by Rick Riordan
The Aesir really needed to work on their timing.
We still had no godly backup. We had a hammer, but no one to wield it. And Loki stood unchained before us in all his mutilated glory, ice clinging to his hair, poison dripping from his face.
“Ah, yes.” He smiled. “For my first act…”
He lashed out with more speed and strength than should have been possible for a guy who’d been chained up for a thousand years. He grabbed the snake that had been dripping venom on him, yanked it off its stalactite, and snapped it like a whip.
Its spine cracked with a sound like Bubble Wrap popping. Loki dropped it, as lifeless as a garden hose, and turned toward us.
“I really hated that snake,” he said. “Who’s next?”
Jack lay heavy in my hand. Alex could barely stand. Sam had her spear ready, but she seemed reluctant to charge, probably because she didn’t want to be to be frozen by her father again…or worse.
My other friends closed ranks around me: three strong einherjar, Blitzen in his fashionable chain mail, Hearthstone with his rowan-wood runes clacking in their bag as his fingers shifted through them.
“We can take him,” T.J. said, his bayonet wet with giant blood. “All at once. Ready?”
Loki spread his arms in a welcoming gesture. Randolph knelt at his feet, silent in agony as the blue vapor spread up his arm, eating away at his flesh. Against the far wall, Sigyn stood very still, her pure red eyes impossible to read, her empty poison bowl clasped to her chest.
“Come on, then, warriors of Odin,” Loki taunted. “I’m unarmed and weak. You can do it!”
That’s when I knew in my heart that we couldn’t. We would charge in and die. We’d end up lying on the floor with our spines snapped, just like that snake.
But we had no choice. We had to try.
Then, from the wall behind us came a cracking sound, followed by a familiar voice. “We’re through! Yes, Heimdall. I’m sure this time. Probably.”
The end of an iron staff poked through the rock and wriggled around. The wall began to crumble.
Loki lowered his arms and sighed. He looked more annoyed than terrified.
“Ah, well.” He winked at me, or maybe his face was just convulsing from centuries of poison damage. “Next time?”
The ground crumbled underneath him. The entire back half of the cavern fell away. Stalagmites and stalactites imploded. Pools of boiling liquid turned into steaming waterfalls before disappearing into the void. Loki and Sigyn fell into nothingness. My uncle, who had been kneeling at the edge of the break, also slipped into the chasm.
“Randolph!” I scrambled to the edge.
About fifty feet below, Randolph crouched on a wet and steaming slope of rock, trying to keep his balance. His right arm was gone, the blue vapor now crawling up his shoulder. He looked up at me, his skull grinning through his translucent face.
“Randolph, hold on!” I said.
“No, Magnus.” He spoke softly, as if he didn’t want to wake anyone. “My family—”
“I am your family, you old idiot!”
Maybe that wasn’t the most endearing thing to say. Maybe I should’ve thought good riddance and let him fall. But Annabeth was right. Randolph was family. The whole Chase clan attracted the gods’ attention, and Randolph had borne that curse more heavily than most of us. Despite everything, I still wanted to help him.
He shook his head, sadness and pain fighting for dominance in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I want to see them.”
He slipped sideways into the darkness without a sound.
I had no time to grieve, no time even to process what had happened, before three gods in tactical armor burst into the cave.
They all wore helmets, infrared goggles, jackboots, and full Kevlar body armor with the letters GRRM across the chest. I might have mistaken them for a regular SWAT team except for the excessive facial hair and the non-standard-issue weapons.
Thor stormed in first, holding his iron staff like a rifle, pointing it in every direction.
“Check your corners!” he yelled.
The next god through was Heimdall, grinning like he was having an excellent time. He also held his massive sword like a gun, his Phablet of Doomsday stuck to the end. He swept the room, taking pictures of himself from every angle.
The third guy I didn’t recognize. He stepped into the cavern with a CLANG because his right foot was encased in the most grotesque oversize shoe I had ever seen. It was cobbled together from scraps of leather and metal, pieces of neon athletic shoes, Velcro straps, and old brass buckles. It even had half a dozen stiletto heels sticking up from the toe like porcupine quills.
The three gods scampered around looking for threats.
With incredibly bad timing, the giant king Thrym began to regain consciousness. The god with the weird shoe rushed over and raised his right foot. His boot grew to the size of a Lincoln Town Car—a junkyard wedge of old shoe parts and scrap metal all compacted together into a huge death-stomper. Thrym didn’t even have time to scream before Shoe Man stepped on him.
SPLAT. No more threat.
“Good one, Vidar!” Heimdall called. “Could you do that again so I can snap a picture?”
Vidar frowned and pointed at the mess. In perfect ASL, he signed, He is flat now.
Across the room, Thor gasped. “My baby!”
He ran past his goats and snatched up the hammer Mjolnir. “At last! Are you okay, Mee-Mee? Did those nasty giants reprogram your channels?”
Marvin jingled the bells on his collar. “We’re fine, boss,” he muttered. “Thanks for asking.”
I looked at Sam. “Did he just call his hammer Mee-Mee?”
Alex growled, “Hey, Aesir idiots!” She pointed to the newly formed abyss. “Loki went that way.”
“Loki?” Thor turned. “Where?” Lightning flickered through his beard, which probably rendered his infrared goggles useless.
With even worse timing than Thrym, the giantess Thrynga chose that moment to show she was still alive. She launched herself from the nearest cesspool like a breaching whale and landed at Heimdall’s feet, gasping and steaming.
“Kill you all!” she croaked, which wasn’t the smartest thing to say when facing three gods in tactical armor.
Thor pointed his hammer at Thrynga as casually as if he were channel surfing. Tendrils of lightning shot from the runes engraved in the metal. The giantess burst into a million bits of rubble.
“Dude!” Heimdall complained. “What did I tell you about lightning so close to my phablet? You want to fry the motherboard?”
Thor grunted. “Well, mortals, it’s a good thing we arrived when we did, or that giantess might have hurt someone! Now, what were you saying about Loki?”
The thing about gods is, you can’t really slap them when they’re acting stupid.
They’ll just slap you back and kill you.
Besides, I was too exhausted, shocked, boiled, and grief-stricken to complain much, even though the Aesir had let Loki get away.
No, I corrected myself. We let Loki get away.
While Thor murmured sweet nothings to his hammer, Heimdall stood at the edge of the chasm and peered into the darkness. “Goes all the way to Helheim. No sign of Loki.”
“My uncle?” I asked.
Heimdall’s white irises turned toward me. For once, he wasn’t smiling. “You know, Magnus…sometimes it’s best not to look as far as you’re able to look, or to listen to everything you’re able to hear.”
He patted me on the shoulder and walked away, leaving me to wonder what the heck he meant.
Vidar, the god with the shoe, went around checking for wounded, but everybody seemed more or less okay—everybody aside from the giants, that is. All of them were now dead. Halfborn had pulled his groin trying to pick up Thor’s hammer. Mallory had given herself a stomachache laughing at him, but both those problems were easily fixed. T.J. had come through without a scratch, though he was worried how to get earth-giant blood off the stock of
his rifle.
Hearthstone was fine, though he kept signing othala, the name of his missing runestone. He signed to Blitz that he could have stopped Loki if he’d had it. I suspected he was just being too hard on himself, but I wasn’t sure. As for Blitz, he leaned against the cave wall and sipped from a canteen, looking tired after stone-sculpting all the way into Loki’s cavern.
As soon as the gods had arrived, Jack had turned back into a pendant, muttering something about not wanting to see Heimdall’s diva sword. In truth, I think he mostly felt guilty that he hadn’t been more help to us, and sorry that Skofnung had turned out not to be the blade of his dreams. Now Jack hung around my neck again, snoozing fitfully. Fortunately, he hadn’t suffered any damage. And he’d been so stunned throughout most of the fight that I’d hardly absorbed any fatigue from him at all. He would live to fight (and sing top-forty songs) another day.
Sam, Alex, and I sat at the edge of the chasm, listening to the echoes in the darkness. Vidar wrapped my ribs, then dabbed some salve on my arms and face and told me in sign language that I wouldn’t die. He also bandaged Alex’s ear and signed, Minor concussion. Stay awake.
Sam herself had no major physical injuries, but I could sense the emotional pain radiating from her. She sat with her spear across her lap like a kayak paddle, looking as though she were ready to navigate straight to Helheim. I think Alex and I both knew instinctively that we shouldn’t leave her alone.
“I was helpless again,” she said miserably. “He just…he controlled me.”
Alex patted her leg. “Not entirely true. You’re alive.”
I looked back and forth between them. “What do you mean?”
Alex’s darker eye was more dilated than the lighter one—probably because of the concussion. It made her stare look even more hollow and shell-shocked.
“When things went bad during the fight,” she said, “Loki just…willed us to die. He told my heart to stop beating, my lungs to stop breathing. I assume he did the same to Sam.”
Samirah nodded, her knuckles whitening on the shaft of her spear.
“Gods.” I didn’t know what to do with all the anger inside me. My chest boiled at the same temperature as the cesspool. If I hadn’t hated Loki enough already, now I was determined to follow him to the ends of the Nine Worlds and…and do something really bad to him.
Like tie him down with his children’s guts? asked a little voice in my head. Put a venomous snake over his face? How did that sort of justice work out for the Aesir?
“So you did resist him,” I told the girls. “That’s good.”
Alex shrugged. “I told you, he can’t control me. Earlier, I was just acting so he wouldn’t get suspicious. But, Sam, yeah…that was a good first start. You stayed alive. You can’t expect complete resistance right away. We can work on it together—”
“He’s free, Alex!” Sam snapped. “We failed. I failed. If I’d been faster, if I’d realized—”
“Failed?” The thunder god loomed over us. “Nonsense, girl! You retrieved my hammer! You are heroes and will all receive trophies!”
I could see Sam gritting her teeth, trying not to yell at Thor. I was afraid she’d bust another capillary from the strain.
“I appreciate that, Lord Thor,” she said at last. “But Loki never cared about the hammer. It was all a smokescreen to get himself freed.”
Thor frowned and raised Mjolnir. “Oh, don’t you worry, lass. We’ll put Loki back in chains. And I promise you, he will care about this hammer when I ram it down his throat!”
Brave words, but when I looked around at my friends, I could tell that no one was reassured.
I stared at the letters on Thor’s Kevlar vest. “What is G-R-R-M, anyway?”
“It’s pronounced grrm,” Thor said. “An acronym for God Rapid Response Mobilization.”
“Rapid?” Alex snarled. “Are you kidding me? You guys took forever to get here!”
“Now, now.” Heimdall stepped in. “You were a moving target, weren’t you? We got into the tunnel at Bridal Veil Falls just fine! But then the whole moving-to-Loki’s-lair thing—that caught us off guard. We were sealed in at both ends with earth-giant-hardened stone. Digging after you…well, even with three gods, that was tough.”
Especially when one takes pictures and does not help, Vidar signed.
The other two gods ignored him, but Hearthstone signed back: They never listen, do they?
I know, signed the god. Hearing people. Silly.
I decided I liked Vidar. “Excuse me,” I asked him, signing as I spoke. “Are you the god of shoes? Or healing? Or…?”
Vidar smirked. He crooked both of his index fingers. He placed one under his eye, then tapped that finger with the other hooked one. I hadn’t seen that sign before, but I got it: Eye for an eye. Talons and hooks. “You’re the god of vengeance.”
That seemed odd to me, since he seemed so kind and was mute. Then again, he wore an expanding shoe that could stomp giant kings flat.
“Oh, Vidar is our go-to guy for emergencies!” Heimdall said. “That shoe of his is made from every shoe scrap that has ever been thrown away! It can…well, you saw what it can do. Hey, do you think we can get a group shot with everyone?”
“No,” said everyone.
Thor glared at the bridge guardian. “Vidar is also called the Silent One, which means he doesn’t talk. He also doesn’t take selfies constantly, which makes him good company.”
Mallory Keen sheathed her twin knives. “Well, that’s fascinating, I’m sure. But shouldn’t you Aesir be doing something productive now, like…oh, finding Loki and tying him up again?”
The girl is right, Vidar signed. Time is wasting.
“Listen to brave Vidar, girl,” said Thor. “Loki’s capture can wait for another day. Right now we should be celebrating the return of my hammer!”
That’s not what I said, Vidar signed.
“Besides,” Thor added, “I don’t need to search for the scoundrel. I know exactly where he’s going.”
“You do?” I asked. “Where?”
Thor pounded me on the back—fortunately with his hand and not his hammer. “We’ll talk all about it back at Valhalla. Dinner is on me!”
Squirrels in the Window May Be Larger Than They Appear
I LOVE IT when gods offer to pay for a dinner that’s already free.
Almost as much as I love assault squads that show up after the assault.
I never got the chance to complain about it, though. Once we got back to Valhalla—thanks to Thor’s very overcrowded chariot—we were given a celebration feast that was wild even by Viking standards. Thor paraded around the feast hall holding Mjolnir above his head, grinning and yelling “Death to our enemies!” and generally causing a commotion. Party horns were blown. Mead was guzzled. Piñatas were cracked open with the mighty Mjolnir and candy was eaten.
Only our little group sulked, clustered around our table and halfheartedly accepting the pats on the back and compliments from our fellow einherjar. They assured us we were heroes. Not only had we retrieved Thor’s hammer, we had destroyed an entire wedding party of evil, badly-dressed earth giants!
Nobody complained about Blitz and Hearth’s presence. Nobody paid much attention to our new friend Vidar, despite his strange footwear. The Silent One lived up to his name and sat with us silently, occasionally asking Hearthstone questions in a form of sign language I didn’t recognize.
Heimdall left early to get back to the Bifrost Bridge. There were important selfies to be taken. Meanwhile, Thor partied like a madman, bodysurfing over crowds of einherjar and Valkyries. Whatever he had wanted to tell us about Loki’s location, he seemed to have forgotten, and I wasn’t going to get anywhere near him in that mob.
My only consolation: some of the lords at the thanes’ table also looked uneasy. Every once in a while Helgi the manager would scowl at the crowd as if he wanted to scream what I was thinking: STOP CELEBRATING, YOU IDIOTS! LOKI IS FREE!
Maybe the einherj
ar were choosing not to worry about it. Maybe Thor had assured them, too, that it was a problem easily fixed. Or maybe they were celebrating because Ragnarok was near. That idea scared me the most.
As dinner ended, Thor rode off in his chariot without even acknowledging us. He bellowed to the assembled host that he had to hurry to the borders of Midgard and demonstrate his hammer’s power by blasting some giant armies to sizzly bits. The einherjar cheered and then began streaming out of the feast hall, no doubt heading to smaller but even wilder parties.
Vidar said his good-byes after a short conversation with Hearthstone in that strange language. Whatever he said, the elf chose not to share it with us. My hallmates offered to stay with me, but they had been invited to an after-party after-party, and I told them to go. They deserved some fun after the tedium of digging their way into Loki’s cavern.
Sam, Alex, Blitz, and Hearth accompanied me to the elevators. Before we got there, Helgi appeared and grabbed my arm.
“You and your friends need to come with me.”
The manager’s voice was grim. I got the feeling we would not be receiving trophies and coupons for our brave deeds.
Helgi led us through passageways I’d never seen before, up staircases into the far reaches of the hotel. I knew Valhalla was big, but each time I went exploring, I was newly amazed. The place went on forever—like Costco or a chemistry lecture.
At last we arrived at a heavy oaken door with a brass plaque that read MANAGER.
Helgi pushed open the door and we followed him inside to an office.
Three of the walls and the ceiling were paneled in spears—polished oak shafts tipped with gleaming silver points. Behind Helgi’s desk, the back wall was one huge plate glass window overlooking the endless swaying branches of the World Tree.
I’d seen a lot of different views from the windows of Valhalla. The hotel had access to each of the Nine Worlds. But I’d never seen a view straight into the tree. It made me feel disoriented, like we were floating in its branches—which, cosmically speaking, we were.
“Sit.” Helgi waved to a semicircle of chairs on the visitors’ side of the desk. Sam, Alex, Blitz, Hearth, and I got comfortable with lots of squeaking leather and creaking wood. Helgi plopped himself down behind his huge mahogany desk, which was empty except for one of those desk-toy thingies with the hanging silver ball bearings that you can knock back and forth.
Oh…and the ravens. At either front corner of the desk perched one of Odin’s twin ravens, both of them glaring at me as if trying to decide whether to assign me detention or feed me to the trolls.
Helgi leaned back and steepled his fingers. He would’ve looked intimidating if it weren’t for his roadkill explosion of hair and the leftover bits of feast beast in his beard.
Sam fiddled nervously with her ring of keys. “Sir, what happened in Loki’s cave…it wasn’t my friends’ fault. I take full responsibility—”
“The Helheim you do!” Alex snapped. “Sam did nothing wrong. If you’re going to punish anyone—”
“Stop!” Helgi ordered. “No one is getting punished.”
Blitzen exhaled with relief. “Well, that’s good. Because we didn’t have time to return this to Thor, but honestly we meant to.” Hearthstone produced Thor’s two-by-four hall-pass key and set it on the manager’s desk.
Helgi frowned. He slipped the pass into his desk drawer, which made me wonder how many others he had in there.
“You are here,” said the manager, “because Odin’s ravens asked for you.”
“Huginn and Muninn?” Thought and Memory, I recalled from the Hotel Valhalla Guide.
The birds made that weird croaking noise ravens love to make, as if regurgitating the souls of all the frogs they’d eaten over the centuries.
They were much larger than normal ravens—and creepier. Their eyes were like gateways into the void. Their feathers were a thousand different shades of ebony. When the light hit them, runes seemed to glisten in their plumage—dark words rising out of a sea of black ink.
Helgi tapped his desk toy. The balls started swinging and hitting each other with an annoying click, click, click.
“Odin would be here,” said the manager, “but he is tending to other matters. Huginn and Muninn represent him. As a bonus”—Helgi leaned forward and lowered his voice—“the ravens don’t show motivational PowerPoints.”
The birds squawked in agreement.