Runelight

by Joanne Harris

  Maggie shook her head, still dazed.

  ‘Well?’ said Adam impatiently.

  Maggie looked into Adam’s eyes and saw the Whisperer burning there.

  ‘First, we had a deal,’ she said. ‘You were going to let Adam go.’

  ‘And so I shall,’ said the Whisperer. ‘Did you think I would break My word? But you have a part to play in this. After that, the boy can go free.’

  ‘What do you mean? What part?’ she said.

  The Whisperer gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Always with the questions,’ it said. ‘Very well. Let Me explain. In Dream, I am discorporate. But My consciousness in the Middle Worlds requires a physical presence. Until now, My young friend has served this purpose. But until I can move to a suitable host, I fear I must impose upon his goodwill for just a little longer.’

  Maggie thought about that for a while. ‘A suitable host?’ she repeated.

  The Whisperer shrugged Adam’s shoulders. ‘Of course,’ it said. ‘You don’t think I like being trapped in this pathetic body? I need something more permanent.’

  It pointed at the stone Head. Its glam was completely dark again now, and only through Bjarkán could she see the net of runes that bound it. That anything could live in there was already hard enough to accept; that Adam’s Magister might choose to do so was almost inconceivable.

  ‘You’d go into that?’ Maggie said.

  ‘No, Maggie, not that. But something with glam.’ Adam’s eyes gleamed. ‘Something nice, with runes, perhaps …’

  ‘Like what?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Just leave that to Me. Suffice it to say that by Sunday night, both you and I will have what we want.’

  ‘But – what about the Old Man?’

  Once more the Whisperer shrugged. ‘Now that you have the new runes, we don’t need it any more. When you’re ready, just say the word and send it to Hel, where it belongs.’

  ‘You mean – kill him?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Well, of course,’ said the Whisperer. ‘This is Odin, General of the Æsir. Our greatest, most dangerous enemy. What did you think we were going to do? Send him to bed with a glass of milk?’

  Now Maggie saw the trap she was in, and she cursed the Old Man inwardly. Had he known this would happen? Of course. Could he have even planned it this way? That too seemed likely. This was Odin, son of Bór. His deviousness was legendary. Odin, whose plans were impenetrable; who, even at his weakest – disembodied, a prisoner – knew how to prey on his victim’s mind.

  She had to buy time, Maggie told herself. She had to find a way out of this. To kill the Old Man was unthinkable – at least until she had found a way of protecting Adam from the vengeance of the Æsir. But to disobey the Whisperer – that, too was unthinkable. Adam was still in its power; it could tear his mind apart—

  ‘What is it, Maggie?’

  The Whisperer’s voice roused her from her unpleasant thoughts.

  ‘The Old Man told me you’d say this. He said that as soon as you had the runes, you’d order me to kill him.’

  ‘Did he now?’ said the Whisperer silkily. ‘And … did he tell you anything else?’

  Maggie gave a little shrug. She hoped it looked petulant, rather than guilty. She knew she would have to take great care what she told the Whisperer. Too little, and who knew what harm it might do to Adam before she subdued it. Too much, and she would relinquish control.

  Yes, she would have to be careful, she thought.

  ‘Well, girl, what are you waiting for?’ said the Whisperer impatiently. ‘You’re getting married on Sunday. So give Me what I want – the runes – and I will give you Adam. Do we have a deal?’

  Stubbornly Maggie shook her head. ‘Not until you set Adam free.’

  For a moment, there was silence. Maggie could feel the Whisperer struggling to contain its rage. In a moment the thing would erupt, and Adam would be the one to suffer.

  But when it finally spoke again, its voice was calm, its colours subdued.

  ‘Maggie, why don’t you trust Me?’ it said. ‘A week ago you were on My side. You believed in Me and the Order. A week ago you couldn’t wait to spill a little demon blood. What did it tell you to change your mind?’

  ‘He hasn’t changed my mind!’ she said.

  ‘Then what did it say?’ said the Whisperer.

  Maggie looked into Adam’s eyes. She hated to hide the truth from him, but this was for his own good. If his passenger were to suspect that she was having second thoughts …

  ‘He made a prophecy,’ she said. ‘Said I’d have to make a choice between my Folk and family. And I’ve made my choice. If the Firefolk come here on Sunday, I’ll fight. But I won’t let Adam be sacrificed. I want your word you’ll keep him safe. We’ll be married in the cathedral at eight, and then – only then – I’ll give you the runes and send the Old Man on his way.’

  For a long time Adam was silent. ‘Sunday,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘At eight.’

  ‘And then you’ll give Me the New Script?’

  ‘I swear it. On my true name.’

  For a moment Maggie sensed the almost frightening intensity of the Whisperer’s satisfaction. ‘Very well,’ it said at last. ‘If that’s the way you want it. Fine.’ And as Maggie watched, its presence withdrew, leaving only Adam there, looking pale, but self-possessed.

  She gave him a smile that Adam found almost chilling in its tenderness.

  ‘I did it,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be safe. And no one will stop our wedding.’

  Then she turned towards the bed and picked up the piece of yellow silk. She draped it over her cropped hair; the late sun caught its folds and she was transfigured, beautiful, a goddess in Aspect, eyes like the sun …

  Of course, Adam thought to himself, love and the right kind of lighting can make a beauty of even the plainest girl. Even so, he felt a stab of unease. She looked so like her sister had, that terrible day on the shores of Hel. Beautiful and dangerous, like something from an unnatural dream. One more day, he told himself. Just one more day and he would be free.

  The thought was such a pleasant one that Adam felt a surge of something almost like affection, as you might feel for a stray dog that unexpectedly turns out to be quite a useful ratter.

  ‘Maggie,’ he said, ‘you’re going to be the most beautiful bride in World’s End!’

  And then he kissed her, and once again Maggie forgot everything else but Adam’s face – Adam’s lips, Adam’s voice, Adam’s eyes – while in the street below, her twin looked for her through the rune Bjarkán, and the Old Man slumbered, satisfied, nursing his dreams of Asgard.

  NAN WAS NOT afraid of dreams. Dream was the lifespring of everything. Dream links Order and Chaos, she knew; Dream links Death to the Middle World. A dreamer may speak to the dead, walk with gods, build wonderful castles in the air.

  And nothing dreamed is ever lost, and nothing lost for ever …

  Seven days had passed since Nan Fey had become the Rider of Lunacy. During that time she had followed the instructions relayed to her by the Auld Man’s birds, waiting, with some apprehension, for the moment when she would be called upon to act – though what exactly she was expected to do was still something of a mystery. So far, all she had had to do was feed her cats and Epona, look after her cottage and wait as the dreamcloud from Red Horse Hill crept closer to the village.

  In fact, it was no longer creeping at all. By Friday morning the cloud had become a wing spread over the valley, casting its shadow from Fettlefields right up to the shores of the Strond. Nan’s house was far enough away to give her a few more days’ security; but Malbry was right in its path. Already, groups of refugees had moved away as the cloud advanced – some as far as Little Bear Wood – but most of Malbry’s villagers had never left the valley, and the thought of leaving it now, even in the face of such danger, was too much for them to contemplate.

  Nan waited for as long as she could. But on the Friday evening, with the dreamcloud blotting out the sky and
drowning even the sound of the Strond with its muted, hateful roar, she decided there was no time to lose. With or without the Auld Man’s orders, she had to do something to help. Alone, out of Aspect, she doubted whether she would be of any use to the villagers. But perhaps if she rode Epona …

  She put on her stoutest boots, her shawl and the hat she wore on festival days. Then she went out into the yard to take a look at the Horse of Air.

  In her present Aspect she seemed (to Nan, who had never actually ridden a horse) much more daunting than she had when they had flown together through Dream. She bore no saddle or bridle, either; and Nan surveyed her doubtfully and wondered if she would carry her. A fall at her age could mean death; and this seemed only too likely to Nan, whose brittle old bones feared the slightest shock, and ached when it was raining.

  Still, she told herself bracingly, a person who had flown through Dream in a washing basket should have nothing to fear from an old mare, and she caught hold of the Horse’s mane and, standing on an old tree-stump, whispered in Epona’s ear:

  ‘Now then, old girl. We’re going to ride, nice and gentle, to Malbry.’

  Epona tossed her head and whinnied.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Crazy Nan. And with an effort she put her old leg over the white horse’s back and hoisted herself into place, keeping hold good and tight, with her hands both clenched in the Horse’s mane.

  ‘There’s my good girl,’ repeated Nan as, without any further prelude, the Horse of Air began to walk, then to trot, and finally to canter down the Malbry road, while Nan held on for dear life, and the sound of the rift in Dream increased gradually from a distant roar to that of a summer thunderstorm.

  Above her, two ravens circled, but the thunderous sound of the rift in Dream swallowed their cries, like everything else.

  ‘Good girl,’ Nan Fey said again, and, kicking up her heels, she rode the White Horse of the Last Days straight towards the dreamcloud, while in World’s End, the Auld Man slept, and a Rider whose name was Treachery prowled the streets of the Universal City, still oblivious to the fact that the actual traitor was somebody else …

  EVEN ON THE Horse of Air, Crazy Nan took ten minutes to get into Malbry. In those ten minutes the dreamcloud had crept three and a half inches closer to the gate of the Parsonage; had further eroded a grain barn belonging to Tyas Miller; had finished off a henhouse, including all its occupants; and discorporated a shaggy brown dog that had been sleeping by the door of the church, where most of the remaining citizens of Malbry and its surrounding hamlets now waited, wakeful and terrified, mothers clasping their children, in expectation of the approaching catastrophe.

  Nan Fey had waited long for this. Ninety-odd years spent waiting for a time when she would be needed at last, when her appearance would be welcomed with sighs of relief, and not with cries of laughter and scorn. She was not of a vengeful nature, but Malbry had not treated Nan well, and now that its fate hung in her hands, she planned to enjoy her moment.

  She circumvented the dreamcloud, which now towered forty feet over her, left Epona on the far side of the church, and entered by a side door. The scene that met her was pitiful. The church was lit with candles. More than two hundred villagers sat huddled against the far wall. Some were children; some were old. Some were farmers, trying hard to look tough. Some wept. Some prayed. Nan saw Mae Smith – now Mae Dean, of course – who had been on a visit to Malbry when the dreamcloud had cut off the road; and her new husband, Zebediah Dean, a rather self-important young man expected to be the new Bishop. Matt Law and his possemen were there – Tyas Miller, Dan Fletcher, Patrick Dunne, Jack Shepherd, Ben Briggs – but even they looked wide-eyed and lost, faces pale, hands outstretched, some still clasping possessions saved from their fallen houses. A shiver of sound went through the church as soon as Nan Fey opened the door; someone started a canticle, but immediately fell silent.

  Instead all eyes turned towards Nan; and she found that in spite of those ninety years of being the butt of everyone’s joke, she felt precious little merriment at seeing the tables thus reversed. Another kind of woman might have been tempted to crow a little, but Crazy Nan Fey had a good heart, and, seeing the villagers’ misery, she raised her voice and called out to them as loudly as she could:

  ‘Listen to me, everyone! I think I know how to help us!’

  A silence greeted Nan’s words. Perhaps it was a measure of their collective despair and wretchedness that no one laughed or scorned her words, but looked at her with doubt and fear (and maybe a little hope too).

  ‘What can anyone do to help?’ That was Damson Ploughman from one of the little smallholdings between Malbry and the Castle Hill Road. ‘My farm’s gone into the devil-mist – aye, and all my horses too, and when my son went after them—’

  ‘Aye!’ That was Mags, the ploughman’s wife, a lady who some folk called lively (and others, just shrill). ‘The End of the Worlds is upon us, d’ye ken! And it’s your folk that brung it here!’

  ‘My folk?’ said Nan Fey.

  ‘Aye, yourn. The Seer-folk!’

  At this, a number of voices were raised in agreement. Mae Dean’s cries were more strident than most (folk in Malbry had not forgotten that it had been her sister who had started all this). Zeb Dean listened approvingly; he’d married Mae (still a beauty) against his great-uncle Torval’s advice, and he was glad to see that she, at least, had no divided sympathies.

  ‘There, there,’ he said, fondly taking his bride’s hand. ‘No need to fret, my darling. I still have some influence here, and you can be sure that when this comes to my great-uncle’s attention, the matter will be dealt with.’

  Nan listened to the angry cries and shook her old head in reproach. ‘I thought you’d a learned better’n that by now,’ she said, raising her own voice over the din. ‘Can’t ye see it’s the Seer-folk that have aided ye these three years?’

  ‘Aye!’ came a mocking voice from the crowd. ‘Who rid us of the Order and brought us Chaos in its place? Who brought demons from under the Hill, and now this dream-mist to drown us? We should be on our knees right now, thanking the gods for their mercy!’

  That was Dan Fletcher, one of Matt’s posse, known in the valley as a cynic and a freethinker; known to Nan Fey since he was a boy.

  ‘I remember you, Dan Fletcher,’ said Nan. ‘I can remember when you were nobbut a lad, asking me about your dreams. You were allus dreaming in those days, even when your ma thrashed you for it.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Dan, ‘and look where it got us! That mist came from off the river Dream, and don’t you dare deny it.’

  Nan smiled at him approvingly. Dan had always been clever, she thought, and it was good that he was here. ‘I don’t deny it, Danny,’ she said, and a shiver went through the assembled folk. ‘This is the start of the End of the Worlds, and it starts, as it should, at the centre. The Seer-folk have left to march on World’s End, the three Horsemen are on the ride, the river Dream has broken its banks …’ She narrowed her eyes at the refugees. ‘Pucker-lips, a-pucker-lips. Ye surely all know what that means.’

  The villagers exchanged silent looks.

  ‘Aye. It means nothing can save us,’ said Dan. Beneath the swagger, his tone was bleak. ‘We can run, we can hide, we can try to fight – it’ll all come to nothing in the end. Nothing but mist and cinders.’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Nan. ‘Listen to this. The Cradle fell an age ago, But Fire and Folk shall raise her …’

  And now Nan quoted the prophecy the Auld Man had given her, trying to fill her creaky old voice with the same quiet air of authority. It didn’t quite work – because halfway through, Mags Ploughman piped up in her strident voice, interrupting the Oracle’s words:

  ‘What are ye listenin’ to her for!’ she cried. ‘She’s allus been mad, y’kennet, and now she’s in league with the Seer-folk! I say we chuck her into the devil-mist, see what happens then, eh!’

  ‘Aye,’ came the voice of Mae Dean, forgetting her new refined ways and slipping into dialect.
‘We’ll have none of yer imaginings here, ye crone!’

  There were cries of ‘Aye!’ and ‘Chuck her in!’ And now came a dozen eager hands clutching hold of Nan Fey, and a surge of people, goaded by fear, thrusting her towards the door.

  But Dan Fletcher stood in their way. ‘She may be as mad as ye say,’ he said, ‘but anyroad, you’ll do her no harm.’

  For a moment it seemed as if they would: fists were raised; blows threatened; someone kicked Dan in the ankle, and made him stagger.

  But now Matt Law stood beside him; and Tyas Miller and Ben Briggs. Violence seemed inevitable. Someone knocked down a statue. Someone else picked up a spade. Nan pulled away from the lynch-mob and flung open the church door into the dark, where Epona, the Horse of Air, stood like a phantom in the mist.

  Two tattered figures flanked her – Hugin and Munin, in true Aspect. Against the wall of mist they looked like shadows from Hel itself. The angry mob gasped and cowered.

  ‘Demons!’ said Zebediah Dean.

  Nan looked at Hughie. ‘Ye took your time, ye two,’ she said.

  ‘And ye were told to wait, Nan Fey.’

  Nan shrugged.

  Mandy crawk-ed. Even in this Aspect, it seemed, she still had problems with language.

  Hughie reached around his neck, where a coin-sized pendant – some kind of talisman – gleamed, reflecting the candle-light. He pulled the object over his head and handed it to Nan Fey.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Nan.

  ‘A token frae the Auld Man,’ said Hughie. ‘Use it as ye see fit.’

  And with that, he and his sibling changed into bird form, took wing and disappeared into the mist.

  Nan looked at the object doubtfully. It was round, inscribed with runes, and in its mirrored surface she could see herself, upside-down, but altered, illuminated …

  Behind her, the crowd of villagers had begun to recover and regroup. Soon, she knew, their fear would once more give way to the threat of violence.