Joanne Harris - Runemarks

Hel smiled and touched the thread that still linked Maddy to her life. It shimmered faintly at her touch; it glowed like the runemark on her hand-

“That runemark…,” said Hel.

Eighteen seconds.

“Please! There’s no time!”

She took the girl’s hand in her living one. Aesk shone there, a violent red-and in that moment Hel understood. The World Ash. The Lightning Tree. The first rune of the New Script. And now she remembered who Maddy reminded her of-not her Aspect, but her signature -and she leveled on the Whisperer the smile that had withered gods.

“So that’s why you wanted her,” she said. “That’s why you brought her into Hel. And Loki-I see why you wanted him too.”

The Whisperer grimaced desperately. “I’ll build a hall for you, Hel,” it said in its most honeyed voice. “When Balder rises from the dead, you’ll lie together in the Sky Citadel.”

Hel put her fingers to her lips. It was a peculiar sensation, bringing a flush to her living side. She’d thought herself beyond this. Aeons old, dry as dust, she had not expected this rush of feeling, this almost girlish surge of hope…

She reached out her hand to break the thread.

The World Serpent cleared the gates at twice the speed of Dream. Maddy and Thor had just enough time to jump clear before Jormungand hurled itself headlong into the river, Old Age still clinging to its tail. A wall of water rose up; clouds of ephemera exploded in all directions; some of the dreamers were already through and Maddy, now seeing the silvery thread that joined her Aspect to her physical self, made to follow them through the narrowing gap…

Behind her the countless dreamers approached. Some were human, some visibly demonic; some bore the runes and colors of gods; others marched like engines, lurched like nightmares, oozed, verminous, toward their freedom.

Thor kept the monstrosities at bay. The inhabitants of Netherworld-dreams and dreamers, creatures of Chaos, engines of destruction, serpents and changelings and any other vermin that might want to breach the gap-mostly gave him a wide berth, and although it was not possible for him to keep every one away from the gate, it was only the quickest and the most capable that managed to follow Jormungand from Netherworld into Dream.

Before him the Æsir, in their Aspects, had gathered. They were pitifully few-just three of them-shocked into silence by what they saw. Frigg, the Mother, wife of Odin, tall, gray-eyed, and with the rune Sól on her left arm; Thor’s wife, Sif, the Harvest Queen, golden-haired and bearing the runesign Ár; and T ýr, the Left-Handed, god of battle, burning like a brand in his fiery colors, his spear in his left hand, his right hand like a ghost of itself sketched in fire against the night.

The Thunderer had hoped for more, but the rest had either failed to escape or fallen into Chaos or plunged into Dream, because he could see no trace of them. Counting himself, a total of four.

Five, if he counted Maddy.

He gestured to Maddy to pass through the gate. Only she could cross into Hel; the others would have to escape through Dream as, all around them, the Black Fortress started to tear itself apart. Every few moments some creature-god or demon, she could not tell-lost its grasp on Netherworld and was sucked, screaming, into the emptiness. The noise was apocalyptic, and from the throat of the abyss came a sinister sucking, snickering sound that grew louder and louder with every second that passed.

“Maddy! Go now!” insisted Thor.

But Maddy had seen something moving below. It- he -was a long way down, obscured by the mists and the parasites of Netherworld, now swarming like deadly motes through the air. But the signature, though faint, was unmistakable. It was Loki, and he was falling. Beneath him and all around, rifts into Chaos were opening fast, revealing glimpses of the dead starry gulf of World Beyond.

“Go, Maddy!” yelled Thor at her side. “Through the gap! There isn’t much time!”

“But that’s Loki,” she cried, pointing at the falling figure.

Thor shook his shaggy head. “There’s nothing you can do-” he began.

But Maddy was already in pursuit.

Before Thor could protest, she had dived, not through the gap to the Underworld but into the cauldron of sizzling air, heedless of ephemera, heedless of the fact that the world she occupied was busily eating itself into oblivion like a serpent swallowing its own tail.

Thor moved to follow her-he wasn’t sure why she needed Loki, but there was no time for argument-then he caught sight of what lay behind him and stopped and gazed with widening eyes at the scenes unfolding beyond Dream.

It was as if Hel, for the first time in a thousand years, had blossomed into a kind of life. Clouds gathered in its false sky; a hot, dark wind blew. But that was not why the Thunderer faltered, even though with its gathering clouds and dead sun the plain seemed almost the twin of that other battlefield beyond World’s End.

It was the dead at which he stared. Not the dead of Underworld-those lost and pitiable souls, numerous as grains of sand-but a column of dead, just like an army, that reached interminably out of the desert to stand, motionless, ten thousand strong, against the might of Netherworld.

Ten thousand to a man; a magical figure, often mentioned in accounts of the Last Battle. It was also, as it happened, precisely the number of the Order’s membership, a calculated sacrifice of its men-Examiners, Magisters, Professors all-gathered together in a Communion stronger than Death…

And now Thor believed he knew that sound-that inhuman sucking, as if Chaos were taking a deep breath-and his face paled beneath his fiery beard. He’d heard it before, at Ragnarók. They’d been outnumbered then, but not as badly; he’d still had his glam-and his hammer too-but even so that sound had struck ice into his heart.

Why, that’s- he thought. At which point there came a terrible crash across the Worlds-Thor just had time to think, Uh-oh, here it comes -and in the final seconds of Maddy’s life the legions of the Order began their march, inexorably, across the plains of Hel.

She caught up with Loki some thousand levels into Netherworld. He was falling rapidly now, eyes shut, still clasping the deathwatch in his hands. He opened his eyes as Maddy approached, then closed them again with a shake of his head.

“Maddy, I’m dead. Leave me alone.”

“What?” For a moment, with the cacophony of Netherworld in her ears, she’d been sure he had said, I’m dead . Then she saw the time on the watch, and her mouth opened in a silent cry.

Forty-five seconds.

“Leave me alone.”

Forty-two seconds.

Forty-one.

“You have to get out,” Loki said.

“We can both get out. Just take my hand…”

Loki swore as the rune Naudr fastened itself around his wrist. “Maddy, believe me. You’re wasting your time.”

Thirty-nine seconds.

Maddy began to drag him upward. “I’m not going to leave you here,” she said. “I was wrong about you. I thought you were the traitor at the gate-”

And now they were hurtling upward again, Maddy hauling him with all her glam, Loki trying to reason with her over the deafening sound of the World’s unmaking.

“But I was the traitor at the gate!” Loki protested.

“Now you’re being noble,” Maddy said. “You want me to leave you and save myself, so you’re trying to make me believe-”

“Please!” yelled Loki. “I am not being noble!”

Thirty seconds left to go. And now their speed rivaled that of the World Serpent at his fastest, crossing what seemed like miles in a fraction of a second, half deafened by the sucking roar of Chaos.