Runelight

by Joanne Harris

  ‘No.’

  The Voice in her mind gave a harsh laugh. Well, that’s what these beggars are going to do. All the way to Asgard.

  BACK IN MALBRY, Maddy Smith was struggling to take in the news.

  ‘You’re saying this girl’s my sister?’

  Hughie nodded. ‘Aye, your twin. Magni, child of the Thunder Oak, twin of Modi, the Lightning Ash. The General spent years looking for her, but never managed tae reach her. And all the time she was in World’s End, right in the lap of the Order. Hard tae believe, isnae, hen?’

  Maddy narrowed her eyes at him. In fact she found it quite easy to believe. That Odin could have neglected to tell her of such an important matter as this, and that having deceived her thus far, he should still have the audacity to expect her now to obey him without question, even though he was technically dead.

  ‘My sister …’ she said slowly. How she had longed to hear those words. To have a sister of her own age with whom to share her thoughts, her dreams. Mae, Jed’s other daughter, had been as different to Maddy as cowslips to crabs; but when Maddy had learned her true parentage, she had hoped that one day her dream might come true. Of course, she had known that the Thunderer was meant to have two children; but oracles often fail to reveal the things that are most important. After the war with the Order, three years ago on the plains of Hel, Maddy had finally assumed that her longed-for sibling was lost in Dream, unborn among its islets, never to wake in the Middle Worlds. But now, here were Odin’s messengers telling her that the girl was alive – and working with the enemy.

  ‘You’re sure that this is the same girl?’

  ‘Oh aye. The General was verra particular.’

  Yes, that sounded like One-Eye, all right, Maddy thought bitterly. He’d known all about her twin sister – perhaps even from their earliest childhood – and, for reasons of his own, had decided not to tell her. Why? Could it have been that he was afraid, even then, of dividing Maddy’s loyalties?

  Once more she thought of the prophecy. I see a mighty Ash that stands beside a mighty Oak tree … Did that mean that she and her twin were supposed to work together? And what about the rest of it? Where did the Old Man come into this? Why would her sister want to send out ephemera against Loki?

  Maddy frowned. She understood now why she couldn’t tell her friends. Announce to the Gødfolk that one of their kind had turned renegade in World’s End, and the uneasy alliance between Æsir and Vanir would turn to conflict in an instant. The Vanir would want to kill the traitor; the Æsir, to try to win her back. And the enemy – whoever that was – would have little more to do than watch while the gods tore each other apart.

  But if Maggie was the enemy …

  Maddy dismissed the half-uttered thought. Her sister, according to Hughie, had lived in the lap of the Order ever since she was a child. She’d had no One-Eye, no Æsir to teach her the meaning of family. How lonely – how different – she must have felt. How easy it must have been for someone – someone a little like One-Eye, perhaps – to mould her to his purposes and make her believe he was her friend.

  ‘What about the Old Man? Does my sister have it?’ she said.

  Hughie shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘And is it the Whisperer?’

  Hughie shrugged. ‘I cannae say. Just find it, says the General. Bring it home, whatever it takes. She mustn’ae get a hold of it.’

  But Maddy, uncomfortable from the very start of this troubling conversation, was feeling increasingly ill at ease. Communication through dreams was, at best, a most imperfect medium, and Odin – if it was Odin at all – had managed to convey only fragments of the whole. Maddy’s heart wanted to believe that Odin’s spirit survived in Dream, but she had changed over three years. She was no longer the innocent little girl who had opened the Horse’s Eye that day. Her dealings with Odin One-Eye had taught her the value of mistrust. And as for Hugin and Munin – they might once have been loyal, but who was to say they hadn’t switched sides and were working with the enemy?

  ‘So how do I know this isn’t a trick?’

  Hughie looked offended. ‘A trick? Now who in the Worlds would do that?’

  ‘Oh, let me see now …’ Maddy said. ‘Order, Chaos, old gods, new gods, demons, Ice People, Tunnel Folk, ephemera, flying snakes, goblins, escapees from Netherworld, magical artefacts with a will of their own – or anyone else with an axe to grind. The Worlds are full of our enemies. Did you want the full list?’

  There was a rather lengthy pause. The ravens exchanged glances. Mandy, whose transition from bird to human Aspect still looked somewhat incomplete, craw-ed in what seemed like frustration and pecked the bed-post savagely.

  Hughie said reproachfully, ‘You have some serious trust issues, hen.’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘So persuade me.’

  But Hughie was getting agitated; he put down the empty sugar bowl and took a few paces around the room. The feathers on his garment – which seemed to be part tunic, part cloak – unfolded like dark wings in the air.

  ‘We’ll have tae do it now,’ he said.

  Mandy gave a sharp craw.

  ‘The General said she’d be like this. He said we’d have tae persuade her.’

  Mandy gave a whole-body shrug that reminded Maddy of Sugar. Then, reaching into her tattered sleeve, she pulled out a piece of faded blue cloth. Hughie took it from her and handed it to Maddy.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Open it.’

  Maddy did. Folded into the piece of cloth was a strip of leather the size of her thumb, onto which was fastened a piece of steel. A buckle, or maybe a brooch, she thought, the metal darkened and pitted with age. And there were runes cast into it: Tyr, Raedo and Úr, the Ox – bound together to form a sigil that Maddy knew to be Odin’s –

  ‘Where did you get this?’ she said.

  Hughie grinned at her. ‘Shiny, eh?’

  With a hand that was not quite steady, Maddy cast the rune Bjarkán and looked through it at the runeshape. Its glam was almost burned out; only a faint gleam of butterfly-blue animated the sigil. Even so, it awakened in her a powerful sense of nostalgia. This had belonged to her oldest friend; his signature was on it. A sudden wave of grief and loss threatened to overwhelm her.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ she said again.

  Hughie shrugged. ‘Pulled it out of Dream, lookin’ for the General.’

  Maddy narrowed her eyes at Mandy, whose attention had wandered again and who was now investigating the contents of a tea caddy on Ethel’s mantelpiece.

  ‘We’re talking about Dream,’ she said. ‘You don’t just pull things out of Dream like driftwood from the river.’

  ‘We do,’ Hughie said. ‘We overlook the Nine Worlds. We’ve been doing it for five hundred years – looking for pieces of salvage like this …’ He gestured towards the leather strap. ‘Do ye know what this is, hen?’

  Slowly Maddy shook her head.

  ‘It’s from a horse’s bridle. Where there’s a bridle, there’s a horse. And where there’s a horse, there’s a rider.’

  A rider, she thought. A general.

  Was Odin really behind all this, orchestrating his own release?

  Such thoughts had crossed her mind before. But she had always pushed them away. That Odin might have escaped Hel’s sphere during those seconds of Chaos, when Dream burst its banks and Netherworld released its ephemera into the Worlds – such a thing had happened before, but the odds were so desperately against it that Maddy was afraid even to hope.

  Dream was a perilous state in which, if he had escaped, her old friend might have been driven insane – assuming, that is, that he had managed to avoid his fellow-travellers from Hel: demons, ephemera, fire-fiends, shadow-folk and Aspects of doom, as well as a whole world of living dreams, lethal as a river of snakes. And yet Loki had managed it. And where one could lead, others might follow. What was Odin’s plan, she thought? How was her twin sister involved? And who – or what – was the Old Man?

&n
bsp; ‘It’s hardly proof,’ she said at last. ‘Now, if you’d brought the Horse itself …’

  Mandy flapped her arms and craw-ed.

  Hughie looked puzzled. ‘But hen—’

  ‘Stop calling me hen!’ she said.

  ‘Maddy, then. But I thought you knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’ Maddy said.

  ‘The General’s Horse. Sleipnir, born of Loki and Svadilfari, who built the walls of the Sky Citadel. Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged mount, who, according tae legend, has a foot in each World except in Pan-daemonium …’

  ‘Yes?’ said Maddy impatiently. ‘Please, Hughie, just get on with it, for gods’ sakes!’

  ‘Aye, well, it’s right here.’

  ‘What do you mean, right here?’ she said.

  ‘I mean it’s been here all the time. Five hundred years, since the Winter War, practically under your noses. Hiding in plain sight, ye might say. Aye, he’s a sly one, the General. And he always has a plan.’

  Maddy uttered a silent curse at the General, his plans and his ravens. But now, at last, she knew where to go. Where else would Odin have hidden the Horse that could carry him between the Worlds? Where else could he hide it in plain sight without arousing suspicion? Where else could he be sure that neither Folk nor Faërie would interfere in his plans?

  Where else, thought Maddy, but Red Horse Hill?

  WINTER IN THE Northlands meant that for nearly three months in the year, the sun barely grazed the horizon. Today it had risen just high enough to brighten the Seven Sleepers, but Red Horse Hill was still in shadow.

  Well, thought Maddy, perhaps the business in hand was best conducted away from the light. Even to Maddy, who had seen many strange things over the past three years, the idea that Sleipnir, the General’s Horse, might actually be under Red Horse Hill was difficult to swallow.

  Wouldn’t she have seen him, she thought? Wouldn’t she have sensed him there, as she had sensed the Whisperer? And if One-Eye had known that he was there, then why in the Worlds had he not tried to awaken him himself?

  Hughie looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘Some things don’t like being wakened,’ he said. ‘I mean, one moment there you are, nice and snug under the ground, sleeping off the End of the World, and the next you’re bein’ wakened up again. It stands tae reason ye’d be a little – ah – ratty.’

  Mandy, who had resumed her raven Aspect for their little trip up to the Hill, gave a harsh, impatient craw.

  ‘Something’s coming,’ Hughie said. ‘I can feel it in the air.’

  He was right, Maddy thought. Something was building in the air like static before a thunderstorm; something that came, not from under the Hill, but from all around them. And with the static came a sound – a distant, wrenching, ripping sound, as if something were actually tearing its way through the fabric of Worlds towards them, making the land raise its hackles and the winter trees bend and sway.

  The sound was getting closer. A tremor ran through the snow-covered ground. Above them, the clouds seemed to ripple and warp …

  ‘What in Hel’s name is it?’ she said.

  Hughie shot her a hunted look. ‘Something’s coming out o’ Dream. Hurry, before it gets here! Ye have to wake the General’s Horse!’

  ‘And how do we do that?’ Maddy said, raising her voice against the sound. ‘A cup of tea and some toast soldiers?’

  But now the raven’s voice was lost in a final rending crash as whatever it was came through from Dream. An overwhelming flare of light; another tremor that shook the Hill and tumbled Maddy to the ground, and then …

  Silence. A dead calm.

  Maddy, scrambling to her feet, had time to hear the birds resume their singing; to hear the sound of sheep in the valley; to catch the distant scent of smoke from chimneys in the village. Hughie, back in his bird form, was cawing raucously above her head. Everything seemed so normal, she thought – as if what had happened a moment ago had been just a fragment of one of her dreams.

  What had come through the rift? she thought. What demon, what ephemera, had birthed itself into the Worlds? She looked around. There was nothing there. No snakes, no skeletal warriors, no wolves, no swarms of killer bees. Nothing but a young girl standing no more than twelve feet away, studying Maddy through granite-gold eyes as direct and luminous as her own.

  For a moment Maddy stared at herself.

  At herself? No, not quite. A scarlet tunic, faded and worn, in the place of Maddy’s wolfskin cloak. That, and the newcomer’s close-cropped hair, marked the difference between them. But for those details, the girl on the Hill might well have been Maddy’s reflection; the figure was slightly transparent, as if glimpsed through a darkened mirror.

  Then the girl stepped forward, and suddenly Maddy could see her more clearly: the plume of her breath in the cold air; the gleam of sweat on her forehead. This girl was no ephemera; she looked as solid as Maddy herself. Well, almost, Maddy corrected. The tiniest shimmer in the air, like a summer heat-haze, like the most transparent of veils, stood between her and the girl in red.

  Maddy said: ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The other girl’s lips moved silently.

  ‘Can you hear what I’m saying?’

  Once more the girl’s lips made no sound.

  ‘Are you my sister? What do you want?’

  ‘Never ye mind talkin’ tae her,’ said Hughie, resuming his human Aspect. ‘She’ll be after the General’s Horse. Without it, she can’t cross over completely from Dream into this part o’ the World. But if she gets the General’s Horse she’ll have entry to all Worlds but Pan-daemonium. She’ll be able tae speak to ye then. She’ll be able to use the Word—’

  ‘You mean she’s real? She’s alive?’ Maddy said.

  Again the girl appeared to speak.

  ‘Of course she’s alive,’ Hughie said. ‘Did ye not—’

  At the same time a tremor went through the Hill. It was a tiny movement, but it lifted every blade of grass like the hackles on a dog’s neck and made the fallen snow shift like a sheet on a restless sleeper.

  ‘Did you say … the Word?’ Maddy said.

  Hughie flapped his arms at her. ‘Please, hen, there isn’t much time! She’s still half in Dream, she’s not prepared, she wasn’t expecting to find us here. But with her glam and that runemark, she’s so much stronger than we thought. And—’

  Ack! Ack! From above their heads, Mandy’s cries became increasingly urgent.

  ‘Please, Maddy! We’re wasting time!’ Hughie’s voice was almost a scream, and Mandy, still in raven form, swooped and chopped around their heads with increasing agitation. ‘Do it now. Pick up the reins. Without the Horse she can’t come through—’

  ‘What reins?’ Maddy said.

  ‘The bridle! Get the bridle!’

  The piece of strap was in Maddy’s pocket. Quickly she took it out. Old and worn out as it was, it had glam; Maddy could feel it. And Odin’s sigil had started to glow with a bold blue light that she recognized.

  ‘That’s it,’ Hughie said. ‘Now use it, for gods’ sakes!’

  But under their feet the Hill was moving. Only very gently at first, but with definite signs of wakefulness. To Maddy it looked like a giant shoulder under a mountain of blankets as the sleeper turns over, opens one eye and says he’ll be up in five minutes.

  She tried a command. ‘Sleipnir, to me!’

  Nothing else happened. The sigil glowed. The passageway into World Below, breached by digging machines and by the Word, stood, all bare rock and blasted earth, in a ring of melting snow. From the air it must have looked like the eye of a horse about to bolt – wide and white and terrified.

  She tried again. ‘Sleipnir, to me!’

  This time she pulled at the bridle. Not with her hand, but with her mind, and with all the force of the rune Úr, the Mighty Ox …

  As if in response, the nine other runes that surrounded the Red Horse began to light up, one by one – Madr, brown; Raedo, red; Yr, green; Bjarkán, white; Logr, bl
ue; Hagall, grey; Kaen, violet; Naudr, indigo; Ós, gold – each ribbon of runelight connecting with the others until they had formed a bindwork of runes that enclosed the Red Horse completely.

  The reins, thought Maddy. Of course. The runes—

  ‘But where’s the Horse? I’ve got the runes. Now where in Hel’s the General’s Horse?’

  It suddenly occurred to Maddy that she had never ridden a horse before, let alone an ephemeral one. What if he throws me off? she wondered. What if he won’t let me ride him?

  Maddy’s eyes flicked back to her twin. As she’d struggled to take the reins, the girl from World’s End had not been idle. Filaments of runelight now shuttled from her fingertips. Her mouth uttered soundless phrases; her fingers formed shadowy runeshapes. What was she doing? Around the Horse, the girl in red was weaving another cradle of light, another set of reins from the glam that poured out of the Horse’s Eye …

  Gods, but she’s fast, Maddy thought – not as fast as Loki, perhaps, whose reckless style of rune-casting was almost too quick for the eye to follow, but fast enough for Maddy to know that in matters of glam, the girl was at least her equal. She raised her right hand – the runemark Aesk gleamed in her palm like a firebolt.

  At the same time her twin raised her left hand. In it, a mindbolt of equal force burned like a nugget of molten glass.

  For a moment the twins faced each other, perfect mirror-images but for their clothes and the length of their hair. Runelight shuttled around them; each held a set of reins in one hand and a deadly bolt in the other.

  ‘Ye have to stop her!’ Hughie said. ‘Hit her with everything you’ve got!’

  Of course, he was right, Maddy told herself. But this was her sister, her long-lost twin. Misled by the Order, corrupted, confused, unable to hear her – but all the same, a child of Thor and Jarnsaxa. And whatever the General’s orders, she could not strike at her twin – at least, not like this, without knowing why they found themselves on opposite sides.

  ‘Remember what the General said,’ croaked Hughie, hoarse with anguish.