Maddy thought about that for a while. “So you think it’s hopeless?” she said at last. “There’s really no way of bringing it out?”

Loki shrugged. “Believe me, I’ve tried. If the General wants to talk to it, he’ll have to come down here himself.”

“Perhaps.” Maddy was still thinking hard.

“You should tell him, you know. Ragnarók’s over. And as far as the Order is concerned, we’re all of us the enemy. Perhaps we should rethink our allegiances. Bury our grudges. Start again.”

“You betrayed the Æsir,” said Maddy. “You’re crazy if you think he’ll ever take you back.”

“The Æsir!” Unexpectedly her words had struck home; for a moment Loki’s eyes flared with unfeigned anger. His colors flared too, from ghostly violet to fiery red. “All they ever did was use me when it suited them. When there was trouble, it was always Please, Loki, think of something. Then when it was over, it was Back to your kennel, without so much as a thank-you. I was always a second-class citizen in Asgard, and not one of them ever let me forget it.”

“But you fought against them at Ragnarók,” said Maddy, who had begun to feel more sympathy for this dangerous individual than she dared admit.

“Ragnarók,” said Loki scornfully. “Whose side did they expect me to take? I had no side. The Æsir had abandoned me, the Vanir always hated me, and as far as Chaos was concerned, I was a traitor who deserved to die. No one would take me, so I looked after number one, as always. All right, maybe I settled a few scores on the way. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s all history. The General has nothing to fear from me.”

“What are you saying?” Maddy said.

Loki gave his crooked smile. “Maddy,” he said, “I’ve been hiding out in World Below for the best part of five hundred years. All right, it’s not the Black Fortress, but it’s hardly bliss. It stinks, it’s dark, it’s overrun by goblins, and I’m constantly having to watch my back…Besides, if I read the signs correctly, there will come a time very soon when none of us are safe, when even the deepest hole will not be enough to hide us from our enemies.”

“So?”

“So I’m tired of hiding,” Loki said. “I want to come home. I want to see the sky again. More importantly, I want the General to make it clear to any of the others who might still harbor a grudge that I’m officially back on the side of the gods.”

He paused, and a wistful look came over his face. “There’s a war on the way. I can feel it,” he said. “I don’t need an oracle to tell me that. The Order is already on the march, spreading the Word through the Middle World. Odin knows-according to my sources he’s spent the last century or so traveling between here and World’s End, charting its progress, trying to learn how much time we have left. My guess is, it just ran out. That’s why he needs the Whisperer. As for myself”-Loki grinned and put down the bottle-“Maddy, I can’t help it. It’s the Chaos in my blood. If there’s a war, I want to fight.”

For a long time Maddy said nothing. “Then tell him so,” she said at last.

“What, meet him aboveground?” Loki said. “You must be out of your tiny mind.”

“You really think One-Eye’s going to come to you?”

“He’ll have to,” said Loki. “If he wants the Oracle. With that on his side there isn’t a secret, scheme, or strategy that the Order can keep from him. He can’t hope to win the war without it. And he certainly can’t afford to let it fall to the other side.” Loki grinned. “So you see, Maddy, he has no choice but to accept my terms. Bring Odin to me, and I’ll let him talk to the Whisperer. If not, then frankly, I don’t rate his chances when the Order gets here.”

Maddy frowned. It all sounded just a little too slick. She had already experienced Loki’s charm, but she knew his reputation too, and she knew that his motives were rarely pure. She looked at him and saw him watching her with a dangerous gleam in his fiery eyes.

“Well?” he said.

“I don’t trust you,” said Maddy.

Loki shrugged. “Few people do. But why not? You’re strong. You’ve already beaten me once before.”

“Twice,” said Maddy.

“Whatever,” he said.

Maddy considered the point for a moment. She realized-rather late-that she didn’t actually know very much about Loki’s powers. Certainly she had beaten him-or had she? It hadn’t been a fair fight. She had taken him by surprise. Or maybe he’d let her surprise him, she thought. Maybe that too was part of his plan.

Now Maddy’s mind began to race. What did she know of the Whisperer? It was an oracle, Loki had said. A power of the Elder Age, an old friend of One-Eye, an enemy of Chaos. Loki had said it hated him, would not speak except in gibes. But One-Eye had said it would come to her, and could it be, she thought suddenly, that Loki somehow knew that too…

Could it be that he had misdirected her? That far from wanting to rescue the Whisperer, he was actually trying to keep it from being rescued?

Could it even be possible that it was Loki himself who had trapped the Whisperer in the fire pit, having failed to make it work for him?

Fire was his element, after all. Could it be that all this was a carefully constructed trap, its aim to lure One-Eye into World Below, where Loki had had centuries to prepare himself for their eventual showdown?

“Well?” said Loki impatiently.

Well, it was far too late to waste time with questions. Yesterday’s ale is nobbut this morning’s piss, as Crazy Nan used to say, which meant, Maddy supposed, that if anyone was going to get her out of this mess, it probably wasn’t the king’s guard.

“Well?”

Maddy sighed. A shadow of a plan was beginning to form in her mind. It was a rather desperate plan, but it was all she could think of at such short notice. “All right,” she said. “But first you have to show me.”

“Show you what?”

“The Whisperer.”

3

She followed him back to the fire pit hall, taking care not to let him out of her sight. He had agreed to her demand with apparent good cheer but with a trace of sullenness in his colors that suggested that he was far from pleased. She knew he was tricky-indeed, if he was Loki, he was trickery itself-and if he already suspected what she meant to do, there was no telling how he might react.

They stepped to the lee of the fire pit, sheltering behind a spur of rock until the geyser had spent itself. Then, in the brief lull between two ventings, Loki stepped forward and came to stand on the lip of the well.

“Stand back,” he told Maddy. “This can be dangerous.”

Maddy watched as he stood motionless, his colors flaring with sudden intensity and the first and little fingers of his right hand pronged to form the runeshape ýr.

His face was streaming with sweat, she saw; his fists were clenched, his eyes screwed shut as if preparing for some painful ordeal. This part at least was no act, she thought. She could feel the effort he was making, see the trembling of his muscles and the strain in every part of his body as he waited, tensed, for the Whisperer.

Even when the geyser began to reawaken, the low rumble rising to become a muted roar, Loki did not stir, but seemed to wait, regardless of his peril, as patiently as a fisherman snaring a trout.

Two minutes had already passed, and now Maddy could hear the eruption building, like a furious howl in a giant’s throat.

Then, almost imperceptibly, he moved.

If Maddy had not been watching very carefully, she would have missed it altogether, for Loki’s style of working was very different from hers. Under One-Eye’s instruction Maddy had learned to value caution and accuracy above all things, to coax the runes rather than to fling them, to handle them with care, as if without it they might explode.

But Loki was fast. Balancing like a rope-dancer on the edge of the pit as the column of steam came rushing toward him, he raised his head and made a curious quick fluttering movement of his hand. At the same time, he shifted to his fiery Aspect, his features just discernible in the twisting flames, and skimmed runes at the column like a handful of firecrackers.