The Hammer of Thor

  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 be 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.

  Kids, do not try this at home. I’m a trained einherji who died a painful death, went to Valhalla, and now spends most of his time arguing with a sword. I am a qualified professional who can jump out of thirty-foot-deep muddy holes. You, I hope, are not.

  I landed on the riverbank just as the waterfall collapsed back into the pond, granting all the little fishies a very wet miracle and a story to tell their grandchildren.

  The grouper tried to wriggle free. “Let me go, you scoundrel!”

  “Counterproposal,” I said. “Andvari, this is my friend Jack, the Sword of Summer. He can cut through almost anything. He sings pop songs like a demented angel. He can also fillet a fish faster than you would believe. I’m about to ask Jack to do all of those things at once—or you can turn into your normal form, slow and easy, and we can have a chat.”

  In two blinks, instead of holding a fish, my hand was wrapped around the throat of the oldest, slimiest dwarf I’d ever seen. He was so disgusting that the fact I didn’t let go should’ve proven my bravery and gotten me into Valhalla all over again.

  “Congratulations,” the dwarf croaked. “You got me. And now you’re gonna get a tragic demise!”

  Let Me Go Immediately, or I Will Make You a Billionaire

  OOH, A DEMISE!

  Normally I am not threatened with a demise. Most folks in the Nine Worlds don’t use fancy words like that. They just say “IMMA KILL YOU!” Or they let their chain-mail-wrapped fists do the talking.

  I was so impressed with Andvari’s vocabulary, I squeezed his throat tighter.

  “Ack!” The dwarf thrashed and wriggled. He was slippery, but not heavy. Even by dwarf standards, the dude was tiny. He wore a fish-skin tunic and underwear that was basically a moss diaper. Slime coated his limbs. His stubby arms hammered away at me, but it didn’t feel any worse than getti
ng hit with Nerf bats. And his face…well, you know how your thumb looks after it’s been under a wet bandage too long—all wrinkly and discolored and gross? Imagine that as a face, with some scraggly white whiskers and mold-green eyes, and you’ve got Andvari.

  “Where’s the gold?” I demanded. “Don’t make me unleash my sword’s playlist.”

  Andvari writhed even more. “You fools don’t want my gold! Don’t you know what happens to people who take it?”

  “They get rich?” I guessed.

  “No! Well, yes. But after that, they die! Or…at least they want to die. They always suffer. And so does everyone around them!” He wiggled his slimy fingers like, Woo, woo, threatening!

  Hearthstone was listing slightly to port, but he managed to stay on his feet. He signed: One person stole gold, no consequences. Then he made my least favorite name sign: index finger and thumb pinched together at the side of his head, a combination of the letter L and the sign for devil, which fit our friend Loki just fine.

  “Loki took your gold once,” I interpreted, “and he didn’t die or suffer.”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s Loki!” Andvari said. “Everybody else who got the gold after him—they went crazy! They had horrible lives, left a trail of dead bodies! Is that what you want? You want to be like Fafnir? Sigurd? The Powerball lottery winners?”

  “The who?”

  “Oh, come on! You’ve heard the stories. Every time I lose my ring, it bounces around the Nine Worlds for a while. Some schmuck gets ahold of it. They win the lottery and make millions. But they always end up broke, divorced, sick, unhappy, and/or dead. Is that what you want?”

  Hearth signed: Magic ring, yes. That’s the secret of his wealth. We need that.

  “You mentioned a ring,” I said.

  Andvari went still. “Did I? Nope. Must have misspoken. No ring.”

  “Jack,” I said, “how do his feet look to you?”

  “Real bad, señor. They need a pedicure.”

  “Do it.”

  Jack flew into action. It’s a rare sword that can remove caked-on pond scum, shave off calluses, trim gnarly toenails, and leave a pair of dwarf feet shiny clean without 1) killing said dwarf, 2) cutting off the flailing feet of said dwarf, or 3) cutting off the legs of the einherji who is holding said dwarf…and all the while singing “Can’t Feel My Face.” Jack is truly special.

  “All right! All right!” Andvari shrieked. “No more torture! I’ll show you where the treasure is! It’s right under that rock!”

  He pointed frantically to pretty much everything until his finger came to rest at a boulder near the edge of the waterfall.

  Traps, Hearthstone signed.

  “Andvari,” I said, “if I move that boulder, what sort of traps will I spring?”

  “None!”

  “What if I move it using your head as a lever, then?”

  “All right, it’s booby-trapped! Exploding hexes! Trip wires to catapults!”

  “I knew it,” I said. “How do you disarm them? All of them.”

  The dwarf squinted with concentration. At least I hoped that’s what he was doing. Otherwise he was making a deposit in his moss diaper.

  “It’s done.” He sighed miserably. “I’ve disarmed all the traps.”

  I glanced at Hearthstone. The elf stretched out his hands, probably testing our surroundings for magic the way I could sense eels and guppies. (Hey, we all have different talents.)

  Hearth nodded. Safe.

  With Andvari still dangling from my hand, I walked to the boulder and flipped it over with my foot. (Einherji strength is also a good talent.)

  Under the rock, a canvas-lined pit was filled with…Wow. I didn’t usually care about money. I’m not about that. But my saliva glands went into overdrive when I saw the sheer volume of gold—bracelets, necklaces, coins, daggers, rings, cups, Monopoly tokens. I wasn’t sure what the value of gold per ounce was these days, but I estimated I was looking at about a gajillion dollars’ worth, give or take a bazillion.

  Jack squealed. “Oh, look at those little daggers! They’re adorable.”

  Hearthstone’s eyes regained their alertness. All that gold seemed to have the same effect on him as waving a cup of coffee under his nose.

  Too easy, he signed. Must be a catch.

  “Andvari,” I said, “if your name means Careful One, why are you so easy to rob?”

  “I know!” he sobbed. “I’m not careful! I get robbed all the time! I think the name is ironic. My mother was a cruel woman.”

  “So this hoard keeps getting stolen, but you keep getting it back? Because of that ring you mentioned?”

  “What ring? Lots of rings in that pile. Take them!”

  “No, the super-magic one. Where is it?”

  “Um, probably in the pile somewhere. Go look!” Andvari quickly pulled a ring off his finger and slipped it into his diaper. His hands were so filthy I wouldn’t have noticed the ring at all if he hadn’t tried to hide it.

  “You just dropped it down your pants,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t!”

  “Jack, I think this dwarf wants a full Brazilian waxing.”

  “No!” Andvari wailed. “All right, yes, my magic ring is in my pants. But please don’t take it. Getting it back is always such a hassle. I told you, it’s cursed. You don’t want to end up like a lottery winner, do you?”

  I turned to Hearth. “What do you think?”

  “Tell him, Mr. Elf!” said Andvari. “You’re obviously an elf of learning. You know your runes. I bet you know the story of Fafnir, eh? Tell your friend this ring will bring you nothing but trouble.”

  Hearth gazed into the distance as if reading a list on some heavenly whiteboard: –10 GOLD FOR BRINGING HOME A CURSED RING. +10 GAJILLION GOLD FOR STEALING A GAJILLION GOLD.

  He signed, Ring is cursed. But also key to treasure. Without ring, treasure will never be enough. Will always come up short.

  I looked at the Jacuzzi-size stash of gold. “I don’t know, man. That seems like plenty to cover your wergild rug.”

  Hearth shook his head. It will not be. Ring is dangerous. But we have to take it just in case. If we don’t use it, we can return it.

  I twisted the dwarf to face me. “Sorry, Andvari.”

  Jack laughed. “Hey, that rhymes, too!”

  “What did the elf say?” Andvari demanded. “I can’t read those gestures!” He waved his grubby hands, accidentally signing donkey waiter pancake in ASL.

  I was losing patience with the old slime-bucket, but I did my best to translate Hearth’s message.

  Andvari’s moss green eyes darkened. He bared his teeth, which looked like they hadn’t been flossed since zombies inspired the Mayflower Compact.

  “You’re a fool, then, Mr. Elf,” he growled. “The ring will come back to me eventually. It always does. In the meantime, it will cause death and misery to whoever wears it. And don’t think it will solve your problems, either. This won’t be the last time you have to come home. You’ve only delayed a much more dangerous reckoning.”

  The change in Andvari’s tone unnerved me even more than his change from grouper to dwarf. No more wailing or crying. He spoke with cold certainty, like a hangman explaining the mechanics of a noose.

  Hearthstone didn’t look rattled. He wore the same expression he’d had at his brother’s cairn—as if he was reliving a tragedy that had happened long ago and couldn’t be changed.

  The ring, he signed.

  The gesture was so obvious even Andvari understood it.

  “Fine.” The dwarf glared at me. “You won’t escape the curse either, human. Soon enough you’ll see what comes of stolen gifts!”

  The hairs on my arms stood up. “What do you mean?”

  He grinned evilly. “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Andvari did the shimmy-shimmy-shake. The ring dropped out the leg hole of his diaper. “One magic ring,” he announced, “complete with curse.”

  “There is no way,” I said, “that I a
m picking that up.”

  “Got it!” Jack dove in and made like a spatula, scooping the ring out of the mud with the flat of his blade.

  Andvari watched wistfully as my sword played paddleball, flipping the ring from one side of his blade to the other.

  “The usual deal?” the dwarf asked. “You spare my life and take everything I own?”

  “The usual sounds great,” I said. “What about all the gold in the pit? How do we carry it?”

  Andvari scoffed. “Amateurs! The canvas lining of the pit is a big magical sack. Pull the drawstring and voila! I have to keep the stash ready for quick getaways for those few times I avoid getting robbed.”

  Hearthstone crouched next to the pit. Sure enough, poking from a hole in the hem of the canvas was a loop of string. Hearth pulled it and the bag snapped closed, shrinking to the size of a backpack. Hearth held it up for me to see—a gajillion dollars’ worth of gold in a superconvenient carry-on size.

  “Now honor your part of the deal!” Andvari demanded.

  I dropped him.

  “Humph.” The old dwarf rubbed his neck. “Enjoy your demise, amateurs. I hope you have pain and suffering and win two lotteries!”

  With that vile curse, he jumped back into his pond and disappeared.

  “Hey, señor!” called Jack. “Heads up!”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  He flipped the ring at me. I caught it out of reflex. “Aww, gross.”

  Seeing as it was a magic ring, I half expected some big Lord of the Rings moment when it landed in my hand—cold heavy whispering, swirling gray mist, a line of Nazgûl doing the Watusi. None of that happened. The ring just sat there, looking very much like a gold ring, albeit one that had recently fallen from a thousand-year-old dwarf’s moss diaper.

  I slipped the ring into my pants pocket, then studied the circle of slime residue on my palm. “My hand will never feel clean again.”

  Hearthstone shouldered his expensive new backpack like Gajillionaire Santa Claus. He glanced at the sun, which was already past its zenith. I hadn’t realized just how long we’d been trekking through the wilds of Mr. Alderman’s backyard.

  We should go, Hearth signed. Father will be waiting.

  And If You Order Now, You Also Get This Cursed Ring!

  FATHER WAS waiting, all right. He paced in the living room, sipping golden juice from a silver goblet while Inge stood nearby waiting for a spill to happen.

  When we walked in, Mr. Alderman turned toward us, his face a mask of cold anger. “Where have you—?”

  His isosceles jaw dropped.

  I guess he didn’t expect to see us soaked in sweat, covered in grass and twigs, our slime-caked shoes leaving slug trails across his white marble floor. Mr. Alderman’s expression was one of the best rewards I’d ever gotten, right up there with dying and going to Valhalla.

  Hearthstone plopped his canvas bag on the floor with a muffled clatter. He signed: Payment—palm up, brushing one finger toward his dad like he was flicking a coin at him. The way Hearth did it made it look like an insult. I liked that.