Hel half smiled. “As you say,” she said, and dismissed the feast—and then just as suddenly it was there: a bone white palace straddling the desert, spires and turrets and gargoyles and minarets and skeleton outcrops of Gothic and neo-Gothic architecture with flying buttresses and fleurs-de-lis and rows of bishops, priests, Examiners, cardinals, shamans, mystics, prophets, witch doctors, soothsayers, Magisters, saviors, demigods, and popes standing in their niches along the facade.
“Nice,” said Loki.
Hel led the way.
Maddy had never seen such a place as this, not even in dreams. Of course, she was aware that none of it was quite real—that is, assuming the word real had any meaning so close to the shores of Dream. But it was impressive: long white walkways of cool alabaster, ivory hangings, intricate vaulting, tapestries faded almost to transparency, and fluted columns of delicate glass. They passed through silent halls of stone, through mirrored rooms as pale as ice, through chambers in which dead princesses waltzed alone, through funeral chapels and deserted hallways soft with dust.
“She’s your daughter?” whispered Maddy as they went.
Loki nodded. He seemed unconcerned, though Maddy guessed that he was playing a game. And a dangerous one, she told herself; there was clearly no love lost between Hel and her father.
“I wasn’t much of a parent,” he said. “Then again, neither was her mother. Quite mad, but alluring—like all demons—though in the end we should never have had children. Too much Chaos in both of us. Hel’s actually pretty normal-looking compared to the rest of the clan. Aren’t you, Hel?”
Hel did not reply, though her living shoulder stiffened in rage. Maddy wondered anxiously whether it was entirely wise for Loki to bait Hel on her own ground, but the Trickster did not seem worried.
“Do you know, Loki,” said Hel, stopping abruptly, “I’ve been trying to work you out. This is my realm, the realm of the dead. In it, I am all-powerful; what comes here belongs to me. And yet here you are, unarmed and unprotected. You seem very sure I’ll let you live.”
Loki looked amused. “What makes you think I’m unprotected?”
Hel raised an eyebrow. “Don’t bullshit me, Trickster,” she said. “You’re alone.”
“Quite alone,” agreed Loki comfortably.
“What exactly do you want?”
Loki smiled. “An hour,” he said.
“An hour?” said Hel.
“In Netherworld.”
Hel’s other eyebrow went up. “Netherworld?” she said. “I suppose you mean Dream?”
Loki shook his head. “I mean Netherworld,” he said, still smiling. “More specifically, the Black Fortress.”
“I always knew you were mad,” said Hel. “You escaped, didn’t you? And you want to go back?”
“More importantly,” said Loki, “I want to be sure I can get out again.”
Hel’s eyebrows went down again. “Now that’s humor,” she said, straight-faced. “It’s almost worth waiting another five hundred years for the punch line.”
Loki shook his head impatiently. “Come on, Hel. I know you can do it. You can’t be so close to the Black Fortress for so many years without getting a few—let’s say, unauthorized insights about how it works.”
Hel gave a half smile. “Maybe so,” she said. “But it’s a dangerous game. Open the fortress, even for an hour, and who knows what might escape from there—into Dream, into Death, perhaps even into the Middle Worlds. Why should I do it? What’s in it for me?”
“One hour,” said Loki. “One hour inside. After that, I’m out of your hair, all debts paid, for ever and ever.”
Hel’s eyes narrowed. “Debts?” she said. Her rage seemed to freeze Maddy to the bone.
“Come on, Hel. You know you owe me.”
“Owe you what?”
Loki smiled. “Don’t be demure. It doesn’t suit you. How is Golden Boy these days, anyway? Still as charming? Still as beautiful? Still as dead?”
The bones of Hel’s dead hand ground audibly together.
Maddy looked anxiously at Loki.
“You’ll like this, Maddy,” he said, still grinning. “It’s a roller-coaster love story through space, death, and time. Boy meets girl—she loves him madly, but he doesn’t even notice her, being too busy charming the hel out of everyone he meets, and besides, she’s not what you’d call a looker, plus she lives in a bad part of town. So she makes a deal. I do her a little favor. She gets Golden Boy all to herself for a slice of eternity, and I get a favor in return. Which favor I’m calling in. Right here, right now.”
“You really are a bastard, Loki,” Hel said in a flat voice.
“I hate to be bitchy, sweetheart, but you weren’t exactly born in wedlock yourself.”
Hel sighed. She didn’t need to—she hadn’t actually breathed in centuries—but somehow Loki brought out the worst in her every time. Still, they’d had a deal, she’d sworn an oath, and an oath of any kind, however foolish, was sacred to one who lived and worked at the balancing point between Order and Chaos.
Bitterly she considered her oath. She’d been younger then (not that that was any excuse), inexperienced in the ways of World and Underworld. Blind enough and foolish enough to believe in love; arrogant enough to believe that she might be the exception to the rule.
And Balder was beautiful. The god of spring blossom; the golden-haired; the good, the kind, the pure in heart. Everybody loved him, but Hel, from her silent kingdom, longed for him most of all. She came to him at first in dreams, weaving her most seductive fantasies for his pleasure, but Balder recoiled, complaining of nightmares and troubled sleep, grew anxious, pale, and fearful, until Hel realized that he hated her as fiercely as he loved life itself, and her cold heart grew colder still as she planned how she could make him hers.
It takes a certain cunning to kill a god. Loki had it, arranged it so that the guilt fell on another, and when Mother Frigg reached out with her glamours, entreating the Nine Worlds to plead for Balder’s return, Loki alone did not beg, so that Balder remained forever at Hel’s side, a pale king to her dark queen.
But the victory was bitter. She’d dreamed of having Balder all to herself, had heard stories, in fact, of a previous Guardian of the Underworld who’d gained a similar prize by means of guile and a handful of pomegranate seeds. But Balder dead had none of the charm of Balder in life. Gone was his light step, his merry voice, the sunshine gleam of his golden hair. He was cold now, cold and expressionless, speaking only when conjured to do so, animated only by Hel’s own glamours. Dead was dead, it seemed, even for gods. And now she would have to pay the price.
“So,” Loki said. “Do we have a deal?”
For a timeless time Hel walked on in silence. They followed her through plague-white gates, through crypts and repositories of bone, across mosaics fashioned from human teeth and sepulchres vaulted with varnished skulls. They moved down, and here at last were the catacombs, stretching to infinity in every direction, festooned with the lace of a million spiders.
She paused along an avenue of stone; on either side there were archways, beneath which a multitude of narrow chambers lay.
“Don’t look,” said Loki quietly.
But Maddy couldn’t help it. The chambers were dark but lit as they passed, and inside Maddy saw the dead, some sitting, some standing, as they had in life, some with half-familiar faces turning toward the unaccustomed warmth, then turning away as the visitors passed, the chamber dimming once more into the murky half-light of Hel.
Hel gestured with her dead hand, and a chamber to the right of them brightened and lit. Within it Maddy saw two young men, both pale and red-haired and bearing such a strong resemblance to Loki that she caught her breath.
“They killed us,” said one of the pale young men. “They killed us both because of you.”
Hel’s half smile broadened to ghastly effect.
Loki said nothing, but averted his eyes.
They went on apace. Once more Hel raised her dea
d hand, and in a chamber to her left a sad-looking woman with soft brown hair turned her face toward the light.
“Loki,” she said. “I waited for you. I waited, but you never came.”
Loki said nothing, but his expression was unusually grim.
A few minutes later Hel stopped again, and in front of her, a chamber lit. Within it Maddy saw the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. His hair was gold, his eyes blue, and though he was pale with the colors of death, he seemed to shine like a fallen star.
“Balder,” said Loki. He made it sound like a curse somehow.
“I’m waiting for you,” Balder said. “There’s a place at my side for you, my friend. No man is clever enough to cheat Death, and I can wait—it won’t be long.”
Again Loki swore and turned away.
Hel smiled again. “Had enough?” she said.
Wordlessly Loki nodded.
“And what about you?” she said to Maddy. “Any old friends you’d like to see?”
Loki put his hand on Maddy’s arm. “Maddy, don’t look. Just keep on going.”
But Hel had already lifted her hand: another room lit, and inside it Maddy saw a woman with cowslip curls and a bearded man whose face was as familiar to her as her own.
“Father?” she said, taking a step.
“Ignore them. Ha’nts. Don’t talk to them.”
“But that was my—”
“I said, ignore them.”
But Maddy had taken another step. Shaking off Loki’s restraining hand, she made for the chamber, where Jed and Julia Smith sat side by side in a stillness that might have seemed companionable in anyone other than the dead. Jed looked up as she came in but with no curiosity, no welcome. He seemed to speak, lips moving silently in the semi-darkness, but no sound came but that of the wind and of the sifting dust.
“This is just glamour, right?” said Maddy in a small voice.
Hel gave her grisly half smile.
“But he can’t be dead. I saw him just a while ago.”
“I can make him speak to you,” suggested Hel in a silky voice. “I can even show you what happened, if you’d like.”
“Don’t,” said Loki tonelessly.
But Maddy could not look away from the room, now lit with an inviting glow. The folk inside were clearer now: Jed and Julia, their faces animated by the flickering light. She knew that they were not her real parents, and yet something inside her still longed for them—for the mother she had never known, for the man she had called Father for fourteen years. It made her feel suddenly very small, very insignificant, and for the first time since she and One-Eye had opened Red Horse Hill, Maddy found herself on the verge of tears.
“Was it my fault?” she said to the shade of Jed Smith. “Was it something I did that brought you here?”
“Leave her alone,” said Loki sharply. “Your business is with me, not her.”
Hel raised her living eyebrow. The chamber darkened; the ghosts disappeared.
“An hour,” said Loki in a harsh voice. “One hour inside. After which I swear you’ll never see me here again.”
Hel smiled. “Very well. I’ll give you an hour. Not a minute—not a second—more.”
“Do I have your oath?” Loki insisted.
“You have my oath, and furthermore, you have my promise—assuming you survive this latest antic of yours, which I doubt—that next time your path crosses mine, father or not, you’ll be a dead man. Understood?”
They shook on it, his living hand in her dead one. Then, with one dead finger, Hel drew a window in the air, and suddenly they were looking out over the river Dream, a vastness of water that no eye could hope to comprehend, wider than the One Sea and ten thousand times as turbulent. Islands dotted its surface like dancers in skirts of pale foam, rocks and skerries too many to count, treacherous sandbanks, cliffs that vanished into cloud, peaks and pinnacles and stovepipe stacks.
“Gods,” said Maddy. “There are so many…”
Loki shrugged. “The islands of Dream come and go,” he said. “They’re not designed to last for long. The fortress, however…”
Briefly he considered it—the Black Fortress of Netherworld, its head lost in a pile of cloud, its feet drowned ten fathoms deep. Its shape was uncertain: one moment a great castle barbed with turrets, the next a great pit with a fiery heart. Nothing keeps to a single Aspect so close to Chaos; this was part of what made the fortress impregnable. Doors and gateways came and went; that was why he needed Hel to keep the way open.
He did not doubt that she would do it. Hel’s oath was legendary—the balance of her realm depended on it—although he did not doubt her promise, either.
For a moment he thought of the Whisperer, its ancient cunning and its intent. Why had it wanted to come to Hel? What had he seen when their minds had crossed? What had he missed in his careful planning for the Oracle to seem so smug?
I see a meeting at Nether’s edge, of the wise and the not so wise.
Wise? In all his life the Trickster had never felt less so.
And now for the last time Hel raised her hand and sketched Naudr, reversed, across the newly created window. All at once Maddy could feel the wind on her face; she could hear the hishhh of the floodwater against the rocks, she could smell its ancient stench…
“You have an hour,” said Half-Born Hel. “I suggest you make the most of it.”
And at that she was gone, and her hall with her, and Loki and Maddy were standing on a rocky turret in the middle of the river Dream, with the Black Fortress of Netherworld gaping at their feet.
6
The Vanir had been gone more than an hour. Ethel Parson had watched them leave with a feeling of peculiar detachment and a sudden certainty that they were gone for good. She felt very strange, very calm, and sitting at her dressing table, looking into the mirror, she tried to make sense of what she had seen.
Over the past twenty-four hours Ethel had seen more than she had in her entire life up until that moment. She had seen gods in battle, women who were wild beasts, her husband possessed by an unholy spirit, her house invaded, her property requisitioned, her life left hanging by a thread.
She knew she should feel something. Fear, probably. Grief. Anxiety. Relief. Horror at the unnaturalness of it. But Ethelberta felt none of these. Instead she scrutinized her face in her dressing-table mirror. She was not in the habit of doing so often. But today she felt compelled to look—not out of vanity, but more out of curiosity, to see if she could find any visible sign of the change she felt within.
I feel different. I am different.
She had changed into a dress of plain brown flannel—not inexpensive, but not good enough to tempt the Faërie woman—and had washed and brushed her long hair. Her face was clean and free of rouge, which made her look younger; her eyes—unremarkable when compared with Freyja’s or Skadi’s—were a clear and thoughtful golden brown. She was not a beauty—but neither was she the same muffin-faced Ethel Goodchild who had almost ended up on the shelf in spite of all her father’s money.
How very strange, thought Ethel calmly. And how strange it was that the Gødfolk had healed her. Perhaps that made her unnatural too; marked, in some way, by their passing. Certainly she did not feel the revulsion she knew she ought to feel; instead she felt something like gratitude. Strangely like joy.
She was just about to go out, thinking that perhaps a morning walk would help to calm her spirits, when a knock came on the front door, and, opening it, she saw Dorian Scattergood, disheveled, wild-eyed, red-faced, and close to tears in his eagerness to tell his tale to someone—anyone—who might believe him.
He had run, he told her, all the way from Red Horse Hill. Lying low until he was sure it was safe, he had at last returned to find the dismembered bodies of Audun Briggs and Jed Smith lying beside the open Eye. Of the parson and Adam there was no sign, although he had seen the six Vanir moving fast along the Malbry road and had hidden under a hedge in a field until the demon folk passed by.
> “There was nothing I could do,” said Dorian wretchedly. “I ran—I hid…”
“Mr. Scattergood,” said Ethel firmly, “I think you’d better come in for a while. The servants are due at any moment, and I’m sure you could take a drink of tea to calm your nerves.”
Tea, thought Dorian in disgust. Nevertheless, he accepted, knowing that if anyone in Malbry was likely to believe him, Ethelberta would.
She did. Urging him on when he faltered, she took in the whole tale: the wolf woman, two murders, Nat’s possession by spirits unknown, the disappearance of Adam Scattergood.
When he had finished, she put down her teacup in its china saucer and added a little more hot water to the pot. “So where do you think my husband has gone?” she asked.
Dorian was puzzled. He’d expected tears, anger, perhaps some kind of hysterical outburst. He’d expected her to blame him for running away—certainly he blamed himself—and the need to confess it to someone had been a part of his reason for coming to the parsonage in the first place. Dorian had never had much time for Nat Parson, but that didn’t mean he should have abandoned him to his fate. The same was true of the others, he thought, and as for Adam—his own nephew, for Laws’ sakes—he was deeply ashamed at having run.
“They went into the Hill, lady,” he said at last. “No doubt about it. Your husband too. They were tracking someone—”
“The Smith girl,” said Ethel, pouring tea.
“Aye, and her friend. The one who escaped.”
Ethel nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m going after them, Mr. Scattergood.”
“After them?” Now he knew that she was mad. In a way it reassured him; her strange calm had begun to make him uneasy. “But, Mrs. Parson—”
“Listen to me,” said Ethel, interrupting. “Something happened to me today. Right here, in the courtyard. It was done in a flash, like a bolt from the blue. One moment alive, the next slipping away into darkness. I’ve seen things, you understand. Things you’d scarcely warrant, not even in dreams.”
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