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Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard Book 3: The Ship of the Dead (Rick Riordan’s Norse Mythology), Page 1

Rick Riordan



  Copyright © 2017 by Rick Riordan

  Cover illustration © 2017 by John Rocco

  Cover design by SJI Associates, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  Rune and symbol art by Michelle Gengaro-Kokmen

  ISBN 978-1-4847-5860-1

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  www.ReadRiordan.com

  To Philip José Farmer,

  whose Riverworld books kick-started my love of history

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Percy Jackson Does His Level Best to Kill Me

  2. Falafel Sandwiches with a Side Order of Ragnarok

  3. I Inherit a Dead Wolf and Some Underwear

  4. But Wait. Act Now, and You Get a Second Wolf Free!

  5. I Bid Farewell to Erik, Erik, Erik, and Also Erik

  6. I Have a Nightmare About Toenails

  7. We All Drown

  8. In the Hall of the Huffy Hipster

  9. I Become a Temporary Vegetarian

  10. Can We Talk About Mead?

  11. My Sword Takes You to (Dramatic Pause) Funkytown

  12. The Guy with the Feet

  13. Stupid Exploding Grandfathers

  14. Nothing Happens. It’s a Miracle

  15. Monkey!

  16. Spit Man Versus Chain Saw. Guess Who Wins

  17. We Are Ambushed by a Pile of Rocks

  18. I Roll Play-Doh to the Death

  19. I Attend a Zombie Pep Rally

  20. Tveirvigi = Worst Vigi

  21. Fun with Open-Heart Surgery

  22. I Have Bad News and—No, Actually I Just Have Bad News

  23. Follow the Smell of Dead Frogs (to the Tune of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”)

  24. I Liked Hearthstone’s Dad Better as a Cow-Abducting Alien

  25. We Devise a Fabulously Horrible Plan

  26. Things Get Wyrd

  27. We Win a Small Rock

  28. Don’t Ever Ask Me to Cook My Enemy’s Heart

  29. We Almost Become a Norwegian Tourist Attraction

  30. Fläm, Bomb, Thank You, Mom

  31. Mallory Gets Nuts

  32. Mallory Also Gets Fruit

  33. We Devise a Horribly Fabulous Plan

  34. First Prize: A Giant! Second Prize: Two Giants!

  35. I Get an Assist from the Murder Murder

  36. The Ballad of Halfborn, Hovel-Hero

  37. Alex Bites My Face Off

  38. Skadi Knows All, Shoots All

  39. I Become as Poetic as…Like, a Poetic Person

  40. I Get a Collect Call from Hel

  41. I Call a Time-Out

  42. I Start Small

  43. I Have a Big Finish

  44. Why Do They Get Cannons? I Want Cannons

  45. If You Understand What Happens in This Chapter, Please Tell Me, Because I Have No Clue

  46. I Win a Fluffy Bathrobe

  47. Surprises All Around, Some of Them Even Good

  48. The Chase Space Becomes a Place

  Glossary

  Pronunciation Guide

  About the Author

  “TRY IT AGAIN,” Percy told me. “This time with less dying.”

  Standing on the yardarm of the USS Constitution, looking down at Boston Harbor two hundred feet below, I wished I had the natural defenses of a turkey buzzard. Then I could projectile vomit on Percy Jackson and make him go away.

  The last time he’d made me try this jump, only an hour before, I’d broken every bone in my body. My friend Alex Fierro had rushed me back to the Hotel Valhalla just in time for me to die in my own bed.

  Unfortunately, I was an einherji, one of Odin’s immortal warriors. I couldn’t die permanently as long as I expired within the boundaries of Valhalla. Thirty minutes later, I woke up as good as new. Now here I was again, ready for more pain. Hooray!

  “Is this strictly necessary?” I asked.

  Percy leaned against the rigging, the wind rippling little waves through his black hair.

  He looked like a normal guy—orange T-shirt, jeans, battered white leather Reeboks. If you saw him walking down the street, you wouldn’t think, Hey, look, a demigod son of Poseidon! Praise the Olympians! He didn’t have gills or webbed fingers, though his eyes were sea green—about the same shade I imagined my face was just then. The only strange thing about Jackson was the tattoo on the inside of his forearm—a trident as dark as seared wood, with a single line underneath and the letters SPQR.

  He’d told me the letters stood for Sono Pazzi Quelli Romani—those Romans are crazy. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding.

  “Look, Magnus,” he told me. “You’ll be sailing across hostile territory. A bunch of sea monsters and sea gods and who-knows-what-else will be trying to kill you, right?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  By which I meant: Please don’t remind me. Please leave me alone.

  “At some point,” said Percy, “you’re going to get thrown off the boat, maybe from as high up as this. You’ll need to know how to survive the impact, avoid drowning, and get back to the surface ready to fight. That’s going to be tough, especially in cold water.”

  I knew he was right. From what my cousin Annabeth had told me, Percy had been through even more dangerous adventures than I had. (And I lived in Valhalla. I died at least once a day.) As much as I appreciated him coming up from New York to offer me heroic aquatic-survival tips, though, I was getting tired of failing.

  Yesterday, I’d gotten chomped by a great white shark, strangled by a giant squid, and stung by a thousand irate moon jellies. I’d swallowed several gallons of seawater trying to hold my breath, and learned that I was no better at hand-to-hand combat thirty feet down than I was on dry land.

  This morning, Percy had walked me around Old Ironsides, trying to teach me the basics of sailing and navigation, but I still couldn’t tell the mizzenmast from the poop deck.

  Now here I was: a failure at falling off a pole.

  I glanced down, where Annabeth and Alex Fierro were watching us from the deck.

  “You got this, Magnus!” Annabeth cheered.

  Alex Fierro gave me two thumbs up. At least I think that was the gesture. It was hard to be sure from this distance.

  Percy took a deep breath. He’d been patient with me so far, but I could tell the stress of the weekend was starting to get to him, too. Whenever he looked at me, his left eye twitched.

  “It’s cool, man,” he promised. “I’ll demonstrate again, okay? Start in skydiver position, spread-eagle to slow your descent. Then, right before you hit the water, straighten like an arrow—head up, heels down, back straight, butt clenched. That last part is really important.”

  “Skydiver,” I said. “Eagle. Arrow. Butt.”

  “Right,” Percy said. “Watch me.”

  He jumped from the yardarm, falling toward the harbor in perfect spread-eagle form. At the last moment, he straightened, heels downward, and hit the water, disappearing with hardly a ripple. A moment later, he surfaced, his palms raised like See? Nothing to it!

  Annabeth and Alex applauded.

  “Okay, Magnus!” Alex cal
led up to me. “Your turn! Be a man!”

  I suppose that was meant to be funny. Most of the time, Alex identified as female, but today he was definitely male. Sometimes I slipped up and used the wrong pronouns for him/her, so Alex liked to return the favor by teasing me mercilessly. Because friendship.

  Annabeth hollered, “You got this, cuz!”

  Below me, the dark surface of the water glinted like a freshly scrubbed waffle iron, ready to squash me flat.

  Right, I muttered to myself.

  I jumped.

  For half a second, I felt pretty confident. The wind whistled past my ears. I spread my arms and managed not to scream.

  Okay, I thought. I can do this.

  Which was when my sword, Jack, decided to fly up out of nowhere and start a conversation.

  “Hey, señor!” His runes glowed along his double-edged blade. “Whatcha doing?”

  I flailed, trying to turn vertical for impact. “Jack, not now!”

  “Oh, I get it! You’re falling! You know, one time Frey and I were falling—”

  Before he could continue his fascinating story, I slammed into the water.

  Just as Percy had warned, the cold stunned my system. I sank, momentarily paralyzed, the air knocked out of my lungs. My ankles throbbed like I’d bounced off a brick trampoline. But at least I wasn’t dead.

  I scanned for major injuries. When you’re an einherji, you get pretty good at listening to your own pain. You can stagger around the battlefield in Valhalla, mortally wounded, gasping your last breath, and calmly think, Oh, so that’s what a crushed rib cage feels like. Interesting!

  This time I’d broken my left ankle for sure. The right one was only sprained.

  Easy fix. I summoned the power of Frey.

  Warmth like summer sunlight spread from my chest into my limbs. The pain subsided. I wasn’t as good at healing myself as I was at healing others, but I felt my ankles beginning to mend—as if a swarm of friendly wasps were crawling around inside my flesh, mud-daubing the fractures, reknitting the ligaments.

  Ah, better, I thought, as I floated through the cold darkness. Now, there’s something else I should be doing….Oh, right. Breathing.

  Jack’s hilt nudged against my hand like a dog looking for attention. I wrapped my fingers around his leather grip and he hauled me upward, launching me out of the harbor like a rocket-powered Lady of the Lake. I landed, gasping and shivering, on the deck of Old Ironsides next to my friends.

  “Whoa.” Percy stepped back. “That was different. You okay, Magnus?”

  “Fine,” I coughed out, sounding like a duck with a chest cold.

  Percy eyed the glowing runes on my weapon. “Where’d the sword come from?”

  “Hi, I’m Jack!” said Jack.

  Annabeth stifled a yelp. “It talks?”

  “It?” Jack demanded. “Hey, lady, some respect. I’m Sumarbrander! The Sword of Summer! The weapon of Frey! I’ve been around for thousands of years! Also, I’m a dude!”

  Annabeth frowned. “Magnus, when you told me about your magic sword, did you perhaps fail to mention that it—that he can speak?”

  “Did I?” Honestly I couldn’t remember.

  The past few weeks, Jack had been off on his own, doing whatever sentient magic swords did in their free time. Percy and I had been using standard-issue Hotel Valhalla practice blades for sparring. It hadn’t occurred to me that Jack might fly in out of nowhere and introduce himself. Besides, the fact that Jack talked was the least weird thing about him. The fact that he could sing the entire cast recording of Jersey Boys from memory…that was weird.

  Alex Fierro looked like he was trying not to laugh. He was wearing pink and green today, as usual, though I’d never seen this particular outfit before: lace-up leather boots, ultra-skinny rose jeans, an untucked lime dress shirt, and a checkered skinny tie as loose as a necklace. With his thick black Ray-Bans and his choppy green hair, he looked like he’d stepped off a New Wave album cover circa 1979.

  “Be polite, Magnus,” he said. “Introduce your friends to your sword.”

  “Uh, right,” I said. “Jack, this is Percy and Annabeth. They’re demigods—the Greek kind.”

  “Hmm.” Jack didn’t sound impressed. “I met Hercules once.”

  “Who hasn’t?” Annabeth muttered.

  “Fair point,” Jack said. “But I suppose if you’re friends of Magnus’s…” He went completely still. His runes faded. Then he leaped out of my hand and flew toward Annabeth, his blade twitching as if he was sniffing the air. “Where is she? Where are you hiding the babe?”

  Annabeth backed toward the rail. “Whoa, there, sword. Personal space!”

  “Jack, behave,” Alex said. “What are you doing?”

  “She’s around here somewhere,” Jack insisted. He flew to Percy. “Aha! What’s in your pocket, sea boy?”

  “Excuse me?” Percy looked a bit nervous about the magical sword hovering at his waistline.

  Alex lowered his Ray-Bans. “Okay, now I’m curious. What do you have in your pocket, Percy? Inquiring swords want to know.”

  Percy pulled a plain-looking ballpoint pen from his jeans. “You mean this?”

  “BAM!” Jack said. “Who is this vision of loveliness?”

  “Jack,” I said. “It’s a pen.”

  “No, it’s not! Show me! Show me!”

  “Uh…sure.” Percy uncapped the pen.

  Immediately it transformed into a three-foot-long sword with a leaf-shaped blade of glowing bronze. Compared to Jack, the weapon looked delicate, almost petite, but from the way Percy wielded it, I had no doubt he’d be able to hold his own on the battlefields of Valhalla with that thing.

  Jack turned his point toward me, his runes flashing burgundy. “See, Magnus? I told you it wasn’t stupid to carry a sword disguised as a pen!”

  “Jack, I never said that!” I protested. “You did.”

  Percy raised an eyebrow. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Nothing,” I said hastily. “So I guess this is the famous Riptide? Annabeth told me about it.”

  “Her,” Jack corrected.

  Annabeth frowned. “Percy’s sword is a she?”

  Jack laughed. “Well, duh.”

  Percy studied Riptide, though I could’ve told him from experience it was almost impossible to tell a sword’s gender by looking at it.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Are you sure—?”

  “Percy,” said Alex. “Respect the gender.”

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “It’s just kinda strange that I never knew.”

  “On the other hand,” Annabeth said, “you didn’t know the pen could write until last year.”

  “That’s low, Wise Girl.”

  “Anyway!” Jack interrupted. “The important thing is Riptide’s here now, she’s beautiful, and she’s met me! Maybe the two of us can…you know…have some private time to talk about, er, sword stuff?”

  Alex smirked. “That sounds like a wonderful idea. How about we let the swords get to know each other while the rest of us have lunch? Magnus, do you think you can handle eating falafel without choking?”

  WE ATE ON the aft spar deck. (Look at me with the nautical terms.)

  After a hard morning of failing, I felt like I’d really earned my deep-fried chickpea patties and pita bread, my yogurt and chilled cucumber slices, and my side order of extra-spicy lamb kebabs. Annabeth had arranged our picnic lunch. She knew me too well.

  My clothes dried quickly in the sunlight. The warm breeze felt good on my face. Sailboats traced their way across the harbor while airplanes cut across the blue sky, heading out from Logan Airport to New York or California or Europe. The whole city of Boston seemed charged with impatient energy, like a classroom at 2:59 P.M., waiting for the dismissal bell, everybody ready to get out of town for the summer and enjoy the good weather.

  Me, all I wanted to do was stay put.

  Riptide and Jack stood propped nearby in a coil of rope, their hilts leaning a
gainst the gunnery rail. Riptide acted like your typical inanimate object, but Jack kept inching closer, chatting her up, his blade glowing the same dark bronze as hers. Fortunately, Jack was used to holding one-sided conversations. He joked. He flattered. He name-dropped like a maniac. “You know, Thor and Odin and I were at this tavern one time…”

  If Riptide was impressed, she didn’t show it.

  Percy wadded up his falafel wrapper. Along with being a water-breather, the dude also had the ability to inhale food.

  “So,” he said, “when do you guys sail out?”

  Alex raised an eyebrow at me like Yeah, Magnus. When do we sail out?

  I’d been trying to avoid this topic with Fierro for the past two weeks, without much luck.

  “Soon,” I said. “We don’t exactly know where we’re headed, or how long it’ll take to get there—”

  “Story of my life,” said Percy.

  “—but we have to find Loki’s big nasty ship of death before it sails at Midsummer. It’s docked somewhere along the border between Niflheim and Jotunheim. We’re estimating it’ll take a couple of weeks to sail that distance.”

  “Which means,” Alex said, “we really should’ve left already. We definitely have to sail by the end of the week, ready or not.”

  In his dark lenses, I saw the reflection of my own worried face. We both knew we were as far from ready as we were from Niflheim.

  Annabeth tucked her feet underneath her. Her long blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her dark blue T-shirt was emblazoned with the yellow words COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN, UC BERKELEY.

  “Heroes never get to be ready, do we?” she said. “We just do the best we can.”

  Percy nodded. “Yep. Usually it works out. We haven’t died yet.”

  “Though you keep trying.” Annabeth elbowed him. Percy put his arm around her. She nestled comfortably against his side. He kissed the blond curls on the top of her head.

  This show of affection made my heart do a painful little twist.

  I was glad to see my cousin so happy, but it reminded me how much was at stake if I failed to stop Loki.

  Alex and I had already died. We would never age. We’d live in Valhalla until Doomsday came around (unless we got killed outside the hotel before that). The best life we could hope for was training for Ragnarok, postponing that inevitable battle as many centuries as possible, and then, one day, marching out of Valhalla with Odin’s army and dying a glorious death while the Nine Worlds burned around us. Fun.