The Book of Doom (6 page)

“Forget it, it’s fine,” said Zac.

“Are you sure? Maybe I could just...” He rubbed the wet stain with a bare foot. “Oh no, that’s just made it worse if anything.”

“I said leave it, it’s fine. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Angelo blinked. “Have we?”

Zac stared.

“Yeah, yeah, right. Of course. I forgot,” Angelo said. He slipped his flip-flops back on. “How do I look?”

“You look –” Zac hunted for something complimentary to say – “marginally less ridiculous,” was the best he could do in the circumstances.

“Really?” said Angelo brightly. “You’re not just saying that?”

“No, you look... good,” Zac said, but that last word came out much higher than he’d intended. “So, are you ready to do this?”

“Before we go, I should warn you. Watch out for the demons. They’re horrible. And I mean
really
horrible.”

“Seriously?” said Zac. “And here I thought they were going to be a right old barrel of laughs.”

“Well, you’d be wrong,” said Angelo with absolute sincerity. “So it’s lucky you’ve got me to keep you right.”

“Oh, yes. I’m a lucky guy,” Zac said. “Now, you ready?”

Angelo took a few quick breaths. He held out his hand. “I’m ready.”

“Then let’s do it.” Zac slipped his hand into the boy’s.

Angelo grinned nervously. “Here we go, then. Bowels of Hell, here we come!”

NCE THE WORLD
had stopped spinning, Zac looked down at his legs. They were buried in snow up to the knees.

A light flurry of flakes continued to fall from an otherwise bright blue sky above. Beside the boys, smoke curled lazily from the chimney of a large stone building with a thatched roof. Muted laughter and singing squeezed out through gaps in the shuttered windows and heavy oak door. It all sounded quite jolly, really.

“So,” said Zac, “this is Hell, is it?”

“Yes,” said Angelo.

Zac shot him a withering look. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean... it might be.”

Zac blew a snowflake off the end of his nose. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say it isn’t.”

“You might be right,” Angelo admitted. He smiled shyly. “I’m a bit of a novice when it comes to teleporting.”

“A novice? How often have you done it?”

“What, including the two times with you?” Angelo asked. He began counting up on his fingers. “Twice.”

“Twice,” Zac said. He shook his head. “Can you take us to Hell? Honestly?”

“Yes!” said Angelo enthusiastically, then, “Maybe...” Then his shoulders slumped and he admitted, “Probably not. It’s trickier than it looks. I might send us somewhere really dangerous by mistake.”

“What, more dangerous than Hell?”

“You never know,” Angelo said in a half-whisper. “There could be worse places out there. It’s not like Heaven and Hell are the only afterlives, is it?”

Zac frowned. “Isn’t it?”

“No!” Angelo laughed. “They’re all real.”

“What do you mean? What’s all real?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“You really don’t know, do you?”

Zac gritted his teeth. “Know
what
?”

“That every religion in history has been right. Although,” Angelo added quickly, “Christianity is
more
right than the others, obviously. There are thousands of afterlives out there. Xibalba. That was the Mayan underworld. Then there’s, let’s see... Olympus, home of the Greek Gods. Adlivun...”

“What’s Adlivun?”

“It’s where Sedna the She-Cannibal lives,” Angelo explained. “But I wouldn’t recommend going there. Everyone says she’s a right cow. Besides, it’s underwater, so we’d get wet.”

Zac rubbed his temples. “This is nuts,” he said. “This is too nuts.”

He straightened and looked around them. The stone building they were next to stood at the top of a high hill. A number of other large buildings stood close to one another down the snowy slopes, as if huddling together for warmth. They all gleamed in the faint sunlight, each one a palace of silver or gold.

Beyond them, the snow extended miles into the distance until it met a wall that stood several hundred metres high. Clearly someone wanted to keep whatever lay on the other side of the wall out.

A kilometre or so in the other direction, the land stopped like a shore meeting the sea. There was no water there, though, just blue sky and a bank of cloud and, if Zac looked hard enough, the beginnings of a rainbow leading away from the edge.

“So, where are we now?” asked Zac. Despite the mounting evidence, he was still finding it hard to believe any of what he was being told. “Santa’s grotto?”

“Haha, very funny. Of course it isn’t.” Angelo gave Zac a playful nudge on the arm. “Santa’s grotto’s got a green roof. I don’t know where this is.”

Zac looked at the door. The wood was dark, and the metal handle had been sculpted into the shape of a gargoyle-like head. An iron ring was gripped in the creature’s unmoving mouth. The place may have sounded quite jolly, but it didn’t look particularly inviting.

“Only one way to find out,” he said; then he turned the handle, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

A moment before, the bar had been filled with the sounds of cheering and laughter and the loud-mouthed gloating of a hundred drunken men. Tankards had clattered against tankards, ale had been quaffed, food had been scoffed and the din of it all had been deafening.

That all stopped when Zac and Angelo stepped into the Great Hall. The laughter died. The cheering ceased. And an amusing ditty about ritual disembowelment came to an abrupt, scratchy halt. A sea of horned helmets turned as one in the direction of the door.

An enormous wooden table filled the hall. It groaned beneath the weight of the feast spread out upon it. If you could call it a feast. It looked to be light on food and heavy on alcohol.

Standing in the corner closest to the door, a bearded man who had been juggling six short swords lost his concentration and then, a moment later, lost several of his toes. He didn’t scream. He didn’t so much as gasp, and as the echo of the clattering swords faded, silence filled the vast room.

Zac felt Angelo step close behind him. He surveyed the faces that looked back at him. Their expressions were a blend of surprise, confusion and annoyance, all tied up in bristly beards and long, matted hair.

The silence was broken by the sound of chair legs scraping on the flagstone floor. At the far head of the table, a man stood up.

At least, Zac assumed he was a man. He was man-shaped, certainly, but looked to have been scaled up somewhere along the way. He stood taller than anyone Zac had ever seen, with shoulders broader than the average family car. Across those shoulders he wore a cape lined at the edges with white and grey fur.

On his head was a helmet with three horns – one each side, and a third sticking up from the front like a unicorn’s. A grubby white patch covered one of his eyes. On it, someone had drawn a cartoon eye in black marker pen. It was surprisingly effective.

The man’s beard was Father-Christmas white. His long hair hung in pigtails, dangling down over the top of the metal breastplate that was strapped across his chest. Unlike Michael’s armour, this stuff had been well used, and was now dented in more places than it was smooth.

Both the real eye and the hand-drawn one glared at Zac and Angelo as, somewhere in the beard, the man’s mouth began to speak.

“Who dares enter the Hall of Valhalla?” he demanded. It was a strong, commanding voice. The type of voice that could rouse sea serpents from the deep, and make avalanches change their minds and head back uphill.

“It’s Valhalla,” Angelo whispered.

“Yes, I heard,” replied Zac below his breath.

“Where dead Vikings go.”

“I can see that.”

“Thou art trespassers in this place,” boomed the one-eyed man. “In the name of Asgard I shall pierce your innards with mine axe and rend your guts asunder! Then I shall summon my wolves to feast upon your quivering innards, unless thou reveal to us who thou art.”

Zac smiled broadly. “Hi, I’m Zac. This is my... colleague, Angelo.”

Angelo poked his head out from behind Zac’s back and gave a shy wave. “Hello.”

The giant glared at them, but looked a little surprised that, despite his threats, they hadn’t made any effort to run away.

Zac fixed him with a cool glare. “And you are?”

There was a muttering then that rippled through the hall. At the far end of the table, the man’s face turned a blustery shade of red.

“Dost thou not know?” he growled.

“Nope,” Zac said. He took a step towards the table. A hundred hands reached for a hundred swords. “Should I?”

“Impudent dog!” spat a Viking who was sitting halfway along the table. He rose to his feet and slammed one fist angrily down on the tabletop.

After a moment, when he realised Zac hadn’t flinched, and that no one else was paying him the slightest bit of attention, he quietly sat down again.

“I am the Allfather,” the one-eyed man boomed. “Lord of the Aesir, Ruler of the Gods—”

“Um... just the
Norse
Gods, sir,” said a helpful Viking who sat a few seats along the table. “We wouldn’t want to step on anyone’s toes by claiming you were ruler of
all
gods. Remember what happened last time? With the Romans?”

“
SILENCE!”
boomed the Allfather. The sheer force of his voice toppled tankards all along the table and forced Zac to take a pace backwards.

“S-sorry, sir, I was only trying to—”

“Wilt thou
shut up
!”

“Shutting up now, sir.”

The Allfather squeezed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and muttered below his breath. Only after that did he look back at Zac.

“Now. Where was I?”

“Lord of the Aesir, Ruler of the Gods,” Zac reminded him.

“Norse Gods,” said a voice quietly.

The Allfather’s glare was one of pure malice. “I swear,” he told the interfering Viking, “another word and I will punch thine mouth loose.”

Nobody, least of all the man who was the focus of the Allfather’s gaze, uttered a word.

Only when he was absolutely certain the Viking wasn’t about to speak again did the Allfather turn back to Zac.

“Right,” he said, a little flustered. “So... Where was...? Yes. Allfather, Lord of the Aesir, Ruler of the
Norse
Gods, if thou wants to get picky about it. I am the all-powerful Odin!”

A chorus of cheers went up around the hall. “Hail, Odin, Master of the Runes!”

“Odin?” said Zac.

“Hail, Odin, patron to the skalds!” went the cry.

“Yes,” said the Allfather. “Odin.”

“Hail, Odin, sole creator of magical songs!”

“For the love of Thor, will ye
shut up
!” Odin bellowed. “Thou doesn’t have to go through all that every time someone says ‘Odin’.”

“Hail, Odin, delighter of—”

“Cut it out! I’m warning thee.” Odin’s aged brow furrowed. “Warning thou... Warning
ye...
?” Odin threw up his arms and sighed. “Oh, who actually talks like that anyway? It’s ridiculous.”

The Ruler of the (specifically Norse) Gods turned back to Zac. “So, yes. In answer to your question, I am – and I don’t want to hear another bloody word out of anyone here – Odin.”

Around the hall there was the sound of a hundred Vikings chewing their bottom lips. Zac took another step closer.

“Never heard of you.”

The assembled audience gasped as one. Those hands already gripping sword handles gripped them tighter.

“What are you doing?” Angelo whimpered. “Don’t upset him. Look at the size of him!”

“Relax. I’ve got a plan,” Zac whispered.

“Have you?”

“Well, no, not really,” Zac admitted. “But I’m sure something’s going to pop right in there any minute now.”

There wasn’t the explosion of temper from Odin that Zac had expected. The Allfather simply stared for a long time, as if trying to get to grips with the idea that someone didn’t know who he was.

“Haven’t you?” he asked at last.

Zac shook his head. “Nope. Should I have?”

“Of course you should!” boomed Odin. Then a flicker of doubt crossed his broad face. “Well, I mean... I suppose it
has
been a long time. And Baldr knows, things have changed over the years.” Slowly, he lowered himself back down into his chair. “Maybe... maybe people don’t know who I am any more. Maybe it’s—”

“Wait,” said Zac. “Did you say Odin?
The
Odin?”

Odin’s eyebrows rose hopefully. “Yes.”

“Lord of the Aesir? Ruler of the Norse Gods?”

“Yes,” nodded the Allfather, suddenly perking right up. “Yes!”

“Father of...”

“Thor,” whispered Angelo.

“
I know
. Father of Thor?”

Odin was standing again. He nodded encouragingly. “Yes. Yes. Go on. Go on!”

“Of course I’ve heard of you! Everyone’s heard of Odin. I thought you said you were
Wodin
to begin with. My mistake. Sorry about that.”

The Allfather laughed loudly enough to shake the rafters. “Aha! I knew you would know of me! Apology accepted, mortal,” he said. He raised his hands and the assembled Vikings cheered on cue.

“Come. Sit by my side,” insisted the Allfather. “Stop a while in the Great Hall, Valhalla, and share what tales you know of Odin, Ruler of the Gods!”

“Just, uh, just the Norse Gods, sir.”

Odin sighed. “Right, that’s it. Get out.”

“What? But, but, Allfather...”

“I’ve warned you already. Out!”

Zac turned to Angelo and gave him a curt nod, just as the scolded Viking shuffled past on his way to the door. “See? Told you I’d come up with a plan,” Zac said.