Joanne Harris - Runemarks

It had been a good falltime, but the season was almost done, and soon would come the long, bleak winter. He could smell it: the wild geese had flown; the fields were bare after that busy Harvestmonth and the stubble burned in time for the next seeding. Wherever Maddy and Odin were planning to meet, they would surely not venture out of the valley at such a time. So far, it was still warm in the afternoon sun, but there was a sharp edge to the air that would soon turn to ice and a long, slow five-month before spring’s awakening.

Awakening! The thought came to Loki with sudden certainty, and he froze, his eyes fixing on the hazy sky, the distant pass, and the seven peaks that guarded the valley. There were tales about those peaks, he knew. He had spread many of them himself in the hope of discouraging attention from the glacial halls under those mountains and from the seven deadly inhabitants that slumbered beneath the ancient stone.

The Sleepers.

“No. They wouldn’t dare.”

In his alarm he spoke aloud, and birds flew cackling out of the scrub at the sound of his voice. Loki scarcely heard them. Already he was sliding down the tree trunk, sending leaves and fragments of bark showering onto the forest floor. Surely, he thought, they wouldn’t dare! The General himself had never dared-after Ragnarók, Odin could no longer assume the Sleepers were his to command.

Unless he knew something that Loki did not. Some new rumor, some warning sign, some omen that Loki’s spies had failed to read. Perhaps, at last, Odin had dared.

Loki’s mind raced furiously. If the Sleepers were awake, he thought, then surely he would have known by now. Their presence would have launched echoes and alarms throughout World Below. No reason to panic just yet, then. The General was above all a tactician, and he would not risk unleashing the Sleepers without first ensuring his absolute authority.

But with the Whisperer in his hands…

A distant shudder ran through the ground. It must have been the digging machines-though for a second Loki had been almost sure that he sensed something else: a convulsion that passed over the skin of the valley like a tremor on the skin of an old dog.

He shivered.

Surely not! There must still be time…

If the Sleepers awoke, he was as good as dead.

Unless he recovered the Whisperer…

If Maddy was heading for the Sleepers, he thought, then the quickest way was underground. It might take her four hours to reach the place-that gave her quite a lead on him-but Loki knew World Below better than anyone. He had shortcuts through the Hill that no one else knew and, with luck, perhaps he could still cut her off. If not, then at least he could be sure that Odin would not have ventured underground. So the General would be traveling overland toward the mountains, which gave him a journey twice as long-and over some rather rough terrain. Which left Maddy and the Whisperer alone.

Loki grinned. In a fair fight he knew he had no chance, but Loki was not accustomed to fighting fair and had no intention of starting now.

Well, then-

With a flick of the fingers he cast ýr at the ground and prepared to re-enter World Below.

Nothing happened.

The door that should have slipped open at his command remained sealed.

Loki cast again, frowning a little.

Still the doorway declined to reveal itself.

Loki cast Thuris, then Logr, Water, and finally Úr, the Mighty Ox, a rune of brute force, which was his equivalent of kicking the door hard in his impatience.

Nothing worked. The door stayed shut. Loki sat down on the forest floor, angry, puzzled, and breathing hard. He had flung those runes with all his glam. Even if the door had been magically sealed, surely something should have happened.

It was shielded, then, whatever it was. He cast Bjarkán as hard as he could.

Still there was nothing. Not a gleam, not a twinkle. The door was not just sealed; it was as if it had never been there.

That shudder, he thought. He’d taken it for the work of those digging machines, but now that he thought about it more carefully, he realized he’d made a mistake. That was the echo of powerful glam-a single working, likely as not-and World Below had shifted accordingly, going into total lockdown against a potential intruder.

He tried to think what kind of assault might have triggered such a response.

Only one thing came to mind.

Now he began to feel afraid. He was locked out of World Below, alone and with enemies on either side. Time was short, the Sleepers might already be awake, and every second lost brought Maddy and One-Eye closer together. The solution was a dangerous one, but he didn’t see that he had a choice. He would have to go after them overland.

He uttered a cantrip, cast Kaen and Raedo, and if anyone had been there to see, they would have been amazed as the young man with the scarred lips and the harried expression dwindled, shrunk, shed his clothes, and became a small brown bird of prey that looked around for a second or two with bright, unbirdlike eyes before taking wing, circling the Hill twice in a widening arc, and soaring away into the thermals and off toward the Seven Sleepers.

Anyone with the truesight, of course, would not have been fooled for a minute. That violet trail was far too distinctive.

Nat Parson was enjoying himself. It wasn’t just the robes, or the ceremony, or the knowledge that everyone was watching him, majestic on his white horse, with Adam Scattergood standing beside him with the incense pot in one hand and a fat church candle in the other. It wasn’t the close attention of the visitor from World’s End, who watched him (with admiration, Nat thought) from his position in the Eye of the Horse. It wasn’t the noble sound of his own voice as it rolled over the Hill, or the roar of the digging machines, or the smoke from the bonfires, or the Fair Day firecrackers that popped and flashed. It wasn’t even the fact that that tiresome girl was for it at last-her and the Outlander too. No, all these things were pleasing, but Nat Parson’s happiness ran deeper than that.

Of course, he’d always known he was destined for greatness. His wife, Ethelberta, had seen it too-in fact, it had been her idea to embark on that long and dangerous pilgrimage to World’s End, which had led to his subsequent awakening to the stern duties of the Faith.

Oh, there was no denying that he had been dazzled by the sophistication of the Universal City: its abbeys and cathedrals, its solemn passageways, its Laws. Nat Parson had always respected the Law-what there was of it in Malbry-but World’s End had opened his eyes at last. For the first time he had experienced perfect Order, an Order imposed by an all-powerful clergy in a world where to be a priest-even a country parson-was to command hitherto unimaginable authority, respect, and fear.

And Nat had discovered that he liked to command authority. He had returned to Malbry with a craving for more, and for ten years following his return, through sermons of increasing violence and dire warnings of terrors to come, he had built up a growing clique of admirers, devotees, worshipers, and prentices in the secret hope that one day he might be called upon in the fight against Disorder.

But Malbry was a quiet place, and its ways were lax and sleepy. Common crime was infrequent enough, but mortal crime-the kind that would enable him to appeal to the bishop, even the Order itself-was almost unheard of.

Only once had he exercised this authority, when a black-and-white sow had been convicted of unnatural acts-but his superiors had taken a dim view of the matter, and Nat’s face had been red as a beet when he had seen the reply from Torval Bishop from over the pass.