The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(24)

‘His own guards killed him,’ I said, ‘which I’m sure has made him even more paranoid. Macro mentioned that the emperor kept changing his personal guard. First automatons replaced the praetors. Then he changed them again to mercenaries and strixes and … big ears? I don’t know what that means.’

One of the dryads huffed indignantly. I guessed she was Cholla, since she looked like a cholla plant – wispy white hair, a fuzzy white beard and large paddle-shaped ears covered with bristles. ‘No decent big-eared person would work for such a villain! What about other weaknesses? The emperor must have some!’

‘Yeah!’ Coach Hedge chimed in. ‘Is he scared of goats?’

‘Is he allergic to cactus sap?’ Aloe Vera asked hopefully.

‘Not that I know of,’ I said.

The assembled dryads looked disappointed.

‘You said you got a prophecy in Indiana?’ Joshua asked. ‘Any clues there?’

His tone was sceptical, which I could understand. A Hoosier prophecy just doesn’t have the same ring to it as a Delphic prophecy.

‘I have to find the westward palace,’ I said. ‘Which must mean Caligula’s base.’

‘No one knows where that is,’ grumbled Pear.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but Mellie and Gleeson seemed to exchange an anxious look. I waited for them to say something else, but they did not.

‘Also from the prophecy …’ I continued. ‘I have to wrest from him the crossword speaker’s breath. Meaning, I think, that I have to free the Erythraean Sibyl from his control.’

‘Does this Sibyl like crosswords?’ Reba asked. ‘I like crosswords.’

‘The Oracle gave her prophecies in the form of word puzzles,’ I explained. ‘Like crosswords. Or acrostics. The prophecy also talks about Grover bringing us here, and a lot of terrible things that will happen at Camp Jupiter in the next few days –’

‘The new moon,’ Meg muttered. ‘Coming very soon.’

‘Yes.’ I tried to contain my annoyance. Meg seemed to want me to be in two places at once, which would have been no problem for Apollo the god. For Lester the human, I could barely manage being in one place at once.

‘There’s another line,’ Grover remembered. ‘Walk the path in thine own enemy’s boots? Could that have something to do with Caligula’s booties?’

I imagined my ginormous sixteen-year-old feet crammed into a Roman toddler’s military-issued leather baby shoes. My toes began to throb.

‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘But if we could free the Sibyl from the maze I’m sure she would help us. I’d like to have more guidance before I charge off to confront Caligula in person.’

Other things I would have liked: my godly powers back, the entire firearms department of Macro’s Military Madness locked and loaded in the hands of a demigod army, an apology letter from my father, Zeus, promising never again to turn me into a human, and a bath. But, as they say, Lesters can’t be choosers.

‘That brings us back to where we started,’ Joshua said. ‘You need the Oracle freed. We need the fires shut off. To do that, we need to get through the maze, but nobody knows how.’

Gleeson Hedge cleared his throat. ‘Maybe somebody does.’

Never before had so many cacti stared at a satyr.

Cholla stroked her wispy white beard. ‘Who is this somebody?’

Hedge turned to his wife, as if to say, All yours, sweetie.

Mellie spent a few more microseconds pondering the night sky, and possibly her former life as a nebulous bachelorette.

‘Most of you know we’ve been living with the McLeans,’ she said.

‘As in Piper McLean,’ I explained, ‘daughter of Aphrodite.’

I remembered her – one of the seven demigods who had sailed aboard the Argo II. In fact, I’d been hoping to call on her and her boyfriend, Jason Grace, while I was in Southern California, to see if they would defeat the emperor and free the Oracle for me.

Wait. Scratch that. I meant, of course, that I hoped they would help me do those things.

Mellie nodded. ‘I was Mr McLean’s personal assistant. Gleeson was a full-time stay-at-home father, doing a great job –’

‘I was, wasn’t I?’ Gleeson agreed, giving Baby Chuck the chain of his nunchaku to teethe on.

‘Until everything went wrong,’ Mellie said with a sigh.

Meg McCaffrey tilted her head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Long story,’ said the cloud nymph, in a tone that implied, I could tell you, but then I’d have to turn into a storm cloud and cry a lot and zap you with lightning and kill you. ‘The point is, a couple of weeks ago, Piper had a dream about the Burning Maze. She thought she’d found a way to reach the centre. She went exploring with … that boy, Jason.’

That boy. My finely tuned senses told me Mellie was not happy with Jason Grace, son of Jupiter.

‘When they came back …’ Mellie paused, her lower half swirling in a corkscrew of cloud stuff. ‘They said they had failed. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Piper hinted that they had encountered something down there that … rattled them.’

The stone walls of the Cistern seemed to creak and shift in the cooling night air, as if sympathetically vibrating with the word rattled. I thought of my dream about the Sibyl in fiery chains, apologizing to someone after delivering terrible news: I am sorry. I would spare you if I could. I would spare her.