Underworlds #4: The Ice Dragon

  The lyre in my lap was barely in one piece, but I used the time to try to restring it. I couldn’t help thinking about Orpheus’ journey to the Greek Underworld to rescue his new wife. After everything he did, charming the beasts and even Hades himself, he couldn’t save her. It wasn’t meant to be.

  I imagined how horrible he must have felt, knowing he had tried everything and still failed. We needed to do better … but the lyre in my hands was so fragile now. I remembered the mysterious man climbing the rocks and signaling to us. Could he really be the same person as at the museum? Did he want the lyre, too?

  And what did he mean — four, two, three, one?

  Jon tugged my sleeve. “Time’s up.”

  I reattached and tightened the lyre’s last string as best I could, then looked up. We were drifting toward a long wooden pier jutting out from the riverbank. Lanterns on the pier cast a sick green light on the black water. Beyond the pier stood a bridge with a gold roof.

  “The port of the dead,” said Sydney, reading from Dana’s notes.

  “It is,” whispered Baldur. “And that’s the infamous Gjoll Bridge. The gold roof is made of the shields of the dead whose souls were not chosen by my sisters to join Odin. Not many of the living have ever seen it. This is Niflheim.”

  The bridge was frightening in its own way, but nothing like the immensity in the distance behind it. There was a tree whose trunk must have measured miles from side to side. It reached to a height far beyond anything I could see.

  “The giant ash tree is the axis of all three worlds,” said Baldur. “Niflheim, Midgard, and Asgard.”

  I tried to imagine how everything was connected to everything else. Norse mythology was one thing, but how did all the other branches of mythology fit in? It was all too much. Besides, I had plenty of other things to worry about.

  As our ship mysteriously drifted to the pier, a troop of ghostly Draugs emerged from the darkness in a slow procession. They carried a portable platform — and I knew right away what it was for.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “They’re coming for you, Baldur.”

  He grumbled under his breath. “To get into the castle, we must fool the keepers of the dead,” he whispered. “It seems a shame to let my funeral go to waste. I’ll play dead. You should, too. Everyone, quietly, get under my shroud!” Baldur lay flat on the funeral platform and pulled the heavy cloth over him. Without any other option, we ducked underneath and clung to the underside of the platform. “Psst,” Baldur said. “When we get inside the castle, you three sneak off to find Dana. I’ll play dead until the Draugs get wise. Now, shhh!”

  Frozen in place, we heard the grumbling of the ghostly Draug warriors walking down the pier toward the ship. They smelled bad, as usual, but there was another smell on them we all recognized — the sour stink of Fenrir. He was definitely in Niflheim.

  We were carried inland to where the ground was mostly frozen swamp, black with stubbly growth. The Draugs marched silently past all kinds of wailing, which I figured must have been coming from souls of the dead. They were angry, or sad, or both.

  But it was about to get worse.

  The Draugs paused, set down the platform, and strode away. I lifted the shroud for a moment to peek out. We were alone.

  “There,” Sydney whispered. A huge, ugly building made of mismatched iron, stone, and wood rose up on a hill in front of the giant tree.

  “I bet Dana’s in there,” I said. “Her parents, too. They have to be.”

  “There’s supposed to be a monster dog, Garm, guarding Niflheim’s fortress,” Baldur whispered. “I don’t sense him nearby.”

  “Maybe he’s being walked by … what’s Loki’s daughter’s name?” Jon asked.

  “Hela,” I said, shivering a little. “Dana told me once. It’s a name you don’t forget.”

  Clang! The chains fell and the gate squealed open. After a minute, the Draugs hauled us across the threshold.

  The Draugs set us down again so they could close the gate behind them. That’s when Baldur whispered, “Now!” We slipped out from under the shroud and darted into the shadows. I wished Baldur a silent “good luck.” We would all need it.

  Hela’s fortress was a city of pointed arches and tall pinnacles, stone bridges and cobbled streets. There were narrow passageways everywhere, low-roofed houses, and plumes of smoke rising from what looked like shops, though I couldn’t imagine what they sold there. In the middle of the city stood a crazy structure made of crumbling stone and rotting wooden beams piled up to impossible heights. It was surrounded by a bad-smelling swamp of black reeds and vines.

  Sydney breathed out. “If I was keeping people prisoner, which I would never do, that ugly place is where I’d put them. Dana and her parents must be in there.”

  I plucked the strings of the lyre one by one. They barely made a ripple, but the magical sound rolled back the dense sludge just enough to give us a path to the gate.

  Unfortunately, the creepy guard dog must have returned from his walk, because there he was. He was huge, a big black-haired monster on four legs with a head just a little smaller than an oil drum.

  “Well, he’s ugly,” said Jon. “Along with everything else here.”

  “According to the myths, Garm has one purpose,” said Sydney. “He guards the Niflheim fortress. That’s all he does.”

  Garm fixed us with his bright red eyes and stepped forward. We shrank back.

  I pulled out the lyre again.

  “Plus, he’s deaf,” she added.

  I holstered the lyre and drew my sword.

  Garm growled like rumbling thunder.

  “I think we’re going to have to fight,” I said. “Again.”

  “Maybe not,” said Jon. “Even crazy monster dogs get hungry, don’t they?” He dug into a pocket and pulled out a chunk of toasted bread. We blinked at him.

  “What? I grabbed it when you put out the fire on the boat. I didn’t think Baldur would miss it.” He pulled us behind him, then tossed the bread high. This surprised Garm, and he leaped for it. We raced past him into the black hall, shutting the big door quietly behind us.

  Apparently not quietly enough.

  The instant we set foot on the stone floor, doors flashed open all around us, and a hundred Draug warriors rushed in.

  “Sword fight!” Sydney cried, rushing ahead like a warrior. Jon and I did the same, hacking away with our swords and surprising the Draugs with our ferocity.

  Too bad ferocity only gets you so far. The Draugs were far better sword fighters, having practiced, like, forever. They lunged. They parried. They lunged again. We mostly jumped aside.

  “Back up!” Jon shouted, pointing. “Across the floor to that passage!”

  We dashed into a passage so tight the Draugs couldn’t follow us. They gargled a bunch of weird words, doubled back, and circled around.

  “Hurry!” said Sydney. “Look —”

  We squeezed out the end of the passage into a corridor of big iron doors, all chained shut.

  “Dungeons, anyone?” said Jon.

  “Dana!” I yelled. “Mrs. Runson! Dr. Runson!”

  I clanged my sword lightly on every door until I heard an answer. “Owen Brown? Is that you?”

  My heart leaped. “Mrs. Runson!”

  “Stand back from the door!” Sydney raised her sword with both hands and brought the blade down on the door latch. The blow dented it, but her sword bounced back and nearly struck her in the helmet.

  “My turn!” said Jon.

  We took turns. Clang! Clang! Clang! Together, the three of us finally hacked the latch to pieces. The door swung open, and Dr. and Mrs. Runson rushed out. “We never believed …”

  “Where’s Dana?” I said, scanning the empty cell behind them.

  They looked at each other. Mrs. Runson buried her face in her hands. Dr. Runson shook his head. “Hela has her,” he said softly. “She refuses to let her go.”

  All at once, the door at the end of the passage burst open, and the whole plac
e lit up like a city at night. The passage swarmed with the same angry Draugs as before, and Garm, too.

  But we hardly looked at them.

  Because out of the midst of the dead Viking warriors stepped … an even deader person. A demon … a witch … a corpse.

  I knew exactly who it was — Loki’s evil daughter, Hela.

  “And now … I have you all!” she crowed.

  Hela was quite a sight, to say the least. She was an old skull-headed lady with stringy white hair. Her hands were the bones of a skeleton, hanging together with stringy sinews. Her arms and legs, visible under her cloak — ugh! — were covered in rags that may or may not have been rotten flesh. When she cracked open her jaws, worms slithered out.

  She was a nice lady.

  Oh, and on her skull-head sat a crown of mangled metal that looked as if it was left over from a really bad car crash.

  I cleared my throat. “We’ve come for Dana.”

  “She cannot leave my Underworld,” Hela said. Her voice was as cracked and rusty as her crown. “Fenrir came with my father’s command. The girl stays. You … may go.”

  It escapes me how a dead skeleton lady could have breath, but she did, and it was really stinky. I nearly fainted. “We’re not leaving without her.” I stepped forward, my sword raised.

  The Runsons, who probably knew enough to keep quiet, poked fingers in my shoulders. “Careful,” they whispered. “She’s a goddess, and really powerful.”

  Hela jerked her way around us like a puppet on wires. It was sickening.

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “Fenrir will make sure you stay with your friend. Of course, you have to be dead to really fit in.” She grinned wickedly. “But the Draugs and Garm will happily oblige.”

  “At least let us see Dana,” said Dr. Runson. “We have to see our daughter.”

  Hela laughed so loudly that a whole crew of worms dribbled down her chin. “Fenrir took her to his lair! She’s at the center of a maze of glass so intricate only Fenrir himself can thread his way in and out. I can’t get in if I wanted to. No, Dana Runson is lost to you. So go! Before I lose my patience and keep you all —”

  Mrs. Runson began to cry.

  I plucked the lyre softly, playing over the strings to see what worked on Hela.

  “Stop that noise,” she said calmly. “It grates on me, and doesn’t do anything except make me angrier.”

  So I stopped. Still, I had to get her to make a deal. Too bad I didn’t think it through before I opened my mouth.

  “I’ll go to Fenrir’s lair,” I said. “I’ll vanquish him. I’ll bring Dana out.”

  “What?” said Jon. “Owen, that’s —”

  Hela whipped her ugly face around to me. “Oh, you will? You can’t possibly succeed at any of those things.”

  My heart pounded like a jackhammer. “I will. And if I come back with Dana …?”

  Hela was silent for a while. “Then you may take her home. But —”

  “Here it comes,” said Sydney.

  “You think yourself a junior Orpheus?” Hela said darkly. “Then find your way to Fenrir’s lair. Vanquish him if you can. Bring Dana back with you. But if you look back at her, for even a second, for a fraction of a second, she remains in Niflheim forever … and so do you. Deal?”

  I felt like my head was stuffed with wool. I had no choice. “Deal.”

  Hela roared with tinny laughter. “Then follow me, everyone! To the mouth of Fenrir’s maze. Let’s watch as this boy fails!”

  AS WE TRAMPED DEEPER INTO HELA’S CASTLE THAN we ever wanted to go, I turned to my friends. “Dr. Runson, Mrs. Runson, tell me what you know about Orpheus. Sydney, read me everything you can find in Dana’s book!”

  Down every set of stairs, down every ramp, the Runsons talked, Sydney read, and Jon patted my shoulders over and over until my brain was mush.

  Was I Orpheus? No. Could I do anything at all like he did? Who knew? He was strong. He was a hero of the journey of the Argonauts. A hero in the Quest for the Golden Fleece. A hero — until he failed to rescue his wife from Hades.

  Who was I?

  Owen Brown. A kid.

  “And here we are!” Hela rasped, fluttering her ragged robes around.

  What we were looking at was a series of glass walls, ten or twelve feet tall. They were angled this way and that, and their edges looked as sharp as razor blades. Far away, in what I guessed was the center of the maze, we could make out the shape of a beast with red fur — Fenrir — pacing back and forth. Every few seconds, we glimpsed a figure behind him, standing motionless. Dana.

  The Runsons hugged each other close.

  Hela turned her beady eyes on me. “I have all the time in the world. But I don’t think she does. Your move.”

  “Owen,” said Sydney quietly, patting my arm.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Good luck,” said Mrs. Runson.

  “Thanks.”

  I looked at Jon. He just nodded. I nodded back.

  And I entered the maze.

  It was as if I had entered another world.

  The glass walls were as sharp as they looked, which I found out when I glanced back at everyone, and they watched me walk straight into one wall, bounce off another wall, and slide to the floor, nearly slicing myself in two.

  “Careful!” I yelped to myself.

  I rose to my feet slowly. But there were so many corridors, and at such crazy angles, that all I saw were reflections of myself. Dana and the center weren’t getting an inch closer.

  Then I remembered for the second time that day what I’d learned so painfully in the Babylonian Underworld. Spaces resonated with a particular sound, a single pitch all their own. If I could play the right notes, the lyre might be able to help me make my way between the glass walls to Dana.

  I’d think about my inevitable battle with Fenrir when I got there. If I got there. No, when I got there. Part of being a hero was having confidence in yourself, right?

  Bling … boong … pling-g-g-g!

  The wall ahead of me resounded as I plucked the lyre. The sound echoed from one wall to another, all the way around what I guessed was a hidden corner. I slipped around it, played more notes, and a farther wall echoed. I moved to it, found a passage that was otherwise invisible, and played the lyre again. Note by note, step-by-step, I made my way to the center of the maze.

  And Dana.

  And Fenrir.

  Dana was as excited to see me as I was to see her.

  Fenrir, not so much.

  He growled, and the smell of his breath almost knocked me over. His venom dripped and hissed on the ground. If giant wolves could smile, I was sure Fenrir was smiling now, as if he saw his supper. My brain flashed with everything all at once. The first time I’d seen Fenrir at Dana’s house. The museum where Jon, Sydney, and I stole the lyre. The stranger at the museum whom we might have just seen in Asgard.

  Then all the pieces fell into place. And I laughed.

  “Really, Owen?” said Dana. “Laughing at a time like this?”

  “The stranger,” I said. “He didn’t follow us at all. He followed the lyre.”

  And suddenly I knew exactly what he meant by that riddle: four, two, three, one.

  Fenrir growled and prepared to leap at me. Before he could, I played those notes: four, two, three, one. All at once, his back arched up like an angry cat’s, and he sank to the floor at my feet. Then he shrank into the back corner of his lair. He curled up, tucked his ugly head between his front paws … and started to whimper.

  “Owen Brown!” came a distant yell that I recognized as Hela’s. “Remember our deal!”

  I kept playing the lyre notes so that Fenrir would stay where he was, and filled Dana in.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Owen, that is so dumb!” she cried.

  “Believe me, I know,” I said. “But that’s the deal. Ready? Here we go.”

  I turned my back on her. We started out of the core of the maze, me in the lead, Dana following. I played the
lyre — four, two, three, one — and took the turns, left, right, to the side, backward, straight ahead. We were making our way out. Well, I was making my way out. I couldn’t hear Dana.

  Orpheus couldn’t stop himself from looking back to see if his wife was still behind him, and I knew why. He must have felt just like I felt. I wanted to know that Dana was there. In this place, crafted by Loki, the trickster god himself, how could anyone be sure that the whole thing wasn’t a horrible trick? For all I knew, the whole journey might still be a colossal failure. Then we’d be living out our days in Niflheim forever.

  And yet, note by note, we got closer to the entrance. Five more turns in the maze, and we would be out. Or maybe only I would be out. Looking through the glass walls, I saw Jon, Sydney, and the Runsons. I looked at their eyes. They stared at me, then they searched the maze behind me. What was in their faces? Did they see Dana behind me? Or was I alone? I couldn’t tell.

  Then I knew I had to look. I had to see if this was a trick….

  My neck twitched. I felt my muscles straining, trying to hold my head forward. My heart pounded. My head ached. I heard nothing behind me. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there!

  I opened my lips. I breathed in. My head turned to the side.

  No!

  I rushed ahead, playing the last note loud and full, and I was out of the maze.

  Everyone screamed.

  And Dana was there, clutching at my shoulders, pulling me to the ground, collapsing on me. Everyone piled on top of us.

  Hela shrieked like a banshee. “Nooooo! Draugs — kill — them — all!”

  Then, before we knew what was happening, Hela hurtled through the air and came down hard in the middle of the Draugs, knocking them all down like bowling pins.

  “What?” I gasped.

  And there was Baldur, dusting his hands together. “Hela’s heavier than she looks! I didn’t come too early, did I?”

  “Right on time!” shouted Sydney.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Baldur said. “My ship makes return trips, you know!”

  In a flash of speed, we sprinted back through the passage, up and down stairs, and out the castle gate. We scrambled onto the ship, and pushed off into the crazy sequence of rivers that brought us there, all before Hela and her Draugs could catch us.