فصل 48

Hearthstone Passes Out Even More than Jason Grace (Though I Have No Idea Who That Is)

JOTUNHEIM LOOKED a lot like Vermont, just with fewer signs offering maple syrup products. Snow dusted the dark mountains. Waist-high drifts choked the valleys. Pine trees bristled with icicles. Jack hovered in front, guiding us along the river as it zigzagged through canyons blanketed in subzero shadows. We climbed trails next to half-frozen waterfalls, my sweat chilling instantly against my skin.

In other words, it was a huge amount of fun.

Sam and I stayed close to Hearthstone. I hoped my residual aura of Frey-glow might do him some good, but he still looked pretty weak. The best we could do was keep him from sliding off the goat.

“Hang in there,” I told him.

He signed something—maybe sorry–but his gesture was so listless I wasn’t sure.

“Just rest,” I said.

He grunted in frustration. He groped through his bag of runes, pulled one out, and placed it in my hands. He pointed to the stone, then to himself, as if to say This is me.

The rune was one I didn’t know:

Sam frowned when she saw it. “That’s perthro.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

She glanced cautiously at Hearth. “Are you trying to explain what happened to you? You want Magnus to know?”

Hearthstone took a deep breath, like he was preparing for a sprint. He signed: Magnus–felt–pain.

I closed my fingers around the stone. “Yeah….When I healed you, there was something dark—”

Hearth pointed again at the stone. He looked at Sam.

“You want me to tell him?” she asked. “You sure?”

He nodded, then rested his head against the goat’s back and closed his eyes.

We walked for about twenty yards before Sam said anything.

“When Hearth and I were in Alfheim,” she started, “he told me part of his story. I don’t know all the details, but…his parents…” She struggled to find words.

Otis the goat bleated. “Go on. I love depressing stories.”

“Be quiet,” Sam ordered.

“I’ll just be quiet, then,” the goat agreed.

I studied Hearthstone’s face. He looked so peaceful asleep. “Blitzen told me a little bit,” I said. “Hearth’s parents never accepted him, because he was deaf.”

“It was worse than that,” Sam said. “They were…not good people.”

Some of Loki’s acidic tone crept into her voice, as if she were imagining Hearth’s parents on the receiving end of mistletoe darts. “Hearth had a brother—Andiron—who died very young. It wasn’t Hearthstone’s fault, but his parents took out their bitterness on him. They always told him the wrong brother had died. To them, Hearth was a disappointment, a disabled elf, a punishment from the gods. He could do no right.”

I clenched the runestone. “He still carries all that pain inside. Gods…”

Sam laid her hand on Hearth’s ankle. “He couldn’t tell me the details of how he grew up, but I—I got the feeling it was worse than you can imagine.”

I looked at the rune. “No wonder he daydreamed about working magic. But this symbol…?”

“Perthro symbolizes an empty cup lying sideways,” Sam said. “It could be spilled drink, or a cup waiting to be filled, or a cup for throwing dice, like fate.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sam brushed some goat hair from Hearthstone’s pants cuff. “I think…I think perthro is the rune Hearthstone personally relates to. When he went to Mimir and drank from the well, Hearthstone was offered a choice between two futures. If he took the first path, Mimir would grant him speech and hearing and send him back to Alfheim to live a normal life, but he would have to give up his dream of magic. If he chose the second path—”

“He’d learn magic,” I guessed, “but he would stay the way he is—deaf and dumb, hated by his own parents. What kind of messed-up choice is that? I should’ve stepped on Mimir’s face when I had the chance.”

Sam shook her head. “Mimir just presented the choices. Magic and normal life are mutually exclusive. Only people who have known great pain have the capacity to learn magic. They have to be like hollow cups. Even Odin…he gave up an eye to drink from Mimir’s well, but that was just the beginning. In order to learn the runes, Odin fashioned a noose and hanged himself from a branch of the World Tree for nine days.”

My stomach checked to see if it had anything left to retch. It settled for dry spasms. “That’s…not right.”

“But it was necessary,” Sam said. “Odin pierced his side with his own spear and hung there in pain, without food or water, until the runes revealed themselves. The pain made him hollow…a receptacle for magic.”

I looked at Hearthstone. I wasn’t sure whether to hug him or wake him up and scold him. How could anyone willingly choose to hold on to that much pain? What kind of magic could possibly be worth the cost?

“I’ve done magic,” I said. “Healing, walking into flames, blasting weapons out of people’s hands. But I’ve never suffered like Hearth has.”

Samirah pursed her lips. “That’s different, Magnus. You were born with your magic—an inheritance from your father. You can’t choose your abilities or change them. Alf seidr is innate. It’s also lesser magic compared to what the runes can do.”

“Lesser?” I didn’t want to argue about whose magic was more impressive, but most of the things I’d seen Hearthstone do had been pretty…subtle.

“I told you back in Valhalla,” Sam said, “the runes are the secret language of the universe. Learning them, you can recode reality. The only limits on your magic are your strength and your imagination.”

“So why don’t more people learn runes?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you. It requires incredible sacrifice. Most people would die before they got as far as Hearthstone has.”

I tucked Hearthstone’s scarf around his neck. I understood now why he’d been willing to risk rune magic. To a guy with his troubled past, recoding reality must have sounded pretty good. I also thought about the message he’d whispered into my mind. He’d called me brother. After everything Hearthstone had been through with his own brother’s death…that could not have been easy.

“So Hearth made himself an empty cup,” I said. “Like perthro.”

“Trying to fill himself with the power of magic,” Sam agreed. “I don’t know all the meanings of perthro, Magnus. But I do know one thing—Hearthstone cast it when we were falling from the cliff into the river.”

I tried to remember, but I’d been overwhelmed with exhaustion as soon as I gripped the sword. “What did it do?”

“It got us here,” Sam said. “And it left Hearthstone like that.” She nodded to his snoring form. “I can’t be sure, but I think perthro is his…what do Christians call it? A ‘Hail Mary pass.’ He was throwing that rune like you’d throw dice from a cup, turning our fate over to the gods.”

My palm was now bruised from clenching the stone. I still wasn’t sure why Hearthstone had given it to me, but I felt a strong instinct to keep it for him—if only temporarily. No one should carry that kind of fate alone. I slipped the rune into my pocket.

We trekked through the wilderness in silence for a while. At one point, Jack led us over the river on a fallen tree trunk. I couldn’t help looking both ways for giant squirrels before crossing.

In places the snow was so deep we had to hop from boulder to boulder while Otis the goat speculated about which one of us would slip, fall, and die first.

“I wish you’d be quiet,” I muttered. “I also wish we had snowshoes.”

“You’d need Uller for that,” said the goat.

“Who?”

“The god of snowshoes,” said Otis. “He invented them. Also archery and…I don’t know, other stuff.”

I’d never heard of a snowshoe god. But I would’ve paid real money if the god of snowmobiles had come roaring out of the woods right then to give us a lift.

We kept trudging along.

Once, we spotted a stone house on the summit of a hill. The gray light and the mountains played tricks with my perception. I couldn’t tell if the house was small and nearby, or massive and far away. I remembered what my friends had told me about giants—that they lived and breathed illusions.

“See that house?” Jack said. “Let’s not go there.”

I didn’t argue.

Judging time was difficult, but by late afternoon the river had turned into a raging current. Cliffs rose along the opposite bank. In the distance, through the trees, I heard the roar of a waterfall.

“Oh, that’s right,” said Otis. “I remember now.”

“You remember what?” I asked.

“Why I left. I was supposed to get help for my master.”

Sam brushed a clump of snow off her shoulder. “Why would Thor need help?”

“The rapids,” said Otis. “I guess we’d better hurry. I was supposed be quick, but I stood watching you guys for almost a day.”

I flinched. “Wait…we were unconscious for a whole day?”

“At least,” said Otis.

“He’s right,” Jack said. “According to my internal clock, it’s Sunday the nineteenth. I warned you, once you took hold of me…well, we fought those dwarves on Friday. You slept all the way through Saturday.”

Sam grimaced. “We’ve lost valuable time. The Wolf’s island will appear in three more days, and we don’t even know where Blitzen is.”

“Probably my fault,” Otis offered. “I should’ve saved you earlier, but giving a human mouth-to-mouth—I had to work up my nerve. My therapist gave me some breathing exercises—”

“Guys,” Jack the sword interrupted, “we’re close now. For real this time.” He hovered off through the woods.

We followed the floating sword until the trees parted. In front of us stretched a beach of jagged black rocks and chunks of ice. On the opposite bank, sheer cliffs rose into the sky. The river had turned into full-on class five rapids—a combat zone of whitewater and half-submerged boulders. Upstream, the river was compressed between two skyscraper-size stone columns—man-made or natural, I couldn’t tell. Their tops were lost in the clouds. From the fissure between them, the river blasted out in a vertical sheet—less like a waterfall and more like a dam splitting down the middle.

Suddenly Jotunheim did not seem like Vermont. It seemed more like the Himalayas—someplace not meant for mortals.

It was hard to focus on anything except the raging falls, but eventually I noticed a small campsite on the beach—a tent, a fire pit, and a second goat with dark fur pacing nervously on the shore. When the goat saw us, he came galloping over.

Otis turned to us and shouted over the roar of the river, “This is Marvin! He’s my brother! His proper name is Tanngrisnr—Snarler—but—”

“Otis!” Marvin yelled. “Where have you been?”

“I forgot what I was doing,” said Otis.

Marvin bleated in exasperation. His lips were curled in a permanent snarl, which—gee, I dunno—might have been how he got the name Snarler.

“This is the help you found?” Marvin fixed his yellow eyes on me. “Two scrawny humans and a dead elf?”

“He’s not dead!” I yelled. “Where is Thor?”

“In the river!” Marvin pointed with his horns. “The god of thunder is about to drown, and if you don’t figure out a way to help him, I’ll kill you. By the way, nice to meet you.”