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.”