by Rick Riordan
Hazel howled. The back wall collapsed, bringing down half the ceiling. Tarquin and his troops disappeared under an avalanche of rocks the size of assault vehicles.
My pain subsided to mere agony levels. Lavinia and Meg hauled me to my feet. Angry purple lines of infection now twisted up my arms. That probably wasn’t good.
Hazel hobbled over. Her corneas had turned an unhealthy shade of gray. “We need to move.”
Lavinia glanced at the pile of rubble. “But isn’t he—?”
“Not dead,” Hazel said with bitter disappointment. “I can feel him squirming under there, trying to…” She shivered. “It doesn’t matter. More undead will be coming. Let’s go!”
Easier said than done.
Hazel limped along, breathing heavily as she led us back through a different set of tunnels. Meg guarded our retreat, slicing down the occasional zombie who stumbled across our path. Lavinia had to support most of my weight, but she was deceptively strong, just as she was deceptively nimble. She seemed to have no trouble hauling my sorry carcass through the tomb.
I was only semiconscious of my surroundings. My bow clanged against my ukulele, making a jarring open chord in perfect sync with my rattled brain.
What had just happened?
After that beautiful moment of godlike prowess with my bow, I’d suffered an ugly, perhaps terminal setback with my gut wound. I now had to admit I was not getting better. Tarquin had spoken of a poison slowly making its way to my brain. Despite the best efforts of the camp’s healers, I was turning, becoming one of the king’s creatures. By facing him, I had apparently accelerated the process.
This should have terrified me. The fact that I could think about it with such detachment was itself concerning. The medical part of my mind decided I must be going into shock. Or possibly just, you know, dying.
Hazel stopped at the intersection of two corridors. “I—I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean?” Meg asked.
Hazel’s corneas were still the color of wet clay. “I can’t get a read. There should be an exit here. We’re close to the surface, but…I’m sorry, guys.”
Meg retracted her blades. “That’s okay. Keep watch.”
“What are you doing?” Lavinia asked.
Meg touched the nearest wall. The ceiling shifted and cracked. I had a fleeting image of us getting buried like Tarquin under several tons of rock—which, in my present state of mind, seemed like an amusing way to die. Instead, dozens of thickening tree roots wriggled their way through the cracks, pushing apart the stones. Even as a former god accustomed to magic, I found it mesmerizing. The roots spiraled and wove themselves together, shoving aside the earth, letting in the dim glow of moonlight, until we found ourselves at the base of a gently sloping chute (A root chute?) with handholds and footholds for climbing.
Meg sniffed the air above. “Smells safe. Let’s go.”
While Hazel stood guard, Meg and Lavinia joined forces to get me up the chute. Meg pulled. Lavinia pushed. It was all very undignified, but the thought of Lavinia’s half-primed manubalista jostling around somewhere below my delicate posterior gave me an incentive to keep moving.
We emerged at the base of a redwood in the middle of the forest. The carousel was nowhere in sight. Meg gave Hazel a hand up, then touched the trunk of the tree. The root chute spiraled shut, submerging under the grass.
Hazel swayed on her feet. “Where are we?”
“This way,” Lavinia announced.
She shouldered my weight again, despite my protestations that I was fine. Really, I was only dying a little bit. We staggered down a trail among the looming redwoods. I couldn’t see the stars or discern any landmarks. I had no idea which direction we were heading, but Lavinia seemed undeterred.
“How do you know where we are?” I asked.
“Told you,” she said. “I like to explore.”
She must really like Poison Oak, I thought for the umpteenth time. Then I wondered if Lavinia simply felt more at home in the wild than she did at camp. She and my sister would get along fine.
“Are any of you hurt?” I asked. “Did the ghouls scratch you?”
The girls all shook their heads.
“What about you?” Meg scowled and pointed at my gut. “I thought you were getting better.”
“I guess I was too optimistic.” I wanted to scold her for jumping into combat and nearly getting us all killed, but I didn’t have the energy. Also, the way she was looking at me, I got the feeling that her grumpy facade might collapse into tears faster than Tarquin’s ceilings had crumbled.
Hazel eyed me warily. “You should have healed. I don’t understand.”
“Lavinia, can I have some gum?” I asked.
“Seriously?” She dug in her pocket and handed me a piece.
“You’re a corrupting influence.” With leaden fingers, I managed to unwrap the gum and stick it in my mouth. The flavor was sickly sweet. It tasted pink. Still, it was better than the sour ghoul poison welling up in my throat. I chewed, glad for something to focus on beside the memory of Tarquin’s skeletal fingers curling and sending scythes of fire through my intestines. And what he had said about the Sibyl…? No. I couldn’t process that right now.
After a few hundred yards of torturous hiking, we reached a small stream.
“We’re close,” Lavinia said.
Hazel glanced behind us. “I’m sensing maybe a dozen behind us, closing fast.”
I saw and heard nothing, but I took Hazel’s word for it. “Go. You’ll move faster without me.”
“Not happening,” Meg said.
“Here, take Apollo.” Lavinia offered me to Meg like I was a sack of groceries. “You guys cross this stream, go up that hill. You’ll see Camp Jupiter.”
Meg straightened her grimy glasses. “What about you?”
“I’ll draw them away.” Lavinia patted her manubalista.
“That’s a terrible idea,” I said.
“It’s what I do,” Lavinia said.
I wasn’t sure if she meant drawing away enemies or executing terrible ideas.
“She’s right,” Hazel decided. “Be careful, legionnaire. We’ll see you at camp.”
Lavinia nodded and darted into the woods.
“Are you sure that was wise?” I asked Hazel.
“No,” she admitted. “But whatever Lavinia does, she always seems to come back unscathed. Now let’s get you home.”
Cooking with Pranjal
Chickweed and unicorn horn
Slow-basted zombie
HOME. SUCH A WONDERFUL word.
I had no idea what it meant, but it sounded nice.
Somewhere along the trail back to camp, my mind must have detached from my body. I don’t remember passing out. I don’t remember reaching the valley. But at some point, my consciousness drifted away like an escaped helium balloon.
I dreamed of homes. Had I ever really had one?
Delos was my birthplace, but only because my pregnant mother, Leto, took refuge there to escape Hera’s wrath. The island served as an emergency sanctuary for my sister and me, too, but it never felt like home any more than the backseat of a taxi would feel like home to a child born on the way to a hospital.
Mount Olympus? I had a palace there. I visited for the holidays. But it always felt more like the place my dad lived with my stepmom.
The Palace of the Sun? That was Helios’s old crib. I’d just redecorated.
Even Delphi, home of my greatest Oracle, had originally been the lair of Python. Try as you might, you can never get the smell of old snakeskin out of a volcanic cavern.
Sad to say, in my four-thousand-plus years, the times I’d felt most at home had all happened during the past few months: at Camp Half-Blood, sharing a cabin with my demigod children; at the Waystation with Emma, Jo, Georgina, Leo, and Calypso, all of us sitting around the dinner table chopping vegetables from the garden for dinner; at the Cistern in Palm Springs with Meg, Grover, Mellie, Coach Hedge, and a prickly assor
tment of cactus dryads; and now at Camp Jupiter, where the anxious, grief-stricken Romans, despite their many problems, despite the fact that I brought misery and disaster wherever I went, had welcomed me with respect, a room above their coffee shop, and some lovely bed linens to wear.
These places were homes. Whether I deserved to be part of them or not—that was a different question.
I wanted to linger in those good memories. I suspected I might be dying—perhaps in a coma on the forest floor as ghoul poison spread through my veins. I wanted my last thoughts to be happy ones. My brain had different ideas.
I found myself in the cavern of Delphi.
Nearby, dragging himself through the darkness, wreathed in orange and yellow smoke, was the all-too-familiar shape of Python, like the world’s largest and most rancid Komodo dragon. His smell was oppressively sour—a physical pressure that constricted my lungs and made my sinuses scream. His eyes cut through the sulfuric vapor like headlamps.
“You think it matters.” Python’s booming voice rattled my teeth. “These little victories. You think they lead to something?”
I couldn’t speak. My mouth still tasted like bubble gum. I was grateful for the sickly sweetness—a reminder that a world existed outside of this cave of horrors.
Python lumbered closer. I wanted to grab my bow, but my arms were paralyzed.
“It was for nothing,” he said. “The deaths you caused—the deaths you will cause—they don’t matter. If you win every battle, you will still lose the war. As usual, you don’t understand the true stakes. Face me, and you will die.”
He opened his vast maw, slavering reptilian lips pulled over glistening teeth.
“GAH!” My eyes flew open. My limbs flailed.
“Oh, good,” said a voice. “You’re awake.”
I was lying on the ground inside some sort of wooden structure, like…ah, a stable. The smells of hay and horse manure filled my nostrils. A burlap blanket prickled against my back. Peering down at me were two unfamiliar faces. One belonged to a handsome young man with silky black hair cresting over his wide sepia forehead.
The other face belonged to a unicorn. Its muzzle glistened with mucus. Its startled blue eyes, wide and unblinking, fixed on me as if I might be a tasty bag of oats. Stuck on the tip of its horn was a crank-handled rotary cheese grater.
“GAH!” I said again.
“Calm down, dummy,” Meg said, somewhere to my left. “You’re with friends.”
I couldn’t see her. My peripheral vision was still blurry and pink.
I pointed weakly at the unicorn. “Cheese grater.”
“Yes,” said the lovely young man. “It’s the easiest way to get a dose of horn shavings directly into the wound. Buster doesn’t mind. Do you, Buster?”
Buster the unicorn continued to stare at me. I wondered if he was even alive, or just a prop unicorn they had wheeled in.
“My name’s Pranjal,” said the young man. “Head healer for the legion. I worked on you when you first got here, but we didn’t really meet then, since, well, you were unconscious. I’m a son of Asclepius. I guess that makes you my grandpa.”
I moaned. “Please don’t call me Grandpa. I feel terrible enough already. Are—are the others all right? Lavinia? Hazel?”
Meg hovered into view. Her glasses were clean, her hair was washed, and her clothes were changed, so I must have been out for quite a while. “We’re all fine. Lavinia got back right after we did. But you almost died.” She sounded annoyed, as if my death would have inconvenienced her greatly. “You should’ve told me how bad that cut was.”
“I thought…I assumed it would heal.”
Pranjal knit his eyebrows. “Yes, well, it should have. You got excellent care, if I do say so myself. We know about ghoul infections. They’re usually curable, if we catch them within twenty-four hours.”
“But you,” Meg said, scowling at me. “You aren’t responding to treatment.”
“That’s not my fault!”
“It could be your godly side,” Pranjal mused. “I’ve never had a patient who was a former immortal. That might make you resistant to demigod healing, or more susceptible to undead scratches. I just don’t know.”
I sat up on my elbows. I was bare-chested. My wound had been re-bandaged, so I couldn’t tell how bad it looked underneath, but the pain had subsided to a dull ache. Tendrils of purple infection still snaked from my belly, up my chest, and down my arms, but their color had faded to a faint lavender.
“Whatever you did obviously helped,” I said.
“We’ll see.” Pranjal’s frown was not encouraging. “I tried a special concoction, a kind of magical equivalent to broad-spectrum antibiotics. It required a special strain of Stellaria media—magical chickweed—that doesn’t grow in Northern California.”
“It grows here now,” Meg announced.
“Yes,” Pranjal agreed with a smile. “I may have to keep Meg around. She’s pretty handy for growing medicinal plants.”
Meg blushed.
Buster still hadn’t moved or blinked. I hoped Pranjal occasionally put a spoon under the unicorn’s nostrils to make sure he was still breathing.
“At any rate,” Pranjal continued, “the salve I used wasn’t a cure. It will only slow down your…your condition.”
My condition. What a wonderful euphemism for turning into a walking corpse.
“And if I do want a cure?” I asked. “Which, by the way, I do.”
“That’s going to take more powerful healing than I’m capable of,” he confessed. “God-level healing.”
I felt like crying. I decided Pranjal needed to work on his bedside manner, perhaps by having a better collection of miraculous over-the-counter cures that did not require divine intervention.
“We could try more horn shavings,” Meg suggested. “That’s fun. I mean, that might work.”
Between Meg’s anxiousness to use the cheese grater and Buster’s hungry stare, I was starting to feel like a plate of pasta. “I don’t suppose you have any leads on available healing gods?”
“Actually,” Pranjal said, “if you’re feeling up to it, you should get dressed and have Meg walk you to the principia. Reyna and Frank are anxious to talk to you.”
Meg took pity on me.
Before meeting the praetors, she took me back to Bombilo’s so I could wash up and change clothes. Afterward, we stopped by the legion mess hall for food. Judging from the angle of the sun and the near-empty dining room, I guessed it was late afternoon, between lunch and dinner, which meant I’d been unconscious for almost a full day.
The day after tomorrow, then, would be April 8—the blood moon, Lester’s birthday, the day two evil emperors and an undead king attacked Camp Jupiter. On the bright side, the mess hall was serving fish sticks.
When I was done with my meal (here’s a culinary secret I discovered: ketchup really enhances fries and fish sticks), Meg escorted me down the Via Praetoria to legion headquarters.
Most of the Romans seemed to be off doing whatever Romans did in the late afternoon: marching, digging trenches, playing Fortiusnitius…I wasn’t really sure. The few legionnaires we passed stared at me as we walked by, their conversations sputtering to a stop. I guessed word had spread about our adventure in Tarquin’s tomb. Perhaps they’d heard that I had a slight turning-into-a-zombie problem and they were waiting for me to scream for brains.
The thought made me shudder. My gut wound felt so much better at the moment. I could walk without cringing. The sun was shining. I’d eaten a good meal. How could I still be poisoned?
Denial is a powerful thing.
Unfortunately, I suspected Pranjal was right. He had only slowed down the infection. My condition was beyond anything that camp healers, Greek or Roman, could solve. I needed godly help—which was something Zeus had expressly forbidden the other gods to give me.
The guards at the praetorium let us through immediately. Inside, Reyna and Frank sat behind a long table laden with maps, books, daggers, and
a large jar of jelly beans. Against the back wall, in front of a purple curtain, stood the legion’s golden eagle, humming with energy. Being so near to it made the hairs on my arms stand up. I didn’t know how the praetors could tolerate working here with that thing right behind them. Hadn’t they read the medical journal articles about the effects of long-term exposure to electromagnetic Roman standards?
Frank appeared ready for battle in his full armor. Reyna looked like she was the one who’d just woken up. She wore her purple cloak hastily pulled over a too-large PUERTO RICO FUERTE T-shirt, which I wondered if she’d slept in—but that was none of my business. The left side of her hair was an adorable fuzzy black mess of cowlicks that made me wonder if she slept on that side—and, again, that was none of my business.
Curled on the carpet at her feet were two automatons I hadn’t seen before—a pair of greyhounds, one gold and one silver. They both raised their heads when they saw me, then sniffed the air and growled as if to say, Hey, Mom, this guy smells like zombie. Can we kill him?
Reyna hushed them. She dug some jelly beans out of the jar and tossed them to the dogs. I wasn’t sure why metallic greyhounds would like candy, but they snapped up the morsels, then settled their heads back on the carpet.
“Er, nice dogs,” I said. “Why haven’t I seen them before?”
“Aurum and Argentum have been out searching,” Reyna said, in a tone that discouraged follow-up questions. “How is your wound?”
“My wound is thriving,” I said. “Me, not so much.”
“He’s better than before,” Meg insisted. “I grated some unicorn-horn shavings on his cut. It was fun.”
“Pranjal helped, too,” I said.
Frank gestured at the two visitors’ seats. “You guys make yourselves comfortable.”
Comfortable was a relative term. The three-legged foldable stools did not look as cushy as the praetors’ chairs. They also reminded me of the Oracle’s tripod seat in Delphi, which reminded me of Rachel Elizabeth Dare back at Camp Half-Blood, who was not-so-patiently waiting for me to restore her powers of prophecy. Thinking about her reminded me of the Delphic cave, which reminded me of Python, which reminded me of my nightmare and how scared I was of dying. I hate stream of consciousness.
