The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(97)

Then Grover found his groove. His notes became more confident and lively, his cadence steadier. He played a fierce, desperate jig – the sort that satyrs piped in springtime in the meadows of Ancient Greece, hoping to encourage dryads to come forth and dance with them in the wild flowers.

The song was hopelessly out of place in this fiery crossword dungeon. No nature spirit could possibly hear it. No dryads would come to dance with us. Nevertheless, the music dulled my pain. It lessened the intensity of the heat, like a cold towel pressed against my feverish forehead.

Medea’s chant faltered. She scowled at Grover. ‘Really? Are you going to stop that, or must I make you?’

Grover played even more frenetically – a distress call to nature that echoed through the room, making the corridors reverberate like the pipes of a church organ.

Meg abruptly joined in, singing nonsense lyrics in a terrible monotone. ‘Hey, how about that nature? We love those plants. Come on down, you dryads, and, uh, grow and … kill this sorceress and stuff.’

Herophile, who had once had such a lovely voice, who had been born singing prophecies, looked at Meg in dismay. With saintlike restraint, she did not punch Meg in the face.

Medea sighed. ‘Okay, that’s it. Meg, I’m sorry. But I’m sure Nero will forgive me for killing you when I explain how badly you sang. Flutter, Decibel – silence them.’

Behind the sorceress, Crest gurgled in alarm. He fumbled with his ukulele, despite his bound hands and two crushed fingers.

Meanwhile, Flutter and Decibel grinned with delight. ‘Now we shall have revenge! DIE! DIE!’

They unfurled their ears, raised their swords and leaped towards the platform.

Could Meg have defeated them with her trusty scimitars?

I don’t know. Instead, she made a move almost as surprising as her sudden urge to sing. Maybe, looking at poor Crest, she decided that enough pandos blood had been shed. Maybe she was still thinking about her misdirected anger, and whom she should really spend her energy hating. Whatever the case, her scimitars flicked into ring form. She grabbed a packet from her belt and ripped it open – spraying seeds in the path of the oncoming pandai.

Flutter and Decibel veered and screamed as the plants erupted, covering them in fuzzy green nebulae of ragweed. Flutter smacked into the nearest wall and began sneezing violently, the ragweed rooting him in place like a fly on flypaper. Decibel crash-landed on the platform at Meg’s feet, the ragweed growing over him until he looked more like a bush than a pandos – a bush that sneezed a lot.

Medea face-palmed. ‘You know … I told Caligula that dragon’s teeth warriors make much better guards. But noooo. He insisted on hiring pandai.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘Sorry, boys. You had your chance.’

She snapped her fingers again. A ventus swirled to life, pulling a cyclone of cinders from the ichor lake. The spirit shot towards Flutter, ripped the screaming pandos from the wall and dumped him unceremoniously into the fire. Then it swept across the platform, grazing my friends’ feet, and pushed Decibel, still sneezing and crying, off the side.

‘Now, then,’ Medea said, ‘if I can encourage the rest of you to BE QUIET …’

The ventus charged, encircling Meg and Grover, lifting them off the platform.

I cried out, thrashing in my chains, sure that Medea would hurl my friends into the fire, but they merely hung there suspended. Grover was still playing his pipes, though no sound came through the wind; Meg was scowling and shouting, probably something like THIS AGAIN? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Herophile was not caught in the ventus. I supposed Medea considered her no threat. She stepped to my side, her fists still clenched. I was grateful for that, but I didn’t see what one boxing Sibyl could do against the power of Medea.

‘Okay!’ Medea said, a glint of triumph in her eyes. ‘I’ll start again. Doing this chant while controlling a ventus is not easy work, though, so please, behave. Otherwise I might lose my concentration and dump Meg and Grover into the ichor. And, really, we have too many impurities in there already, what with the pandai and the ragweed. Now, where were we? Oh, yes! Flaying your mortal form!’





42


You want prophecy?

I’ll drop some nonsense on you

Eat my gibberish!





‘Resist!’ Herophile knelt at my side. ‘Apollo, you must resist!’

I could not speak through the pain. Otherwise I would have told her, Resist. Gosh, thanks for that profound wisdom! You must be an Oracle or something!

At least she did not ask me to spell out the word RESIST on stone tiles.

Sweat poured down my face. My body sizzled, and not in the good way that it used to when I was a god.

The sorceress continued her chant. I knew she must be straining her power, but this time I didn’t see how I could take advantage of it. I was chained. I couldn’t pull the arrow-in-the-chest trick, and, even if I did, I suspected Medea was far enough along with her magic that she could just let me die. My essence would trickle into the pool of ichor.

I couldn’t pipe like Grover. I couldn’t rely on ragweed like Meg. I didn’t have the sheer power of Jason Grace to break through the ventus cage and save my friends.

Resist … But with what?

My consciousness began to waver. I tried to hold on to the day of my birth (yes, I could remember that far back), when I jumped from my mother’s womb and began to sing and dance, filling the world with my glorious voice. I remembered my first trip into the chasm of Delphi, grappling with my enemy Python, feeling his coils around my immortal body.