فصل 21

Gunilla Gets Blowtorched and It’s Not Funny. Okay, It’s a Little Bit Funny

THE MAIN THING I discovered: Valhalla needed GPS. Even Gunilla got turned around in the endless corridors, banquet halls, gardens, and lounges.

At one point we were riding in a service elevator when Gunilla said, “Here’s the food court.”

The doors opened and a wall of flames engulfed us both.

My heart leaped into my throat. I thought Surt had found me. Gunilla screamed and staggered backward. I smashed random buttons until the doors shut. Then I did my best to put out the burning hem of Gunilla’s dress.

“You okay?” My pulse was still racing. Gunilla’s arms were covered with patches of steaming red skin.

“My skin will heal,” Gunilla said. “My pride may not. That—that was Muspellheim, not the food court.”

I wondered if Surt had engineered our little detour somehow, or if elevator doors in Valhalla often opened into the world of fire. I wasn’t sure which possibility was more disturbing.

The tightness in Gunilla’s voice told me how much pain she was in. I remembered standing over Mallory Keen when she fell in battle—the way I’d been able to sense the damage and how it could be mended if I’d had more time.

I knelt next to the Valkyrie. “May I?”

“What are you—”

I touched her forearm.

My fingers began to steam, drawing the heat from her skin. The redness faded. Her burns disappeared. Even the singed tip of her nose healed.

Gunilla stared at me as if I’d sprouted horns. “How did you…? You weren’t burned, either. How?”

“I don’t know.” My head spun with exhaustion. “Good luck? Healthy living?”

I tried to stand and promptly collapsed.

“Whoa, son of Frey.” Gunilla grabbed my arm.

The elevator doors opened again. This time we really were at a food court. The smells of lemon chicken and pizza wafted in.

“Let’s keep walking,” Gunilla said. “Clear your head.”

We got some strange looks as we stumbled through the dining area, me leaning against the Valkyrie captain for support, Gunilla’s dress still smoking and tattered.

We turned into a corridor lined with conference rooms. Inside one, a guy in studded leather armor was giving a PowerPoint presentation to a dozen warriors, explaining the weaknesses of mountain trolls.

A few doors down, Valkyries in glittering party hats socialized over cake and ice cream. The birthday candle was shaped like the number 500.

“I think I’m okay now,” I told Gunilla. “Thanks.”

I wobbled a few steps on my own but managed to stay upright.

“Your healing abilities are remarkable,” Gunilla said. “Frey is the god of abundance and fertility, growth and vitality—I guess that explains it. Still, I’ve never seen an einherji who can heal himself so quickly, much less heal others.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “Normally I have trouble just opening Band-Aids.”

“And your immunity to fire?”

I concentrated on the carpet designs, keeping one foot in front of the other. I could walk now, but healing Gunilla’s burns had left me feeling like I’d just had a bad case of pneumonia.

“I don’t think it’s fire immunity,” I said. “I’ve burned myself before. I just…I have a high tolerance for extreme temperatures. Cold. Heat. The same thing happened on the Longfellow Bridge when I walked into the flames…” My voice faltered. I remembered that Gunilla had edited that video and made me look like a fool. “But you know all about that.”

Gunilla didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. She absently stroked one of the hammers in her bandolier as if it were a kitten. “Perhaps….In the beginning of creation, only two worlds existed: Muspellheim and Niflheim, fire and ice. Life rose between those extremes. Frey is the god of moderate climes and the growing season. He represents the middle ground. Perhaps that’s why you can resist heat and cold.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Magnus Chase. It has been a long time since I met a child of Frey.”

“Why? Are we not allowed in Valhalla?”

“Oh, we have some children of Frey from the old days. The kings of Sweden were his descendants, for instance. But we haven’t seen a new one in Valhalla for centuries. Frey is Vanir, for one thing.”

“Is that bad? Surt called me Vanir-spawn.”

“That wasn’t Surt.”

I thought about my dream: those glowing eyes in the smoke. “It was Surt.”

Gunilla looked like she wanted to argue, but she let it drop. “Whatever the case, the gods are divided into two tribes. The Aesir are mostly gods of war: Odin, Thor, Tyr, and the rest. The Vanir are more like the gods of nature: Frey, Freya, their father, Njord. That’s an oversimplification, but anyway—long ago, the two tribes had a war. They almost destroyed the Nine Worlds. They finally settled their differences. They intermarried. They joined forces against the giants. But still they’re different clans. Some Vanir have palaces in Asgard, the seat of the Aesir gods, but the Vanir also have their own world, Vanaheim. When a child of the Vanir dies bravely, they don’t usually go to Valhalla. More often they go to the Vanir afterlife, overseen by the goddess Freya.”

It took me a minute to digest all that. Clans of gods. Wars. Whatever. But that last part, the Vanir afterlife…“You’re telling me there’s another place like Valhalla, except for Vanir children, and I’m not there? What if that’s where my mom went? What if I was supposed to—”

Gunilla took my arm. Her blue eyes were intense with anger. “That’s right, Magnus. Think about what Samirah al-Abbas has done. I’m not saying all children of the Vanir go to Folkvanger—”

“You put them in a Volkswagen?”

“Folkvanger. It’s the name of Freya’s hall for the slain.”

“Oh.”

“My point is, you could have gone there. It would’ve been more likely. Half the honored dead go to Odin. Half go to Freya. That was part of the agreement that ended the gods’ war eons ago. So why did Samirah bring you here? Wrongly chosen, wrongly slain. She’s the daughter of Loki, the father of evil. She cannot be trusted.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I hadn’t known Samirah all that long, but she seemed pretty nice. Of course, so did her dad, Loki….

“You may not believe this,” Gunilla said, “but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. I think you may be innocent of Samirah’s plans.”

“What plans?”

She laughed bitterly. “To hasten Doomsday, of course. To bring the war before we are ready. That’s what Loki wants.”

I was tempted to protest that Loki had told me otherwise. He seemed more interested in stopping Surt from getting my dad’s sword….But I decided it wouldn’t be wise to tell Gunilla I’d been having chats with the father of evil.

“If you hate Sam so much,” I said, “why did you let her be a Valkyrie in the first place?”

“That wasn’t my choice. I oversee the Valkyries, but Odin picks them. Samirah al-Abbas was the last Valkyrie he chose, two years ago, under what were…unusual circumstances. The All-Father has not appeared in Valhalla since.”

“You think Sam killed him?”

I meant it as a joke, but Gunilla actually seemed to consider it. “I think Samirah should never have been chosen as a Valkyrie. I think she’s working for her father as a spy and a saboteur. Getting her kicked out of Valhalla was the best thing I ever did.”

“Wow.”

“Magnus, you don’t know her. There was another child of Loki here once. He—he wasn’t what he seemed. He—” She stopped herself, looking like someone had just stepped on her heart. “Never mind. I swore to myself I wouldn’t be fooled again. I intend to delay Ragnarok for as long as possible.”

The edge of fear had crept back into her voice. She didn’t sound much like the daughter of a war god.

“Why delay?” I asked. “Isn’t Ragnarok what you’re all training for? It’s like your big graduation party.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Come. There’s something I need to show you. We will go through the gift shop.”

When she said gift shop, I imagined a glorified closet selling cheap Valhalla souvenirs. Instead, it was a five-level department store combined with a convention center trade show. We passed through a supermarket, a clothing boutique with the latest in Viking fashions, and an IKEA outlet (naturally).

Most of the showroom floor was a maze of stalls, kiosks, and workshops. Bearded guys in leather aprons stood outside their forges offering free samples of arrowheads. There were specialized merchants for shields, spears, crossbows, helmets, and drinking cups (lots and lots of drinking cups). Several of the larger booths had full-size boats for sale.

I patted the hull of a sixty-foot warship. “I don’t think this would fit in my bathtub.”

“We have several lakes and rivers in Valhalla,” Gunilla said. “There’s also the Whitewater Rafting Experience on floor twelve. All einherjar should know how to fight at sea as well as on land.”

I pointed to a riding ring where a dozen horses were tethered. “And those? You can ride a horse through the hallways?”

“Of course,” said Gunilla. “We’re pet-friendly. But notice, Magnus—the lack of weapons. The scarcity of armor.”

“You’re kidding, right? This place has thousands of weapons for sale.”

“Not enough,” Gunilla said. “Not for Ragnarok.”

She led me down the Nordic Knickknacks aisle to a big iron door marked: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

She slipped one of her keys into the lock. “I don’t show this to many people. It’s too disturbing.”

“Not another wall of fire, is it?”

“Worse.”

Behind the door was a set of stairs. Then another set of stairs. Then another set of stairs. By the time we reached the top, I’d lost count of how many flights. My upgraded einherji legs felt like overcooked linguine.

At last we stepped out onto a narrow balcony.

“This,” Gunilla said, “is my favorite view.”

I couldn’t answer. I was too busy trying not to die from vertigo.

The balcony ringed the opening in the roof above the Hall of the Slain. The tree Laeradr’s topmost branches stretched upward, making a green dome the size of Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center. Inside, far below, hotel staff scurried around the tables like termites, getting things ready for dinner.

From the outer edge of the balcony, the roofline of Valhalla sloped away—a thatch-work of gold shields blazing red in the evening sun. I felt like I was standing on the surface of a metal planet.

“Why don’t you show this to people?” I asked. “It’s…well, intimidating, but it’s also beautiful.”

“Over here.” Gunilla pulled me to a spot where I could gaze down between two sections of roof.

My eyeballs felt like they were going to implode. I flashed back to a presentation my sixth grade science teacher once gave about the size of the universe. He explained how vast the earth was, then described how that was nothing compared to the solar system, which in turn was nothing compared to the galaxy, et cetera, et cetera, until I felt as significant as a speck on the underarm of a flea.

Stretching out around Valhalla, gleaming to the horizon, was a city of palaces, each as big and impressive as the hotel.

“Asgard,” Gunilla said. “The realm of the gods.”

I saw roofs made entirely of silver ingots, hammered bronze doors big enough to fly a B-1 bomber through, sturdy stone towers that pierced the clouds. Streets were paved in gold. Each garden was as vast as Boston Harbor. And circling the edge of the city were white ramparts that made the Great Wall of China look like a baby fence.

At the very edge of my vision, the city’s widest avenue ran through a gateway in the walls. On the far side, the pavement dissolved into multicolored light—a roadway of prismatic fire.

“The Bifrost,” Gunilla said. “The rainbow bridge leading from Asgard to Midgard.”

I’d heard about the Bifrost Bridge. In my children’s myth book, it was a seven-color pastel arc with happy bunny rabbits dancing around the base. This bridge had no happy bunnies. It was terrifying. It was a rainbow in the way a nuclear explosion was a mushroom.

“Only the gods may cross over,” Gunilla said. “Anyone else would burn the moment they set foot on it.”

“But…we’re in Asgard?”

“Of course. Valhalla is one of Odin’s halls. That’s why, within the hotel, the einherjar are immortal.”

“So you can go down there and see the gods, sell Girl Scout cookies door-to-door or whatever?”

Gunilla curled her lip. “Even gazing upon Asgard, you have no sense of reverence.”

“Not really, no.”

“Without the express permission of Odin, we aren’t allowed to visit the city of the gods, at least not until the day of Ragnarok, when we will defend the gates.”

“But you can fly.”

“It’s forbidden to go there. If I tried, I would fall from the sky. You’re missing the point, Magnus. Look at the city again. What do you notice?”

I scanned the neighborhood, trying to see past all the silver and gold and the scary huge architecture. In one window, rich drapes hung in tatters. Along the streets, fire braziers stood empty and cold. The statues in one garden were completely overgrown with thorn bushes. The streets were deserted. No fires burned in any of the windows.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“Exactly. I would not be selling many Girl Scout cookies.”

“You mean the gods are gone?”

Gunilla turned toward me, her string of hammers glinting orange in the sunset. “Some may be slumbering. Some are roaming the Nine Worlds. Some still appear from time to time. The fact is, we don’t know what’s going on. I’ve been in Valhalla five hundred years, and I have never seen the gods so quiet, so inactive. The last two years…”

She plucked a leaf from a low-hanging branch of Laeradr. “Two years ago, something changed. The Valkyries and thanes all felt it. The barriers between the Nine Worlds began to weaken. Frost giants and fire giants raided Midgard more frequently. Monsters from Helheim broke into the worlds of the living. The gods grew distant and silent. This was around the time when Samirah became a Valkyrie—the last time we saw Odin. It was also when your mother died.”

A raven circled overhead. Two more joined it. I thought about my mom—how she used to joke that birds of prey were stalking us when we went hiking. They think we’re dead. Quick, start dancing!

At the moment I wasn’t tempted to dance. I wanted to borrow Gunilla’s hammers and knock the birds out of the sky.

“You think there’s a connection between those things?” I asked.

“All I know…we are poorly prepared for Ragnarok. Then you arrive. The Norns issue dire warnings, calling you the Harbinger of the Wolf. That’s not good, Magnus. Samirah al-Abbas may have been watching you for years, waiting for the right moment to insert you into Valhalla.”

“Insert me?”

“Those two friends of yours on the bridge, the ones who had been monitoring you since you became homeless, perhaps they were working with her.”

“You mean Blitz and Hearth? They’re homeless guys.”

“Are they? Don’t you find it strange they looked after you so carefully?”

I wanted to tell her to go to Helheim, but Blitz and Hearth had always seemed a little…unusual. Then again, when you live on the streets, the definition of normal gets a little fuzzy.

Gunilla took my arm. “Magnus, I didn’t believe it at first, but if that was Surt on the bridge, if you did find the Sword of Summer…then you’re being used by the forces of evil. If Samirah al-Abbas wants you to retrieve the sword, then that’s exactly what you cannot do. Stay in Valhalla. Let the thanes deal with this prophecy. Swear you’ll do this, and I will speak to the thanes on your behalf. I’ll convince them that you can be trusted.”

“Do I detect an or else?”

“Only this: by tomorrow morning, the thanes will announce their decision regarding your fate. If we cannot trust you, then we will have to take precautions. We must know whose side you’re on.”

I looked down at the empty golden streets. I thought about Sam al-Abbas dragging me through the cold void, putting her career on the line because she thought I was brave. You have potential, Magnus Chase. Don’t prove me wrong. Then she’d been vaporized in the feast hall thanks to Gunilla’s edited blooper reel.

I pulled my arm away. “You said Frey is about the middle ground between fire and ice. Maybe this isn’t about choosing sides. Maybe I don’t want to pick an extreme.”

Gunilla’s expression rolled shut like a storm window. “I can be a powerful enemy, Magnus Chase. I will warn you one time: if you follow the plans of Loki, if you seek to hasten Ragnarok, I will destroy you.”

I tried to meet her eyes, and to ignore my lungs flopping around in my chest. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Below us, the dinner horn echoed through the feast hall.

“The tour is over,” Gunilla announced. “From this point on, Magnus Chase, I will guide you no more.”

She leaped over the side of the balcony and flew down through the branches, leaving me to find my own way back. Without GPS.