Runemarks (5 page)

“I have no friends, Outlander,” she said. “Teach me.”

Now, One-Eye had no love for children. He looked down with no affection at all at the grubby little girl with the runemark on her hand and wondered how he could have let her draw him in. He was getting old—wasn’t that the truth?—old and sentimental, and it was likely to be the death of him—aye, as if the runes hadn’t already told him as much. His most recent casting of the runestones had given him
Madr,
the Folk, crossed with
Thuris,
the Thorny One, and finally
Hagall,
the Destroyer—

—and if that wasn’t a warning to keep moving on—

“Teach me,” said the little girl.

“Leave me alone.” He began to walk, long-legged, down the side of the Hill, with Maddy running after him.

“Teach me.”

“I won’t.”

“Teach me.”

“Get lost!”

“Teach me.”

“Ye
gods
!”

One-Eye made an exasperated sound and forked a runesign with his left hand. Maddy thought she saw something between his fingers—a fleck of blue fire, no more than a spark, as if a ring or gemstone he was wearing had caught the light. But One-Eye wore no rings or gems…

Without thinking, she raised her hand against the spark and
pushed
it back toward the Outlander with a sound like a firecracker going off.

One-Eye flinched. “Who taught you
that
?”

“No one did,” said Maddy in surprise. Her runemark felt unusually warm, once more changing color from rusty brown to tiger’s-eye gold.

For a minute or two One-Eye said nothing. He looked at his hand and flexed the fingers, now throbbing as if they had been burned. Then he looked at Maddy with renewed curiosity.

“Teach me,” she said.

There was a long pause. Then he said, “You’d better be good. I haven’t taken a pupil—let alone a girl—in more years than I care to remember.”

Maddy hid her grin beneath her tangled hair.

For the first time in her life, she had a teacher.

4

Over the next fortnight, Maddy listened to One-Eye’s teachings with a single-mindedness she had never shown before. Nat Parson had always made it clear that to be a bad-blood was a shameful thing, like being a cripple or a bastard. But here was this man telling her the exact opposite. She had
skills,
the Outlander told her, skills that were unique and valuable. She was an apt pupil, and One-Eye, who had come to the valley as a trader of medicines and salves and who rarely stayed anywhere for longer than a few days, this time extended his visit to almost a month as Maddy absorbed tales, maps, letters, cantrips, runes—every scrap of information her new friend gave her. It was the beginning of a long apprenticeship, and one that would change her world picture forever.

Now, Maddy’s folk believed in a universe of Nine Worlds.

Above them was the Firmament, the Sky City of Perfect Order.

Beneath them was the Fundament, or World Below, which led to the three lands of Death, Dream, and Damnation, which gave way to World Beyond, the Pan-daemonium, the home of all Chaos and all things profane.

And between them, so Maddy was taught, lay the Middle Worlds: Inland, Outland, and the One Sea, with Malbry and the valley of the Strond right at the center, like a bull’s-eye on a shooting target. From which you might have concluded that the folk of Malbry had no small opinion of themselves.

But now Maddy learned of a world beyond the map’s edge, a world of many parts and contradictions, a world in which Nat Parson or Adam Scattergood, for instance, might be driven to madness by as small a thing as a glimpse of ocean or an unfamiliar star.

In such a world, Maddy understood, one man’s religion might be another’s heresy, magic and science might overlap, houses might be built on rivers or underground or high in the air; even the Laws of the Order at World’s End, which she had always assumed were universal, might warp and bend to suit the customs of this new, expanded world.

Of course only a child or an idiot believed that World’s End actually
was
the end of the world. There
were
other lands, everyone knew that. Once there had even been trade with these lands—trade, and sometimes even war. But it was widely held that these Outlands had suffered so badly from Tribulation that their folk had long since fallen into savagery, and no one—no one
civilized
—went there anymore.

But, of course, One-Eye had. Beyond the One Sea, or so he said, there were men and women as brown as peat, with hair curled tight as bramble-crisp, and these people had never known Tribulation or read the Good Book, but instead worshiped gods of their own—wild brown gods with animal heads—and performed their own kind of magic, and all this was to them every bit as respectable and as everyday as Nat Parson’s Sunday sermons on the far side of the Middle World.

“Nat Parson says magic’s the devil’s work,” said Maddy.

“But I daresay he’d turn a blind eye if it suited him?”

Maddy nodded, hardly daring to smile.

“Understand, Maddy, that Good and Evil are not as firmly rooted as your churchman would have you believe. The Good Book preaches Order above all things; therefore Order is good. Glam works from Chaos; therefore magic is the devil’s work. But a tool is only as good or bad as the one working it. And what is good today may be evil again tomorrow.”

Maddy frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Listen,” said the Outlander. “Since the world began—and it has begun many times, and many times ended, and been remade—the laws of Order and Chaos have opposed each other, advancing and retreating in turn across the Nine Worlds, to contain or disrupt according to their nature. Good and Evil have nothing to do with it. Everything lives—and dies—according to the laws of Order and Chaos, the twin forces that even gods cannot hope to withstand.”

He looked at Maddy, who was still frowning. She was very young for this lesson, he thought, and yet it was essential that she should learn it now. Even next year might be too late—the Order was already spreading its wings, sending more and more Examiners out of World’s End…

He swallowed his impatience and started again. “Here’s a tale of the Æsir that will show you my drift. Their general was called Odin Allfather. You may have heard his name, I daresay.”

She nodded. “He of the spear and the eight-legged horse.”

“Aye. Well, he was among those who remade the world in the early days, at the dawn of the Elder Age. And he brought together all his warriors—Thor and Týr and the rest—to build a great stronghold to push back the Chaos that would have overwhelmed the new world before it was even completed. Its name was Asgard, the Sky Citadel, and it became the First World of those Elder Days.”

Maddy nodded. She knew the tale, though the Good Book claimed it was the Nameless that had built the Sky Citadel and that the Seer-folk had won it by trickery.

One-Eye went on. “But the enemy was strong, and many had skills that the Æsir did not possess. And so Odin took a risk. He sought out a son of Chaos and befriended him for the sake of his skills, and took him into Asgard as his brother. You’ll know of him, I guess. They called him the Trickster.”

Again Maddy nodded.

“Loki was his name, wildfire his nature. There are many tales about him. Some show him in an evil light. Some said that Odin was wrong to take him in. But—for a time, at least—Loki served the Æsir well. He was crooked, but he was useful; charm comes easily to the children of Chaos, and it was his charm and his cunning that kept him close at Odin’s side. And though in the end his nature grew too strong and he had to be subdued, it was partly because of Loki that the Æsir survived for as long as they did. Perhaps it was their fault for not keeping a closer watch on him. In any case, fire burns; that’s its nature, and you can’t expect to change that. You can use it to cook your meat or to burn down your neighbor’s house. And is the fire you use for cooking any different from the one you use for burning? And does that mean you should eat your supper raw?”

Maddy shook her head, still puzzled. “So what you’re saying is…I shouldn’t play with fire,” she said at last.

“Of course you should,” said One-Eye gently. “But don’t be surprised if the fire plays back.”

At last came the day of One-Eye’s departure. He spent most of it trying to convince Maddy that she could not go with him.

“You’re barely seven years old, for gods’ sakes. What would I do with you on the Roads?”

“I’d work,” said Maddy. “You know I can. I’m not afraid. I know lots of things.”

“Oh, aye? Three cantrips and a couple of runes? That’ll get you a long way in World’s—” He broke off suddenly and began to tug at one of the straps that bound his pack.

But Maddy was no simpleton. “World’s End?” she said, her eyes widening. “You’re going to World’s
End
?”

One-Eye said nothing.

“Oh, please let me come,” Maddy begged. “I’d help you, I’d carry your stuff, I’d not cause you any trouble—”

“No?” He laughed. “Last time I heard, kidnapping was still a crime.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought of that. If she disappeared, there would be posses after them from Fettlefields to the Hindarfell and One-Eye put in the roundhouse or hanged…

“But you’ll forget me,” Maddy said. “I’ll never, ever see you again.”

One-Eye smiled. “I’ll be back next year.”

But Maddy would not look at him and stared at the ground and would not speak. One-Eye waited, wryly amused. Still Maddy did not look up, but there came a single small, fierce sniff from beneath the mat of hair.

“Maddy, listen,” he told her gently. “If you really want to help me, there’s a way you can. I need a pair of eyes and ears; I need that much more than I need company on the Roads.”

Maddy looked up. “Eyes and ears?”

One-Eye pointed at the Hill, where the dim outline of the Red Horse glowed like banked embers from its rounded flanks. “You go there a lot, don’t you?” he said.

She nodded.

“Do you know what it is?”

“A treasure mound?” suggested Maddy, thinking of the tales of gold under the Hill.

“Something far more important than that. It’s a crossroads into World Below, with roads leading down as far as Hel’s kingdom. Perhaps even as far as the river Dream, pouring its waters into the Strond—”

“So there’s no treasure?” said Maddy, disappointed.

“Treasure?” He laughed. “Aye, if you like. A treasure lost since the Elder Age. That’s why the goblins are here in such number. That’s why it carries such a charge. You can feel it, Maddy, can’t you?” he said. “It’s like living under a vulcano.”

“What’s a vulcano?”

“Never mind. Just watch it, Maddy. Just look out for anything strange. That Horse is only half asleep, and if it wakes up—”

“I wish
I
could wake it,” said Maddy. “Don’t you?”

One-Eye smiled and shook his head. It was a strange smile, at the same time cynical and rather sad. He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I do. That’s not a road I’d care to tread, not for all of Otter’s Ransom. Though there may come a time when I have no choice.”

“But the treasure?” she said. “You could be rich—”

“Maddy,” he sighed. “I could be dead.”

“But surely—”

“There are far worse things than goblins down there, and treasures rarely sleep alone.”

“So?” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

“I daresay you’re not,” said One-Eye in a dry voice. “But listen, Maddy. You’re seven years old. The Hill—and whatever lies underneath it—has been waiting for a long time. I’m sure it can wait a little longer.”

“How much longer?”

One-Eye laughed.

“Next year?”

“We’ll see. Learn your lessons, watch the Hill, and look out for me by Harvestmonth.”

“Swear you’ll be back?”

“On Odin’s name.”

“And on yours?”

He nodded. “Aye, girl. That too.”

After that, the Outlander had returned to Malbry once a year—never before Beltane or later than Maddy’s birthday at the end of Harvestmonth—trading fabrics, salt, skins, sugar, salves, and news. His arrival was the high point of Maddy’s year; his departure, the beginning of a long darkness.

Every time he asked her the same question.

“What’s new in Malbry?”

And every time she gave him the same accounts of the goblins and their mischief-making: of larders raided, cellars emptied, sheep stolen, milk soured. And every time he said: “Nothing more?” and when Maddy assured him that was all, he seemed to relax, as if some great burden had been lifted temporarily from his shoulders.

And, of course, at each visit he taught her new skills.

First she learned to read and write. She learned poems and songs and foreign tongues; medicines and plant lore and kennings and stories. She learned histories and folktales and sayings and legends; she studied maps and rivers, mountains and valleys, stones and clouds, and charts of the sky.

Most importantly, she learned the runes. Their names, their values, their fingerings. How to carve them into fortune stones, to be scattered and read for a glimpse of the future, or bind them like stalks into a corn dolly; how to fashion them into an ash stick; how to whisper their verses into a cantrip, to skim them like jump stones, throw them like firecrackers, or cast their shadows with her fingers.

She learned to use
Ár,
to ensure a good harvest—

—and
T
ý
r,
to make a hunting spear find its mark—