Underworlds #3: Revenge of the Scorpion King (3 page)

W
E HURRIED BEHIND
P
ANU THROUGH ONE DIM,
twisting passage after another.

The air was hotter and heavier the closer we got to the tower, and all I could think of was Kingu, trapped in an Underworld where it was always night, always felt like a thousand degrees, and he was always in the body of a scorpion. What had he said?

Cursed to an eternity of darkness.

If that didn’t make you want revenge, nothing would. Still, if Kingu had warred against a greater god, wasn’t he just as bad as Loki?

“Down this alley, and we’ll reach the tower before Loki does,” Panu whispered.

I still wasn’t sure I trusted the lion-headed boy, either. Panu liked Kingu, who seemed dark and cruel, and very powerful. But all my brain could tell me was one thing: Stop Loki from finding the Tablets.

Kawwww!

A dark, winged shape dived straight down from somewhere in the upper levels of the tower, and we ducked into the shadows. Its wingspan was a good twenty feet from tip to tip. At the last second, it swooped up over the city streets, and we noticed human legs and arms among the feathers.

“Whoa,” Jon gasped. “Is there a guy riding that big bird?”

“No, that’s Birdman,” said Panu. “Half man, half raptor, and one of the seven beasts. Beware his razor-sharp talons. This way —”

Two more passageways, an empty square, a set of steps, and finally we were at the base of the enormous tower. It seemed even hotter here. While Sydney and Jon followed Panu ahead, Dana paused next to me. Her eyes were pained, and she rubbed the wrist of her armored hand.

“Is it the glove?” I asked. “Does it hurt?”

She stared at the tower for a long second, then shook her head. “No. I mean, yeah, but it’s not that. It’s the Fires of Midgard. My parents read me the original myth. It’s horrifying. Our world is supposedly turned to ashes. I wish I knew how the Crystal Rune is involved. I just can’t remember that part of the story.”

No one knew that part of the story. Maybe it wasn’t even written yet. That was the problem. Or
one
of the problems.

We had so many.

“Look, if we can get to the Tablets of Destiny, maybe we can stop Loki today. And that will be the end of all this,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing. “No fires. No war. No Crystal Rune. No Loki. Everything goes back to normal.”

Dana looked at me, then down at the tattered book in her bag. “Maybe. I just wish I knew more.”

Waiting by the archway at the base of the tower, Panu was obviously afraid. “I might be more help to you if I work my way up the outside. To there.” He pointed a paw up at the tower’s summit.

“Good idea,” I said. “It’s our mission, not yours —”

“I smell Fenrir on his way,” Dana said. “So we’d all better hurry.”

Panu nodded. “Until I see you at the top!” With a quick wave, he galloped down a curved passage. We were alone.

“Strange guy,” said Sydney. “And by ‘guy,’ I mean ‘lion.’”

We had no time to waste, so we slipped under the arch and entered the tower. The instant I stepped into the vast open room, my limbs felt like lead and my heart sank to my knees. Dana almost fell down, her legs wobbled so suddenly. That was the effect the tower had on us.

“This tower is cursed, all right,” whispered Jon, peering up at the distant ceiling. “And it’s so huge.”

The ground level was the distance of a dozen football fields from wall to wall, but otherwise bare. The floor was a mixture of sand and stone packed as hard as concrete, and flaming torches dotted the walls as far as we could see. The ceiling was high, and a thick rope dangled all the way down from it but stopped about twenty feet above the floor.

Jon’s eyes went wide. “Are we supposed to climb up to the next level on that?”

“It looks easy enough to get under the rope,” said Sydney. “But reaching it will be a different story. What are the monsters again?”

Dana flipped open her
Bulfinch’s
. “Aside from Birdman and Fire Serpent, there are Thornviper and Mad Dog and …”

Thump-thump-thump!
The floor quaked beneath our feet.

“… Mammoth,” Dana whispered, closing the book. “Mammoth was another one.”

“Mammoth?” I said. “As in the big, wooly thing that trampled cavemen —”

The floor shuddered so violently that we fell to our knees. Dana swung all the way around, aiming her gloved hand at any movement in the dark distance.

Suddenly, the room echoed with the low trumpeting of what could only have been a prehistoric beast, the ground shook again, and there was a mammoth. It was the kind of thing you’d see in a science museum. Except that he was twice the size of any fossilized museum mammoth.

And alive. Very alive.

He bounded across the floor, his shaggy black fur waving like a forest of Spanish moss. One gigantic bloodred tusk jutted out from each side of his head like medieval lances, their tips burning with blades of fire.

“Scatter!” Sydney screamed as the mammoth bore down on us.

While Dana and I took off one way and Sydney the other, Jon froze, his mouth hanging open, his eyes like saucers.

The beast seemed to like the unmoving target, because he charged full speed at Jon.

Blam!
Dana sent a bolt of light at the mammoth with her glove, but it bounced off the beast’s thick hide. Worse, Dana sank to one knee and clutched her quivering wrist. “Owen, the lyre!”

I pulled the lyre from its holster and plucked the strings one by one, hoping to trip the mammoth. None of the strings did anything at all, until I tried the last one. Its pitch was as low and deep as the mammoth’s roar, and it reverberated against the walls.

Ooooong.

The sand on the floor rippled once, and the mammoth’s tree-trunk legs slid apart. He crashed to his knees, and everything shook violently.

All of a sudden, there was a familiar stink, and Fenrir leaped into the giant room.

“Like we needed
him
!” said Dana.

Catching sight of us, Fenrir snorted, and his nostrils brewed up a fiery belch.

Loki strode in behind him, his neck gleaming with several rune necklaces. Then he saw us, and his eyes flashed in rage. “You!” he shouted. “Always you! You followed me to Babylonia? No doubt the lyre helped you somehow, but now I will end you once and for all —”

But Dana let loose a blast before that could happen.
Blam!
The force of it knocked her back on her heels, and she groaned.

Loki grabbed the flame out of the air. “Don’t play if you don’t know the rules, Miss Runson! I’ll have that glove — and you — before this day is over!” He fired off his own bolt. I pulled Dana out of the way, and the floor we’d just been standing on exploded.

The mammoth reared up on his hind legs and let loose a roar that shook the walls. That’s when I noticed that the mammoth stood a good twenty feet tall on his hind legs — the same distance from the floor to the rope.

Despite my fear, my brain was still able to add two and two. “We’ll use him to get to the next level,” I mumbled.

Jon looked at me, then the mammoth, then the rope, then back at the mammoth.

“That’s crazy,” he said.

Then Fenrir charged, Loki aimed, and Mammoth attacked all at once.

We ran.

While my fingers busily plucked the one workable string of the lyre, I glanced at Dana.

Blam-blam-blam!
Bolt after bolt of silver light sprayed across the room, and Loki and Fenrir dived away, while the lyre’s note drew Mammoth to us.

With one final twang, Mammoth’s fat feet skidded out from beneath him. It was enough. We grabbed his fur and hung on for dear life.

“You will not!” Loki shouted. He shot bolts at us one after another. The beast thrashed and bucked, but we climbed onto his head. Plucking the lyre’s string in one ear, then the other, I steered the mammoth to the center of the room.

“Up! Up!” Sydney cried, and we leaped from the mammoth’s back onto the rope. That made it start swinging wildly, which was actually a good thing because none of Loki’s blasts connected with us. We climbed hand over hand all the way up to the ceiling, through the opening, and into the tower’s second level.

Looking back, I saw the rune on Loki’s breastplate glow and the mammoth slow to a stop. Loki tied a rune onto his tusk, and the creature bowed to him. “He got him,” I said, shaking my head.

“But we got out!” said Jon, on his feet and looking around. “And we’re still alive!”

I wanted to cheer, but I didn’t like the look of this new level. The floor was a weird mat of thorns from wall to wall. On the far side of the room, a thick, thorny vine snaked up from the floor to the ceiling.

There wasn’t a monster in sight.

“This must be Thornviper’s lair,” Dana said as we hurried toward the vine. “I wonder what a thornviper actually is.”

Ssss …

We stopped, turned, and saw a tiny viper slithering calmly through the thorns. He raised his tiny head.

Ssss …

Sydney laughed. “Seriously?
That
’s Thornviper? This little guy is one of the seven great monsters of Babylon? An earthworm could take him —”

It was a little funny. Until it wasn’t.

Ssss
… came a sound from our right. A second tiny viper.

“Twins?” said Jon.

Then —
ssss
— we saw another one. Then another, and the nest of thorns was suddenly crawling with the little things.

“Okay,” said Sydney, “I get it, there are lots of them, but they’re still really small —”

Then we watched as all the tiny vipers slithered together and twisted and coiled around in a mess of heads and tails.

“What’s happening?” said Dana.

“I think we’re seeing what happens just before we die,” said Jon, covering his eyes. “Oh, no, no …”

Before we knew it, the little vipers had formed one single gargantuan viper.

“So
that
’s Thornviper,” said Sydney.

The monster reared his humongous head up to the ceiling. His fangs were as long as sabers, and they dripped goopy liquid to the floor. A tongue as long as a hallway carpet uncoiled from his mouth and snapped like a whip.

SSSSSSS!

The sound was so high-pitched I was afraid my eardrums would burst. Then a blast of flaming thorns from the creature’s mouth almost incinerated us. Luckily, a weak bolt from Dana’s glove was just enough to blow the flames away.

Thornviper reared again.

“Owen!” cried Dana, crouching behind Sydney and holding her wrist. “I can’t —”

Oooong!
The string that had worked on the level below did nothing here. In fact, none of the strings did. Thornviper rose to strike again and hissed his high-pitched whine.

SSSSS!

I twisted the tuner on the highest string to try to match the note, and the daggers of pain that shot through my eyeballs nearly made me black out.

EEEENG!

Thornviper howled in pain. All at once, a flicker, a spark — and the thorns blew up into a fire.

“Climb the vine!” cried Sydney, pulling Dana and Jon with her. “Hurry!”

We climbed the thorn vine, not caring how much it cut our fingers. As soon as we reached the top, the ceiling spiraled open. We scrambled through the opening as Thornviper wailed in his nest of burning thorns.

The floor closed beneath our feet.

We’d made it to the third level.

A
S CRAZY AND NOISY AND DANGEROUS AS THE ROOM
below had been, the third level of the tower was as silent as a tomb.

Which didn’t make me feel any better.

We peered around and found ourselves in the center of a large ring of ascending stone benches.

“This kind of reminds me of a gladiator arena,” said Dana.

“Didn’t people die in those?” asked Jon.

“Only the ones who didn’t win,” said Dana.

Jon shook his head. “Funny. Really.”

Trying to focus my throbbing eyes, I scanned the room from side to side. The ring of bleachers around us was unbroken except in two places. A long set of steps rose from ground level to the ceiling, where a low arch led, I guessed, to the next level. Next to the bottom of the stairs was a tall opening leading somewhere dark and creepy. I didn’t want to know any more about that.

“So,” Sydney muttered, “I guess we get up those stairs and out of here fast.”

“I really like the second part of that plan,” said Jon.

Before we could move, the dark opening echoed with the sound of feet, and out came an endless column of lion-headed warriors. They growled loudly, but didn’t move toward us. They simply tramped up the bleachers, sat down, and began to chant.

It was
what
they chanted that was the problem.

“Furnace! Furnace!”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Jon whispered.

Moments later, a large, human shape moved slowly out of the archway, and the crowd cheered louder. “FURNACE!”

“Oh, I’m going to be sick,” said Dana.

We’d found our monster.

“Furnace” was eight feet of blackened metal. His legs and arms were thick, pistonlike cylinders, and his chest was as big as a tin drum. His head was a barrel with a hatch for a mouth and hot coals flaming inside. Furnace eyed us with large glowing eyes, and we backed up.

“Is he some kind of prehistoric robot?” asked Sydney, her voice shaking.

Furnace blew one big flame from his metal jaws, and the lion-headed spectators fell silent. In the sudden quiet, we heard Loki’s muffled cries and Thornviper hissing below our feet. The Norse god wasn’t far behind us.

“Come to me!” Furnace spat at us from his fiery jaws, coals spraying across the floor.

“We don’t want to,” said Jon, stepping quickly behind me.

Furnace laughed hoarsely, spit more flames, and stomped toward us. The roar from the lion-headed crowd shook the walls.

I plucked the lyre’s strings frantically while we backed away from the metal monster, but none of them did anything. When I saw Dana aiming her glove, I said, “No, I’ll —”

Bam!
She shot a bolt from her hand, then fell to her knees with a groan, but when her bolt struck Furnace —
blang!
— he rang like a bell. The sound echoed from wall to wall, and the lyre trembled in my hands.

“That’s it!” I said. I loosened one of the lyre’s strings to match the sound.

When the note rang out, Furnace halted in mid-belch and wobbled on his canister feet.

“Run up the stairs!” shouted Dana.

As we rushed straight for the stairs, a wave of sand blew up from the floor and sprayed us. Furnace turned his head, and there was Loki, the runes glowing on his chest.

“Two beasts down, five more to go!” Loki sneered. “Fenrir and the other beasts are waiting for you, Furnace. Come, be my ally. Join my war.”

“Ally?” spat the metal man. “Only the holder of the Tablets commands me. Otherwise, I am the enemy of all who try to ascend the tower.”

We edged backward toward the stairs.

“You are the enemy of Kingu, not of me,” said Loki, the rune on his breastplate glowing more brightly. “After today, Kingu will no longer concern you. I am your master now.”

The light from Loki’s rune flooded the metal man.

“I told you,” said Sydney. “Loki is betraying Kingu, just like I said.”

“Come on!” Dana grabbed my arm, and I pulled Sydney away.

With no time to lose, we raced up the stairs to the opening. When I glanced back, I saw Furnace’s massive arms drop to his sides. He bowed his colossal head. Loki hung a rune necklace on it.

“The rune controls you until I hold the Tablets,” Loki said to Furnace. “Go to Fenrir and your fellow beasts below. Go!”

Furnace bowed once more, and the opening closed behind us.

“Level four,” Dana said, looking around at a room carved entirely of marble. In the center of the room stood a tall, carved arch that formed the entrance to a long tunnel. Beyond the end of the tunnel we spied a ramp that ended in an opening to the floor above.

“The quickest way to the ramp is straight through the tunnel,” said Jon. “I vote for the quickest way.”

“Agreed,” said Sydney.

As our eyes adjusted to the pale light, we saw columns on either side, and pedestals, and shelves along the walls that held what appeared to be the tattered remains of paper scrolls. We also saw loose papers scattered on the tunnel’s floor.

“It looks like this place was once a library,” I said.

“It does,” Dana whispered. Then she stopped short of entering the tunnel. “Do you remember my parents’ library? How one book was missing?”

We all nodded. The Runsons’ library was where we’d first met Fenrir. We had barely escaped, but not before noticing a gap in the shelves where one book was gone.

“I think I know which book it is,” Dana went on as we once more headed toward the arch. “It had a cover dotted with clear stones. It was about the Crystal Rune.”

“Then your parents probably took it with them to Iceland,” Sydney said.

Dana shook her head slowly. “They burned the book. I remember that.”

“Burned it?” said Jon. “Why would they burn a book? They love books.”

“They burned it so no one else would ever read it,” Dana said. “That’s why Fenrir couldn’t find it at my house, and why Loki sent the Draugs after my parents. I remember my parents reading it to me when I was young.” Her eyes darkened. “Not exactly bedtime reading.”

“Do you remember any of the book?” asked Syd.

“A few words and phrases,” Dana said. “Not much.”

“Dana, your parents are smart,” I said. “If they’re the only ones who know where the rune is, they’ll find it and keep it from Loki. Don’t worry. You’ll see them soon.”

I had no idea what I was saying, but I hoped it sounded all right to Dana. I guess it did. She smiled a little.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”

Keeping our eyes squarely on the ramp beyond the tunnel, we made our way quietly to the large marble arch. Jutting down from the top of the arch were the remains of columns that had somehow been broken. On the floor just below stood the bottom pieces of those same columns, also broken. We slipped between the columns into the tunnel.

“Weird how the walls are curved here,” said Jon as we stepped deeper into the passage. “And …” he said, reaching out with his fingers, “… a little slimy.”

Whooosh!
Air blew over us from the dark distance, stirring the papers on the floor. It was foul, heavy, and stale. It smelled like old food.
Really
old food. Another rush of air, and the walls around us rippled. Then came something that sounded like a … growl.

When the tunnel shut in front of us I think we all figured it out.

“
This
is Mad Dog!” Jon yelled. “We’re
inside
Mad Dog! Get out of here!”

The instant we turned around, the opening we’d come through began to close up, too, and the broken columns at the top lowered toward the broken columns on the floor. Like teeth.

We dived through the marble jaws just before they clamped shut. When they did, the arch and the tunnel shook violently, chunks of stone crashed to the floor, and there stood an enormous dog made of marble.

Mad Dog.

“Get past him and up that ramp!” I yelled.

We raced right past his humongous head, but the marble dog was as quick as he was enormous. He twisted back and swiped at us with a massive paw. His claws caught a handful of the shelves on the wall and tore them away. Then he opened his jaws wide, and flames shot out.

We all fell flat on the ramp, and the whole room went crimson with fire. The walls shuddered with a sound like a hammer striking stone.

And the lyre’s fourth string rang.

“Thank you!” I yelled, plucking that string over and over. Mad Dog howled as if someone had smashed his big stone paw.

“This way!” Sydney cried, and we dashed up the ramp and ran as fast as we could, leaping into the darkness of the fifth level. Mad Dog charged at us one last time, but the opening to the fifth level closed, and we were alone.

A sliver of pale light shone from ceiling to floor in the distance. “Moonlight,” Jon said. “That must be the exit. We’re near the top of the tower.”

Except that getting there wasn’t going to be easy. Between us and the shaft of light was a swamp, burning with the same green flames we had seen from Fire Serpent.

“We’ll have to pick our way across the swamp to get there,” said Dana, scanning the tiny islands of land that dotted the swamp and stretching her glove to me. “Hold hands so no one falls in.”

I took her hand. It was odd, burning and freezing at the same time. Even touching the glove for a short time made my fingers ache. I could only imagine how Dana felt.

We hopped from island to island, and the flames licked at our feet, hissing at an eerie pitch. Was that the lyre’s note? It was weird how the levels of the tower seemed to be “tuned.” That had to mean something, but I couldn’t spend too much time thinking about it — because just then Fire Serpent rose out of the swamp behind us, rearing his fat head and snorting fire from his snout.

Jon groaned. “Here we go again. Everybody down!”

We flattened to the ground, and a blast of green flame blew over us, igniting the swamp grass. At the same time, a bolt of silver light struck the water next to us.

“Loki’s back, too!” Sydney shouted.

And there he was, his face a storm of anger. Loki charged at us across the swamp. “You cannot stop me! The monsters
will
be mine! But I will take a moment to destroy you first —”

Loki threw a ball of flame at Dana, which she deflected at the last moment with a pretty weak stream of light from her glove. Loki’s blast fizzled near the serpent’s knobby tail. The beast spun around to the Norse god.

“You’ll be bound to me soon enough, snake. In the meantime —” Loki touched the rune on his breastplate, and silver light enveloped the beast.

“Run! Over here!” growled a distant voice. I looked up to see a familiar face, standing in the distant shaft of moonlight.

“Panu?” said Jon. “You
did
come back!”

“I said I would. Now come on!” he called. “This way to the next level!”

We jumped quickly from one island to the next, when I heard Loki laugh wickedly from behind us. “You won’t win this race! Serpent, stand aside! These four children are mine!”

Blam-blam-blam!
Loki sprayed lightning bolts across the swamp. I hit the soggy ground, pulling Dana with me.

Ahead of us, Jon and Sydney reached Panu, and he lifted them through the opening to the next level with his strong arms. I pulled Dana, stumbling, with me. Her gloved hand was hanging at her side. The last blast had exhausted her completely.

I couldn’t get the pitch on the lyre right. The strings were tuned to the tower, not to Loki. It wasn’t working.

I couldn’t stop him.

Loki laughed coldly. “Say good-bye —”

But I had to try.

I pushed Dana toward Panu, swung around, and rushed Loki, swinging the lyre like an ax. Then a blast struck the side of my head, and I went down.