by Alane Adams
The black ovals in the snake’s yellow eyes narrowed to menacing slivers. “Odin has no patience for a fool’sss errand.”
“You’re not the boss. The boss is the boss. The boy should see the boss.”
This new, manic voice came from over Sam’s head. In the branches of the tree, a bushy-tailed squirrel with fat cheeks sat nibbling a walnut at high speed, turning it over and over in its hands before tossing the bare shell to the side.
“Sssilence, Ratatosk!” snapped the snake.
But the squirrel had run around the trunk in a brown flash and disappeared from sight. Leaves rustled as it climbed higher.
“Who was that?” Sam asked.
“Ssssomeone with delusssions of grandeur,” the snake replied.
The branches rattled overhead, and a streak of brown raced down the tree trunk.
“Boss says he should come up, so he should come up.” Ratatosk zipped around the trunk, gesturing at Sam with his tail to come forward, then waited for Sam to follow.
“Guess I’ve been invited,” Sam boasted, and stepped past the snake.
Reaching up into the branches, he found a knot and pulled himself up, stepping from limb to branch to knotty hole, following Ratatosk.
“Hurry, hurry,” the squirrel said, stopping to peer around the trunk. “Don’t delay. Mustn’t keep His Lordship waiting.”
Sam tried to keep up, but it was hard going, and as he got higher, he made the mistake of looking down. The ground seemed an alarming distance away. He felt clammy, paralyzed with dread. This was a bad time to develop a fear of heights.
The squirrel raced back, urging him on. “Come on, come on, it’s quite safe. He’s waiting; you don’t want him to leave.”
Sam pushed himself on until the branches began to thin out and bend under his weight. He was near the top. He balanced, with one arm wrapped around the trunk, and looked up.
At first he didn’t see it. Perched on the highest knob sat a noble-looking bird. Brown feathers with white tips covered its solid body, which stood about three feet tall.
Is this the boss? Sam wondered.
Somehow it didn’t surprise Sam that the person in charge was a bald eagle. When the bird turned its head, Sam was taken aback by the fierceness in its gaze.
“Uh . . . hello. I’m Sam. Sam Baron—Barconian, I mean. I need your help.”
The bird listened to him, or at least Sam thought it did, and then it turned away to stare off into the distance.
“Hey!” Sam shouted after a few moments. “I’m talking to you. Just please don’t give me any more tests. I failed every one of them.”
The eagle turned its head back toward Sam.
“Tell him,” Ratatosk urged Sam. “Tell the boss what happened.”
“Okay. The first one, I got frustrated, and I took it out on Fetch. The next one, I couldn’t protect Leo from the Shun Kara. And the last one—well, I almost ate my own mother. So if that’s why you won’t talk to me, I get it. But just so you know, all of Orkney is counting on me to end this red-sun curse, so . . .”
Sam let the last and most important point hang in the air, hoping it would generate some sympathy. Instead, the eagle flapped its expansive wings, fanning so much air at Sam that the boy lost his balance and nearly fell from the branch on which he stood.
“Oh no, oh no, the boss is mad, he’s mad, you should go.” Ratatosk scurried down the tree trunk a safe distance, but Sam wasn’t going anywhere. He clung to the trunk until the wind from the wings subsided. He had nowhere else to go.
But when he looked back at the bird, the eagle was gone. In its place sat an old man with thick gray hair and the eagle’s same blazing, blue topaz eyes. The man was barefoot and draped in a simple cloth sheath knotted at the waist like a toga. A crown of leaves wrapped around his forehead. It was evident that he had been strong and handsome in his youth.
“Are you Odin?” Sam asked.
“Who else would you expect to find?”
“I don’t know. I thought you had only one eye.”
Odin rubbed his face thoughtfully. “A vanity on my part. When I am here in this place, I appear as I choose. So you think you failed my tests,” the god challenged.
Sam’s heart raced. “Didn’t I?”
Odin smiled, then threw his head back and laughed. “You are still alive, are you not?” He jumped down to a lower branch with a thud so they were now eye to eye. “Just like your father,” he mused. His eyes were as dazzling as the ocean, shifting and changing from sea foam green to bright blue.
“You knew my father?”
“Aye, I keep track of all my offspring. Bloody hard at times, but I liked Robert. He reminded me of my son Baldur, a great warrior. They both understood you must fight for what you want in this life.”
“Emenor told me the witches put my dad into a stone.”
Odin nodded wryly. “Your father had a blind eye for the witches. Came from loving one, I suppose.”
“So it’s true . . .” Crazy hope sprang up in Sam. “Please. Help me save him,” he pleaded.
“Your father cannot be saved, Samuel. He clings to life in that stone, but no power in this realm can restore him. He was mortally wounded in battle.”
Sam’s hope fizzled, but he remained firm. “I can’t just leave him like that. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Please. Give me something to set him free.”
“Do you realize how much trouble you have caused me, breaking my curse against the witches after all these years?” Odin chuckled. “If that old goat Rubicus had not wanted to destroy this world, we would have been friends.”
“He can still destroy the world.” Sam insisted. “Maybe you can’t see it here on Asgard, but the red sun is killing everything: animals, crops, and pretty soon people. Then everything on Earth. And it’s all my fault.”
“That’s a lot for one small boy. I suppose I could cut off your head,” Odin said thoughtfully, rubbing his bearded chin. “It worked with Rubicus.”
“What if another boy like me is born?” Sam argued desperately. “I say let’s end it now, while we can.”
“And you think you are the one to do it?”
Sam could hear Odin’s skepticism. Drawing himself up as tall as he could, he tried to project confidence. “Everyone keeps telling me I am a Son of Odin. With your help, I can break the curse.”
“Perhaps you are right.” Odin sighed. “You are blood of my blood. But I warn you, it won’t be easy to end this pox on the sun once and for all.”
“Then help me. Tell me what to do,” Sam pleaded.
“You must find the source of the dark magic. The curse was born in the Fourth Realm of Nifelheim, the underworld of lost souls. I always suspected its mistress, Sinmara, was behind the red sun, but cutting Rubicus’s head off was less trouble. To steal her secret, you will have to get inside Sinmara, like you did with the Omera—only this time, do not linger. Being inside Sinmara too long could consume you.”
The god’s gentle chiding bemused Sam. Like he ever wanted to feel that oily darkness again.
Odin continued, “You will need powerful magic to withstand her darkness. Let me think . . .” After a moment, the god snapped his sturdy fingers. “My Fury. Where did I put it? Fetch!” he bellowed.
Ratatosk poked his head out of the leaves. “Fetch is not here, boss. You banished him.”
“Oh, bother. Go on, then—get me my Fury.”
The squirrel streaked off and rustled through the leaves. There was a rattling and clanking sound down below in the canopy. Then the brown streak ran up Odin’s leg to his shoulder, where it stopped. Odin held out his palm, and Ratatosk dropped a battered tin cup in his hand.
That’s Odin’s Fury? Sam wondered, unimpressed.
Odin stared down into the cup and murmured some incomprehensible words. After clearing his throat, he spat into the cup, raised it to the sun, and then offered it to Sam.
“Drink.”
Sam took the cup, thoroughly grossed out by the idea
of drinking Odin’s spit.
“All of it,” Odin ordered.
Sam stared into the cup. It was half-filled with an amber liquid. Steeling himself for a nasty taste, Sam took a small sip. There was no taste at all, but he felt a burning in his belly. The feeling was not painful; rather, it was empowering. So he tilted the cup back and swallowed all of the god’s nectar. He instantly flushed as fire seemed to race through his veins, filling him with a searing energy and a strange desire to grab a sword and fight someone, anyone. Sam tapped the tin cup to get the last few drops of this precious and powerful fluid.
He felt invincible.
He felt like a god.
“Now what?” Sam asked.
“Now you must follow your heart. You did not fail my tests, Samuel. You passed them. Each and every one. You showed me that you have the power of mercy. The courage to sacrifice yourself for a friend. And, most important, the strength of self-control.”
Sam smiled sheepishly. If only the tests in junior high were this easy to pass.
“But you must be careful, my boy.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
Odin put one thick finger to Sam’s chest. “You saw with the Omera how easy it is to surrender yourself to darkness. Yes, you fought back. But never underestimate its power, or it will consume you.” Odin smiled then, his eyes twinkling proudly. “I trust you to do the right thing, Sam. Stay the true course, and things will turn out.”
As Sam tried to process all that wisdom, Odin began to change and shift again, his body shimmering, and then, in a blur of golden light, he transformed back into the eagle. The majestic bird flew up to his perch atop the Yggdrasil tree and stared at the pure sun.
Ratatosk scampered up next to Sam, then twirled a walnut in his little paws. “The boss likes you. You like the boss. Every-thing’s going to change now.” He split the walnut in half and held it out to Sam.
Inside the shell nestled a glowing emerald. It was a deep jade color, shaped like a perfect teardrop. Sam reached slowly for the jewel but pulled back when he saw, in the facets, Endera’s glittering eyes. A chill stopped his heart for a beat.
Sam could hear her laughing at him somewhere inside his mind. She was mocking him, waiting for him to return so she could manipulate him. Sam seized the emerald and squeezed it tightly, feeling the jewel heat up from his touch. He tightened his grip, his arm trembling from exertion, until the emerald was reduced to dust. He let the glimmering remains sift through his fingers and drift down like sparking rain through the tree branches.
The squirrel was right. Everything was going to change now.
Chapter Forty
Sam shimmied down Odin’s Yggdrasil tree and jumped from the last branch, hitting the ground with a satisfying thump. Everything felt different, starting with him. There was hope in the air, confidence in his veins. Twenty feet above the ground, he paused. The snake waited at the bottom. That wouldn’t do. Sam picked a handful of brown nuts off the tree and threw them across the clearing so they landed in a scatter of clunks.
The nosy snake whipped its head around, then slithered off in a hurry toward the noise. Sam was alone. Now was the time to steal the Horn of Gjall. He hesitated, not wanting to betray Odin. I trust you to do the right thing, Odin had said. The god had trusted him with great power. Abusing it felt wrong. Then Sam remembered Howie’s scared look as his friend had been taken away. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t at least try. He probably wouldn’t find it, and that would be that.
Dropping to the ground, he felt around the base of the tree, searching for where Odin might have buried the Horn. He dug through the shrubs, pushing aside tall grass, and came up empty-handed. A familiar hiss echoed across the meadow. The snake was coming back.
Hurriedly turning over rocks, Sam desperately wished it to magically appear, but still nothing. Then he spied a yellow flower at the base of the trunk. It stood alone, with a thick stalk and the most perfect yellow petals. It reminded him of a sunflower. Its face was turned toward the sun, and it waved in the breeze, beckoning him.
Wrapping two hands around the stalk, Sam gave it a tug, straining to uproot it. The stalk was rubbery and tough. A large clod of dirt came up as the roots began to unearth and Sam fell backward as the plant finally came free.
He was shocked to see a mud-encrusted horn dangling from the roots. The instrument was made of brass, dulled with age, and elegantly curved like a ram’s horn. Sam didn’t have time to brush off the grime. Breaking it free from the root tangle, he shoved the Horn into his waistband, pulling his shirt over it to hide it, then hurriedly replanted the flower. Even after he had packed dirt around the roots, the stalk drooped. The bright yellow petals fluttered one by one to the ground, as if the loss of the Horn had sapped its life.
“Where are you, Sssson of Odin?” the snake called from nearby. “I can ssssmell you.”
Leaving the wilted flower, Sam darted into the woods and ran as fast as his legs would carry him back to the beach where he had left his friends. He felt as if he had been gone for days. They would be sick with worry. The Horn bit into his waist where it was lodged under his belt.
Sam used the sound of crashing waves to guide him to the beach. He ran through the fog that separated the interior of the island from the rest of Orkney. A breeze began blowing, and he broke through the mist onto the narrow sand spit.
He expected to find Mavery, Keely, and Leo jumping for joy at his return, but instead he found them bound, captive, and huddled under a tree. An Orkadian warship was anchored in the harbor, its red-and-white flags flapping in the breeze.
The Falcory, Beo, looking fierce as ever, stood guard over Leo and Keely. Another Falcory held Mavery by her nape while she kicked and screamed to be released. Rego stood near the captives, next to Gael, the tall Eifalian Sam had met in Skara Brae who had disliked his aura. Gael wore the same flowing aqua blue robe and had that disapproving look in his eyes.
Sam took in the situation, contemplating his next move. He was about to duck back into the bushes, when Rego’s trusty bird, Lagos, squawked at Sam reprovingly as she flew over his head.
Rego and the rest of the Orkadians were alerted. Sam gave in and walked down the beach toward Rego and Gael. A group of Orkadian soldiers dressed in battle regalia trotted over and surrounded him. The blond-headed Captain of the Guard, Teren, was with them, looking pained as he clamped his hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“Sam, I’m glad you are well,” Teren said, though his left hand was at the hilt of his sword.
“Thanks for the welcoming party,” Sam said jovially to Rego and the other adults. He couldn’t help the enthusiasm, Odin’s magic bubbled in his veins, creating a veritable fountain of confidence.
But Gael lunged forward. “You are responsible for this,” he said, shooting an accusatory finger up at the clotted sun. “You did this to us.”
Sam stepped back, overcome with guilt. The Orkadians had found out the boy from Pilot Rock, not the witches, had caused the red sun. Not even Odin’s Fury could save him from that.
Did Rego betray me? Sam wondered, glaring at the dwarf.
Rego put a firm hand on the Eifalian’s arm. “Now, Gael, calm yourself. The boy didn’t plan this.”
“He’s no boy. He’s a witch,” Gael accused, jerking free of Rego’s grasp. His eyes flashed with anger and something else. Grief. His voice was choked with it. “I should have seen it before. When I read his aura, I saw the darkness in him.”
Sam backed away. “Hey, I didn’t ask for any of this,” he said, raising his hands.
“You are killing my people,” Gael said, advancing on Sam. He drew a long sword from his robes and held the blade in front of him, pointed directly at Sam. “My own sister,” he sobbed, the grief spilling over. “Dead because of you. She was weakened by illness, and your red sun finished her.”
“I’m sorry. I really am.” Sam took another step back as Gael advanced with his sword. “I didn’t know who I was.”
Captain
Teren stepped protectively to Sam’s side. “Let’s not act hasty, Gael,” Teren said calmly. “Witch or not, he’s just a boy.”
But Gael kept coming, murder in his eyes. “You must be stopped before it kills everyone!”
Before Teren could draw his own sword, Gael sprang forward and shouted, “This is for Orkney!” and drove his blade straight at Sam’s heart.
There was no time for Sam to react, to feel horror or shock. The event seemed to happen in slow motion. Sam saw the grief and anger ripple over Gael’s face as the man rushed forward. He watched the sun flash off the edge of Gael’s blade, saw the tip heading straight for him. He heard Keely scream and Rego yell, “Nooooo!”
Through it all, Sam had one regret—that he would never see his father again, never get to ask him why he had abandoned his wife and son. His eyes fluttered closed, waiting for death. But the sword didn’t penetrate Sam’s chest. Instead, the hardened steel melted like butter and ran down the front of his shirt in a stream of liquid silver.
There was shocked silence. Stunned, Sam opened his eyes and touched the place where Gael had tried to skewer him. His finger poked through a hole in his shirt, but his skin was intact.
“What magic is this?” Gael gasped, dropping his broken sword hilt in the sand.
“Odin’s Fury,” Rego said in awe. “The boy must’ve drunk the nectar of the gods. He cannot be killed while it’s in him.”
The Orkadian soldiers traded looks of surprise.
“The boy did it!” Rego exclaimed. “We have our chance to end the curse. He found Odin.”
Teren clapped Sam hard on the back, followed by hearty congratulations from Rego. But Sam couldn’t take his eyes off Gael. The Eifalian looked stricken. Without another word, the elven leader turned, walked back to a waiting rowboat, and returned to the ship.
Rego turned to Beo. “Untie his friends. Sam is coming back with us to explain to the High Council how we’re going to end this curse. Isn’t that right, Sam?”
Sam knew it wasn’t the right time to tell Rego he needed to go to someplace called Nifelheim to face a mistress of the underworld named Sinmara, so he nodded and said, “Sure thing. High Council. Can’t wait.” Anything to free his friends.