Underworlds #4: The Ice Dragon

  “Brother!” shouted Thor.

  I pulled Dana toward me. “What did you —”

  Only it wasn’t Dana anymore.

  Her familiar features twisted and shrank in an instant, and she was suddenly the old woman. Then she was a dwarf, then a child, then a bear, then a snake-headed old man. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Jon and Sydney gaped, mouths hanging open. Finally, we were staring at Loki himself, his silver armor beaming in the flames of the furnace.

  “Loki, you fiend!” Odin cried.

  “You forget that I am a shape-shifter! And this was so simple!” Loki hissed. “I knew that the lowly mistletoe was passed over by Odin’s charm. I needled the secret out of the Sybil. Thank you, children, for allowing me to switch with your friend. For bringing me here, into Asgard! With Baldur’s death, all is fulfilled. Ragnarok begins now!”

  “What have you done with Dana?” I cried, drawing my sword.

  “Why, she’s joined her parents in Niflheim, of course!” he sneered. “But don’t worry your little heads about her. I’ll see to her personally … when I rule all the worlds!” With a swift flash of his armored hand, he tore the Crystal Rune from me, slicing my palm open. “Now the rune is mine!”

  Enraged, Thor threw his hammer at Loki, but Loki became a deer and leaped out of the way. Then his hooves stretched into talons. Clutching the Crystal Rune to his chest, he became a bird and flew straight up and out over the cold sea to join his approaching ships.

  “Baldur!” Odin wailed at the top of his lungs, and Valhalla trembled on its foundations. “Children,” he shouted, “the reign of the gods is coming to its terrible end. We postpone Baldur’s journey to the land of the dead. First we fight, then we mourn our lost son.” He raised an arm in the air. “All heroes — to the shore!”

  WE WATCHED, STUNNED, AS FOUR GODS TOOK UP Baldur’s limp body and walked slowly up the hill to Valhalla.

  “I’ve known forever that Loki is evil,” Sydney said, wiping tears from her cheeks. “We all have. But this — killing Odin’s son right in front of us — this is different. This is … worse.”

  “What just happened?” Jon said. “Where’s Dana?”

  I wiped the blood from the shallow cut on my hand. “Loki must have switched places with Dana in the hut. We lost sight of them for what, a minute? Long enough. Loki probably changed Fenrir into the dog. And now Dana’s … in the Underworld!”

  “We need every sword!” Thor shouted. He turned to us. “Children, are you with us?”

  Jon looked at me. “We have to save Dana, don’t we?”

  Sydney’s face was as hard as a stone. “That’s the most important thing.”

  My mind was spinning. “But as long as Loki’s up here, he won’t be in Niflheim. Dana and her parents are safe,” I said. “And if we can defeat him —”

  All at once, we heard a long, queasy note that sounded like it was played on the bone of some long-dead animal.

  “Who comes now?” Odin boomed.

  “It is I, Kingu, with my army!” called a voice nearly as loud in reply.

  We turned, and our friend from the Babylonian Underworld — a god clad in scorpion armor — marched before an army of lion-headed warriors. Next to him trod his son, the massive stone giant, Ullikummi.

  “Children, we traveled through your world to join this war,” Kingu said, approaching us.

  “As did I, the god of the Egyptian Underworld, Anubis,” said a jackal-headed creature at least eight feet tall from boots to ears, who marched in behind us. “My canine warriors are at your service, Odin!”

  “And look!” said Sydney. “Our old friend!”

  Over a distant hill strode an enormous red-armored god. It was Hades himself, king of the Greek Underworld. With him marched the great heroes, Odysseus, Hercules, Jason, and a thousand others.

  My head swam. We were witnessing a massive gathering of gods and heroes, and it was awesome. Also, terrifying. Ragnarok — the Twilight of the Gods — was going to be huge.

  The three Underworld leaders joined us on a plain high above the sea, while their armies massed at the shore below. Odin greeted and embraced Hades, Anubis, and Kingu in turn. It was a very strange sight.

  “It was Hades who showed us the way through your village, children,” said Anubis.

  “How is it …” I started, but couldn’t go on.

  “It burns still,” said Kingu softly, “but without Loki, the fire monsters fell under my command once more. They are back below, where they belong.”

  “Odin, your allies unite to stop Loki’s invasion because of these children here,” boomed Hades. He looked right at me with his fiery eyes. It was hard to hold his gaze. “These children alone assured our allegiance.”

  Odin breathed deeply and turned to us, too. “I shall help you find your friend. If we survive this day.”

  The black and white ravens circled over Odin’s head, chattering. He answered with a swift nod, then peered out across the waves. “Loki’s ships will land soon. Kingu, Hades, line your armies along the shore to the east. Anubis, to the west. Create a corridor across the plains to the bridge. In his greed for my throne, Loki cannot help but enter. We shall trap him at the bridge!”

  No sooner had the Underworld gods moved their armies to the shore, than we heard the faint pounding of drums. Soon, the drums were all we could hear, battering out a rhythm for the oarsmen on Loki’s war-ships. Rowing the lead ship were giants covered in ice, with long white hair to their shoulders, dented armor, furs, and enormous boots. There were a dozen of them, and they were taller than oak trees.

  This didn’t bode well.

  Sydney gasped softly. “Those must be the Frost Giants,” she said. “I remember them from Dana’s book.”

  Then … suddenly … silence.

  No sound but the lapping of waves. The whole world seemed to wait, holding its breath.

  I looked at Jon. “This is it —”

  THOOM!

  THOOM!

  The ground shook. Even before the first ships landed on the far side of the bridge, the enormous stony-faced Frost Giants, led by Loki himself, climbed down into the water and charged toward solid ground, bypassing the bridge entirely. The earth shook beneath our feet as the giants thudded up onto the land.

  “Heroes! To the shore!” Odin shouted. Wave upon wave of armored men and gods charged down the fields to meet the approaching ships. At the same time, the Frost Giants thundered up from the shore, heaving boulders at the Norsemen.

  Loki leaped ahead of the giants, swinging his silver sword, booming out commands. Meanwhile, his army of beasts — angry, evil, and fearless — charged off the boats onto the Asgard bridge.

  Jon turned to Odin. “What can we do to help?”

  Odin stood with Thor but seemed alone, the wind brushing his hair and beard. The golden glow of his face was now a somber gray. “Now that I see the size of Loki’s great force, my heart quakes in sorrow. The end of the gods may happen today. You can help….”

  Odin needed something from us? Three kids who were way out of our element?

  He lowered his head to us. “Children, enter the high throne room. Destroy my throne. Make certain no piece of it stands.”

  “But, Father, why?” asked Thor. “That throne has been the seat of your power since the beginning of time. It is indestructible!”

  Odin breathed in a long breath, his eyes scanning the roiling battlefield below. “Thor, my son, not even you know this. Only I know the reason the throne must be destroyed. Only I know its terrible truth. It must now be told.”

  My mind reeled. I was terrified of what he might say. What secret could make the chief Norse god con-fide in humans? In kids?

  “The Crystal Rune,” Odin said, “is nothing less than an ancient key. That is why I tried to keep it hidden. It transforms my throne into a cursed engine, a device of destruction so vile you could never imagine. Its single purpose is to grind all the worlds to dust. It is a Doomsday machine, fashioned at the mo
ment that Asgard came to be. It is the curse beneath the beauty. It is the end written in the beginning. That is why I have protected it for eons.”

  He looked up at the high towers of Valhalla. “I built this great hall with my own hands for one reason: to keep — no, to imprison — the terror within.”

  “Father,” said Thor, glancing at the battlefield below, then back to Odin, “you lived like this? For centuries?”

  Odin placed his armored hand on Thor’s shoulder. “From the beginning. Children, you know the inscription on the rune?”

  I recited it from memory.

  “Whoever holds this crystal key

  Holds close the fate of Odin’s throne.”

  Odin nodded. “Turn the rune upside down, and you will see its other inscription, the words that complete the poem.” He spoke them.

  “Come Ragnarok, when all is gone,

  Great Odin’s throne alone shall be.”

  Loki yelled somewhere below. “Draug archers — take the field!” The battle was ramping up, and all we could do was stare at Odin in shock.

  “But what you’re saying isn’t in any of the Norse myths, is it?” asked Sydney. “Dana would have mentioned it.”

  Arrows rose like a black cloud of crows.

  “It is a story for the end times only,” Odin said, watching the arrows fall. “Not knowing the Crystal Rune’s true power, Loki believes that it will claim my throne for him. He will use it and let loose its terrifying, grim secret. You must destroy the throne before this can happen.”

  “But if it’s indestructible, how?” Jon said.

  “Baldur was invincible except for the sting of the lowly mistletoe,” said Odin. “There is always a way. Perhaps with magic older than the rune itself.” He looked at my holster.

  “The lyre?” I said. “But it’s so banged up.”

  “Owen Brown, use your lyre,” Odin said. “Find the single note that will turn my throne to ash, that will destroy what is indestructible.”

  No pressure or anything. Just a command to save the world, given by a Norse god. No big deal.

  I remembered how we struggled in the Babylonian Underworld until I discovered that each object and place resonated with its own frequency. Would that knowledge help us here?

  I ran my fingers along the arms of the lyre, thinking about how beautiful it had been in the museum when we first saw it. It had been through, well, a couple of Underworlds since then. And now that Dana was trapped in Niflheim, the thing I’d always feared might actually happen: I could lose her forever. We would need the lyre to rescue her, too — but I didn’t know if it could hold up until then.

  “If you cannot destroy my throne before Loki arrives,” Odin said, “not just Asgard, but all the worlds — yours included — shall fall.”

  “But isn’t it written that destroying your throne will also … destroy you?” asked Thor in alarm.

  Odin nodded. “A small price to pay for the survival of the worlds. Now, lead the children to Valhalla. Help them as you can —”

  Arrows continued crashing onto the field. Kingu’s lion-headed troops scattered. Ullikummi swatted the arrows away, but still more fell. The battlefield crawled with shapes, as if the solid ground were boiling. Monsters from Niflheim. Beasts of every description. Dead men. Millions of Draugs, Frost Giants, Hill Giants, Mountain Giants.

  All to put Loki on Odin’s throne.

  “Go!” said Odin. “Prevent the end, if you can!”

  Leaving the field in a daze, stunned by what we’d been asked to do, we climbed the final hill to the great hall of Valhalla. From its front gate, what we saw was a horrifying sight. A caravan of catapults rolled off Loki’s ships and plowed across the bridge onto land, firing as they advanced. The sky was black with arrows and projectiles. Explosions of liquid fire set the fields aflame. Great snow-headed elephants stormed off the ships at a gallop, trumpeting wildly as they scattered Anubis and his Egyptian forces.

  “Inside, quickly,” said Thor.

  Once inside the outermost walls of Valhalla, we mounted one stairway after another, steep and tall and almost vertical, to a level above the walls. There were more stairs to climb, and more, and more. I turned to look at what was going on below.

  Hades waded into a herd of spiked beasts, blades swinging, his spiky red armor dented but not breached. The bellowing roars of the beasts rang among Valhalla’s heights.

  Thor pulled me away. “We are nearly there. Hurry!”

  We climbed steps and entered the great hall. It was an open room made of stone. Wooden rafters crisscrossed the ceiling, which rose to a height I could barely see. Benches lined the hall from end to end.

  “This is where the Norse gods feasted,” said Thor. “Until today.”

  He led us from the banquet hall and up more high steps until we came to a flat terrace in the open air, where Baldur’s body lay on a platform, waiting for his final voyage to the Underworld. Behind Baldur stood a tall arch of blue stone. Beyond it, we could see only darkness.

  “Go through the arch,” Thor said, “then travel to the end of the ramparts. The throne stands at the very top of Valhalla. I cannot pass this point.”

  “Why not?” asked Sydney.

  Thor pointed to words carved over the arch. “It translates to ‘No god nor man can enter here but the All-High Odin Himself.’”

  “So Loki can’t go in, either,” said Jon.

  “Loki is a shape-shifter,” said Sydney. “He’ll find a way.”

  “But we can go in,” I said, suddenly understanding. “Because we’re not gods or men. We’re … kids.”

  There came a growl so loud and deep that the stones quaked beneath our feet.

  “What is that?” asked Sydney.

  “One of the many signs that foretell our doom!” said Thor.

  Comforting.

  We ran to the edge of the terrace and looked at the field below. Fenrir, the red wolf and son of Loki, was now as large as a house. When he opened his jaws, they seemed to reach from the ground to the clouds. An inferno of flame burst out between his fangs, scorching large swaths of the green fields.

  “I cannot stay!” Thor said, stepping away from us. “I would tell you, ‘May the gods be with you,’ but I fear you’re on your own. Good luck. It’s all we have now!”

  And without another word, Thor raced in great strides down from Valhalla and the mountain, leaping over rocks and stumps. He jumped from ledge to ledge, back to the field where Fenrir leaped, fiery-mouthed, at Odin himself.

  JON, SYDNEY, AND I STARED DOWN AT THE FIELD FROM the doorway of the great hall, and suddenly it hit me that we were on our own. I couldn’t tell what I felt. Would Asgard really fall today? Would Loki rule? Would our worlds crumble?

  I looked at the lyre in my hands. It seemed so old and frail.

  “Come on,” said Jon. “Odin may not survive, but let’s do what we have to do.”

  We slipped under the arch and started running up stairways to the summit and Odin’s throne. Finally, we came to a place open to the sky, a high, flat terrace of white stone polished to a glassy sheen. At the far end stood a tall throne, as high and wide as a house, made entirely of crystal.

  “That’s the engine of death?” Jon said. “It’s so … beautiful!”

  In the throne’s back was an indentation the exact size and shape of the Crystal Rune. I felt my knees ready to buckle. To destroy it meant the death of Odin. Not to destroy it meant the end of our world, if Loki had anything to say about it. “This lyre isn’t going to do anything at all —”

  Then we heard something weird. It sounded like crunching and cracking and stomping, but it wasn’t coming from the noisy battlefield. It was coming from the forest just below Valhalla’s uppermost level — just below us.

  “Oh, please,” said Jon. “Tell me it’s not him.”

  Sydney ran to the edge of the wall and looked down. “It’s him.”

  And it was.

  While his armies blasted the fields below, Loki ha
d somehow gotten away and was now making his way up the north side of the mountain. In one of his armored hands, he grasped the Crystal Rune he had stolen from us. On either side of him were Frost Giants, uprooting trees as they came. Behind them, a beast that looked vaguely like an oversize ox, with a forehead of iron horns, was dragging a giant battering ram.

  My heart pounded like a drum. “How did he get away from the battle?”

  “He’s a shape-shifter, remember?” said Sydney. “Odin needs to know he’s here.”

  But when we looked down, we saw Fenrir twist his giant head and blast a huge fireball across the field directly at Odin.

  Thor leaped for his father, throwing him out of the way as the ground exploded in flame.

  “Odin is busy. So are the others,” said Jon, scanning the field. “Maybe Kingu —”

  WHOOM!

  The walls of Valhalla rang like a bell and burst open with a blast.

  “Valhalla is breached!” I cried, whipping out the lyre. “We have to destroy the throne!”

  In what seemed like a matter of moments, we heard crashing stones and shattering timbers. The walls echoed with the sound of Loki bellowing. And suddenly, he was blasting his way through stones and ice and wooden beams, past Baldur’s body, up the last set of stairs until he stood outside the final arch to the throne, the arch that Thor couldn’t enter.

  Loki’s dark eyes smirked as he read the inscription on the crown of the arch. The horns on his head twisted and coiled through the woven bands of his terrifying helmet.

  I drew in a breath and slowly plucked a string, knowing it might mean the end of Odin. Plang-g-g. It echoed against the stones, then faded. It wasn’t the right note. I set my fingers on the next string.

  “He’s doing it again,” said Sydney, pulling me back with her.

  “How many ways can one guy be ugly?” Jon muttered.

  Quite a few, it turned out. First, he was a clawed beast with six legs, then a serpent, then a woolly creature with fiery horns, then a wormlike man with no bones, and a skeleton with no skin. Then, finally, standing among the broken walls of Valhalla, was a dragon.