The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(80)

We were no longer in Santa Barbara. There was no harbour, no string of super-yachts, just the dark Pacific stretching before us. Behind us loomed a dark cliff. A zigzag of wooden stairs led up towards the lights of a house at the top.

Meg McCaffrey was there too. Wait. When did Meg arrive? She was thoroughly drenched, her clothes shredded, her face and arms a war zone of bruises and cuts. She sat next to Piper, sharing ambrosia. I suppose my ambrosia wasn’t good enough. The pandos Crest squatted some distance away at the base of the cliff, eyeing me hungrily as if waiting for his first music lesson to begin. The pandos must have done what I’d asked. Somehow, he’d found Meg, pulled her from the sea and flown her here … wherever here was.

The thing I remember most clearly is Piper saying, He’s not dead.

She said this over and over, as soon as she could manage the words, once the nectar and ambrosia tamed the swelling around her mouth. She still looked awful. Her upper lip needed stitches. She would definitely have a scar. Her jaw, chin and lower lip were one gigantic aubergine-coloured bruise. I suspected her dentist bill would be hefty. Still, she forced out the words with steady determination. ‘He’s not dead.’

Meg held her shoulder. ‘Maybe. We’ll find out. You need to rest and heal.’

I stared incredulously at my young master. ‘Maybe? Meg, you didn’t see what happened! He … Jason … the spear –’

Meg glared at me. She did not say Shut up, but I heard the order loud and clear. On her hands, her gold rings glinted, though I didn’t know how she could have retrieved them. Perhaps, like so many magic weapons, they automatically returned to their owner if lost. It would be like Nero to give his stepdaughter such clingy gifts.

‘Tempest will find Jason,’ Meg insisted. ‘We just have to wait.’

Tempest … right. After the ventus had brought Piper and me here, I vaguely remembered Piper harassing the spirit, using garbled words and gestures to order him back to the yachts to find Jason. Tempest had raced off across the surface of the sea like an electrified waterspout.

Now, staring at the horizon, I wondered if I could dare hope for good news.

My memories from the ship were coming back, piecing themselves together into a fresco more horrible than anything painted on Caligula’s walls.

The emperor had warned me: This is not a game. He was indeed not Commodus. As much as Caligula loved theatrics, he would never mess up an execution by adding glitzy special effects, ostriches, basketballs, race cars and loud music. Caligula did not pretend to kill. He killed.

‘He’s not dead.’ Piper repeated her mantra, as if trying to charmspeak herself as well as us. ‘He’s gone through too much to die now, like that.’

I wanted to believe her.

Sadly, I had witnessed tens of thousands of mortal deaths. Few of them had any meaning. Most were untimely, unexpected, undignified, and at least slightly embarrassing. The people who deserved to die took forever to do so. Those who deserved to live always went too soon.

Falling in combat against an evil emperor in order to save one’s friends … that seemed all too plausible a death for a hero like Jason Grace. He’d told me what the Erythraean Sibyl said. If I hadn’t asked him to come with us –

Don’t blame yourself, said Selfish Apollo. It was his choice.

It was my quest! said Guilty Apollo. If not for me, Jason would be safe in his dorm room, sketching new shrines for obscure minor deities! Piper McLean would be unharmed, spending time with her father, preparing for a new life in Oklahoma.

Selfish Apollo had nothing to say to this, or he kept it selfishly to himself.

I could only watch the sea and wait, hoping that Jason Grace would come riding out of the darkness alive and well.

At last, the smell of ozone laced the air. Lightning flashed across the surface of the water. Tempest charged ashore, a dark form laid across his back like a saddlebag.

The wind horse knelt. He gently spilled Jason onto the sand. Piper shouted and ran to his side. Meg followed. The most horrible thing was the momentary look of relief on their faces, before it was crushed.

Jason’s skin was the colour of blank parchment, speckled with slime, sand and foam. The sea had washed away the blood, but his school shirt was stained as purple as a senatorial sash. Arrows protruded from his arms and legs. His right hand was fixed in a pointing gesture, as if he were still telling us to go. His expression didn’t seem tortured or scared. He looked at peace, as if he’d just managed to fall asleep after a hard day. I didn’t want to wake him.

Piper shook him and sobbed, ‘JASON!’ Her voice echoed from the cliffs.

Meg’s face settled into a hard scowl. She sat back on her haunches and looked up at me. ‘Fix him.’

The force of the command pulled me forward, made me kneel at Jason’s side. I put my hand on Jason’s cold forehead, which only confirmed the obvious. ‘Meg, I cannot fix death. I wish I could.’

‘There’s always a way,’ Piper said. ‘The physician’s cure! Leo took it!’

I shook my head. ‘Leo had the cure ready at the moment he died,’ I said gently. ‘He went through many hardships in advance to get the ingredients. Even then, he needed Asclepius to make it. That wouldn’t work here, not for Jason. I’m so sorry, Piper. It’s too late.’

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘No, the Cherokee always taught …’ She took a shaky breath, as if steeling herself for the pain of speaking so many words. ‘One of the most important stories. Back when man first started destroying nature, the animals decided he was a threat. They all vowed to fight back. Each animal had a different way to kill humans. But the plants … they were kind and compassionate. They vowed the opposite – that they’d each find their own way to protect people. So, there’s a plant cure for everything, whatever disease or poison or wound. Some plant has the cure. You just have to know which one!’