Cunning Warrior

Book Three of the Magic Shoe Series

 

Chapter 1

 

Skidbladnir

 

The night was dark. Darker than any that I can remember. The moon must have taken the night off because the only light out there was from the tiny stars that shone brightly but barely illuminated the rolling waves we were traveling across. The water almost looked black, like it had been overtaken by thick, oozing oil that would eventually cause the ship to get stuck, or maybe even pull it under to the sea depths below. But that wasn’t going to happen. We were on Skidbladnir. The famous Norse ship of myth and legend. The ship that had been the preferred choice of water travel for the Norse gods for who knows how long.

     From what I could gather, the lore of the ship suggested that it would always be surrounded by favorable winds, calm water, and would never fail at getting its passengers to their intended destination. Basically, a sure thing as far as ships go. I know it sounds stupid. If you asked me a couple of months ago if something like Skidbladnir could exist, I would’ve laughed in your face. But after I literally saw it unfold like a sea-worthy camper on steroids, how could I deny its existence? Blows my mind to think that this massive ship was in Wren’s shoe the whole time. Once he took that thin piece of leather out of his shoe, the thing just folded outward over and over again until it was big enough to fit Donna Grima’s family and her followers.

     Now the ship was sailing to the cloaked land of Vinland with a Wrathful army that was hellbent on overthrowing whoever was in charge there and taking the land for themselves. As far as I was concerned, the farther away this bunch of lunatics was from the Nullvin world, the better. Not that I would wish these people on anyone. This Grima lady was certifiably crazy and obsessed with power. I mean, this self-proclaimed queen had created this whole system back in Canada, where she was literally draining the magic from the Vins she captured and had it stored in this gnarly, evil-looking pear tree. Then she and her demented family would eat these pears full of magical essence or whatever it’s called and literally devour everyone’s powers. I mean, that’s messed up. If it wasn’t for Maria destroying the tree like a full-on boss, those poor Vins would have still been trapped in her evil estate and sucked dry of their powers. Maria would say it was really the Norns working through her that destroyed the tree, but I wasn’t about to give them all the credit. No way! Maria needed to own that victory. But I doubted she ever would.

     So, there we were, hitching a ride with the worst of the worst to a foreign land that wanted to stay hidden. A land that Grima wanted to reclaim in the name of the Drainers, since she believed they were treated so unfairly hundreds of years ago when they were banished from Vinland. If those Drainers were anything like her, then I can totally see why they banished them. I’m not saying that all Drainers are bad. Quite the opposite. Wren is a Drainer, and he is hands down the nicest person I have ever met, maybe even too nice. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. But these guys, they are rotten to the core. They wouldn’t think twice about draining the life out of anyone for no good reason.I glanced toward the side of the ship where Wren and Eyota were surrounded by the Ashford family. Wren was holding onto a large oar that went down into the water. I had no idea what it was, but Pan thought it might be a steering oar or rudder.

     Guess the bad guys figured since Wren and his shoes were the so-called Compass to Vinland, he would know how to get there. It literally made no sense to me. There was no way Wren knew how to get to Vinland, but these people sure acted like they had everything under control. As far as I was concerned, this queen lady was all over the place to be in control. She just seemed high on revenge to me, and that kind of brain doesn’t always think clearly. I had seen firsthand what revenge-seeking gets you with my parents, and it usually didn’t end well.

     It made me insanely angry seeing Wren and Eyota surrounded by the Ashfords. Every once in a while, Wren would glance toward Eyota with those sad eyes of his, and I knew he was blaming himself for everything. And to make matters worse, Eyota was all tied up like a mummy, sitting on some barrel, which was the worst thing you could possibly do to her. That girl hated being restrained in any way. Sure, it made sense that they wanted her restrained since she was the Eradicator. None of their powers worked on her. But clearly, she was also being used to get Wren to do their bidding. The message was loud and clear. Get them to Vinland, or harm will come to his friend. Now you see why we really didn’t have a choice but to jump on the boat before it left for Vinland. Especially since it was headed for a cloaked land that was impossible to find. If we hadn’t gotten on, there was a very real possibility that we would never see Wren or Eyota again.

     “We can’t just stay here,” Maria whispered as she pulled Pan toward her. A couple of Drainers walked a little too close to our sphere of invisibility that was created by Pan’s amulet. “Eventually, someone is going to see us.”

     “Maybe there’s somewhere on this ship that we can hide,” Pan spoke softly to avoid drawing attention to us.

     Even though I didn’t like to think of myself as a hiding kind of guy, I knew it was our best option. It’s not like we had anywhere to escape to if we were found out. We were on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

     “Yeah. Let’s look around.” Pan turned and almost bumped into another one of the Wrathful and jumped back to avoid contact.

     “Seriously, dude,” I scolded him in a hushed tone.

     “I know,” he took a deep inhale. “It’s not like I’m used to worrying about anyone seeing me.”

     He had a point. Pan was barely seen by anyone since he was a Tariaksuq. He could travel between this world and the spirit world, and that means you can never get a good view of him. Especially if you looked at him straight on, then he would just fade from view and make you think that you were insane and seeing ghosts. It drove me crazy when I first met him, but since he pulled both Maria and me into the spirit world when Underfoot was under attack, it wasn’t a problem anymore. Something must have happened as a result of us traveling back and forth between worlds, because now we had no trouble seeing him. He was completely visible to us. The only time I couldn’t see him was when he left the material world and went into the spirit world. But now, thanks to Pan’s amulet that had been handed down through his family for generations, we were all invisible as long as we stayed close to him and didn’t cross the circle of invisibility that surrounded him.

     It wasn’t hard to navigate because Pan could adjust it to make the sphere bigger or smaller, and we could see this chalk-like circle on the ground to let us know if we got too far away from him, but that didn’t stop people from coming into the sphere. And once they crossed the line, they would be able to see us. Maybe not a big deal in a wide-open space, but we were on a crowded ship full of people. Sooner or later, someone was going to see us.

     “This ship is huge,” Maria commented. “There has to be somewhere to hide.”

     “True, but I don’t think traditional Viking ships usually had much going on below deck,” Pan whispered back and then cautiously started to walk down the center of the ship, taking care not to get too close to anyone.

     “But this isn’t an ordinary Viking ship,” I added.

     Maria grabbed me by the arm briefly. “Did you see that?”

     “See what?” I pulled my arm away since she could read minds, even though at this point, she probably already knew how I felt about her.                 “Something was glowing over there?” she pointed to a small wooden structure that jutted out of the deck of the ship. I gave her a sour look.

     “The whole ship is glowing, Maria.” I wasn’t joking either. The whole ship looked like it had been doused in some toxic chemical because it glowed yellow. Not an obnoxious yellow, more like a dim nightlight. You would think that I would be used to things glowing by now, since my spear glowed and God knows I had seen enough glowing ghosts to last me a lifetime back in the Spirit World, but it was still strange to have something so massive radiate light.

     “It wasn’t the ship, it was something else,” Maria shook her head at me, and reached out to get Pan’s attention. “Pan, can you go over to that little door over there?”

     Door? I didn’t see it right away, but she was right. The structure she was pointing to did have a small door on the flat surface of the side facing us. Pan winked at her and carefully moved through the maze of people until we were all standing in front of the door. Now that we were close, I could see that it wasn’t full-sized; it only came up to my shoulders. Maria pulled on the elaborate gold handle, but it didn’t budge.

     “Why would it be locked?” She mumbled to herself.

     “Maybe the gods like to keep their stuff away from riff-raff,” I scoffed at her statement.

     “Maybe there is something really important in there,” she tried to look through the thin gap between the door and the doorframe.

     “I’ll check it out.” Pan started to move towards the door.

     “How?” I asked him. “It’s locked.”

     “Unless there is some kind of protective barrier, I can just hop into the spirit world real quick, take a couple of steps, and then hop back into this world.”

     “Man, your reality is so bizarre.” I really didn’t know how he kept anything straight in his head, moving back and forth between worlds all the time.

     “It’s a little tricky since we’re on water, so I’ll have to be really fast,” he said. “I might come back a little wet.”

     “Well then, maybe you shouldn’t,” Maria wavered, “what if you don’t make it back on the boat and end up in the middle of the…” Maria didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence because before we knew what happened, Pan was gone, and then the door opened from the inside. On the other side of the door, Pan was standing there, bent over, grinning at us and wildly gesturing for us to come inside.

     I had my spear extended and cautiously ducked down to clear the low door opening, and Maria followed. Pan shut the door quietly behind us and then slid a thick gold bar attached to the back of the door to the wall, locking us inside. Normally, I didn’t like the idea of being locked in anything, but after I walked down a couple of stairs and held up my glowing spear, I wasn’t about to complain. The room was perfect. Even though the ceiling was low, the room was spacious. There was a small table with chairs, a desk, and an actual bed with legit pillows and a blanket. Best of all, there was a huge round window, which I really appreciated. It would have driven me crazy not to be able to see what was going on outside, even though the moonless night wasn’t letting us see much.

     “This has to be someone’s room,” Maria said, walking over to one of the walls. “Guys, look at this.”

     I walked over and saw that there were tons of maps nailed to the wooden beams of the glowing ship. Since the maps were illuminated from behind, they reminded me of computer screens with ancient writing on them.

     “I wonder who these maps belong to?” Maria gently ran her hand over one of them to smooth out the creases. I wasn’t a geography expert or anything, but I didn’t recognize the land masses drawn on any of the maps and certainly didn’t know any of the names since they were written in some crazy language that I had never seen.

    “There!” Maria said suddenly and pointed to the left of us. I turned with my weapon extended, ready to strike whatever had caught her attention. But all that was there was a rather short, glowing, see-through man who looked just as shocked to see us as we were to see him.