Joanne Harris - Runemarks

“Lizzy’ll lead us right,” he said. “She’s the best tracker I’ve ever had. She can sniff out a potato at a hundred yards, a truffle in a mile. No dog can match her. Take my word for it.”

Ethel frowned. “Well, if that’s the best you can do…”

“Lizzy’s the best. No doubt about it.”

“Then in that case,” said Ethel, “we mustn’t waste time. Show her the trail, Mr. Scattergood.”

Ten minutes later, plus several bribes of apple and potato and many sniffs of Nat Parson’s discarded overcoat, and Fat Lizzy was fairly straining at the leash. Her eyes gleamed, her snout twitched, she gave little barking grunts of excitement; it was the closest Dorian had ever seen to a talking pig.

“She scents the trail,” Dorian said. “Listen, Mrs. Parson. She’s never let me down. I say we follow her, and if I’m wrong-”

“If you’re wrong, then my husband and your nephew may be wolf meat before long.”

“I know that.” He looked at the potbellied sow, who was practically dancing with excitement. “But I know my Lizzy. She’s no ordinary pig. She’s one of Black Nell’s line, and I never had a pig from that brood that wasn’t twice as smart as any other. I say we give her a chance-it’s more chance than we have without her, anyway.”

And so it was that Ethel Parson and Dorian Scattergood followed Fat Lizzy down the road and across the fields to Red Horse Hill and that before noon they had already entered World Below and, lighting a lamp to show their way, had set off along the sloping path into the unknown.

On the threshold of another world, Loki and Maddy were facing the shortest hour of their lives. All around them lay the river Dream, a vastness so broad that neither side could be clearly seen but dotted with islets and skerries and rocks, some drifting, some static, the largest of which housed the Black Fortress of Netherworld.

Above them, purple clouds were gathering like wool on a spindle.

And at their feet lay the Black Fortress, which, Maddy now saw, was no fortress at all, but a huge crater, lipped with steel, from which a thousand thousand galleries dropped and yawped, each gallery lined with barred doors, cells, oubliettes, chambers, dungeons, stairwells, forgotten walkways, dank grottoes, flooded passageways, cavernous spaces, and colossal engines of excavation, for Netherworld is the sink of every evil thought, every submerged terror and neurosis, every war crime, every outrage against what is hopeful and good-and it is always expanding its territory, going deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the World toward an inexhaustible mother lode of sickness.

From the crater, the sound of those engines was like an army of giants cracking boulders with their teeth; above it the voices of the countless dead made a sound like Jed Smith’s forge, but infinitely greater.

“Gods,” Maddy said. “It’s so much more than I ever imagined…”

“Yes, and you don’t even have all that much imagination,” said Loki, putting his hands in his pockets. “Try to picture how I saw it, in the days after Ragnarók; if you think it looks bad from up here, you should try going in deeper-let’s say, twelve hundred levels or so. Believe me, down there, things begin to get seriously imaginative-”

“I don’t understand,” said Maddy.

But Loki appeared to be searching for something, and with what looked like increasing anxiety. He searched in the unfamiliar pockets, in his belt, around his wrists, and cursed as he failed to find what he sought.

“What is it?” said Maddy. “What have you lost?”

But Loki was grinning now with relief. He reached into his shirt and drew out what looked like a watch on a chain around his neck.

“This,” he said. “It’s a timepiece from Hel. Time here doesn’t follow the normal rules-minutes here could mean hours or even days outside-and we’ll need to be sure how long we’ve got.”

Maddy looked at it curiously. It was a little like a fob watch, though it was no timepiece that she’d ever seen. There were no hours marked on the black dial, and the hands, which were red, showed only the minutes and the seconds. Complex machineries turned and spun behind the glass-and-silver casing.

“What kind of a watch is it?” said Maddy.

Loki grinned. “A deathwatch,” he said.

The deathwatch was already counting down. Maddy found herself unable to look away as the red hands ticked away the hour. She said, “Do you really think Hel will keep her word? What’s to stop her from leaving us here?”

“Hel’s word is what keeps Hel in balance. To break it would mean abandoning her neutral position, and here, at the brink of Chaos, that’s the last thing she can afford to do. Believe me, if she tells us we’ve got an hour…” Loki glanced at the face of the deathwatch again. The countdown now read fifty-nine minutes.

Maddy was looking at him curiously. “You look different,” she said.

“Never mind that,” said Loki.

“But your face-your clothes…”

Maddy struggled to express what she saw. It was like watching a reflection on water as it clears. As she watched, he seemed to come into focus; still recognizably Loki, with his fiery hair and scarred lips, but Loki as drawn by some otherworldly artist in colors unknown to Nature’s palette. “And your glam,” she said, with sudden realization. “It isn’t reversed anymore.”

“That’s right,” said Loki. “That’s because I’m here in my true Aspect, not in the form I was obliged to take when I re-entered World Above.”

“Your true Aspect?” said Maddy.

“Look, this is Netherworld,” said Loki with impatience. “It’s not a place you can visit in person. In fact, as we speak, our bodies are in Hel, tethered to life by the thinnest of threads, awaiting our return. And may I suggest that if we want to rejoin them-”

“You mean this -this isn’t me?” Maddy looked down at herself and was startled to see that she too was different. Her hair was loose instead of being sensibly braided, and in place of her usual clothes she now wore a belted chain-mail tunic of what she judged to be immodest length. Of her other clothes, her jacket, and her pack there was no sign.

“Our packs!” she exclaimed in sudden dismay. “The Whisperer!”

In Hel’s domain she had forgotten it; now the thought filled her with alarm. She realized that she had not felt its call since Hel had joined them in the desert. Loki had been carrying it then, but she could not recall having seen him with it at any time since they entered Hel’s halls.

She turned on him with a sudden suspicion. “Loki,” she said, “what did you do?”

Loki looked hurt. “I hid it, of course. Why? You think it would have been safer here?”

He did have a point, Maddy thought. Still, it continued to trouble her. If Odin had followed them there somehow-

“Come on,” said Loki impatiently. “Just being here causes massive disruption, and the longer we stay, the greater the chances of attracting the wrong sort of attention. Now please ”-once more he checked the deathwatch around his neck-“you really don’t want to be here when our time-now fifty-seven minutes-runs out.”

He was right, Maddy thought. Why should she mistrust him? He’d risked his life to bring her this far. And yet there was something in his colors, colors so bright that she no longer needed the truesight to show her his thoughts. Maybe it was a part of being in Aspect, but everything seemed brighter here, brighter and clearer than anywhere else. Squinting at Loki, she could see his fear, that silvery streak in his signature, and, running alongside it, something else: a thread of something dark and indistinct, like a thought that even he seemed reluctant to face.