The Trials of Apollo, Book One: The Hidden Oracle

by Rick Riordan

  I’m not sure how I found the nest.

  Perhaps the forest simply allowed me to reach it, knowing that I was marching to my death. I’ve found that when one is searching for danger, it’s never hard to find.

  Soon I was crouched behind a fallen tree, studying the myrmekes’ lair in the clearing ahead. To call the place an anthill would be like calling Versailles Palace a single-family home. Earthen ramparts rose almost to the tops of the surrounding trees—a hundred feet at least. The circumference could have accommodated a Roman hippodrome. A steady stream of soldiers and drones swarmed in and out of the mound. Some carried fallen trees. One, inexplicably, was dragging a 1967 Chevy Impala.

  How many ants would I be facing? I had no idea. After you reach the number impossible, there’s no point in counting.

  I nocked an arrow and stepped into the clearing.

  When the nearest myrmeke spotted me, he dropped his Chevy. He watched me approach, his antennae bobbing. I ignored him and strolled past, heading for the nearest tunnel entrance. That confused him even more.

  Several other ants gathered to watch.

  I’ve learned that if you act like you are supposed to be somewhere, most people (or ants) will not confront you. Normally, acting confident isn’t a problem for me. Gods are allowed to be anywhere. It was a bit tougher for Lester Papadopoulos, dork teen extraordinaire, but I made it all the way to the nest without being challenged.

  I plunged inside and began to sing.

  This time I needed no ukulele. I needed no muse for my inspiration. I remembered Daphne’s face in the trees. I remembered Hyacinthus turning away, his death wound glistening on his scalp. My voice filled with anguish. I sang of heartbreak. Rather than collapsing under my own despair, I projected it outward.

  The tunnels amplified my voice, carrying it through the nest, making the entire hill my musical instrument.

  Each time I passed an ant, it curled its legs and touched its forehead to the floor, its antennae quivering from the vibrations of my voice.

  Had I been a god, the song would have been stronger, but this was enough. I was impressed by how much sorrow a human voice could convey.

  I wandered deeper into the hill. I had no idea where I was going until I spotted a geranium blooming from the tunnel floor.

  My song faltered.

  Meg. She must have regained consciousness. She had dropped one of her emergency seeds to leave me a trail. The geranium’s purple flowers all faced a smaller tunnel leading off to the left.

  “Clever girl,” I said, choosing that tunnel.

  A clattering sound alerted me to the approaching myrmeke.

  I turned and raised my bow. Freed from the enchantment of my voice, the insect charged, its mouth foaming with acid. I drew and fired. The arrow embedded itself up to the fletching in the ant’s forehead.

  The creature dropped, its back legs twitching in death throes. I tried to retrieve my arrow, but the shaft snapped in my hand, the broken end covered in steaming corrosive goo. So much for reusing ammunition.

  I called, “MEG!”

  The only answer was the clattering of more giant ants moving in my direction. I began to sing again. Now, though, I had higher hopes of finding Meg, which made it difficult to summon the proper amount of melancholy. The ants I encountered were no longer catatonic. They moved slowly and unsteadily, but they still attacked. I was forced to shoot one after another.

  I passed a cave filled with glittering treasure, but I was not interested in shiny things at the moment. I kept moving.

  At the next intersection, another geranium sprouted from the floor, all its flowers facing right. I turned that direction, calling Meg’s name again, then returning to my song.

  As my spirits lifted, my song became less effective and the ants more aggressive. After a dozen kills, my quiver was growing dangerously light.

  I had to reach deeper into my feelings of despair. I had to get the blues, good and proper.

  For the first time in four thousand years, I sang of my own faults.

  I poured out my guilt about Daphne’s death. My boastfulness, envy, and desire had caused her destruction. When she ran from me, I should have let her go. Instead, I chased her relentlessly. I wanted her, and I intended to have her. Because of that, I had left Daphne no choice. To escape me, she sacrificed her life and turned into a tree, leaving my heart scarred forever….But it was my fault. I apologized in song. I begged Daphne’s forgiveness.

  I sang of Hyacinthus, the most handsome of men. The West Wind Zephyros had also loved him, but I refused to share even a moment of Hyacinthus’s time. In my jealousy, I threatened Zephyros. I dared him, dared him to interfere.

  I sang of the day Hyacinthus and I played discus in the fields, and how the West Wind blew my disc off course—right into the side of Hyacinthus’s head.

  To keep Hyacinthus in the sunlight where he belonged, I created hyacinth flowers from his blood. I held Zephyros accountable, but my own petty greed had caused Hyacinthus’s death. I poured out my sorrow. I took all the blame.

  I sang of my failures, my eternal heartbreak and loneliness. I was the worst of the gods, the most guilt-ridden and unfocused. I couldn’t commit myself to one lover. I couldn’t even choose what to be the god of. I kept shifting from one skill to another—distracted and dissatisfied.

  My golden life was a sham. My coolness was pretense. My heart was a lump of petrified wood.

  All around me, myrmekes collapsed. The nest itself trembled with grief.

  I found a third geranium, then a fourth.

  Finally, pausing between verses, I heard a small voice up ahead: the sound of a girl crying.

  “Meg!” I gave up on my song and ran.

  She lay in the middle of a cavernous food larder, just as I had imagined. Around her were stacked the carcasses of animals—cows, deer, horses—all sheathed in hardened goop and slowly decaying. The smell hit my nasal passages like an avalanche.

  Meg was also enveloped, but she was fighting back with the power of geraniums. Patches of leaves sprouted from the thinnest parts of her cocoon. A frilly collar of flowers kept the goo away from her face. She had even managed to free one of her arms, thanks to an explosion of pink geraniums at her left armpit.

  Her eyes were puffy from crying. I assumed she was frightened, possibly in pain, but when I knelt next to her, her first words were, “I’m so sorry.”

  I brushed a tear from the tip of her nose. “Why, dear Meg? You did nothing wrong. I failed you.”

  A sob caught in her throat. “You don’t understand. That song you were singing. Oh, gods…Apollo, if I’d known—”

  “Hush, now.” My throat was so raw I could barely talk. The song had almost destroyed my voice. “You’re just reacting to the grief in the music. Let’s get you free.”

  I was considering how to do that when Meg’s eyes widened. She made a whimpering sound.

  The hairs on the nape of my neck came to attention. “There are ants behind me, aren’t there?” I asked.

  Meg nodded.

  I turned as four of them entered the cavern. I reached for my quiver. I had one arrow left.

  Parenting advice:

  Mamas, don’t let your larvae

  Grow up to be ants

  MEG THRASHED IN HER GOO CASE. “Get me out of here!”

  “I don’t have a blade!” My fingers crept to the ukulele string around my neck. “Actually I have your blades, I mean your rings—”

  “You don’t need to cut me out. When the ant dumped me here, I dropped the packet of seeds. It should be close.”

  She was right. I spotted the crumpled pouch near her feet.

  I inched toward it, keeping one eye on the ants. They stood together at the entrance as if hesitant to come closer. Perhaps the trail of dead ants leading to this room had given them pause.

  “Nice ants,” I said. “Excellent calm ants.”

  I crouched and scooped up the packet. A quick glance inside told me half a dozen seeds remain
ed. “Now what, Meg?”

  “Throw them on the goo,” Meg said.

  I gestured to the geraniums bursting from her neck and armpit. “How many seeds did that?”

  “One.”

  “Then this many will choke you to death. I’ve turned too many people I cared about into flowers, Meg. I won’t—”

  “JUST DO IT!”

  The ants did not like her tone. They advanced, snapping their mandibles. I shook the geranium seeds over Meg’s cocoon, then nocked my arrow. Killing one ant would do no good if the other three tore us apart, so I chose a different target. I shot the roof of the cavern, just above the ants’ heads.

  It was a desperate idea, but I’d had success bringing down buildings with arrows before. In 464 BCE, I caused an earthquake that wiped out most of Sparta by hitting a fault line at the right angle. (I never liked the Spartans much.)

  This time, I had less luck. The arrow embedded itself in the packed earth with a dull thunk. The ants took another step forward, acid dripping from their mouths. Behind me, Meg struggled to free herself from her cocoon, which was now covered in a shag carpet of purple flowers.

  She needed more time.

  Out of ideas, I tugged my Brazilian-flag handkerchief from my neck and waved it like a maniac, trying to channel my inner Paolo.

  “BACK, FOUL ANTS!” I yelled. “BRASIL!”

  The ants wavered—perhaps because of the bright colors, or my voice, or my sudden insane confidence. While they hesitated, cracks spread across the roof from my arrow’s impact site, and then thousands of tons of earth collapsed on top of the myrmekes.

  When the dust cleared, half the room was gone, along with the ants.

  I looked at my handkerchief. “I’ll be Styxed. It does have magic power. I can never tell Paolo about this or he’ll be insufferable.”

  “Over here!” Meg yelled.

  I turned. Another myrmeke was crawling over a pile of carcasses—apparently from a second exit I had failed to notice behind the disgusting food stores.

  Before I could think what to do, Meg roared and burst from her cage, spraying geraniums in every direction. She shouted, “My rings!”

  I yanked them from my neck and tossed them through the air. As soon as Meg caught them, two golden scimitars flashed into her hands.

  The myrmeke barely had time to think Uh-oh before Meg charged. She sliced off his armored head. His body collapsed in a steaming heap.

  Meg turned to me. Her face was a tempest of guilt, misery, and bitterness. I was afraid she might use her swords on me.

  “Apollo, I…” Her voice broke.

  I supposed she was still suffering from the effects of my song. She was shaken to her core. I made a mental note never again to sing so honestly when a mortal might be listening.

  “It’s all right, Meg,” I said. “I should be apologizing to you. I got you into this mess.”

  Meg shook her head. “You don’t understand. I—”

  An enraged shriek echoed through the chamber, shaking the compromised ceiling and raining clods of dirt on our heads. The tone of the scream reminded me of Hera whenever she stormed through the hallways of Olympus, yelling at me for leaving the godly toilet seat up.

  “That’s the queen ant,” I guessed. “We need to leave.”

  Meg pointed her sword toward the room’s only remaining exit. “But the sound came from there. We’ll be walking in her direction.”

  “Exactly. So perhaps we should hold off on making amends with each other, eh? We might still get each other killed.”

  We found the queen ant.

  Hooray.

  All corridors must have led to the queen. They radiated from her chamber like spikes on a morning star. Her Majesty was three times the size of her largest soldiers—a towering mass of black chitin and barbed appendages, with diaphanous oval wings folded against her back. Her eyes were glassy swimming pools of onyx. Her abdomen was a pulsing translucent sac filled with glowing eggs. The sight of it made me regret ever inventing gel capsule medications.

  Her swollen abdomen might slow her down in a fight, but she was so large, she could intercept us before we reached the nearest exit. Those mandibles would snap us in half like dried twigs.

  “Meg,” I said, “how do you feel about dual-wielding scimitars against this lady?”

  Meg looked appalled. “She’s a mother giving birth.”

  “Yes…and she’s an insect, which you hate. And her children were ripening you up for dinner.”

  Meg frowned. “Still…I don’t feel right about it.”

  The queen hissed—a dry spraying noise. I imagined she would have already hosed us down with acid if she weren’t worried about the long-term effects of corrosives on her larvae. Queen ants can’t be too careful these days.

  “You have another idea?” I asked Meg. “Preferably one that does not involve dying?”

  She pointed to a tunnel directly behind the queen’s clutch of eggs. “We need to go that way. It leads to the grove.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Meg tilted her head. “Trees. It’s like…I can hear them growing.”

  That reminded me of something the Muses once told me—how they could actually hear the ink drying on new pages of poetry. I suppose it made sense that a daughter of Demeter could hear the growth of plants. Also, it didn’t surprise me that the tunnel we needed was the most dangerous one to reach.

  “Sing,” Meg told me. “Sing like you did before.”

  “I—I can’t. My voice is almost gone.”

  Besides, I thought, I don’t want to risk losing you again.

  I had freed Meg, so perhaps I’d fulfilled my oath to Pete the geyser god. Still, by singing and practicing archery, I had broken my oath upon the River Styx not once but twice. More singing would only make me more of a scofflaw. Whatever cosmic punishments awaited me, I did not want them to fall on Meg.

  Her Majesty snapped at us—a warning shot, telling us to back off. A few feet closer and my head would have rolled in the dirt.

  I burst into song—or rather, I did the best I could with the raspy voice that remained. I began to rap. I started with the rhythm boom chicka chicka. I busted out some footwork the Nine Muses and I had been working on just before the war with Gaea.

  The queen arched her back. I don’t think she had expected to be rapped to today.

  I gave Meg a look that clearly meant Help me out!

  She shook her head. Give the girl two swords and she was a maniac. Ask her to lay down a simple beat and she suddenly got stage fright.

  Fine, I thought. I’ll do it by myself.

  I launched into “Dance” by Nas, which I have to say was one of the most moving odes to mothers that I ever inspired an artist to write. (You’re welcome, Nas.) I took some liberties with the lyrics. I may have changed angel to brood mother and woman to insect. But the sentiment remained. I serenaded the pregnant queen, channeling my love for my own dear mother, Leto. When I sang that I could only wish to marry a woman (or insect) so fine someday, my heartbreak was real. I would never have such a partner. It was not in my destiny.

  The queen’s antennae quivered. Her head seesawed back and forth. Eggs kept extruding from her abdomen, which made it difficult for me to concentrate, but I persevered.

  When I was done, I dropped to one knee and held up my arms in tribute, waiting for the queen’s verdict. Either she would kill me or she would not. I was spent. I had poured everything into that song and could not rap another line.

  Next to me, Meg stood very still, gripping her swords.

  Her Majesty shuddered. She threw back her head and wailed—a sound more brokenhearted than angry.

  She leaned down and gently nudged my chest, pushing me in the direction of the tunnel we needed.

  “Thank you,” I croaked. “I—I’m sorry about the ants I killed.”

  The queen purred and clicked, extruding a few more eggs as if to say, Don’t worry; I can always make more.

  I stroked the quee
n ant’s forehead. “May I call you Mama?”

  Her mouth frothed in a pleased sort of way.

  “Apollo,” Meg urged, “let’s go before she changes her mind.”

  I was not sure Mama would change her mind. I got the feeling she had accepted my fealty and adopted us into her brood. But Meg was right; we needed to hurry. Mama watched as we edged around her clutch of eggs.

  We plunged into the tunnel and saw the glow of daylight above us.

  Nightmares of torches

  And a man in purple clothes

  But that’s not the worst

  I HAD NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY to see a killing field.

  We emerged into a glade littered with bones. Most were from forest animals. A few appeared human. I guessed we had found the myrmekes’ dumping site, and they apparently didn’t get regular garbage pickup.

  The clearing was hemmed with trees so thick and tangled that traveling through them would’ve been impossible. Over our heads, the branches wove together in a leafy dome that let in sunlight but not much else. Anyone flying above the forest would never have realized this open space existed under the canopy.

  At the far end of the glade stood a row of objects like football tackle dummies—six white cocoons staked on tall wooden poles, flanking a pair of enormous oaks. Each tree was at least eighty feet tall. They had grown so close together that their massive trunks appeared to have fused. I had the distinct impression I was looking at a set of living doors.

  “It’s a gateway,” I said. “To the Grove of Dodona.”

  Meg’s blades retracted, once again becoming gold rings on her middle fingers. “Aren’t we in the grove?”

  “No…” I stared across the clearing at the white cocoon Popsicles. They were too far away to make out clearly, but something about them seemed familiar in an evil, unwelcome sort of way. I wanted to get closer. I also wanted to keep my distance.

  “I think this is more of an antechamber,” I said. “The grove itself is behind those trees.”

  Meg gazed warily across the field. “I don’t hear any voices.”

  It was true. The forest was absolutely quiet. The trees seemed to be holding their breath.