The Hidden Oracle

  I decided the biggest threat would be Malcolm Pace. You can never be too careful with children of Athena. Surprisingly, though, he’d paired himself with Sherman Yang. That didn’t seem like a natural partnership, unless Malcolm had some sort of plan. Those Athena children always had a plan. It rarely included letting me win.

  The only demigods not participating were Harley and Nyssa, who had set up the course.

  Once the satyrs judged we had all spread out sufficiently and our leg bindings had been double-checked, Harley clapped for our attention.

  “Okay!” He bounced up and down eagerly, reminding me of the Roman children who used to cheer for executions at the Colosseum. “Here’s the deal. Each team has to find three golden apples, then get back to this meadow alive.”

  Grumbling broke out among the demigods.

  “Golden apples,” I said. “I hate golden apples. They bring nothing but trouble.”

  Meg shrugged. “I like apples.”

  I remembered the rotten one she’d used to break Cade’s nose in the alley. I wondered if perhaps she could use golden apples with the same deadly skill. Perhaps we stood a chance after all.

  Laurel Victor raised her hand. “You mean the first team back wins?”

  “Any team that gets back alive wins!” Harley said.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Holly said. “There can only be one winner. First team back wins!”

  Harley shrugged. “Have it your way. My only rules are stay alive, and don’t kill each other.”

  “O quê?” Paolo started complaining so loudly in Portuguese that Connor had to cover his left ear.

  “Now, now!” Chiron called. His saddlebags were overflowing with extra first-aid kits and emergency flares. “We won’t need any help making this a dangerous challenge. Let’s have a good clean three-legged death race. And another thing, campers, given the problems our test group had this morning, please repeat after me: Do not end up in Peru.”

  “Do not end up in Peru,” everyone chanted.

  Sherman Yang cracked his knuckles. “So where is the starting line?”

  “There is no starting line,” Harley said with glee. “You’re all starting from right where you are.”

  The campers looked around in confusion. Suddenly the meadow shook. Dark lines etched across the grass, forming a giant green checkerboard.

  “Have fun!” Harley squealed.

  The ground opened beneath our feet, and we fell into the Labyrinth.

  Bowling balls of death

  Rolling toward my enemies

  I’ll trade you problems

  AT LEAST WE DID NOT LAND IN PERU.

  My feet hit stone, jarring my ankles. We stumbled against a wall, but Meg provided me with a convenient cushion.

  We found ourselves in a dark tunnel braced with oaken beams. The hole we’d fallen through was gone, replaced by an earthen ceiling. I saw no sign of the other teams, but from somewhere above I could vaguely hear Harley chanting, “Go! Go! Go!”

  “When I get my powers back,” I said, “I will turn Harley into a constellation called the Ankle Biter. At least constellations are silent.”

  Meg pointed down the corridor. “Look.”

  As my eyes adjusted, I realized the tunnel’s dim light emanated from a glowing piece of fruit about thirty meters away.

  “A golden apple,” I said.

  Meg lurched forward, pulling me with her.

  “Wait!” I said. “There might be traps!”

  As if to illustrate my point, Connor and Paolo emerged from the darkness at the other end of the corridor. Paolo scooped up the golden apple and shouted, “BRASIL!”

  Connor grinned at us. “Too slow, suckers!”

  The ceiling opened above them, showering them with iron orbs the size of cantaloupes.

  Connor yelped, “Run!”

  He and Paolo executed an awkward one-eighty and hobbled away, hotly pursued by a rolling herd of cannonballs with sparking fuses.

  The sounds quickly faded. Without the glowing apple, we were left in total darkness.

  “Great.” Meg’s voice echoed. “Now what?”

  “I suggest we go the other direction.”

  That was easier said than done. Being blind seemed to bother Meg more than it did me. Thanks to my mortal body, I already felt crippled and deprived of my senses. Besides, I often relied on more than sight. Music required keen hearing. Archery required a sensitive touch and the ability to feel the direction of the wind. (Okay, sight was also helpful, but you get the idea.)

  We shuffled ahead, our arms extended in front of us. I listened for suspicious clicks, snaps, or creaks that might indicate an incoming flock of explosions, but I suspected that if I did hear any warning signs, it would be too late.

  Eventually Meg and I learned to walk with our bound legs in synchronicity. It wasn’t easy. I had a flawless sense of rhythm. Meg was always a quarter beat slow or fast, which kept us veering left or right and running into walls.

  We lumbered along for what might have been minutes or days. In the Labyrinth, time was deceptive.

  I remembered what Austin had told me about the Labyrinth feeling different since the death of its creator. I was beginning to understand what he meant. The air seemed fresher, as if the maze hadn’t been chewing up quite so many bodies. The walls didn’t radiate the same malignant heat. As far as I could tell, they weren’t oozing blood or slime, either, which was a definite improvement. In the old days, you couldn’t take a step inside Daedalus’s Labyrinth without sensing its all-consuming desire: I will destroy your mind and your body. Now the atmosphere was sleepier, the message not quite as virulent: Hey, if you die in here, that’s cool.

  “I never liked Daedalus,” I muttered. “That old rascal didn’t know when to stop. He always had to have the latest tech, the most recent updates. I told him not to make his maze self-aware. ‘A.I. will destroy us, man,’ I said. But noooo. He had to give the Labyrinth a malevolent consciousness.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meg said. “But maybe you shouldn’t bad-mouth the maze while we’re inside it.”

  Once, I stopped when I heard the sound of Austin’s saxophone. It was faint, echoing through so many corridors I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. Then it was gone. I hoped he and Kayla had found their three apples and escaped safely.

  Finally, Meg and I reached a Y in the corridor. I could tell this from the flow of the air and the temperature differential against my face.

  “Why’d we stop?” Meg asked.

  “Shh.” I listened intently.

  From the right-hand corridor came a faint whining sound like a table saw. The left-hand corridor was quiet, but it exuded a faint odor that was unpleasantly familiar…not sulfur, exactly, but a vaporous mix of minerals from deep in the earth.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Meg complained.

  “A sawing noise to the right,” I told her. “To the left, a bad smell.”

  “I choose the bad smell.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Meg blew me one of her trademark raspberries, then hobbled to the left, pulling me along with her.

  The bronze bands around my leg began to chafe. I could feel Meg’s pulse through her femoral artery, messing up my rhythm. Whenever I get nervous (which doesn’t happen often), I like to hum a song to calm myself—usually Ravel’s Boléro or the ancient Greek “Song of Seikilos.” But with Meg’s pulse throwing me off, the only tune I could conjure was the “Chicken Dance.” That was not soothing.

  We edged forward. The smell of volcanic fumes intensified. My pulse lost its perfect rhythm. My heart knocked against my chest with every cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck of the “Chicken Dance.” I feared I knew where we were. I told myself it wasn’t possible. We couldn’t have walked halfway around the world. But this was the Labyrinth. Down here, distance was meaningless. The maze knew how to exploit its victims’ weaknesses. Worse: it had a vicious sense of humor.

  “I see light!” Meg
said.

  She was right. The absolute darkness had changed to murky gray. Up ahead, the tunnel ended, joining with a narrow, lengthwise cavern like a volcanic vent. It looked as if a colossal claw had slashed across the corridor and left a wound in the earth. I had seen creatures with claws that big down in Tartarus. I did not fancy seeing them again.

  “We should turn around,” I said.

  “That’s stupid,” Meg said. “Don’t you see the golden glow? There’s an apple in there.”

  All I saw were swirling plumes of ash and gas. “The glow could be lava,” I said. “Or radiation. Or eyes. Glowing eyes are never good.”

  “It’s an apple,” Meg insisted. “I can smell apple.”

  “Oh, now you develop keen senses?”

  Meg forged onward, giving me little choice but to go with. For a small girl, she was quite good at throwing her weight around. At the end of the tunnel, we found ourselves on a narrow ledge. The cliff wall opposite was only ten feet away, but the crevasse seemed to plunge downward forever. Perhaps a hundred feet above us, the jagged vent opened into a bigger chamber.

  A painfully large ice cube seemed to be working its way down my throat. I had never seen this place from below, but I knew exactly where we were. We stood at the omphalus—the navel of the ancient world.

  “You’re shaking,” Meg said.

  I tried to cover her mouth with my hand, but she promptly bit it.

  “Don’t touch me,” she snarled.

  “Please be quiet.”

  “Why?”

  “Because right above us—” My voice cracked. “Delphi. The chamber of the Oracle.”

  Meg’s nose quivered like a rabbit’s. “That’s impossible.”

  “No, it’s not,” I whispered. “And if this is Delphi, that means…”

  From overhead came a hiss so loud, it sounded as if the entire ocean had hit a frying pan and evaporated into a massive steam cloud. The ledge shook. Pebbles rained down. Above, a monstrous body slid across the crevasse, completely covering the opening. The smell of molting snakeskin seared my nostrils.

  “Python.” My voice was now an octave higher than Meg’s. “He is here.”

  The Beast is calling

  Tell him I’m not here. Let’s hide

  Where? In garbage. Natch

  HAD I EVER BEEN SO TERRIFIED?

  Perhaps when Typhon raged across the earth, scattering the gods before him. Perhaps when Gaea unleashed her giants to tear down Olympus. Or perhaps when I accidentally saw Ares naked in the gymnasium. That had been enough to turn my hair white for a century.

  But I had been a god all of those times. Now I was a weak, tiny mortal cowering in the darkness. I could only pray my old enemy would not sense my presence. For once in my long glorious life, I wanted to be invisible.

  Oh, why had the Labyrinth brought me here?

  As soon as I thought this, I chided myself: Of course it would bring me where I least wanted to be. Austin had been wrong about the maze. It was still evil, designed to kill. It was just a little subtler about its homicides now.

  Meg seemed oblivious to our danger. Even with an immortal monster a hundred feet above us, she had the nerve to stay on task. She elbowed me and pointed to a tiny ledge on the opposite wall, where a golden apple glowed cheerfully.

  Had Harley placed it there? I couldn’t imagine. More likely the boy had simply rolled golden apples down various corridors, trusting that they would find the most dangerous spots to roost. I was really starting to dislike that boy.

  Meg whispered, “Easy jump.”

  I gave her a look that under different circumstances would’ve incinerated her. “Too dangerous.”

  “Apple,” she hissed.

  “Monster!” I hissed back.

  “One.”

  “No!”

  “Two.”

  “No!”

  “Three.” She jumped.

  Which meant that I also jumped. We made the ledge, though our heels sent a spray of rubble into the chasm. Only my natural coordination and grace saved us from toppling backward to our deaths. Meg snatched up the apple.

  Above us, the monster rumbled, “Who approaches?”

  His voice…Gods above, I remembered that voice—deep and gruff, as if he breathed xenon rather than air. For all I knew, he did. Python could certainly produce his share of unhealthy gasses.

  The monster shifted his weight. More gravel spilled into the crevasse.

  I stood absolutely still, pressed against the cold face of the rock. My eardrums pulsed with every beat of my heart. I wished I could stop Meg from breathing. I wished I could stop the rhinestones on her eyeglasses from glittering.

  Python had heard us. I prayed to all the gods that the monster would decide the noise was nothing. All he had to do was breathe down into the crevasse and he would kill us. There was no escaping his poisonous belch—not from this distance, not for a mortal.

  Then, from the cavern above, came another voice, smaller and much closer to human. “Hello, my reptilian friend.”

  I nearly wept with relief. I had no idea who this newcomer was, or why he had been so foolish as to announce his presence to Python, but I always appreciated it when humans sacrificed themselves to save me. Common courtesy was not dead after all!

  Python’s harsh laugh shook my teeth. “Well, I was wondering if you would make the trip, Monsieur Beast.”

  “Don’t call me that,” the man snapped. “And the commute was quite easy now that the Labyrinth is back in service.”

  “I’m so pleased.” Python’s tone was dry as basalt.

  I couldn’t tell much about the man’s voice, muffled as it was by several tons of reptile flesh, but he sounded calmer and more in control than I would have been talking to Python. I had heard the term Beast used to describe someone before, but as usual, my mortal brainpower failed me.

  If only I’d been able to retain just the important information! Instead, I could tell you what I had for dessert the first time I dined with King Minos. (Spice cake.) I could tell you what color chitons the sons of Niobe were wearing when I slew them. (A very unflattering shade of orange.) But I couldn’t remember something as basic as whether this Beast was a wrestler, a movie star, or a politician. Possibly all three?

  Next to me, in the glow of the apple, Meg seemed to have turned to bronze. Her eyes were wide with fear. A little late for that, but at least she was quiet. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought the man’s voice terrified her more than the monster’s.

  “So, Python,” the man continued, “any prophetic words to share with me?”

  “In time…my lord.”

  The last words were spoken with amusement, but I’m not sure anyone else would’ve recognized it. Aside from myself, few had been on the receiving end of Python’s sarcasm and lived to tell the tale.

  “I need more than your assurances,” the man said. “Before we proceed, we must have all the Oracles under our control.”

  All the Oracles. Those words almost sent me off the cliff, but somehow I retained my balance.

  “In time,” Python said, “as we agreed. We have come this far by biding our time, yes? You did not reveal your hand when the Titans stormed New York. I did not march to war with Gaea’s giants. We both realized the time for victory was not yet right. You must remain patient for a while longer.”

  “Don’t lecture me, snake. While you slumbered, I built an empire. I have spent centuries—”

  “Yes, yes.” The monster exhaled, causing a tremor along the cliff face. “And if you ever want your empire to come out of the shadows, you need to deliver on your side of the bargain first. When will you destroy Apollo?”

  I stifled a yelp. I should not have been surprised that they were talking about me. For millennia, I had assumed that everyone talked about me all the time. I was so interesting they simply couldn’t help it. But this business about destroying me—I didn’t like that.

  Meg looked more terrified than I’d ever seen her. I w
anted to think she was worried for my sake, but I had a feeling she was equally concerned about herself. Again, those mixed-up demigod priorities.

  The man stepped closer to the chasm. His voice became clearer and louder. “Don’t worry about Apollo. He is exactly where I need him to be. He will serve our purpose, and once he is no longer useful…”

  He did not bother finishing the statement. I was afraid it did not end with we will give him a nice present and send him on his way. With a chill, I recognized the voice from my dream. It was the nasal sneer of the man in the purple suit. I also had a feeling I’d heard him sing before, years and years ago, but that didn’t make sense….Why would I suffer through a concert given by an ugly purple-suited man who called himself the Beast? I was not even a fan of death metal polka!

  Python shifted his bulk, showering us with more rubble. “And how exactly will you convince him to serve our purpose?”

  The Beast chuckled. “I have well-placed help within the camp who will steer Apollo toward us. Also, I have upped the stakes. Apollo will have no choice. He and the girl will open the gates.”

  A whiff of Python vapor floated across my nose—enough to make me dizzy, hopefully not enough to kill me.

  “I trust you are right,” said the monster. “Your judgment in the past has been…questionable. I wonder if you have chosen the right tools for this job. Have you learned from your past mistakes?”

  The man snarled so deeply I could almost believe he was turning into a beast. I’d seen that happen enough times. Next to me, Meg whimpered.

  “Listen here, you overgrown reptile,” the man said, “my only mistake was not burning my enemies fast enough, often enough. I assure you, I am stronger than ever. My organization is everywhere. My colleagues stand ready. When we control all four Oracles, we will control fate itself!”

  “And what a glorious day that will be.” Python’s voice was jagged with contempt. “But beforehand, you must destroy the fifth Oracle, yes? That is the only one I cannot control. You must set flame to the grove of—”

  “Dodona,” I said.

  The word leaped unbidden from my mouth and echoed through the chasm. Of all the stupid times to retrieve a piece of information, of all the stupid times to say it aloud…oh, the body of Lester Papadopoulos was a terrible place to live.

  Above us, the conversation stopped.

  Meg hissed at me, “You idiot.”

  The Beast said, “What was that sound?”

  Rather than answer, Oh, that’s just us, we did something even more foolish. One of us, Meg or me—personally, I blame her—must have slipped on a pebble. We toppled off the ledge and fell into the sulfurous clouds below.

  SQUISH.

  The Labyrinth most definitely had a sense of humor. Instead of allowing us to smash into a rock floor and die, the maze dropped us into a mound of wet, full garbage bags.