Joanne Harris - Runemarks

But the victory was bitter. She’d dreamed of having Balder all to herself, had heard stories, in fact, of a previous Guardian of the Underworld who’d gained a similar prize by means of guile and a handful of pomegranate seeds. But Balder dead had none of the charm of Balder in life. Gone was his light step, his merry voice, the sunshine gleam of his golden hair. He was cold now, cold and expressionless, speaking only when conjured to do so, animated only by Hel’s own glamours. Dead was dead, it seemed, even for gods. And now she would have to pay the price.

“So,” Loki said. “Do we have a deal?”

For a timeless time Hel walked on in silence. They followed her through plague-white gates, through crypts and repositories of bone, across mosaics fashioned from human teeth and sepulchres vaulted with varnished skulls. They moved down, and here at last were the catacombs, stretching to infinity in every direction, festooned with the lace of a million spiders.

She paused along an avenue of stone; on either side there were archways, beneath which a multitude of narrow chambers lay.

“Don’t look,” said Loki quietly.

But Maddy couldn’t help it. The chambers were dark but lit as they passed, and inside Maddy saw the dead, some sitting, some standing, as they had in life, some with half-familiar faces turning toward the unaccustomed warmth, then turning away as the visitors passed, the chamber dimming once more into the murky half-light of Hel.

Hel gestured with her dead hand, and a chamber to the right of them brightened and lit. Within it Maddy saw two young men, both pale and red-haired and bearing such a strong resemblance to Loki that she caught her breath.

“They killed us,” said one of the pale young men. “They killed us both because of you.”

Hel’s half smile broadened to ghastly effect.

Loki said nothing, but averted his eyes.

They went on apace. Once more Hel raised her dead hand, and in a chamber to her left a sad-looking woman with soft brown hair turned her face toward the light.

“Loki,” she said. “I waited for you. I waited, but you never came.”

Loki said nothing, but his expression was unusually grim.

A few minutes later Hel stopped again, and in front of her, a chamber lit. Within it Maddy saw the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. His hair was gold, his eyes blue, and though he was pale with the colors of death, he seemed to shine like a fallen star.

“Balder,” said Loki. He made it sound like a curse somehow.

“I’m waiting for you,” Balder said. “There’s a place at my side for you, my friend. No man is clever enough to cheat Death, and I can wait-it won’t be long.”

Again Loki swore and turned away.

Hel smiled again. “Had enough?” she said.

Wordlessly Loki nodded.

“And what about you?” she said to Maddy. “Any old friends you’d like to see?”

Loki put his hand on Maddy’s arm. “Maddy, don’t look. Just keep on going.”

But Hel had already lifted her hand: another room lit, and inside it Maddy saw a woman with cowslip curls and a bearded man whose face was as familiar to her as her own.

“Father?” she said, taking a step.

“Ignore them. Ha’nts. Don’t talk to them.”

“But that was my-”

“I said, ignore them.”

But Maddy had taken another step. Shaking off Loki’s restraining hand, she made for the chamber, where Jed and Julia Smith sat side by side in a stillness that might have seemed companionable in anyone other than the dead. Jed looked up as she came in but with no curiosity, no welcome. He seemed to speak, lips moving silently in the semi-darkness, but no sound came but that of the wind and of the sifting dust.

“This is just glamour, right?” said Maddy in a small voice.

Hel gave her grisly half smile.

“But he can’t be dead. I saw him just a while ago.”

“I can make him speak to you,” suggested Hel in a silky voice. “I can even show you what happened, if you’d like.”

“Don’t,” said Loki tonelessly.

But Maddy could not look away from the room, now lit with an inviting glow. The folk inside were clearer now: Jed and Julia, their faces animated by the flickering light. She knew that they were not her real parents, and yet something inside her still longed for them-for the mother she had never known, for the man she had called Father for fourteen years. It made her feel suddenly very small, very insignificant, and for the first time since she and One-Eye had opened Red Horse Hill, Maddy found herself on the verge of tears.

“Was it my fault?” she said to the shade of Jed Smith. “Was it something I did that brought you here?”

“Leave her alone,” said Loki sharply. “Your business is with me, not her.”

Hel raised her living eyebrow. The chamber darkened; the ghosts disappeared.

“An hour,” said Loki in a harsh voice. “One hour inside. After which I swear you’ll never see me here again.”

Hel smiled. “Very well. I’ll give you an hour. Not a minute-not a second-more.”

“Do I have your oath?” Loki insisted.

“You have my oath, and furthermore, you have my promise-assuming you survive this latest antic of yours, which I doubt-that next time your path crosses mine, father or not, you’ll be a dead man. Understood?”

They shook on it, his living hand in her dead one. Then, with one dead finger, Hel drew a window in the air, and suddenly they were looking out over the river Dream, a vastness of water that no eye could hope to comprehend, wider than the One Sea and ten thousand times as turbulent. Islands dotted its surface like dancers in skirts of pale foam, rocks and skerries too many to count, treacherous sandbanks, cliffs that vanished into cloud, peaks and pinnacles and stovepipe stacks.

“Gods,” said Maddy. “There are so many…”

Loki shrugged. “The islands of Dream come and go,” he said. “They’re not designed to last for long. The fortress, however…”

Briefly he considered it-the Black Fortress of Netherworld, its head lost in a pile of cloud, its feet drowned ten fathoms deep. Its shape was uncertain: one moment a great castle barbed with turrets, the next a great pit with a fiery heart. Nothing keeps to a single Aspect so close to Chaos; this was part of what made the fortress impregnable. Doors and gateways came and went; that was why he needed Hel to keep the way open.

He did not doubt that she would do it. Hel’s oath was legendary-the balance of her realm depended on it-although he did not doubt her promise, either.

For a moment he thought of the Whisperer, its ancient cunning and its intent. Why had it wanted to come to Hel? What had he seen when their minds had crossed? What had he missed in his careful planning for the Oracle to seem so smug?

I see a meeting at Nether’s edge, of the wise and the not so wise.

Wise? In all his life the Trickster had never felt less so.

And now for the last time Hel raised her hand and sketched Naudr, reversed, across the newly created window. All at once Maddy could feel the wind on her face; she could hear the hishhh of the floodwater against the rocks, she could smell its ancient stench…

“You have an hour,” said Half-Born Hel. “I suggest you make the most of it.”

And at that she was gone, and her hall with her, and Loki and Maddy were standing on a rocky turret in the middle of the river Dream, with the Black Fortress of Netherworld gaping at their feet.

The Vanir had been gone more than an hour. Ethel Parson had watched them leave with a feeling of peculiar detachment and a sudden certainty that they were gone for good. She felt very strange, very calm, and sitting at her dressing table, looking into the mirror, she tried to make sense of what she had seen.