Maddy knew all this because when she was ten years old, Nat had asked her to remove the lock, saying that he had lost the key and needed to consult the Book for parish purposes.
Maddy had taken malicious pleasure in refusing. “I thought girls weren’t allowed to touch the Good Book,” she’d said modestly, watching him from beneath her lowered lashes.
This was true; Nat had said so only the week before, in a sermon in which he had denounced the bad blood, disorderly habits, and weak intellect of females in general. After that, of course, he could not insist any further, and so the Book of Words had remained closed.
That had done nothing to endear Maddy to Nat; in fact, it was at that moment that the parson’s dislike of Maddy had turned to hate, and he had begun to watch for any sign that might justify an official Examination of Jed Smith’s pert, clever daughter.
“But the parson doesn’t have the Word,” Maddy said. “Only an Examiner could have—” She stopped and stared at the Whisperer. “Examiners?” she murmured in disbelief. “He’s called in the Examiners?”
Not kings, but historians rule the world. It was a proverb that One-Eye had often quoted, but even Maddy didn’t quite realize how true it was.
The Order of Examiners had begun five hundred years ago, in the Department of Records in the great University of World’s End. It had to have happened there, of course. World’s End was always the center of things. It was the financial capital and the home of the king, the Parleyment was there and the great cathedral of St. Sepulchre, and rumor had it that in the vaults of the Department of Records, there was a library of more than ten thousand books—poetry and science and histories and grimoires—to which only the serious scholars—Professors, Magisters, and other senior staff—had access.
In those days the Examiners were simply officials of the University. They were entirely secular, and their Examination procedures consisted merely of written tests. But after Tribulation and the dark time that followed, the University had remained a symbol of Order. Gradually its influence had grown. Histories were written, conclusions drawn, dangerous books hidden away. And quietly, studiously, power had passed. Not to kings or warriors, but to the Department of Records and the little clique of historians, academics, and theologians who had appointed themselves the sole chroniclers of Tribulation.
The Good Book had been the culmination of their work: the story of the world and of its near destruction by the forces of Chaos; a catalog of world knowledge, science, wisdom, and medicine; and a list of commandments to ensure that in the future, whatever else happened, Order would always triumph.
And so the Order was begun. Not quite priests, not quite scholars, though they shared elements of both, over the years they had become increasingly powerful, and by the end of the first century following Tribulation they had extended their authority far beyond the University. They controlled education and ensured that literacy was restricted to the priesthood, its prentices, and members of the Order. The word University was expanded to make Universal City, so that as years passed, folk forgot that once there had been free access to books and to learning and came to believe that things had always been as they were.
Since then the Order had grown and grown. The king was on the coins, but the Order told him how many to strike; they governed the Parleyment; the army and the police were under their jurisdiction. They were immensely wealthy, they had the power to seize land and possessions from anyone who broke the Law, and they were always recruiting new members. From the priesthood, for the most part, although the Order also took students from the age of thirteen, and these prentices—who gave up their names and renounced their families—often turned out to be the most zealous of all, working tirelessly up the ranks in the hope that one day they might be found worthy to receive the key to the Book of Words.
Everyone had heard tales: of how some prentice had denounced his father to the Order for failing to attend prayers or how some old woman had been Cleansed for decking a wishing well or keeping a cat.
World’s End, of course, was used to it, but if anyone had suggested to Maddy Smith that a villager of Malbry—even one as vain and stupid as Nat Parson—would deliberately court the attention of the Examiners, she would never have believed them.
Two hours later, and at last the passageway had broadened out, a faint gleam reflecting dully against mica-spackled walls. The sour cellar smell that suffused the Hill no longer troubled Maddy at all. In fact, now that she thought about it, the air seemed sweeter than before, although it was growing perceptibly colder.
“We’re getting close to the Sleepers,” she said.
“Aye, miss,” said Sugar, who had been getting more and more nervous as they approached their goal. “Not long now. Well, that’s my job done, then, and if I could just be on me way…”
But Maddy’s eye had lit upon something, a point of luminescence too pale to be firelight, too bright to be a reflection on the stone. “That’s daylight,” she said, her face brightening.
Sugar considered putting her straight, then he shrugged and thought better of it.
“That’s the Sleepers, miss,” he said in a low voice, and that was when his courage, already tried to its breaking point, finally gave way. He could withstand many things, but enough was enough, and there comes a time for every goblin to take the better part of valor and run.
Sugar-and-Sack turned and ran.
Maddy ran toward the light, too excited to think either about Sugar’s desertion or about the fact that it didn’t really look like daylight at all. It was a cool and silvery light, like the pale edge of a summer pre-dawn. It was faint but penetrating. Maddy could see that it touched the sides of the passageway with a milky gleam, picking out the fragments of mica in the rock and lighting the plumes of steam that came from Maddy’s mouth in the cold air.
It was a cavern. She could see that now. The passage broadened, became funnel-shaped, and then opened out, and Maddy, who had considered herself accustomed to marvels after her time under the Hill, gave a long sigh of amazement.
The cavern was beyond size. Maddy had heard tales of the great cathedrals of World’s End, cathedrals as big as cities with spires of glass, and in her imagination they might have been something like this. Even so, the sheer hugeness of the space almost defeated her. It was a bristling vastness of luminous blue ice, its ceiling vaulted in a thousand bewildering swirls and fantails, its height lifted unimaginably by glassy pillars as broad as barn doors.
It stretched out forever—or so it first seemed—and the light seemed trapped within the ancient ice, a light that shone like a distillation of stars.
For a long time Maddy stared, breathless. The ceiling was open in part to the sky; a fragment of moon stood outlined against a patch of darkness. From the gaps in the vaulting, icicles fell, tumbling and plunging hundreds of feet to hang, crystalline, above her head. If I threw a stone, thought Maddy with a sudden chill, or if I were to even raise my voice…
But the icicles were the least of a thousand wonders that filled the cavernous hall. There were strands of filigree no thicker than a spider’s web; there were flowers of glass with leaves of frozen gauze; there were sapphires and emeralds growing out of the walls; there were acres of floor smoother than marble, fit for a million dancing princesses.
And the light: it shone out from everywhere, clean and cold and pitiless. As her eyes adjusted, Maddy saw that it was made from signatures; thousands of them, it seemed, crisscrossing the rapturous air. Maddy had never, never in her life seen so many signatures.
Their brightness left her speechless. Gods alive, she thought, One-Eye’s is bright and Loki’s is brighter, but this makes them look like candles in the sun.
She had been moving, wide-eyed, bewildered, further into the cavern. Every step showed her new marvels. She could hardly breathe—hardly think—for wonderment. Then in front of her she saw something that momentarily eclipsed everything else: a raw-edged block of blue ice with thin columns at its four corners. Ma
ddy peered closer—and gave a cry as she saw, embedded deep beneath the ice, something that could only be…
A face.
4
In the fields to the west of Little Bear Wood, Odin One-Eye was watching birds. One bird in particular, a small brown hawk, flying fast and low across the fields. Not in a hunting pattern, he thought—although there was surely plenty of prey. No, this hawk flew as if it sensed a predator, though there were surely no eagles this far from the mountains, and only an eagle would bring down a hawk.
A hawk, but what kind?
That was no bird.
He had sensed rather than seen it almost at once. Its movement, perhaps, or the speed of its course, or its colors scrawled across the sky—half obscured by the setting sun but as familiar to One-Eye as his own.
Loki.
So the traitor had survived. It came as no great surprise to him—Loki had a habit of beating the odds, and that hawk had always been a favorite Aspect of his. But what in Hel’s name was he doing here now? Loki, of all people, should have been fully aware of the recklessness of flaunting his colors in World Above. But here he was, in broad daylight—and in too much of a hurry even to cover his tracks.
In the old days, of course, Odin could have brought down the bird with a single mindrune. Today, and at such a distance, he knew better than to try. Runes that had once been child’s play to him now cost him an effort he could ill afford. But Loki was a child of Chaos; its harmonies were in his blood.
What could have forced him to leave the Hill? The Examiner and his invocations? Surely not. No single Examiner could have flushed out the Trickster from his stronghold, and Loki wasn’t the type to panic. Besides, why would he leave his base? And why, of all places, make for the Sleepers?
One-Eye left the fields by a gap in the hedge and, skirting the edge of Little Bear Wood, squinted after the fleeting hawk. The western road was completely deserted; the sun’s rays shone low across the brindled land, sending his long shadow sprawling behind him. On the Hill a bonfire was lit: the folk of Malbry were celebrating.
Briefly One-Eye hesitated. He was reluctant to leave Red Horse Hill, where Maddy would surely look for him. But Loki’s presence in World Above was much too disturbing to ignore.
He took out his bag of runestones and cast his fortune quickly, there on the side of the western road.
He drew Ós, the Æsir, reversed—
—crossed with Hagall, the Destroyer—
—with Isa and Kaen in opposition—
—and finally his own rune, Raedo, reversed, crossed with Naudr, the Binder, rune of the Underworld—rune of Death.
Even in the best of circumstances such a fortune would not have made for cheerful reading. Now, with an Examiner of the Order on Red Horse Hill, with Loki in the world again, with the Whisperer in unknown hands, and with Maddy still missing in World Below, it seemed like a taunt from the Fates themselves.
He gathered the runestones and stood up. It would take him the best part of the night to reach the Sleepers unobserved. He guessed Loki could do it in less than an hour. That couldn’t be helped, and staff in hand, One-Eye began the long trek toward the mountains.
It was then, just then, that the possemen struck.
He should have known, One-Eye told himself later. That little wood, so convenient and well placed on the edge of the fields, was the perfect site for an ambush. But he had been preoccupied with thoughts of Loki and the Sleepers; blinded by the sinking sun, he never saw them coming.
A second later they were out of the trees, running low to the ground, a posse of nine, armed with staves.
One-Eye moved surprisingly fast. T ýr, the Warrior, shot out like a steel dart from between his fingers, and the first man—it was Daniel Hetherset, one of Nat’s prentices—fell to the ground with his hands clasped to his face.
Time was when that would have been enough. This time it was not, and the eight remaining posse members barely halted, exchanging rapid glances as they fanned out across the road, staves at the ready.
“We don’t want a fight.” It was Matt Law, the constable, a large, earnest man not built for speed.
“I can tell,” said One-Eye softly. At his fingertips T ýr was a blade of light, rather short for a mindsword but keener than Damascus steel.
“Come quiet,” said Matt, whose face was cheesy with fear. “I give you my word you’ll be fairly treated.”
One-Eye gave a smile that made the lawman shiver. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I think I’d rather be on my way.”
That should have ended it. As it was, the possemen drew back a little. Matt, however, stood his ground. He was fat but not soft, and under the gaze of his fellow villagers he was very conscious of his duty as an officer of the Law.
“You’ll come with us,” he said, “whether you want to or not. Be reasonable. You’re outnumbered. I’ve given you my word that your case will be treated according to due process and with every…”
One-Eye had been watching Matt and had missed the man who shifted—oh, so slyly—into the line of his blind eye.
The others stayed where they were, spread out against the sun, so that One-Eye’s vision was blurred and their faces, which might have given them away, were lost in shadow.
Daniel Hetherset, who had fallen beneath the Outlander’s blow, was recovering. The mindsword had not cut him badly, and now he began to struggle to his feet, blood still flowing from the ugly scratch across his cheek.
One-Eye’s gaze had dropped fractionally; Matt was standing directly in front, and the man who had blindsided him—it was Jan Goodchild, a father of two from one of the most right-thinking families in the valley—now swung out his staff and struck at One-Eye’s head as hard as he could.
If the blow had connected properly, the fight would have been over there and then. But Jan was excited, and his strike went wild, hitting One-Eye on the shoulder and knocking him off balance into the group of possemen.
There followed a messy scuffle, with weapons flailing wildly, Matt Law calling for order, and the Outlander, T ýr in hand, swiping and feinting just as cleverly as if it had been a real short-sword and not just a glamour held in place by nothing but the force of his own will.
One-Eye, unlike Loki, had always been a natural with weapons. Even so, he could feel his glam weakening; it takes a great deal of power to use a mindsword, and his time was running short. Jan swiped at him again, hitting his right arm with sickening force; the strike that would have speared Jan went astray and hit Matt Law instead, a messy blow right in the midsection.
One-Eye followed up with another strike, this time spearing Jan through the ribs, a clean thrust, and One-Eye had time for a single thought—You’ve killed him, you fool—before T ýr guttered and died in his hand.
Then they were on him, seven men with staves, moving together like reapers in the corn.
A blow to the stomach doubled him up. Another to the head sent him sprawling across the western road. And as the blows fell—too many to count, far too many for the crooked fingerings of ýr and Naudr to disperse—One-Eye had time for one more thought—This is what you get for helping the Folk—before one final crashing blow fell across the back of his head and pain and darkness swallowed him whole.
5
Meanwhile, Loki was not finding his task quite as straightforward as he’d hoped. It had been many years since he had approached the Sleepers by this route, and by the time he reached the mountains it was dark. Beneath him the slopes were blank and featureless in the starlight. A waning moon was rising; small clouds flirted across it from time to time, painting the sky silver.
He flew onto a spar of rock that jutted out above a broad belt of scree. Here he regained his Aspect and rested—his shift to hawk guise had stolen more of his glam than he had expected.
Above him the Sleepers were icebound and forbidding; below were scree and stark rock. Down in the foothills, narrow paths crisscrossed the scrubby brushland; blackthorn trees grew; wildcats h
ad their lairs here and sometimes fed on the small brown goats that ran freely across the heather. Afew huts had been built on the slopes of these foothills—mostly by goatherds—but as the land grew bare, even these few signs of habitation ceased.
He stood and looked up at the Sleepers. The entrance was maybe two hundred feet above him, a deep, narrow crevasse buried in snow. He’d been through once but would not have chosen to take the same route again if there had been any other choice.
There was not, and now he stood shivering on his spar of rock and quickly considered his position. The great disadvantage of his type of shapeshifting was that he took nothing with him but his skin—no weapons, no food, and more importantly, no clothes. Already the bitter cold had begun to work on him; much more of it and it would finish him quick.
He thought of shifting to his fiery Aspect but dismissed the idea almost at once. There was nothing to burn above the snow line, and besides, a fire on the mountain would attract far too much of the wrong sort of attention.
Of course, he could always fly up to the crevasse, sparing himself a long, exhausting struggle up into the icy regions. However, he was aware that his hawk guise made him vulnerable—for a hawk can speak no cantrips, and a hawk’s claws are useless if fingerings are required. Loki did not relish the thought of flying blind—not to mention naked—into the Sleepers and whatever ambush might be waiting.
Well, whatever he did, it would have to be fast. He was too exposed out on the blank rock, his colors visible for miles. He might as well have written LOKI WAS HERE across the open mountainside.