Underworlds #4: The Ice Dragon (2 page)

S
YDNEY AND
D
ANA HURLED THEIR TORCHES AT THE
dogs. We ducked behind the frozen waterfall as I plucked the lyre’s strings in reverse order, releasing the rushing water again.

Eeeeee!
shrieked the skeleton dogs. I had a feeling the water wasn’t going to stop them.

“Go!” Dana cried. We careened from passage to passage, pursued by the creepy sound of bone feet
scraping the floor. Without the torches, we ran in the dark. But the problem with running in the dark is that you hit things. Like each other.

“Ow!” Jon cried.

“Get off me!” Sydney yelled.

“Just follow my voice,” Dana called from up ahead.

“It’s getting colder,” said Jon. “We’re going deeper into the mines, farther from the surface. Farther from … everything!”

I didn’t want to think about it. “This way,” I said. I slipped down a side passage and pulled the others with me. It must have tricked the skeleton dogs, because after a while, we couldn’t hear their scary feet pawing the stones anymore. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t hear anything.

I thumbed the lyre’s highest string gently, and a faint golden light shone out. Now we could see that the passage narrowed and ended a few feet ahead. It led nowhere.

“I knew it,” Jon groaned. “This is the part where
we’re
buried by silence. Behold our crypt. The tomb that time forgot. It was nice knowing you guys.
Though I could do without our slow and agonizing demise —”

“Calm down,” said Sydney. “We just have to backtrack.”

“And meet those dead dogs again?” said Jon. “No, thanks. I’ll wait here.”

Sydney glared at him. “Wait for what? To starve to death?”

“Enough!” said Dana. “We’ll think of something.” She opened her copy of
Bulfinch’s Mythology
and started flipping the pages. Finally, she said, “Owen, feel free to inspire us….”

Everyone stared at me. “Oh, sure,” I said. “Turn to the kid with the magical lyre.”

I plucked one string after the other. I pretended I was working on an idea of how to save us. But I didn’t have an idea. I had nothing.

After a few minutes of string-plucking, I frowned to make it look like I was thinking, and walked the whole length of the passage step-by-step, as if I were measuring. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t measuring. I was freaking out.

“Guys,” I started.

“What’s that?” Jon interrupted me, pointing up to a small round stone inset in the ceiling. It was polished and black — and unlike anything around it.

“Exactly what we’re looking for!” I said.

I held up the lyre and, all at once, the reflection of light from the lyre flashed from the stone directly onto the passage floor. It bounced off at an angle, struck the wall near Sydney’s head, smacked the floor between Jon’s feet, and hit the wall behind Dana, changing color with each new direction. Finally, it came to rest on the wall just over the passage entrance.

The wall burned brightly for a moment in the whole rainbow of colors, then went clear.

And there it was.

A long, slender crystal, set right into the wall.

Dana gasped. “The Crystal Rune of Asgard! We found it!”

The rune was small, a kind of sharp-edged, angular oval, with intersecting lines carved deep inside the crystal. It glowed gently with its own white light.

“Dana, you do the honors,” I said.

She stood on her toes and slipped the glassy stone from its niche in the wall. “It’s cold. And heavy. My Old Norse is a little rusty, but I think these carvings are a kind of poem. If I can get it right …” She frowned, moved her lips silently, and then finally read the lines aloud.

It was a chilling prophecy. When Dana handed the rune to me, I suddenly understood why Loki was all crazy to get his hands on the thing. There was something powerful and electric running through the stone. But the fact that the poem actually foretold the end of the Norse world, the Twilight of the Gods, was why Loki wanted the rune more than anything in the world.

“Loki knows that the only way for him to survive the Twilight of the Gods is in Odin’s throne,” I said. “With this rune, he can have that. That’s why he wants it so much.”

“But we have it now,” said Sydney. “And I think we need to get this straight to Odin before anything else —”

Thud-d-d. Thud-d-d.
Footsteps echoed down the passage and into the cave.

My senses buzzed. “Dogs?” I whispered. I holstered the lyre and drew my sword along with the others. There was silence for a moment. Then came a weird, inhuman shriek. And the rustle of … hooves.

“Sounds like something bigger than dogs,” whispered Jon. “I knew this was where we’d end our days —”

“Leave the children be, you nasty goblins!” boomed a voice. “Take that! And that!”

A flash of metal and the howl of voices filled the air.

“This way, children!” shouted the booming voice. Suddenly, there was a man standing at the mouth of the passage. In one hand he held a broadsword; in the other, a torch sizzling with red flames. He was huge, with long blond hair, a big beard, and a smile.

“You’d better come with me,” the man said when we didn’t budge. “These rock goblins are hungry!”

A small army of green-skinned creatures swarmed out from the rocks. They were as skinny as stick figures, with tight green skin, curving talons, and hoofed feet. I resisted the sudden urge to throw up.

The man swung his blade sharply, and two goblins jumped away screaming. The pack started pelting him with rocks and daggers, but nearly everything bounced off the man’s arms and legs as if he were made of iron.

“Oh, come on!” he crowed. “Is that all you have?” He jiggled the daggers out of his arms and tossed them back, then swung his massive sword in a wide circle to clear a path. “You kids can scurry out any time you want, you know!” he said.

We scurried.

While the man hacked a path through the goblins, we tore through the mines, Dana clutching the rune close to her. As we burst out of the tunnels and clambered back up the path to the surface, the man tossed his torch into the cave and the goblins retreated. That was when we finally saw the full size of our rescuer. He was a man at least seven feet tall, with massive muscles and bulging arms, covered with furs from his
shoulders to his chunky boots. We could see long, flowing blond hair when he removed a helmet the size of a fire hydrant, with a white horn curving up from the center.

T
HE GLACIER WAS A VAST FIELD OF ICE, SLOPING UP
from the northern rim of the volcano to somewhere completely shrouded by clouds. It looked like a straight shot, but the thing about glaciers is that they’re slippery — so climbing them isn’t easy. Two wobbly steps forward, one back. It took forever to make any progress.

Plus, it was getting colder by the second, our armor was freezing, and we had to keep breaking icicles off
our helmets. All I wanted — all I
really
wanted — was to lie down and sleep.

On top of that, it began to snow. Hard.

“We’re going to get so lost,” Jon said. “I can’t even see my own hands.”

Dana passed the rune to Sydney and uncoiled the rope from her shoulder. “Let’s use the rope to tie ourselves to one another.”

“That way if one of us falls, we all fall?” said Jon.

Sydney slipped the rune inside her armor and gave Jon a look. “No. This way, we don’t lose
you
.”

We looped the rope around our waists, and just in time, too. When a blast of wind cleared the whirling snow for a second, Jon was tiptoeing inches from the edge of a deep chasm.

“Ack!” cried Jon. “We almost lost me!”

I looked down into the chasm, but couldn’t see the bottom. I kicked a slab of ice off the edge. It dropped fast, exploding into pieces with each ledge it struck on the way down.

“Ohhh …”

I turned to the others. “Who said that?”

“Ohhh …”

“Someone’s out there,” Sydney said, pointing into the spinning snow. “Hello?”

“Ohhh … help!”

We made our way forward, following the sound. Soon we saw an old woman dressed in rags. Her hands were stretched out in front of her, searching the air as if to find her way.

“Wait, is this a mirage?” Jon said, shrinking back.

“If it’s not, then what is an old lady doing out here?” Dana whispered. “Ma’am? Stop —”

“I need to find my dog. He fell into the ravine. There he is!” the woman cried, stepping to the edge and pointing to a small dog limping back and forth on a ledge some ten feet below. “I have to save my poor puppy!”

“No!” said Dana. “I’ll get your dog for you. You stay here. Guys, give me some slack.”

“What?” I said. There was no way. But Dana gave me a look that told me she’d made up her mind. She was going. Keeping the rope tight around her waist, Dana edged down the chasm wall while we lowered
her foot by foot onto the ledge. The dog backed away from her, but she motioned it over and stroked its head. “It’s all right. It’s okay, Mr. Puppy. Let’s climb back up. Here we go….”

“Dana, be careful,” Jon said.

Dana held the dog close, and we pulled her gently to the top of the chasm.

“My hero!” the woman cried, as the dog leaped into her arms. “Now all of you must come with me. My hut is nearby, so you can warm yourselves. Follow me!”

Laughing, the woman clutched Dana’s wrist as if it were a lifeline, unhooked her rope, and pulled her into the whirling snowstorm.

“We need to keep moving,” said Sydney. “We can’t stay.”

“Only long enough to warm up,” said Jon.

“Dana?” I called. She didn’t answer. “Dana! Wait for us!”

We lost sight of her for a second, and I didn’t like it. The snow was whipping around like a tornado, and it was all I could do not to be swept into the chasm myself. We plowed ahead for what seemed like ten
minutes (but was probably only a few seconds), until we finally saw the woman’s home. It was a tiny hut wedged under a ridge of glacier. The wind blew like a hurricane across the ice, and it struck me that the hut hardly seemed strong enough to survive a good rain, never mind an Icelandic winter.