Runemarks (32 page)

“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.

6

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.

Over the past twenty-four hours Ethel had seen more than she had in her entire life up until that moment. She had seen gods in battle, women who were wild beasts, her husband possessed by an unholy spirit, her house invaded, her property requisitioned, her life left hanging by a thread.

She knew she should feel
something.
Fear, probably. Grief. Anxiety. Relief. Horror at the
unnaturalness
of it. But Ethelberta felt none of these. Instead she scrutinized her face in her dressing-table mirror. She was not in the habit of doing so often. But today she felt compelled to look—not out of vanity, but more out of
curiosity,
to see if she could find any visible sign of the change she felt within.

I feel different. I
am
different.

She had changed into a dress of plain brown flannel—not inexpensive, but not good enough to tempt the Faërie woman—and had washed and brushed her long hair. Her face was clean and free of rouge, which made her look younger; her eyes—unremarkable when compared with Freyja’s or Skadi’s—were a clear and thoughtful golden brown. She was not a beauty—but neither was she the same muffin-faced Ethel Goodchild who had almost ended up on the shelf in spite of all her father’s money.

How very strange,
thought Ethel calmly. And how strange it was that the Gødfolk had healed her. Perhaps that made
her
unnatural too; marked, in some way, by their passing. Certainly she did not feel the revulsion she knew she ought to feel; instead she felt something like gratitude. Strangely like joy.

She was just about to go out, thinking that perhaps a morning walk would help to calm her spirits, when a knock came on the front door, and, opening it, she saw Dorian Scattergood, disheveled, wild-eyed, red-faced, and close to tears in his eagerness to tell his tale to someone—anyone—who might believe him.

He had run, he told her, all the way from Red Horse Hill. Lying low until he was sure it was safe, he had at last returned to find the dismembered bodies of Audun Briggs and Jed Smith lying beside the open Eye. Of the parson and Adam there was no sign, although he had seen the six Vanir moving fast along the Malbry road and had hidden under a hedge in a field until the demon folk passed by.

“There was nothing I could do,” said Dorian wretchedly. “I ran—I hid…”

“Mr. Scattergood,” said Ethel firmly, “I think you’d better come in for a while. The servants are due at any moment, and I’m sure you could take a drink of tea to calm your nerves.”

Tea,
thought Dorian in disgust. Nevertheless, he accepted, knowing that if anyone in Malbry was likely to believe him, Ethelberta would.

She did. Urging him on when he faltered, she took in the whole tale: the wolf woman, two murders, Nat’s possession by spirits unknown, the disappearance of Adam Scattergood.

When he had finished, she put down her teacup in its china saucer and added a little more hot water to the pot. “So where do you think my husband has gone?” she asked.

Dorian was puzzled. He’d expected tears, anger, perhaps some kind of hysterical outburst. He’d expected her to blame him for running away—certainly he blamed himself—and the need to confess it to someone had been a part of his reason for coming to the parsonage in the first place. Dorian had never had much time for Nat Parson, but that didn’t mean he should have abandoned him to his fate. The same was true of the others, he thought, and as for Adam—his own
nephew,
for Laws’ sakes—he was deeply ashamed at having run.

“They went into the Hill, lady,” he said at last. “No doubt about it. Your husband too. They were tracking someone—”

“The Smith girl,” said Ethel, pouring tea.

“Aye, and her friend. The one who escaped.”

Ethel nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m going after them, Mr. Scattergood.”

“
After
them?” Now he knew that she was mad. In a way it reassured him; her strange calm had begun to make him uneasy. “But, Mrs. Parson—”

“Listen to me,” said Ethel, interrupting. “Something happened to me today. Right here, in the courtyard. It was done in a flash, like a bolt from the blue. One moment alive, the next slipping away into darkness. I’ve seen things, you understand. Things you’d scarcely warrant, not even in dreams.”

“Dreams?” said Dorian. Dreaming was not a pastime respectable folk admitted to in Malbry. He wondered whether Ethel Parson had received a knock on the head and wished he hadn’t called on her. “Perhaps you
were
dreaming,” he suggested. “There’s funny things—dangerous things—can happen in dreams, and if you don’t happen to be used to it—”

Ethel made an impatient noise. “I was
dead,
Mr. Scattergood. Dead and halfway to the Underworld before the Seer-folk brought me back. Do you think I’m afraid of a few bad dreams? Do you think I’d be afraid of
anything
?”

By now Dorian’s unease had deepened into anxiety. He’d never had much experience with madwomen and, being unmarried himself, had little idea of how to deal with one now.

“Er—Mrs. Parson,” he said feebly. “Naturally you’re distraught. Perhaps a rest and some smelling salts?”

She fixed him with a pitying look. “I was dead,” she repeated gently. “People talk around the dead. They say things they shouldn’t. They pay less attention. I don’t pretend to understand all of what’s happening here. The affairs of the Seer-folk are not our affairs, and I wish none of us had been caught up in them, but it’s too late for wishes, I’m afraid. They healed me. They gave me my life. Did they really think that I would return to it as if nothing had happened? Needlework, cooking, and the kettle on the hob?”

“What are you saying?” said Dorian Scattergood.

“I’m saying,” said Ethel, “that somewhere in World Below, my husband and your nephew are still alive. And that if we are to find them again—”

“
Find
them?” said Dorian. “We’re not talking about a piece of lost knitting here, Mrs. Parson—”

Once more she chilled him with a look. “Do you own a dog, Mr. Scattergood?”

“A
dog
?”

“Yes, Mr. Scattergood. A dog.”

“Well—no,” he said, taken aback. “Is it important?”

Ethel nodded. “By all accounts there are hundreds of passageways under the Hill. We’ll need a dog to find their trail. A tracking dog with a good nose. Otherwise we may spend the rest of our lives wandering about in the dark, don’t you agree?”

Dorian stared at her, astonished. “You’re not mad,” he said at last.

“Far from it,” said Ethel. “Now, we’ll need a dog, and lamps and supplies. Or I will, if you’d rather stay here.”

Dorian protested less than she’d expected. For a start he welcomed the opportunity to redeem himself for his behavior on the Hill; secondly, whether Ethel was mad or not, she was clearly determined, and he could hardly let her go alone. Borrowing the parson’s horse and trap, he left her to get ready—hardly daring to hope she would change her mind—and returned within the hour with two packs containing food and essentials and with a small black potbellied sow on the seat beside him.

Ethelberta regarded the black sow with some uncertainty. But Dorian was adamant: pigs were his livelihood and he’d always believed in their superior intelligence. Black Nell, the potbellied sow that had caused the scandal years ago, had been a famous truffler in her day, faithful and clever, guarding the farm as well as any dog.

This new sow was descended from Nell herself, though Dorian had never mentioned the fact or declared the broken ruinmark that adorned her soft underbelly with a patch of white. Instead he had used pitch to conceal the mark (as once his own mother had used a hot iron and soot to conceal the mark on her new baby’s arm), and he had never regretted it.

“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.