Joanne Harris - Runemarks

“I can’t,” said Hel, but her voice was faint.

“Oh, but you can,” wheedled the Whisperer. “One little cut-a snip, no more-and everything you’ve ever wanted can be yours. A life for a life, Goddess. Loki’s life-all five minutes of it-and in exchange you could have Balder back again. Imagine that. Balder, alive. Warm. Breathing. And yours, Goddess. All yours.”

For long seconds more Hel was silent. “I can’t break my word,” she said at last. “The balance between Order and Chaos depends on my neutrality.”

“With or without you,” said the Whisperer, “the balance between Order and Chaos may soon be challenged.”

Hel’s living eye was all hunger in her pallid face. “How so?” she asked.

The Whisperer allowed itself the luxury of a smile. “Do we have a deal, Goddess?”

“Tell me how, damn your eyes!”

Glowing, it told her.

Across the river Loki shot like a flaming missile toward the gates of Netherworld. Hel could see that he was almost burned out now, his signature like that of a guttering flame, his face twisted with effort and concentration.

Behind him came Thor, Maddy, the serpent with Old Age still clinging to its tail, and, behind that, the dreamers. Dreamers in their hundreds-in their thousands -trailing them in shoals as the fortress disintegrated, all of them making for the river.

And now a tremor went through the Underworld, a deep tremor that rocked all of Hel to its foundations, moving rocks that had lain still since the beginning of the world and sending shock waves through the ranks of the dead, making bones dance, dust fly, mist scatter, and a howl of outrage rise from Hel’s parched throat.

“What is going on here?” shrieked the goddess of the Dead. The deathwatch in her hand showed barely eighty-five seconds remaining.

“That’s Chaos itself, knocking at your door. Chaos, in search of its prisoners. If Loki escapes, it will break through-”

“Loki did this?”

“Kill him now. Save your kingdom and yourself.”

“What if you’re wrong, Oracle?”

“You’ll still have Balder-will you refuse?”

“Balder.” For the second time in five hundred years Hel gave an involuntary sigh.

“Seventy seconds.”

“But I-”

“Sixty seconds, and you’ll see Balder alive. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven-”

“All right! All right!” Hel stretched out her dead hand-the fingers were bones, brittle and yellow in the eerie light. In its spidery shadow Loki slept, one arm flung out across Hel’s sandy floor, a tiny smile on his scarred lips. The silver thread that linked him to Netherworld gleamed like a skein of spiderweb.

“Do it, lady. Take his life.”

Hel reached out her dead hand and snapped the thread.

And at that very moment there came a terrible ripping, splitting, splintering sound-as of Worlds being torn apart at the seams-and all of these things happened at once:

Sugar’s runestone turned black as pitch.

Odin felt a wave of energy rush past him as ten thousand of the newly dead poured over him into the Underworld.

In Netherworld, Jormungand cleared the gates and plunged headlong toward the river Dream.

Loki followed, with seconds to spare-and ran full tilt into an invisible barrier that sent him into a deadly spiral, plummeting out of control back into the pit.

And in World’s End, Magister Number 262, a man who in another life had answered to the name of Fortune Goodchild, had time only to ask himself, How can we possibly march to Netherworld? before the Nameless spoke a single Word and he fell, stone dead, onto the floor of the Council of Twelve.

“It’s beginning,” said the Whisperer.

“What’s beginning?” said Hel.

“The end,” said the Whisperer, glowing softly. “The last meeting between Order and Chaos. The final End of Everything.”

And now Hel saw it starting to change: the stone Head sprouted like a ghastly flower, the air was taking a definite shape, and now she could see its true Aspect, spectral at first but brightening visibly. A shining figure, slightly bent; hooded eyes in a lean face; a staff of runes that gleamed and spun.

“Who are you?” said Hel.

The Whisperer smiled. “My dear, I’ve been so many things. I was Mimir the Wise. I was Odin’s friend and confidante. I was the Oracle who predicted Ragnarók. My name is Untold, for I have many. But as we’re friends, you may call me the Ancient of Days.”

Everyone felt the psychic blast that slammed throughout the Nine Worlds, so that a hundred miles from the epicenter, purple clouds gathered, doors slammed, dogs howled, ears bled, and birds fell screaming from the sky.

The Vanir felt it and quickened their pace. Frey took the form of a wild boar, and Heimdall that of a gray wolf, and Bragi that of a brown fox, and all three of them set off at a gallop down the tunnels while Njörd protested and Freyja wailed and Idun sensibly picked up their clothes in case they needed them later.

Fat Lizzy felt it and knew they were close.

And at the mouth of the Underworld, as the parson and the Huntress gazed in wonderment at the scene unfolding on the plain below, Examiner Number 4421974 heard it and gave a long, harsh sigh of deliverance before slipping gently out of his host and down the passageway into Hel.

It had begun, as the Good Book had foretold.

The dead were on the march. Ten thousand of them.

Silently Hel considered the multitude standing before her on the plain. So many souls, but where was their homage? Why were they ranked like an army? What was this Order, where men could be dead but where Death herself had no authority?

She turned her terrible half face upon the ten thousand. “Be dead,” she ordered.

The men did not move.

“I command you to disperse,” said Hel.

Still no one moved; ten thousand men stood like sheaves, their eyes turned toward Netherworld.

She turned on the Whisperer. “Is this your doing?”

“Of course it is,” said the Whisperer. “Now make haste and give me the girl.”

“The girl?” In the commotion she’d almost forgotten.

Hel looked at the deathwatch. Thirty seconds remained. She’d broken her word to Loki, and the balance between the Worlds had been shaken to its roots. Break it again, and she dared not think what might happen. Already she could feel the river rising, and beyond it Chaos, like a sick heart beating.

“Quickly,” snapped the Whisperer. “Every moment she spends in Netherworld is an unnecessary risk.”

“Why?” said Hel.

She looked down at the sleeping girl, tethered to life by a skein of silk. Until now she had spared her hardly a thought; between Loki and the Whisperer there had been no time to notice a fourteen-year-old girl.

Now she watched her most carefully: noted her rust red signature; once more searched her memory for the resemblance-a family likeness, perhaps, from the days when the Æsir ruled the Worlds…

“Who is she?” said Hel.

“No one,” said the Whisperer.

“Funny, that’s what Loki said.”

The Whisperer brightened fretfully. “She’s no one,” it said. “Just give her to me. Cut the thread-do it now, while you can…”

Hel’s profile was unreadable as she gently reached out with her dead hand. She touched Maddy’s face lingeringly.

“Do it now,” urged the Whisperer. “Do it, and I’ll make Balder yours…”