by Rick Riordan
‘You met him at the pond?’ I asked. ‘Was he good at skipping stones?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, yeah. He destroyed me at stone skipping. That first day … it was perfect. Well, except for one thing.’ She pulled me close and kissed my forehead. ‘I didn’t have you yet, pumpkin.’
Okay, yes. My mom called me pumpkin. Go ahead and laugh. As I got older, it embarrassed me, but that was while she was still alive. Now I’d give anything to hear her call me pumpkin again.
‘What was my dad like?’ I asked. It felt strange to say my dad. How can somebody be yours if you’ve never met him? ‘What happened to him?’
My mom spread her arms to the sunlight. ‘That’s why I bring you here, Magnus. Can’t you feel it? He’s all around us.’
I didn’t know what she meant. Usually she didn’t talk in metaphors. My mom was about as literal and down-to-earth as you could get.
She ruffled my hair. ‘Come on, I’ll race you to the beach.’
My dream shifted. I found myself standing in Uncle Randolph’s library. In front of me, lounging sideways across the desk, was a man I’d never seen before. He was walking his fingers across the collection of old maps.
‘Death was an interesting choice, Magnus.’
The man grinned. His clothes looked fresh from the store: blinding white sneakers, crisp new jeans and a Red Sox home jersey. His feathery hair was a mix of red, brown and yellow, tousled in a fashionable I-just-got-out-of-bed-and-I-look-this-good sort of way. His face was shockingly handsome. He could’ve done ads for aftershave in men’s magazines, but his scars ruined the perfection. Burn tissue splashed across the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones, like impact lines on the moon’s surface. His lips were marred by a row of welts all the way around his mouth – maybe piercing holes that had closed over. But why would anyone have that many mouth piercings?
I wasn’t sure what to say to the scarred hallucination, but since my mom’s words were still lingering in my head, I asked, ‘Are you my father?’
The hallucination raised his eyebrows. He threw back his head and laughed.
‘Oh, I like you! We’ll have fun. No, Magnus Chase, I’m not your father, but I’m definitely on your side.’ He traced his finger under the Red Sox logo on his jersey. ‘You’ll meet my son soon enough. Until then, a little advice: don’t trust appearances. Don’t trust your comrades’ motives. Oh, and –’ he lunged forward and grabbed my wrist – ‘tell the All-Father I said hello.’
I tried to break free. His grip was like steel. The dream changed. Suddenly I was flying through cold grey fog.
‘Stop struggling!’ said a female voice.
Holding my wrist was the girl I’d seen circling the bridge. She charged through the air on her nebulous horse, pulling me along at her side like I was a sack of laundry. Her blazing spear was strapped across her back. Her chain-mail armour glinted in the grey light.
She tightened her grip. ‘Do you want to fall into the Gap?’
I got a feeling she wasn’t talking about the clothing store. Looking below me, I saw nothing – just endless grey. I decided I did not want to fall into it.
I tried to speak. I couldn’t. I shook my head weakly.
‘Then stop struggling,’ she ordered.
Beneath her helmet, a few wisps of dark hair had escaped her green headscarf. Her eyes were the colour of redwood bark.
‘Don’t make me regret this,’ she said.
My consciousness faded.
I awoke gasping, every muscle in my body tingling with alarm.
I sat up and grabbed my gut, expecting to find a burning hole where my intestines used to be. No smouldering asphalt was embedded there. I felt no pain. The strange sword was gone. My clothes looked perfectly fine – not wet or burned or torn.
In fact, my clothes looked too fine. The same stuff I’d been wearing for weeks – my only pair of jeans, my layers of shirts, my jacket – didn’t smell. They’d seemingly been washed, dried and put back on me while I was unconscious, which was an unsettling idea. They even had a warm lemony scent that reminded me of the good old days when my mom did my laundry. My shoes were like new, as shiny as when I dug them out of the dumpster behind Marathon Sports.
Even weirder: I was clean. My hands weren’t caked with grime. My skin felt freshly scrubbed. I ran my fingers through my hair and found no tangles, no twigs, no pieces of litter.
Slowly I got to my feet. There wasn’t a scratch on me. I bounced on my heels. I felt like I could run a mile. I breathed in the smell of chimney fires and an approaching snowstorm. I almost laughed with relief. Somehow I’d survived!
Except … that wasn’t possible.
Where was I?
Gradually my senses expanded. I was standing in the entry courtyard of an opulent town house, the kind you might see on Beacon Hill – eight storeys of imposing white limestone and grey marble jutting into the winter sky. The double front doors were dark heavy wood bound with iron. In the centre of each was a life-size wolf’s-head door knocker.
Wolves … that alone was enough to make me hate the place.
I turned to look for a street exit. There wasn’t one, just a fifteen-foot-tall white limestone wall surrounding the courtyard. How could you not have a front gate?
I couldn’t see much over the wall, but I was obviously still in Boston. I recognized some of the surrounding buildings. In the distance rose the towers of Downtown Crossing. I was probably on Beacon Street, just across from the Common. But how had I got here?
In one corner of the courtyard stood a tall birch tree with pure white bark. I thought about climbing it to get over the wall, but the lowest branches were out of reach. Then I realized the tree was in full leaf, which shouldn’t have been possible in the winter. Not only that: its leaves glittered gold as if someone had painted them with twenty-four-carat gilt.
Next to the tree, a bronze plaque was affixed to the wall. I hadn’t really noticed it earlier, since half the buildings in Boston had historic markers, but now I looked closer. The inscriptions were in two languages. One was the Norse alphabet I’d seen earlier. The other was English:
WELCOME TO THE GROVE OF GLASIR.
NO SOLICITING. NO LOITERING.
HOTEL DELIVERIES: PLEASE USE THE NIFLHEIM ENTRANCE.
Okay … I’d exceeded my daily quota of bizarre. I had to get out of here. I had to get over that wall, find out what had happened to Blitz and Hearth – and maybe Uncle Randolph if I was feeling generous – then possibly hitchhike to Guatemala. I was done with this town.
Then the double doors swung inward with a groan. Blinding golden light spilled out.
A burly man appeared on the stoop. He wore a doorman’s uniform: top hat, white gloves and a dark green jacket with tails and the interlocking letters HV embroidered on the lapel, but there was no way this guy was an actual doorman. His warty face was smeared with ashes. His beard hadn’t been trimmed in decades. His eyes were bloodshot and murderous, and a double-bladed axe hung at his side. His name tag read: HUNDING, SAXONY, VALUED TEAM MEMBER SINCE 749 C.E.
‘S-s-sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I must … um, wrong house.’
The man scowled. He shuffled closer and sniffed me. He smelled like turpentine and burning meat. ‘Wrong house? I don’t think so. You’re checking in.’
‘Uh … what?’
‘You’re dead, aren’t you?’ the man said. ‘Follow me. I’ll show you to registration.’
NINE
You Totally Want the Minibar Key
Would it surprise you to learn that the place was bigger on the inside?
The foyer alone could’ve been the world’s largest hunting lodge – a space twice as big as the mansion appeared on the outside. An acre of hardwood floor was covered with exotic animal skins: zebra, lion and a forty-foot-long reptile that I wouldn’t want to have met when it was alive. Against the right wall, a fire crackled in a bedroom-size hearth. In front of it, a few high-school-age guys in fluffy green bathrobes lounged on overstuffed leat
her couches, laughing and drinking from silver goblets. Over the mantel hung the stuffed head of a wolf.
Oh, joy, I thought with a shudder. More wolves.
Columns made from rough-hewn tree trunks held up the ceiling, which was lined with spears for rafters. Polished shields gleamed on the walls. Light seemed to radiate from everywhere – a warm golden glow that hurt my eyes like a summer afternoon after a dark theatre.
In the middle of the foyer, a freestanding display board announced:
TODAY’S ACTIVITIES
SINGLE COMBAT TO THE DEATH! – OSLO ROOM, 10 A.M.
GROUP COMBAT TO THE DEATH! – STOCKHOLM ROOM, 11 A.M.
BUFFET LUNCH TO THE DEATH! – DINING HALL, 12 P.M.
FULL ARMY COMBAT TO THE DEATH! – MAIN COURTYARD, 1 P.M.
BIKRAM YOGA TO THE DEATH! – COPENHAGEN ROOM,
BRING YOUR OWN MAT, 4 P.M.
The doorman Hunding said something, but my head was ringing so badly I missed it.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘what?’
‘Luggage,’ he repeated. ‘Do you have any?’
‘Um …’ I reached for my shoulder strap. My backpack had apparently not been resurrected with me. ‘No.’
Hunding grunted. ‘No one brings luggage any more. Don’t they put anything on your funeral pyre?’
‘My what?’
‘Never mind.’ He scowled towards the far corner of the room, where an overturned boat’s keel served as the reception desk. ‘Guess there’s no putting it off. Come on.’
The man behind the keel apparently used the same barber as Hunding. His beard was so big it had its own zip code. His hair looked like a buzzard that had exploded on a windshield. He was dressed in a forest-green pinstriped suit. His name tag read: HELGI, MANAGER, EAST GOTHLAND, VALUED TEAM MEMBER SINCE 749 C.E.
‘Welcome!’ Helgi glanced up from his computer screen. ‘Checking in?’
‘Uh –’
‘You realize check-in time is three p.m.,’ he said. ‘If you die earlier in the day, I can’t guarantee your room will be ready.’
‘I can just go back to being alive,’ I offered.
‘No, no.’ He tapped on his keyboard. ‘Ah, here we are.’ He grinned, revealing exactly three teeth. ‘We’ve upgraded you to a suite.’
Next to me, Hunding muttered under his breath, ‘Everyone is upgraded to a suite. All we have are suites.’
‘Hunding …’ warned the manager.
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘You don’t want me to use the stick.’
Hunding winced. ‘No, sir.’
I looked back and forth between them, checking their name tags.
‘You guys started working here the same year,’ I noted. ‘749 … what is C.E.?’
‘Common Era,’ said the manager. ‘What you might call A.D.’
‘Then why don’t you just say A.D.?’
‘Because Anno Domini, in the Year of Our Lord, is fine for Christians, but Thor gets a little upset. He still holds a grudge that Jesus never showed up for that duel he challenged him to.’
‘Say what now?’
‘It’s not important,’ Helgi said. ‘How many keys would you like? Is one sufficient?’
‘I still don’t get where I am. If you guys have been here since 749, that’s over a thousand years.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Hunding grumbled.
‘But that’s impossible. And … and you said I’m dead? I don’t feel dead. I feel fine.’
‘Sir,’ Helgi said, ‘all this will be explained tonight at dinner. That’s when new guests are formally welcomed.’
‘Valhalla.’ The word surfaced from the depths of my brain – a half-remembered story my mom had read me when I was little. ‘The HV on your lapel. The V stands for Valhalla?’
Helgi’s eyes made it clear I was straining his patience. ‘Yes, sir. The Hotel Valhalla. Congratulations. You’ve been chosen to join the hosts of Odin. I look forward to hearing about your brave exploits at dinner.’
My legs buckled. I leaned on the desk for support. I’d been trying to convince myself this was all a mistake – some elaborate theme hotel where I’d been mistaken for a guest. Now I wasn’t so sure.
‘Dead,’ I mumbled. ‘You mean I’m actually … I’m actually –’
‘Here is your room key.’ Helgi handed me a stone engraved with a single Viking rune, like the stones in Uncle Randolph’s library. ‘Would you like the minibar key?’
‘Uh –’
‘He wants the minibar key,’ Hunding answered for me. ‘Kid, you want the minibar key. It’s going to be a long stay.’
My mouth tasted like copper. ‘How long?’
‘Forever,’ Helgi said, ‘or at least until Ragnarok. Hunding will now show you to your room. Enjoy your afterlife. Next!’
TEN
My Room Does Not Suck
I wasn’t paying the closest attention as Hunding guided me through the hotel. I felt as if I’d been spun around fifty times then released into the middle of a circus and told to have fun.
Each hall we walked through seemed bigger than the one before. Most of the hotel guests looked like they were in high school, though some looked slightly older. Guys and girls sat together in small groups, lounging in front of fireplaces, chatting in many different languages, eating snacks or playing board games like chess and Scrabble and something that involved real daggers and a blowtorch. Peeking into side lounges, I spotted pool tables, pinball machines, an old-fashioned video arcade and something that looked like an iron maiden from a torture chamber.
Staff members in dark green shirts moved among the guests, bringing platters of food and pitchers of drink. As far as I could tell, all the servers were buff female warriors with shields on their backs and swords or axes on their belts, which is not something you see a lot in the service industry.
One heavily armed waitress passed me with a steaming plate of spring rolls. My stomach rumbled.
‘How can I be hungry if I’m dead?’ I asked Hunding. ‘None of these people look dead.’
Hunding shrugged. ‘Well, there’s dead and then there’s dead. Think of Valhalla more like … an upgrade. You’re one of the einherjar now.’
He pronounced the word like in-HAIR-yar.
‘Einherjar,’ I repeated. ‘Just rolls right off the tongue.’
‘Yeah. Singular: einherji.’ He said it like in-HAIR-yee. ‘We’re the chosen of Odin, soldiers in his eternal army. The word einherjar is usually translated as lone warriors, but that doesn’t really capture the meaning. It’s more like … the once warriors – the warriors who fought bravely in the last life and will fight bravely again on the Day of Doom. Duck.’
‘The Day of Doom Duck?’
‘No, duck!’
Hunding pushed me down as a spear flew past. It impaled a guy sitting on the nearest sofa, killing him instantly. Drinks, dice and Monopoly money flew everywhere. The people he’d been playing with rose to their feet, looking mildly annoyed, and glared in the direction the spear had come from.
‘I saw that, John Red Hand!’ Hunding yelled. ‘The lounge is a No Impaling area!’
From the billiard room, somebody laughed and called back in … Swedish? He didn’t sound very remorseful.
‘Anyway.’ Hunding resumed walking as if nothing had happened. ‘The elevators are right over here.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘That guy was just murdered with a spear. Aren’t you going to do anything?’
‘Oh, the wolves will clean up.’
My pulse went into double time. ‘Wolves?’
Sure enough, while the other Monopoly players were sorting their pieces, a pair of grey wolves bounded into the lounge, grabbed the dead man by his legs and dragged him away, the spear still sticking out of his chest. The trail of blood evaporated instantly. The perforated sofa mended itself.
I cowered behind the nearest potted plant. I don’t care how that sounds. My fear simply took control. These wolves didn’t have glowing blue eyes like the animals
that had attacked my apartment, but still I wished I’d ended up in an afterlife where the mascot was a gerbil.
‘Aren’t there any rules against killing?’ I asked in a small voice.
Hunding raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘That was just a bit of fun, boy. The victim will be fine by dinner.’ He pulled me out of my hiding place. ‘Come on.’
Before I could ask more about the ‘bit of fun’, we reached an elevator. Its cage door was made out of spears. Overlapping gold shields lined the walls. The control panel had so many buttons, it stretched from floor to ceiling. The highest number was 540. Hunding pressed 19.
‘How can this place have five hundred and forty floors?’ I said. ‘It would be the tallest building in the world.’
‘If it only existed in one world, yes. But it connects with all the Nine Worlds. You just came through the Midgard entrance. Most mortals do.’
‘Midgard …’ I vaguely remembered something about the Vikings believing in nine different worlds. Randolph had used the term worlds, too. But it had been a long time since my mom read me those Norse bedtime stories. ‘You mean, like, the world of humans.’
‘Aye.’ Hunding took a breath and recited, ‘Five hundred and forty floors has Valhalla; five hundred and forty doors leading out into the Nine Worlds.’ He grinned. ‘You never know when or where we’ll have to march off to war.’
‘How often has that happened?’
‘Well, never. But still … it could happen at any time. I, for one, can’t wait! Finally, Helgi will have to stop punishing me.’
‘The manager? What’s he punishing you for?’
Hunding’s expression soured. ‘Long story. He and I –’
The elevator’s spear-cage door rolled open.
‘Forget it.’ Hunding clapped me on the back. ‘You’ll like floor nineteen. Good hallmates!’
I’d always thought of hotel corridors as dark, depressing and claustrophobic. Floor nineteen? Not so much. The vaulted ceiling was twenty feet tall, lined with – you guessed it – more spears for rafters. Valhalla had apparently got a good deal at the Spear Wholesale Warehouse. Torches burned in iron sconces, but they didn’t seem to make any smoke. They just cast warm orange light across the wall displays of swords, shields and tapestries. The hall was so wide you could’ve played a regulation soccer game, no problem. The blood-red carpet had tree-branch designs that moved as if swaying in the wind.
