by Rick Riordan
“Well,” Reyna said, “if that’s true, it means we’re in the right place. And I can only think of one other direction to explore.” Her eyes followed the pylons of Sutro Tower until they disappeared into the fog. “Who wants to climb first?”
Want had nothing to do with it. I was drafted.
The ostensible reason was so Reyna could steady me if I started feeling shaky on the ladder. The real reason was probably so I couldn’t back out if I got scared. Meg went last, I suppose because that would give her time to select the proper gardening seeds to throw at our enemies while they were mauling my face and Reyna was pushing me forward.
Aurum and Argentum, not being able to climb, stayed on the ground to guard our exit like the opposable-thumb-lacking slackers they were. If we ended up plummeting to our deaths, the dogs would be right there to bark excitedly at our corpses. That gave me great comfort.
The rungs were slippery and cold. The chute’s metal ribs made me feel like I was crawling through a giant Slinky. I imagined they were meant as some kind of safety feature, but they did nothing to reassure me. If I slipped, they would just be more painful things for me to hit on my way down.
After a few minutes, my limbs were shaking. My fingers trembled. The first set of crossbeams seemed to be getting no closer. I looked down and saw we had barely cleared the radar dishes on the station’s rooftop.
The cold wind buffeted me around the cage, ripping through my hoodie, rattling the arrows in my quiver. Whatever Tarquin’s guards were, if they caught me on this ladder, my bow and my ukulele would do me no good. At least a flock of killer sheep couldn’t climb ladders.
Meanwhile, in the fog high above us, more dark shapes swirled—definitely birds of some kind. I reminded myself that they couldn’t be strixes. Still, a queasy sense of danger gnawed at my stomach.
What if—?
Stop it, Apollo, I chided myself. There’s nothing you can do now but keep climbing.
I concentrated on one perilous slippery rung at a time. The soles of my shoes squeaked against the metal.
Below me, Meg asked, “Do you guys smell roses?”
I wondered if she was trying to make me laugh. “Roses? Why in the name of the twelve gods would I smell roses up here?”
Reyna said, “All I smell is Lester’s shoes. I think he stepped in something.”
“A large puddle of shame,” I muttered.
“I smell roses,” Meg insisted. “Whatever. Keep moving.”
I did, since I had no choice.
At last, we reached the first set of crossbeams. A catwalk ran the length of the girders, allowing us to stand and rest for a few minutes. We were only about sixty feet above the relay station, but it felt much higher. Below us spread an endless grid of city blocks, rumpling and twisting across the hills whenever necessary, the streets making designs that reminded me of the Thai alphabet. (The goddess Nang Kwak had tried to teach me their language once, over a lovely dinner of spicy noodles, but I was hopeless at it.)
Down in the parking lot, Aurum and Argentum looked up at us and wagged their tails. They seemed to be waiting for us to do something. The mean-spirited part of me wanted to shoot an arrow to the top of the next hill and yell, FETCH! but I doubted Reyna would appreciate that.
“It’s fun up here,” Meg decided. She did a cartwheel, because she enjoyed giving me heart palpitations.
I scanned the triangle of catwalks, hoping to see something besides cables, circuit boxes, and satellite equipment—preferably something labeled: PUSH THIS BUTTON TO COMPLETE QUEST AND COLLECT REWARD.
Of course not, I grumbled to myself. Tarquin wouldn’t be so kind as to put whatever we needed on the lowest level.
“Definitely no silent gods here,” Reyna said.
“Thanks a lot.”
She smiled, clearly still in a good mood from my earlier misstep into the puddle of shame. “I also don’t see any doors. Didn’t the prophecy say I’m supposed to open a door?”
“Could be a metaphorical one,” I speculated. “But you’re right, there’s nothing here for us.”
Meg pointed to the next level of crossbeams—another sixty feet up, barely visible in the belly of the fog bank. “The smell of roses is stronger from up there,” she said. “We should keep climbing.”
I sniffed the air. I smelled only the faint scent of eucalyptus from the woods below us, my own sweat cooling against my skin, and the sour whiff of antiseptic and infection rising from my bandaged abdomen.
“Hooray,” I said. “More climbing.”
This time, Reyna took the lead. There was no climbing cage going to the second level—just bare metal rungs against the side of the girder, as if the builders had decided Welp, if you made it this far, you must be crazy, so no more safety features! Now that the metal-ribbed chute was gone, I realized it had given me some psychological comfort. At least I could pretend I was inside a safe structure, not free-climbing a giant tower like a lunatic.
It made no sense to me why Tarquin would put something as important as his silent god at the top of a radio tower, or why he had allied himself with the emperors in the first place, or why the smell of roses might signal that we were getting closer to our goal, or why those dark birds kept circling above us in the fog. Weren’t they cold? Didn’t they have jobs?
Still, I had no doubt we were meant to climb this monstrous tripod. It felt right, by which I mean it felt terrifying and wrong. I had a premonition that everything would make sense to me soon enough, and when it did, I wouldn’t like it.
It was as if I were standing in the dark, staring at small disconnected lights in the distance, wondering what they might be. By the time I realized Oh, hey, those are the headlights of a large truck barreling toward me! it would be too late.
We were halfway to the second set of crossbeams when an angry shadow dove out of the fog, plummeting past my shoulder. The gust from its wings nearly knocked me off the ladder.
“Whoa!” Meg grabbed my left ankle, though that did nothing to steady me. “What was that?”
I caught a glimpse of the bird as it disappeared back into the fog: oily black wings, black beak, black eyes.
A sob built in my throat, as one of the proverbial truck’s headlights became very clear to me. “A raven.”
“A raven?” Reyna frowned down at me. “That thing was huge!”
True, the creature that buzzed me must’ve had a wingspan of at least twenty feet, but then several angry croaks sounded from somewhere in the mist, leaving me in no doubt.
“Ravens, plural,” I corrected. “Giant ravens.”
Half a dozen spiraled into view, their hungry black eyes dancing over us like targeting lasers, assessing our soft-and-tasty weak spots.
“A flock of ravens.” Meg sounded half-incredulous, half-fascinated. “Those are the guards? They’re pretty.”
I groaned, wishing I could be anywhere else—like in bed, under a thick layer of warm Kevlar quilts. I was tempted to protest that a group of ravens was actually called an unkindness or a conspiracy. I wanted to shout that Tarquin’s guards should be disqualified on that technicality. But I doubted Tarquin cared about such niceties. I knew the ravens didn’t. They would kill us either way, no matter how pretty Meg thought they were. Besides, calling ravens unkind and conspiratorial had always seemed redundant to me.
“They’re here because of Koronis,” I said miserably. “This is my fault.”
“Who’s Koronis?” Reyna demanded.
“Long story.” I yelled at the birds, “Guys, I’ve apologized a million times!”
The ravens croaked back angrily. A dozen more dropped out of the fog and began to circle us.
“They’ll tear us apart,” I said. “We have to retreat—back to the first platform.”
“The second platform is closer,” Reyna said. “Keep climbing!”
“Maybe they’re just checking us out,” Meg said. “Maybe they won’t attack.”
She shouldn’t have said that.
Ravens are contrary creatures. I should know—I shaped them into what they are. As soon as Meg expressed the hope that they wouldn’t attack, they did.
I’d like to sing a
Classic for you now. Thank you.
Please stop stabbing me.
IN RETROSPECT, I SHOULD have given ravens sponges for beaks—nice, soft, squishy sponges that weren’t capable of stabbing. While I was at it, I should’ve thrown in some Nerf claws.
But nooo. I let them have beaks like serrated knives and claws like meat hooks. What had I been thinking?
Meg yelled as one of the birds dove by her, raking her arm.
Another flew at Reyna’s legs. The praetor leveled a kick at it, but her heel missed the bird and connected with my nose.
“OWEEEEE!” I yelled, my whole face throbbing.
“My bad!” Reyna tried to climb, but the birds swirled around us, stabbing and clawing and tearing away bits of our clothes. The frenzy reminded me of my farewell concert in Thessalonika back in 235 BCE. (I liked to do a farewell tour every ten years or so, just to keep the fans guessing.) Dionysus had shown up with his entire horde of souvenir-hunting maenads. Not a good memory.
“Lester, who is Koronis?” Reyna shouted, drawing her sword. “Why were you apologizing to the birds?”
“I created them!” My busted nose made me sound like I was gargling syrup.
The ravens cawed in outrage. One swooped, its claws narrowly missing my left eye. Reyna swung her sword wildly, trying to keep the flock at bay.
“Well, can you un-create them?” Meg asked.
The ravens didn’t like that idea. One dove at Meg. She tossed it a seed—which, being a raven, it instinctively snapped out of the air. A pumpkin exploded to full growth in its beak. The raven, suddenly top-heavy with a mouth full of Halloween, plummeted toward the ground.
“Okay, I didn’t exactly create them,” I confessed. “I just changed them into what they are now. And, no, I can’t undo it.”
More angry cries from the birds, though for the moment they stayed away, wary of the girl with the sword and the other one with the tasty exploding seeds.
Tarquin had chosen the perfect guards to keep me from his silent god. Ravens hated me. They probably worked for free, without even a health plan, just hoping to have the chance to bring me down.
I suspected the only reason we were still alive was that the birds were trying to decide who got the honor of the kill.
Each angry croak was a claim to my tasty bits: I get his liver!
No, I get his liver!
Well, I get his kidneys, then!
Ravens are as greedy as they are contrary. Alas, we couldn’t count on them arguing with one another for long. We’d be dead as soon as they figured out their proper pecking order. (Oh, maybe that’s why they call it a pecking order!)
Reyna took a swipe at one that was getting too close. She glanced at the catwalk on the crossbeam above us, perhaps calculating whether she’d have time to reach it if she sheathed her sword. Judging from her frustrated expression, her conclusion was no.
“Lester, I need intel,” she said. “Tell me how we defeat these things.”
“I don’t know!” I wailed. “Look, back in the old days, ravens used to be gentle and white, like doves, okay? But they were terrible gossips. One time I was dating this girl, Koronis. The ravens found out she was cheating on me, and they told me about it. I was so angry, I got Artemis to kill Koronis for me. Then I punished the ravens for being tattletales by turning them black.”
Reyna stared at me like she was contemplating another kick to my nose. “That story is messed up on so many levels.”
“Just wrong,” Meg agreed. “You had your sister kill a girl who was cheating on you?”
“Well, I—”
“Then you punished the birds that told you about it,” Reyna added, “by turning them black, as if black was bad and white was good?”
“When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound right,” I protested. “It’s just what happened when my curse scorched them. It also made them nasty-tempered flesh-eaters.”
“Oh, that’s much better,” Reyna snarled.
“If we let the birds eat you,” Meg asked, “will they leave Reyna and me alone?”
“I—What?” I worried that Meg might not be kidding. Her facial expression did not say kidding. It said serious about the birds eating you. “Listen, I was angry! Yes, I took it out on the birds, but after a few centuries I cooled down. I apologized. By then, they kind of liked being nasty-tempered flesh-eaters. As for Koronis—I mean, at least I saved the child she was pregnant with when Artemis killed her. He became Asclepius, god of medicine!”
“Your girlfriend was pregnant when you had her killed?” Reyna launched another kick at my face. I managed to dodge it, since I’d had a lot of practice cowering, but it hurt to know that this time she hadn’t been aiming at an incoming raven. Oh, no. She wanted to knock my teeth in.
“You suck,” Meg agreed.
“Can we talk about this later?” I pleaded. “Or perhaps never? I was a god then! I didn’t know what I was doing!”
A few months ago, a statement like that would have made no sense to me. Now, it seemed true. I felt as if Meg had given me her thick-lensed rhinestone-studded glasses, and to my horror, they corrected my eyesight. I didn’t like how small and tawdry and petty everything looked, rendered in perfect ugly clarity through the magic of Meg-o-Vision. Most of all, I didn’t like the way I looked—not just present-day Lester, but the god formerly known as Apollo.
Reyna exchanged glances with Meg. They seemed to reach a silent agreement that the most practical course of action would be to survive the ravens now so they could kill me themselves later.
“We’re dead if we stay here.” Reyna swung her sword at another enthusiastic flesh-eater. “We can’t fend them off and climb at the same time. Ideas?”
The ravens had one. It was called all-out attack.
They swarmed—pecking, scratching, croaking with rage.
“I’m sorry!” I screamed, futilely swatting at the birds. “I’m sorry!”
The ravens did not accept my apology. Claws ripped my pant legs. A beak clamped on to my quiver and almost pulled me off the ladder, leaving my feet dangling for a terrifying moment.
Reyna continued to slash away. Meg cursed and threw seeds like party favors from the worst parade float ever. A giant raven spiraled out of control, covered in daffodils. Another fell like a stone, its stomach bulging in the shape of a butternut squash.
My grip weakened on the rungs. Blood dripped from my nose, but I couldn’t spare a moment to wipe it away.
Reyna was right. If we didn’t move, we were dead. And we couldn’t move.
I scanned the crossbeam above us. If we could just reach it, we’d be able to stand and use our arms. We’d have a fighting chance to…well, fight.
At the far end of the catwalk, abutting the next support pylon, stood a large rectangular box like a shipping container. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it sooner, but compared to the scale of the tower, the container seemed small and insignificant, just another wedge of red metal. I had no idea what such a box was doing up here (A maintenance depot? A storage shed?) but if we could find a way inside, it might offer us shelter.
“Over there!” I yelled.
Reyna followed my gaze. “If we can reach it…We need to buy time. Apollo, what repels ravens? Isn’t there something they hate?”
“Worse than me?”
“They don’t like daffodils much,” Meg observed, as another flower-festooned bird went into a tailspin.
“We need something to drive them all away,” Reyna said, swinging her sword again. “Something they’ll hate worse than Apollo.” Her eyes lit up. “Apollo, sing for them!”
She might as well have kicked me in the face again. “My voice isn’t that bad!”
“But you’re the—You used to be the god of music, right? If you can charm a crowd, you should be able to repuls
e one. Pick a song these birds will hate!”
Great. Not only had Reyna laughed in my face and busted my nose, now I was her go-to guy for repulsiveness.
Still…I was struck by the way she said I used to be a god. She didn’t seem to mean it as an insult. She said it almost like a concession—like she knew what a horrible deity I had been, but held out hope that I might be capable of being someone better, more helpful, maybe even worthy of forgiveness.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, let me think.”
The ravens had no intention of letting me do that. They cawed and swarmed in a flurry of black feathers and pointy talons. Reyna and Meg tried their best to drive them back, but they couldn’t cover me completely. A beak stabbed me in the neck, narrowly missing my carotid artery. Claws raked the side of my face, no doubt giving me some bloody new racing stripes.
I couldn’t think about the pain.
I wanted to sing for Reyna, to prove that I had indeed changed. I was no longer the god who’d had Koronis killed and created ravens, or cursed the Cumaean Sibyl, or done any of the other selfish things that had once given me no more pause than choosing what dessert toppings I wanted on my ambrosia.
It was time to be helpful. I needed to be repulsive for my friends!
I rifled through millennia of performance memories, trying to recall any of my musical numbers that had totally bombed. Nope. I couldn’t think of any. And the birds kept attacking….
Birds attacking.
An idea sparked at the base of my skull.
I remembered a story my children Austin and Kayla had told me, back when I was at Camp Half-Blood. We were sitting at the campfire, and they’d been joking about Chiron’s bad taste in music. They said that several years earlier, Percy Jackson had managed to drive off a flock of killer Stymphalian birds simply by playing what Chiron had on his boom box.
What had he played? What was Chiron’s favorite—?
“‘VOLARE’!” I screamed.
Meg looked up at me, a random geranium stuck in her hair. “Who?”