by Rick Riordan
My butt went weightless in the saddle. FYI, I do not like having a weightless butt. I wondered if Sam flew her airplane like this, and if so, how many flight instructors she had sent into cardiac arrest.
We broke through the clouds. In front of us, Cape Cod stretched to the horizon—a parenthesis of green and gold in a blue sea. Directly below, the northern tip of the peninsula made a gentle curlicue around Provincetown harbor. A few sailboats dotted the bay, but it was too early in the spring for many visitors.
Sam leveled us off at about five hundred feet and flew us along the coast, racing over dunes and marshes, then following the arc of Commercial Street with its gray shingled cottages and neon-painted gingerbread houses. The shops were mostly shut down, the streets empty.
“Just scouting,” Sam told me.
“Making sure an army of giants isn’t hiding behind the Mooncusser Tattoo Shop?”
“Or sea trolls, or wights, or my father, or—”
“Yeah, I get the idea.”
Finally, she banked us left, heading for a gray stone tower that loomed on a hill at the edge of town. The granite structure rose about two hundred and fifty feet and had a turreted top that resembled a fairy-tale castle. I had a vague memory of seeing the tower during my visit here as a kid, but my mom had been more interested in hiking the dunes and walking the beaches.
“What is that place?” I asked Sam.
“Our destination.” A faint smile tugged at her mouth. “The first time I saw it, I thought it was the minaret for a mosque. It looks sort of like one.”
“But it’s not?”
She laughed. “No. It’s a memorial for the Pilgrims. They landed here before they moved to Plymouth. Of course, Muslims have been in America for a long time, too. One of my friends at mosque? She has an ancestor, Yusuf ben Ali, who served with George Washington during the American Revolution.” She stopped herself. “Sorry, you didn’t want a history lesson. Anyway, we’re not here for the tower. We’re here for what’s underneath.”
I was afraid she wasn’t talking about the gift shop.
We flew around the monument, scanning the clearing at its base. Just outside the tower’s entrance, sitting on the stone retaining wall and swinging their feet like they were bored, were my two favorite people from alien worlds.
“Blitz!” I yelled. “Hearth!”
Hearth was deaf, so yelling his name didn’t do much good, but Blitzen nudged him and pointed us out. They both jumped off the ledge and waved enthusiastically as our horse came in for a landing.
“Kid!” Blitzen jogged toward me.
He could have been mistaken for the ghost of a tropical explorer. From the rim of his pith helmet, a screen of white gauze covered him down to his shoulders. The gauze, I knew, was custom-designed to block sunlight, which turns dwarves to stone. He’d also put on leather gloves to protect his hands. Otherwise he was wearing the same outfit I’d seen in my dream: a walnut three-piece suit with a black bow tie, snappy pointed leather shoes, and a bright orange handkerchief for flair. Just the thing for a day excursion into a tomb of the undead.
He tackled me with a hug, almost losing his pith helmet. His cologne smelled like rose petals. “Hammers and anvils, I’m glad to see you!”
Hearthstone ran up next, smiling faintly and waving both palms in the ASL gesture for Yay! For Hearth, this was the equivalent of ecstatic fanboy screaming.
He wore his usual black leather jacket and jeans, with his Twister-dot scarf wrapped around his neck. His face was as pale as ever, with the perpetually sad eyes and the spiky platinum hair, but he had fleshed out a bit in the past few weeks. He looked healthier, at least by human standards. Maybe they’d been ordering a lot of pizza while they hid out in Mimir’s safe house.
“You guys.” I pulled Hearth into a hug. “You look exactly like when I saw you in the bathroom!”
In retrospect, that was probably not the line to lead with.
I backed up and explained what had been going on—the weird dreams, the weirder reality, Loki in my head, my head in a pickle jar, Mimir’s head in the bathtub, et cetera.
“Yeah,” Blitzen said. “The Capo loves to show up in the bathtub. Almost scared me out of my chain mail pajamas one night.”
“That’s an image I did not need,” I said. “Also, we have to have a talk about communication. You guys just disappeared on me without a word.”
“Hey, kid, it was his idea.” He signed this for Hearth’s benefit—pinky touching the forehead, then pointing at Hearth with two fingers. Idea. His. H for Hearthstone’s name sign.
Hearthstone grunted in irritation. He signed back: To save you, dummy. Tell Magnus. He made an M for my name sign—a fist with three fingers wrapped over his thumb.
Blitzen sighed. “The elf is overreacting, as usual. He got me all terrified and hustled me out of town. But I’ve calmed down now. It was just a little death prophecy!”
Sam untangled her backpack from the horse’s saddlebags. She patted the horse’s muzzle and pointed toward the sky, and our white stallion buddy took off for the clouds.
“Blitzen…” She turned. “You understand there’s no such thing as a little death prophecy, right?”
“I’m fine!” Blitzen gave us a confident smile. Through the gauze netting, he looked like a slightly happier ghost. “A few weeks ago, Hearthstone got back from his one-on-one rune magic class with Odin. He was all excited to read my future. So he cast the runes and…well, they didn’t come out so good.”
Not so good? Hearthstone stomped his foot. Blitzen. Bloodshed. Cannot be stopped. Before O-S-T-A-R-A.
“Right,” Blitzen said. “That’s what he read in the runes. But—”
“What’s Ostara?” I asked.
“The first day of spring,” Sam said. “Which is in, ah, four days.”
“The same day as your supposed wedding.”
“Believe me,” she said sourly, “it wasn’t my idea.”
“So Blitzen is supposed to die before that?” My stomach started climbing up my throat. “Bloodshed that cannot be stopped?”
Hearthstone nodded emphatically. He shouldn’t be here.
“I agree,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Guys!” Blitzen tried for a hearty chuckle. “Look, Hearthstone is new at reading the future. Maybe he misinterpreted! Bloodshed might actually be…toolshed. A toolshed that cannot be stopped. That would be a good omen!”
Hearthstone held out his hands as if to strangle the dwarf, which needed no translation.
“Besides,” Blitz said, “if there’s a tomb here, it’ll be underground. You need a dwarf!”
Hearth launched into a flurry of angry signs, but Samirah stepped in.
“Blitz is right,” she said, signing the message with a hot-potato fist bump, both index fingers extended. She’d gotten good at ASL since meeting Hearthstone—just, you know, in her spare time between gathering souls, making honor roll, and flying jet planes.
“This is too important,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask you otherwise. We have to find Thor’s hammer before the first of spring, or entire worlds will be destroyed. Or…I’ll have to marry a giant.”
Another way, Hearth signed. Must be one. Don’t even know hammer is here.
“Buddy.” Blitz took the elf’s hands, which was kind of sweet but also kind of rude, because it was the ASL equivalent of putting a gag on someone’s mouth. “I know you’re worried, but it’ll be fine.”
Blitz turned toward me. “Besides, as much as I love this elf, I’m going crazy in that safe house. I’d rather die out here, being useful to my friends, than keep on watching TV and eating delivery pizza and waiting for Mimir’s head to pop up in the bathtub. Also, Hearthstone snores like you wouldn’t believe.”
Hearth yanked his hands back. You’re not signing, but I can read lips, remember?
“Hearth,” Sam said. “Please.”
Sam and Hearth had a staring contest so intense I could feel ice crystals forming in the air. I�
�d never seen those two so much at odds before, and I did not want to be in the middle. I was tempted to summon Jack and have him sing a Beyoncé song just to give them a common enemy.
At last Hearthstone signed: If anything happens to him…
I take responsibility, Sam mouthed.
“I can read lips, too,” Blitzen said. “And I can take responsibility for myself.” He rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Now, let’s find the entrance to this barrow, eh? It’s been months since I unearthed a malicious undead power!”
Cry Me a Blood River. Wait. Actually, Don’t
JUST LIKE the good old days: marching together into the unknown, searching for missing magical weapons, and risking painful death. I’d missed my buddies!
We walked halfway around the base of the tower before Blitzen said “Aha.”
He knelt and ran his gloved fingertips along a crack in the paving stones. To me, it didn’t look any different from the thousands of other cracks in the stone, but Blitzen seemed to like this one.
He grinned up at me. “Now you see, kid? You never would’ve found this without a dwarf. You would’ve walked around forever, looking for the entrance to the tomb, and—”
“That crack is the entrance?”
“It’s the trigger for the entrance, yeah. But we’ll still need some magic to get in. Hearth, double-check this for me, will you?”
Hearth crouched next to him. He nodded like, Yep, then traced a rune on the floor with his finger. Immediately, a ten-foot-square section of pavement vaporized, revealing a shaft that plunged straight down. Unfortunately, the four of us happened to be on that ten-foot square when it vaporized.
We dropped into the darkness with a fair amount of screaming, most of which was mine.
Good news: When I landed, I didn’t break any bones. Bad news: Hearthstone did.
I heard a wet snap, followed by Hearth’s grunt, and I knew immediately what had happened.
I’m not saying elves are fragile. In some ways, Hearth was the toughest guy I knew. But on occasion, I wanted to wrap him in blankets and slap a “handle with care” sticker on his forehead.
“Hold on, man,” I told him, which was useless, since he couldn’t see me in the dark. I found his leg and quickly located the break. Hearth gasped and tried to claw the skin off my hands.
“What’s going on?” Blitz demanded. “Whose elbow is this?”
“That’s me,” Sam said. “Everyone okay?”
“Hearth has a broken ankle,” I said. “I need to fix it. You two keep watch.”
“It’s totally dark!” Blitz complained.
“You’re a dwarf.” Sam slipped her ax from her belt, a sound I knew well. “I thought you thrived underground.”
“I do!” said Blitz. “Preferably in a well-lit and tastefully decorated underground.”
Judging from the echo of our voices, we were in a large stone chamber. There was no light, so I assumed the shaft we’d fallen through had closed above us.
In the plus column, nothing had attacked us…yet.
I found Hearth’s hand and made sign letters against his palm so he wouldn’t panic: HEAL YOU. BE STILL.
Then I put both my hands on his broken ankle.
I called on the power of Frey. Warmth blossomed in my chest and spread down my arms. My fingers glowed with a soft golden light, pushing back the darkness. I could feel the bones in Hearthstone’s ankle knitting together, the swelling subsiding, his circulation returning to normal.
He let out a long sigh and signed, Thanks.
I squeezed his knee. “No problem, man.”
“So, Magnus,” Blitz said, his voice hoarse, “you might want to look around.”
One side effect of my healing power was that I temporarily glowed. I don’t mean I looked healthy. I mean I actually glowed. In the daytime it was hardly noticeable, but here, in a dark subterranean chamber, I looked like a human night-light. Sadly, that meant I could now see our surroundings.
We were in the middle of a domed chamber, like a giant beehive carved from rock. The apex of the ceiling, about twenty feet up, showed no sign of the hatch through which we’d fallen. All around the circumference of the walls, in closet-size niches, stood mummified men in rotted clothing, their leathery fingers clasped around the hilts of corroded swords. I saw no exit from the room.
“Well, this is perfect,” I said. “They’re going to wake up, aren’t they? Those ten guys—”
“Twelve,” Sam corrected.
“Twelve guys with big swords,” I said.
My hand closed around my runestone pendant. Either Jack was trembling, or I was. I decided it must be Jack.
“They could just be terrifying inanimate corpses,” Blitz said. “Think positive.”
Hearthstone snapped his fingers for attention. He pointed to the sarcophagus that stood upright in the center of the room.
It’s not that I hadn’t noticed it. The big iron box was hard to miss. But I’d been trying to ignore it, hoping it would go away. The front was carved with ornate Viking images—wolves, serpents, and runic inscriptions swirling around a central picture of a bearded man with a big sword.
I had no idea what a coffin like this was doing on Cape Cod. I was pretty sure the Pilgrims hadn’t brought it over on the Mayflower.
Sam motioned for us to stay put. She levitated off the floor and floated around the sarcophagus, her ax ready.
“Inscriptions on the back, too,” she reported. “This sarcophagus is old. I don’t see any sign that it’s been opened recently, but perhaps Thrym hid the hammer inside.”
“Here’s an idea,” Blitzen said. “Let’s not check.”
I glanced at him. “That’s your expert opinion?”
“Look, kid, this tomb reeks of ancient power. It was built well over a thousand years ago, long before Viking explorers got to North America.”
“How can you tell?”
“The marks on the rock,” Blitzen said. “I can tell when a chamber was hewn as easily as I can gauge the age of a shirt by the wear of the threads.”
That didn’t sound very easy to me. Then again, I didn’t have a degree in dwarven fashion design.
“So it’s a Viking tomb built before the Vikings got here,” I said. “Uh…how is that possible?”
It moved, Hearth signed.
“How can a tomb move?”
Blitzen took off his pith helmet. The gauze netting left a cowlick across his otherwise perfect hair. “Kid, stuff moves in the Nine Worlds all the time. We’re connected by the World Tree, right? The branches sway. New branches grow. Roots deepen. This place has shifted from wherever it was originally built. Probably because…you know, it’s imbued with evil magic.”
Sam touched down next to us. “Not a fan of evil magic.”
Hearth pointed to the floor in front of the sarcophagus. I hadn’t noticed before, but all around the base of the coffin, a faint circle of runes was etched in the stone.
Hearth finger-spelled: K-E-N-N-I-N-G.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Samirah edged a little closer to the inscription. “A kenning is a Viking nickname.”
“You, mean like…‘Hey, Kenning. How’s it going?’”
“No,” Sam said, in that I-am-going-to-hit-you-with-the-stupid-stick tone. “It’s a way of referring to somebody with a description instead of their name. Like instead of Blitzen, I might say Clever-of-clothes, or for Hearthstone, Rune-lord.”
Hearth nodded. You may call me Rune-lord.
Sam squinted at the inscription on the floor. “Magnus, could you glow a little closer please?”
“I’m not your flashlight.” But I stepped toward the coffin.
“It says Blood River,” Sam announced. “Over and over, all the way around.”
“You can read Old Norse?” I asked.
“Old Norse is easy. You want difficult? Try learning Arabic.”
“Blood River.” My bagel breakfast sat heavy in my gut. “Does this remind anybody of bloodsh
ed that cannot be stopped? I don’t like it.”
Even without his gauze netting, Blitz looked a little gray. “It’s…probably a coincidence. However, I would like to point out there are no exits from this room. My dwarven senses tell me these walls are solid all the way around. We’ve walked into a loaded trap. The only way out is to spring it.”
“I’m starting to dislike your dwarven senses,” I said.
“You and me both, kid.”
Hearthstone glared at Blitzen. You wanted to come here. What now? Break kenning circle. Open coffin?
Sam readjusted her hijab. “If there’s a wight in this tomb, it’ll be in that sarcophagus. It’s also the most secure place to hide a magical weapon, like a god’s hammer.”
“I need a second opinion.” I pulled off my pendant.
Jack sprang to full length in my hand. “Hey, guys! Ooh, a tomb imbued with evil magic? Cool!”
“Buddy, can you sense Thor’s hammer anywhere around here?”
Jack vibrated with concentration. “Hard to be sure. There’s something powerful in that box. A weapon? A magical weapon? Can we open it? Please, please? This is exciting!”
I resisted the urge to smack him upside the hilt, which would have only hurt me. “You ever heard of an earth giant working with a wight? Like…using its tomb as a safe-deposit box?”
“That would be strange,” Jack admitted. “Usually an earth giant just buries his stuff in…you know, the earth. Like, deep in the earth.”
I turned to Sam. “So why would Otis send us here? And how is this a good idea?”
Sam glanced around the chamber like she was trying to decide which of the twelve mummies to hide behind. “Look, maybe Otis was wrong. Maybe—maybe this was a wild-goose chase, but—”
“But we’re here now!” Jack said. “Aw, c’mon, guys. I’ll protect you! Besides, I can’t stand an unopened present. At least let me shake the coffin to guess what’s inside!”
Hearthstone made a chopping motion against his palm. Enough already.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, he produced a small leather pouch—his collection of runestones. He pulled out one I’d seen before: