The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #1)

by Rick Riordan

YEAH, I KNOW. You guys are going to read about how I died in agony, and you’re going be like, “Wow! That sounds cool, Magnus! Can I die in agony too?” No. Just no. Don’t go jumping off any rooftops. Don’t run into the highway or set yourself on fire. It doesn’t work that way. You will not end up where I ended up.

The dude gunned his BMW 528i (of course it had to be a BMW) and shot down Commonwealth Avenue, ignoring the lights, honking at other cars, weaving randomly from lane to lane. “You missed a pedestrian,” I said. “You want to go back and hit her?”

“The statue of Leif Erikson…Does that mean the Vikings—er, the Norse—discovered Boston? I thought the Pilgrims did that.” “I could give you a three-hour lecture on that topic alone.” “Please don’t.” “Suffice it to say, the Norse explored North America and even built settlements around the year 1000, almost five hundred years before Christopher Columbus. Scholars agree on that.” “That’s a relief. I hate it when scholars disagree.”

“Myths are simply stories about truths we’ve forgotten.”

People said the towers looked like giant salt and pepper shakers, but I’d always thought they looked like Daleks from Doctor Who. (So I’m a nerd. Sue me.

For the first time, I felt like my body was humming at the right frequency, like I’d finally been tuned to match the crappy soundtrack of my life.

I’D SEEN SOME WEIRD STUFF IN MY LIFE. I once watched a crowd of people wearing nothing but Speedos and Santa hats jog down Boylston in the middle of winter. I met a guy who could play the harmonica with his nose, a drum set with his feet, a guitar with his hands, and a xylophone with his butt all at the same time. I knew a woman who’d adopted a grocery cart and named it Clarence. Then there was the dude who claimed to be from Alpha Centauri and had philosophical conversations with Canada geese. So a well-dressed Satanic male model who could melt cars…why not?

(Pro homeless tip: public libraries are safe havens. They have bathrooms. They hardly ever kick out kids who are reading as long as you don’t smell too bad or cause a scene.)

Stupid magical hotel wouldn’t even allow me to properly vandalize things.

“Magnus Chase!” Helgi called. “Do you know your parentage?” I counted to five. My first inclination was to yell, No, but your dad was apparently a jackass!

Wrongly chosen, wrongly slain, A hero Valhalla cannot contain. Nine days hence the sun must go east, Ere Sword of Summer unbinds the beast.

Also, why would I get targeted by a big bad dude like Surt? If he was the lord of Muspellheim, High King Roasty Toasty, shouldn’t he pick on more interesting heroes, like the children of Thor? At least their dad had a movie franchise.

I wanted to ask him about elves, but walking and talking in sign language don’t mix. Nor could Hearth read lips very well on the move. I kind of liked that, actually. You couldn’t multitask while talking to him. The dialogue required one hundred percent focus. If all conversations were like that, I imagined people wouldn’t say so much stupid garbage.

I’d been raised nonreligious. I’d always considered myself an atheist. So, of course, my punishment was to find out I was the son of a Norse deity, go to a Viking afterlife, and have an open-coffin memorial in a cheesy uni-faith chapel. If there was an Almighty God up there, a head honcho of the universe, He was totally laughing at me right now.

Painted on the prow was HARALD’S DEEP-SEA EXCURSIONS AND DEATH WISHES, which seemed like a lot of verbiage for a twenty-foot-long dinghy.

In the back of my brain, my common sense yelled, DROP IT! But as you have probably figured out by now, I don’t listen to my common sense much.

The goat plodded over. “You really should take better care of your elf. They need lots of sunshine—not this weak Jotunheim light. And you can’t overwater them by drowning them in rivers.”

Blitz brought out the silken cord. “This rope can’t be weakened. And Hearthstone’s right. We might as well tie it to one another for safety.” “That way if we fall,” Sam said, “we’ll fall together.” “Sold,” I said, trying to tamp down my anxiety. “I love dying with friends.”

“I feel like Jack up the beanstalk,” I muttered. Sam laughed under her breath. “Where do you think that story comes from? It’s a cultural memory—a watered-down account of what happens when humans blunder into Jotunheim.”

Gunilla eyed me. “Where is your sword, Magnus?” I gestured to the ruined end of the hall. “Last I checked, he was taking a bath in a goblet.” Gunilla considered that. It was the sort of statement that only made sense in the loony world of the Vikings.

“Somebody once told me that a hero’s bravery has to be unplanned—a genuine response to a crisis. It has to come from the heart, without any thought of reward.”

T.J. dangled four sets of handcuffs from his finger. “Here’s the thing, Magnus: Gunilla made it clear that if we don’t prove our loyalty to Valhalla by apprehending you, we will spend the next hundred years in the boiler room shoveling coal. So consider yourself under arrest, blah, blah, blah.” Halfborn grinned. “But the other thing is: we’re Vikings. We’re pretty bad at following orders. So consider yourself free again.” T.J. let the handcuffs slip from his finger. “Oops.”

“An old dwarf once told me that the most powerful crafting materials are paradoxes. This rope is made of them. But I’ve got one more—the final paradox that will bind you: the Sword of Summer, a weapon that wasn’t designed to be a weapon, a blade that is best used by letting go of it.”

Surt’s flames rolled over me. They lost their intensity. They were nothing but ghostly flickers of warm orange, as harmless as butterflies. At my feet, the heather began to bloom—white flowers spreading across the landscape, reclaiming the trampled and burned areas where Surt’s warriors had walked, soaking up the blood, covering the corpses of the fallen giants. “The battle is over,” I announced. “I consecrate this ground in the name of Frey.” The words sent a shockwave in every direction. Swords, daggers, and axes flew from the fire giants’ hands. T.J.’s rifle spun from his grasp. Even the weapons lying on the ground were expelled from the island, blasted into the darkness like shrapnel. The only one left holding a weapon was me.