with joy into the wave.

  “That rift,” said Balder, “in Netherworld. You know what caused it, don’t you, Hel?”

  Hel’s face was impassive, but he thought her living profile flushed a little.