“Oh,” said Maddy. “That promise.”

Thor clamped a fist the size of a Midwinter goose around Loki’s neck. “You,” he said in a thunderous voice. “I’m going to break every bone in your body, starting with your miserable neck. And then I’m going to break them all over again, just to make sure I haven’t missed any. And then I’m going to grind all the broken bits together. And after that”-he gave a large, red, friendly grin-“I’m going to have to hurt you a bit.”

“I may have omitted to tell you,” said Loki, “that our friend here and I have certain…issues-”

Thor’s fingers tightened over his throat, cutting off his remaining air supply.

“Help-” said Loki.

And as Maddy put her hand on the thunder god’s arm and said, “Father-” there came a sudden unimaginable sound at the door of the cell and the World Serpent came crashing through it, its massive coils filling the room.

Thor looked at Maddy. “What d’you mean, Father?”

He had loosened his grip on Loki, who was now flattened against the cell wall as far from Jormungand as he could manage while Ellie, incensed at this latest invasion, lashed out at the serpent with her walking stick.

“Terrific,” said Loki under his breath. “Come to Netherworld. Meet the kids.”

Thor, no quick thinker, was having difficulty coming to terms. “You’re my daughter?” he said slowly. “Surely I’d have remembered that.”

Behind them the crone was holding out gamely against the World Serpent. Old Age conquers everything in the end, of course, and although the blows that fell against Jormungand were comparatively feeble, Ellie seemed impervious to the serpent’s venom.

“I hate to butt in,” said Loki, “but if we could keep this to the point…? Thor, this is Maddy. She’s come to break you out of here. As have I. Not that you’ll appreciate that, of course-you’re far too busy planning to smash every bone in my body to feel an ounce of gratitude-but we now have nineteen minutes left, and personally I’d rather go into this some other-”

“Nineteen minutes for what?” said Thor. In the face of danger he seemed happier and more alert; his beard bristled; in fact, his whole Aspect was that of a thunder god preparing for war and enjoying every minute of it.

“Listen,” said Loki impatiently. “This is the heart of Netherworld. Just being here creates a disruption you can’t imagine. I mean, we’ve hardly gone out of our way to be discreet. We’ve already punched holes in a hundred dreams, let a hundred demons escape, including Old Age and the World Serpent, so if we’re going to get out of here, we’ll have to rely on brains, not muscle. Which, let’s face it, old friend-”

Thor’s face darkened. He shot out his fist-

“You need me,” said Loki, ducking.

“Need you why?”

“Because I know how to free the gods.”

Maddy’s eyes were very bright as the Trickster explained his latest plan. She was beginning to think she’d misjudged Loki, and she was suddenly ashamed at her past belief that he was the traitor at the gate.

She wanted to tell him so, but there wasn’t time. The deathwatch stood at sixteen minutes, and between them, Ellie and Jormungand seemed determined to tear the room apart. Runelight crackled around them both, and the air was so thick with venom that Maddy’s eyes burned and stung.

“Now listen,” said Loki urgently. “You’ll have to protect me-both of you. My glam’s almost out, and I don’t stand a chance if it comes to a fight. Plus we’ll have to be very fast.”

The Thunderer rumbled his assent.

“Well, as we know,” Loki went on, “our friend Jormungand moves through dreams. Beneath that uncouth exterior he’s really just another worm, sliding his way down toward his lair. Or in this case, as it happens, the river Dream. Are you with me so far?”

“Get on with it,” growled Thor.

“Until now,” Loki explained, “we’ve done what we could to slow him down. A creature his size attracts attention, makes holes in the fabric of Netherworld like the holes in Ridings cheese. But what if we wanted to make those holes? Let Jorgi run amok in the right place, and we could engineer a breakout the like of which has never been seen in all of Chaos. All we need is to lay the bait-”

“Bait?” said Thor. “What is this, a fishing trip?”

“Fifteen minutes,” said Loki, looking at Maddy. “Just follow the snake. And don’t stop for anything.”

Thor’s beard bristled dangerously. “Tell me, runt. What bait do you use?”

But Maddy had already understood. A chill went down her spine as Loki, corpse-pale in his diminishing colors, sidestepped through the cell wall into nothingness.

“Bait?” she said. “Himself, of course.”

15

In a second Jormungand was after him, Old Age still clinging to its sweltering coils. Stone fell away from the damaged wall; a second assault punched right through, giving Thor and Maddy a sudden, dizzying perspective into the next cell. The serpent made for the hole at once, and for what seemed an age they watched its oil-black length squeeze and press itself through the crumbling gap.

“Hang on,” said Maddy to Thor, and flinging her arms around the serpent’s tail, she prepared to follow it into the unknown. Beside her, Thor was doing the same: his fingers dug into Jormungand’s coils, his knees pressed into the creature’s flanks. It was something like riding a bareback horse, Maddy told herself-albeit a legless horse three hundred feet long that oozed a venomous pus. It stank, and yet she held on tight, eyes shut against the poison mist that came from the serpent’s mouth.

For an instant she opened them-and found herself flying for the second time above the sickening vista of Netherworld. Cries of torment rose from below; rags of dream fell away beneath her like clouds. And then they were falling into the pit; above them the air was aswarm with ephemera. Maddy closed her eyes-

– and opened them again as the World Serpent shrieked through a tunnel of lights at the end of which a single figure-a man, she thought-seemed to hang, turning, on a wheel of stars. Beneath them some creature that seemed all eyes snapped at Jormungand-and then they were through again into open space, where pits of fire released a sulfurous stench and a blond-haired woman wrestled with a giant spindly armored cockroach above a crater lined with human bones.

Beside her she was conscious of Thor flinging missiles at the ephemera below. His strength was colossal, and when he struck, the aftershock was great enough to rip holes in the barren land beneath them and to send great chunks of Netherworld spinning wildly into space.

They passed in this way over a dozen vistas, through a dozen cells and a dozen tunnels. In their wake dreams were shattered, cell walls broken, dreamers roused. Maddy could only guess at most of this-her eyes were burning from the serpent’s venom and she needed all her strength simply to hold on.

The Thunderer, at least, was enjoying himself. He’d picked up the general idea by now, although the subtleties had more or less passed him by. Thor was not a great thinker, but he knew a demon when he saw one, and this place was filled with them. Back in Aspect, hurling mindbolts, he felt almost happy again, and the memories of five hundred years slipped gently away like a distant dream.

There was no sign at all of Loki. His fading signature was lost among the multitude of ephemera and trails of light, and his figure-desperately small next to the huge bulk of the serpent that pursued him-had long since been lost to Maddy’s sight. She could only hope he was still alive; beneath her Jormungand’s coils lashed ferociously as the serpent gained strength, cutting and slashing as it went, a machine chopping into the dream fortress like hay.

Pieces of Netherworld sheared away in its wake; dreamers broke free-though whether they were Æsir or not, Maddy had no way of telling; ephemera were scattered to the winds like chaff. Once Maddy even thought she glimpsed what lay behind the walls of Netherworld: a spiraling, sucking darkness knitted with dead stars. A chill went through her.