Could it be a trap? she wondered. It wasn’t like Loki to be so obvious. And yet-if he didn’t want her to take the thing, then why had he left it so obviously?

Loki wasn’t obvious. Loki was subtle. And so, whatever he was planning, the obvious answer must be false. Unless he’d known she would think this way. In which case the obvious answer was the right one. Unless-

Unless, she thought, he had no plan.

Unless the carelessness was a bluff designed to make her think he had something clever up his sleeve. Some kind of protection, some backup in case of a hostile reception. But what if he hadn’t? What if, as she’d first suspected, he was running on nothing but wits and bravado?

If so, then he was at her mercy. And the glam he carried-that tantalizing bauble-was hers for the taking.

With a word she summoned it. The glam was hiding in his pack, so bright now that she could almost see it through the worn leather. She opened it, and the Whisperer’s light blazed out, almost blinding Hel with its intensity.

Hel had never seen the Whisperer. Mimir’s time was before her birth, and the Æsir had never been generous with their secrets. But she knew a glam when she saw one, and now she held it in her hands, feeling its energy run through her, its voice now deafening in her mind.

Kill them, said the Whisperer. Kill them both.

13

A problem shared is a problem solved, or so the saying goes. Fortunately for Sugar-and-Sack, he was quite unaware that he now shared the problem of his journey to Hel with Odin, the six Vanir, the Huntress, Nat Parson and a dead Examiner, Adam Scattergood, the parson’s wife, a farmer from the valley, and a potbellied pig, and even if he had known, it is doubtful whether the knowledge would have cheered him.

He’d been checking the runestone every five minutes or so, and either his imagination was working overtime or in that short time it had darkened still further. Sugar didn’t think it was his imagination. And he knew what he was supposed to do.

“The Underworld,” he muttered feverishly. “He must be madder than I thought. Wants me to go to the Underworld, eh? Wants me to find a Whisperer? What’s a Whisperer? I sez. And all he sez is-”

Don’t let me down.

The goblin shuddered. It looked bad-but the Captain, he knew, had a knack for getting himself out of tight corners. And if he did and Sugar betrayed him…

He stared half hypnotized at the runestone, noting the way its color deepened from vermilion to crimson to ruby.

The stone would show him the way, the Captain had assured him. Sugar had seen such stones before, although he’d never used them. Rune magic was for Seer-folk, not goblins, and Sugar felt uncomfortable just touching the stone, let alone using it.

But it had shown him the trail so far: every broken cantrip, every signature. And now at last the trail had run out, and it would open up the way to Hel, a road that no one living should take-not if they wanted to stay that way.

If it turns red, then you’ll know I’m in mortal peril.

He cast the stone against the ground, just as the Captain had told him to. And a passageway that had not been there a moment before forked out like lightning at his feet. It was dark in the passage, steps that seemed to be made of black glass staggered down into the gap, and below it, he knew, lay the final stretch-to the Underworld and the Whisperer.

He looked down at the Captain’s charm, which had darkened once more from ruby to oxblood and now to the midnight gleam of a very good claret.

If it turns black…

Gods, he thought.

And whimpering with fright, Sugar pocketed the stone and set off once again at a brisk trot down the narrow steps and along the path to the Land of the Dead.

It had been almost three days since Odin had entered World Below on the trail of the fugitives. In that time he had moved gradually and carefully downward, favoring the smaller passageways and always keeping the river between himself and his pursuers. In this way he had crossed the Strond twice, approaching the Underworld by an oblique route that he hoped would put Skadi and her parson off his scent.

In that time he had barely eaten, barely slept. He still traveled in darkness but found that his sense of direction had improved beyond measure and that his reading of colors had become honed to a degree of accuracy he had not known since before the war.

He had sensed the presence of the Vanir in World Below, as he had sensed the presence of the Huntress. It was tempting to try to contact them, but in his present condition he dared not approach. Later he would, in full Aspect, once the Whisperer was his again-that is, if the Whisperer was ever his again.

Till then he concentrated on reading the signs-and there were many, stretching across World Below like the strings of a harp, tuned to exquisite pitch. It took concentration, it took glam, but at every new sign his foreboding grew.

Finally he cast the runes. He cast them blind, but it didn’t matter; their message was clear enough. First he drew Raedo, reversed-his own rune-crossed with Naudr, the rune of Death-

Then Ós, the Æsir; Kaen, reversed; Hagall, the Destroyer; and finally Thuris, rune of Victory-

– But for whom? Odin wondered. For Order or Chaos? And on whose side do the Æsir stand?

So it begins, Odin thought. Not aboveground, as he’d imagined, but deep in the belly of Chaos itself. Not the war-surely not yet-but war would follow as winter follows fall. Loki was part of it-Maddy too. What had started the chain of events? The waking of the Sleepers? The discovery of the Whisperer? Something else? He could not tell. But he knew this: he had to be there.

Someone else who had to be there was Ethelberta Parson. Why this was so she could not say, but as she and Dorian approached their goal, she sensed it with growing urgency. They had endured cold and discomfort, their feet were blistered, their food was gone but for a few raw potatoes they kept aside for the pig, they were out of lamp oil, and still Ethelberta was undaunted, following the squat snuffling form of Fat Lizzy through the labyrinth of World Below.

Dorian Scattergood had long since given up hope of finding anyone in that endless maze. Even the idea of finding his way home seemed impossible now, though that was not the reason he continued to move on. Ahead of him Ethel was a dim shape against the phosphorescent walls. Patient, tireless, as unafraid of the rats and goblins they had encountered on the upper levels of World Below as she was now of the passing dead.

“We do not need to fear them,” she had told Dorian as the first whispering wave of spirits brushed by them-he had been flattened against the wall, shaking with terror, but she had simply parted the flow and moved on, ignoring the mournful voices all around them-ignoring even the familiar voices of Jed Smith and Audun Briggs as they followed them to the Land of the Dead.

The road into Hel had been bad enough for Maddy. But for Odin it was much worse: he could not close his blind eyes to the presence of the dead nor his ears to their pleas and curses. They sensed it, and for what seemed like miles he was carried along, feet hardly touching the floor of the passage, on wave after wave of the marching dead.

It was not the first time he had risked that journey. Each time had been unpleasant, but this time he felt that something had changed. There was a sense almost of expectancy among the crowd, a knowing quality that made him uneasy. And for the first time they spoke to him-they called him by name.