Runemarks (40 page)

9

The parson had listened from afar in a state of dull indifference. His Huntress had been defeated, his enemy reinstated; his wife had turned out to be some kind of Seeress—and what did it matter anyway? What did anything matter, now that he had lost the Word?

He looked across at Ethel, standing among the Seer-folk with Dorian on one side of her and that absurd pig on the other. Even the goblin was with them, he thought, and he felt a sudden wrench of self-pity as he realized that no one was watching him, that he could just stand up and walk away into the desert and no one would miss him or even notice that he had gone. He might be dead, for all they cared; even that damned pig got more respect—

Stop whining, man, for gods’ sakes!

Nat jumped as if he’d been stuck with a pin.

Who’s that? Who spoke? Examiner?

But Nat knew that it was not the voice of an Examiner. It was no more than a whisper in his mind—and yet he knew it, heard it as if through dreams…

Then it struck him with the force of a slap.

Why, that’s
my
voice
, thought Nat, lifting his head. And with the realization came another thought, one that lit up his eyes with sudden eagerness and set his heart a-fluttering.

Perhaps he didn’t need Elias Rede.

Rede was just one man in an army of thousands. And an army of thousands would have its own general—a general whose powers would be unimaginably greater than those of any foot soldier—a general who might be grateful for an insider’s help…

Nat looked at the Good Book in his hands. Stripped of the powers the Examiner had brought him, he saw that it was just so much worthless ballast now, and he dropped it without a second thought. More important to him now was the knife in his pocket: just a simple clasp knife, such as any countryman might carry, but sharpened to a lethal sliver.

He knew where to strike, had used it many a time when he was a boy, hunting deer with his father in Little Bear Wood. No one would suspect him now. No one thought him capable. But when the time came, he would know what to do…

And so Nat stood up and joined the group, and followed, and watched, and awaited his chance as the light of Chaos lit the plain and gods and demons marched to war.

“Gods,” said Heimdall. “There are so
many
of them…”

They had reached the edge of the battle line. It was vaster than any of them had ever imagined, vast with the false perspective of Hel’s domain, and lined from one horizon to the other with the dead.

Whatever they had been in life, Odin thought, in death the Order had merged as one: a last Communion, a deadly swarm armed with one Word, which, when uttered, would increase its power by ten thousand.

He could already feel it building: it raised his hackles, shivered the ground, made the clouds shift and circle. If there had been birds in those clouds, they would have dropped from the sky; as it was, even the dead felt it and followed, like dust on a wind of static.

They were waiting, he sensed, for some command, some new word that would galvanize them into movement. All of them silent now, eyes closed; all of them focused with the unbreakable concentration of the dead. The column seemed to stretch out for miles, and yet beyond it the farsighted Watchman seemed to see something—something impossible, he told himself, and yet if he’d not known, he could almost have
sworn
…

But then came a rumbling across the plain, a silent resonance that nevertheless penetrated the listeners to the marrow and beyond.

Bragi heard it as a lost chord.

Idun heard it as the silent sob of a dying man.

Freyja heard it as a cracked mirror.

Heimdall heard it as a blackbird shadow.

Frey heard it as a death wind.

Skadi heard it as creeping ice.

And Odin heard it as a whisper of the Elder Days, a low sound of ancient spite, and suddenly he understood—not everything, but
some
at least—and as once more the ten thousand dead opened their eyes and spoke as one, everyone heard the Word that was spoken, a teasing, seductive whisper of a Word that hung over the desert like a distant smoke signal under the putrid clouds.

Odin,
it whispered.

“I hear you,” he said.

Then come,
it said.
Come to Me.

And as the Vanir watched, the ten thousand with their ranks and columns parted silently and in a single fluid movement, leaving a narrow passageway across the sand.

Odin smiled and stepped forward, staff in hand.

Heimdall made as if to guide him.

The dead column seemed to tremble. Ten thousand pairs of eyes opened once more and ten thousand heads turned in his direction. The combined weight of their concentration made the Watchman’s teeth ache.

Alone,
said the Whisperer, and every Examiner mouthed the words in perfect synchronicity.
The General must stand alone.

There was a long pause. Then Odin spoke. “At least let me take the goblin,” he said. “I’ll need his eyes to lead me through.”

Agreed,
said the Whisperer, and its voice moved through the mouths of the dead like the wind through a field of corn.

Odin smiled.

“If you think I’m letting you go alone—” said Heimdall.

“I must,” said Odin. “The prophecy—”

“Damn the prophecy!”

With an effort Odin drew himself up to the full height of his Warrior Aspect. Light and fury blazed from him; the air about him was bright with runes.

“I’m ordering you to stay here,” he said. “You and the other Vanir too.”

“But why?”

“Because it’s the only way. And because if I lose this battle, it may be that the Vanir will be all that stands between Chaos and the Middle Worlds.”

“But you
can’t
fight. You can’t even
see
—”

“I don’t need to see. Now let me go.”

“At least let Idun give you some apple—”

“Listen, Heimdall.” Odin turned toward him, and his one eye, though blind, was shining. “If my suspicions are right, then even in my youth, armed, in full Aspect, and with my glam intact, I would have been no match for the powers here. You really think fruit is going to help?”

“Then why are you going?” Freyja said.

Ethel could have told her, with her new clear sight, but Odin had bound her to silence. The image of the death ship was strong in her mind—the fallen General with his dog at his feet—and she wished there was something she could say to make him turn back…

But by then Odin was already gone, with Sugar leading him carefully across the dusty ground, and the ranks of the Order closed as he passed, erasing him like writing in the sand.

10

Nat Parson had watched with apparent indifference as Odin vanished into the ranks. Inside, however, his heart was racing.

That Voice!

He’d heard it as they all had, whispered across the battlefield, and he’d clapped both hands to his face as blood began to drip from his nose. It was the Word—he could sense it as a rabid dog scents water—and for a moment he thought he might go mad from terror and desire.

And now he could almost touch the Word; it trembled all around him like the coming of spring; it called him in a voice like gold—

Laws, that power!

Ten thousand times stronger than anything he’d felt before, the pull of the Word was not to be denied, and who could know, when at last it was unleashed, what gifts it might bestow on a faithful servant?

Worlds, Nathaniel. What else is there?

He stared at the obedient dead, pegged out across the colorless horizon. Ten thousand dead, yet strangely alive—his strained senses could feel their vigilance, their stillness a blind over that horrible alertness. He could feel their unity: the ripples that ran through them like wind through grass, a single flicker of an eye echoed in ten thousand pairs of eyes as they stood in terrible Communion.

That could have been me,
he told himself.

Somewhere in those ranks stood his Examiner, the one he had known as Elias Rede. Somewhere, he was certain, Rede was
aware
of him. Surely that made him a part of this Communion, gave him the right to some of that power…

He took a step toward the line.

Ten thousand pairs of eyes looked his way.

He whispered: “It’s me. Nat Parson.”

Nothing happened. No one moved.

Nat took another step.

Behind him the Vanir were lost in debate; their raised voices reached him as if from a distance, but the sounds of the dead were deafening, an artillery of furtive creaking and rustling, as of insects crawling on shifting sand.

He moved closer.

“Prentice?” he said quietly.

Adam, who had been pretending to sleep behind a nearby piece of rock, lifted his head.

Nat smiled—to Adam he looked as mad as ale, and Adam began to feel that it might be safer to be as far from his old master as possible.

He backed away—

“Oh no, you don’t.” Nat reached out to grab the boy’s arm. “I may need you yet, Adam Scattergood.” He did not mention why he might need him, though Adam cringed at the look in his eyes. Nothing was left, Adam thought, of his master. Instead Nat looked like one of the dead; his dull but horribly knowing eyes were fixed on a point Adam could not see, and his grin was like that of a rabid wolf.

“I don’t want to go,” said Adam faintly.

“Good lad,” said the parson, and crossed the line to join the army of the dead.

None of the Vanir saw him go. Nat had made no friends among the Faërie, and now that he was no longer a threat, their contempt for him was plain to see. But Ethel had not forgotten him. Her husband still had a part to play, and even she did not know how the game would end.

So she watched as Nat approached the line, dragging Adam in his wake, and she followed quietly, a few paces back. Dorian knew better than to protest. In the short time they had traveled together, his respect for Ethel had grown beyond measure, and although he was terribly afraid of the dead men standing on the plain, he would rather have died than let her go alone. And so he followed, his pig at his heels (for Lizzy too knew loyalty), and though the dead pressed in on either side, distressing the air with their stench and their chanting, Ethel Parson stayed calm, her gray eyes kind and compassionate and unafraid.

Someone, she knew, was about to die. And the fate of the Worlds depended on
whom.

11

Balder the Fair, behind whose shining Aspect fragments of Loki were still apparent, looked down at himself with a puzzled expression. He examined his hands, his chest, his arms and legs. He pulled a hank of hair over his eyes and squinted at it. Even through his colors it still showed faintly red.

“What
is
this?” said Balder, looking at Hel.

But it was the Whisperer who replied. “A life for a life, O Fairest One. You’re free to go. Your new Aspect will take you anywhere—back to the Middle Worlds, if that’s what you want—”

“To Asgard?” said Balder.

“Sorry, no deal. Asgard fell—well, of course, you wouldn’t be expected to know that, would you?—but you can take your pick of the other Worlds and feel smug at the thought that you’re the first dead person to leave the Underworld by legitimate means since before the Elder Age began…”

But Balder was no longer listening. “Asgard fell?” he repeated numbly.

“Yes, lord,” said Hel. “At Ragnarók.”

“And Odin?”

“Him too.”

“The others?”

“Everyone, lord. Everyone fell,” said Hel with a trace of impatience. She’d been waiting for a sign of gratitude for some time now, and this footling concentration on petty details seemed to her pointless and quite annoyingly masculine.

She gave him a glimpse of her living profile, keeping her dead face turned away, and was irritated to find that he did not notice. It was trying, she thought, after everything she had sacrificed.

“Well, Loki didn’t fall,” Balder went on, oblivious. “Otherwise his body wouldn’t be here. And what exactly am I doing in Loki’s body, and how did you manage to get him out of it in the first place?”

Maddy told him of Loki’s promise, Hel’s betrayal, the release of the Æsir—

“What?” said Balder. “The Æsir escaped?”

“Well, they
would
have done if Hel hadn’t stopped them—”

“You don’t understand,” said Hel. “Netherworld’s unstable; if I open it now, anything might get through—”

“Including the Æsir,” said Maddy at once.

“The Æsir,” said Hel. “Where would they go? Into Dream or the ranks of the dead…”

“Whereas I—” said Balder.

“
You
have a body, lord. A glam…” She hesitated, and her living eye shifted modestly downward. “I thought perhaps that you and I—”

He stared at her with an astonishment that Hel found quite unflattering. She flushed a little and turned to the Whisperer. “You promised…,” she began.

But the Whisperer was not paying attention. Instead it stood in its hazy Aspect, glamour twisting around it like smoke, watching the distant, dark figure crossing the gray strand toward it. A silence fell, in which Maddy could hear individual grains of sand dropping onto the dead plain.

“One-Eye,” she said.

The Whisperer smiled.

The ranks of the Order parted like cornstalks as Odin passed through and closed again like spears at his back.

“Odin,” it said.

“Mimir, old friend.”

Odin, in Aspect, mindsword to hand, his hat pulled down to conceal his face, with Sugar trotting at his heels. The Nameless, in Aspect, hooded and cloaked, its runestaff spitting glamours. Maddy on one side, Hel on the other, Balder in the middle.

“Not Mimir,” it said. “Not anymore.”

“You’ll always be Mimir to me,” he said.

And now the General could see them all—their colors, at least. His truesight perceived them as figures of light: he saw Maddy, weakened and depleted by her flight through Netherworld, her colors touched with the gray-violet of grief; he saw Balder revealed in Loki’s glam, saw Hel in her colors, saw what had once been the Whisperer standing in a column of light, the stone Head that it had inhabited for so long lying discarded at its feet.

“Old friend,” it said. “It’s been too long.”

“Five hundred years,” said Odin, moving closer.

“Longer by far,” said the Nameless softly, and though its voice was calm, Odin could see the killing rage in its heightened colors. He supposed it had just cause to hate him; all the same, his heart was heavy. So many friends lost or dead. Such a price to pay for a few years’ peace.

Does it have to be like this?

The answer came as quick as thought.
To the death,
it said.
To the victor, the Worlds.

In silence the enemies faced each other. Behind them the river Dream boiled and seethed. Beyond that lay the darkness.