Underworlds #3: Revenge of the Scorpion King

  Angry human eyes, large and dark and shadowed, stared out beneath a brow of bone and feathers as red as the beak.

  “KAAAA!” Birdman snarled. Flames licked the tip of his beak.

  I so wished that Dana’s glove was working, but all we had was the damaged lyre. With a big whoosh, Birdman swooped, his daggerlike talons flashing. We scattered across the clearing, but the wind from his wings almost blew us right off the edge of the tower. We zigzagged as if we were racing through a minefield until we reached the turret.

  “Up! Up!” Jon said. “It’ll be easy for Birdman to pick us off, so we have to climb fast!”

  Great idea. But when we grabbed the vines coiling up the side of the turret, they were so sharp they sliced our fingers. You know, because being attacked by a monster wasn’t deadly enough.

  Circling upward to gain speed, Birdman then dived at Sydney and Jon. His razor talons swiped and grasped, and flame flickered from his beak.

  I kicked out at his head. He recoiled, then lunged at me, opening his beak wide and clamping it shut just inches from my arm. I felt the hot breeze on my face.

  “No, you don’t!” Dana yelled. She swung her gloved fist with the force of a hammer and struck Birdman where his ugly beak met his even uglier head. Crack! The upper beak split and flames leaked out. Birdman twisted back in pain, seized the glove on Dana’s hand, and pulled.

  She screamed.

  Birdman hooted in victory. I twisted the tuner on my lyre to match the pitch of the sound and slammed on the string as hard as I could. As the note rang in the air, Birdman screeched but didn’t let go of Dana’s hand. Sydney grabbed Dana by the waist. Jon swung his foot out and kicked Birdman where his beak was cracked.

  Birdman pulled back for a second.

  Loki’s glove was in his beak.

  Dana cried out and went limp. Jon and Sydney held her close to the tower to keep her from falling. Birdman flapped in a rage nearby, but he wouldn’t come any closer because of the sound of the lyre. He finally scratched the air harmlessly, then fluttered away, Dana’s glove still in his beak.

  “Dana, are you all right?” I called frantically.

  She came to and stared at her hand, then at us. “I’m free …” she said. “I’m free. Come on!”

  Just then, Loki emerged from the level below. His rune’s silver glow enveloped Birdman, and the beast fluttered down to him, dropping the glove at his feet.

  “Keep going!” Dana cried, taking the lead, her hand scratched red and raw. “One last climb, and we’ll be on the summit.”

  After what seemed like hours, we made it to within a few feet of the top. I paused to catch my breath, but there was no time. Instead, I grabbed a vine and wrapped it around my hand. Finding footing, I tugged myself up.

  Even in the unfamiliar night air of the desert, the air on the summit smelled strange.

  Then I remembered that smell. It was the unmistakable scent of scorpion venom.

  A RING OF TORCHES BLAZED AROUND THE EDGE OF the high parapet.

  The Scorpion King stood in the midst of them, his giant head hanging low. As far as I could tell, he was staring at the exact center of the summit roof, at a stone carved with exotic characters.

  Panu bowed before him. “My king!”

  I stood next to Dana, Jon, and Sydney, hundreds of feet above the ground, while the dark Babylonian Underworld stretched for miles beneath us.

  Loki shouted at the top of his lungs from the level below. A flash of silver light arced over the summit.

  Then Birdman appeared overhead, a rune around his neck. With a screech, he dived down to the ground below, where the five other beasts stood with Fenrir. I knew they all had runes around their necks now. They were all under Loki’s power.

  “Loki’s close,” said Jon.

  “Kingu,” said Dana, stepping up to face the Scorpion King. “Loki’s used his runes to subdue every beast so far, but if he gets the Tablets of Destiny, he’ll control them forever. Don’t betray us. Help us stop him —”

  Before she could finish, the tower shook, the air rippled with energy, and Loki appeared. He stared at Kingu, then at us, then at the carved stone in the floor.

  “And here we are,” said Loki. He had obviously waited until he had an audience to slide his reclaimed glove on his hand. It enveloped his arm and sent a ripple of energy across his armor from head to toe. “Ah. Complete at last. My armor restored.”

  “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen,” Sydney whispered.

  “It’s the Underworld,” said Loki, his thin lips curling into a grin. “Nothing works the way you want it to. Come with me, Dana Runson. I have not finished with you.” He grabbed her bleeding hand.

  Jon, Sydney, and I stepped toward him, but Loki raised his glowing fist menacingly. “Don’t be foolish. You children have already lost.” He circled us slowly, pulling Dana with him. “With both the Scorpion King and me against you, you have no choice but to submit to our power.”

  Nearby, the Scorpion King’s stingers hovered like a pair of deadly puppets on strings. The points were swollen with venom. We’d already seen what damage they could do.

  They were two gods of awesome power, each with his own mission of revenge.

  And we were smack in the middle.

  “And now to the real business,” Loki said. “Kingu, where are the seventh beast and the Tablets you promised?”

  Without lifting his head, the Scorpion King spoke. “That is the saddest part of my curse. The seventh beast is my own son, Ullikummi, Man of Stone.”

  “And where is he?” asked Loki. His armor gleamed coldly in the last threads of moonlight, and the air around him was as icy as a freezer.

  “Ullikummi joined me in battle,” Kingu said. “He was cursed to this place with me. But the great god Marduk’s spite was such that he sealed my son here, in a tomb on this summit. A tomb I have not seen until this day. My Ullikummi.”

  Kingu spoke his son’s name as if it were an incantation. Ullikummi.

  “A sad story, no doubt,” said Loki with a sneer. “I shall regret not having your son join me. But I am here for the Tablets of Destiny. Where are they?”

  Kingu’s great pincers clenched and unclenched as he spoke. “The Tablets of Destiny lie under the stones in Ullikummi’s arms, lost to me, lost to the world, lost …”

  In that moment, Loki’s expression turned from fake sympathy to a cold, hard, deadly look of rage. “What do you mean, under the stones?”

  Kingu did not respond. He only repeated his last word over and over softly until it drifted into silence.

  Lost … lost … lost …

  Panu looked at me then at the lyre, and I swear my brain flashed with lightning.

  Lost?

  Only what is lost can be found.

  Kingu didn’t shift his dark eyes from the stone. “I have not seen his grave since I was cursed. By subduing the beasts to your power, Loki, you have made it possible for me to ascend the tower. I must thank you….”

  “Thank me?” Loki spat. “You can thank me by giving me the Tablets of Destiny! Raise them up from the ground if you have to —”

  “Can you raise the dead?” said Kingu.

  Standing with his back to the falling moon, Kingu was deep in shadow, his eyes invisible under the helmet of his insectlike head.

  “Can you return what is lost?” he went on quietly.

  The lightning flashed in my brain for a second time, and I suddenly became a genius. Only what is lost can be found. It all made sense! Each level of the tower had its own tone, its own musical note. That was part of the riddle and the curse. All the notes together made up a chord of notes.

  The lost chord of legend.

  Loki fumed, his fingers sparking like mad. “I want those Tablets of Destiny now!”

  Panu stepped over to me, Jon, and Sydney. “This is the second riddle!” he whispered. “Kingu needs the lost chord!”

  Looking down at the lyre in my hands, I realized something. “I on
ly have six working strings … but the seventh beast has no note. He’s buried. He’s silent!”

  Jon’s eyes widened. “Owen, strum the lyre —”

  So I did.

  I played the six-string chord, with each string in its new tuning, and they vibrated with the notes of each level of the tower. Over and over I strummed the strings, creating a sound that swept over all of us, across the summit, down to the stones under our feet.

  And under the stones, too.

  “Stop that noise!” Loki snapped. “It hurts my —”

  He didn’t have a chance to finish before the roof beneath our feet rumbled violently and split apart, throwing us back on our heels. Then arose a giant man of stone.

  He smelled like wet sand and roots and moss and damp stone. His gargantuan arms bulged with stone muscles. His feet were three feet long from heel to toe. The stones of his joints ground together when he moved.

  Loki staggered. “The seventh beast —”

  In his massive, stony hands the giant cradled two flat stones carved with words that smoked as if they had just been written by a lightning bolt.

  “The Tablets!” Loki said.

  “Ullikummi stands before you, alive once more!” the giant thundered as he raised the smoking tablets high over his head. The skies rumbled when he spoke.

  “Give me the Tablets of Destiny!” Loki said, his rune stone glowing silver in the night air. “Bow down and give them to me!”

  Kingu turned to Loki. Then to us.

  He bristled from legs to arms to neck to head. Fire erupted in his yellow eyes.

  Then his stingers twitched.

  KINGU’S TAIL HARDLY MOVED.

  I didn’t take my eyes off of it, but all I saw was a blur.

  “Ahh!” Loki shrieked as Kingu’s stinger made contact. The armor at his shoulder burst open, and we saw white bone. Loki collapsed to his knees, clutching his shoulder, and Dana stumbled away from him. I pulled her behind us.

  “Kingu, you fiend —” Loki shouted, then gasped for air.

  “You dare speak to me!” Kingu boomed, his tail arching high over his head. “You dare cast darkness upon me? I invented darkness, Pale Master!” He spat out those last two words as if they were a curse. Then he swung his head around to the giant.

  “Ullikummi!” he said.

  “By the Sun and Moon of Babylon, I obey you, Father!” the giant thundered. “What would you have me do?”

  Kingu glared at Loki then, and with the slightest movement of his pincer, he indicated the ground below us, where Fenrir and the six monsters awaited. “Send the Tablets below!”

  Without a pause, the stone giant threw the Tablets of Destiny from the top of the tower. They exploded like a bomb, shattering into dust at the feet of the beasts.

  “NO!” Loki cried, peering over the edge of the tower in disbelief.

  I suddenly understood what had just happened. The lost chord was the only thing that released the seventh monster and the Tablets of Destiny, which would free Kingu from his curse. But Kingu could never tell Loki that. So instead, he tricked him. Kingu tricked the trickster.

  “My curse is ended! My son lives!” Kingu bellowed. “Loki, your childish runes cannot control me. I have tricked you. These children have tricked you! God for god, you do not want to fight me.”

  Loki staggered backward, his expression a mask of rage. Holding one silver hand over his wounded shoulder, he snarled, “You children will feel my wrath as never before. Midgard will burn to ashes!”

  In a fury, he shot a bolt of silver light at us, but Kingu stepped in the way. The bolt exploded on his chest.

  “You will not harm them here!” Kingu shouted. “Remember where you are, ice god. This is my Underworld. A world of heat!”

  As he spoke, the moon fell away and the long-hidden sun edged over the horizon, a white disc of light. At the same time, Kingu’s twin stingers flashed out at Loki, throwing him unceremoniously off the side of the tower.

  “Ahhhh!” Loki screamed.

  We ran to the edge in time to see Birdman fly up, catch Loki in midair, and carry him safely to the ground below.

  Dark light shone from the rune in Loki’s breastplate, and the six monsters crowded around him.

  “Monsters — to Midgard!” he yelled. Within moments, Loki had climbed in his sledge and led his snarling troop of fire monsters to the river and beyond.

  We were silent at the top of the tower for a long minute.

  “He got what he wanted,” said Jon quietly. “He’s stronger now.”

  “Not all of what he wanted,” Kingu said. “Loki believes he has won here today. He has a few more beasts, that is all. But runes or no runes, without the Tablets, the fire beasts will not be easy to control.”

  The scorpion shell covering Kingu’s face rippled from top to bottom, and the ridges and knobs of his forehead became less prominent.

  “It begins. I become myself once more. Ullikummi, come. Children, follow!”

  Stones shifted together across the summit, forming stairs that coiled down the side of the tower to the ground.

  Astonished by the transformations taking place every moment to the Scorpion King, we walked behind him down the outside of the tower. Ullikummi followed, twenty steps at once.

  By the time we arrived on the ground, the black dunes of night were turning pink with the coming of day.

  “My curse is ended,” said Kingu, one of his arms becoming a large and muscular human arm. “Soon, I shall have my revenge on the great god who condemned me. But there are more pressing matters to attend to. Loki plans to topple Asgard? Odin is a just and honorable god, well-known in the Underworlds. His overthrow will not happen on my watch.” He looked at us fiercely. “This war is now my war.”

  “What will you do?” Sydney asked.

  Kingu pointed to the west, beyond the river and the brightening dunes. “In Egypt, we will find the allies we need. Loki’s journey to the northern heights shall be stopped.”

  “The northern heights!” Dana gasped, grabbing my arm. “I remember now! Before my parents burned the book, they locked its secret in my mind by reading me the book over and over. The legend says the rune lies in a tiny village in the far north of Iceland. I know where the Crystal Rune is!”

  “Then as I go to the Egyptian Underworld, you must go north,” Kingu said. “Panu, fetch the Chariot of the Whirlwind.”

  “Yes, sir!” said Panu, bounding away.

  By the time we heard the sound of hooves thundering beneath our feet, Kingu was completely human again, his scorpion shell no more than armor. But the hooves we heard weren’t horse hooves. Beasts made of rain and wind and storm approached us from the distance, their limbs whirling and howling. We stared in shock.

  Panu snapped and slapped the reins wildly, then the chariot screeched to a halt. “The great chariot awaits, my friends!”

  “Children,” Kingu said, “in return for what you did today, the gates of the Underworld are open to you. Panu, bring our young friends to the border of the Greek Underworld. Loki will begin his attack on Midgard while his runes still control the monsters. Go in strength, children. And hurry!”

  Kingu took his place at the front of his vast army of lion-headed warriors. With his giant son at his right side, they began their long march to the Egyptian Underworld.

  We clambered into the Chariot of the Whirlwind, and Panu drove it like a race car driver. The chariot was as good as its name. Within minutes, we had left the vast desert behind and were standing at the banks of the River Styx.

  We thanked Panu for helping us, for saving our lives, for everything.

  “You’re amazing,” I said. “We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if it wasn’t for you.”

  Panu grinned. “We won today, a little,” he said. “Good luck, friends. I hope we meet again in different times.”

  I wondered about that. Different times could be either better or worse.

  As Panu and the chariot vanished into the darkness, we hurri
ed down the riverbank to search for the raft of the ancient Greek ferryman, Charon. Instead, we found the old man crawling on his hands and knees, barely breathing.

  “Loki!” Charon cried as we helped him to his feet. “The silver brute! He’s been here! Horrible monsters! A huge dog and a very ugly man with fire in his head. Loki led them up and out there. To your town!”

  The old man pointed across the river, his finger wiggling at the murky darkness.

  “You must go!” he cried. “Quickly!”

  WE WERE BREATHLESS AS CHARON PILOTED THE RAFT silently across the river. I tipped him with one of my sister Mags’s blue-haired pennies, and we rushed away through the reeds.

  We were quiet as we entered the boiler room at school, quiet as we wove through the dark halls, quiet as we exited the main doors of the school.

  Then we saw the fires.

  “Oh, my gosh,” said Sydney. “Oh, no.”

  Loki hadn’t wasted any time.

  Sirens shrieked from every direction. The horrifying winged shape of Birdman dived across the red sky, blasting flame from his cracked beak. Mammoth roared and thundered through the town, upending cars and goring them with his flaming tusks. Plumes of smoke rose from neighborhoods all around us. There were frightened shouts and screaming, car horns, house alarms, the crazed barking of dogs.

  “The Fires of Midgard,” I said.

  Pinewood Bluffs was burning.

  Past the high school we saw Furnace, howling at the top of his lungs and belching fire at the nearby movie theater. Fire Serpent stomped up behind him, his webbed feet gouging prints into the pavement. Together, the two monsters blew out red and green flames like twin flamethrowers.

  We staggered back from the heat, not knowing what to do. Anger rose in my throat. I wanted to rush at the monsters and pound them with my fists, but I knew I’d be incinerated just like the movie theater. And the pizza place. And the homes across the street. Mad Dog was at the shopping center, battering the cars one by one across the parking lot and setting them ablaze.

  “Owen, is there any life left in that thing?” asked Dana, nodding at the lyre.