by Rick Riordan
Percy staggered over to Jason and clapped him on the shoulder. The ghostly crowd gave them a standing ovation as the Argo II extended its landing gear and settled on the arena floor. Leo stood at the helm, Hazel and Frank grinning at his side. Coach Hedge danced around the firing platform, pumping his fist in the air and yelling, ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’
Percy turned to the emperor’s box. ‘Well?’ he yelled at Bacchus. ‘Was that entertaining enough for you, you wine-breathed little –’
‘No need for that.’ Suddenly the god was standing right next to him in the arena. He brushed Dorito dust off his purple robes. ‘I have decided you are worthy partners for this combat.’
‘Partners?’ Jason growled. ‘You did nothing!’
Bacchus walked to the edge of the lake. The water instantly drained, leaving an Otis-headed pile of mush. Bacchus picked his way to the bottom and looked up at the crowd. He raised his thyrsus.
The crowd jeered and hollered and pointed their thumbs down. Percy had never been sure whether that meant live or die. He’d heard it both ways.
Bacchus chose the more entertaining option. He smacked Otis’s head with his pinecone staff, and the giant pile of Otismeal disintegrated completely.
The crowd went wild. Bacchus climbed out of the lake and strutted over to Ephialtes, who was still lying spread-eagled, overcooked and smoking.
Again, Bacchus raised his thyrsus.
‘DO IT!’ the crowd roared.
‘DON’T DO IT!’ Ephialtes wailed.
Bacchus tapped the giant on the nose, and Ephialtes crumbled to ashes.
The ghosts cheered and threw spectral confetti as Bacchus strode around the stadium with his arms raised triumphantly, exulting in the worship. He grinned at the demigods. ‘That, my friends, is a show! And of course I did something. I killed two giants!’
As Percy’s friends disembarked from the ship, the crowd of ghosts shimmered and disappeared. Piper and Nico struggled down from the emperor’s box as the Colosseum’s magical renovations began to turn into mist. The arena floor remained solid, but otherwise the stadium looked as if it hadn’t hosted a good giant killing for aeons.
‘Well,’ Bacchus said. ‘That was fun. You have my permission to continue your voyage.’
‘Your permission?’ Percy snarled.
‘Yes.’ Bacchus raised an eyebrow. ‘Although your voyage may be a little harder than you expect, son of Neptune.’
‘Poseidon,’ Percy corrected him automatically. ‘What do you mean about my voyage?’
‘You might try the parking lot behind the Emmanuel Building,’ Bacchus said. ‘Best place to break through. Now, goodbye, my friends. And, ah, good luck with that other little matter.’
The god vaporized in a cloud of mist that smelled faintly of grape juice. Jason ran to meet Piper and Nico.
Coach Hedge trotted up to Percy, with Hazel, Frank and Leo close behind. ‘Was that Dionysus?’ Hedge asked. ‘I love that guy!’
‘You’re alive!’ Percy said to the others. ‘The giants said you were captured. What happened?’
Leo shrugged. ‘Oh, just another brilliant plan by Leo Valdez. You’d be amazed what you can do with an Archimedes sphere, a girl who can sense stuff underground and a weasel.’
‘I was the weasel,’ Frank said glumly.
‘Basically,’ Leo explained, ‘I activated a hydraulic screw with the Archimedes device – which is going to be awesome once I install it in the ship, by the way. Hazel sensed the easiest path to drill to the surface. We made a tunnel big enough for a weasel, and Frank climbed up with a simple transmitter that I slapped together. After that, it was just a matter of hacking into Coach Hedge’s favourite satellite channels and telling him to bring the ship around to rescue us. After he got us, finding you was easy, thanks to that godly light show at the Colosseum.’
Percy understood about ten percent of Leo’s story, but he decided it was enough since he had a more pressing question. ‘Where’s Annabeth?’
Leo winced. ‘Yeah, about that … she’s still in trouble, we think. Hurt, broken leg, maybe – at least according to this vision Gaia showed us. Rescuing her is our next stop.’
Two seconds before, Percy had been ready to collapse. Now another surge of adrenalin coursed through his body. He wanted to strangle Leo and demand why the Argo II hadn’t sailed off to rescue Annabeth first, but he thought that might sound a little ungrateful.
‘Tell me about the vision,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything.’
The floor shook. The wooden planks began to disappear, spilling sand into the pits of the hypogeum below.
‘Let’s talk on board,’ Hazel suggested. ‘We’d better take off while we still can.’
They sailed out of the Colosseum and veered south over the rooftops of Rome.
All around the Piazza del Colosseo, traffic had come to a standstill. A crowd of mortals had gathered, probably wondering about the strange lights and sounds that had come from the ruins. As far as Percy could see, none of the giants’ spectacular plans for destruction had come off successfully. The city looked the same as before. No one seemed to notice the huge Greek trireme rising into the sky.
The demigods gathered around the helm. Jason bandaged Piper’s sprained shoulder while Hazel sat at the stern, feeding Nico ambrosia. The son of Hades could barely lift his head. His voice was so quiet Hazel had to lean in whenever he spoke.
Frank and Leo recounted what had happened in the room with the Archimedes spheres and the visions Gaia had showed them in the bronze mirror. They quickly decided that their best lead for finding Annabeth was the cryptic advice Bacchus had provided: the Emmanuel Building, whatever that was. Frank started typing at the helm’s computer while Leo tapped furiously at his controls, muttering, ‘Emmanuel Building. Emmanuel Building.’ Coach Hedge tried to help by wrestling with an upside-down street map of Rome.
Percy knelt next to Jason and Piper. ‘How’s the shoulder?’
Piper smiled. ‘It’ll heal. Both of you did great.’
Jason elbowed Percy. ‘Not a bad team, you and me.’
‘Better than jousting in a Kansas cornfield,’ Percy agreed.
‘There it is!’ Leo cried, pointing to his monitor. ‘Frank, you’re amazing! I’m setting course.’
Frank hunched his shoulders. ‘I just read the name off the screen. Some Chinese tourist marked it on Google Maps.’
Leo grinned at the others. ‘He reads Chinese.’
‘Just a tiny bit,’ Frank said.
‘How cool is that?’
‘Guys,’ Hazel broke in. ‘I hate to interrupt your admiration session, but you should hear this.’
She helped Nico to his feet. He’d always been pale, but now his skin looked like powdered milk. His dark sunken eyes reminded Percy of photos he’d seen of liberated prisoners-of-war, which Percy guessed Nico basically was.
‘Thank you,’ Nico rasped. His eyes darted nervously around the group. ‘I’d given up hope.’
The past week or so, Percy had imagined a lot of scathing things he might say to Nico when they met again, but the guy looked so frail and sad that Percy couldn’t muster much anger.
‘You knew about the two camps all along,’ Percy said. ‘You could have told me who I was the first day I arrived at Camp Jupiter, but you didn’t.’
Nico slumped against the helm. ‘Percy, I’m sorry. I discovered Camp Jupiter last year. My dad led me there, though I wasn’t sure why. He told me the gods had kept the camps separate for centuries and that I couldn’t tell anyone. The time wasn’t right. But he said it would be important for me to know …’ He doubled over in a fit of coughing.
Hazel held his shoulders until he could stand again.
‘I – I thought Dad meant because of Hazel,’ Nico continued. ‘I’d need a safe place to take her. But now … I think he wanted me to know about both camps so I’d understand how important your quest was, and so I’d search for the Doors of Death.’
The air turned el
ectric – literally, as Jason started throwing off sparks.
‘Did you find the doors?’ Percy asked.
Nico nodded. ‘I was a fool. I thought I could go anywhere in the Underworld, but I walked right into Gaia’s trap. I might as well have tried running from a black hole.’
‘Um …’ Frank chewed his lip. ‘What kind of black hole are you talking about?’
Nico started to speak, but whatever he needed to say must have been too terrifying. He turned to Hazel.
She put her hand on her brother’s arm. ‘Nico told me that the Doors of Death have two sides – one in the mortal world, one in the Underworld. The mortal side of the portal is in Greece. It’s heavily guarded by Gaia’s forces. That’s where they brought Nico back into the upper world. Then they transported him to Rome.’
Piper must’ve been nervous, because her cornucopia spat out a cheeseburger. ‘Where exactly in Greece is this doorway?’
Nico took a rattling breath. ‘The House of Hades. It’s an underground temple in Epirus. I can mark it on a map, but – but the mortal side of the portal isn’t the problem. In the Underworld, the Doors of Death are in … in …’
A cold pair of hands did the itsy-bitsy spider down Percy’s back.
A black hole. An inescapable part of the Underworld where even Nico di Angelo couldn’t go. Why hadn’t Percy thought of this before? He’d been to the very edge of that place. He still had nightmares about it.
‘Tartarus,’ he guessed. ‘The deepest part of the Underworld.’
Nico nodded. ‘They pulled me into the pit, Percy. The things I saw down there …’ His voice broke.
Hazel pursed her lips. ‘No mortal has ever been to Tartarus,’ she explained. ‘At least, no one has ever gone in and returned alive. It’s the maximum-security prison of Hades, where the old Titans and the other enemies of the gods are bound. It’s where all monsters go when they die on the earth. It’s … well, no one knows exactly what it’s like.’
Her eyes drifted to her brother. The rest of her thought didn’t need to be spoken: No one except Nico.
Hazel handed him his black sword.
Nico leaned on it like it was an old man’s cane. ‘Now I understand why Hades hasn’t been able to close the doors,’ he said. ‘Even the gods don’t go into Tartarus. Even the god of death, Thanatos himself, wouldn’t go near that place.’
Leo glanced over from the wheel. ‘So let me guess. We’ll have to go there.’
Nico shook his head. ‘It’s impossible. I’m the son of Hades, and even I barely survived. Gaia’s forces overwhelmed me instantly. They’re so powerful down there … no demigod would stand a chance. I almost went insane.’
Nico’s eyes looked like shattered glass. Percy wondered sadly if something inside him had broken permanently.
‘Then we’ll sail for Epirus,’ Percy said. ‘We’ll just close the gates on this side.’
‘I wish it were that easy,’ Nico said. ‘The doors would have to be controlled on both sides to be closed. It’s like a double seal. Maybe, just maybe, all seven of you working together could defeat Gaia’s forces on the mortal side, at the House of Hades. But unless you had a team fighting simultaneously on the Tartarus side, a team powerful enough to defeat a legion of monsters in their home territory –’
‘There has to be a way,’ Jason said.
Nobody volunteered any brilliant ideas.
Percy thought his stomach was sinking. Then he realized the entire ship was descending towards a big building like a palace.
Annabeth. Nico’s news was so horrible Percy had momentarily forgotten she was still in danger, which made him feel incredibly guilty.
‘We’ll figure out the Tartarus problem later,’ he said. ‘Is that the Emmanuel Building?’
Leo nodded. ‘Bacchus said something about the parking lot at the back? Well, there it is. What now?’
Percy remembered his dream of the dark chamber, the evil buzzing voice of the monster called Her Ladyship. He remembered how shaken Annabeth had looked when she’d come back from Fort Sumter after her encounter with the spiders. Percy had begun to suspect what might be down in that shrine … literally, the mother of all spiders. If he was right, and Annabeth had been trapped down there alone with that creature for hours, her leg broken … At this point, he didn’t care if her quest was supposed to be solo or not.
‘We have to get her out,’ he said.
‘Well, yeah,’ Leo agreed. ‘But, uh …’
He looked like he wanted to say, What if we’re too late?
Wisely, he changed tack. ‘There’s a parking lot in the way.’
Percy looked at Coach Hedge. ‘Bacchus said something about breaking through. Coach, you still have ammo for those ballistae?’
The satyr grinned like a wild goat. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
XLIX
Annabeth
Annabeth had reached her terror limit.
She’d been assaulted by chauvinist ghosts. She’d broken her ankle. She’d been chased across a chasm by an army of spiders. Now, in severe pain, with her ankle wrapped in boards and bubble wrap, and carrying no weapon except her dagger, she faced Arachne – a monstrous half-spider who wanted to kill her and make a commemorative tapestry about it.
In the last few hours, Annabeth had shivered, sweated, whimpered and blinked back so many tears that her body simply gave up on being scared. Her mind said something like, Okay, sorry. I can’t be any more terrified than I already am.
So instead Annabeth started to think.
The monstrous creature picked her way down from the top of the web-covered statue. She moved from strand to strand, hissing with pleasure, her four eyes glittering in the dark. Either she was not in a hurry, or she was slow.
Annabeth hoped she was slow.
Not that it mattered. Annabeth was in no condition to run, and she didn’t like her chances in combat. Arachne probably weighed several hundred pounds. Those barbed legs were perfect for capturing and killing prey. Besides, Arachne probably had other horrible powers – a poisonous bite, or web-slinging abilities like an Ancient Greek Spider-Man.
No. Combat was not the answer.
That left trickery and brains.
In the old legends, Arachne had got into trouble because of pride. She’d bragged about her tapestries being better than Athena’s, which had led to Mount Olympus’s first reality TV punishment programme: So You Think You Can Weave Better Than a Goddess? Arachne had lost in a big way.
Annabeth knew something about being prideful. It was her fatal flaw as well. She often had to remind herself that she couldn’t do everything alone. She wasn’t always the best person for every job. Sometimes she got tunnel vision and forgot about what other people needed, even Percy. And she could get easily distracted talking about her favourite projects.
But could she use that weakness against the spider? Maybe if she stalled for time … though she wasn’t sure how stalling would help. Her friends wouldn’t be able to reach her, even if they knew where to go. The cavalry would not be coming. Still, stalling was better than dying.
She tried to keep her expression calm, which wasn’t easy with a broken ankle. She limped towards the nearest tapestry – a cityscape of Ancient Rome.
‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘Tell me about this tapestry.’
Arachne’s lips curled over her mandibles. ‘Why do you care? You’re about to die.’
‘Well, yes,’ Annabeth said. ‘But the way you captured the light is amazing. Did you use real golden thread for the sunbeams?’
The weaving truly was stunning. Annabeth didn’t have to pretend to be impressed.
Arachne allowed herself a smug smile. ‘No, child. Not gold. I blended the colours, contrasting bright yellow with darker hues. That’s what gives it a three-dimensional effect.’
‘Beautiful.’ Annabeth’s mind split into two different levels: one carrying on the conversation, the other madly grasping for a scheme to survive. Nothing came to her. Arachne h
ad been beaten only once – by Athena herself, and that had taken godly magic and incredible skill in a weaving contest.
‘So …’ she said. ‘Did you see this scene yourself?’
Arachne hissed, her mouth foaming in a not-very-attractive way. ‘You are trying to delay your death. It won’t work.’
‘No, no,’ Annabeth insisted. ‘It just seems a shame that these beautiful tapestries can’t be seen by everyone. They belong in a museum, or …’
‘Or what?’ Arachne asked.
A crazy idea sprang fully formed from Annabeth’s mind, like her mom jumping out of Zeus’s noggin. But could she make it work?
‘Nothing.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘It’s a silly thought. Too bad.’
Arachne scuttled down the statue until she was perched atop the goddess’s shield. Even from that distance, Annabeth could smell the spider’s stink, like an entire bakery full of pastries left to go bad for a month.
‘What?’ the spider pressed. ‘What silly thought?’
Annabeth had to force herself not to back away. Broken ankle or no, every nerve in her body pulsed with fear, telling her to get away from the huge spider hovering over her.
‘Oh … it’s just that I was put in charge of redesigning Mount Olympus,’ she said. ‘You know, after the Titan War. I’ve completed most of the work, but we need a lot of quality public art. The throne room of the gods, for instance … I was thinking your work would be perfect to display there. The Olympians could finally see how talented you are. As I said, it was a silly thought.’
Arachne’s hairy abdomen quivered. Her four eyes glimmered as if she had a separate thought behind each and was trying to weave them into a coherent web.
‘You’re redesigning Mount Olympus,’ she said. ‘My work … in the throne room.’
‘Well, other places, too,’ Annabeth said. ‘The main pavilion could use several of these. That one with the Greek landscape – the Nine Muses would love that. And I’m sure the other gods would be fighting over your work as well. They’d compete to have your tapestries in their palaces. I guess, aside from Athena, none of the gods has ever seen what you can do?’
