The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(100)

I leaned on Piper as she helped me across the room – back to the platform where Meg, Grover and Herophile waited.

The seven women warriors stood nearby as if waiting for orders.

Like their shields, their armour was fashioned from cleverly fitted planks of honey-gold wood. The women were imposing, each perhaps seven feet tall, their faces as polished and beautifully turned as their armour. Their hair, in various shades of white, blonde, gold and pale brown, spilled down their backs in waterfall braids. Chlorophyll green tinted their eyes and the veins of their well-muscled limbs.

They were dryads, but not like any dryads I’d ever met.

‘You’re the Meliai,’ I said.

The women regarded me with disturbingly keen interest, as if they would be equally delighted to fight me, dance with me, or toss me into the fire.

The one on the far left spoke. ‘We are the Meliai. Are you the Meg?’

I blinked. I got the feeling they were looking for a yes, but, as confused as I was, I was pretty sure I was not the Meg.

‘Hey, guys,’ Piper intervened, pointing to Meg. ‘This is Meg McCaffrey.’

The Meliai broke into a double-time march, lifting their knees higher than was strictly necessary. They closed ranks, forming a semicircle in front of Meg like they were doing a marching-band manoeuvre. They stopped, banged their spears once against their shields, then lowered their heads in respect.

‘ALL HAIL THE MEG!’ they cried. ‘DAUGHTER OF THE CREATOR!’

Grover and Herophile edged into the corner, as if trying to hide behind the Sibyl’s toilet.

Meg studied the seven dryads. My young master’s hair was windswept from the ventus. The electrical tape had come off her glasses, so she looked like she was wearing mismatched rhinestone-encrusted monocles. Her clothes had once again been reduced to a collection of burned, shredded rags – all of which, in my opinion, made her look exactly like The Meg should look.

She summoned her usual eloquence: ‘Hi.’

Piper’s mouth curved in the ghost of a smile. ‘I met these guys at the entrance to the maze. They were just charging in to find you. Said they heard your song.’

‘My song?’ Meg asked.

‘The music!’ Grover yelped. ‘It worked?’

‘We heard the call of nature!’ cried the lead dryad.

That had a different meaning for mortals, but I decided not to mention it.

‘We heard the pipes of a lord of the Wild!’ said another dryad. ‘That would be you, I suppose, satyr. Hail, satyr!’

‘HAIL, SATYR!’ the others echoed.

‘Uh, yeah,’ Grover said weakly. ‘Hail to you too.’

‘But mostly,’ said a third dryad, ‘we heard the cry of the Meg, daughter of the creator. Hail!’

‘HAIL!’ the others echoed.

That was quite enough hailing for me.

Meg narrowed her eyes. ‘When you say creator, do you mean my dad, the botanist, or my mom, Demeter?’

The dryads murmured among themselves.

Finally, the leader spoke: ‘This is a most excellent point. We meant the McCaffrey, the great grower of dryads. But now we realize that you are also the daughter of Demeter. You are twice-blessed, daughter of two creators! We are at your service!’

Meg picked her nose. ‘At my service, huh?’ She looked at me as if to ask, Why can’t you be a cool servant like this? ‘So, how did you guys find us?’

‘We have many powers!’ shouted one. ‘We were born from the Earth Mother’s blood!’

‘The primordial strength of life flows through us!’ said another.

‘We nursed Zeus as a baby!’ said a third. ‘We bore an entire race of men, the warlike Bronze!’

‘We are the Meliai!’ said a fourth.

‘We are the mighty ash trees!’ cried the fifth.

This left the last two without much to say. They simply muttered, ‘Ash. Yep; we’re ash.’

Piper chimed in. ‘So Coach Hedge got Grover’s message from the cloud nymph. Then I came to find you guys. But I didn’t know where this secret entrance was, so I went to downtown LA again.’

‘By yourself?’ Grover asked.

Piper’s eyes darkened. I realized she had come here first and foremost to get revenge on Medea, secondly to help us. Making it out alive … that had been a very distant third on her list of priorities.

‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I met these ladies downtown and we sort of made an alliance.’

Grover gulped. ‘But Crest said the main entrance would be a death trap! It was heavily guarded!’

‘Yeah, it was …’ Piper pointed at the dryads. ‘Not any more.’

The dryads looked pleased with themselves.

‘The ash is mighty,’ said one.

The others murmured in agreement.

Herophile stepped out from her hiding place behind the toilet. ‘But the fires. How did you –?’

‘Ha!’ cried a dryad. ‘It would take more than the fires of a sun Titan to destroy us!’ She held up her shield. One corner was blackened, but the soot was already falling away, revealing new, unblemished wood underneath.

Judging from Meg’s scowl, I could tell her mind was working overtime. That made me nervous.

‘So … you guys serve me now?’ she asked.