Runelight

by Joanne Harris

  ‘Play nice,’ said Angrboda, ‘or I’ll take your toys away.’ She made a gesture with her hand, and something shot from her fingertips – a spray of purple sparks that struck Hagall from Heimdall’s hand and showered Loki with shrapnel.

  Loki remembered the runemark he’d seen earlier on her arm, and wondered silently to himself how Angie could have obtained such a powerful glam. The runes had been gifts to the gods long ago, from Odin Allfather himself – broken or reversed in defeat at Ragnarók; with the General gone, he thought, there could surely be no more.

  And yet she had hit him with something, he thought; something very different from the unruly, gaudy glamours of her kind. Loki felt very uneasy.

  ‘Come on, Angie. I’m cold,’ he said. ‘If you’re here to help, then get on with it.’

  Angie gave him a quelling look. ‘We’re here to prove to your stuck-up friends that they’re going to need us on their side. And to make sure you don’t get any ideas – like weaselling out of doing your bit and flying south to sunnier climes …’

  Heimdall clenched his golden teeth. ‘There’ll be no weaselling,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Angrboda. ‘We can discuss this further when Jormungand has cleaned up the mess.’

  ‘Cleaned up the mess?’ said Heimdall. ‘You’re saying he’s not responsible?’

  ‘Of course not. Weren’t you listening? Something happened on the Hill. Something that fractured the rift in Dream and let out all this vermin. But there’s nothing to suggest for now that we were ever its target. In fact, it’s entirely possible that this wasn’t meant for us at all.’

  ‘What was it, then?’ said Heimdall.

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ said the Temptress, with a sideways glance at Loki. ‘But whatever – whoever’s responsible, they’ve left us with plenty of evidence.’

  ‘How so?’ said the Watchman, narrow-eyed.

  The Temptress arched an eyebrow. ‘They came to us through Dream,’ she said. ‘How better to know them than from their dreams?’ And with that, she stepped towards Jormungand and climbed onto his scaly neck, holding herself in place with the aid of a strap placed around his jaw.

  ‘I’ll see you back in the village,’ she said. ‘There’s someone there who needs our help.’ Then, turning back with a grin: ‘Oh, and for gods’ sakes, boys – put some bloody clothes on.’

  NO ONE BUT Maddy had seen the Horse as he birthed himself from the Hill. But the signs of his passing were clear enough. Something large had broken free; and given the signature he had left, it was only a matter of time before they came to the obvious conclusion.

  The initial surge of ephemera from the Hill had dwindled to a verminous ooze, and the Æsir had now been joined by the Vanir, who in their animal Aspects had raced down from the Sleepers towards the source of the attack. Now, regrouping by Red Horse Hill – at least, by what was left of it – they surveyed the damage with anxious eyes as the horrible truth became clear to them.

  ‘So all this time that wretched Horse has been right here under our noses?’ said Frey. ‘But who could have known where to find him? And why?’

  ‘Loki,’ said Thor. ‘He made the damn thing.’

  Sif, still in battle-sow Aspect, grunted her approval.

  ‘But why all this mess?’ squeaked Idun, who, of all the Vanir, had no animal Aspect and had taken the shape of a hazelnut, which Njörd carried in his talons. ‘Couldn’t he just have stolen the Horse without waking half of Netherworld?’

  ‘This is Loki we’re talking about,’ said Bragi. ‘Who knows why he does these things?’

  No one knew the answer to that. But what was clear to all of them was that what had once seemed little more than a nick between the boundaries of the Worlds had now become a gaping wound. There was no way of knowing when another wave of ephemera might strike; but on one thing the gods were all agreed. Such damage to the boundary between the Worlds had not been seen since Ragnarók, and as far as most of them were concerned, Loki was the obvious culprit.

  There was some justification for this. After all, it was he who had caused the original rift in Dream. Afterwards, from Red Horse Hill, it had been Loki’s job to guard the Eye. But now the Eye had been pulverized, and Loki was missing, his trail leading south, with an ice-blue signature that could only belong to Heimdall shooting after him in pursuit.

  ‘When I get my hands on the weasel,’ said Thor, flinging his hammer into a cluster of afreets, ‘I’ll use him as a toothpick.’

  ‘I’ll chop him into fish-bait,’ said Njörd.

  Freyja, in Carrion Aspect, rasped: ‘I’ll make a necklace from his teeth.’

  Sif grunted through her tusks. ‘I’ll spread him from here to Fettlefields.’

  Jolly resumed his Aspect for long enough to remark, with a smirk: ‘Well, I don’t see him comin’ back here in a rush, not with this little lot to clear up— Oops, watch out, here they come again …’

  The lull in the battle had proved to be only a temporary respite. Now once more the Hill disgorged a new glut of ephemera, taking shape as they approached, coming towards them on nightmare hooves and wings that stole the sun from the sky.

  Once more the gods prepared to face another offensive.

  Bragi took out his guitar and struck a mighty power chord. A battery of sharp little notes scattered across the hillside, dropping ephemera in their tracks, although they still kept coming.

  Bragi frowned and tightened a string. ‘Am I in tune?’ he said.

  Thor shrugged indifferently. Dorian Scattergood had been tone-deaf, and he himself had never been particularly interested in music. As far as the Thunderer was concerned, guitars, pipes – or, still worse, lutes – were usually best avoided.

  Instead, he unleashed his hammer again, striking rifts in the valley floor that led right down into World Below. Sugar wielded his mindsword, Frey his double-edged scythe. But for every stray demon they managed to halt, for every mindbolt that struck the mark, for every piece of ephemera that was blown back into oblivion, ten more escaped into the air, becoming insubstantial, acquiring the shapes of vapours and clouds, or sank back into the marshy ground, following rootlets, rivers, streams, finding their way to the One Sea, fishing for dreams as they drifted.

  From Malbry all the way to World’s End, people sensed their presence. Babies woke up screaming; good dogs turned bad overnight; old folk died in their sleep; rabbits ate their litters. Dream had turned another page. Tribulation was closer.

  Meanwhile, back at Red Horse Hill, the situation looked hopeless. The gods were outnumbered ten thousand to one. Poisoned by the toxic air, feathers singed, glam burned out, cut and bruised and aching, step by step and blow by blow, they were forced back, away from the Hill.

  Tyr had a number of rat bites. Frey’s right arm hung useless. Bragi’s guitar had a broken string. Even Thor was limping, though Jolly still seemed to be enjoying himself. And the flow of ephemera out of the Hill was as steady as ever.

  Maddy, less than a mile away, had fared even worse than the Æsir. Clinging to a stunted oak, a river of mud and fire at her feet, she had managed, with runes and her mindsword, to combat the worst of the attack. The beings that surged out of the Hill had for the most part avoided her, but a clash with a column of razor-ants, some giant leeches and something that looked like a pterodactyl (though she had never seen one, of course) had left her with cuts and grazes and a gash across her forehead that was still bleeding steadily. That, combined with the fumes from World Below and the continuous onslaught on her glam, now found her much weakened, her mindsword pared down to little more than a sliver, her grasp on the tree trunk – now slick with her blood – finally beginning to fail.

  Her friends, though close, were out of reach. The air was charged with ephemera. Their presence formed a kind of mist – a mist that was filled with invisible shrapnel – that clung to Maddy’s hair and clothes, freezing her limbs, dragging her down, eating away her resistance.

  Odin’s ravens were nowhere to be
seen – in fact, it was hard to see anything under that creeping cloud of mist.

  She wondered vaguely where Loki was. Somewhere safer, probably. The Trickster had always had the knack of not being there when trouble arose – a fact that had done little to earn him the trust of the Æsir during the current conflict. Besides, what now came out of the Hill would have tested the faith of even the most devoted of Loki’s few remaining friends.

  As before, it began as a rumbling from the channels of World Below; the surge of ephemera stuttered and stopped, like a water pipe blocked by some kind of obstruction. And there came a sound like a thousand steam-kettles all about to blow at once; a screaming, hissing, ratcheting sound …

  As Jormungand made his entrance.

  IT WAS AN impressive entrance, as Maddy conceded later, after she’d shaken the dust from her hair and marvelled over the fragments of rock – some of them gems that the Tunnel Folk would have sold their grandmothers to obtain – projected so high into the air that five minutes later they were still falling like shooting stars over Malbry.

  Of course, she had seen the World Serpent before. But Jormungand in Aspect was a sight to challenge anyone’s nerve. His head was as big as a team of oxen, his mane like a haystack of runelight. And his jaws – jaws that were open wide to engulf the fleeing shoals of ephemera – were like a pair of barn doors edged with teeth the shape and size of scimitars.

  Maddy reached for her mindsword, knowing that it was hopeless. Jormungand reared his massive head; Maddy gathered the last of her strength and prepared to go out fighting. She could feel the Serpent’s venomous breath, feel the heat of his approach. But he did not attack. He simply lolled and gaped at her, no more than twenty feet away. Perhaps he recognized her, she thought. Perhaps he would listen to reason.

  Maddy lowered her mindsword. ‘Ah – remember me?’ she said.

  She was still far from confident. The last time she and the Serpent had met had been three years ago, in one of the dungeons of the Black Fortress, and although he had helped the gods to escape, that had mostly been due to Loki, who had used himself as human bait to induce the beast to wreak havoc.

  ‘I’m a … friend of Loki’s,’ she said.

  Jormungand gave a long hiss.

  ‘Well, not so much a friend,’ Maddy amended hastily. ‘More what you’d call an associate.’

  The World Serpent made an unspeakable sound and rolled over in his sheath of slime. His stench was almost palpable. She wondered what was to stop him from simply opening his jaws and gulping her down like a grape. Once more she reached for her mindsword. Worn down to no more than a toothpick now, it would scarcely have deterred a rat. The World Serpent gave an enormous yawn—

  And then there was girlish laughter, and a ringing voice from above that said: ‘Oh, darling. Put it away.’

  Maddy looked up – just in time to see the Witch of Ironwood jump down from her position on the Serpent’s flank, in scarlet furs from head to foot and looking very pleased with herself. At her side, the Wolf Brothers gambolled like unruly puppies in the wake of the devastation.

  ‘Thought you could use a lift,’ she said. ‘Climb aboard, and I’ll take you home.’ She sternly addressed Jormungand, who had turned his attention to a shoal of ephemera that was drifting past. Opening his enormous jaws, he inhaled – and drew the ephemera into his mouth with the ease of a whale ingesting plankton.

  Angie stroked his slimy mane. ‘Hungry, darling? That’s my boy.’ She smiled at Maddy. ‘My boys have always had a healthy appetite,’ she said. ‘Now come on, sweetheart, and take Maddy home. You can catch a bite on the way.’

  Meanwhile, not far from the village, the gods were watching with apprehension. A fistful of glamours was all they had left; they were limping, exhausted, close to defeat. Regrouping on the higher ground, they had watched the river rise, while the Folk gathered in clusters in and around the soundest buildings – mainly the church and the Parsonage, where Ethel had remained to help – some carrying possessions, others silently glaring at those who had brought this disaster upon them.

  Crazy Nan Fey was among the crowd, although she knew perfectly well that the gods were in no way responsible for what was happening. It was all written down in the Good Book, and in the nursery rhymes of her youth – which all went to show, said Crazy Nan, that the old wives’ tales the Order despised were not as foolish as they’d claimed, and that if anyone could somehow avert that long-awaited Apocalypse, then it would most likely be an old wife—

  And then came an almighty crash, and out of what little was left of the Hill burst Jormungand in full Aspect, throwing up a shower of stones as he erupted from the ground. Flaming pieces of half-melted rock showered the valley like shooting stars, and Nan and the villagers were forced to take cover wherever they could as the gods turned to face the new attack.

  It was some five minutes before the dust and debris had cleared enough for the gods to realize that the World Serpent was not alone. A trio of wolves accompanied him, plus a firebird, two ravens and, approaching from the direction of the Sleepers, a sea-eagle, and a small brown hawk whose signature scrawled across the sky marked it unmistakably as …

  ‘Loki. I should have known,’ growled Thor, grabbing Jolly by the feet.

  But Jolly had taken one look at Jormungand and resumed his goblin Aspect. ‘That slimy bastard swallered me once,’ he said. ‘I’m damned if I’m goin’ in there again.’

  The Thunderer, finding himself disarmed, gave a howl of fury. ‘You come back here right now,’ he roared.

  ‘Or what?’ said Jolly, picking his teeth.

  ‘But that’s the World Serpent,’ said Thor plaintively.

  ‘So what if he is? He’s on our side.’

  As the gods looked on in silence, it became clear that Jolly was right. If being on the side of the gods meant swallowing ephemera, slurping shadows, gobbling dreams, snapping up demons by the shoal with what seemed like insatiable appetite, then the Serpent was on their side.

  What was more, he had a rider. Almost obscured by runelight, she seemed to be clinging onto his mane, her russet-red signature shining through the miasma. The three wolves they had seen were still at her flanks; and although beside the Serpent these looked no larger than kittens, the gods could see from their signatures that they were no ordinary wolves, but creatures of terrible power and strength. And above them all flew the firebird – a bird unlike any in the Nine Worlds, its trail coloured that eerie rainbow’s-end purple that the gods associated with Chaos.

  ‘What in Hel’s name is going on?’ Thor growled in frustration. ‘Isn’t that Maddy riding the snake?’

  The others squinted at the scene, and finally agreed that it was.

  ‘She’s coming this way,’ said Freyja. ‘I can see her colours now.’

  ‘Thank the gods she’s safe,’ said Njörd.

  Bragi picked up his guitar and strummed a chord of victory.

  ‘And there shall come a Horse of Fire,’ said Ethel in her quiet voice. ‘And the name of his Rider is Carnage. And there shall come a Horse of the Sea – and the name of his Rider is Treachery.’

  ‘What is this?’ said Njörd. ‘A prophecy?’

  ‘It’s from the Book of Apocalypse.’ Ethel, whose role as a parson’s wife had sometimes included helping him – in a very unofficial capacity – to prepare his weekly sermons, had more than just a passing knowledge of the contents of the Good Book. ‘The Horse of Fire – Red Horse Hill – and now, perhaps, the Horse of the Sea—’

  ‘What? The Serpent?’ Freyja said.

  ‘But a serpent isn’t a horse …’ said Njörd.

  ‘And the Good Book is often inaccurate,’ said Ethel in her calm voice. ‘But if I’m right, then the End of the Worlds is closer than we imagined. Two of the Riders are already here. We have to face the enemy.’

  ‘I thought that’s what we were doing,’ said Thor.

  Ethel shook her head. ‘No. This is just a diversion. The final battle takes place in Worl
d’s End. In just twelve days, at End of Worlds—’

  ‘What?’ said Thor.

  ‘Where else? she said. ‘That’s where Asgard fell, after all. They even built a memorial.’

  ‘The cathedral of Saint Sepulchre.’

  For a moment there was silence as the gods considered the End of the Worlds. Sugar in particular felt very apprehensive. In his newly acquired capacity as god of war, he was aware that the prospect of another Ragnarók ought to fill him with enthusiasm. But Sugar-and-Sack had not yet outgrown his previous – and somewhat unimposing – role, and had found the Aspect of Brave-Hearted Tyr unexpectedly hard to assume.

  Perhaps, thought Sugar, when Asgard was rebuilt, he would take to Aspect more readily. For now, though, he still found killing rats a challenge, and the thought of a final battle gave him goosebumps all over.

  ‘A Rider whose name is Treachery,’ said Thor. ‘That has to be Loki, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, shall we?’ said Ethel, still watching the Serpent’s approach. He was moving very quickly now, blurring along the Malbry road, and now the gods could smell him too, like a stretch of mud-flats in the sun; a salty stink that caught at their throats and made their eyes water. At last he stopped, and Maddy climbed down from where she had been clinging; Maddy with a gash on her head and three enormous wolves at her heels.

  ‘It’s all right. Jorgi’s on our side,’ she said, seeing Thor almost ready to strike.

  ‘What happened?’ said Idun, in goddess Aspect. ‘Are you all right? Have some apple …’

  Idun’s apples were legendary – a cure for age and sickness as well as for wounds in battle. She carried supplies wherever she went: the fruit was dried, but still good, and Maddy accepted a small piece, not so much for its healing properties as for the excuse it gave her to be silent a few minutes longer. The thought of lying to her friends was almost too dreadful to contemplate; and even the presence of Jorgi and the wolves now came as a welcome diversion.