by Rick Riordan
I got treated to a flurry of disturbing images, none of which made much sense. I saw my Uncle Randolph’s ship listing in the storm, heard his daughters screaming from inside the wheelhouse. Sam and Amir—who had no business being there—clung to opposite sides of the deck, trying to reach each other’s hands until a wave crashed over them and swept them out to sea.
The dream shifted. I saw Alex Fierro in her suite in Valhalla, throwing ceramic pots across the atrium. Loki stood in her bedroom, casually adjusting his paisley bow tie in the mirror as pots passed through him and smashed against the wall.
“It’s such a simple request, Alex,” he said. “The alternative will be unpleasant. Do you think because you’re dead you have nothing left to lose? You are very wrong.”
“Get out!” Alex screamed.
Loki turned, but he was no longer a he. The god had changed into a young woman with long red hair and dazzling eyes, an emerald green evening gown accentuating her figure. “Temper, temper, love,” she purred. “Remember where you come from.”
The words reverberated, shaking the scene apart.
I found myself in a cavern of bubbling sulfuric pools and thick stalagmites. The god Loki, wearing only a loincloth, lay lashed to three rock columns—his arms spread wide, his legs bound together, his ankles and wrists tied with glistening dark cords of calcified guts. Coiled around a stalactite above his head was a massive green serpent, jaws open, fangs dripping venom into the god’s eyes. But instead of screaming, Loki was laughing as his face burned. “Soon enough, Magnus!” he called. “Don’t forget your wedding invitation!”
A different scene: a mountainside in Jotunheim in the middle of a blizzard. At the summit stood the god Thor, his red beard and shaggy hair flecked with ice, his eyes blazing. In his thick fur cloak, with his hide clothes dusted with snow, he looked like the Abominable Ginger Snowman. Coming up the slope to kill him were a thousand giants—an army of muscle-bound gargantuans in armor fashioned from slabs of stone, their spears the size of redwood trees.
With his gauntlets, Thor raised his hammer—the mighty Mjolnir. Its head was a slab of iron shaped roughly like a flattened circus tent, blunt on both ends and pointed in the middle. Runic designs swirled across the metal. In the god’s double-fisted grip, Mjolnir’s handle looked so stubby it was almost comical, like he was a child raising a weapon much too heavy for him. The army of giants laughed and jeered.
Then Thor brought down the hammer. At his feet, the side of the mountain exploded. Giants went flying in a million-ton maelstrom of rock and snow, lightning crackling through their ranks, hungry tendrils of energy burning them to ashes.
The chaos subsided. Thor glowered down at the thousand dead enemies now littering the slopes. Then he looked directly at me.
“You think I can do that with a staff, Magnus Chase?” he bellowed. “HURRY UP WITH THAT HAMMER!”
Then, being Thor, he lifted his right leg and farted a thunderclap.
The next morning, Hearthstone shook me awake.
I felt like I’d been bench-pressing Mjolnir all night, but I managed to stumble into the shower, then dress myself in elfish linen and denim. I had to roll up the sleeves and cuffs about sixteen times to make them fit.
I wasn’t sure about leaving Blitzen behind, but Hearthstone decided that our friend would be safer here than where we were going. We set him on the mattress and tucked him in. Then the two of us crept out of the house, thankfully without encountering Mr. Alderman.
Inge had agreed to meet us at the back edge of the estate. We found her waiting where the well-kept lawn met a gnarled line of trees and undergrowth. The sun was on the rise again, turning the sky blood orange. Even with my sunglasses on, my eyeballs were screaming in pain. Stupid beautiful sunrise in stupid Elf World.
“I don’t have long,” Inge fretted. “I bought a ten-minute break from the master.”
That made me angry all over again. I wanted to ask how much it would cost to buy ten minutes of stomping Mr. Alderman with cleats, but I figured I shouldn’t waste Inge’s valuable time.
She pointed to the woods. “Andvari’s lair is in the river. Follow the current downstream to the waterfall. He dwells in the pool at its base.”
“Andvari?” I asked.
She nodded uneasily. “That is his name—the Careful One, in the old language.”
“And this dwarf lives underwater?”
“In the shape of a fish,” said Inge.
“Oh. Naturally.”
Hearthstone signed to Inge: How do you know this?
“I…well, Master Hearthstone, hulder still have some nature magic. We’re not supposed to use it, but—I sensed the dwarf the last time I was in the woods. Mr. Alderman only tolerates this patch of wilderness on his property because…you know, hulder need a forest nearby to survive. And he can always…hire more help in there.”
She said hire. I heard catch.
The ten-minute cleat-stomping session was sounding better and better.
“So this dwarf…” I said, “what’s he doing in Alfheim? Doesn’t the sunlight turn him to stone?”
Inge’s cow tail flicked. “According to the rumors I’ve heard, Andvari is over a thousand years old. He has powerful magic. The sunlight barely affects him. Also, he stays in the darkest depths of the pool. I—I suppose he thought Alfheim was a safe place to hide. His gold has been stolen before, by dwarves, humans, even gods. But who would look for a dwarf and his treasure here?”
Thank you, Inge, Hearth signed.
The hulder blushed. “Just be careful, Master Hearth. Andvari is tricky. His treasure is sure to be hidden and protected by all sorts of enchantments. I’m sorry I can only tell you where to find him, not how to defeat him.”
Hearthstone gave Inge a hug. I was afraid the poor girl’s bonnet might pop off like a bottle cap.
“I—please—good luck!” She dashed off.
I turned to Hearthstone. “Has she been in love with you since you were kids?”
Hearth pointed at me, then circled his finger at the side of his head. You’re crazy.
“Whatever, man,” I said. “I’m just glad you didn’t kiss her. She would’ve passed out.”
Hearthstone gave me an irritated grunt. Come on. Dwarf to rob.
We Nuke All the Fish
I HAD trekked through the wilderness of Jotunheim. I had lived on the streets of Boston. Somehow the swath of uncultivated land behind the Alderman Manor seemed even more dangerous.
Glancing behind us, I could still see the house’s towers peeking above the woods. I could hear traffic from the road. The sun shone down as glaringly cheerful as usual. But under the gnarled trees, the gloom was tenacious. The roots and rocks seemed determined to trip me. In the upper branches, birds and squirrels gave me the stink eye. It was as if this little patch of nature were trying doubly hard to stay wild in order to avoid getting turned into a tea garden.
If I even see you bringing a croquet set up in here, the trees seemed to say, I will make you eat the mallets.
I appreciated the attitude, but it made our stroll a little nerve-racking.
Hearthstone seemed to know where he was going. The thought of Andiron and him playing in these woods as boys gave me new respect for their courage. After picking our way through a few acres of thornbushes, we emerged in a small clearing with a cairn of stones in the center.
“What is that?” I asked.
Hearthstone’s expression was tight and painful, as if he were still forging through the briar. He signed, The well.
The melancholy of the place seeped into my pores. This was the spot where his brother had died. Mr. Alderman must have filled in the well—or maybe he had forced Hearthstone to do it after he’d finished skinning the evil creature. The act had probably earned Hearth a couple of gold coins.
I circled my fist over my chest, the sign for I’m sorry.
Hearth stared at me as if the sentiment did not compute. He knelt next to the cairn and picked up a small flat ston
e from the top. Engraved on it in dark red was a rune:
Othala. Inheritance. The same symbol Randolph’s little girl Emma had been clutching in my dream. Seeing it in real life, I felt seasick all over again. My face burned with the memory of Randolph’s scar.
I recalled what Loki had said in the wight’s tomb: Blood is a powerful thing. I can always find you through him. For a second, I wondered if Loki had somehow put the rune here as a message for me, but Hearthstone didn’t seem surprised to find it.
I knelt next to him and signed, Why is that here?
Hearthstone pointed to himself. He set the stone carefully back on top of the pile.
Means home, he signed. Or what is important.
“Inheritance?”
He considered for a moment, then nodded. I put it here when I left, years ago. This rune I will not use. It belongs with him.
I stared at the pile of rocks. Were some of these the same ones that eight-year-old Hearthstone had been playing with when the monster attacked his brother? This place was more than a memorial for Andiron. Part of Hearthstone had died here, too.
I was no magician, but it seemed wrong for a set of runestones to be missing one symbol. How could you master a language—especially the language of the universe—without all the letters?
I wanted to encourage Hearth to take back the rune. Surely Andiron would want that. Hearth had a new family now. He was a great sorcerer. His cup of life had been refilled.
But Hearthstone avoided my eyes. It’s easy not to heed someone when you’re deaf. You simply don’t look at them. He rose and walked on, gesturing for me to follow.
A few minutes later, we found the river. It wasn’t impressive—just a swampy creek like the one that meandered through the Fenway greenbelt. Clouds of mosquitos hovered over marsh grass. The ground was like warm bread pudding. We followed the current downstream through thick patches of bramble and bog up to our knees. The thousand-year-old dwarf Andvari had picked a lovely place to retire.
After last night’s dreams, my nerves were raw.
I kept thinking about Loki bound in his cave. And his appearance in Alex Fierro’s suite: It’s such a simple request. If that had actually happened, what did Loki want?
I remembered the assassin, the goat-killer who liked to possess flight instructors. He’d told me to bring Alex to Jotunheim: SHE IS NOW YOUR ONLY HOPE FOR SUCCESS. That did not bode well.
Three days from now, the giant Thrym expected a wedding. He would want his bride, as well as a bride-price of the Skofnung Sword and Stone. In exchange, maybe, we would get back Thor’s hammer and prevent hordes of Jotunheim from invading Boston.
I thought about the thousand giants I’d seen in my dream, marching into battle to challenge Thor. I wasn’t anxious to face such a force—not without a big hammer that could explode mountains and fry invading armies into sizzly bits.
I guessed what Hearth and I were doing now made sense: trudging through Alfheim, trying to retrieve gold from some old dwarf so we could get the Skofnung Stone and heal Blitz. Still…I felt as if Loki was intentionally keeping us sidetracked, not giving us time to think. He was like a point guard waving his hands in our faces, distracting us from shooting for the net. There was more to this wedding deal than getting Thor’s hammer back. Loki had a plan within a plan. He’d recruited my Uncle Randolph for some reason. If only I could find a moment to gather my thoughts without being pulled from one life-threatening problem to another….
Yeah, right. You have just described your entire life and afterlife, Magnus.
I tried to tell myself everything would be fine. Unfortunately, my esophagus didn’t believe me. It kept yo-yoing up and down from my chest to my teeth.
The first waterfall we found was a gentle trickle over a mossy ledge. Open meadows stretched out on either bank. The water wasn’t deep enough for a fish to hide in. The meadows were too flat to conceal effective traps like poison spikes, land mines, or trip wires that launched dynamite or rabid rodents from catapults. No self-respecting dwarf would’ve hidden his treasure here. We kept walking.
The second waterfall had potential. The terrain was rockier, with lots of slippery moss and treacherous crevices between the boulders on either bank. The overhanging trees shaded the water and provided ample potential hiding places for crossbows or guillotine blades. The river itself cascaded down a natural stairwell of rock before tumbling ten feet into a pond the diameter of a trampoline. With all the churning froth and ripples, I couldn’t see below the surface, but judging from the dark blue water, it must’ve been deep.
“There could be anything down there,” I told Hearth. “How do we do this?”
Hearthstone gestured toward my pendant. Be ready.
“Uh, okay.” I pulled off my runestone and summoned Jack.
“Hey, guys!” he said. “Whoa! We’re in Alfheim! Did you bring sunglasses for me?”
“Jack, you don’t have eyes,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but still, I look great in sunglasses! What are we doing?”
I told him the basics while Hearthstone rummaged through his bag of runestones, trying to decide which flavor of magic to use on a dwarf/fish.
“Andvari?” Jack said. “Oh, I’ve heard of that guy. You can steal his gold, but don’t kill him. That would be really bad luck.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
Swords could not shrug, but Jack tilted from side to side, which was his closest equivalent. “I dunno what would happen. I just know it’s right up there on the things-you-don’t-do list, along with breaking mirrors, crossing paths with Freya’s cats, and trying to kiss Frigg under the mistletoe. Boy, I made that mistake once!”
I had the horrible feeling Jack was about to tell me the story. Then Hearthstone raised a runestone over his head. I just had time to recognize the symbol:
Thurisaz: the rune of Thor.
Hearthstone slammed it into the pond.
KA-BLAM! Water vapor coated my sunglasses. The atmosphere turned to pure steam and ozone so fast, my sinuses inflated like car air bags.
I wiped off my lenses. Where the pond had been, a huge muddy pit went down thirty feet. At the bottom, dozens of surprised fish flailed around, their gills flapping.
“Whoa,” I said. “Where did the waterfall…?”
I looked up. The river arched over our heads like a liquid rainbow, bypassing the pond and crashing into the riverbed downstream.
“Hearth, how the heck—?”
He turned to me, and I took a nervous step back. His eyes blazed with anger. His expression was scarier and even less Hearth-like than when he’d uruzed himself into Ox Elf.
“Uh, just saying, man…” I raised my hands. “You nuked about fifty innocent fish.”
One of them is a dwarf, he signed.
He jumped into the pit, his boots sinking into the mud. He waded around, pulling out his feet with deep sucking noises, examining each fish. Above me, the river continued to arc through midair, roaring and glittering in the sunlight.
“Jack,” I said, “what does the thurisaz rune do?”
“It’s the rune of Thor, señor. Hey—Thor, señor. That rhymes!”
“Yeah, great. But, uh, why did the pond go boom? Why is Hearthstone acting so weird?”
“Oh! Because thurisaz is the rune of destructive force. Like Thor. Blowing stuff up. Also, when you invoke it, you can get a little…Thor-like.”
Thor-like. Just what I needed. Now I really didn’t want to jump into that hole. If Hearthstone started farting like the thunder god, the air down there was going to get toxic real fast.
On the other hand, I couldn’t leave those fish at the mercy of an angry elf. Sure, they were just fish. But I didn’t like the idea of so many dying just so we could weed out one disguised dwarf. Life was life. I guess it was a Frey thing. I also figured Hearthstone might feel bad about it once he shook off the influence of thurisaz.
“Jack, stay here,” I said. “Keep watch.”
“Which would b
e easier and cooler with sunglasses,” Jack complained.
I ignored him and leaped in.
At least Hearth didn’t try to kill me when I dropped down next to him. I looked around but saw no sign of treasure—no X’s marking the spot, no trapdoors, just a bunch of gasping fish.
How do we find Andvari? I signed. The other fish need water to breathe.
We wait, Hearth signed. Dwarf will suffocate too unless he changes form.
I didn’t like that answer. I crouched and rested my hands on the mud, sending out the power of Frey through the slime and the muck. I know that sounds weird, but I figured if I could heal with a touch, intuiting everything that was wrong inside someone’s body, maybe I could extend my perception a little more—the same way you might squint to see farther—and sense all the different life-forms around me.
It worked, more or less. My mind touched the cold panicked consciousness of a trout flopping a few inches away. I located an eel that had burrowed into the mud and was seriously considering biting Hearthstone in the foot (I convinced him not to). I touched the tiny minds of guppies whose entire thought process was Eek! Eek! Eek! Then I sensed something different—a grouper whose thoughts were racing a little too fast, like he was calculating escape plans.
I snatched him up with my einherji reflexes. The grouper yelled, “GAK!”
“Andvari, I presume? Nice to meet you.”
“LET ME GO!” wailed the fish. “My treasure is not in this pond! Actually, I don’t have a treasure! Forget I said that!”
“Hearth, how ’bout we get out of here?” I suggested. “Let the pond fill up again.”
The fire suddenly went out of Hearthstone’s eyes. He staggered.
From above, Jack yelled, “Uh, Magnus? You might want to hurry.”
The rune magic was fading. The arc of water started to dissolve, breaking into droplets. Keeping one hand tight on my captive grouper, I wrapped my other arm around Hearthstone’s waist and leaped straight up with all my strength.
