Joanne Harris - Runemarks

In this way, and quite by accident, Odin discovered the Whisperer’s trail. He had reached the heart of Red Horse Hill at about the same time as Loki and Maddy crossed the Strond and found no recent sign of them there. But as he approached the central chasm from one of the tunnels leading down, his truesight showed him a fugitive gleam and he caught his first scent of the Whisperer.

Someone had tried to erase it, he saw, but its signature was very strong, and in places it overwhelmed the workings, spilling out at intervals along the passage. Once it was joined by a faint signature of a familiar violet, another time by a bright fragment that was unmistakably Maddy’s. They were moving fast, Odin could tell. And they were heading straight for the Underworld.

But why would they risk the Underworld? Hel had no reason to welcome Loki-in fact, she was more likely to kill him on sight or, better yet, hand him over to Netherworld, where Surt the Destroyer still kept the Æsir captive and would be more than interested to learn how one of his prisoners had managed to escape.

Unless he had something to bargain with, thought Odin. A weapon, perhaps? A glam?

In the darkness he smiled grimly. Of course. He was not the only one to covet the Whisperer. Surely Hel could have little use for such a glam, but beyond Hel’s world, where the balance was set, in Netherworld, or even beyond-

For a moment he stopped. Could that be Loki’s aim? he thought. To use the Whisperer as a bargaining tool-not with the Æsir, or the Vanir, or even with the Order, but with the very Lords of Chaos?

Odin’s mind reeled at the thought.

That power combined with the power of Chaos, destabilizing the Worlds, rewriting reality…

It could mean, quite simply, the Worlds’ unmaking. Not another Ragnarók, but a final dissolution of all things, a breakdown in the laws of Order and Chaos, a terminal upsetting of the balance.

Surely even Loki would not dare to set in motion such a chain of events. But if not, then what exactly did he expect to gain? And even if he was innocent of malice, then did he really understand the risk he was taking-not only with his own life, but with the whole of existence?

Above One-Eye, at last, the hunt was on. Three hunters, to be exact: a woman who was a Fury, a goddess, and also a wolf; a man who was two men in a single body; and Adam Scattergood, who was beginning to think that even death at the wolf woman’s hands might be more merciful than the terror of these endless passages with their sounds and their smells.

Skadi had wanted to kill him at once. Reverting to her natural form, she had leveled her ice blue gaze at Adam and given a wolfish-and still bloodstained-smile.

But Nat had other plans for Adam. And here he was now, miles below the demon mound, carrying the parson’s Book and pack. Fear had made him surprisingly docile, and although the pack was heavy, he made no complaint. In fact, thought Nat, it was easy to forget him altogether, and he did, for long periods, as they followed the white she-wolf deeper into World Below.

They stopped for supplies some way down, and while Nat rested, Adam packed as much food and drink as he could carry. Bread, cheese, dried meat-lots of this, in the silent hope that the wolf woman might prefer it to fresh boy. Adam himself was not at all hungry. Nat ate sparingly, and studied the Good Book, and seemed to argue with himself in a way that Adam found very disturbing. Then they walked-Skadi in her natural shape, wearing Jed Smith’s cast-off clothes and cursing at the elusive trail-and then they slept for an hour or two, and when Adam awoke from a terrifying dream, he was not really surprised to find that his present reality was far, far worse.

There must have been a thousand paths leading out from under the Hill. Even with Skadi’s wolf senses, finding the trail was a difficult task. She did find it, however: it ran alongside their own path, in a small lateral tunnel to which they had not, as yet, gained access. But they were close: once they had even heard their quarry tapping its way quietly along the tunnel at their side, and the white wolf had howled with frustration at finding herself so near, with only a span of rock between themselves and their prey.

But the wolf form tired Skadi if she kept to it for too long, and often she was obliged to shift to her human Aspect, eating ravenously every time she did so. Adam found her human Aspect even more intimidating than her wolf form. At least with a wolf he knew more or less what he was dealing with. And when she was a wolf, there could be no spells or glamours, no sudden explosions, mindblasts, or conjurings. Adam had always hated magic; only now was he beginning to realize quite how much.

Better to deny it all, he thought. Better to tell himself that it was all a dream from which he would soon awake. It made sense. Adam had never been a dreamer, and so it was natural that this-this exceptionally long and troubling dream-should have unnerved him. But a dream was all it was, he thought, and the more he told himself that it was just a dream, the less he thought of his aching back, or the wolf woman at his side, or the impossible things that came to him out of the dark.

By the time they reached the river, Adam Scattergood had come to a decision. It didn’t seem to matter anymore that he’d seen two men die, that he was far from home in the company of wolves, that he had blisters on his feet and rock dust in his lungs, or even that the parson had gone insane.

He was dreaming, that was all.

All he had to do was wake up.

Meanwhile, on the trail of the hunters, the Vanir had made less headway than they would have liked. Not that the trail was difficult to follow-Skadi was making no attempt to shield her colors-but by now the six of them were so little in sympathy with each other that they could hardly agree on anything.

Heimdall and Frey had wanted to shapeshift at once and follow the Huntress in animal guise. But Njörd refused to be left behind, and his favorite Aspect-that of a sea eagle-was hardly practical underground. Freyja refused to shift at all, protesting that there would be no one to carry her clothes for when she returned to her true Aspect, and all of them found it impossible to make Idun understand the urgency of their pursuit, as she stopped repeatedly to marvel over pretty stones or veins of metal in the ground or the black lilies that grew wherever water seeped through the walls.

Frey suggested shapeshifting Idun, the way Loki had once turned her into a hazelnut to flee the clutches of the Ice People. But Bragi wouldn’t hear of it, and finally they proceeded on foot, rather more slowly than they would have wished.

All in all, it had been a long, quarrelsome descent for the six of them, Heimdall maintaining stubbornly that Odin could not have betrayed them, Freyja complaining about the dust, Bragi singing cheery songs that got on everyone’s nerves, Njörd impatient, Frey suspicious, and Idun so lost to any sense of peril that she had to be closely watched at all times to keep her from wandering away. Nevertheless, they crossed the Strond barely an hour after the Huntress, for Skadi had her own problems, in the shape of Nat Parson and Adam Scattergood, both of whom had slowed her down considerably.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the Strond, someone else had been following a trail. It was an easy trail to follow, if you knew where to look; the Captain had shielded his colors, of course, but had left small cantrips at every turn he took, embedded in the tunnel walls or hidden beneath the stones of the path, to show where he was heading.

Not that Sugar had any doubt where he was heading-and only the Captain could be mad or bad enough to believe that any such as he could ever return from such a destination.