Joanne Harris - Runemarks

No one seemed to know where they had gone; certainly not the goblins, who in the absence of their captain seemed to have lost any control they might once have had and were deserting Red Horse Hill in droves, taking what loot they could carry with them.

He intercepted and questioned a number of these fugitives but could make little of what they told him. Rumors were flying like wild geese. The Order was marching on the Hill; the Nameless had risen; the World Ash had fallen; Surt the Destroyer had crossed over from Chaos and was even now on his way to devour the world.

There were other, more plausible rumors as well: the Captain was dead (Odin put this down to wishful thinking); World Below was overrun; any treasure, food, and ale was therefore free to all comers-this at least was true enough, as Odin discovered on entering the food cellars, although most of the goblins he found there were too drunk to make any sense.

By contrast, in World Above an ominous quiet reigned. The digging machines were abandoned in the open Eye; in the fields only a few people came and went. It felt like a Sunday, but the church bells were silent and even the farmers, who had good reason to be busy, seemed to have forsaken their business. Watching the world through the rune Bjarkán, Odin wondered at the eerie stillness while over the Hill the wild geese flew and storm clouds gathered sullen over the valley of the Strond.

Something was stirring, he could sense it clearly. It shivered through World Below, rattling bones and blowing through doorways. It had a voice-seven voices, in fact-and Odin had no need of truesight or oracle to know from where that wind was blowing.

The Sleepers.

Well, he thought, it was inevitable. Once Skadi had awakened, rousing the others was simply a matter of time. And without the Whisperer he could not know for sure what they knew or what they were planning. Did they have the Whisperer? Were they responsible for Maddy’s disappearance? And where was Loki? Was he still alive? And if so, what was his game?

It was crooked, of course- that went without saying-but the one thing of which Odin was still sure was that the Vanir would oppose any partnership with the Trickster. If Skadi had convinced them that Loki and Odin were together again, then he would have to approach them with the greatest of care.

And approach them he must, if he was to have the answers to his questions.

Casting his gaze toward the Horse’s Eye, he had found their summons in the form of a white-headed crow bearing a message. It sat on the big stone on top of the Hill, cocked its head, and spoke.

Craw.

One-Eye liked crows and knew their language from all the times he had taken their shape. He drew close to the bird and through the rune Bjarkán assured himself that this was indeed a common crow and not one of the Vanir in bird Aspect.

Vanir, it said. Parley. No trick.

One-Eye nodded. “Where?” he said.

Parson house.

“When?”

Tonight.

Thoughtfully Odin scattered a handful of scraps for the crow, which flapped down and began to peck at the food. No trick, it had said. But the parson’s house seemed a strange place to meet-could they be thinking of an alliance with the Folk?-and in today’s world, he knew, even old friends were not to be trusted.

Damn them, damn them. He was getting too old for diplomacy. His shoulder was still on fire from Jed Smith’s crossbow bolt; he was worried about Maddy, suspicious of the Vanir, and distressingly weakened by the power of the Word.

The Word. Oh, he’d known of its existence for many years, but he had never encountered its effects firsthand. Now that he had, he feared it more than ever. A single Examiner had bled him helpless. One man-not even a Magister-had come within inches of breaking his mind.

Imagine an army primed with the Word. The Book of Apocalypse didn’t seem quite so far-fetched now that he’d seen what the Word could do. And the Order was strong-in purpose as well as in numbers-while he and his kind were scattered and in conflict. But what could he-what could any of them do against the Nameless? Alone, he might gain a few years’ reprieve-ten, twenty if he was lucky-before the Order finally tracked him down. Together-if he managed to win back the Vanir at all-what could they hope for but defeat?

Perhaps the Examiner was right, he thought. Perhaps my time is over. And yet the thought did not fill him with the despair he might have expected. Instead he was conscious of a strange sensation, a kind of lightening of the spirit, and in that moment he recognized the feeling. He’d felt it before, in the days before Ragnarók, with Worlds colliding and the forces of Chaos awaiting their time. It was the joy of a gambler throwing down his last coin, the knowledge that everything stands or falls on the turn of a card.

Well, what is it to be? he asked himself. A few years’ reprieve or a merciful death? A sliver of hope or a bolt from the blue?

His chances were poor; he knew that already. The Vanir mistrusted him, Skadi had sworn vengeance on him, Loki had fled, Maddy was lost, the Whisperer missing, the Hill wide open, and the Folk on his trail. And without the Oracle the chances of his being able to talk, cajole, negotiate, or outright lie the Vanir into obedience were small indeed.

But Odin was a gambler. He liked those odds. They appealed to his sense of the dramatic. And so once more as the sun tipped westward, he picked up his staff and his battered old pack and made his way down Red Horse Hill.

In Skadi’s absence Nat Parson had slept, exhausted after his night’s work. But his sleep had not refreshed him, punctuated as it was with itchy, uncomfortable dreams that left him feeling edgy and dissatisfied.

He woke past noon with an aching head, dizzy with hunger, and yet the thought of eating made him feel sick. Most of all he was terribly afraid that the newly acquired powers he had demonstrated to the Huntress might somehow have seeped away.

To his relief, however, the power of the Word remained undimmed. If anything, he thought it had actually increased as he slept, like some fast-growing creeper feeling its way through his brain. He lit the altar candles on his first try, almost without thinking, and the colors that had so overwhelmed him before now seemed familiar, almost commonplace.

How this had happened he did not know, but somehow, as he’d stepped forward at the very instant the Examiner summoned the Word against One-Eye, their minds had meshed. By accident or design? Had he been chosen to receive this power? With the Order, of course, anything was possible. Perhaps it was simply chance, the aftermath of Communion combined with some more random element-chance or choice, who knows?-but whatever it was, Nat Parson meant to keep it.

He hardly spoke to his wife at all, except to demand the loan of her second-best dress. Her best was already lying discarded somewhere out on Red Horse Hill, and Skadi would need another when she returned from the Sleepers in bird form.

Ethelberta was quite naturally reluctant to part with the cream of her wardrobe in this way, and there was a small unpleasantness, from which Nat escaped to the sanctuary of his study before his desire to use the Word on Ethelberta became too strong to resist.

Meanwhile, the Huntress had returned. It had taken some hours to bring the Vanir around to her way of thinking, and it was early afternoon by the time she reached the village. By then her quarry was already gone: Maddy and Loki into World Below and Odin into World Above, to observe the parsonage and to check the area for a possible ambush.

He did not observe Skadi as, in the guise of a white she-wolf, she explored the intricacies of Red Horse Hill, sniffing out its passageways, calculating its defenses, searching for a fresh trail. Briefly she caught Loki’s scent, but it was faint and soon ran cold, and she could find no trace of Maddy Smith.