That could have been me, he told himself.

Somewhere in those ranks stood his Examiner, the one he had known as Elias Rede. Somewhere, he was certain, Rede was aware of him. Surely that made him a part of this Communion, gave him the right to some of that power…

He took a step toward the line.

Ten thousand pairs of eyes looked his way.

He whispered: “It’s me. Nat Parson.”

Nothing happened. No one moved.

Nat took another step.

Behind him the Vanir were lost in debate; their raised voices reached him as if from a distance, but the sounds of the dead were deafening, an artillery of furtive creaking and rustling, as of insects crawling on shifting sand.

He moved closer.

“Prentice?” he said quietly.

Adam, who had been pretending to sleep behind a nearby piece of rock, lifted his head.

Nat smiled-to Adam he looked as mad as ale, and Adam began to feel that it might be safer to be as far from his old master as possible.

He backed away-

“Oh no, you don’t.” Nat reached out to grab the boy’s arm. “I may need you yet, Adam Scattergood.” He did not mention why he might need him, though Adam cringed at the look in his eyes. Nothing was left, Adam thought, of his master. Instead Nat looked like one of the dead; his dull but horribly knowing eyes were fixed on a point Adam could not see, and his grin was like that of a rabid wolf.

“I don’t want to go,” said Adam faintly.

“Good lad,” said the parson, and crossed the line to join the army of the dead.

None of the Vanir saw him go. Nat had made no friends among the Faërie, and now that he was no longer a threat, their contempt for him was plain to see. But Ethel had not forgotten him. Her husband still had a part to play, and even she did not know how the game would end.

So she watched as Nat approached the line, dragging Adam in his wake, and she followed quietly, a few paces back. Dorian knew better than to protest. In the short time they had traveled together, his respect for Ethel had grown beyond measure, and although he was terribly afraid of the dead men standing on the plain, he would rather have died than let her go alone. And so he followed, his pig at his heels (for Lizzy too knew loyalty), and though the dead pressed in on either side, distressing the air with their stench and their chanting, Ethel Parson stayed calm, her gray eyes kind and compassionate and unafraid.

Someone, she knew, was about to die. And the fate of the Worlds depended on whom.

11

Balder the Fair, behind whose shining Aspect fragments of Loki were still apparent, looked down at himself with a puzzled expression. He examined his hands, his chest, his arms and legs. He pulled a hank of hair over his eyes and squinted at it. Even through his colors it still showed faintly red.

“What is this?” said Balder, looking at Hel.

But it was the Whisperer who replied. “A life for a life, O Fairest One. You’re free to go. Your new Aspect will take you anywhere-back to the Middle Worlds, if that’s what you want-”

“To Asgard?” said Balder.

“Sorry, no deal. Asgard fell-well, of course, you wouldn’t be expected to know that, would you?-but you can take your pick of the other Worlds and feel smug at the thought that you’re the first dead person to leave the Underworld by legitimate means since before the Elder Age began…”

But Balder was no longer listening. “Asgard fell?” he repeated numbly.

“Yes, lord,” said Hel. “At Ragnarók.”

“And Odin?”

“Him too.”

“The others?”

“Everyone, lord. Everyone fell,” said Hel with a trace of impatience. She’d been waiting for a sign of gratitude for some time now, and this footling concentration on petty details seemed to her pointless and quite annoyingly masculine.

She gave him a glimpse of her living profile, keeping her dead face turned away, and was irritated to find that he did not notice. It was trying, she thought, after everything she had sacrificed.

“Well, Loki didn’t fall,” Balder went on, oblivious. “Otherwise his body wouldn’t be here. And what exactly am I doing in Loki’s body, and how did you manage to get him out of it in the first place?”

Maddy told him of Loki’s promise, Hel’s betrayal, the release of the Æsir-

“What?” said Balder. “The Æsir escaped?”

“Well, they would have done if Hel hadn’t stopped them-”

“You don’t understand,” said Hel. “Netherworld’s unstable; if I open it now, anything might get through-”

“Including the Æsir,” said Maddy at once.

“The Æsir,” said Hel. “Where would they go? Into Dream or the ranks of the dead…”

“Whereas I-” said Balder.

“You have a body, lord. A glam…” She hesitated, and her living eye shifted modestly downward. “I thought perhaps that you and I-”

He stared at her with an astonishment that Hel found quite unflattering. She flushed a little and turned to the Whisperer. “You promised…,” she began.

But the Whisperer was not paying attention. Instead it stood in its hazy Aspect, glamour twisting around it like smoke, watching the distant, dark figure crossing the gray strand toward it. A silence fell, in which Maddy could hear individual grains of sand dropping onto the dead plain.

“One-Eye,” she said.

The Whisperer smiled.

The ranks of the Order parted like cornstalks as Odin passed through and closed again like spears at his back.

“Odin,” it said.

“Mimir, old friend.”

Odin, in Aspect, mindsword to hand, his hat pulled down to conceal his face, with Sugar trotting at his heels. The Nameless, in Aspect, hooded and cloaked, its runestaff spitting glamours. Maddy on one side, Hel on the other, Balder in the middle.

“Not Mimir,” it said. “Not anymore.”

“You’ll always be Mimir to me,” he said.

And now the General could see them all-their colors, at least. His truesight perceived them as figures of light: he saw Maddy, weakened and depleted by her flight through Netherworld, her colors touched with the gray-violet of grief; he saw Balder revealed in Loki’s glam, saw Hel in her colors, saw what had once been the Whisperer standing in a column of light, the stone Head that it had inhabited for so long lying discarded at its feet.

“Old friend,” it said. “It’s been too long.”

“Five hundred years,” said Odin, moving closer.

“Longer by far,” said the Nameless softly, and though its voice was calm, Odin could see the killing rage in its heightened colors. He supposed it had just cause to hate him; all the same, his heart was heavy. So many friends lost or dead. Such a price to pay for a few years’ peace.

Does it have to be like this?

The answer came as quick as thought. To the death, it said. To the victor, the Worlds.

In silence the enemies faced each other. Behind them the river Dream boiled and seethed. Beyond that lay the darkness.