The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #3)

“We’ve got a minute at most before the high tide comes flooding through here!” yelled Halfborn. “Ship, Magnus! Now!”

I took the handkerchief and tried to steady my shaking hands. I’d practiced this ship-unfolding trick a couple of times on calmer water, once by myself and once with Alex, but I could still hardly believe it would work. I definitely wasn’t looking forward to the results.

I flicked the handkerchief toward the water. As soon as the cloth hit the surface, the corners unfolded and unfolded and kept unfolding. It was like watching the building of a Lego model in a sped-up stop-motion video. In the space of two breaths, a Viking longship lay at anchor in the canal, the turbulent water coursing around its stern.

But, of course, nobody complimented me on its beautifully trimmed hull, or the elaborate Viking shields lining the rails, or the five rows of oars ready for service. No one noted how the mainmast was hinged and folded over so it could pass through this low tunnel without breaking apart. No one gasped at the beauty of the carved dragon figurehead, or praised the fact that the ship was much larger and more spacious than your typical longship, even boasting a covered area belowdecks so we wouldn’t have to sleep in the rain and snow.

Mallory Keen’s first comment was, “Can we talk about the color?”

T.J. frowned. “Why is it—?”

“I don’t know!” I wailed. “I don’t know why it’s yellow!”

My father, Frey, had sent me the boat weeks ago, promising that it was the perfect vessel to use on our voyage. It would get us where we needed to go. It would protect us on the most treacherous seas.

My friends had been excited. They had trusted me, even when I’d refused to give them a preview of our magical ship.

But why, oh, why had my father made the boat the color of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!??

Everything about it was neon, eye-melting yellow: the ropes, the shields, the hull, the sail, the rudder, even the dragon figurehead. For all I knew, the bottom of the keel was yellow, too, and we’d blind every fish we sailed past.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” Halfborn said, scowling at me like it mattered very much. “Load up! Hurry!”

A roar echoed from the upstream tunnel like an approaching freight train. The ship banged against the dock. Halfborn tossed our supplies on deck as T.J. hauled up the anchor, while Mallory and I held the mooring lines fast with all our einherji strength.

Just as Halfborn threw the last sacks, a wall of water burst out of the tunnel behind us.

“Let’s go!” yelled T.J.

We jumped aboard as the wave slammed into our stern, propelling us forward like the kick of a seventy-million-gallon mule.

I glanced back at the dock one last time. Hunding the bellhop stood knee-deep in water, clutching his chocolate bar, staring at me as we rocketed into the darkness, his face bleached with shock as if, after all these centuries of dealing with the dead in Valhalla, he’d finally seen an actual ghost.





I LIKE my rivers the way I like my enemies—slow, wide, and lazy.

I rarely get what I like.

Our boat shot down the rapids in near-total darkness. My friends scrambled around the deck, grabbing ropes and tripping over oars. The ship rocked from side to side, making me feel like I was surfing on a pendulum. Mallory hugged the rudder with her full weight, trying to keep us in the middle of the current.

“Don’t just stand there!” she yelled at me. “Help!”

The old saying is true: no nautical training survives first contact with the water.

I’m pretty sure that’s an old saying.

Everything I’d learned from Percy Jackson evaporated out of my brain. I forgot starboard and port, stern and aft. I forgot how to discourage shark attacks and how to fall off a mast properly. I hopped across the deck yelling, “I’m helping! I’m helping!” without knowing what to do at all.

We swerved and sloshed through the tunnel at impossible speeds, our retracted mast barely clearing the roof. The tips of our oars scraped against the stone walls, leaving trails of bright yellow sparks that made it look like faeries were ice-skating alongside us.

T.J. rushed past me, heading for the prow, and nearly impaled me with his bayonet. “Magnus, hold that line!” he yelled, waving at pretty much every rope on the ship.

I grabbed the nearest bit of rigging and pulled as hard as I could, hoping I had the right line, or hoping I at least looked helpful while doing the wrong thing.

We bumped down a series of cataracts. My teeth clattered out telegraph messages. Frigid waves crashed over the shields on the railing. Then the tunnel widened and we sideswiped a rock that came out of nowhere. The boat spun a 360. We dropped down a waterfall toward certain death, and as the air turned to cold misty soup around us…everything went dark.

What a fantastic time to have a vision!

I found myself standing on the deck of a different ship.

In the distance, glacial cliffs rimmed a vast bay marbled with ice. The air was so cold, a layer of frost crackled over my coat sleeves. Beneath my feet, instead of wooden planking, spread a bumpy surface of glistening gray and black like the shell of an armadillo.

The entire ship, a Viking vessel the size of an aircraft carrier, was made of the same stuff. And unfortunately I knew what it was—the clipped toenails and fingernails of the dishonored dead, billions upon billions of nasty zombie cuttings, all cobbled together by evil pedicurist magic to create Naglfar, the Ship of Nails, also known as the Ship of the Dead.

Above me, gray sails rippled in the freezing wind.

Shuffling across the deck were thousands of desiccated human husks dressed in rusted armor: draugr, Viking zombies. Giants strode among them, shouting orders and kicking them to form ranks. Out of the corners of my eyes, I caught glimpses of darker things, too: incorporeal shades that might have been wolves, or serpents, or skeletal horses made of smoke.

“Look who’s here!” said a cheerful voice.

Standing before me, in the white uniform of a navy admiral, was Loki himself. His autumn-leaf-colored hair swept around the edges of his flag officer’s hat. His intense irises glinted like rings of hardening amber, suffocating the life out of his poor trapped pupils. Despite the pitted wreckage of his face, damaged from centuries of snake venom dripping between his eyes, despite the scarred and twisted lips that had once been sewn together by an angry dwarf, Loki grinned in such a warm, friendly way it was almost impossible not to smile back.

“Coming to visit me?” he asked. “Awesome!”

I tried to yell at him. I wanted to berate him for getting my uncle killed, for torturing my friends, for ruining my life and causing me six solid months of indigestion, but my throat was filled with wet cement.