4

It was a few minutes more before Maddy could stand. She did so shakily, brushing cinders out of her hair. Her vision was still cloudy from looking into the fire pit; her face and hands were sore, as if they were sunburned.

The aftershock was over now, and in its wake the cavern was eerily still. Dust trickled from the broken ceiling onto the giant mound of rocks and rubble, completely obliterating the end of the cavern where Loki and his net had been thrown.

Congratulations, Maddy, said a dry voice inside her head. Now you’re a murderer.

“No,” whispered Maddy, horrified.

She’d never intended to hurt him, of course. She’d only meant to keep him at bay, to hold him while she claimed the Whisperer. But everything had happened so fast. She’d had no time to measure her strength. And if now, by her fault, he was under there-smashed beneath that fist of rock…

And now it was not just the fumes from the pit that were making it hard for Maddy to breathe. The mound of stones, so like a barrow from the Elder Age, almost seemed to fill the cavern. Slowly, reluctantly, she moved toward it. A small part of her protested against all hope that Loki might be trapped but unhurt, and fitfully she began to turn over the smaller rocks, searching in vain for a scrap of sleeve, a boot, a shadow-

A signature.

That was it! Maddy could have kicked herself with frustration. Casting Bjarkán with a trembling hand, she found his at once, that unmistakable wildfire trail. No two light-signatures are ever the same, and Loki’s, like One-Eye’s, was unusually complex and alive.

Alive!

A good tracker may tell the age of the wolf he hunts, whether it limps, how fast it was running, and when it made its last kill. Maddy was not so skilled a tracker, but she spotted the fragments of the net and traces of the mindrune she had cast.

There had been tremendous power in that final rune, power enough to collapse the ceiling as Maddy dragged the Whisperer out of the pit. Pieces of Aesk still littered the floor, like shards from an exploded bottle, and here was where the rune had thrown him, pinning Loki like a moth as the ceiling collapsed on top of him.

But then…

There it was, against all hope, leading away from the mound of stone: not a back-trail, not a fragment, but a signature, scrawled fleetingly in that characteristic lurid violet against the rock.

She guessed from its faintness that he had tried to hide, but either he was too weak to shield his color-trail or the falling rocks had taken up too much of his concentration, because there it was, unmistakably, leading toward the cavern mouth.

It was there at last that Maddy found him. He had fallen behind a block of stone; one arm was up to cover his face, his motionless fingers still pronged into the runeshape of ýr, the Protector. He was very still, and there was blood-an alarming amount of it-on the rock behind him.

Maddy’s heart did a slow roll. She knelt down, shaking, and held out a hand to touch his face. The blood, she saw, came from a narrow slash just above his eyebrow. A rock must have caught him as he ran, unless it was the fall that had knocked him unconscious. In any case, though, he was alive.

Relief made Maddy laugh aloud; then, hearing her voice rattle eerily across the ruined cavern, she thought better of it.

He was alive, she reminded herself-but as soon as he awoke, doubly dangerous. This was his place. Gods knew what resources he might have at his command. She needed to get out, and quickly.

She looked around. The cavern was still acrid with the stench of the fire pit, but at least the air was cooler now that the shower of debris had stopped. It had been a close shave, she saw now: a chunk of volcanic glass the size of a hog’s head had flown through the air, missing her by inches, and now lay, still glowing, by her feet.

Thinking fast, Maddy assessed the situation. It looked bad: she had failed-she had lost the Whisperer-her strength was exhausted, and she was buried in the tunnels of World Below with miles and miles of passages and galleries between herself and the surface.

Still, she thought, it had been a good plan. It should have worked. For a second there had been a contact between them. The Whisperer should have answered her call. It almost had-but, as Crazy Nan used to say, “Almost” never wins the race.

Maddy looked around in desperation. What was she to do now?

“Kill him,” said a voice behind her.

Startled, Maddy turned around.

“Go on. He deserves it.” It was a man’s voice, dry and rather fussily disapproving, like Nat Parson in mid-sermon. But there was no one in sight; around her the shadows swelled, red-tinged, as the fire pit drew breath.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

“Just kill him,” said the voice again. “Do the Worlds a favor. You’ll never get a better chance.”

Maddy looked left and right but saw no one.

Had she imagined it? Was she so addled by smoke and fumes? Somewhere at the back of her mind she was conscious of a small, persistent voice telling her to run, that the geyser was about to vent again, that she was already half poisoned from the fire pit fumes, and that unless she got out into breathable air, she would collapse, but none of that seemed very important now. So much easier to ignore it, to close her eyes, to think of nothing.

“Stop that,” said the voice sharply. “What are you, an imbecile? Look down, girl, look down!”

Maddy dropped her gaze.

“Lower.”

“But there’s nothing-” began Maddy, then stopped short, her eyes widening as she finally saw-really saw-the thing that had crash-landed almost at her feet, still glowing from the heat of its fiery cradle.

“Ah, at last,” said the Whisperer in a weary tone. “Now, if you can possibly bear a little more exertion, you might at least give that bastard a kick from me.”

5

As far as anyone knew, the passages that ran beneath Red Horse Hill had never once been mapped or counted. Even the Captain didn’t know them all, for although he had used the place for centuries as a bolt-hole and rallying place for goblins, he was not the architect of the Hill, nor the custodian of all its secrets.

Rumor had it that if you went deep enough, you could follow the Strond right down into Netherworld and the Black Fortress, which straddled the river Dream, but no one knew that for sure-except possibly the Captain, and any goblin foolish enough to ask him for particulars deserved everything he got.

Sugar-and-Sack was no fool. But he was curious-perhaps more curious than was altogether safe-and he had seen a number of peculiar things, which he longed to try and investigate. It had begun with that girl who knew his true name and her descent into regions where no goblin ventured but into which the Captain sometimes disappeared, returning in a foul temper and reeking of smoke.

Next had come the developments in World Above. In usual circumstances Sugar would have taken little interest in these. Goblins don’t like trouble, unless they are causing it themselves, and the frequent comings and goings on Red Horse Hill-the posses and the parson stirring up the neighborhood-would normally have kept him safely underground.

But this time he sensed that there was something more afoot than the usual tension between Folk and Faërie. There had been rumors-and a horseman, riding hard on a laden steed, galloping back to the Hindarfell. There was a scent too, like incense and burned stubble, and half an hour ago the Captain had returned from one of his forays with a rag around his head and a nasty gleam in his eye, had put his guard on full alert, and had shut himself up in his private quarters, snapping at any goblin who came close.