Runemarks Read online

  “In yer own time,” said the goblin, picking his teeth.

  “Shh,” said Maddy. “I’m thinking.”

  The goblin yawned. He was beginning to look quite cocky now, and his bright gold eyes shone with mischief. “Doesn’t know what to do with me, kennet?” he said. “Knows it’ll bring revenge if I don’t get home safe.”

  “Revenge? Who from?”

  “The Captain, acourse,” said the goblin. “Gods, was you brung up in a box? Now you let me go, there’s a good girl, and there’ll be no hard feelings and no call to get the Captain involved.”

  Maddy smiled but said nothing.

  “Ah, come on,” said the goblin, looking uncomfortable now. “There’s no good in keeping me here, and nowt I can give yer.”

  “Oh, but there is,” said Maddy, sitting down cross-legged on the floor. “You can give me your name.”

  The goblin stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “A named thing is a tamed thing. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

  It was an old story, told by One-Eye years ago, and Maddy had almost forgotten it in the excitement of the moment. At the beginning of the First Age, it was given to every creature, tree, rock, and plant a secret name that would bind that creature to the will of anyone who knew it.

  Mother Frigg knew the true names and used them to make all of Creation weep for the return of her dead son. But Loki, who had many names, would not be bound to such a spell, and so Balder the Fair, god of springtime, was forced to remain in the Underworld, Hel’s kingdom, until the End of All Things.

  “Me name?” the goblin said at last.

  Maddy nodded.

  “What’s a name? Call me Hair-of-the-Dog, or Whisky-in-the-Jar, or Three-Sheets-to-the-Wind. It’s nowt to me.”

  “Your true name,” said Maddy, and once more she drew the rune Naudr, the Binder, and Isa, to fix it in ice.

  The goblin wriggled but was held fast. “What’s it to you, anyroad?” he demanded. “And how come you know so bloody much about it?”

  “Just tell me,” said Maddy.

  “You’d never be able to say it,” he said.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “I won’t! Lemme go!”

  “I will,” said Maddy, “as soon as you tell me. Otherwise I’ll open up the cellar doors and let the sun do its worst.”

  The goblin blenched at that, for sunlight is lethal to the Good Folk. “You wouldn’t do that, lady, would yer?” he whined.

  “Watch me,” said Maddy, and, standing up, she began to make her way to the trapdoor—now closed—through which the ale kegs were delivered.

  “You wouldn’t!” squeaked the goblin.

  “Your name,” she said, with one hand on the latch.

  The goblin struggled more fiercely than ever, but Maddy’s runes still held him fast. “He’ll get yer!” he squeaked. “The Captain’ll get yer, and then you’ll be sorry!”

  “Last chance,” said Maddy, drawing the bolt. A tiny wand of sunlight fell onto the cellar floor only inches from the goblin’s foot.

  “Shut it, shut it!” shrieked the goblin.

  Maddy just waited patiently.

  “All right, then! All right! It’s…” The goblin rattled off something in his own language, fast as pebbles in a gourd. “Now shut it, shut it now!” he cried, and wriggled as far as he could away from the spike of sunlight.

  Maddy shut the trapdoor, and the goblin gave a sigh of relief. “That was just narsty,” he said. “Nice young girl like you shouldn’t be messin’ with narstiness like that.” He looked at Maddy in reproach. “What d’you want me name for, anyroad?”

  But Maddy was trying to remember the word the goblin had spoken.

  Snotrag? No, that wasn’t it.

  Sna-raggy? No, that wasn’t it, either.

  Sma-ricky? She frowned, searching for just the right inflection, knowing that the goblin would try to distract her, knowing that unless she got it completely right, the cantrip wouldn’t work.

  “Smá—”

  “Call me Smutkin, call me Smudgett.” The goblin was babbling now, trying to break Maddy’s cantrip with one of his own. “Call me Spider, Slyme, and Sluggitt. Call me Sleekitt, call me Slow—”

  “Quiet!” said Maddy. The word was on the tip of her tongue.

  “Say it, then.”

  “I will.” If only the creature would stop talking…

  “Forgot it, hast yer!” There was a note of triumph in the goblin’s voice. “Forgot it, forgot it, forgot it!”

  Maddy could feel her concentration slipping. It was all too much to do at once; she could not hope to keep the goblin subdued and make the effort to remember the cantrip that would bind him to her will. Already Naudr and Isa were close to failing. The goblin had one foot almost free, and his eyes snapped with malice as he worked to release the other.

  It was now or never. Dropping the runes, Maddy turned all her will toward speaking the creature’s true name.

  “Smá-rakki—” It felt right—fast and percussive—but even as she opened her mouth, the goblin shot out of the corner like a cork from a bottle, and before she had even finished speaking, he was halfway into the cellar wall, burrowing as if his life depended on it.

  If Maddy had paused to think at this point, she would simply have ordered the goblin to stop. If she had spoken the name correctly, then he would have been forced to obey her, and she could have questioned him at leisure. But Maddy didn’t pause to think. She saw the goblin’s feet vanishing into the ground and shouted something—not even a cantrip—while at the same time casting Thuris, Thor’s rune, as hard as she could at the mouth of the burrow.

  It felt like throwing a firework. It snapped against the brick-lined floor, throwing up a shower of sparks and a small but pungent cloud of smoke.

  For a second or two nothing happened. Then there came a low rumble from under Maddy’s feet, and from the burrow came a swearing and a kicking and a scuffle of earth, as if something inside had come up against a sudden obstacle.

  Maddy knelt down and reached inside the hole. She could hear the goblin cursing, too far away for her to reach, and now there was another sound, a kind of sliding, squealing, pattering noise that Maddy almost recognized…

  The goblin’s voice was muffled but urgent. “Now look what you’ve gone and done. Gog and Magog, let me out!” There came another desperate scuffling of earth, and the creature reversed out of the hole at speed, falling over its feet and coming to a halt against a stack of empty barrels, which fell over with a clatter loud enough (Maddy thought) to wake the Seven Sleepers from their beds.

  “What happened?” she said.

  But before the goblin could make his reply, something shot out of the hole in the wall. Several somethings, in fact; no, dozens—no, hundreds—of fat, brown, fast-moving somethings, swarming from the burrow like—

  “Rats!” exclaimed Maddy, gathering her skirt around her ankles.

  The goblin looked at her with scorn. “Well, what did you think would happen?” he said. “Cast that kind of glam at World Below, and before you know it, you’re knee-deep in bilge and vermin.”

  Maddy stared at the hole in dismay. She had intended to summon only the goblin, but the cry—and that fast-flung rune—had apparently summoned everything within her range. Now not only rats, but beetles, spiders, wood lice, centipedes, whirligigs, earwigs, and maggots squirted horribly out of the hole, along with a generous outpouring of foul water (possibly from a broken drain), to form a kind of verminous brew that poured and wriggled at alarming speed out of the burrow and across the floor.

  And then, just when she was sure that nothing worse could possibly happen, there came the sound of a door opening above-stairs, and a high and slightly nasal voice came to Maddy from the kitchen.

  “Hey, madam! You going to stay down there all morning, or what?”

  “Oh, gods.” It was Mrs. Scattergood.

  The goblin shot Maddy a cheery wink.

  “Did you hear me?” said Mrs
. Scattergood. “There’s pots to wash up here—or am I supposed to do them an’ all?”

  “In a minute!” called Maddy in haste, taking refuge on the cellar steps. “Just…sorting out a few things down here!”

  “Well, now you can come and finish things off up here,” said Mrs. Scattergood. “Come up right now and see to them pots. And if that one-eyed scally good-for-nowt comes round again, you can tell him from me to shove off!”

  Maddy’s heart leaped into her mouth. That one-eyed scally good-for-nowt—that must mean her old friend was back, after more than twelve months of wandering, and no amount of rats and cockroaches—or even goblins—was going to keep her from seeing him. “He was here?” she said, taking the cellar steps at a run. “One-Eye was here?” She emerged breathless into the kitchen.

  “Aye.” Mrs. Scattergood handed her a tea towel. “Though I dunno what there is in that to look so pleased about. I’d have thought that you, of all people—” She stopped and cocked her head to listen. “What’s that noise?” she said sharply.

  Maddy closed the cellar door. “It’s nothing, Mrs. Scattergood.”

  The landlady gave her a suspicious look. “What about them rats?” she said. “Did you fix it right this time?”

  “I need to see him,” Maddy said.

  “Who? The one-eyed scallyman?”

  “Please,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  Mrs. Scattergood pursed her lips. “Not on my penny, you won’t,” she said. “I’m not paying you good money to go gallivanting around with thieves and beggars—”

  “One-Eye isn’t a thief,” said Maddy.

  “Don’t you start giving yourself airs, madam,” said Mrs. Scattergood. “Laws knows you can’t help the way you’re made, but you might at least make an effort. For your father’s sake, you might, and for the memory of your sainted mother.” She paused for breath for less than a second. “And you can take that look off your face. Anyone would think you were proud to be a—”

  And then she stopped, openmouthed, as a sound came from behind the cellar door. It was, thought Mrs. Scattergood, a peculiar kind of scuttling noise, punctuated by the occasional thud. It made her feel quite uncomfortable—as if there might be something more down in that cellar than barrels of ale. And what was that distant sloshing sound, like wash day at the river?

  “Oh my Laws, what have you done?” Mrs. Scattergood made for the cellar door.

  Maddy put herself in front of it, and with one hand she traced the shape of Naudr against the latch. “Don’t go down there, please,” she said.

  Mrs. Scattergood tried the latch, but the runesign held it fast. She turned to glare at Maddy, her fierce little teeth bared like a ferret’s. “You open this door right now,” she said.

  “You really, really don’t want me to.”

  “You open this door, Maddy Smith, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Maddy tried once more to protest, but Mrs. Scattergood was unstoppable. “I’ll wager you’ve got that scally down there, helping himself to my best ale. Well, you just open this door, girl, or I’ll have Matt Law down here to take you both to the roundhouse!”

  Maddy sighed. It wasn’t that she liked working at the inn, but a job was a job, and a shilling a shilling, and neither was likely to be forthcoming as soon as Mrs. Scattergood looked into the cellar. In an hour or so the spell would wear off, and the creatures would crawl back into their hole. Then she could seal it up again, sweep up the mess, mop up the water…

  “Let me explain,” she tried again.

  But Mrs. Scattergood was beyond explanations. Her face had flushed a dangerous red, and her voice was almost as shrill as a rat’s. “Adam!” she shrieked. “Get in here right now!”

  Adam was Mrs. Scattergood’s son. He and Maddy had always hated each other, and it was the thought of his sneering, gleeful face—and that of her long-absent friend, known in some circles as the one-eyed scallyman—that finally made up her mind.

  “You’re sure it was One-Eye?” she said at last.

  “Of course it was! Now open this—”

  “All right,” said Maddy, and reversed the rune. “But if I were you, I’d give it an hour.”

  And at that she turned and fled, and was already on the road to Red Horse Hill by the time the shrill, distant screaming began, emerging like smoke from the Seven Sleepers’ kitchen and rising above slumbering Malbry village to vanish into the morning air.

  2

  Malbry was a village of some eight hundred souls. A quiet place, or so it seemed, set between mountain ridges in the valley of the river Strond, which flowed from the Wilderlands in the north through the Uplands and the Inlands before finally making its way south toward World’s End and into the One Sea.

  The mountains—called the Seven Sleepers, though no one remembered exactly why—were bitter and snow-cloaked all year round, and there was only one pass, the Hindarfell, which was blocked by snow three months of the year. This remoteness affected the valley folk: they kept to themselves, were suspicious of strangers, and (but for Nat Parson, who had once made a pilgrimage as far as World’s End and who considered himself quite the traveler) had little to do with the world outside.

  There were a dozen little settlements in the valley, from Farnley Tyas at the foot of the mountains to Pease Green at the far side of Little Bear Wood. But Malbry was the biggest and the most important. It housed the valley’s only parson, the largest church, the best inns, and the wealthiest farmers. Its houses were built of stone, not wood; there was a smithy, a glassworks, a covered market. Its inhabitants thought themselves better than most and looked down on the folk of Pog Hill or Fettlefields and laughed in secret at their country ways. The only thorn in Malbry’s side stood roughly two miles from the village. The locals called it Red Horse Hill, and most folk avoided it because of the tales that collected there and the goblins who lived beneath its flanks.

  Once, it was said, there had been a castle on the Hill. Malbry itself had been part of its fiefdom, growing crops for the lord of that land—but all that had been a long time ago, before Tribulation and the End of the World. Nowadays there was nothing to see: only a few standing stones, too large to have been looted from the ruins, and, of course, the Red Horse cut into the clay.

  It had long been known as a goblin stronghold. Such places drew them, the villagers said, lured them with promises of treasure and tales of the Elder Age. But it was only in recent years that the Good Folk had ventured as far as the village.

  Fourteen years, to be precise, which was exactly when Jed Smith’s pretty wife, Julia, had died giving birth to their second daughter. Few doubted that the two things were linked or that the rust-colored mark on the palm of the child’s hand was the sign of some dreadful misfortune to come.

  And so it was. From that day forth, that Harvestmonth, the goblins had been drawn to the blacksmith’s child. The midwife had seen them, so she said, perched on the baby’s pinewood crib, or grinning from inside the warming pan, or tumbling the blankets. At first the rumors were scarcely voiced. Nan Fey was mad, just like her old grandam, and it was best to take anything she said with a dose of salt. But as time passed and goblin sightings were reported by such respectable sources as the parson, his wife, Ethelberta, and even Torval Bishop from over the pass, the rumors grew and soon everyone was wondering how the Smiths, of all people—the Smiths, who never dreamed, went to church every day, and would no more have flung themselves into the river Strond than truckle with the Good Folk—could have given birth to two so very different daughters.

  Mae Smith, with her cowslip curls, was widely held to be the prettiest and least imaginative girl in the valley. Jed Smith said she was the image of her poor mother, and it almost broke his heart to see her so, though he smiled when he said it, and his eyes were like stars.

  But Maddy was dark, just like an Outlander, and there was no light in Jed’s eyes when he looked at her, only an odd kind of measuring look, as if he were weighing Maddy against her dead mot
her and finding that he had been sold short.

  Jed Smith was not the only one to think so. As she grew older, Maddy discovered that she had disappointed almost everyone. An awkward girl with a sullen mouth, a curtain of hair, and a tendency to slouch, she had neither Mae’s sweet nature nor her sweet face. Her eyes were rather beautiful, halfway between gray and gold, but few people ever noticed this, and it was widely believed that Maddy Smith was ugly, a troublemaker, too clever for her own good, too stubborn—or too slack—to change.

  Of course folk agreed that it was not her fault she was so brown or her sister so pretty, but a smile costs nothing, as the saying goes, and if only the girl had made an effort once in a while, or even showed a little gratitude for all the help and free advice she had been given, then maybe she would have settled down.

  But she did not. From the beginning Maddy was wild: never laughed, never cried, never brushed her hair, fought with Adam Scattergood and broke his nose, and, if that wasn’t already bad enough, showed signs of being clever—disastrous in a girl—with a tongue on her that could be downright rude.

  No one mentioned the ruinmark, of course. In fact, for the first seven years of her life no one had even explained to Maddy what it meant, though Mae pulled faces and called it your blemish and was surprised when Maddy refused to wear the mittens sent to her father by the village’s charitable—and ever-hopeful—widows.

  Someone needed to put things straight with the girl, and at last Nat Parson accepted the unpleasant duty of telling her the facts. Maddy didn’t understand much of it, littered as it was with quotes from the Good Book, but she understood his contempt—and behind it, his fear. It was all written down in the Book of Tribulation: how after the battle the old gods—the Seer-folk of that time—had been cast into Netherworld, but how in dreams they still endured, fragmented but still dangerous, entering the minds of the wicked and the susceptible, trying desperately to be reborn…

  “And so their demon blood lives on,” had said the parson, “passed from man to woman, beast to beast. And here you are, by no fault of your own, and as long as you say your prayers and remember your place, there’s no reason why you should not lead as worthwhile a life as any of the rest of us and earn forgiveness at the hand of the Nameless.”