The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #3)

We didn’t make for the river, as we had last time to find Andvari’s gold. This time we moved roughly parallel to the water, picking our way through briars and the gnarled roots of giant oak trees.

After another quarter mile, I started to smell what Hearth and Blitz had talked about. I had a flashback to my eighth-grade biology class, when Joey Kelso hid our teacher’s frog habitat in the ceiling tiles. It wasn’t discovered until a month later, when the glass terrarium crashed back into the classroom and broke all over the teacher’s desk, spraying the front row with glass, mold, slime, and rancid amphibian bodies.

What I smelled in the forest reminded me of that, except much worse.

Hearthstone stopped at the edge of another clearing. He crouched behind a fallen tree and gestured for us to join him.

In there, he signed. Only place he could have gone.

I peered through the gloom. The trees around the clearing had been reduced to charcoal stick figures. The ground was thick with rotting mulch and animal bones. About fifty feet from our hiding place rose an outcropping of boulders, two of the largest rocks leaning together to form what looked like the entrance of a cave.

“Now we wait,” Blitz whispered as he signed, “for what passes for nighttime in this dwarf-forsaken place.”

Hearth nodded. He will emerge at night. Then we see.

I was having a hard time breathing, much less thinking in the miasma of dead-frog stench. Staying here sounded like a terrible idea.

Who’s going to emerge? I signed. Your dad? From there? Why?

Hearthstone looked away. I got the feeling he was trying to be merciful by not answering my questions.

“We’ll find out,” Blitz murmured. “If it’s what we fear…Well, let’s enjoy our ignorance while we still can.”





WHILE WE waited, Hearthstone provided us with dinner.

From his rune bag, he drew this symbol:



It looked like a regular X to me, but Hearthstone explained it was gebo, the rune of gifts. In a flash of gold light, a picnic basket appeared, overflowing with fresh bread, grapes, a wheel of cheese, and several bottles of sparkling water.

“I like gifts,” I said, keeping my voice low. “But won’t the smell draw…uh, unwanted attention?” I pointed to the cave entrance.

“Doubtful,” said Blitzen. “The smell coming out of that cave is more powerful than anything in this basket. But just to be safe, let’s eat everything quickly.”

“I like the way you think,” I said.

Blitzen and I dug in, but Hearth merely settled himself behind the fallen tree trunk and watched us.

“Not eating?” I asked him.

He shook his head. Not hungry, he signed. Also, g-e-b-o makes gifts. Not for the giver. For giver, it must be sacrifice.

“Oh.” I looked down at the wedge of cheese I’d been about to shove in my mouth. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

Hearthstone shrugged, then motioned for us to continue. I didn’t like the idea of him sacrificing so we could eat dinner. Just him being back home, waiting for his father to emerge from a cave, seemed like sacrifice enough. He didn’t need his very own Ramadan rune.

On the other hand, it would’ve been rude to refuse his gift. So, I ate.

As the sun sank, the shadows lengthened. I knew from experience that Alfheim never got fully dark. Like Alaska in summer, the sun would just dip to the horizon and pop back up again. Elves were creatures of light, which was proof that light did not equal good. I’d met plenty of elves (Hearth excepted) who proved that.

The gloom intensified, but not enough for Blitz to take off his anti-sun gear. It must have been a thousand degrees inside that heavy jacket, but he didn’t complain. Once in a while he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed under his netting, wiping the sweat from his neck.

Hearthstone fidgeted with something on his wrist—a bracelet of woven blond hair that I’d never seen before. The color of the locks seemed vaguely familiar….

I tapped his hand for attention. Is that from Inge?

Hearth winced, like this was an awkward subject. On our last visit, Mr. Alderman’s long-suffering house servant Inge had helped us a lot. A hulder, a sort of elf with the tail of a cow, she’d known Hearth since they were both kids. As it turned out, she also had a massive crush on him, even kissing him on the cheek and declaring her love before she fled the chaos of Mr. Alderman’s last party.

We visited her a few days ago, Hearth signed. While scouting. She is living with her family now.

Blitz sighed in exasperation, which, of course, Hearth couldn’t hear.

Inge is a good lady, the dwarf signed. But…He made Vs with both hands and circled them in front of his forehead, like he was pulling things out of his mind. In this context, I imagined the sign meant something like delusional.

Hearthstone frowned. Not fair. She tried to help. Hulder bracelet is good luck.

If you say so, Blitz signed.

Glad she is safe, I signed. Is the bracelet magic?

Hearth started to respond. Then his hands froze. He sniffed the air and gestured DOWN!

The birds had stopped chattering in the trees. The whole forest seemed to be holding its breath.

We crouched lower, our eyes barely peeking over the top of the fallen tree. On my next inhalation, I got such a snootful of dead-frog stench I had to repress a gag.

Just inside the cave entrance, twigs and dry leaves crackled under the weight of something huge.

The hairs on my neck quivered. I wished I had summoned Jack so I would be ready to fight if needed, but Jack wasn’t good in stakeout situations, what with his tendency to glow and sing.

Then, from the doorway of the cave came…Oh, gods of Asgard.

I’d been holding out hope that Alderman had turned into something not so bad. Maybe his cursed form was a Weimaraner puppy, or a chuckwalla iguana. Of course, deep down I’d known the truth all along. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

Hearth had told me horror stories about what happened to previous thieves who dared to take Andvari’s ring. Now I saw that he hadn’t been bluffing.

Emerging from the cave was a beast so hideous I couldn’t comprehend it all at once.

First I focused on the ring glinting on its middle right fore-toe—a tiny band of gold biting into the scaly flesh. It must have hurt badly, throbbing like a tourniquet. The end of the toe had blackened and shriveled.

The monster’s four feet were each the diameter of a trash-can lid. Its short thick legs dragged along a lizard-like body, maybe fifty feet from nose to tail, its spine ridged with spikes bigger than my sword.

The face I had seen in my dreams: glowing green eyes, a snub-nosed snout with slimy nostrils, a horrible maw with rows of triangular teeth. Its head was maned with green quills. The monster’s mouth reminded me of Fenris Wolf’s—too large and expressive for a beast, its lips too human. Worst of all: tufts of white clung to its forehead—the last remnants of Mr. Alderman’s once-impressive hair.

The new, dragonish Alderman pulled himself from his lair, muttering, grinning, snarling, then cackling hysterically—all for no apparent reason.