by Rick Riordan
Whatever the case, the sorceress arched her back and screamed. She turned, glowering, then reached behind her and pulled out the missile. She stared at it incredulously. “A blowgun dart? Are you kidding me?”
The fires continued to swirl around her, but none shot toward Piper. Medea staggered. Her eyes crossed.
“And it’s poison?” The sorceress laughed, her voice tinged with hysteria. “You would try to poison me, the world’s foremost expert on poisons? There is no poison I can’t cure! You cannot—”
She dropped to her knees. Green spittle flew from her mouth. “Wh-what is this concoction?”
“Compliments of my Grandpa Tom,” Piper said. “Old family recipe.”
Medea’s complexion turned as pale as the fire. She forced out a few words, interspersed with gagging. “You think…changes anything? My power…doesn’t summon Helios….I hold him back!”
She fell over sideways. Rather than dissipating, the cone of fire swirled even more furiously around her.
“Run,” I croaked. Then I yelled for all I was worth, “RUN NOW!”
We were halfway back to the corridor when the parking lot behind us went supernova.
I am not sure how we got out of the maze.
Lacking any evidence to the contrary, I will credit my own courage and fortitude. Yes, that must have been it. Having escaped the worst of the Titan’s heat, I bravely supported Piper and Meg and exhorted them to keep going. Smoking and half-conscious but still alive, we stumbled through the corridors, retracing our steps until we arrived at the freight elevator. With one last heroic burst of strength, I flipped the lever and we ascended.
We spilled into the sunlight—regular sunlight, not the vicious zombie sunlight of a quasi-dead Titan—and collapsed on the sidewalk. Grover’s shocked face hovered over me.
“Hot,” I whimpered.
Grover pulled out his panpipe. He began to play, and I lost consciousness.
In my dreams, I found myself at a party in ancient Rome. Caligula had just opened his newest palace at the base of the Palatine Hill, making a daring architectural statement by knocking out the back wall of the Temple of Castor and Pollux and using it as his front entrance. Since Caligula considered himself a god, he saw no problem with this, but the Roman elites were horrified. This was sacrilege akin to setting up a big-screen TV on a church altar and having a Super Bowl party with communion wine.
That didn’t stop the crowd from attending the festivities. Some gods had even shown up (in disguise). How could we resist such an audacious, blasphemous party with free appetizers? Throngs of costumed revelers moved through vast torchlit halls. In every corner, musicians played songs from across the empire: Gaul, Hispania, Greece, Egypt.
I myself was dressed as a gladiator. (Back then, with my godly physique, I could totally pull that off.) I mingled with senators who were disguised as slave girls, slave girls who were disguised as senators, a few unimaginative toga ghosts, and a couple of enterprising patricians who had crafted the world’s first two-man donkey costume.
Personally, I did not mind the sacrilegious temple/palace. It wasn’t my temple, after all. And in those first years of the Roman Empire, I found the Caesars refreshingly risqué. Besides, why should we gods punish our biggest benefactors?
When the emperors expanded their power, they expanded our power. Rome had spread our influence across a huge part of the world. Now we Olympians were the gods of the empire! Move over, Horus. Forget about it, Marduk. The Olympians were ascendant!
We weren’t about to mess with success just because the emperors got big-headed, especially when they modeled their arrogance after ours.
I wandered the party incognito, enjoying being among all the pretty people, when he finally appeared: the young emperor himself, in a golden chariot pulled by his favorite white stallion, Incitatus.
Flanked by praetorian guards—the only people not in costume—Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus was buck naked, painted in gold from head to foot, with a spiky crown of sun rays across his brow. He was pretending to be me, obviously. But when I saw him, my first feeling wasn’t anger. It was admiration. This beautiful, shameless mortal pulled off the role perfectly.
“I am the New Sun!” he announced, beaming at the crowd as if his smile were responsible for all the warmth in the world. “I am Helios. I am Apollo. I am Caesar. You may now bask in my light!”
Nervous applause from the crowd. Should they grovel? Should they laugh? It was always hard to tell with Caligula, and if you got it wrong, you usually died.
The emperor climbed down from his chariot. His horse was led to the hors d’oeuvres table while Caligula and his guards made their way through the crowd.
Caligula stopped and shook hands with a senator dressed as a slave. “You look lovely, Cassius Agrippa! Will you be my slave, then?”
The senator bowed. “I am your loyal servant, Caesar.”
“Excellent!” Caligula turned to his guards. “You heard the man. He is now my slave. Take him to my slave master. Confiscate all his property and money. Let his family go free, though. I’m feeling generous.”
The senator spluttered, but he could not form the words to protest. Two guards hustled him away as Caligula called after him, “Thank you for your loyalty!”
The crowd shifted like a herd of cattle in a thunderstorm. Those who had been surging forward, anxious to catch the emperor’s eye and perhaps win his favor, now tried their best to melt into the pack.
“It’s a bad night,” some whispered in warning to their colleagues. “He’s having a bad night.”
“Marcus Philo!” cried the emperor, cornering a poor young man who had been attempting to hide behind the two-man donkey. “Come out here, you scoundrel!”
“Pr-Princeps,” the man stuttered.
“I loved the satire you wrote about me,” Caligula said. “My guards found a copy of it in the Forum and brought it to my attention.”
“S-sire,” said Philo. “It was only a weak jest. I didn’t mean—”
“Nonsense!” Caligula smiled at the crowd. “Isn’t Philo great, everybody? Didn’t you like his work? The way he described me as a rabid dog?”
The crowd was on the verge of full panic. The air was so full of electricity, I wondered if my father was there in disguise.
“I promised that poets would be free to express themselves!” Caligula announced. “No more paranoia like in old Tiberius’s reign. I admire your silver tongue, Philo. I think everyone should have a chance to admire it. I will reward you!”
Philo gulped. “Thank you, lord.”
“Guards,” said Caligula, “take him away. Pull his tongue out, dip it in molten silver, and display it in the Forum where everyone can admire it. Really, Philo—wonderful work!”
Two praetorians hauled away the screaming poet.
“And you there!” Caligula called.
Only then did I realize the crowd had ebbed around me, leaving me exposed. Suddenly, Caligula was in my face. His beautiful eyes narrowed as he studied my costume, my godly physique.
“I don’t recognize you,” he said.
I wanted to speak. I knew that I had nothing to fear from Caesar. If worse came to worst, I could simply say Bye! and vanish in a cloud of glitter. But, I have to admit, in Caligula’s presence, I was awestruck. The young man was wild, powerful, unpredictable. His audacity took my breath away.
At last, I managed a bow. “I am a mere actor, Caesar.”
“Oh, indeed!” Caligula brightened. “And you play the gladiator. Would you fight to the death in my honor?”
I silently reminded myself that I was immortal. It took a little convincing. I drew my gladiator’s sword, which was nothing but a costume blade of soft tin. “Point me to my opponent, Caesar!” I scanned the audience and bellowed, “I will destroy anyone who threatens my lord!”
To demonstrate, I lunged and poked the nearest praetorian guard in the chest. My sword bent against his breastplate. I held aloft my ridiculous weapon, which
now resembled the letter Z.
A dangerous silence followed. All eyes fixed on Caesar.
Finally, Caligula laughed. “Well done!” He patted my shoulder, then snapped his fingers. One of his servants shuffled forward and handed me a heavy pouch of gold coins.
Caligula whispered in my ear, “I feel safer already.”
The emperor moved on, leaving onlookers laughing with relief, some casting envious glances at me as if to ask What is your secret?
After that, I stayed away from Rome for decades. It was a rare man who could make a god nervous, but Caligula unsettled me. He almost made a better Apollo than I did.
My dream changed. I saw Herophile again, the Sibyl of Erythraea, reaching out her shackled arms, her face lit red by the roiling lava below.
“Apollo,” she said, “it won’t seem worth it to you. I’m not sure it is myself. But you must come. You must hold them together in their grief.”
I sank into the lava, Herophile still calling my name as my body broke and crumbled into ash.
I woke up screaming, lying on top of a sleeping bag in the Cistern.
Aloe Vera hovered over me, her prickly triangles of hair mostly snapped off, leaving her with a glistening buzz cut.
“You’re okay,” she assured me, putting her cool hand against my fevered forehead. “You’ve been through a lot, though.”
I realized I was wearing only my underwear. My entire body was beet maroon, slathered in aloe. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. I touched my nostrils and discovered I had been fitted with small green aloe nose plugs.
I sneezed them out.
“My friends?” I asked.
Aloe moved aside. Behind her, Grover Underwood sat cross-legged between Piper’s and Meg’s sleeping bags, both girls fast asleep. Like me, they had been slathered with goo. It was a perfect opportunity to take a picture of Meg with green plugs sticking out of her nostrils, for blackmail purposes, but I was too relieved that she was alive. Also, I didn’t have a phone.
“Will they be all right?” I asked.
“They were in worse shape than you,” Grover said. “It was touch and go for a while, but they’ll pull through. I’ve been feeding them nectar and ambrosia.”
Aloe smiled. “Also, my healing properties are legendary. Just wait. They’ll be up and walking around by dinner.”
Dinner…I looked at the dark orange circle of sky above. Either it was late afternoon, or the wildfires were closer, or both.
“Medea?” I asked.
Grover frowned. “Meg told me about the battle before she passed out, but I don’t know what happened to the sorceress. I never saw her.”
I shivered in my aloe gel. I wanted to believe Medea had died in the fiery explosion, but I doubted we could be so lucky. Helios’s fire hadn’t seemed to bother her. Maybe she was naturally immune. Or maybe she had worked some protective magic on herself.
“Your dryad friends?” I asked. “Agave and Money Maker?”
Aloe and Grover exchanged a sorrowful look.
“Agave might pull through,” said Grover. “She went dormant as soon as we got her back to her plant. But Money Maker…” He shook his head.
I had barely met the dryad. Still, the news of her death hit me hard. I felt as if I were dropping green leaf-coins from my body, shedding essential pieces of myself.
I thought about Herophile’s words in my dream: It won’t seem worth it to you. I’m not sure it is myself. But you must come. You must hold them together in their grief.
I feared that Money Maker’s death was only one small part of the grief that awaited us.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Aloe patted my greasy shoulder. “It isn’t your fault, Apollo. By the time you found her, she was too far gone. Unless you’d had…”
She stopped herself, but I knew what she’d intended to say: Unless you’d had your godly healing powers. A lot would have been different if I’d been a god, not a pretender in this pathetic Lester Papadopoulos disguise.
Grover touched the blowgun at Piper’s side. The river-cane tube had been badly charred, pitted with burn holes that would probably make it unusable.
“Something else you should know,” he said. “When Agave and I carried Money Maker out of the maze? That big-eared guard, the guy with the white fur? He was gone.”
I considered this. “You mean he died and disintegrated? Or he got up and walked away?”
“I don’t know,” Grover said. “Does either seem likely?”
Neither did, but I decided we had bigger problems to think about.
“Tonight,” I said, “when Piper and Meg wake up, we need to have another meeting with your dryad friends. We’re going to put this Burning Maze out of business, once and for all.”
OUR council of war was more like a council of wincing.
Thanks to Grover’s magic and Aloe Vera’s constant sliming (I mean attention), Piper and Meg regained consciousness. By dinnertime, the three of us could wash, get dressed, and even walk around without screaming too much, but we still hurt a great deal. Every time I stood up too fast, tiny golden Caligulas danced before my eyes.
Piper’s blowgun and quiver—both heirlooms from her grandfather—were ruined. Her hair was singed. Her burned arms, glistening with aloe, looked like newly glazed brick. She called her father to warn him she would be spending the night with her study group, then settled into one of the Cistern’s brickwork alcoves with Mellie and Hedge, who kept urging her to drink more water. Baby Chuck sat in Piper’s lap, staring enraptured at her face as if it were the most amazing thing in the world.
As for Meg, she sat glumly by the pool, her feet in the water, a plate of cheese enchiladas in her lap. She wore a baby blue T-shirt from Macro’s Military Madness featuring a smiling cartoon AK-47 with the caption: SHOOTIE’S JUNIOR MARKSMAN CLUB! Next to her sat Agave, looking dejected, though a new green spike had started to grow where her withered arm had fallen off. Her dryad friends kept coming by, offering her fertilizer and water and enchiladas, but Agave shook her head glumly, staring at the collection of fallen money maker petals in her hand.
Money Maker, I was told, had been planted on the hillside with full dryad honors. Hopefully, she would be reincarnated as a beautiful new succulent, or perhaps a white-tailed antelope squirrel. Money Maker had always loved those.
Grover looked exhausted. Playing all the healing music had taken its toll, not to mention the stress of driving back to Palm Springs at unsafe speeds in the borrowed/slightly stolen Bedrossian-mobile with five critical burn victims.
Once we had all gathered—condolences exchanged, enchiladas eaten, aloe slimed—I began the meeting.
“All of this,” I announced, “is my fault.”
You can imagine how difficult this was for me to say. The words simply had not been in the vocabulary of Apollo. I half hoped the collected dryads, satyrs, and demigods would rush to reassure me that I was blameless. They did not.
I forged on. “Caligula’s goal has always been the same: to make himself a god. He saw his ancestors immortalized after their deaths: Julius, Augustus, even disgusting old Tiberius. But Caligula didn’t want to wait for death. He was the first Roman emperor who wanted to be a living god.”
Piper looked up from playing with the baby satyr. “Caligula kind of is a minor god now, right? You said he and the two other emperors have been around for thousands of years. So he got what he wanted.”
“Partly,” I agreed. “But being a minor anything isn’t enough for Caligula. He always dreamed of replacing one of the Olympians. He toyed with the idea of becoming the new Jupiter or Mars. In the end, he set his sights on being”—I swallowed the sour taste from my mouth—“the new me.”
Coach Hedge scratched his goatee. (Hmm. If a goat wears a goatee, is it a man-tee?) “So, what? Caligula kills you, puts on a Hi, I’m Apollo! name tag, and walks into Olympus hoping nobody notices?”
“It would be worse than killing me,” I said. “He would consume my essenc
e, along with the essence of Helios, to make himself the new sun god.”
Prickly Pear bristled. “The other Olympians would just allow this?”
“The Olympians,” I said bitterly, “allowed Zeus to strip me of my powers and toss me to earth. They’ve done half of Caligula’s job for him. They won’t interfere. As usual, they’ll expect heroes to set things right. If Caligula does become the new sun god, I will be gone. Permanently gone. That’s what Medea has been preparing for with the Burning Maze. It’s a giant cooking pot for sun-god soup.”
Meg wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”
For once, I was in total agreement with her.
Standing in the shadows, Joshua Tree crossed his arms. “So the fires of Helios—that’s what’s killing our land?”
I spread my hands. “Well, humans aren’t helping. But on top of the usual pollution and climate change, yes, the Burning Maze was the tipping point. Everything that’s left of the Titan Helios is now coursing through this section of the Labyrinth under Southern California, slowly turning the top side into a fiery wasteland.”
Agave touched the side of her scarred face. When she looked up at me, her stare was as pointed as her collar. “If Medea succeeds, will all the power go into Caligula? Will the maze stop burning and killing us?”
I had never considered cacti a particularly vicious life-form, but as the other dryads studied me, I could imagine them tying me up with a ribbon and a large card that said FOR CALIGULA, FROM NATURE and dropping me on the emperor’s doorstep.
“Guys, that won’t help,” Grover said. “Caligula’s responsible for what’s happening to us right now. He doesn’t care about nature spirits. You really want to give him the full power of a sun god?”
The dryads muttered in reluctant agreement. I made a mental note to send Grover a nice card on Goat Appreciation Day.