Runelight

by Joanne Harris

  Whatever had been inside was gone.

  THERE’S AN OLD Northlands saying that goes like this: When lies don’t help, try telling the truth. Loki knew it well, of course, but much preferred his own version, which was: When lies don’t help, tell better lies.

  Loki was an excellent liar. Having realized where they were heading, he had decided to play for time, and, assuming an air of insouciance, had assured the anxious gods that everything was going to plan.

  ‘What plan?’ Skadi said. ‘Your plan to get us nowhere?’

  Loki waved a cheery hand. ‘We’re going to leave the wagons behind. They’re only holding us up,’ he said. ‘Those who can take bird Aspect will; as for the rest, you can leave them to me.’

  The Æsir looked doubtful at this. Vanir and Chaos folk could change Aspect at will; but they, with their broken runemarks, were quite unable to do so.

  ‘You’re playing for time,’ Skadi said. ‘This is a trick to split us up so you can make your getaway.’

  Loki shook his head. ‘Please. Just how far do you think I’d get?’

  ‘All right. What’s the plan?’ she said.

  Loki shrugged. ‘Just wait and see.’

  The gods spent the next few hours trying to work out how Loki could fly Ethel, Thor and the Queen of the Pigs across an indeterminate stretch of countryside – not to mention their weapons, of course, and the clothes that the Vanir would certainly need when resuming their human Aspects.

  No one believed he could do it. In fact, Thor was looking forward to the moment when Loki at last admitted defeat, and he could finally hammer him.

  ‘You’re going to change their Aspects,’ said Idun, who, with Bragi, liked a good tale, and had joined in the guessing game with enthusiasm (she was in fact the only one who still believed Loki’s promise). ‘You’ll turn us all into acorns and carry us into the city.’

  Loki shook his head. ‘No.’

  Idun looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘All right. You’re going to ask the Tunnel Folk to build a magnificent flying machine …’

  Loki sighed. ‘Wrong,’ he said.

  Bragi made a suggestion. ‘You’re going to summon Jormungand, your monstrous son, to take us into the city through Dream …’

  ‘Nope,’ said Loki. ‘Wrong again.’

  In fact, this would have been an excellent solution, but for two simple drawbacks. One, Loki had no idea how to summon Jormungand. Two, the World Serpent was far more likely to crunch him up like a fish-biscuit than to help him in any way.

  No, Loki’s solution was simpler. He was planning to run away.

  The only obstacle to this was attached to his wrist by the Wedlock; and Loki knew that if he fled, Sigyn would certainly raise the alarm, after which he didn’t rate his chances of survival.

  He’d tried everything he could – everything but the truth, of course. Nothing had worked. Sigyn was impervious to flattery; to argument; to charm or tears or declarations of love. She was reasonable, but adamant; and Loki was keenly reminded of the woman who, five hundred years before, had collected the droplets of poison dripping from the fangs of the snake that Skadi had hung above his face, while sweetly but firmly refusing his pleas to release him from his manacles.

  Finally the lies had run out. They’d marched the whole day and most of the night, and still there was nothing to be seen – not the dawn, nor the sea, nor Odin’s birds, nor the battlements of the Universal City. The road ahead was endless, the landscape around them was swimming in fog, and even Thor was getting tired, which made him all the keener to hammer the cause of his annoyance.

  Only Sigyn still seemed to believe that Loki really had a plan; which Loki found so annoying that finally he turned her back into an acorn and called a halt.

  ‘Er, listen, folks,’ he told the gods. ‘I haven’t quite been straight with you. The good news is that I know where we are. The bad news is …’

  ‘Do tell,’ said Thor.

  Loki told them the bad news.

  After that, he sat and waited for the noise to die down. After five minutes or so, it did, and once again he tried to explain how this time it really wasn’t his fault.

  ‘I know how it looks,’ he admitted.

  ‘It looks like a trap,’ said Heimdall, narrowing his steel-blue eyes. ‘It looks as though you led us here on a fool’s errand, talked about plans, and basically wasted as much time as you could to keep us away from things at World’s End.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t,’ said Loki.

  ‘Please. Let me hammer him,’ said Thor.

  ‘I’m telling the truth,’ Loki insisted.

  ‘Let me hammer him anyway.’

  For a moment Loki stood up, trying to hold back the angry gods. ‘Please!’ he yelled. ‘Just listen to me! I think I know what’s happening here!’

  Little by little the noise died down again, barring some muttered invective.

  Then Loki took a deep breath and summoned all his eloquence.

  ‘I know that most of you hate me,’ he said, ‘and none of you really trust me. But please, just think for a minute.’ He spread his hands appealingly. ‘How could I have done all this? Opened the Worlds, taken us through, created this fog to confuse everyone …’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve never had the kind of glam it would take to play a trick like that, and even if I had, I’d be burned out by now. So before you play jump-rope with my spine—’

  ‘You could have had help,’ said Heimdall.

  ‘Yes, because I have so many friends,’ Loki told him bitterly. ‘Tell me, does anyone remember what happened last time I was here? I called in a favour from Hel, who swore that she’d kill me if I ever showed my face here again, so trust me when I tell you that I’m not exactly thrilled to be back.’

  ‘He has a point,’ said Angie, who until then had been silent. ‘You told us you knew what was happening,’ she said, addressing the Trickster.

  ‘Yes, but you’re not going to like it.’

  Ethel raised an eyebrow. ‘At this stage,’ she said quietly, ‘I don’t think you have much to lose. Why don’t you tell us?’

  Loki gave his crooked smile. ‘I have to admit, you got me,’ he said. ‘You got me good and proper. The Wedlock …’ He glanced at his wrist, where Eh still gleamed, with Sigyn, in her acorn form, dangling from the end of the chain. ‘I assumed all that was Skadi’s idea, to keep me out of mischief. But it wasn’t, was it, Seeress?’

  Smiling, Ethel shook her head.

  ‘Of course, I should have known something was wrong. Since when did you care what happened to me? Since when did you try to protect me? You’ve always hated my guts. And perhaps – just perhaps – I deserved it. So why would you, of all people, help me? At first I thought it was because you needed me to get to World’s End. But that wasn’t the reason. You needed me for something else. Something no one else knew about.’

  Ethel’s brown eyes shone. ‘Well done. I wondered if you’d work it out.’

  ‘Well, Trickery is my middle name. And I knew Angie couldn’t be working alone. That runemark of hers could only have come from someone with access to the New Script. Someone who can cross between Worlds. Someone who can speak with the dead. Someone who’s an oracle …’

  Ethel smiled. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘It was a good performance, though.’ Loki’s grin was cold and hard. ‘You had me completely fooled. I thought there was nothing left in the Worlds that had the power to surprise me. But you – you, with your tea and cake and shall-I-be-Mother? – gods! What an act! If only I’d known …’

  ‘Known what?’ said Thor.

  ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet? The Oracle predicted this. She knew we were coming here all along. Perhaps she even brought it about. She knew, because she’d made a deal. That was why she needed me.’

  Loki was looking beyond them now, to a point ahead on the road. ‘I see a Rainbow riding high; of cheating Death the legacy. Cheating Death. I should have known.’

  He raised his voice and called through the mi
st. ‘A life for a life, Hel, isn’t that right? Isn’t that the currency of choice? Wasn’t that always your bargain?’

  For a moment no one answered him. Then the mist began to roll away, leaving the road ahead of them bare, and the landscape around them familiar.

  They had all seen Hel’s kingdom before, and yet the barren scale of it, the sickening wasteland all around and the sky like a lid on a cauldron filled their hearts with fear and dismay. Nothing relieved its emptiness; no desert of the Middle Worlds could mirror its bleak magnificence.

  And now there was someone standing ahead of them, a woman with a face like the moon that changed as she moved it left and right, and a smile like a mouthful of broken bones as she turned her dead eye on the Trickster.

  It had been years since Hel the Half-Born had felt anything remotely like enjoyment. And yet, she thought, this might qualify. To see Loki like this, at her mercy, betrayed by one of his own kin. Her dead eye lingered on him. It saw so much more than her living one. Fear, hatred, anguish, despair – these were the colours that Hel loved most, and they were present now in abundance.

  But when he spoke, the Trickster’s tone was as light and mocking as ever. ‘So tell me – who is it?’ Loki said. ‘Who am I redeeming today? Golden Boy? Too obvious. Besides, he’s too much of a goody-two-shoes to get involved with something like this. No, it has to be someone else. Now let me guess – who could it be? Who could be worth such a sacrifice?’

  Ethel shrugged. ‘You got me,’ she said. ‘Believe me, it’s nothing personal. You all heard the prophecy. The future of Asgard depends on this. If I could have thought of another way to bring my husband back from the dead—’

  ‘So, you made a deal with Hel. My life for the General’s. Was this your idea, or his?’

  Ethel smiled. ‘A bit of both.’

  ‘Well. You got a bargain.’

  Loki looked around at the circle of gods. From their expressions it was clear that most of them agreed with him. Only Idun seemed distressed; her blue eyes went from Ethel to Loki, then back to Ethel again, as if she expected one of them to pull off a mask and shout, Surprise!

  ‘This isn’t happening,’ she said at last. ‘Ethel would never betray one of us. Not even to save the General. Not even if it was Loki …’

  ‘Idun, sweetheart,’ Loki said, ‘we’re gods, not saints. Everyone lies. Everyone cheats. Everyone scores off everyone else. Well, maybe not you. What I don’t understand is this: how did we get here, Seeress? You can’t have brought us to Hel on your own. You must have had help from someone.’

  Ethel just smiled.

  Loki thought hard. ‘The ravens!’ he said. ‘Odin’s messengers. They can travel from World to World – through Death, Dream and Damnation. They must have acted as go-betweens. My darling daughter did the rest. And Angie – I thought you liked me …’

  The Temptress shrugged. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I do. But I wanted my hall in Asgard. I wanted to be on the winning team. And I wanted this …’ She showed him the runemark on her arm, gleaming in its violet light.

  ‘So protecting me was just a ruse to ensure I survived to cement your deal.’ Loki appealed to the party of gods. ‘You’re really going along with this? You’re going to watch them sacrifice me? Sif, we’ve had our differences, but …’

  The goddess of grace and plenty smiled. ‘You bet I’m going to watch,’ she said. ‘I only wish we had popcorn.’

  ‘Thor,’ said Loki. ‘We’re old friends …’

  Thor shrugged. ‘What choice do we have? It’s either you or the General.’

  ‘Heimdall … Bragi … Tyr …’

  The Watchman showed his golden teeth. ‘We’ll tell everyone you died bravely.’

  ‘I’ll write you an epic poem,’ said Bragi.

  ‘Idun … Njörd … Freyja. Please …’

  One by one the gods turned away. Sugar gave him a rueful look. Jolly spread his hands and grinned. Idun wiped away a tear. Bragi played a sad little tune. Angrboda blew him a kiss.

  Fenris said: ‘Tough call, dude.’

  ‘Well, thanks a bunch,’ said the Trickster. ‘It’s nice to know who your friends are. And to think I risked my life for you!’ His green eyes narrowed suddenly. ‘That’s why Maddy isn’t here. You guessed she wouldn’t play along. So you sent the ravens to lure her away with some half-baked story about her twin.’ He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I wondered why you were helping me, Seeress, offering me your protection. I thought you’d decided to give me a break. Maybe even forgiven me. Turns out you needed a sacrifice …’

  Ethel shrugged. ‘Forgiven you? You caused the death of my only son. You think I’m going to let you off?’

  ‘That was a misunderstanding—’

  ‘A life for a life,’ Ethel said. ‘It’s time to keep our bargain.’

  Hel took a lurching step forward. Even through her living eye she could see that Loki was afraid. A shiver of pleasure ran through her, and she paused to savour the moment a while. Pleasures were so very few, here in the Kingdom of the Dead. And if the End of Everything was as close as it was rumoured to be, then she meant to enjoy every pleasure she could before the darkness claimed them all.

  She raised the binding rope of runes that was her most powerful weapon. Woven from the rune Naudr, it gleamed with a livid malevolence.

  ‘I made you a promise, Loki,’ she said. ‘I made it right here, three years ago. And Hel always keeps her promises – as I’m sure you already know …’

  And with that she flicked out the rune Naudr, which wrapped itself tightly around Loki’s neck. Tugged at it. Loki fell to his knees. Once more Hel closed her living eye and concentrated on Loki’s signature. Through the rune Bjarkán it shone, a skein of violet against the dark. Now Hel extended her withered hand and grasped the violet filament between her skeletal fingers. It brightened as Loki struggled in vain to pull himself free from the stranglehold of Naudr. It was impossible, he knew. Death conquers all – even Wildfire.

  He looked up at the circle of gods. Naudr, the Binder, bit into his throat. He tried to speak – to plead his case – but the binding rope had cut off his voice.

  ‘A life for a life,’ Hel intoned, bringing the violet skein to her mouth. ‘Odin, son of Bór, arise!’

  There was a moment of anticipation. Then another. In the deserts of Hel, the bone-white wind blew drifts of dust across the dunes.

  ‘Odin, son of Bór,’ said Hel, ‘Father of Thor, General of Asgard, Allfather of the Middle Worlds – I summon you to life! Arise!’

  Once again, nothing happened. The wind keened over the bitter ground. The dead, sensing something momentous, distressed the chilly air in droves. But no one arose. The dead stayed dead. Odin was not among them.

  Ethel turned to Hel. ‘Oh. This is rather embarrassing.’

  ‘What?’ said Hel, looking confused.

  ‘Well, clearly my husband isn’t here.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Hel. ‘He died. You saw him die, all of you.’ She tugged at the rope around Loki’s neck. ‘You promised me. We had a deal …’

  ‘But you can’t keep your side of it. Why would I give you Loki?’

  ‘So – take somebody else,’ said Hel, beginning to look agitated. ‘I’ll give you your son Balder, if you like. Or anyone. But Loki’s mine!’

  For a moment Ethel looked down at the Trickster, on his knees. Naudr had robbed him of his voice, but his eyes still pleaded eloquently. She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Our deal was for Odin. No one else.’

  The living side of Hel’s face took on a look of disbelief. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He belongs to me. This time I don’t care if the Nine Worlds end …’

  And, like a seamstress trimming loose thread, she nipped at Loki’s lifeline with teeth that were white on one side of her mouth, worn black stumps on the other.

  The Trickster uttered a blasphemous prayer as he felt her sever his life.

  Goodbye, cruel Worlds!

  He closed his eyes …


  And opened them to find himself looking up at Hel’s living profile, her features now distorted with anger and bewilderment. Between her fingers, his signature shone as bright and unbroken as ever.

  ‘What went wrong?’ Heimdall said. ‘I thought you were supposed to cut his life, not floss your teeth with it.’

  ‘Does this mean Loki doesn’t die?’ said Sif, looking disgusted.

  Ethel smiled. ‘Apparently so. As we have already seen, Death’s guardian cannot break her word without suffering serious consequences.’

  Once more, and with growing impatience, Hel tried to break the violet thread. Nothing happened. The signature glowed. She tore at the thread with her fingernails …

  ‘Do you mind? That tickles.’ Loki had loosened the binding rope, and was now sitting cross-legged on the sandy ground, looking more confident than he felt. He still had no idea why Hel had failed to take his life, but his keen sense of the ridiculous had temporarily suspended his fear.

  He looked up at the circle of gods now staring at him in surprise. Only Ethel seemed unmoved, her face serene as always.

  ‘Of cheating Death the legacy,’ quoted Loki, with a smile. ‘Of course. I see now. Cheating Death. You pushed her to this, Seeress. You cheated Death. You pushed Hel into breaking her word, using me as bait. Did you plan this from the start? Did you know this would happen?’

  Ethel shrugged. ‘Hel’s always had a bit of a moral blind spot where you were concerned. I wonder why.’

  Now Hel’s living features were dark with rage. Even her dead side looked angry. It occurred to her that the only time she ever felt rage was when the Trickster was around. How could he have cheated Death? What could be protecting him?

  She focused her blind eye on Loki.

  There! How could she have missed it? Almost invisible around his wrist, something glittered. A golden chain. Hel had been too preoccupied with gloating over her enemy to notice the chain, or the little charm that dangled from it – a gleaming golden acorn. Now her all-seeing dead eye registered its significance, and she ground her teeth together in wrath as she saw the Wedlock.