The Tower of Nero

by Rick Riordan

  I suppose I could have raged at him and called him bad names. We were alone. He probably expected it. Given his awkward self-consciousness at the moment, he might even have let me get away with it unpunished.

  But it would not have changed him. It would not have made anything different between us.

  You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him. Meg could never have changed Nero, any more than I could change Zeus. I could only try to be different than him. Better. More…human. And to limit the time I spent around him to as little as possible.

  I nodded. “I understand, Father.”

  Zeus seemed to understand that what I understood was not perhaps the same thing he understood, but he accepted the gesture, I suppose because he had little choice.

  “Very well. So…welcome home.”

  I rose from my throne. “Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  I dissolved into golden light. There were several other places I’d rather be, and I intended to visit them all.

  AS A GOD, I COULD SPLIT MYSELF INTO multiple parts. I could exist in many different places at once.

  Because of this, I can’t tell you with absolute certainty which of the following encounters came first. Read them in any order you like. I was determined to see all my friends again, no matter where they were, and give them equal attention at roughly the same time.

  First, though, I must mention my horses. No judgment, please. I had missed them. Because they were immortal, they did not need sustenance to survive. Nor did they absolutely have to make their daily journey through the sky in order to keep the sun going, thanks to all the other solar gods out there, still powering the movements of the cosmos, and that other thing called astrophysics. Still, I worried that my horses hadn’t been fed or taken out for exercise in at least six months, perhaps a whole year, which tended to make them grumpy. For reasons I shouldn’t have to explain, you don’t want your sun being pulled across the sky by grumpy horses.

  I materialized at the entrance of the sun palace and found that my valets had abandoned their posts. This happens when you don’t pay them their gold drachma every day. I could barely push open the front door because months of mail had been shoved through the slot. Bills. Ad circulars. Credit card offers. Appeals for charities like Godwill and Dryads Without Borders. I suppose Hermes found it amusing to deliver me so much snail mail. I would have to have a talk with that guy.

  I also hadn’t put a stop to my automatic deliveries from the Amazons, so the portico was piled high with shipping boxes filled with toothpaste, laundry detergent, guitar strings, reams of blank tablature, and coconut-scented suntan lotion.

  Inside, the palace had reverted to its old Helios smell, as it did every time I was gone for an extended period. Its former owner had baked the place with the scent of Titan: pungent and saccharine, slightly reminiscent of Axe body spray. I’d have to open some windows and burn some sage.

  A layer of dust had accumulated on my golden throne. Some jokers had written WASH ME on the back of the chair. Stupid venti, probably.

  In the stables, my horses were glad to see me. They kicked at their stalls, blew fire, and whinnied indignantly, as if to say, Where the Hades have you been?

  I fed them their favorite gilded straw, then filled their nectar trough. I gave them each a good brushing and whispered sweet nothings in their ears until they stopped kicking me in the groin, which I took as a sign that they forgave me.

  It felt good to do something so routine—something I’d done millions of times before. (Taking care of horses, I mean. Not getting kicked in the groin.) I still didn’t feel like my old self. I didn’t really want to feel like my old self. But being in my stables felt much more comfortable and familiar than being on Olympus.

  I split myself into separate Apollos and sent one of me on my daily ride across the sky. I was determined to give the world a regular day, to show everyone that I was back at the reins and feeling good. No solar flares, no droughts or wildfires today. Just Apollo being Apollo.

  I hoped that this part of me would serve as my steady rudder, my grounding force, while I visited my other stops.

  The welcome I received at Camp Half-Blood was uproarious and beautiful.

  “LESTER!” the campers chanted. “LESTER!”

  “LESTER?!”

  “LESTER!”

  I had chosen to appear in my old Papadopoulos form. Why not my glowing perfect god bod? Or one of the Bangtan Boys, or Paul McCartney circa 1965? After complaining for so many months about my flabby, acne-spotted Lester meat sack, I now found that I felt at home in that form. When I’d first met Meg, she had assured me that Lester’s appearance was perfectly normal. At the time, the notion had horrified me. Now I found it reassuring.

  “Hello!” I cried, accepting group hugs that threatened to deteriorate into stampedes. “Yes, it’s me! Yep, I made it back to Olympus!”

  Only two weeks had passed, but the newbie campers who had seemed so young and awkward when I first arrived now carried themselves like demigod veterans. Going through a major battle (sorry, “field trip”) will do that to you. Chiron looked enormously proud of his trainees—and of me, as if I were one of them.

  “You did well, Apollo,” he said, gripping my shoulder like the affectionate father I’d never had. “You are always welcome here at camp.”

  Ugly weeping would not have been appropriate for a major Olympian god, so that’s exactly what I did.

  Kayla, Austin, and I hugged each other and wept some more. I had to keep my godly powers firmly under control, or my joy and relief might have exploded in a firestorm of happiness and obliterated the whole valley.

  I asked about Meg, but they told me she had already left. She’d gone back to Palm Springs, to her father’s old home, with Luguselwa and her foster siblings from Nero’s Imperial Household. The idea of Meg handling that volatile group of demigods with only the help of LuBeard the Pirate made me uneasy.

  “Is she well?” I asked Austin.

  He hesitated. “Yeah. I mean…” His eyes were haunted, as if remembering the many things we’d all seen and done in Nero’s tower. “You know. She will be.”

  I set aside my worries for the moment and continued making rounds among my friends. If they felt nervous that I was a god again, they hid it well. As for me, I made a conscious effort to stay cool, not to grow twenty feet tall or burst into golden flames every time I saw someone I liked.

  I found Dionysus sitting glumly on the porch of the Big House, sipping a Diet Coke. I sat down across from him at the pinochle table.

  “Well,” he said with a sigh, “it appears some of us do get happy endings.”

  I think he was pleased for me, in his own way. At least, he tried to tamp down the bitterness in his voice. I couldn’t blame him for feeling salty.

  My punishment was over, yet his continued. A hundred years compared to my six months.

  To be honest, though, I could no longer consider my time on Earth to have been a punishment. Terrible, tragic, nearly impossible…yes. But calling it a punishment gave Zeus too much credit. It had been a journey—an important one I made myself, with the help of my friends. I hoped…I believed that the grief and pain had shaped me into a better person. I had forged a more perfect Lester from the dregs of Apollo. I would not trade those experiences for anything. And if I had been told I had to be Lester for another hundred years…well, I could think of worse things. At least I wouldn’t be expected to show up at the Olympian solstice meetings.

  “You will have your happy ending, Brother,” I told Dionysus.

  He studied me. “You speak as the god of prophecy?”

  “No.” I smiled. “Just as someone with faith.”

  “Surely not faith in our father’s wisdom.”

  I laughed. “Faith in our ability to write our own stories, regardless of what the Fates throw at us. Faith that you will find a way to make wine out of your sour grapes.”

  “How deep,” Dionysus muttered, though I detected a f
aint smile at the corners of his mouth. He gestured to his game table. “Pinochle, perhaps? At that, at least, I know I can dominate you.”

  I stayed with him that afternoon, and he won six games. He only cheated a little.

  Before dinner, I teleported to the Grove of Dodona, deep within the camp’s forest.

  Just as before, the ancient trees whispered in a cacophony of voices—snatches of riddles and songs, bits of doggerel (some of it actually about dogs), recipes, and weather reports, none of it making much sense. Brass wind chimes twisted in the branches, reflecting the evening light and catching every breeze.

  “Hello!” I called. “I came to thank you!”

  The trees continued to whisper, ignoring my presence.

  “You gave me the Arrow of Dodona as my guide!” I continued.

  I detected a tittering of laughter among the trees.

  “Without the arrow,” I said, “my quest would have failed. It sacrificed itself to defeat Python. Truly, it was the greatest in all the grove!”

  If the trees could have made a screechy rewind noise, I’m sure they would have. Their whispering died away. The brass chimes hung lifeless in the branches.

  “Its wisdom was invaluable,” I said. “Its sacrifice noble. It represented you with honor. I will certainly tell this grove’s guardian, my grandmother Rhea, all about its great service. She will hear what you did—that when I needed aid, you sent your best.”

  The trees began whispering again, more nervously this time. Wait. Wait, we didn’t…What?

  I teleported away before they could see me smile. I hoped that wherever its spirit was, my friend the arrow was having a laugh worthy of a Shakespearean comedy.

  That night, after the campfire, I sat watching the embers burn down with Nico, Will, and Rachel.

  The boys sat comfortably next to each other, Will’s arm around Nico’s shoulder, as the son of Hades twirled a burnt marshmallow on a stick. Next to me, Rachel hugged her knees and stared contentedly at the stars, the dying fire reflecting in her red hair like a charging herd of tauri silvestres.

  “Everything’s working again,” she told me, tapping the side of her head. “The visions are clear. I can paint. I’ve issued a couple of prophecies already. No more snake poison in my mind. Thank you.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “And your parents’ destroyed house?”

  She laughed. “Turned out to be a good thing. Before, my dad had wanted me to stay around here in the fall. Now, he says maybe it’s a good idea if I do what I wanted to begin with. Gonna take a gap year in Paris to study art while they rebuild the house.”

  “Oh, Paris!” Will said.

  Rachel grinned. “Right? But don’t worry, I’ll be back here next summer to dish out more oracular awesomeness.”

  “And if we need you in the meantime,” Nico said, “there’s always shadow-travel.”

  Will sighed. “I’d love to think you’re suggesting a date night in Paris, Mr. Dark Lord. But you’re still thinking about Tartarus, aren’t you? Hoping for some prophetic guidance?”

  Nico shrugged. “Unfinished business…”

  I frowned. It seemed like so long ago they had mentioned this to me—Nico’s compulsion to explore the depths of Tartarus, the voice he had heard, calling for help.

  I didn’t want to open fresh wounds, but I asked as gently as I could, “You’re sure it’s not…Jason?”

  Nico picked at his blackened marshmallow. “I won’t lie. I’ve wondered about that. I’ve thought about trying to find Jason. But, no, this isn’t about him.” He snuggled a little closer to Will. “I have a sense that Jason made his choice. I wouldn’t be honoring his sacrifice if I tried to undo it. With Hazel…She was just drifting in Asphodel. I could tell she wasn’t supposed to be there. She needed to come back. With Jason, I have a feeling he’s somewhere better now.”

  “Like Elysium?” I wondered. “Rebirth?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Nico admitted.

  I shook my head. “I’m afraid I’m clueless about after-death matters. But if it’s not Jason you’re thinking about…?”

  Nico twirled his s’more stick. “When I was in Tartarus the first time, somebody helped me. And I—we left him down there. I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Should I be jealous?” Will asked.

  “He’s a Titan, dummy,” Nico said.

  I sat up straight. “A Titan?”

  “Long story,” Nico said. “But he’s not a bad guy. He’s…Well, I feel like I should look for him, see if I can figure out what happened. He might need my help. I don’t like it when people are overlooked.”

  Rachel bunched up her shoulders. “Hades wouldn’t mind you traipsing down to Tartarus?”

  Nico laughed without humor. “He’s expressly forbidden it. After that business with the Doors of Death, he doesn’t want anybody in Tartarus ever again. That’s where the troglodytes come in. They can tunnel anywhere, even there. They can get us in and out safely.”

  “Safely being a relative term,” Will noted, “given that the whole idea is bonkers.”

  I frowned. I still didn’t like the idea of my sunshiny son skipping off into the land of monster nightmares. My recent tumble to the edge of Chaos had reminded me what a terrible travel destination it was. Then again, it wasn’t my place to tell demigods what to do, especially those I loved the most. I didn’t want to be that kind of god anymore.

  “I wish I could offer you help,” I said, “but I’m afraid Tartarus is outside my jurisdiction.”

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Will said. “You’ve done your part. No story ever ends, does it? It just leads into others.” He laced his fingers through Nico’s. “We’ll handle whatever comes next. Together. With or without a prophecy—”

  I swear I had nothing to do with it. I did not press a button on Rachel’s back. I did not prearrange a surprise gift from Delphic Deliveries.

  But as soon as Will said the word prophecy, Rachel went rigid. She inhaled sharply. A green mist rose from the earth, swirling around her and coiling into her lungs. She tipped over sideways while Nico and Will lunged to catch her.

  As for me, I scrambled away in a very ungodlike manner, my heart beating like a frightened Lester. I guess all that green gas reminded me too much of my recent quality time with Python.

  By the time my panic subsided, the prophetic moment had passed. The gas had dissipated. Rachel lay comfortable on the ground, Will and Nico both standing over her with perturbed looks.

  “Did you hear it?” Nico asked me. “The prophecy she whispered?”

  “I—I didn’t,” I admitted. “Probably better if…if I let you two figure this one out.”

  Will nodded, resigned. “Well, it didn’t sound good.”

  “No, I’m sure it didn’t.” I looked down fondly at Rachel Dare. “She’s a wonderful Oracle.”

  THE WAYSTATION FELT SO DIFFERENT IN the summer.

  Emmie’s rooftop garden was bursting at the seams with tomatoes, peas, cabbage, and watermelon. The great hall was bursting at the seams with old friends.

  The Hunters of Artemis were in residence, having taken quite a beating on their most recent excursion to catch the Teumessian Fox.

  “That fox is murder,” said Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, rubbing her bruised neck. “Led us right into a den of werewolves, the little punk.”

  “Ugh,” agreed Thalia Grace, pulling a werewolf tooth out of her leather cuirass. “TF spreads destruction everywhere he goes.”

  “TF?” I asked.

  “Easier than saying Teumessian Fox twenty times a day,” Thalia told me. “Anyway, the fox runs through a town and stirs up every monster within twenty miles. Peoria is pretty much in ruins.”

  This sounded like a tragic loss, but I was more concerned with my Hunter buddies.

  “Are you regretting your decision to join up?” I asked Reyna.

  She grinned. “Not for a minute. This is fun!”

  Thalia punched her in the shoulder. “
Great Hunter, this one. I knew she would be. We’ll get that fox one of these days.”

  Emmie called to them from the kitchen to help with dinner, because the carrots weren’t going to dice themselves. The two friends strode off together, laughing and sharing stories. It did my heart good to see them so happy, even if their version of fun was a never-ending foxhunt that destroyed large portions of the Midwest.

  Jo was teaching Georgina, their daughter (and possibly mine, too), to forge weapons in the smithy. When Georgina saw me, she looked unexcited, as if we’d just parted a few minutes ago. “You keep my doll?” she demanded.

  “Ah…” I could have lied. I could have magically produced an exact likeness of the pipe-cleaner figure and said Of course. But the truth was, I had no idea where the little guy had ended up, perhaps in Delphi or Tartarus or Chaos? I told her the truth. “Would you make me another one?”

  Georgina thought about this. “Nah.”

  Then she went back to quenching hot blades with her mom.

  The swordsman Lityerses seemed to be adjusting well. He was overseeing an “elephant visitation program” with Waystation resident Livia and Hannibal from Camp Jupiter. The two pachyderms were romping around together in the back lot, flirting by throwing medicine balls at each other.

  After dinner, I got to visit with Leo Valdez, who had just straggled back home after a full day of community service. He was teaching homeless kids shop skills at a local shelter.

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  He grinned, biting off a chunk of Emmie’s fresh-made buttermilk biscuits. “Yeah. Bunch of kids like me, you know? They never had much. Least I can show them somebody cares. Plus, some of them are excellent mechanics.”

  “Don’t you need tools?” I asked. “A shop?”

  “Festus!” Leo said. “A bronze dragon makes the best mobile shop. Most of the kids just see him as a truck, with the Mist and all, but a few of them…they know what’s up.”

  Jo passed by on her way to the griffin lofts and patted him on the shoulder. “Doing good, this one. He’s got potential.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Leo said.