Runemarks

Runemarks Read Online Free PDF

Book: Runemarks Read Online Free PDF
Author: Joanne Harris
eagerly. “Tell me about the Æsir.”
    “I said a
collector,
not a storyteller.”
    But Maddy was not to be put off. “What happened to them?” she said. “Did they all die? Did the Nameless hurl them into the Black Fortress, with the snakes and demons?”
    “Is
that
what they say?”
    “Nat Parson does.”
    He made a sharp sound of contempt. “Some died, some vanished, some fell, some were lost. New gods emerged to suit a new age, and the old ones were forgotten. Maybe that proves they weren’t gods at all.”
    “Then what were they?”
    “They were the Æsir. What else do you need?”
    Once again he turned away, but this time Maddy caught at him. “Tell me
more.

    “There is no more,” One-Eye said. “There’s me. There’s you. And there’s our cousins under the Hill. The dregs, girlie, that’s what we are. The wine’s long gone.”
    “Cousins,” said Maddy wistfully. “Then you and I must be cousins too.” It was a strangely attractive thought. That Maddy and One-Eye might both belong to the same secret tribe of traveling folk, both of them marked with Faërie fire…
    “Oh, teach me how to use it,” she begged, holding out her palm. “I know I can do it. I want to learn—”
    But One-Eye had lost patience at last. He snapped his book shut and stood up, shaking the grass stems from his cloak. “I’m no teacher, little girl. Go play with your friends and leave me alone.”
    “I have no friends, Outlander,” she said. “Teach me.”
    Now, One-Eye had no love for children. He looked down with no affection at all at the grubby little girl with the runemark on her hand and wondered how he could have let her draw him in. He was getting old—wasn’t that the truth?—old and sentimental, and it was likely to be the death of him—aye, as if the runes hadn’t already told him as much. His most recent casting of the runestones had given him
Madr,
the Folk, crossed with
Thuris,
the Thorny One, and finally
Hagall,
the Destroyer—

    —and if that wasn’t a warning to keep moving on—
    “Teach me,” said the little girl.
    “Leave me alone.” He began to walk, long-legged, down the side of the Hill, with Maddy running after him.
    “Teach me.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Teach me.”
    “Get lost!”
    “Teach me.”
    “Ye
gods
!”
    One-Eye made an exasperated sound and forked a runesign with his left hand. Maddy thought she saw something between his fingers—a fleck of blue fire, no more than a spark, as if a ring or gemstone he was wearing had caught the light. But One-Eye wore no rings or gems…
    Without thinking, she raised her hand against the spark and
pushed
it back toward the Outlander with a sound like a firecracker going off.
    One-Eye flinched. “Who taught you
that
?”
    “No one did,” said Maddy in surprise. Her runemark felt unusually warm, once more changing color from rusty brown to tiger’s-eye gold.
    For a minute or two One-Eye said nothing. He looked at his hand and flexed the fingers, now throbbing as if they had been burned. Then he looked at Maddy with renewed curiosity.
    “Teach me,” she said.
    There was a long pause. Then he said, “You’d better be good. I haven’t taken a pupil—let alone a girl—in more years than I care to remember.”
    Maddy hid her grin beneath her tangled hair.
    For the first time in her life, she had a teacher.

4
    Over the next fortnight, Maddy listened to One-Eye’s teachings with a single-mindedness she had never shown before. Nat Parson had always made it clear that to be a bad-blood was a shameful thing, like being a cripple or a bastard. But here was this man telling her the exact opposite. She had
skills,
the Outlander told her, skills that were unique and valuable. She was an apt pupil, and One-Eye, who had come to the valley as a trader of medicines and salves and who rarely stayed anywhere for longer than a few days, this time extended his visit to almost a month as Maddy absorbed tales, maps, letters, cantrips,
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