Hotel Valhalla [Magnus Chase Series]

Dealing With A Deal-Breaker

   By Brokkr the Dwarf

That Loki, he’s some kind of handsome, huh? Until you see the scars on his
face and the little pinholes above and below his lips.
  Betcha don’t know how
he got those holes.
  Cop a seat on that boulder, and I’ll tell you about it.

  So Loki, one day he’s bored. He breaks into Thor’s place to muck around with the thunder god’s stuff.
  Not too smart, if you ask me.
  Anyway, Thor’s not home, but his wife, Sif, is.
  Now Sif, she’s this gorgeous platinum blonde. Well, not platinum so much as gold. Real pretty hair, though, and wicked long. Loki sneaks up behind her with a knife. She doesn’t hear him, because she’s asleep. He cuts off her hair, which was a rotten thing to do on account of she was so proud of it. She wakes up, sees she’s pretty much bald, and starts crying her eyes out.
  Who walks in then, but Thor. Let me tell you, he’s not the brightest coal in the kiln, if you get my drift. But even he can make out what’s got Sif all upset. I mean, Loki is standing there with a knife in one hand and Sif’s hair in the
other.
  Calling Captain Obvious, am I right?
  So Loki’s caught red-handed. But he’s a persuasive guy. He tells Thor, who is ready to pound him to a pulp with his fists, that he’ll get Sif a wig that’ll look even better than her real hair. Thor says okay, because what else is he going do, let his wife go around bald and crying? Not hardly.
  Only one place Loki can get a fine piece of craftsmanship like that, and that’s right here in Nidavellir. So he hops on the tree at Asgard, changes branches in Alfheim, and gets off at Nabbi’s Tavern.
  He asks around and finds a couple of dwarves—Ivaldi’s boys—to take the job. They make Sif a wig, and just to show off, throw in a magic spear and a ship that folds up so small it fits in a pocket.
  You think Loki hoofs it back to Thor’s palace with the goods? Nah.
  He’s having a good time in Nidavellir.
  That’s when me and my bro Sindri come into the story.
  Loki saunters into our shop and starts poking around. He shows us the wig, the spear, and the ship, and bets his head—no joke, his head—we can’t make anything that good.
  Sindri and me take the bet, because we know our stuff is insanely awesome.
  So we’re firing up the kiln, hammering some metal, kind of showing off for the god.
  He watches for a few minutes, then says he’s going back to Asgard. What he really does?
  Turns into a horsefly and gets all up in our faces while we’re working.
  We had, like, no clue it was him bugging us,but it didn’t even matter.
  What we made rocked.
  First thing we pumped out was this boar with golden bristles that could run wicked fast.
  Second thing was a gold ring that makes eight copies of itself every ninth day. How fantastic is that?
  But the best thing we made was this hammer that always hits its target and boomerangs back to its owner.
  So we bring the stuff to Asgard, looking for Loki, because he never
showed to collect. We’re confident, right, so we also bring a bag to put Loki’s head in. Not that we think he’s really going to pay up.
  Surprise, surprise, even though all the gods say the boar and the ring and the hammer are the coolest things ever and we totally win the bet, Loki tries to squirm out of the deal.
  "I just promised you could take my head off,” Loki says. “But I didn’t say anything about my neck. Don’t touch my neck!”
  How are we supposed to cut a guy’s head off without touching his neck?
  “You’re a cheat and a lying weasel,” Sindri says to him. “So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going make sure you can’t talk anyone else into making stuff for you.”

Sindri and I jump him.

  Loki doesn’t see it coming and falls like a ton of bricks. The other gods, they just look the other way while Sindri takes out his needle and thread and—well, you’ve seen Loki’s mouth. Sure, he can talk now.
  Eventually he managed to tug the stitches out of his lips. But he wasn’t saying a single thing when we left that day.
  In case you’re wondering, we gave the boar to Frey, the ring to Odin, and the hammer to Thor.
  You don’t hear much about the first two, but yeah…the hammer we made is that hammer.