Joanne Harris - Runemarks

“Getting help,” came the sardonic voice. “For our poor, exhausted friend.”

“Oh no,” said Loki.

“What now?” said Maddy.

“I think she’s going to wake someone else.” Loki put his face in his hands. “Gods,” he said. “That’s all we need. More people after my blood.”

More people after my blood, he’d said, but the second woman who came strolling out of the Hall of Sleepers was as different from the icy Huntress as cream is from granite.

This woman was round and soft and golden; flowers gleamed in her long hair, and Ár, the green rune of Plenty, shone out from her forehead. Her gaze fell on Maddy, and it was wide and trusting and slightly perplexed, like that of an infant who wishes to please.

And such was the charm of this strange and childlike woman that even Maddy, who had plenty of reason to dislike a certain kind of cowslip-haired beauty, felt the air of the cavern thaw a little at her presence and seemed to smell the scent of distant gardens and ripe strawberries and fresh honey straight from the comb.

Skadi walked behind her at some distance, as if unwilling to get too close to something so unlike herself.

Loki too recognized her; as the smiling woman made her way toward him, Maddy saw in his face a mixture of relief and what might have been embarrassment.

“Who is it?” whispered Maddy.

“Idun,” he said. “The Healer.”

“Here he is,” said Skadi curtly. “Now get him moving, and fast.”

Idun peered at Loki, wide-eyed. “Oh, dear. What have you been up to this time?” she said.

He pulled a face. “Me? Nothing.”

“Do be polite, Loki, or you won’t get your apple.”

Idun, thought Maddy. The keeper of the magical fruit that cures sickness and heals Time. According to the tales, the fruit was golden apples stored in a golden casket, but the fruit that Idun held out to Loki was small and yellow and wrapped in foliage, more like a crab apple than anything else, though its scent, potent even in the frosty air of the cavern, was all green summer and creamy Harvestmonth crammed into a handful of withered leaves.

“Eat it,” said Skadi as Loki hesitated.

Loki did, looking none too pleased. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, and then Maddy saw his signature brighten suddenly from its dim bruise color to a vibrant gleam. It had been fading; now it hummed with power that crackled from his hair and his fingertips and shimmered briefly across his entire body like St. Sepulchre’s fire.

The effect was immediate. He straightened; breathed deeply; tested his ribs and his injured hand and the gouges from the cat’s claws and found them mended.

“Feeling better?” said Idun.

Loki nodded.

“Good,” said Skadi. “Let’s go. And, Loki…”

“What?”

“In case you were thinking of pulling a fast one-”

“Who, me?”

“I’ll be watching you.” She smiled. “Like a hawk.”

Ten minutes later an eagle and a small brown hawk were on their way to the village of Malbry. It would take them an hour to cross the valley. Without wings, Loki said, it was pointless to follow-and yet Maddy hated the thought of leaving One-Eye at the mercy of the Huntress when she realized (as she inevitably would) that she had been deceived.

Idun, as she soon discovered, was no help. She listened attentively enough to Maddy’s story but seemed to feel no sense of urgency or danger at all.

“Odin will think of something,” she said, and appeared to feel that ought to reassure her.

But Maddy was not reassured. “There must be some way,” she said. “It’s my fault. I took the Whisperer…”

Idun was sitting on a block of ice, singing to herself. At the mention of the Whisperer she stopped, and a look of mild anxiety crossed her features.

“That old glam?” she said. “Best leave it alone. It never did give us anything but bad news.” She pulled a comb from her hair and examined it, then began to sing again, her voice a thin filament of sweetness in the chilly air.

It was clear to Maddy that whatever powers Idun possessed would be of little use to her in their present situation. Wild thoughts of mindblasting her way out of the cavern were attractive but impractical, and she knew that however much she tried, she could never walk to the village in time.

One solution remained, and as she examined it from all angles, weighing the benefits and disadvantages, she became more and more convinced that it was her only hope.

“There’s no choice,” she said at last. “I’ll have to wake another Sleeper.”

Idun smiled vaguely. “That would be nice, dear. Just like old times.”

Maddy had a feeling that reviving old times was the last thing they needed right now, but she didn’t see any alternative. The question was, whom to wake? And how could she be sure that waking someone else wouldn’t just make matters worse?

With a heavy heart, and with Bjarkán gleaming at her fingertips, Maddy went over to the remaining Sleepers. Idun followed her through the caverns like a lost child, singing to herself and wondering at the lights and colors. Maddy noticed that wherever Idun went, the ice melted briefly, reconfiguring itself into frost flowers and ice garlands in her wake. More than once she looked anxiously at the chains of icicles suspended above their heads and tried not to think of what might happen if Idun stopped moving for too long.

Instead she concentrated on the Sleepers. There they lay in their beds of ice, still and gleaming beneath the bindwork of runes. Five remained of the original seven-four men and one woman-and for some time Maddy went from one to the other and back again, trying to determine which one to choose.

The first was a man of powerful build, with shaggy hair and a beard that curled like foam. His signature was ocean blue; he wore the rune Logr beneath a tunic of something that looked like close-linked scales, and his feet, which were large and shapely, were bare.

Maddy had no difficulty recognizing him from One-Eye’s accounts and decided at once that there was no question of waking him. That was Njörd, the Man of the Sea, one of the original Vanir and onetime husband of Skadi the Huntress. Their marriage had failed, due to irreconcilable differences, but all the same Maddy felt it wiser to keep Njörd out of the situation for the moment.

The second Sleeper was like Njörd, with the fair skin and pale hair of the Vanir, though Maddy sensed a warmth coming from him that had been absent in the Man of the Sea. He too was a warrior, with the rune Madr on his chest and a spyglass around his neck. It took Maddy some time to decide who he was, but she finally made up her mind that he must be golden-toothed Heimdall, messenger of the Seer-folk and wakeful guardian of the rainbow bridge; even beneath the ice, his bright blue eyes remained open and fiercely aware.

Maddy passed him by with a shiver of unease. She knew from the stories that Heimdall, though loyal to Odin and to the Æsir, hated Loki with a passion and was unlikely to be sympathetic to anyone trying to help him.

The third was Bragi, husband of Idun, a tall man with the rune Sól on his hand and a crown of flowers around his head. He looked gentle (Maddy knew him mainly as a champion of songs and poetry) and she would have liked to have chosen him, but Bragi, she knew, was no friend of Loki’s, and she didn’t like the idea of having to explain his role-or, indeed, her own-in what was becoming a very tortuous mess.

The fourth Sleeper was armored in gold and his long hair gleamed with it; the rune Fé shone out from his brow and a broken sword lay at his side.

Next to him, close enough to touch, was the last Sleeper, a woman of bright and troubling beauty. Fé adorned her as well; her hair was fretted and woven with gems, and a necklace of twisted gold circled her throat, catching the light even through the ice. She bore a striking resemblance to the Sleeper beside her, and Maddy knew them at once to be Frey and Freyja, the twin children of Njörd, who had joined the Seer-folk with him in the time of the Whisperer.