Percy Jackson The Complete Collection (73 page)

‘I will now announce your partners,’ Quintus said. ‘There will be no trading. No switching. No complaining.’

‘Aroooof!’ Mrs O’Leary buried her face in a plate of pizza.

Quintus produced a big scroll and started reading off names. Beckendorf would be with Silena Beauregard, which Beckendorf looked pretty happy about. The Stoll brothers, Travis and Connor, would be together. No surprise. They did everything together. Clarisse was with Lee Fletcher from the Apollo cabin – melee and ranged combat combined, they would be a tough combo to beat. Quintus kept rattling off the names until he said, ‘Percy Jackson with Annabeth Chase.’

‘Nice.’ I grinned at Annabeth.

‘Your armour is crooked,’ was her only comment, and she redid my straps for me.

‘Grover Underwood,’ Quintus said, ‘with Tyson.’

Grover just about jumped out of his goat fur. ‘What? B-but –’

‘No, no,’ Tyson whimpered. ‘Must be a mistake. Goat boy –’

‘No complaining!’ Quintus ordered. ‘Get with your partner. You have two minutes to prepare!’

Tyson and Grover both looked at me pleadingly. I tried to give them an encouraging nod, and gestured that they should move together. Tyson sneezed. Grover started chewing nervously on his wooden club.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Annabeth said. ‘Come on. Let’s worry about how we’re going to stay alive.’

It was still light when we got into the woods, but the shadows from the trees made it feel like midnight. It was cold, too, even in summer. Annabeth and I found tracks almost immediately – scuttling marks made by something with a lot of legs. We began to follow the trail.

We jumped a creek and heard some twigs snapping nearby. We crouched behind a boulder, but it was only the Stoll brothers tripping through the woods and cursing. Their dad was the god of thieves, but they were about as stealthy as water buffaloes.

Once the Stolls had passed, we forged deeper into the west woods, where the monsters were wilder. We were standing on a ledge overlooking a marshy pond when Annabeth tensed. ‘This is where we stopped looking.’

It took me a second to realize what she meant. Last winter, when we’d been searching for Nico di Angelo, this was where we’d given up hope of finding him. Grover, Annabeth and I had stood on this rock, and I’d convinced
them not to tell Chiron the truth: that Nico was a son of Hades. At the time it seemed the right thing to do. I wanted to protect his identity. I wanted to be the one to find him and make things right for what had happened to his sister. Now, six months later, I hadn’t even come close to finding him. It left a bitter taste in my mouth.

‘I saw him last night,’ I said.

Annabeth knitted her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’

I told her about the Iris-message. When I was done, she stared into the shadows of the woods. ‘He’s summoning the dead? That’s not good.’

‘The ghost was giving him bad advice,’ I said. ‘Telling him to take revenge.’

‘Yeah … spirits are never good advisers. They’ve got their own agendas. Old grudges. And they resent the living.’

‘He’s going to come after me,’ I said. ‘The spirit mentioned a maze.’

She nodded. ‘That settles it. We
have
to figure out the Labyrinth.’

‘Maybe,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘But who sent the Iris-message? If Nico didn’t know I was there –’

A branch snapped in the woods. Dry leaves rustled. Something large was moving in the trees, just beyond the ridge.

‘That’s not the Stoll brothers,’ Annabeth whispered.

Together we drew our swords.

We got to Zeus’s Fist, a huge pile of boulders in the middle of the west woods. It was a natural landmark where campers often rendezvoused on hunting expeditions, but now there was nobody around.

‘Over there,’ Annabeth whispered.

‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘Behind us.’

It was weird. Scuttling noises seemed to be coming from several different directions. We were circling the boulders, our swords drawn, when someone right behind us said, ‘Hi.’

We whirled around, and the tree nymph Juniper yelped.

‘Put those down!’ she protested. ‘Dryads don’t like sharp blades, okay?’

‘Juniper,’ Annabeth exhaled. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I live here.’

I lowered my sword. ‘In the boulders?’

She pointed towards the edge of the clearing. ‘In the juniper. Duh.’

It made sense, and I felt kind of stupid. I’d been hanging around dryads for years, but I never really talked to them much. I knew they couldn’t go very far from their tree, which was their source of life. But I didn’t know much else.

‘Are you guys busy?’ Juniper asked.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’re in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we’re trying not to die.’

‘We’re not busy,’ Annabeth said. ‘What’s wrong, Juniper?’

Juniper sniffled. She wiped her silky sleeve under her eyes. ‘It’s Grover. He seems so distraught. All year he’s been out looking for Pan. And every time he comes back, it’s worse. I thought maybe, at first, he was seeing another tree.’

‘No,’ Annabeth said, as Juniper started crying. ‘I’m sure that’s not it.’

‘He had a crush on a blueberry bush once,’ Juniper said miserably.

‘Juniper,’ Annabeth said, ‘Grover would never even
look
at another tree. He’s just stressed out about his searcher’s licence.’

‘He can’t go underground!’ she protested. ‘You can’t let him.’

Annabeth looked uncomfortable. ‘It might be the only way to help him; if we just knew where to start.’

Ah.’ Juniper wiped a green tear off her cheek. ‘About that …’

Another rustle in the woods, and Juniper yelled, ‘Hide!’

Before I could ask why, she went
poof
into green mist.

Annabeth and I turned. Coming out of the woods was a glistening amber insect, three metres long, with jagged pincers, an armoured tail and a sting as long as my sword. A scorpion. Tied to its back was a red silk package.

‘One of us gets behind it,’ Annabeth said, as the thing clattered towards us. ‘Cut off its tail while the other distracts it in front.’

‘I’ll take point,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the invisibility hat.’

She nodded. We’d fought together so many times we knew each other’s moves. We could do this, easy. But it all went wrong when the other two scorpions appeared from the woods.

‘Three?’
Annabeth said. ‘That’s not possible! The whole woods, and half the monsters come at us?’

I swallowed. One, we could take. Two, with a little luck. Three? Doubtful.

The scorpions scurried towards us, whipping their barbed tails like they’d come here just to kill us. Annabeth and I put our backs against the nearest boulder.

‘Climb?’ I said.

‘No time,’ she said.

She was right. The scorpions were already surrounding us. They were so close I could see their hideous mouths foaming, anticipating a nice juicy meal of demigods.

‘Look out!’ Annabeth parried away a sting with the flat of her blade. I stabbed with Riptide, but the scorpion backed out of range. We clambered sideways along the boulders, but the scorpions followed us. I slashed at another one, but going on the offensive was too dangerous. If I went for the body, the tail stabbed downward. If I went for the tail, the thing’s pincers came from either side and tried to grab me. All we could do was defend, and we wouldn’t be able to keep that up for very long.

I took another step sideways, and suddenly there was nothing behind me. It was a crack between two of the largest boulders, something I’d probably passed by a million times, but …

‘In here,’ I said.

Annabeth sliced at a scorpion then looked at me like I was crazy.
‘In there?
It’s too narrow.’

‘I’ll cover you. Go!’

She ducked behind me and started squeezing between the two boulders. Then she yelped and grabbed my armour straps, and suddenly I was tumbling into a pit that hadn’t been there a moment before. I could see the scorpions above us, the purple evening sky and the trees, and then the hole shut like the lens of a camera, and we were in complete darkness.

Our breathing echoed against stone. It was wet and cold. I was sitting on a bumpy floor that seemed to be made of bricks.

I lifted Riptide. The faint glow of the blade was just enough to illuminate Annabeth’s frightened face and the mossy stone walls on either side of us.

‘Wh-where are we?’ Annabeth said.

‘Safe from scorpions, anyway.’ I tried to sound calm, but I was freaking out. The crack between the boulders couldn’t have led into a cave. I would’ve known if there was a cave here; I was sure of it. It was like the ground had opened up and swallowed us. All I could think of was the fissure in the dining room pavilion, where those skeletons had been consumed last summer. I wondered if the same thing had happened to us.

I lifted my sword again for light.

‘It’s a long room,’ I muttered.

Annabeth gripped my arm. ‘It’s not a room. It’s a corridor.’

She was right. The darkness felt … emptier in front of us. There was a warm breeze, like in subway tunnels, only it felt older, more dangerous somehow.

I started forward, but Annabeth stopped me. ‘Don’t take another step,’ she warned. ‘We need to find the exit.’

She sounded really scared now.

‘It’s okay,’ I promised. ‘It’s right –’

I looked up and realized I couldn’t see where we’d fallen in. The ceiling was solid stone. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions.

Annabeth’s hand slipped into mine. Under different
circumstances I would’ve been embarrassed, but here in the dark I was glad to know where she was. It was about the only thing I was sure of.

‘Two steps back,’ she advised.

We stepped backwards together like we were in a minefield.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Help me examine the walls.’

‘What for?’

‘The mark of Daedalus,’ she said, as if that were supposed to make sense.

‘Uh, okay. What kind of –’

‘Got it!’ she said with relief. She set her hand on the wall and pressed against a tiny fissure, which began to glow blue. A Greek symbol appeared: Δ, the Ancient Greek Delta.

The roof slid open and we saw night sky, stars blazing. It was a lot darker than it should’ve been. Metal ladder rungs appeared in the side of the wall, leading up, and I could hear people yelling our names.

‘Percy! Annabeth!’ Tyson’s voice bellowed the loudest, but others were calling out, too.

I looked nervously at Annabeth. Then we began to climb.

We made our way around the rocks and ran into Clarisse and a bunch of other campers carrying torches.

‘Where have you two been?’ Clarisse demanded. ‘We’ve been looking forever.’

‘But we were only gone a few minutes,’ I said.

Chiron trotted up, followed by Tyson and Grover.

‘Percy!’ Tyson said. ‘You are okay?’

‘We’re fine,’ I said. ‘We fell in a hole.’

The others looked at me sceptically, then at Annabeth.

‘Honest!’ I said. ‘There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone a minute.’

‘You’ve been missing for almost an hour,’ Chiron said. ‘The game is over.’

‘Yeah,’ Grover muttered. ‘We would’ve won, but a Cyclops sat on me.’

‘Was an accident!’ Tyson protested, and then he sneezed.

Clarisse was wearing the gold laurels, but she didn’t even brag about winning them, which wasn’t like her. ‘A hole?’ she said suspiciously.

Annabeth took a deep breath. She looked around at the other campers. ‘Chiron … maybe we should talk about this at the Big House.’

Clarisse gasped. ‘You found it, didn’t you?’

Annabeth bit her lip. ‘I – Yeah. Yeah, we did.’

A bunch of campers started asking questions, looking about as confused as I was, but Chiron raised his hand for silence. ‘Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place.’ He stared at the boulders as if he’d just noticed how dangerous they were. ‘All of you, back to your cabins. Get some sleep. A game well played, but curfew is past!’

There was a lot of mumbling and complaints, but the campers drifted off, talking amongst themselves and giving me suspicious looks.

‘This explains a lot,’ Clarisse said. ‘It explains what Luke is after.’

‘Wait a second,’ I said. ‘What do you mean? What did we find?’

Annabeth turned towards me, her eyes dark with worry. ‘An entrance to the Labyrinth. An invasion route straight into the heart of the camp.’

Chiron had insisted we talk about it in the morning, which was kind of like,
Hey, your life’s in mortal danger. Sleep tight!
It was hard to fall asleep, but when I finally did, I dreamed of a prison.

I saw a boy in a Greek tunic and sandals crouching alone in a massive stone room. The ceiling was open to the night sky, but the walls were seven metres high and polished marble, completely smooth. Scattered around the room were wooden crates. Some were cracked and tipped over, as if they’d been flung in there. Bronze tools spilled out of one –a compass, a saw and a bunch of other things I didn’t recognize.

The boy huddled in the corner, shivering from cold, or maybe fear. He was spattered in mud. His legs, arms and face were scraped up as if he’d been dragged here along with the boxes.

Then the double oak doors moaned open. Two guards in bronze armour marched in, holding an old man between them. They flung him to the floor in a battered heap.

‘Father!’ The boy ran to him. The man’s robes were in tatters. His hair was streaked with grey, and his beard was long and curly. His nose had been broken. His lips were bloody.

The boy took the old man’s head in his arms. ‘What
did they do to you?’ Then he yelled at the guards, ‘I’ll kill you!’

‘There will be no killing today,’ a voice said.

The guards moved aside. Behind them stood a tall man in white robes. He wore a thin circlet of gold on his head. His beard was pointed like a spear blade. His eyes glittered cruelly. ‘You helped the Athenian kill my Minotaur, Daedalus. You turned my own daughter against me.’

‘You did that yourself, Your Majesty,’ the old man croaked.

A guard planted a kick in the old man’s ribs. He groaned in agony. The young boy cried, ‘Stop it!’

‘You love your maze so much,’ the king said, ‘I have decided to let you stay here. This will be your workshop. Make me new wonders. Amuse me. Every maze needs a monster. You shall be mine!’

‘I don’t fear you,’ the old man groaned.

The king smiled coldly. He locked his eyes on the boy. ‘But a man cares about his son, eh? Displease me, old man, and the next time my guards inflict a punishment, it will be on him!’

The king swept out of the room with his guards, and the doors slammed shut, leaving the boy and his father alone in the darkness.

‘What will we do?’ the boy moaned. ‘Father, they will kill you!’

The old man swallowed with difficulty. He tried to smile, but it was a gruesome sight with his bloody mouth.

‘Take heart, my son.’ He gazed up at the stars. ‘I – I will find a way.’

A bar lowered across the doors with a fatal BOOM, and I woke in a cold sweat.

I was still feeling shaky the next morning when Chiron called a war council. We met in the sword arena, which I thought was pretty strange – trying to discuss the fate of the camp while Mrs O’Leary chewed on a life–size squeaky pink rubber yak.

Chiron and Quintus stood at the front by the weapon racks. Clarisse and Annabeth sat next to each other and led the briefing. Tyson and Grover sat as far away from each other as possible. Also present around the table: Juniper the tree nymph, Silena Beauregard, Travis and Connor Stoll, Beckendorf, Lee Fletcher, even Argus, our hundred-eyed security chief. That’s how I knew it was serious. Argus hardly ever shows up unless something really major is going on. The whole time Annabeth spoke, he kept his hundred blue eyes trained on her so hard, his whole body turned bloodshot.

‘Luke must have known about the Labyrinth entrance,’ Annabeth said. ‘He knew everything about camp.’

I thought I heard a little pride in her voice, like she still respected the guy, as evil as he was.

Juniper cleared her throat. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you last night. The cave entrance has been there a long time. Luke used to use it.’

Silena Beauregard frowned. ‘You knew about the Labyrinth entrance, and you didn’t say anything?’

Juniper’s face turned green. ‘I didn’t know it was important. Just a cave. I don’t like yucky old caves.’

‘She has good taste,’ Grover said.

‘I wouldn’t have paid any attention except… well, it was Luke.’ She blushed a little greener.

Grover huffed. ‘Forget what I said about good taste.’

‘Interesting.’ Quintus polished his sword as he spoke. ‘And you believe this young man, Luke, would dare use the Labyrinth as an invasion route?’

‘Definitely,’ Clarisse said. ‘If he could get an army of monsters inside Camp Half-Blood, just pop up in the middle of the woods without having to worry about our magical boundaries, we wouldn’t stand a chance. He could wipe us out easy. He must’ve been planning this for months.’

‘He’s been sending scouts into the maze,’ Annabeth said. ‘We know because… because we found one.’

‘Chris Rodriguez,’ Chiron said. He gave Quintus a meaningful look.

‘Ah,’ Quintus said. ‘The one in the… Yes. I understand.’

‘The one in the what?’ I asked.

Clarisse glared at me. ‘The point is, Luke has been looking for a way to navigate the maze. He’s searching for Daedalus’s workshop.’

I remembered my dream the night before – the bloody old man in tattered robes. ‘The guy who created the maze.’

‘Yes,’ Annabeth said. ‘The greatest architect, the greatest inventor of all time. If the legends are true, his workshop is in the centre of the Labyrinth. He’s the only one who knew how to navigate the maze perfectly. If Luke managed to find the workshop and convince Daedalus to help him, Luke wouldn’t have to fumble around searching for paths,
or risk losing his army in the
maze’s
traps. He could navigate anywhere he wanted – quickly and safely. First to Camp Half-Blood to wipe us out. Then… to Olympus.’

The arena was silent except for Mrs O’Leary’s toy yak getting disembowelled:
SQUEAK! SQUEAK!

Finally Beckendorf put his huge hands on the table. ‘Back up a sec. Annabeth, you said “convince Daedalus”. Isn’t Daedalus dead?’

Quintus grunted. ‘I would hope so. He lived, what, three thousand years ago? And, even if he were alive, don’t the old stories say he fled from the Labyrinth?’

Chiron clopped restlessly on his hooves. ‘That’s the problem, my dear Quintus. No one knows. There are rumours… well, there are
many
disturbing rumours about Daedalus, but one is that he disappeared back into the Labyrinth towards the end of his life. He might still be down there.’

I thought about the old man I’d seen in my dream. He’d looked so frail it was hard to believe he’d last another week, much less three thousand years.

‘We need to go in,’ Annabeth announced. ‘We have to find the workshop before Luke does. If Daedalus is alive, we convince him to help us, not Luke. If Ariadne’s string still exists, we make sure it never falls into Luke’s hands.’

‘Wait a second,’ I said. ‘If we’re worried about an attack, why not just blow up the entrance? Seal the tunnel?’

‘Great idea!’ Grover said. ‘I’ll get the dynamite!’

‘It’s not so easy, stupid,’ Clarisse growled. ‘We tried that at the entrance we found in Phoenix. It didn’t go well.’

Annabeth nodded. ‘The Labyrinth is magical architecture,
Percy. It would take huge power to seal even one of its entrances. In Phoenix, Clarisse demolished a whole building with a wrecking ball, and the maze entrance just shifted a few metres. The best we can do is prevent Luke from learning to navigate the Labyrinth.’

‘We could fight,’ Lee Fletcher said. ‘We know where the entrance is now. We can set up a defensive line and wait for them. If an army tries to come through, they’ll find us waiting with our bows.’

‘We will certainly set up defences,’ Chiron agreed. ‘But I fear Clarisse is right. The magical borders have kept this camp safe for hundreds of years. If Luke manages to get a large army of monsters into the centre of camp, bypassing our boundaries… we may not have the strength to defeat them.’

Nobody looked very happy about that news. Chiron usually tried to be upbeat and optimistic. If he was predicting we couldn’t hold off an attack, that wasn’t good.

‘We have to get to Daedalus’s workshop first,’ Annabeth insisted. ‘Find Ariadne’s string and prevent Luke from using it.’

‘But if nobody can navigate in there,’ I said, ‘what chance do we have?’

‘I’ve been studying architecture for years,’ she said. ‘I know Daedalus’s Labyrinth better than anybody.’

‘From reading about it.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘That’s not enough.’

‘It has to be!’

‘It isn’t!’

‘Are you going to help me or not?’

I realized everyone was watching Annabeth and me like a tennis match. Mrs O’Leary’s squeaky yak went
EEK!
as she ripped off its pink rubber head.

Chiron cleared his throat. ‘First things first. We need a quest. Someone must enter the Labyrinth, find the workshop of Daedalus and prevent Luke from using the maze to invade this camp.’

‘We all know who should lead this,’ Clarisse said. ‘Annabeth.’

There was a murmur of agreement. I knew Annabeth had been waiting for her own quest since she was a little kid, but she looked uncomfortable.

‘You’ve done as much as I have, Clarisse,’ she said. ‘You should go, too.’

Clarisse shook her head. ‘I’m not going back in there.’

Travis Stoll laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re scared. Clarisse, chicken?’

Clarisse got to her feet. I thought she was going to pulverize Travis, but she said in a shaky voice: ‘You don’t understand anything, punk. I’m never going in there again. Never!’

She stormed out of the arena.

Travis looked around sheepishly. ‘I didn’t mean to –’

Chiron raised his hand. ‘The poor girl has had a difficult year. Now, do we have agreement that Annabeth should lead the quest?’

We all nodded except Quintus. He folded his arms and stared at the table, but I wasn’t sure anyone else noticed.

‘Very well.’ Chiron turned to Annabeth. ‘My dear, it’s
your time to visit the Oracle. Assuming you return to us in one piece, we shall discuss what to do next.’

Waiting for Annabeth was harder than visiting the Oracle myself.

I’d heard it speak prophecies twice before. The first time had been in the dusty attic of the Big House, where the spirit of Delphi slept inside the body of a mummified hippie lady. The second time, the Oracle had come out for a little stroll in the woods. I still had nightmares about that.

I’d never felt threatened by the Oracle’s presence, but I’d heard stories: campers who’d gone insane, or who’d seen visions so real they died of fear.

I paced the arena, waiting. Mrs O’Leary ate her lunch, which consisted of fifty kilograms of ground beef and several dog biscuits the size of trashcan lids. I wondered where Quintus got dog biscuits that size. I didn’t think you could just walk into Pet Zone and put those in your shopping cart.

Chiron was deep in conversation with Quintus and Argus. It looked to me like they were disagreeing about something. Quintus kept shaking his head.

On the other side of the arena, Tyson and the Stoll brothers were racing miniature bronze chariots that Tyson had made out of armour scraps.

I gave up on pacing and left the arena. I stared across the fields at the Big House’s attic window, dark and motionless. What was taking Annabeth so long? I was pretty sure it hadn’t taken me this long to get my quest.

‘Percy,’ a girl whispered.

Juniper was standing in the bushes. It was weird how she almost turned invisible when she was surrounded by plants.

She gestured me over urgently. ‘You need to know: Luke wasn’t the only one I saw around that cave.’

‘What do you mean?’

She glanced back at the arena. ‘I was trying to say something, but he was right there.’

‘Who?’

‘The sword master,’ she said. ‘He was poking around the rocks.’

My stomach clenched. ‘Quintus? When?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t pay attention to time. Maybe a week ago, when he first showed up.’

‘What was he doing? Did he go in?’

‘I – I’m not sure. He’s creepy, Percy. I didn’t even see him come into the glade. Suddenly he was just
there.
You have to tell Grover it’s too dangerous –’

‘Juniper?’ Grover called from inside the arena. ‘Where’d you go?’

Juniper sighed. ‘I’d better go in. Just remember what I said. Don’t trust that man!’

She ran into the arena.

I stared at the Big House, feeling more uneasy than ever. If Quintus was up to something… I needed Annabeth’s advice. She might know what to make of Juniper’s news. But where the heck was she? Whatever was happening with the Oracle, it shouldn’t be taking this long.

Finally I couldn’t stand it any more.

It was against the rules, but then again nobody was
watching. I ran down the hill and headed across the fields.

The front parlour of the Big House was strangely quiet. I was used to seeing Dionysus by the fireplace, playing cards and eating grapes and griping at satyrs, but Mr D was still away.

I walked down the hallway, floorboards creaking under my feet. When I got to the base of the stairs, I hesitated. Four floors above would be a little trapdoor leading to the attic. Annabeth would be up there somewhere. I stood quietly and listened. But what I heard wasn’t what I had expected.

Sobbing. And it was coming from below me.

I crept around the back of the stairs. The basement door was open. I didn’t even know the Big House
had
a basement. I peered inside and saw two figures in the far corner, sitting amid a bunch of stockpiled cases of ambrosia and strawberry preserves. One was Clarisse. The other was a teenage Hispanic guy in tattered camouflage combats and a dirty black T-shirt. His hair was greasy and matted. He was hugging his shoulders and sobbing. It was Chris Rodriguez, the half-blood who’d gone to work for Luke.

‘It’s okay,’ Clarisse was telling him. ‘Try a little more nectar.’

‘You’re an illusion, Mary!’ Chris backed further into the corner. ‘G-get away.’

‘My name’s not Mary.’ Clarisse’s voice was gentle but really sad. I never knew Clarisse could sound that way. ‘My name is Clarisse. Remember. Please.’