by Linsey Hall
“I’ll be back.” Ares returned to Magic’s Bend to get Roarke. Jeff hadn’t transported with us.
I turned to Del. “Here’s hoping this works.”
She knocked on her head and crossed her fingers—Del was the most superstitious person I’d ever met—and I mimicked her movements before calling on Jeff.
Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing, so I just imagined him coming to me, calling him with my mind.
At first, there was nothing. Jeff! Come on, Jeff! We’re in Trondheim.
A moment later, the little dragon popped our of thin air, hovering nearby.
“Hey, buddy.” I smiled.
He blew out a stream of fire, which I took to mean hello.
“Come on over here.” I gestured and he flew toward me, stopping in midair. I placed my hand on his warm back and he purred. I gasped as magic flowed into me, strong and pure.
Del watched, eyes bright, as I called upon my dragon sense, drawing energy and magic from Jeff. He seemed to have an endless well of the stuff.
There were so many things I wanted to know that the questions jumbled over one another in my head. Where are the dragons? Where is Drakon? What is the place where the mist meets the magma?
At first, my dragon sense was slow to latch on, as if some of the questions couldn’t be answered. Some things were protected even from Jeff’s magic. Even our powers combined couldn’t break through certain protection charms. But eventually, I got ahold of something. The tug was firm and strong, pulling us toward the southwest.
Ares appeared out of the air with Roarke.
I removed my hand from Jeff’s back. “Right, we’ve got to get moving again. We’re close, but not close enough.”
“Where to?”
“Sognefjord. The entrance on the sea.” I’d read up on Norway this morning, just a quick browse of Wikipedia so that I’d recognize things. The Sognefjord was one of the largest fjords on the western coast. I looked at Jeff. “You go wherever it’s safe, okay? Back to my place or something.”
I knew it was silly, trying to take care of a magical dragon that could pop out of space in a moment, but he was my buddy now. I really liked Jeff, and he wasn’t exactly the biggest dragon.
Jeff just gave me a look that said, I do what I want.
I scowled at him.
“Let’s go.” Ares held out his hand, and I took it. Del did the same.
Within a minute, all four of us were standing in a valley at the edge of the fjord. Snow-covered mountains rose high on either side of us, glittering white in the sun. The water of the fjord was a dark contrast, and on the other side of the long deep bay, more mountains reached toward the sky.
To our right, the fjord spilled out into the Norwegian Sea. To our left, it traveled hundreds of miles, deep into Norway.
“Well, this is desolate,” Del said.
“That’s the truth.” I turned, studying our surroundings and focusing on my dragon sense for a clue. It’d been clear that this was where we should come, but now that we were here… What, exactly?
Magic sparked on the air, an unfamiliar signature that prickled against my skin. A warning. I spun in a circle, warily inspecting our surroundings. My friends did the same, each as tense and ready.
About fifty meters in the distance, a small patch of snow exploded into the air. I jumped back. “Holy crap!”
Ares shifted into a fighting stance, his eyes alert on the now falling snow. Del and Roarke’s magic swelled, as if they were getting ready to shift into their more dangerous forms.
When the snow settled, a small man stood in the valley. Stocky and no more than four feet tall, he had a long beard and dark clothing.
He waited patiently, as if we were supposed to go to him. And why not? He’d just popped out of the earth like one of the giant killer worms from Tremors.
Hopefully he was less dangerous.
“Who the heck is that?” Del whispered.
“No idea.” I approached slowly, my friends at my side.
As we neared, I realized that the man’s clothes were an old-fashioned style, with suspenders and big heavy boots. He wasn’t wearing nearly enough to combat the elements out here, but he didn’t seem bothered.
“You trespass upon the land of the dvergr. What is your purpose?” His voice was deep and hoarse, that of a much bigger man.
I glanced at Del and whispered, “What are dvergr?”
“Dwarves, I think. In Old Norse. Live underground and are great metalsmiths.”
I turned back to him. “We seek passage up the fjord.”
“Harrumph.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Only a boat of the ancients shall take you up this fjord lest you be eaten by the Kraken.”
I grimaced. More Kraken? I’d gone my whole life with no Kraken, and now there had been two in less than a month?
“What is a boat of the ancients?” Ares asked.
“What it sounds like.” The dvergr gestured to the valley around. “You must find the boat in this valley and pay the boat’s owner to take you to the fjord. It is the only way you will make it alive.”
“Why are you helping us?”
The dvergr grinned, revealing stubby little teeth. “Payment, of course.” He dug into his pocket and withdrew a shining orange stone. Amber. The Vikings had loved amber, right? “This is what you must give to the ferryman to pay him. It is enchanted. But you must pay me for it first.”
I could feel the magic of the amber. No way I could conjure one of my own to pay the ferryman. It was clearly a special stone. So I’d need to bargain. “What do you want?”
His grin widened in a face that only a mother could love. “You must make the decision and the offering. If I accept, the stone is yours. If I don’t…”
The ground around us rumbled as magic sparked on the air. More of the prickling sensation. The snow exploded around us, thousands of white clumps flying high into the air. The world whited out and I tensed, calling on my magic.
When the snow settled, over a hundred dwarves stood around us, all grinning. Each carried a beautiful weapon. All were blades—swords, daggers, and axes—and all were intricately designed and crafted. Truly beautiful works of craftsmanship that the dwarves no doubt hoped to remove our heads with.
“Those are some bloodthirsty grins,” Ares murmured.
He was right. I looked at our dvergr. “I really don’t want to fight you all.”
“You do not. So you must make your offering.” He raised the gleaming stone. “And take your prize to be on your way, far from the realm of Svartalfheim.”
“Sounds good.” I held up a finger. “Just give us a moment to discuss how to best present our gift to you.”
He grinned, a greedy gleam in his dark eyes. I swallowed hard and turned to my friends.
“These dvergr mean business,” Roarke said. “What shall we give them?”
“I have no idea.” I looked at Del. “What have you read about dwarves from Norse myth?”
“Nothing much. They live underground in their city of Svartalfheim—we don’t want to go there, trust me. They spend most of their time crafting beautiful metalwork.”
I glanced at the weapons surrounding us, each so beautiful that they almost made their dwarf masters look good, too.
The dwarf who held our gem made a noise in his throat, clearly ready for us to get this show on the road. I glanced at him and realized that unlike his counterparts, he did not have a weapon.
I looked at my friends. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Do it,” Ares said.
I grinned and called upon my magic, envisioning the most beautiful blade in my own personal collection. It was a dagger of the finest steel, made in Japan by a master craftsman hundreds of years ago. I used my conjuring gift to recreate the blade in its exact form. It appeared in my hand, perfectly weighted and sharper than those knives on late night TV that could cut through pennies.
I turned and held it out to the dvergr. “Does this suit your tastes?”
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His eyes gleamed bright as he gazed at the blade. “Indeed it does.”
He reached for it, his hand small and gnarled. I yanked it back and held out my hand. “The gem first, please.”
“That is not how it works,” he said.
“It is now.” I hardened my voice. “I insist.”
He frowned, clearly waffling. What was the big deal? Had he not intended to give me the stone? Was this a game?
A cunning glint entered his eyes as he gazed around at the other dvergr. They eyed us all avidly, all but licking their chops.
Ah, hell. These guys really weren’t going to play fair. And they weren’t even subtle about it.
Ares made a sound low in his throat and caught my eye. I glanced at him. He raised his brows and nodded toward the dvergr nearest him. The short man with a bushy brown beard and eyes as brilliant as emeralds was edging closer to us, his hand gripped tightly around his broad ax.
Yep. Ares agreed that we were in a pickle. A shiver ran down my spine. We couldn’t fight a hundred dvergr. Though they were small, they were stocky with muscles and armed to the teeth. And we couldn’t bail either—we really did need to get up the valley, and he might be right about us needing a boat.
“You’re planning to betray us,” I said.
“I am not,” he blustered, his gaze riveted to the dagger I’d conjured.
“You are.” I held the knife up. “You want this. Bad. But you also want some entertainment—or whatever. I honestly don’t know what you’ll get out of killing us. But your buddies are all but licking their chops.”
He scowled at them, as if they’d let the cat out of the bag. Mythological creatures were always so tricky.
“Why don’t you just attack?” I asked.
He bristled. “Honor. We started this as an honest trade. We will finish it as one.”
But they’d be happy to attack after. “Then here’s what we’re going to do. My friends and I are going to find this boat you speak of. If it’s really there, then I’ll believe you. We’ll make the trade, and we’ll be on our way.”
The dvergr all grumbled, sounding like a low rolling thunderstorm. The one in front of me vacillated, looking between his buddies and the dagger in my hand.
He licked his lips. “Fine. You find the boat, we conduct our business.”
“Good. Keep your men off us.”
He grumbled.
I looked back at my friends. “Let’s find this boat.”
“This’ll be tense.” Del eyed the dvergr, who eyed her right back. “Scariest Easter egg hunt ever.”
“I’ll search from the sky.” Roarke’s magic swelled on the air. The gray tornado of light whirled around him as he shifted into his demon form. His snow gear disappeared, and his skin turned dark gray. Massive wings flared from his back, and he launched himself into the air.
As he circled overhead, I inspected the valley around us. It was hard to see anything except the dwarves standing in the now-lumpy snow, all of them gazing at us.
I called on my dragon sense, envisioning a boat floating on the fjord and asking it to help me find the vessel.
“I don’t feel anything,” Del said. No doubt she was trying her dragon sense, too.
“Same,” I said.
“It could be hidden in the snow, or by magic,” Ares says.
“If it’s magic, we’re in trouble,” I said.
Roarke landed next to us. “There are no harbors or towns visible. Not a single living thing.”
“Dang.” I looked at the dwarf. “Are you screwing with us?”
He shook his head.
We all studied the valley. Chill wind whistled through the fjord. The air was silent save for the wind and the breathing of the ancient dwarves. It was so quiet here, so abandoned, that it felt like no one had been here since the Vikings themselves.
Oh! The errant thought triggered an idea. “Maybe the boat is underground. The Vikings were famous for boat burials.”
Del grinned. “Oh, you’re right.”
This time, I tried asking my dragon sense to find me a boat burial. A very different thing, indeed. Particularly considering that after one thousand years underground, the boat would be in pretty poor shape. Poor enough that it might not even resemble a boat anymore.
The fact that a broken down old boat wouldn’t get us up the fjord was a concern for another time.
Immediately, my dragon sense latched on, pulling me east. I pointed. “That way.”
“I feel it, too,” Del said.
We tromped through the snow, weaving around the dwarves who refused to move.
“Napoleon syndrome on these guys, huh?” I whispered.
Ares chuckled, but he stayed alert, ready to fight at the slightest hint of attack. It was the most uncomfortable search I’d ever conducted.
“Feels like we’re just waiting for them to get bored and attack,” Del muttered.
“Exactly.” My dragon sense screamed inside of me and I stopped, pointing downward. “Here.”
I conjured some shovels and passed them around. The dvergr came to stand next to us, his gaze riveted to the dagger still in my hand.
“Keep an eye on the dwarves.” Ares began to dig, his vampire speed blowing the rest of us out of the water. He cleared the snow and cut through the dark dirt below. After a few feet, I touched his arm and he stilled. “Slow down, champ. We don’t want to hurt the boat.”
Besides the fact that it was supposed to be our ride through the fjord, it was still technically an archaeological site. Fast digging was always bad.
“There’d better be some serious magic down here,” I said to the dwarf. “Because there’s no way this boat will be seaworthy, and I’m not going to destroy a site just to take a bath in the fjord.”
He scowled. “I am no liar.”
“Yeah, you are.”
He didn’t even bother looking chagrinned.
I turned to the task at hand and began to dig. My dragon sense could almost sense the energy of the site as we neared it. “We’re getting close.”
We slowed our shovels. After about six feet, the tip of my shovel hit something slightly squishier. “We’re there.”
I conjured a trowel and got on my hands and knees in the dirt, uncovering a lumpy form that was clearly different than the dirt around it.
“I’ve found the bow of the boat,” Ares said from behind me. “Or the stern. Impossible to say.”
“The boats were identical at each end.” I stared at the lumpy form that I’d uncovered, then leaned back on my butt, discomfort welling inside me. “Well, fates. That’s a body.”
“The warrior who was buried with his ship,” Del said. “He’ll be our ferryman.”
His body was wrapped in a dark fabric that was crusted with dirt. He’d definitely decayed over the years, but how much was hard to say without removing the cloth.
“Well, I officially feel like crap about this.” Though there was great scientific value in excavating graves, the way we’d done this made me feel like a grave robber. I looked up at the dvergr. “You better be right about this.”
“You found the boat, didn’t you?” he groused.
“We did.” I held out my hand. “The gem, please.”
“What about my dagger?”
“Let me try the gem. If I don’t give you the dagger, you can kill us anyway. There are plenty of you.”
He waffled, then handed over the gem. The stone was warm beneath my hand, vibrating with magic.
I held it over the body. “Um, here is payment for a ride up the fjord.”
I felt crazy as a loon, but once magic started to fizz on the air, sparking with golden light, hope lit in my chest.
The lump in the soil didn’t move, but the golden sparkles coalesced on top of it, forming the shape of a man. I scrambled back from the body, climbing out of the burial pit with my friends.
The golden lights faded to reveal a man dressed in ancient Viking armor. His tunic was a brilliant red, emblazon
ed with a golden dragon that matched his flowing golden hair.
For one surreal moment, I pictured Fabio from the old romance novel covers. But this guy wasn’t quite real. He was very slightly transparent.
“Who wakes me from my slumber?” His gaze traveled over my friends and me.
“I do.” I stepped forward. “We would like you to take us up the fjord to the other end.”
A broad grin stretched across his face. “Ah, I wake to fight another day!”
“Not fight!” I held up my hands. “Just a ride.”
His smiled stretched wider as he ignored me and climbed out of the pit. He hovered his hands over the pit, and golden light sparkled on the air, floating down into the dirt. My breath stopped short as a massive Viking ship rose from the ground, held aloft by the golden sparkles.
“Holy fates.” I watched the ship float through the air toward the sea. It traveled the thirty meters and settled onto the water without a splash. The water was deep enough that the boat could sit right next to shore—almost a natural harbor.
“The real boat is still in the ground,” Del murmured.
I turned and looked where she was pointing. She was right. The lump of the body was still there, and so was the end of the boat that Ares had found. We’d merely woken the ghost and a shadow of his boat. The dirt that we’d removed from the ship burial was flowing back into the grave, coving the ship right back up.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” I said. “This magic is crazy.”
A hand tugged at my sleeve, and I turned to look. The dvergr stood next to me, brow furrowed. “Payment!”
I hesitated. What if the boat didn’t work?
“This is surreal!” Roarke shouted.
I looked up to see him standing on the deck of the semi-transparent boat. Yep, this magic was crazy.
“Fair enough.” I handed over the dagger.
The dvergr grabbed it, his eyes gleaming. His compatriots let out a victorious roar and charged, their weapons raised.
Shit. I’d been right.
“Come on!” I sprinted, Del and Ares at my side. The dvergr’s feet thundered on the ground as they raed us. My lungs burned as I raced for the boat. A quick glance behind showed the dwarves gaining, their grins wide and bloodthirsty.