Runelight Read online

  After that, as everyone knew, there was nobbut one step to Last Days. As the gods converged on World’s End, it was told that Three Riders would come into the Worlds, three Riders on three Horses – red for the fires of World Below, black for the depths of the One Sea, and white for the clouds of the Firmament – and they would conquer the Nine Worlds, and Asgard would belong to them:

  And there shall come a Horse of Fire,

  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.

  And there shall come a Horse of Air,

  And the name of his Rider is Lunacy …

  And now Nan Fey laughed aloud. For years folk had mocked her visions, calling her crazy and lunatic and saying she had her head in the clouds. Well, very soon she would show them all. They would see who was crazy. Nan Fey would ride the Horse of Air to the Bridge across the Firmament, and the mark with which Nan had been born – a broken, reversed form of the rune Fé – would become a glam of the New Script, complete and full of power.

  Meanwhile, so the Auld Man said, all Nan had to do was dream. And so she went back into her cottage and sat down on her narrow bed – the same box cot she had used as a girl, when she was Nancy Wickerman, the basket-maker’s daughter – and folded her hands like faded petals across the bosom of her dress, and waited for Dream to take her into the clouds and over the moon and across the Sea to Asgard.

  There was an old lady so mad, they say,

  That she flew through the air in a basket.

  She flew to the Land of Roast Beef

  With brandy in a flaskit.

  Into the clouds and over the Moon and into

  the Land of the Seer-oh

  Where the Faëries play all the livelong day

  and the oceans are made of beer-oh!

  Ancient Ridings nursery rhyme

  ‘OH, PLEASE,’ SAID Loki impatiently. ‘If I hear another nursery rhyme, or folk song, or Faërie story, or amusing anecdote from the everyday lives of the newly reborn, I swear I’m going to kill myself.’

  Sigyn put down her lute and shrugged. ‘Well, I think you’re very ungrateful,’ she said. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t want me here.’

  Loki looked down at his left wrist, where Eh, in the form of a fine gold chain, sparkled and glimmered harmlessly. At first he’d tried to break it, but in vain; his wrist was scored with angry marks. Changing to bird form hadn’t helped; even in his Fiery Aspect the Wedlock rune still held him fast, and hours later he’d had to accept the fact that escape was impossible.

  Worse still was the fact that Sigyn was happy. Nothing Loki could say or do seemed to have any lasting effect on her. She remained implacably cheerful in the face of his initial rage, then his persistent rudeness and finally his silent resentment, plying him with food and drink and trying to keep him entertained with stories and songs of her homeland.

  Sigyn had rather a pretty voice, and, as well as the lute, could play both the harp and the mandolin. With glamours she had managed to transform the cave into an airy boudoir, with silken drapes and vases of flowers and dishes of sweetmeats on every surface, but so far her efforts had borne no fruit, and Loki seemed as bored and uncooperative as ever.

  ‘I don’t want you here,’ he told her now. ‘Go away and leave me alone.’

  Sigyn smiled uncertainly. ‘Now you know that isn’t true. It’s just that you’re tired and cranky. Let me fix you something to eat, and then I’ll sing you a lullaby—’

  ‘I don’t want a lullaby,’ he snapped. ‘And I – am – not – getting – cranky!’

  Sigyn shrugged and turned away. ‘I don’t see why you have to be so mean,’ she said, with a tremor in her voice. ‘I was going to make you a feather bed, with down pillows and satin sheets. I was going to bring you hot spiced wine, and rose-petal candies, and honey cake. I would have sung you my sweetest songs, even slept on the floor if you’d wanted me to …’ Now her eyes were swimming with tears and her mouth had thinned to a stubborn line. ‘And for all the affection you show in return, I might as well be a poisonous snake. Well, if that’s the way you want it …’

  She forked a little sign with her hand, and suddenly the Wedlock became a set of manacles linked to a chain so heavy that Loki fell to his knees. At the same moment, the shimmering outline of something long and sinuous appeared in the air above him, like something behind a silk screen. A distant tearing sound accompanied it.

  Loki had heard that sound before, at the gates of Netherworld, and once again on Red Horse Hill. The fabric of Worlds seemed to stretch and yawn, and Loki suddenly realized that the powers of Eh, the Wedlock, extended to far more than glamours.

  ‘Er … hang on a minute,’ said Loki, pinned to the ground by the weight of the chain.

  Sigyn pretended not to hear. She forked another sign with her hand, and now Loki saw something like a snake’s head pressed against the troubled air like a child’s hand pressing against a balloon. It gleamed with a sickly soap-bubble sheen, acquiring substance as he watched.

  ‘Sigyn, sweetheart …’

  She looked at him. ‘Well?’

  ‘You’ve got this all wrong,’ Loki said. ‘Of course I appreciate all you’ve done. And – yeah, maybe …’ He gritted his teeth. ‘Maybe I was kinda cranky.’

  Sigyn’s expression softened again. The manacles dropped from Loki’s wrists, once more becoming a fine gold chain. The bubble (with the snake inside, like a worm in a dead man’s eye) winked out of existence.

  Loki took a deep breath. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ he said.

  ‘Do what?’ said Sigyn.

  ‘You know – the – ah …’

  Sigyn ignored him. ‘Rose-petal candy?’ She held out the dish. It was made of pink porcelain, and had popped into existence just as quickly and effortlessly as the snake had popped out of it.

  ‘Ah – yes. That would be nice.’ Loki took a sugared rose and put it cautiously into his mouth, trying not to think of the fact that Sigyn, in her present mood, could probably turn it into a cockroach, or a stone, or a razor-blade …

  ‘Delicious,’ he said, forcing a smile.

  ‘I know they’re your favourites,’ Sigyn said. ‘And now …’ she went on, and began to sing:

  ‘There was an old lady so mad, they say,

  That she flew through the air in a basket.

  She flew to the Land of Roast Beef

  With brandy in a flaskit …’

  NAN FEY ALSO knew the old rhymes. There were stories hidden in all of them – tales of the Seer-folk and their time masquerading as nonsense as the years rewrote the language, subtly twisting and turning it so that solemn invocations, rumours of plague, and prophecies and heroes and lovers and generals and gods were turned at last into skipping songs and rock-a-byes; even when their histories had been outlawed by the Order, the words of the Seer-folk had remained in the mouths and hearts of children.

  Young Nancy Wickerman had been a collector of skipping songs and nursery rhymes since she was nobbut a bairn, and now, grown old and mad (so they said), she realized that even at their most nonsensical, those words had a curious power.

  The Land of Roast Beef, for instance. Absurd as it undoubtedly was, Nan had heard it mentioned in many a tale – a place where natural laws did not apply; where ordinary folk might fly through the air, and clouds were the manes of horses that galloped across the summer sky. According to legend, the Land of Roast Beef was a place where food never ran short and ale was always plentiful, where Death was banished for ever, and from which the fortress of the Seer-folk, the legendary Sky Citadel of old, appeared as a castle in the sky, every brick and roof-tile all agleam with enchantment.

  Folk of Malbry now identified this mythical land as a romanticized version of World’s End, but Nan believed there was more to the old tales than a rustic’s dream of the Universal City. The Auld Man had already told her as much; the Auld Man who came to her in dreams. Ac
cording to all the old tales, the Sky Citadel had been linked to World’s End by a fabulous Bridge, a construction of glamours and ephemera, born of Chaos, but serving the gods, and visible to the human eye only when sunshine and rain combined. It was this bridge, the Auld Man said, that still existed in children’s rhymes, its true name – Bif-rost – reversed and corrupted, like Nan’s own rune, and hidden away for five hundred years, forgotten until the End of the World.

  But now the End of the World was nigh. The time had come for Crazy Nan Fey. Already two of the three Riders of the prophecy were on their way to World’s End. The third still lacked a steed, of course – but Crazy Nan was not perturbed by trivial details such as this. She owned a number of baskets, one of them a wicker washbasket of more than comfortable size – certainly generous enough to take one old lady and any amount of brandy.

  Nan liked brandy, especially when the weather was cold. She made it from apples in summertime, and when the dark months came around, she fancied she could taste the sun in every single mouthful. And dreaming, of course, came easier when Nan had taken a sip or two – which made it all the more crucial as serious dreaming was required. And now she opened her bright old eyes and reached for the bottle beside her bed, and tasted the sunny days of old, and felt the magic of summers past lighten her feet and fingertips.

  Into the clouds and over the Moon and into the Land of the Seer-oh, thought Nan and, refreshed, stood up and went to find the big old wicker washbasket. According to the song, she knew, that was the way to reach the clouds, and crazy or not, Nan Fey meant to reach them, and ride her Horse of Air through the sky all the way to Bif-rost.

  The basket was rather dusty, she found, having been kept in the cellar. Still, the wind would take care of that. Nan pulled it into the kitchen and very carefully stepped inside. The bottle of brandy in her apron pocket made a comforting sloshing sound. She was wearing her warmest goat-hair shawl (it might be cold in the mountains), and the bonnet she got out for funerals. She closed her eyes and settled herself; the dry wicker creaked and complained at her weight. Her heart was beating fit to burst; excitement made her feverish. She took another sip of brandy – to calm her nerves, Nan told herself – and waited for the basket to rise.

  Nothing happened. She took another sip.

  Still the basket did not rise.

  Crazy Nan began to feel a little foolish, sitting in the washing basket in her shawl and bonnet, waiting to be swept off to the Land of Roast Beef – a little foolish, and a little mad. Perhaps the Folk were right, after all – perhaps she really was crazy. She was tempted to open her eyes, just once, to see if anyone was watching. But the Auld Man had told her what to do, and Nan was not about to disobey. She screwed her eyes shut and thought of Dream, and this time she thought she felt something shift and grate on the floor beneath her. Her head swam from the brandy, but she kept her eyes resolutely closed. Meanwhile the sensation of movement increased, so that now it felt like the rocking horse that Nancy had had as a small child, a wooden horse she’d named Epona, which her father had thrown onto the fire when Nancy began to talk to it, telling it stories, pretending to fly …

  It had been over seventy years since Nan had thought of Epona. Now the image of her returned, and Nan rejoiced at the memory. That had been a good time, she thought; a time when even a broken ruinmark could catch the eye of a General. Nan had been young in those days, strong as a mountain pony and keen; longing to serve the General, to learn from him, to help his plan. He could have asked her anything. She would have ventured below the Hill. She would have brought him the Whisperer. She would have tackled the Order itself, if only he had said the word. But that broken ruinmark of hers was too scanty for his purpose, and time had passed, her youth had flown, and Odin had never made use of her.

  Then Maddy Smith had come along; Maddy, with her ruinmark. Special from the first day – a brighter star than the General himself. At first Nan had tried to be friends with the girl, teaching her songs and stories. But Odin One-Eye had taken her. Worse still, he had given her what Nancy had longed for all her life, leaving Nan to fend for herself while the Æsir reclaimed their birthright.

  But then the Auld Man had come to her, promising salvation. Youth, her health, a glam of her own; the return of everything she had lost in the course of a wasted lifetime. What more could she hope for? The Æsir had lost their General; the Vanir were weak and dispersed. The Order had been annihilated. Runes – be they old or new – had proved themselves inadequate in the face of the threat from Netherworld, the rift between Worlds that reduced all things to a blanket of ash and cinders.

  But the Auld Man could fix all that. He was, after all, an oracle. And when the Bridge had been rebuilt and the rift in Netherworld mended, all accounts would be cleared at last and balance would return to the Worlds.

  Nan opened one eye. She was dreaming, she knew; it explained that sensation of flying. And as she looked around now, she saw that the snowy ground was far below, and that the wicker washbasket was riding on top of a broad-backed cloud, with a mane all silvered with moonlight that stretched out across half the sky, and an underbelly that was swollen with rain …

  Epona, thought Nan. The Horse of Air …

  From the shadow of the Seven Sleepers, Loki looked up into a sky that was crazed with cold midwinter stars, and for a moment he saw her, riding high, shining in the moonlight, with a trail of glam streaming after her like the tail end of a comet, and said to himself, What the Hel was that? and fingered the chain around his wrist.

  And in World’s End the final piece of an intricate plan now fell into place and the Rider whose name was Lunacy (still tucked into her washing basket) rode Epona to the Land of Roast Beef, where the Auld Man was waiting for her.

  IN WORLD’S END, Maggie too was about to enter the realm of Dream. But this time, on Sleipnir, she had no need to sleep, but could reach the source of Dream directly, consciously, in her own Aspect. This time she was not afraid. Dream was no longer a threat to her, but a shining path that led to the Old Man; to victory over her enemies; and to Adam’s release from servitude.

  There was only one small problem. Outside of dreams, Maggie Rede had never actually ridden a horse. And the strawberry roan in the stall by her side, feeding placidly from a bale of hay, looked alarmingly big to her now that she came to mount him.

  ‘Do I have to do this now?’ Maggie appealed to Adam.

  Adam nodded. ‘Our time is short. The sooner we find it, the better.’

  Once more Maggie eyed the Horse. He looked just like any other horse – that is, until she peered at him through the circle of her finger and thumb, and saw the blaze of his signature and the runes that shone from his harness. In Dream, would he take on his true Aspect again – that flaming half-horse, half-spider that had dragged itself out of the Hill? And, assuming she found the Old Man, what then? What was the Magister’s plan?

  The Book of Apocalypse spoke of war; but although Maggie trusted Adam implicitly, she still did not quite trust his passenger. There were too many unanswered questions that it still refused to answer. What exactly did it want? What power did it hold over Adam? What – or who – was the Old Man? And what about the girl from her dream, who Adam had said was her sister?

  Her sister. The thought still came as a shock. For three whole years Maggie Rede had thought herself alone in the world, and the news that she still had a family filled her with confusion. She had never been close to her brothers; had never had sisters to talk to. Donal Rede had been proud of his sons, indifferent to his daughter; Susan, who had longed for a girl who liked pretty clothes and needlework, had found Maggie something of a disappointment. Now Maggie knew why. She had never been a Rede. She had been a cuckoo in their homely little nest, while somewhere else, her real tribe had been fighting the Order, bringing the plague, releasing demons from Netherworld and generally seeking to undermine everything she stood for …

  Unless, of course, she stopped them. That was her destiny, Adam had said. To b
uild a better world, he said. To claim it for the powers of good. The Order was gone. World’s End was in disarray. Maggie alone stood between the Æsir and their citadel. But with Sleipnir, the Word and the Old Man, she could still hope to challenge them; to thwart their plans; to rid the Worlds of Chaos for good, to put an end to Tribulation once and for all.

  But the Chaos that was in her blood spoke of possibilities. What if war wasn’t the only way to end the conflict and heal the Worlds? If Dream could be used for good and evil, why couldn’t Chaos do the same? And if so, couldn’t she find a way to make peace with the Firefolk?

  These were the thoughts in Maggie’s mind as she hoisted herself onto Sleipnir’s back. Troubled, uneasy, heady thoughts, filled with contra dictions.

  She looked at Adam.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Now tell him where you want to go. My master will guide you the rest of the way.’

  Maggie glanced nervously down at the Horse. He seemed calm enough for the moment; in fact, he might almost be sleeping. There was no saddle on his back, but she kept one hand on the reins and fastened the other into his mane. In her mind, the Magister was a light and tentative presence.

  ‘No more tricks,’ she told it. ‘Try anything like you did last time—’

  No tricks, Maggie, it said. Trust Me. We’re on the same side.

  She turned her attention back to the Horse, who had made no move since she mounted him. ‘I want you to find the Old Man,’ she said, as boldly as she could.

  Sleipnir opened one eye.

  Good, said the Voice in her mind.

  And with that, the air trembled in front of them, there came a blaze of runelight, the Horse took a single step forward, and the three of them slipped away into Dream.