Joanne Harris - Runemarks

Isa, cast from four different angles, shattered the pillar into a drift of diamonds, but by then the Trickster was already gone. In wildfire Aspect he led them toward the far side of the hall, dodging glamours and runes, twice more reappearing as Lucy from behind one of the fabulous constructions of ice. As the Vanir closed in on all sides, he pretended to falter, turning an expression of anguished appeal to the group of angry gods.

“Got him!” said Frey. “There’s no way out-”

“Tag,” said Lucy, and shifted again, to bird form this time, and made straight for the ceiling and its colossal central chandelier. At the hub, the small opening made by Loki’s fall gaped palely at the approaching dawn.

Too late the Vanir saw his plan.

“After him!” yelled Frey, and shifted into a harrier hawk, rather larger than Loki’s bird Aspect. Njörd became a sea eagle, white-winged and dagger-clawed, and Heimdall shifted into a falcon, yellow-eyed and fast as an arrow. The three of them made straight for Loki, while Freyja shot missiles at the gap in the roof and Bragi took out a flute from his pocket and played a little saraband that peppered the air with fast, deadly notes, scorching Loki’s feathers and almost bringing him down.

Loki spun in midair, lost control for a moment, then recovered and made for the sky. The sea eagle saw its chance and closed in, but its wingspan was too large for the cavern; it dodged a volley of semi-quavers, wheeled round, and clipped an ancient column of ice, shattering its core, before flying out of control into the nest of icicles that made up the main part of the ceiling. The frozen chandelier trembled, shook, and finally began to disintegrate, throwing down shards of ice that had hung intact for five hundred years into the Hall of Sleepers.

For a time confusion reigned. A cataract of frozen pieces, some knife-edged, others as large as bales of hay, had begun to tumble, slowly but with increasing momentum, from the bright vaulting. Some smashed onto the polished floor, flinging up fragments that were as sharp and deadly as pieces of shrapnel. Others pulverized before they reached the ground, snowing steely particles into the air.

It was so sudden, so cataclysmic, that for a few crucial seconds the Vanir lost interest in the winged fugitive and scattered to the far corners of the Hall of Sleepers in their various attempts to escape the avalanche:

Bragi played a jig so merry that the ice melted into gentle rain long before it reached his head.

Freyja flung up ýr and created a mindshield of golden light against which the falling fragments rebounded harmlessly.

Idun simply smiled vaguely and the particles of ice turned into a shower of apple blossoms that drifted quietly to the ground.

Heimdall, Njörd, and Frey beat their wings in angry confusion, trying to dodge the falling ice as their prey vanished, with no more injury than a few scorched feathers, through the grinning gap.

And in all the confusion Maddy simply strolled into the hall, quietly retrieved the Whisperer from its hiding place under the loosened snow, then calmly strolled out again-unobserved and unsuspected-into the tunnels of World Below.

Now Loki was flying for his life. He’d bought himself some time, of course: the three hunters had been slowed down, both by the collapse of the ice chandelier and by their greater size, which had made it less easy for them to leave through the small gap in the roof.

As it was, he had fifteen minutes on them before he spotted his three pursuers: the falcon, the sea eagle, and the harrier hawk, circling the valley in a hunting pattern, searching for him in the early morning sunlight.

At once Loki dropped his hawk Aspect and came to rest behind a small copse just outside Forge’s Post; here stood a tiny log cabin, with a line of washing behind it and an old lady dozing in a rocking chair on the porch.

The old lady was Crazy Nan Fey, the nurse of Maddy’s younger days. She opened one eye as the hawk came to land, and she watched with some interest as it became a naked young man, who proceeded to ransack Nan ’s washing line in search of something to wear. Nan supposed she ought to intervene-but the loss of an old dress, an apron, and a shawl seemed a small price to pay for the spectacle, and she decided against it.

Two minutes later a second old lady, barefoot and with a thick shawl over her head, was walking at a suspiciously athletic pace toward Malbry village. Closer observation might have shown that her left hand was oddly crooked, though few would have recognized the runeshape ýr.

Some birds flew overhead for a time, but as far as she saw, they did not land.

Maddy and Loki had arranged to meet by the big old beech in Little Bear Wood. Maddy reached it first, having taken the road through World Below, and she sat down on the grass to wait and to settle things once and for all with the Whisperer.

Their conversation was not a comfortable one. The Whisperer was resentful at having been left in the Hall of Sleepers “like a damned pebble,” as it put it, and Maddy was furious that it had hidden the truth about her Æsir blood.

“I mean, it isn’t something you just forget to mention,” she snapped. “Oh, and by the way, you’re Allfather’s granddaughter. Didn’t it occur to you that I might be interested?”

The Whisperer glowed in a bored kind of way.

“And another thing,” said Maddy. “If I’m Modi, Thor’s child, and according to the prophecy I’m supposed to rebuild Asgard, then presumably whichever side I’m on wins the war. Right?”

The Whisperer yawned lavishly.

Now Maddy blurted out the question that had been burning the roof of her mouth since Odin had first told her who she was. “Is that why One-Eye found me?” she said. “Is that why he taught me what he did? Did he just pretend to be my friend so he could use me against the enemy when the time came? And how would he do it? I’m no warrior…”

She had a sudden, vivid memory of Loki in the caves, saying: A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons-and though it was warm in the little wood, Maddy could not suppress a shiver.

The Whisperer gave its dry laugh. “I warned you,” it said. “That’s what he does. He uses people. He used me when it suited him, then abandoned me to my fate. It’ll happen to you if you let it, girl-to him you’re nothing but another step on the road back to Asgard. He’ll sacrifice you in the end, just as he sacrificed me, unless-”

“Is this another prophecy?” Maddy interrupted.

“No. It’s a prediction,” the Whisperer said.

“What’s the difference?”

“Predictions can be wrong. Prophecies can’t.”

“So you don’t actually know what’s going to happen, either?” said Maddy.

“Not exactly. But I’m a good guesser.”

Maddy bit a fingernail. “I see an army poised for battle. I see a general standing alone. I see a traitor at the gate. I see a sacrifice.” She turned to the Whisperer. “Is that me?” she said. “Am I supposed to be the sacrifice? And is One-Eye the traitor?”

“Couldn’t say,” smirked the Whisperer.

“The dead will awake from the halls of Hel. And the Nameless shall rise and Nine Worlds be lost, unless the Seven Sleepers wake and the Thunderer be freed from Netherworld-freed from Netherworld?” Maddy said. “Is that even possible?”

Within the Whisperer’s glassy shell, fragments of runelight sparkled and spun.

“I said, is it possible?” repeated Maddy. “To free my father from Netherworld?”

Loki had thought her childish and irrational. In fact, ever since she had heard the tale of his escape from Netherworld, Maddy had been thinking very clearly indeed. She had gambled on his willingness to help-not because she trusted in Loki’s better nature, but because she expected him to lie. She was sure he had no intention of allowing her to throw the Whisperer back into the fire pit, but the task of retrieving it from the Hall of Sleepers was a two-man job, and rather than let it fall into the hands of the Vanir, she was sure that Loki would be ready to humor her-at least until they reached World Below, where he would deliver Maddy and the Whisperer safely into Odin’s hands. For a price, of course.