“Not a sign,” the parson had replied, “but we’ll find them, all right. If we have to raze the Hill to the ground, we’ll find them.”

The Examiner had given one of his rare smiles. “I’m sure you will, brother,” he had said, and Nat had felt a little shiver of pleasure move up his spine.

Brother, he had thought. You can count on me.

Adam Scattergood was also enjoying himself. In the short time following Maddy’s disappearance he had almost completely forgotten his humiliation at the witch girl’s hands, and as the frenzy had spread, so had Adam’s self-importance. For a young person of such limited imagination, Adam had found plenty of tales to tell, aided by Nat and by his own desire to sink Maddy once and for all.

The result had been far more than either of them could have hoped for. The tales had led to searches, alarums, a visit from the bishop, an Examiner-an Examiner, forsooth!-and now this wondrous combination of Fair Day and fox hunt, with himself as the youthful hero and man of the hour.

He shot a quick glance over his shoulder. There were four machines on the Hill now, giant screws made of wood and metal, each one drawn by two oxen. From four drill points, two at each end of the Horse, came forth clots of red clay. Around these points the animals’ hooves had made such deep ruts in the earth that the outline of the Horse was barely visible, but even so, Adam could see that the entrance was still as closely sealed as ever.

Boom-boom-boom!

Once more one of the drilling machines had hit stone. Still the oxen strained and lowed. Nat Parson raised his voice above the squeal of the machine. A minute passed, and then another. The oxen kept on moving, the drill gave half a turn, and then there was a crack!-and the mechanism spun free.

Two men went to the beasts’ heads. Another climbed into the hole to inspect the damage to the drill. The three remaining machines went on, inexorably. Nat Parson seemed unmoved by the setback. The Examiner had warned him it might take time.

Book Four. The Word

1

Deep in the tunnels of World Below, Maddy was hungry, tired, and at the end of her patience. The passage was featureless, they had been walking for hours, and the steady shuffling lurch of her footsteps in the semi-darkness had begun to make her feel quite seasick.

Sugar had turned sullen as it became clear that he was expected to walk all the way to the Sleepers.

“How far now?” Maddy asked.

“Dunno,” he said dourly. “Never go that far, do I? And you wouldn’t, neither, if you knowed what was there.”

“Why don’t you tell me?” said Maddy, containing an impulse to mindbolt the goblin through the nearest wall.

“How can it tell you?” the Whisperer said. “It has nothing but legends and stories to go by. Devices used by the ignorant for the benefit of the foolish and the obfuscation of the credulous.”

Maddy sighed. “I suppose you’re not going to tell me, either.”

“What,” it said, “and spoil the surprise?”

And so they shuffled on, through a passageway that smelled sour and unused, for what seemed like leagues (though in fact it was only three or four miles). As they left the Hill, the pounding of the machines receded, although they all heard the peculiar clapping sound that came afterward and felt the cold tremor that shivered all along the granite layer above their heads.

Maddy stopped. “What in Hel was that?”

It was the sound of glam, she thought. That unmistakable aftershock-but so much louder, so much stronger than any mere cantrip she had ever heard.

The Whisperer brightened like an eye.

“You know, don’t you?” Maddy said.

“Oh yes,” said the Whisperer.

“Then what was it?”

The Whisperer glowed complacently. “That, my dear,” it said, “was the Word.”

2

Nat Parson could barely contain his excitement. He’d heard of it, of course-everyone had-but he’d never actually seen it in action, and the result was more splendid and more terrible than even he could ever have hoped for.

It had taken more than an hour of prayer for the Examiner to prepare himself. By then the Hill had been trembling with it, a deep resonance that seemed to suck silently at Nat’s eardrums. The villagers felt it; it raised their hackles, made them shiver, made them laugh without knowing why. Even the oxen felt it, lowing and straining at their harnesses as the machines went on grinding, and the Examiner, his pale face now sheened with sweat, his brow furrowed with exertion, his whole body trembling, stretched out his hand at last and spoke.

No one had actually heard what he said. The Word is inaudible, though everyone said afterward that they had felt something. Some wept. Some screamed. Some seemed to hear the voices of people long dead. Some felt an ecstasy that seemed to them almost indecent-almost uncanny.

Loki had felt it from Little Bear Wood but, in his eagerness to seek out Maddy and the Whisperer, had mistaken the vibration-and the crack that followed-for the work of the digging machines on the Hill.

One-Eye had felt it as a sudden rush of memories. Memories of his son Balder, dead from a shaft of mistletoe; of his faithful wife, Frigg; of his son Thor-all folk long lost, whose faces seldom returned to his thoughts.

On the Hill there had come a wakening shudder, making Nat’s hair stand on end. Then a crack like a thunderbolt.

Laws, that power!

“Laws,” he said.

The Examiner was the only one who had seemed unimpressed by the procedure. In fact, Nat thought he had looked almost bored, as if this were some everyday routine, somewhat fatiguing, but no more exciting than digging out a nest of weasels.

Then he had stopped thinking and, like the rest of them, had simply stared.

At the Examiner’s feet there was now an irregular gash in the ground, some sixteen inches long and perhaps three inches wide. Its shape seemed vaguely significant-it was ýr, the Fundament, reversed-although Nat, who was not familiar with the Elder Script, did not recognize its importance.

“I have broken the first of nine locks,” said the Examiner in his flat voice. “The remaining eight are as yet intact, but this reversal is the most important.”

“Why?” asked Adam, which pleased Nat because it was the question he had wanted to ask but had not for fear of sounding ignorant.

The Examiner gave a small, impatient sigh, as if to deplore the ignorance of these rustic folk. “See this mark-this ruinmark? This marks the entrance to the demon mound. Eight more of these locks remain to be broken before the machines can get inside.”

“How do you know there isn’t another way into the Hill?” said Dorian Scattergood, who was standing close by.

“There are several,” said the Examiner. He seemed to be enjoying himself, though his voice remained dry and contemptuous. “However, the enemy’s first defense is to close the Hill against all intruders. To dig deep, as a rabbit does when it scents the hawk. And so now, as you see, the Hill has been sealed. No escape from within, no way in from without. However, as any hunter knows, it is sometimes useful to fill in smaller rabbit holes with earth before setting the snare at the main burrow’s mouth. And when this burrow is opened at last”-the Examiner gave a chilly smile-“then, Parson, we shall dig them out.”

“You mean the…Good Folk?” said a voice behind him. It was Crazy Nan from Forge’s Post, perhaps the only person, thought Nat, who would have dared to speak openly of the Faërie-and in front of an Examiner, no less.