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Review and discussion of book three in the Trials of Apollo series, The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan
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The Burning Maze
But the Burning Maze isn’t the entire Labyrinth. And at least now we have some ea why the emperor set it up the way he d. It’s because of. Apollo.”.
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The Burning Maze (the Trials of Apollo Book 3) PDF Download
The Burning Maze (the Trials of Apollo Book 3) PDF Download … He was a God once. Until he was cast out his father, Zeus. Now, he’s an awkward teenager. Called …
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Rocco By: Lorraine Cink Illustrated by: Alice X. Zhang By: Ashley Eckstein, Stacy Kravetz Third book by The of Apollo by Rick Riordan Riordan Burning Maze …
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[PDF] ” The Burning Maze ” by Rick Riordan
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defeat. THE BIRDS MAY BE REPELLED WITH PIG ENTRAILS, it reported. HAST THOU ANY? “Grover,” I called over my shoulder, “would you happen to have any pig entrails?” “What?” He turned, which was not an effective way of facing me, since I was duct-taped to his back. He almost scraped my nose off on the brick wall. “Why would I carry pig entrails? I’m a vegetarian!” Meg clambered up the ramp to join us. “The birds are almost through,” she reported. “I tried different kinds of plants. I tried to summon Peaches….” Her voice broke with despair. Since entering the Labyrinth, she had been unable to summon her peach- spirit minion, who was handy in a fight but rather picky about when and where he showed up. I supposed that, much like tomato plants, Peaches didn’t do well underground. “Arrow of Dodona, what else?” I shouted at its point. “There has to be something besides pig intestines that will keep strixes at bay!” WAIT, the arrow said. HARK! IT APPEARETH THAT ARBUTUS SHALL SERVE. “Our-butt-us shall what?” I demanded. Too late. Below us, with a peal of bloodthirsty shrieks, the strixes broke through the tomato barricade and swarmed into the room. “HERE they come!” Meg yelled. Honestly, whenever I wanted her to talk about something important, she shut up. But when we were facing an obvious danger, she wasted her breath yelling Here they come. Grover increased his pace, showing heroic strength as he bounded up the ramp, hauling my flabby duct-taped carcass behind him. Facing backward, I had a perfect view of the strixes as they swirled out of the shadows, their yellow eyes flashing like coins in a murky fountain. A dozen birds? More? Given how much trouble we’d had with a single strix, I didn’t like our chances against an entire flock, especially since we were now lined up like juicy targets on a narrow, slippery ledge. I doubted Meg could help all the birds commit suicide by whacking them face-first into the wall. “Arbutus!” I yelled. “The arrow said something about arbutus repelling strixes.” “That’s a plant.” Grover gasped for air. “I think I met an arbutus once.” “Arrow,” I said, “what is an arbutus?” I KNOW NOT! BECAUSE I WAS BORN IN A GROVE DOTH NOT MAKETH ME A GARDENER! Disgusted, I shoved the arrow back into my quiver. “Apollo, cover me.” Meg thrust one of her swords into my hand, then rifled through her gardening belt, glancing nervously at the strixes as they ascended. How Meg expected me to cover her, I wasn’t sure. I was garbage at swordplay, even when I wasn’t duct-taped to a satyr’s back and facing targets that would curse anyone who killed them. “Grover!” Meg yelled. “Can we figure out what type of plant an arbutus is?” She ripped open a random packet and tossed seeds into the void. They burst like heated popcorn kernels and formed grenade-size yams with leafy green stems. They fell among the flock of strixes, hitting a few and causing startled squawking, but the birds kept coming. “Those are tubers,” Grover wheezed. “I think an arbutus is a fruit plant.” Meg ripped open a second seed packet. She showered the strixes with an explosion of bushes dotted with green fruits. The birds simply veered around them. “Grapes?” Grover asked. “Gooseberries,” said Meg. “Are you sure?” Grover asked. “The shape of the leaves—” “Grover!” I snapped. “Let’s restrict ourselves to military botany. What’s a—? DUCK!” Now, gentle reader, you be the judge. Was I asking the question What’s a duck? Of course I wasn’t. Despite Meg’s later complaints, I was trying to warn her that the nearest strix was charging straight at her face. She didn’t understand my warning, which was not my fault. I swung my borrowed scimitar, attempting to protect my young friend. Only my terrible aim and Meg’s quick reflexes prevented me from decapitating her. “Stop that!” she yelled, swatting the strix aside with her other blade. “You said cover me!” I protested. “I didn’t mean—” She cried out in pain, stumbling as a bloody cut opened along her right thigh. Then we were engulfed in an angry storm of talons, beaks, and black wings. Meg swung her scimitar wildly. A strix launched itself at my face, its claws about to rip my eyes out, when Grover did the unexpected: he screamed. Why is that surprising? you may be asking. When you’re swarmed by entrail-devouring birds, it is a perfect time to scream. True. But the sound that came from the satyr’s mouth was no ordinary cry. It reverberated through the chamber like the shock wave of a bomb, scattering the birds, shaking the stones, and filling me with cold, unreasoning fear. Had I not been duct-taped to the satyr’s back, I would have fled. I would have jumped off the ledge just to get away from that sound. As it was, I dropped Meg’s sword and clamped my hands over my ears. Meg, lying prone on the ramp, bleeding and no doubt already partially paralyzed by the strix’s poison, curled into a ball and buried her head in her arms. The strixes fled back down into the darkness. My heart pounded. Adrenaline surged through me. I needed several deep breaths before I could speak. “Grover,” I said, “did you just summon Panic?” I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him shaking. He lay down on the ramp, rolling to one side so I faced the wall. “I didn’t mean to.” Grover’s voice was hoarse. “Haven’t done that in years.” “P-panic?” Meg asked. “The cry of the lost god Pan,” I said. Even saying his name filled me with sadness. Ah, what good times the nature god and I had had in ancient days, dancing and cavorting in the wilderness! Pan had been a first-class cavorter. Then humans destroyed most of the wilderness, and Pan faded into nothing. You humans. You’re why we gods can’t have nice things. “I’ve never heard anyone but Pan use that power,” I said. “How?” Grover made a sound that was half sob, half sigh. “Long story.” Meg grunted. “Got rid of the birds, anyway.” I heard her ripping fabric, probably making a bandage for her leg. “Are you paralyzed?” I asked. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Waist down.” Grover shifted in our duct-tape harness. “I’m still okay, but exhausted. The birds will be back, and there’s no way I can carry you up the ramp now.” I did not doubt him. The shout of Pan would scare away almost anything, but it was a taxing bit of magic. Every time Pan used it, he would take a three-day nap afterward. Below us, the strixes’ cries echoed through the Labyrinth. Their screeching already sounded like it was turning from fear—Fly away!—to confusion: Why are we flying away? I tried to wriggle my feet. To my surprise, I could now feel my toes inside my socks. “Can someone cut me loose?” I asked. “I think the poison is losing strength.” From her horizontal position, Meg used a scimitar to saw me out of the duct tape. The three of us lined up with our backs literally to the wall—three sweaty, sad, pathetic pieces of strix bait waiting to die. Below us, the squawking of the doom birds got louder. Soon they’d be back, angrier than ever. About fifty feet above us, just visible now in the dim glint of Meg’s swords, our ramp dead- ended at a domed brick ceiling. “So much for an exit,” Grover said. “I thought for sure…This shaft looks so much like…” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t bear to tell us what he’d hoped. “I’m not dying here,” Meg grumbled. Her appearance said otherwise. She had bloody knuckles and skinned knees. Her green dress, a prized gift from Percy Jackson’s mother, looked like it had been used as a saber-toothed tiger’s scratching post. She had ripped off her left legging and used it to stanch the bleeding cut on her thigh, but the fabric was already soaked through. Nevertheless, her eyes shone defiantly. The rhinestones still glittered on the tips of her cat-eye glasses. I’d learned never to count out Meg McCaffrey while her rhinestones still glittered. She rummaged through her seed packages, squinting at the labels. “Roses. Daffodils. Squash. Carrots.” “No…” Grover bumped his fist against his forehead. “Arbutus is like…a flowering tree. Argh, I should know this.” I sympathized with his memory problems. I should have known many things: the weaknesses of strixes, the nearest secret exit from the Labyrinth, Zeus’s private number so I could call him and plead for my life. But my mind was blank. My legs had begun to tremble—perhaps a sign I would soon be able to walk again—but this didn’t cheer me up. I had nowhere to go, except to choose whether I wanted to die at the top of this chamber or the bottom. Meg kept shuffling seed packets. “Rutabaga, wisteria, pyracantha, strawberries—” “Strawberries!” Grover yelped so loudly I thought he was trying for another blast of Panic. “That’s it! The arbutus is a strawberry tree!” Meg frowned. “Strawberries don’t grow on trees. They’re genus Fragaria, part of the rose family.” “Yes, yes, I know!” Grover rolled his hands like he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “And Arbutus is in the heath family, but—” “What are you two talking about?” I demanded. I wondered if they were sharing the Arrow of Dodona’s Wi-Fi connection to look up information on botany.com. “We’re about to die, and you’re arguing about plant genera?” “Fragaria might be close enough!” Grover insisted. “Arbutus fruit looks like strawberries. That’s why it’s called a strawberry tree. I met an arbutus dryad once. We got in this big argument about it. Besides, I specialize in strawberry- growing. All the satyrs from Camp Half-Blood do!” Meg stared doubtfully at her packet of strawberry seeds. “I dunno.” Below us, a dozen strixes burst forth from the mouth of the tunnel, shrieking in a chorus of pre-disembowelment fury. “TRY THE FRAGGLE ROCK!” I yelled. “Fragaria,” Meg corrected. “WHATEVER!” Rather than throwing her strawberry seeds into the void, Meg ripped open the packet and shook them out along the edge of the ramp with maddening slowness. “Hurry.” I fumbled for my bow. “We’ve got maybe thirty seconds.” “Hold on.” Meg tapped out the last of the seeds. “Fifteen seconds!” “Wait.” Meg tossed aside the packet. She placed her hands over the seeds like she was about to play the keyboard (which, by the way, she can’t do well, despite my efforts to teach her). “Okay,” she said. “Go.” Grover raised his pipes and began a frantic version of “Strawberry Fields Forever” in triple time. I forgot about my bow and grabbed my ukulele, joining him in the song. I didn’t know if it would help, but if I was going to get ripped apart, at least I wanted to go out playing the Beatles. Just as the wave of strixes was about to hit, the seeds exploded like a battery of fireworks. Green streamers arced across the void, anchoring against the far wall and forming a row of vines that reminded me of the strings of a giant lute. The strixes could have easily flown through the gaps, but instead they went crazy, veering to avoid the plants and colliding with each other in midair. Meanwhile, the vines thickened, leaves unfurled, white flowers bloomed, and strawberries ripened, filling the air with their sweet fragrance. The chamber rumbled. Wherever the strawberry plants touched the stone, the brick cracked and dissolved, giving the strawberries an easier place to root. Meg lifted her hands from her imaginary keyboard. “Is the Labyrinth…helping?” “I don’t know!” I said, strumming furiously on an F minor 7. “But don’t stop!” With impossible speed, the strawberries spread across the walls in a tide of green. I was just thinking Wow, imagine what the plants could do with sunlight! when the domed ceiling cracked like an eggshell. Brilliant rays stabbed through the darkness. Chunks of rock rained down, smashing into the birds, punching through strawberry vines (which, unlike the strixes, grew back almost immediately). As soon as the sunlight hit the birds, they screamed and dissolved into dust. Grover lowered his panpipe. I set down my ukulele. We watched in amazement as the plants continued to grow, interlacing until a strawberry-runner trampoline stretched across the entire area of the room at our feet. The ceiling had disintegrated, revealing a brilliant blue sky. Hot dry air wafted down like the breath from an open oven. Grover raised his face to the light. He sniffled, tears glistening on his cheeks. “Are you hurt?” I asked. He stared at me. The heartbreak on his face was more painful to look at than the sunlight. “The smell of warm strawberries,” he said. “Like Camp Half-Blood. It’s been so long….” I felt an unfamiliar twinge in my chest. I patted Grover’s knee. I had not spent much time at Camp Half-Blood, the training ground for Greek demigods on Long Island, but I understood how he felt. I wondered how my children were doing there: Kayla, Will, Austin. I remembered sitting with them at the campfire, singing “My Mother Was a Minotaur” as we ate burnt marshmallows off a stick. Such perfect camaraderie is rare, even in an immortal life. Meg leaned against the wall. Her complexion was pasty, her breathing ragged. I dug through my pockets and found a broken square of ambrosia in a napkin. I did not keep the stuff for myself. In my mortal state, eating the food of the gods might cause me to spontaneously combust. But Meg, I had found, was not always good about taking her ambrosia. “Eat.” I pressed the napkin into her hand. “It’ll help the paralysis pass more quickly.” She clenched her jaw, as if about to yell I DON’T WANNA!, then apparently decided she liked the idea of having working legs again. She began nibbling on the ambrosia. “What’s up there?” she asked, frowning at the blue sky. Grover brushed the tears from his face. “We’ve made it. The Labyrinth brought us right to our base.” “Our base?” I was delighted to learn we had a base. I hoped that meant security, a soft bed, and perhaps an espresso machine. “Yeah.” Grover swallowed nervously. “Assuming anything is left of it. Let’s find out.” THEY tell me I reached the surface. I don’t remember. Meg was partially paralyzed, and Grover had already carried me halfway up the ramp, so it seems wrong that I was the one who passed out, but what can I say? That Fm7 chord on “Strawberry Fields Forever” must have taken more out of me than I realized. I do remember feverish dreams. Before me rose a graceful olive-skinned woman, her long auburn hair gathered up in a donut braid, her sleeveless dress as light and gray as moth wings. She looked about twenty, but her eyes were black pearls—their hard luster formed over centuries, a defensive shell hiding untold sorrow and disappointment. They were the eyes of an immortal who had seen great civilizations fall. We stood together on a stone platform, at the edge of what looked like an indoor swimming pool filled with lava. The air shimmered with heat. Ashes stung my eyes. The woman raised her arms in a supplicating gesture. Glowing red iron cuffs shackled her wrists. Molten chains anchored her to the platform, though the hot metal did not seem to burn her. “I am sorry,” she said. Somehow, I knew she wasn’t speaking to me. I was only observing this scene through the eyes of someone else. She’d just delivered bad news to this other person, crushing news, though I had no idea what it was. “I would spare you if I could,” she continued. “I would spare her. But I cannot. Tell Apollo he must come. Only he can release me, though it is a…” She choked as if a shard of glass had wedged in her throat. “Four letters,” she croaked. “Starts with T.” Trap, I thought. The answer is trap! I felt briefly thrilled, the way you do when you’re watching a game show and you know the answer. If only I were the contestant, you think, I’d win all the prizes! Then I realized I didn’t like this game show. Especially if the answer was trap. Especially if that trap was the grand prize waiting for me. The woman’s image dissolved into flames. I found myself in a different place—a covered terrace overlooking a moonlit bay. In the distance, shrouded in mist, rose the familiar dark profile of Mount Vesuvius, but Vesuvius as it had been before the eruption of 79 CE blew its summit to pieces, destroying Pompeii and wiping out thousands of Romans. (You can blame Vulcan for that. He was having a bad week.) The evening sky was bruised purple, the coastline lit only by firelight, the moon, and the stars. Under my feet, the terrace’s mosaic floor glittered with gold and silver tiles, the sort of artwork very few Romans could afford. On the walls, multicolored frescoes were framed in silk draperies that had to have cost hundreds of thousands of denarii. I knew where I must be: an imperial villa, one of the many pleasure palaces that lined the Gulf of Naples in the early days of the empire. Normally such a place would have blazed with light throughout the night, as a show of power and opulence, but the torches on this terrace were dark, wrapped in black cloth. In the shadow of a column, a slender young man stood facing the sea. His expression was obscured, but his posture spoke of impatience. He tugged on his white robes, crossed his arms over his chest, and tapped his sandaled foot against the floor. A second man appeared, marching onto the terrace with the clink of armor and the labored breathing of a heavyset fighter. A praetorian guard’s helmet hid his face. He knelt before the younger man. “It is done, Princeps.” Princeps. Latin for first in line or first citizen—that lovely euphemism the Roman emperors used to downplay just how absolute their power was. “Are you sure this time?” asked a young, reedy voice. “I don’t want any more surprises.” The praetor grunted. “Very sure, Princeps.” The guard held out his massive hairy forearms. Bloody scratches glistened in the moonlight, as if desperate fingernails had raked his flesh. “What did you use?” The younger man sounded fascinated. “His own pillow,” the big man said. “Seemed easiest.” The younger man laughed. “The old pig deserved it. I wait years for him to die, finally we announce he’s kicked the situla, and he has the nerve to wake up again? I don’t think so. Tomorrow will be a new, better day for Rome.” He stepped into the moonlight, revealing his face—a face I had hoped never to see again. He was handsome in a thin, angular way, though his ears stuck out a bit too much. His smile was twisted. His eyes had all the warmth of a barracuda’s. Even if you do not recognize his features, dear reader, I am sure you have met him. He is the school bully too charming to get caught; the one who thinks up the cruelest pranks, has others carry out his dirty work, and still maintains a perfect reputation with the teachers. He is the boy who pulls the legs off insects and tortures stray animals, yet laughs with such pure delight he can almost convince you it is harmless fun. He’s the boy who steals money from the temple collection plates, behind the backs of old ladies who praise him for being such a nice young man. He is that person, that type of evil. And tonight, he had a new name, which would not foretell a better day for Rome. The praetorian guard lowered his head. “Hail, Caesar!” I awoke from my dream shivering. “Good timing,” Grover said. I sat up. My head throbbed. My mouth tasted like strix dust. I was lying under a makeshift lean-to—a blue plastic tarp set on a hillside overlooking the desert. The sun was going down. Next to me, Meg was curled up asleep, her hand resting on my wrist. I suppose that was sweet, except I knew where her fingers had been. (Hint: In her nostrils.) On a nearby slab of rock, Grover sat sipping water from his canteen. Judging from his weary expression, I guessed he had been keeping watch over us while we slept. “I passed out?” I gathered. He tossed me the canteen. “I thought I slept hard. You’ve been out for hours.” I took a drink, then rubbed the gunk from my eyes, wishing I could wipe the dreams from my head as easily: a woman chained in a fiery room, a trap for Apollo, a new Caesar with the pleasant smile of a fine young sociopath. Don’t think about it, I told myself. Dreams aren’t necessarily true. No, I answered myself. Only the bad ones. Like those. I focused on Meg, snoring in the shade of our tarp. Her leg was freshly bandaged. She wore a clean T-shirt over her tattered dress. I tried to extricate my wrist from her grip, but she held on tighter. “She’s all right,” Grover assured me. “At least physically. Fell asleep after we got you situated.” He frowned. “She didn’t seem happy about being here, though. Said she couldn’t handle this place. Wanted to leave. I was afraid she’d jump back into the Labyrinth, but I convinced her she needed to rest first. I played some music to relax her.” I scanned our surroundings, wondering what had upset Meg so badly. Below us stretched a landscape only slightly more hospitable than Mars. (I mean the planet, not the god, though I suppose neither is much of a host.) Sun- blasted ocher mountains ringed a valley patchworked with unnaturally green golf courses, dusty barren flats, and sprawling neighborhoods of white stucco walls, red-tiled roofs, and blue swimming pools. Lining the streets, rows of listless palm trees stuck up like raggedy seams. Asphalt parking lots shimmered in the heat. A brown haze hung in the air, filling the valley like watery gravy. “Palm Springs,” I said. I’d known the city well in the 1950s. I was pretty sure I’d hosted a party with Frank Sinatra just down the road there, by that golf course—but it felt like another life. Probably because it had been. Now the area seemed much less welcoming—the temperature too scorching for an early spring evening, the air too heavy and acrid. Something was wrong, something I couldn’t quite place. I scanned our immediate surroundings. We were camped at the crest of a hill, the San Jacinto wilderness at our backs to the west, the sprawl of Palm Springs at our feet to the east. A gravel road skirted the base of the hill, winding toward the nearest neighborhood about half a mile below, but I could tell that our hilltop had once boasted a large structure. Sunk in the rocky slope were a half dozen hollow brickwork cylinders, each perhaps thirty feet in diameter, like the shells of ruined sugar mills. The structures were of varying heights, in varying stages of disintegration, but their tops were all level with one another, so I guessed they must have been massive support columns for a stilt house. Judging from the detritus that littered the hillside—shards of glass, charred planks, blackened clumps of brick—I guessed that the house must have burned down many years before. Then I realized: we must have climbed out of one of those cylinders to escape the Labyrinth. I turned to Grover. “The strixes?” He shook his head. “If any survived, they wouldn’t risk the daylight, even if they could get through the strawberries. The plants have filled the entire shaft.” He pointed to the farthest ring of brickwork, where we must have emerged. “Nobody’s getting in or out that way anymore.” “But…” I gestured at the ruins. “Surely this isn’t your base?” I was hoping he would correct me. Oh, no, our base is that nice house down there with the Olympic-size swimming pool, right next to the fifteenth hole! Instead, he had the nerve to look pleased. “Yeah. This place has powerful natural energy. It’s a perfect sanctuary. Can’t you feel the life force?” I picked up a charred brick. “Life force?” “You’ll see.” Grover took off his cap and scratched between his horns. “The way things have been, all the dryads have to stay dormant until sunset. It’s the only way they can survive. But they’ll be waking up soon.” The way things have been. I glanced west. The sun had just dropped behind the mountains. The sky was marbled with heavy layers of red and black, more appropriate for Mordor than Southern California. “What’s going on?” I asked, not sure I wanted the answer. Grover gazed sadly into the distance. “You haven’t seen the news? Biggest forest fires in state history. On top of the drought, the heat waves, and the earthquakes.” He shuddered. “Thousands of dryads have died. Thousands more have gone into hibernation. If these were just normal natural disasters, that would be bad enough, but—” Meg yelped in her sleep. She sat up abruptly, blinking in confusion. From the panic in her eyes, I guessed her dreams had been even worse than mine. “W-we’re really here?” she asked. “I didn’t dream it?” “It’s all right,” I said. “You’re safe.” She shook her head, her lips quivering. “No. No, I’m not.” With fumbling fingers, she removed her glasses, as if she might be able to handle her surroundings better if they were fuzzier. “I can’t be here. Not again.” “Again?” I asked. A line from the Indiana prophecy tugged at my memory: Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots. “You mean you lived here?” Meg scanned the ruins. She shrugged miserably, though whether that meant I don’t know or I don’t want to talk about it, I couldn’t tell. The desert seemed an unlikely home for Meg—a street kid from Manhattan, raised in Nero’s royal household. Grover tugged thoughtfully at his goatee. “A child of Demeter…That actually makes a lot of sense.” I stared at him. “In this place? A child of Vulcan, perhaps. Or Feronia, the wilderness goddess. Or even Mefitis, the goddess of poisonous gas. But Demeter? What is a child of Demeter supposed to grow here? Rocks?” Grover looked hurt. “You don’t understand. Once you meet everybody—” Meg crawled out from beneath the tarp. She got unsteadily to her feet. “I have to leave.” “Hold on!” Grover pleaded. “We need your help. At least talk to the others!” Meg hesitated. “Others?” Grover gestured north. I couldn’t see what he was pointing to until I stood up. Then I noticed, half-hidden behind the brick ruins, a row of six boxy white structures like…storage sheds? No. Greenhouses. The one nearest the ruins had melted and collapsed long ago, no doubt a victim of the fire. The second hut’s corrugated polycarbonate walls and roof had fallen apart like a house of cards. But the other four looked intact. Clay flowerpots were stacked outside. The doors stood open. Inside, green plant matter pressed against the translucent walls —palm fronds like giant hands pushing to get out. I didn’t see how anything could live in this scalded barren wasteland, especially inside a greenhouse meant to keep the climate even warmer. I definitely didn’t want to get any closer to those claustrophobic hot boxes. Grover smiled encouragingly. “I’m sure everyone’s awake by now. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the gang!” GROVER led us to the first intact greenhouse, which exuded a smell like the breath of Persephone. That’s not a compliment. Miss Springtime used to sit next to me at family dinners, and she was not shy about sharing her halitosis. Imagine the odor of a bin full of wet mulch and earthworm poop. Yes, I just love spring. Inside the greenhouse, the plants had taken over. I found that frightening, since most of them were cacti. By the doorway squatted a pineapple cactus the size of a cracker barrel, its yellow spines like shish-kebab skewers. In the back corner stood a majestic Joshua tree, its shaggy branches holding up the roof. Against the opposite wall bloomed a massive prickly pear, dozens of bristly paddles topped with purple fruit that looked delicious, except for the fact that each one had more spikes than Ares’s favorite mace. Metal tables groaned under the weight of other succulents—pickleweed, spinystar, cholla, and dozens more I couldn’t name. Surrounded by so many thorns and flowers, in such oppressive heat, I had a flashback to Iggy Pop’s 2003 Coachella set. “I’m back!” Grover announced. “And I brought friends!” Silence. Even at sunset, the temperature inside was so high, and the air so thick, I imagined I would die of heatstroke in approximately four minutes. And I was a former sun god. At last the first dryad appeared. A chlorophyll bubble ballooned from the side of the prickly pear and burst into green mist. The droplets coalesced into a small girl with emerald skin, spiky yellow hair, and a fringe dress made entirely of cactus bristles. Her glare was almost as pointed as her dress. Fortunately, it was directed at Grover, not me. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Ah.” Grover cleared his throat. “I got called away. Magical summons. I’ll tell you all about it later. But look, I brought Apollo! And Meg, daughter of Demeter!” He showed off Meg like she was a fabulous prize on The Price Is Right. “Hmph,” said the dryad. “I suppose daughters of Demeter are okay. I’m Prickly Pear. Or Pear for short.” “Hi,” Meg said weakly. The dryad narrowed her eyes at me. Given her spiny dress, I hoped she wasn’t a hugger. “You’re Apollo as in the god Apollo?” she asked. “I don’t believe it.” “Some days, neither do I,” I admitted. Grover scanned the room. “Where are the others?” Right on cue, another chlorophyll bubble popped over one of the succulents. A second dryad appeared—a large young woman in a muumuu like the husk of an artichoke. Her hair was a forest of dark green triangles. Her face and arms glistened as if they’d just been oiled. (At least I hoped it was oil and not sweat.) “Oh!” she cried, seeing our battered appearances. “Are you hurt?” Pear rolled her eyes. “Al, knock it off.” “But they look hurt!” Al shuffled forward. She took my hand. Her touch was cold and greasy. “Let me take care of these cuts, at least. Grover, why didn’t you heal these poor people?” “I tried!” the satyr protested. “They just took a lot of damage!” That could be my life motto, I thought: He takes a lot of damage. Al ran her fingertips over my cuts, leaving trails of goo like slug tracks. It was not a pleasant sensation, but it did ease the pain. “You’re Aloe Vera,” I realized. “I used to make healing ointments out of you.” She beamed. “He remembers me! Apollo remembers me!” In the back of the room, a third dryad emerged from the trunk of the Joshua tree—a male dryad, which was quite rare. His skin was as brown as his tree’s bark, his olive hair long and wild, his clothes weathered khaki. He might have been an explorer just returning from the outback. “I’m Joshua,” he said. “Welcome to Aeithales.” And at that moment, Meg McCaffrey decided to faint. I could have told her that swooning in front of an attractive boy was never cool. The strategy hadn’t worked for me once in thousands of years. Nevertheless, being a good friend, I caught her before she could nose-dive into the gravel. “Oh, poor girl!” Aloe Vera gave Grover another critical look. “She’s exhausted and overheated. Haven’t you let her rest?” “She’s been asleep all afternoon!” “Well, she’s dehydrated.” Aloe put her hand on Meg’s forehead. “She needs water.” Pear sniffed. “Don’t we all.” “Take her to the Cistern,” Al said. “Mellie should be awake by now. I’ll be along in a minute.” Grover perked up. “Mellie’s here? They made it?” “They arrived this morning,” said Joshua. “What about the search parties?” Grover pressed. “Any word?” The dryads exchanged troubled glances. “The news isn’t good,” Joshua said. “Only one group has come back so far, and—” “Excuse me,” I pleaded. “I have no idea what any of you are talking about, but Meg is heavy. Where should I put her?” Grover stirred. “Right. Sorry, I’ll show you.” He draped Meg’s left arm over his shoulders, taking half her weight. Then he faced the dryads. “Guys, how about we all meet at the Cistern for dinner? We’ve got a lot to talk about.” Joshua nodded. “I’ll alert the other greenhouses. And, Grover, you promised us enchiladas. Three days ago.” “I know.” Grover sighed. “I’ll get more.” Together, the two of us lugged Meg out of the greenhouse. As we dragged her across the hillside, I asked Grover my most burning question: “Dryads eat enchiladas?” He looked offended. “Of course! You expect them just to eat fertilizer?” “Well…yes.” “Stereotyping,” he muttered. I decided that was my cue to change the subject. “Did I imagine it,” I asked, “or did Meg faint because she heard the name of this place? Aeithales. That’s ancient Greek for evergreen, if I recall correctly.” It seemed an odd name for a place in the desert. Then again, no odder than dryads eating enchiladas. “We found the name carved into the old doorsill,” Grover said. “There’s a lot we don’t know about the ruins, but like I said, this site has a lot of nature energy. Whoever lived here and started the greenhouses…they knew what they were doing.” I wished I could say the same. “Weren’t the dryads born in those greenhouses? Don’t they know who planted them?” “Most were too young when the house burned down,” Grover said. “Some of the older plants might know more, but they’ve gone dormant. Or”—he nodded toward the destroyed greenhouses—“they’re no longer with us.” We observed a moment of silence for the departed succulents. Grover steered us toward the largest of the brick cylinders. Judging from its size and position in the center of the ruins, I guessed it must have once been the central support column for the structure. At ground level, rectangular openings ringed the circumference like medieval castle windows. We dragged Meg through one of these and found ourselves in a space very much like the well where we’d fought the strixes. The top was open to the sky. A spiral ramp led downward, but fortunately only twenty feet before reaching the bottom. In the center of the dirt floor, like the hole in a giant donut, glittered a dark blue pool, cooling the air and making the space feel comfortable and welcoming. Around the pool lay a ring of sleeping bags. Blooming cacti overflowed from alcoves built into the walls. The Cistern was not a fancy structure—nothing like the dining pavilion at Camp Half-Blood, or the Waystation in Indiana—but inside it I immediately felt better, safer. I understood what Grover had been talking about. This place resonated with soothing energy. We got Meg to the bottom of the ramp without tripping and falling, which I considered a major accomplishment. We set her down on one of the sleeping bags, then Grover scanned the room. “Mellie?” he called. “Gleeson? Are you guys here?” The name Gleeson sounded vaguely familiar to me, but, as usual, I couldn’t place it. No chlorophyll bubbles popped from the plants. Meg turned on her side and muttered in her sleep…something about Peaches. Then, at the edge of the pond, wisps of white fog began to gather. They fused into the shape of a petite woman in a silvery dress. Her dark hair floated around her as if she were underwater, revealing her slightly pointed ears. In a sling over one shoulder she held a sleeping baby perhaps seven months old, with hooved feet and tiny goat horns on his head. His fat cheek was squished against his mother’s clavicle. His mouth was a veritable cornucopia of drool. The cloud nymph (for surely that’s what she was) smiled at Grover. Her brown eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. She held one finger to her lips, indicating that she’d rather not wake the baby. I couldn’t blame her. Satyr babies at that age are loud and rambunctious, and can teethe their way through several metal cans a day. Grover whispered, “Mellie, you made it!” “Grover, dear.” She looked down at the sleeping form of Meg, then tilted her head at me. “Are you…Are you him?” “If you mean Apollo,” I said, “I’m afraid so.” Mellie pursed her lips. “I’d heard rumors, but I didn’t believe them. You poor thing. How are you holding up?” In times past, I would have scoffed at any nymph who dared to call me poor thing. Of course, few nymphs would have shown me such consideration. Usually they were too busy running away from me. Now, Mellie’s show of concern caused a lump to form in my throat. I was tempted to rest my head on her other shoulder and sob out my troubles. “I—I’m fine,” I managed. “Thank you.” “And your sleeping friend here?” she asked. “Just exhausted, I think.” Though I wondered if that was the whole story with Meg. “Aloe Vera said she would be along in a few minutes to care for her.” Mellie looked worried. “All right. I’ll make sure Aloe doesn’t overdo it.” “Overdo it?” Grover coughed. “Where’s Gleeson?” Mellie scanned the room, as if just realizing this Gleeson person was not present. “I don’t know. As soon as we got here, I went dormant for the day. He said he was going into town to pick up some camping supplies. What time is it?” “After sunset,” Grover said. “He should’ve been back by now.” Mellie’s form shimmered with agitation, becoming so hazy I was afraid the baby might fall right through her body. “Gleeson is your husband?” I guessed. “A satyr?” “Yes, Gleeson Hedge,” Mellie said. I remembered him then, vaguely—the satyr who had sailed with the demigod heroes of the Argo II. “Do you know where he went?” “We passed an army-surplus store as we drove in, down the hill. He loves army-surplus stores.” Mellie turned to Grover. “He may have just gotten distracted, but…I don’t suppose you could go check on him?” At that moment, I realized just how exhausted Grover Underwood must be. His eyes were even redder than Mellie’s. His shoulders drooped. His reed pipes dangled listlessly from his neck. Unlike Meg and me, he hadn’t slept since last night in the Labyrinth. He’d used the cry of Pan, gotten us to safety, then spent all day guarding us, waiting for the dryads to wake up. Now he was being asked to make another excursion to check on Gleeson Hedge. Still, he mustered a smile. “Sure thing, Mellie.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re the best lord of the Wild ever!” Grover blushed. “Watch Meg McCaffrey until we get back, would you? Come on, Apollo. Let’s go shopping.” EVEN after four thousand years, I could still learn important life lessons. For instance: Never go shopping with a satyr. Finding the store took forever, because Grover kept getting sidetracked. He stopped to chat with a yucca. He gave directions to a family of ground squirrels. He smelled smoke and led us on a chase across the desert until he found a burning cigarette someone had dropped onto the road. “This is how fires start,” he said, then responsibly disposed of the cigarette butt by eating it. I didn’t see anything within a mile radius that could have caught fire. I was reasonably sure rocks and dirt were not flammable, but I never argue with people who eat cigarettes. We continued our search for the army-surplus store. Night fell. The western horizon glowed—not with the usual orange of mortal light pollution, but with the ominous red of a distant inferno. Smoke blotted out the stars. The temperature barely cooled. The air still smelled bitter and wrong. I remembered the wave of flames that had nearly incinerated us in the Labyrinth. The heat seemed to have had a personality—a resentful malevolence. I could imagine such waves coursing beneath the surface of the desert, washing through the Labyrinth, turning the mortal terrain above into an even more uninhabitable wasteland. I thought about my dream of the woman in molten chains, standing on a platform above a pool of lava. Despite my fuzzy memories, I was sure that woman was the Erythraean Sibyl, the next Oracle we had to free from the emperors. Something told me she was imprisoned in the very center of… whatever was generating those subterranean fires. I did not relish the idea of finding her. “Grover,” I said, “in the greenhouse, you mentioned something about search parties?” He glanced over, swallowing painfully, as if the cigarette butt were still stuck in his throat. “The heartiest satyrs and dryads—they’ve been fanning out across the area for months.” He fixed his eyes on the road. “We don’t have many searchers. With the fires and the heat, the cacti are the only nature spirits that can still manifest. So far, only a few have come back alive. The rest…we don’t know.” “What are they are searching for?” I asked. “The source of the fires? The emperor? The Oracle?” Grover’s hoof-fitted shoes slipped and skidded on the gravel shoulder. “Everything is connected. It has to be. I didn’t know about the Oracle until you told me, but if the emperor is guarding it, the maze is where he would put it. And the maze is the source of our fire problems.” “When you say maze,” I said, “you mean the Labyrinth?” “Sort of.” Grover’s lower lip trembled. “The network of tunnels under Southern California—we assume it’s part of the larger Labyrinth, but something’s been happening to it. It’s like this section of the Labyrinth has been…infected. Like it has a fever. Fires have been gathering, strengthening. Sometimes, they mass and spew—There!” He pointed south. A quarter mile up the nearest hill, a plume of yellow flame vented skyward like the fiery tip of a welding torch. Then it was gone, leaving a patch of molten rock. I considered what would’ve happened if I’d been standing there when the vent flared. “That’s not normal,” I said. My ankles felt wobbly, as if I were the one with fake feet. Grover nodded. “We already had enough problems in California: drought, climate change, pollution, all the usual stuff. But those flames…” His expression hardened. “It’s some kind of magic we don’t understand. Almost a full year I’ve been out here, trying to find the source of the heat and shut it off. I’ve lost so many friends.” His voice was brittle. I understood about losing friends. Over the centuries, I’d lost many mortals who were dear to me, but at that moment, one in particular came to mind: Heloise the griffin, who had died at the Waystation, defending her nest, defending us all from the attack of Emperor Commodus. I remembered her frail body, her feathers disintegrating into a bed of catnip in Emmie’s roof garden…. Grover knelt and cupped his hand around a clump of weeds. The leaves crumbled. “Too late,” he muttered. “When I was a seeker, looking for Pan, at least I had hope. I thought I could find Pan and he’d save us all. Now…the god of the Wild is dead.” I scanned the glittering lights of Palm Springs, trying to imagine Pan in such a place. Humans had done quite a number on the natural world. No wonder Pan had faded and passed on. What remained of his spirit he’d left to his followers— the satyrs and dryads—entrusting them with his mission to protect the wild. I could have told Pan that was a terrible idea. I once went on vacation and entrusted the realm of music to my follower Nelson Riddle. I came back a few decades later and found pop music infected with sappy violins and backup singers, and Lawrence Welk was playing accordion on prime-time television. Never. Again. “Pan would be proud of your efforts,” I told Grover. Even to me that sounded halfhearted. Grover rose. “My father and my uncle sacrificed their lives searching for Pan. I just wish we had more help carrying on his work. Humans don’t seem to care. Even demigods. Even…” He stopped himself, but I suspected he was about to say Even gods. I had to admit he had a point. Gods wouldn’t normally mourn the loss of a griffin, or a few dryads, or a single ecosystem. Eh, we would think. Doesn’t concern me! The longer I was mortal, the more affected I was by even the smallest loss. I hated being mortal. We followed the road as it skirted the walls of a gated community, leading us toward the neon store signs in the distance. I watched where I put my feet, wondering with each step if a plume of fire might turn me into a Lester flambé. “You said everything is connected,” I recalled. “You think the third emperor created this burning maze?” Grover glanced from side to side, as if the third emperor might jump out from behind a palm tree with an ax and a scary mask. Given my suspicions about the emperor’s identity, that might not be too far-fetched. “Yes,” he said, “but we don’t know how or why. We don’t even know where the emperor’s base is. As far as we can tell, he moves around constantly.” “And…” I swallowed, afraid to ask. “The emperor’s identity?” “All we know is that he uses the monogram NH,” said Grover. “For Neos Helios.” A phantom ground squirrel gnawed its way up my spine. “Greek. Meaning New Sun.” “Right,” Grover said. “Not a Roman emperor’s name.” No, I thought. But it was one of his favorite titles. I decided not to share that information; not here in the dark, with only a jumpy satyr for company. If I confessed what I now knew, Grover and I might break down and sob in each other’s arms, which would be both embarrassing and unhelpful. We passed the gates of the neighborhood: DESERT PALMS. (Had someone really gotten paid to think up that name?) We continued to the nearest commercial street, where fast-food joints and gas stations shimmered. “I hoped Mellie and Gleeson would have new information,” Grover said. “They’ve been staying in LA with some demigods. I thought maybe they’d had more luck tracking down the emperor, or finding the heart of the maze.” “Is that why the Hedge family came to Palm Springs?” I asked. “To share information?” “Partly.” Grover’s tone hinted at a darker, sadder reason behind Mellie and Gleeson’s arrival, but I didn’t press. We stopped at a major intersection. Across the boulevard stood a warehouse store with a glowing red sign: MARCO’S MILITARY MADNESS! The parking lot was empty except for an old yellow Pinto parked near the entrance. I read the store sign again. On second look, I realized the name was not MARCO. It was MACRO. Perhaps I’d developed a bit of demigod dyslexia simply from hanging around them too long. Military Madness sounded like exactly the sort of place I didn’t want to go. And Macro, as in large worldview or computer program or…something else. Why did that name unleash another herd of ground squirrels into my nervous system? “It looks closed,” I said dully. “Must be the wrong army-surplus store.” “No.” Grover pointed to the Pinto. “That’s Gleeson’s car.” Of course it is, I thought. With my luck, how could it not be? I wanted to run away. I did not like the way that giant red sign washed the asphalt in bloodstained light. But Grover Underwood had led us through the Labyrinth, and after all his talk about losing friends, I was not about to let him lose another. “Well, then,” I said, “let’s go find Gleeson Hedge.” HOW hard could it be to find a satyr in an army-surplus store? As it turned out, quite hard. Macro’s Military Madness stretched on forever—aisle after aisle of equipment no self-respecting army would want. Near the entrance, a giant bin with a neon purple sign promised PITH HELMETS! BUY 3, GET 1 FREE! An endcap display featured a Christmas tree built of stacked propane tanks with garlands of blowtorch hoses, and a placard that read ’TIS ALWAYS THE SEASON! Two aisles, each a quarter mile long, were entirely devoted to camouflage clothing in every possible color: desert brown, forest green, arctic gray, and hot pink, just in case your spec-ops team needed to infiltrate a child’s princess-themed birthday party. Directory signs hung over each lane: HOCKEY HEAVEN, GRENADE PINS, SLEEPING BAGS, BODY BAGS, KEROSENE LAMPS, CAMPING TENTS, LARGE POINTY STICKS. At the far end of the store, perhaps half a day’s hike away, a massive yellow banner screamed FIREARMS!!! I glanced at Grover, whose face looked even paler under the harsh fluorescents. “Should we start with the camping supplies?” I asked. The corners of his mouth drifted downward as he scanned a display of rainbow-colored impaling spikes. “Knowing Coach Hedge, he’ll gravitate toward the guns.” So we started our trek toward the distant promised land of FIREARMS!!! I didn’t like the store’s too-bright lighting. I didn’t like the too-cheerful canned music, or the too-cold air-conditioning that made the place feel like a morgue. The handful of employees ignored us. One young man was label-gunning 50% OFF stickers on a row of Porta-Poo™ portable toilets. Another employee stood unmoving and blank-faced at the express register, as if he had achieved boredom-induced nirvana. Each worker wore a yellow vest with the Macro logo on the back: a smiling Roman centurion making the okay sign. I didn’t like that logo, either. At the front of the store stood a raised booth with a supervisor’s desk behind a Plexiglas screen, like the warden’s post in a prison. An ox of a man sat there, his bald head gleaming, veins bulging on his neck. His dress shirt and yellow vest could barely contain his bulky arm muscles. His bushy white eyebrows gave him a startled expression. As he watched us walk past, his grin made my skin crawl. “I don’t think we should be here,” I muttered to Grover. He eyed the supervisor. “Pretty sure there are no monsters here or I’d smell them. That guy is human.” This did not reassure me. Some of my least favorite people were human. Nevertheless, I followed Grover deeper into the store. As he predicted, Gleeson Hedge was in the firearms section, whistling as he stuffed his shopping cart with rifle scopes and barrel brushes. I saw why Grover called him Coach. Hedge wore bright blue double-weave polyester gym shorts that left his hairy goat legs exposed, a red baseball cap that perched between his small horns, a white polo shirt, and a whistle around his neck, as if he expected at any moment to be called in to referee a soccer game. He looked older than Grover, judging from his sun-weathered face, but it was hard to be sure with satyrs. They matured at roughly half the speed of humans. I knew Grover was thirty-ish in people years, for instance, but only sixteen in satyr terms. The coach could have been anywhere between forty and a hundred in human time. “Gleeson!” Grover called. The coach turned and grinned. His cart overflowed with quivers, crates of ammo, and plastic-sealed rows of grenades that promised FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!!! “Hey, Underwood!” he said. “Good timing! Help me pick some land mines.” Grover flinched. “Land mines?” “Well, they’re just empty casings,” Gleeson said, gesturing toward a row of metal canisters that looked like canteens, “but I figured we could fill them with explosives and make them active again! You like the World War II models or the Vietnam-era kind?” “Uh…” Grover grabbed me and shoved me forward. “Gleeson, this is Apollo.” Gleeson frowned. “Apollo…like Apollo Apollo?” He scanned me from head to toe. “It’s even worse than we thought. Kid, you gotta do more core exercises.” “Thanks.” I sighed. “I’ve never heard that before.” “I could whip you into shape,” Hedge mused. “But first, help me out. Stake mines? Claymores? What do you think?” “I thought you were buying camping supplies.” Gleeson arched his brow. “These are camping supplies. If I have to be outdoors with my wife and kid, holed up in that cistern, I’m going to feel a lot better knowing I’m armed to the teeth and surrounded by pressure-detonated explosives! I got a family to protect!” “But…” I glanced at Grover, who shook his head as if to say Don’t even try. At this point, dear reader, you may be wondering Apollo, why would you object? Gleeson Hedge has it right! Why mess around with swords and bows when you can fight monsters with land mines and machine guns? Alas, when one is fighting ancient forces, modern weapons are unreliable at best. The mechanisms of standard mortal-made guns and bombs tend to jam in supernatural situations. Explosions may or may not get the job done, and regular ammunition only serves to annoy most monsters. Some heroes do indeed use firearms, but their ammo must be crafted from magical metals—Celestial bronze, Imperial gold, Stygian iron, and so on. Unfortunately, these materials are rare. Magically crafted bullets are finicky. They can be used only once before disintegrating, whereas a sword made from magical metal will last for millennia. It’s simply impractical to “spray and pray” when fighting a gorgon or a hydra. “I think you already have a great assortment of supplies,” I said. “Besides, Mellie is worried. You’ve been gone all day.” “No, I haven’t!” Hedge protested. “Wait. What time is it?” “After dark,” Grover said. Coach Hedge blinked. “Seriously? Ah, hockey pucks. I guess I spent too long in the grenade aisle. Well, fine. I suppose—” “Excuse me,” said a voice at my back. The subsequent high-pitched yelp may have come from Grover. Or possibly me, who can be sure? I spun around to find that the huge bald man from the supervisor’s booth had sneaked up behind us. This was quite a trick, since he was almost seven feet tall and must have weighed close to three hundred pounds. He was flanked by two employees, both staring impassively into space, holding label guns. The manager grinned, his bushy white eyebrows creeping heavenward, his teeth the many colors of tombstone marble. “I’m so sorry to interrupt,” he said. “We don’t get many celebrities and I just —I had to be sure. Are you Apollo? I mean…the Apollo?” He sounded delighted by the possibility. I looked at my satyr companions. Gleeson nodded. Grover shook his head vigorously. “And if I were Apollo?” I asked the manager. “Oh, we’d comp your purchases!” the manager cried. “We’d roll out the red carpet!” That was a dirty trick. I’d always been a sucker for the red carpet. “Well, then, yes,” I said, “I’m Apollo.” The manager squealed—a sound not unlike the Erymanthian Boar made that time I shot him in the hindquarters. “I knew it! I’m such a fan. My name is Macro. Welcome to my store!” He glanced at his two employees. “Bring out the red carpet so we can roll Apollo up in it, will you? But first let’s make the satyrs’ deaths quick and painless. This is such an honor!” The employees raised their labeling guns, ready to mark us down as clearance items. “Wait!” I cried. The employees hesitated. Up close, I could see how much they looked alike: the same greasy mops of dark hair, the same glazed eyes, the same rigid postures. They might have been twins, or—a horrible thought seeped into my brain—products of the same assembly line. “I, um, er…” I said, poetic to the last. “What if I’m not really Apollo?” Macro’s grin lost some of its wattage. “Well, then, I’d have to kill you for disappointing me.” “Okay, I’m Apollo,” I said. “But you can’t just kill your customers. That’s no way to run an army-surplus store!” Behind me, Grover wrestled with Coach Hedge, who was desperately trying to claw open a family fun pack of grenades while cursing the tamper-proof packaging. Macro clasped his meaty hands. “I know it’s terribly rude. I do apologize, Lord Apollo.” “So…you won’t kill us?” “Well, as I said, I won’t kill you. The emperor has plans for you. He needs you alive!” “Plans,” I said. I hated plans. They reminded me of annoying things like Zeus’s once-a- century goal-setting meetings, or dangerously complicated attacks. Or Athena. “B-but my friends,” I stammered. “You can’t kill the satyrs. A god of my stature can’t be rolled up in a red carpet without my retinue!” Macro regarded the satyrs, who were still fighting over the plastic-wrapped grenades. “Hmm,” said the manager. “I’m sorry, Lord Apollo, but you see, this may be my only chance to get back into the emperor’s good graces. I’m fairly sure he won’t want the satyrs.” “You mean…you’re out of the emperor’s good graces?” Macro heaved a sigh. He began rolling up his sleeves as if he expected some hard, dreary satyr-murdering ahead. “I’m afraid so. I certainly didn’t ask to be exiled to Palm Springs! Alas, the princeps is very particular about his security forces. My troops malfunctioned one too many times, and he shipped us out here. He replaced us with that horrible assortment of strixes and mercenaries and Big Ears. Can you believe it?” I could neither believe it nor understand it. Big ears? I examined the two employees, still frozen in place, label guns ready, eyes unfocused, faces expressionless. “Your employees are automatons,” I realized. “These are the emperor’s former troops?” “Alas, yes,” Macro said. “They are fully capable, though. Once I deliver you, the emperor will surely see that and forgive me.” His sleeves were above his elbows now, revealing old white scars, as if his forearms had been clawed by a desperate victim many years ago…. I remembered my dream of the imperial palace, the praetor kneeling before his new emperor. Too late, I remembered the name of that praetor. “Naevius Sutorius Macro.” Macro beamed at his robotic employees. “I can’t believe Apollo remembers me. This is such an honor!” His robotic employees remained unimpressed. “You killed Emperor Tiberius,” I said. “Smothered him with a pillow.” Macro looked abashed. “Well, he was ninety percent dead already. I simply helped matters along.” “And you did it for”—an ice-cold burrito of dread sank into my stomach —“the next emperor. Neos Helios. It is him.” Macro nodded eagerly. “That’s right! The one, the only Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus!” He spread his arms as if waiting for applause. The satyrs stopped fighting. Hedge continued chewing on the grenade pack, though even his satyr teeth were having trouble with the thick plastic. Grover backed away, putting the cart between himself and the store employees. “G-Gaius who?” He glanced at me. “Apollo, what does that mean?” I gulped. “It means we run. Now!” MOST satyrs excel at running away. Gleeson Hedge, however, was not most satyrs. He grabbed a barrel brush from his cart, yelled “DIE!” and charged the three-hundred-pound manager. Even the automatons were too surprised to react, which probably saved Hedge’s life. I grabbed the satyr’s collar and dragged him backward as the employees’ first shots went wild, a barrage of bright orange discount stickers flying over our heads. I pulled Hedge down the aisle as he launched a fierce kick, overturning his shopping cart at our enemies’ feet. Another discount sticker grazed my arm with the force of an angry Titaness’s slap. “Careful!” Macro yelled at his men. “I need Apollo in one piece, not half- off!” Gleeson clawed at the shelves, grabbed a demo-model Macro’s Self-Lighting Molotov Cocktail™ (BUY ONE, GET TWO FREE!), and tossed it at the store employees with the battle cry “Eat surplus!” Macro shrieked as the Molotov cocktail landed amid Hedge’s scattered ammo boxes and, true to its advertising, burst into flames. “Up and over!” Hedge tackled me around the waist. He slung me over his shoulder like a sack of soccer balls and scaled the shelves in an epic display of goat-climbing, leaping into the next aisle as crates of ammunition exploded behind us. We landed in a pile of rolled-up sleeping bags. “Keep moving!” Hedge yelled, as if the thought might not have occurred to me. I scrambled after him, my ears ringing. From the aisle we’d just left, I heard bangs and screams as if Macro were running across a hot skillet strewn with popcorn kernels. I saw no sign of Grover. When we reached the end of the aisle, a store clerk rounded the corner, his label gun raised. “Hi-YA!” Hedge executed a roundhouse kick on him. This was a notoriously difficult move. Even Ares sometimes fell and broke his tailbone when practicing it in his dojo (witness the Ares-so-lame video that went viral on Mount Olympus last year, and which I absolutely was not responsible for uploading). To my surprise, Coach Hedge executed it perfectly. His hoof connected with the clerk’s face, knocking the automaton’s head clean off. The body dropped to its knees and fell forward, wires sparking in its neck. “Wow.” Gleeson examined his hoof. “I guess that Iron Goat conditioning wax really works!” The clerk’s decapitated body gave me flashbacks to the Indianapolis blemmyae, who lost their fake heads with great regularity, but I had no time to dwell on the terrible past when I had such a terrible present to deal with. Behind us, Macro called, “Oh, what have you done now?” The manager stood at the far end of the lane, his clothes smeared with soot, his yellow vest peppered with so many holes it looked like a smoking piece of Swiss cheese. Yet somehow—just my luck—he appeared unharmed. The second store clerk stood behind him, apparently unconcerned that his robotic head was on fire. “Apollo,” Macro chided, “there’s no point in fighting my automatons. This is a military-surplus store. I have fifty more just like these in storage.” I glanced at Hedge. “Let’s get out of here.” “Yeah.” Hedge grabbed a croquet mallet from a nearby rack. “Fifty may be too many even for me.” We skirted the camping tents, then zigzagged through Hockey Heaven, trying to make our way back to the store entrance. A few aisles away, Macro was shouting orders: “Get them! I’m not going to be forced to commit suicide again!” “Again?” Hedge muttered, ducking under the arm of a hockey mannequin. “He worked for the emperor.” I panted, trying to keep up. “Old friends. But —wheeze—emperor didn’t trust him. Ordered his arrest—wheeze—execution.” We stopped at an endcap. Gleeson peeked around the corner for signs of hostiles. “So Macro committed suicide instead?” Hedge asked. “What a moron. Why’s he working for this emperor again, if the guy wanted him killed?” I wiped the sweat from my eyes. Honestly, why did mortal bodies have to sweat so much? “I imagine the emperor brought him back to life, gave him a second chance. Romans have strange ideas about loyalty.” Hedge grunted. “Speaking of which, where’s Grover?” “Halfway back to the Cistern, if he’s smart.” Hedge frowned. “Nah. Can’t believe he’d do that. Well…” He pointed ahead, where sliding glass doors led out to the parking lot. The coach’s yellow Pinto was parked tantalizingly close—which is the first time yellow, Pinto, and tantalizingly have ever been used together in a sentence. “You ready?” We charged the doors. The doors did not cooperate. I slammed into one and bounced right off. Gleeson hammered at the glass with his croquet mallet, then tried a few Chuck Norris kicks, but even his Iron Goat–waxed hooves didn’t leave a scratch. Behind us, Macro said, “Oh, dear.” I turned, trying to suppress a whimper. The manager stood twenty feet away, under a whitewater raft that was suspended from the ceiling with a sign across its prow: BOATLOADS OF SAVINGS! I was beginning to appreciate why the emperor had ordered Macro arrested and executed. For such a big man, he was much too good at sneaking up on people. “Those glass doors are bombproof,” Macro said. “We have some for sale this week in our fallout shelter improvement department, but I suppose that wouldn’t do you any good.” From various aisles, more yellow-vested employees converged—a dozen identical automatons, some covered in Bubble Wrap as if they’d just broken out of storage. They formed a rough semicircle behind Macro. I drew my bow. I fired a shot at Macro, but my hands shook so badly the arrow missed, embedding itself in an automaton’s Bubble-Wrapped forehead with a crisp pop! The robot barely seemed to notice. “Hmm.” Macro grimaced. “You really are quite mortal, aren’t you? I guess it’s true what people say: ‘Never meet your gods. They’ll only disappoint you.’ I just hope there’s enough of you left for the emperor’s magical friend to work
The Burning Maze (the Trials of Apollo Book 3) PDF Download
2019
The third book in the latest series from international bestselling author, Rick Riordan
He was a God once. Until he was cast out his father, Zeus. Now, he’s an awkward teenager. Called Lester.
The only way out is a series of scary and dangerous trials, of course.
For his third trial, Apollo must journey through the Labyrinth to free an Oracle who only speaks in puzzles.
Then, defeat the most vicious of three very vicious Roman Emperors.
(All without the use of his godly powers.)
It looks like he will need all the help he can get – from some new and old friends.
__________
More books by Rick Riordan:
The Percy Jackson series:
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters
Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse
Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth
Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian
Percy Jackson: The Demigod Files
The Heroes of Olympus series:
The Lost Hero
The Son Of Neptune
The Mark of Athena
The Heroes of Olympus: The Demigod Files
The Kane Chronicles series:
The Red Pyramid
The Throne of Fire
The Serpent’s Shadow
The Magnus Chase Series:
Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer
Magnus Chase and the Hammer of Thor
Magnus Chase and the Ship of the Dead
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