The Sword of Summer

A stunned Magnus follows Randolph onto the Longfellow Bridge. Rather than explain more about Magnus’s father, Randolph points out how the bridge’s architecture resembles a Viking longship and describes how it means the poet Longfellow, among others, knew the Boston area was sacred to the Norse explorers. Randolph believes the Viking longship went down in the water the bridge now spans and that the roots of the World Tree (Yggdrasill) are in the city.

A distant explosion interrupts Randolph’s lecture. Randolph orders Magnus to hold his hand out over the water and call up his birthright. Following a second, closer explosion, Magnus complies. The snow and ice on the water melt, leaving “a hole in the shape of a hand” (33). A corroded piece of metal shoots up through the water and into Magnus’s hand. The piece of metal is Sumarbrander, the Sword of Summer and what Magnus’s father left for him to find.

Randolph insists Magnus has the power to renew the sword, but before Magnus can even start to figure out what that means, a third explosion hits on the bridge. Magnus runs toward it to find a slick man with skin and clothes of the blackest black untouched by the fires or heat.