by Tony Abbott
“What’s wrong?” Sydney said. “We did what Hades asked. We have the Cyclopes. A couple of days early, too.”
“What’s wrong?” growled Charon as we stepped aboard his raft and he pushed off. “Just the end of the world, that’s all. Why do you think I’m working this late? I’ll be working day and night for years, now that a war’s brewing. Pah! Let the big red guy tell you.”
And there he was, pacing on the black shore when we pulled in, the big red guy.
Hades.
Hades took one look at the runes around the giants’ necks and snarled. “Loki’s servants! So! My Underworld wasn’t good enough for you?” He yanked the runes away amid a shower of sparks, threw them to the ground, and crushed them under his heel. As the Cyclopes grew back to their normal height, Hades called out to a large troop of Myrmidon warriors. “Take them away. Far out of my sight!”
The black-armored Myrmidons forced the two sulking giants away at spear point. Soon they were lost in the darkness.
Hades turned back to us, his face grimmer than I had ever seen it.
“So. You’ve completed your task. Well done,” he said joylessly.
“Is Dana allowed to go now?” I asked. “Is she free?”
Hades breathed in and glared down at us. When he saw Dana’s glove, his eyes burned white. “That glove may help you. You had better hope it does. Loki will want it back.”
I had a feeling that was true. I remembered again about paying the price for magic.
“Dana Runson,” Hades went on, “you are free to return to your home. Not that it — or you — will be safe from Loki’s war. To assault Asgard itself and topple Odin from his throne, Loki must wage his war in the world above … your world. Your home is Loki’s battlefield.”
We could see vast armies marching toward the northern horizons. Torches streamed in long wavering lines into the far distance. I felt as if my breath had been sucked out of me.
“So it’s really happening?” I said.
Hades nodded somberly. “As we speak, our villages nearest the Norse Underworld are burning to the ground. The children of Loki — the fire dragons of Niflheim — are loose. Parts of my empire are already nothing but ashes.” Hades paused to gaze at the red glow on the northern horizon. “Loki has always wanted Odin’s throne for himself. Now that Underworld monsters have joined his army, war is upon us all. Perhaps now the lyre of Orpheus will prove its deepest worth. Go, all of you. Prepare yourselves!”
With that, Hades dropped a great red helmet over his head, held up a sword that must have been fifteen feet long, and walked away.
We watched silently for a few minutes. More and more of Hades’ forces gathered, and the whole ground began to swim with the movement of armies. The Myrmidons. Armored horses, beasts with wings, beasts with horns. Bands of ancient heroes. Hercules. Jason. Odysseus. Achilles. Aeneas. We saw them all.
Your home is Loki’s battlefield.
Over and over, those words echoed in my head as we watched the unimaginable. My heart was thundering like a crazy drum as we turned and made our way to the riverbank. All the while, my brain was still trying to calm itself down, trying to find at least a shred of something to make me feel good about our victory today. My ears throbbed with the sound of marching feet.
“At least you’re back with us now,” Jon said to Dana as we reached Charon’s raft.
“Hades may have let me go, but Loki will be back,” said Dana, staring back at the red horizon. “For me, for my parents, and for this glove.”
“But you’re not leaving us,” Sydney added fiercely. “We’re sticking together.”
I was about to add something when Dana grasped her wrist, stared into her silver palm, and held her breath.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“He’s … he’s … here!” she whispered. She pointed up the riverbank not far from where we stood, and we heard the sound of something sliding over the black ground beyond.
“I don’t like that sound,” said Jon. “We should get on Charon’s raft right now. We have to go. It’s really late —”
I heard the lapping of the River Styx on the shore behind us, and I knew Jon was right. But I couldn’t help it. I crept carefully to the top of the riverbank. Sydney and Dana joined me.
Finally, with a soft sigh, Jon followed.
Together we peeked over the top of the slope.
Just as I thought the roller coaster of our day was ending and we were home free, we saw him.
The Dark Master.
LOKI.
My heart battered the inside of my chest as if it wanted to jump out and walk around.
Jon sighed. “We had to look, didn’t we? We couldn’t just go home, we had to look.”
“The glove told me he was nearby,” Dana whispered. “It knew somehow. It must have the same runic charm that makes his armor so powerful. If it knows when Loki is nearby, we can use it….”
Loki stood on the black earth next to his sledge, watching the trail of flaming torches recede into the north. His silver armor reflected their red glow. “Look, Fenrir,” he said. “Hades and his heroes march to the fringes of their realm. How quaint. I won’t be there when they come. My trick has worked. All they’ll meet are an army of dragons. A rather large army.”
“Trick?” Sydney whispered. “Hades is heading into an ambush?”
I didn’t want it to be true. Loki had played a trick, sending his forces to fake an attack on Hades’ northern lands, while he escaped to continue his quest.
A moment later, an army of Draugs marched up behind the sledge. They raised their swords high, then stood at attention.
“These guys are everywhere you look,” said Jon under his breath. “Just how many dead Vikings are there?”
“Millions,” said Dana.
“The children destroyed the forge? I will find another,” Loki said to the Draugs. “They captured the two Cyclopes? I will unleash an army of giants. They stole my glove? I sense it near. And I will have it back.”
Dana trembled beside me and looked down at her hand. “Uh-oh. Maybe this isn’t such a good thing….”
We crouched perfectly still behind a stack of fallen trees and watched as Loki slipped a dagger out of his cloak and etched a new symbol on the side of the sledge.
“Hades plans to stop us in the north,” Loki continued, choking with laughter, “but alas, Fenrir, we travel … east. To the land of the twin rivers. The palace of beasts. The horned, the clawed, the fanged. All of them will join me.”
My mind was a whirlwind. I had no idea what I was seeing and hearing. But the bottom line was that Loki needed to be stopped. He needed to be stopped from whatever horror he was planning. Turn our whole world into a burning, freezing, dead place, all because he was mad at Odin? No. I couldn’t not try to stop it. The idea of a war between the gods was too horrifying.
But I was learning that horrifying was also the new normal.
“What are we going to do?” Sydney whispered.
“We have to tell Hades,” Jon put in, glancing back at the last of the torches.
“There’s no time,” I said.
“But we won today,” said Sydney. “The hourglass isn’t ticking anymore. Dana’s free.”
“So is Loki,” I whispered. “Free to do what he wants. We’ll lose him if we —”
“Don’t even go there,” said Jon. “Come on. Charon’s waiting for us. School. Home.”
Loki finished carving the rune into the sledge. His armor flashed as if a surge of power raced through it. Dana winced. I turned to her.
“Does it hurt badly?” I whispered.
She took a deep breath and nodded. “I can take it. Are you okay with the lyre?”
I didn’t know how to answer. Then I nodded. “Fine.”
Loki uttered a dark command to the Draugs. The dead Vikings bowed and assembled behind the sledge.
“We can’t stop him,” Sydney whispered. “Not here. Not with all of these Draugs nearby. There must
be a thousand of them. What could we possibly do?”
My brain knew she was right. Turn now, it said. Go to the river, take Charon’s ferry home, go to sleep. Worry about the war in the morning.
But something else in me said, You can’t let Loki go! You saw the oracle’s vision. He’ll destroy our world. Our families, Dana’s parents, everyone is in danger!
All that was true, too. My blood thundered in my ears. My heart battered my ribs. My brain came up with logical arguments for saving myself and forgetting Loki until tomorrow.
Unfortunately, my brain lost.
When Loki’s head was turned, and the Draugs had set their sights on the distant hills, I touched Dana’s good hand lightly, glanced at Jon and Sydney with what must have been a pretty dumb expression, and crept silently over to Loki’s magical sledge.
Without a thought in my head, I lifted the heavy furs on the back end of the sledge and crawled underneath them. I made myself as small as I possibly could and hoped it wasn’t the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
When the heavy furs lifted a few moments later, I almost choked.
But it wasn’t Loki.
Dana, Jon, and Sydney crawled under the furs next to me.
I was so glad my friends were just as stupid as I was.
I breathed out a long silent breath of relief, held the smelly furs tight with all my strength, and felt Loki’s sudden weight on the sledge. We heard the Draugs march away. We heard Loki whip the reins. We heard Fenrir’s triumphant roar, and felt the heat of his fiery breath.
Then the magic sledge jerked forward, bounding over the scorched earth. We traveled mile after mile, hour after hour. The surface of the ground changed. There was what felt like snow, then ice. The whole time, none of us spoke. We barely breathed.
Finally, the sledge began to slow.
The shush of the sledge’s rails up and down a series of gentle slopes lasted for a little while, then it stopped.
Silence.
We heard Loki whisper a command to Fenrir, followed by the jostle of reins. Then both of them left. After five minutes passed, ten, twenty, and we were sure Loki and his wolf were really gone, we lifted the furs and slid to the ground.
To the sand.
The air was hot under a starry night sky. A crescent moon shone over endless seas of sand.
A desert.
Not far away from us stood a desert city. It was monstrous — walled in amber stone, with statues of tall lion-headed creatures. There was a massive blue gate glistening in the moonlight, with studded doors as tall as a house. Crimson towers rose inside the walls. So did a huge cone-shaped temple of white and blue stones, hanging with luxurious gardens.
“So where are we?” Jon asked. “Dana?”
She frowned. “I know Norse and Greek the best,” she said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say we’re in the Babylonian Underworld.”
In the distance, something moved. Lots of somethings.
What at first had seemed like statues of men with lion heads along the amber walls, we saw now were sentinels — living creatures that patrolled the city.
Hundreds of them.
As far as the eye could see.
I drew in a long breath. “In other words, we’re a long way from home.”
GLOSSARY
Asgard (Norse Mythology): home of the Norse gods and the court of Odin
Charon (Greek Mythology): a ferryman who leads the souls of the dead across the River Styx to the Underworld
Cyclopes (Greek Mythology): one-eyed giants
Draugs (Norse Mythology): death walkers; souls living in dead bodies
Fenrir (Norse Mythology): a giant, fire-breathing red wolf
Hades (Greek Mythology): the ruler of the Underworld
Jason (Greek Mythology): a human hero of many adventures; sailed a ship named the Argo
Loki (Norse Mythology): a trickster god
Lyre of Orpheus (Greek Mythology): a stringed instrument that charms people, animals, and objects into doing things for Orpheus
Myrmidons (Greek Mythology): skilled warriors
Odin (Norse Mythology): the chief Norse god
Orpheus (Greek Mythology): a musician who traveled to the Underworld to bring his wife back from the dead
River Styx (Greek Mythology): a river that divides the land of the living from the land of the dead
Valkyries (Norse Mythology): women who work for Odin and choose who lives and dies in battle
“PREPARE YOURSELVES,” PANU WHISPERED.
Kingu was an insect over ten feet tall.
His body was formed of overlapping black plates that shifted as he moved. His legs — eight of them — looked like jackhammers, hinged with massive talons on the ends. He had industrial-size pincers for arms. His head was enormous, all knobby and angled, and his fanged mouth looked like a mechanical claw.
Finally, each large eye was yellow and deep, like fire blazing at the end of a tunnel.
Jon gasped. “He’s a … bug!”
“Scorpion,” said Panu. “Marduk cursed him into the shape of a giant, deadly desert scorpion. Kingu is now the Scorpion King.”
PHOTO BY DOLORES ABBOTT
TONY ABBOTT is the author of more than ninety books for young readers, including the popular The Secrets of Droon series; Kringle; Firegirl, which won SCBWI’s 2006 Golden Kite Award; The Postcard, winner of the 2009 Edgar Award for best juvenile mystery; and The Haunting of Derek Stone series.
Tony Abbott was born in Ohio and lives with his wife and two daughters in Connecticut. For more information about Tony, visit www.tonyabbottbooks.com.
Text copyright © 2012 by Robert T. Abbott
Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Scholastic Inc.
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First printing, January 2012
Cover art by Antonio Javier Caparo
Design by Tim Hall
e-ISBN 978-0-545-46357-7
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