The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)

‘Oh, I bet,’ Piper said. ‘You and Caligula, the most twisted Roman emperor in history? A match made in Tartarus. In fact, that’s where I’m going to send you.’

On the other side of the chariot wreckage, Meg McCaffrey’s fingers twitched. Her bluebonnet earplugs shivered as she took a deep breath. I had never been so glad to see wild flowers tremble in someone’s ears!

I pushed my shoulder against the wind. I still couldn’t break through, but the barrier seemed to be softening, as if Medea was losing focus on her minion. Venti were fickle spirits. Without Medea keeping it on task, the air servant was likely to lose interest and fly off to find some nice pigeons or aeroplane pilots to harass.

‘Brave words, Piper,’ said the sorceress. ‘Caligula wanted to kill you and Jason Grace, you know. It would have been simpler. But I convinced him it would be better to let you suffer in exile. I liked the idea of you and your formerly famous father stuck on a dirt farm in Oklahoma, both of you slowly going mad with boredom and hopelessness.’

Piper’s jaw muscles tensed. Suddenly she reminded me of her mother, Aphrodite, whenever someone on earth compared their own beauty to hers. ‘You’re going to regret letting me live.’

‘Probably.’ Medea shrugged. ‘But it has been fun watching your world fall apart. As for Jason, that lovely boy with the name of my former husband –’

‘What about him?’ Piper demanded. ‘If you’ve hurt him –’

‘Hurt him? Not at all! I imagine he’s in school right now, listening to some boring lecture, or writing an essay, or whatever dreary work mortal teenagers do. The last time you two were in the maze …’ She smiled. ‘Yes, of course I know about that. We granted him access to the Sibyl. That’s the only way to find her, you know. I have to allow you to reach the centre of the maze – unless you’re wearing the emperor’s shoes, of course.’ Medea laughed, as if the idea amused her. ‘And, really, they wouldn’t go with your outfit.’

Meg tried to sit up. Her glasses had slipped sideways and were hanging from the tip of her nose.

I elbowed my cyclone cage. The wind was definitely swirling more slowly now.

Piper gripped her knife. ‘What did you do to Jason? What did the Sibyl say?’

‘She only told him the truth,’ Medea said with satisfaction. ‘He wanted to know how to find the emperor. The Sibyl told him. But she told him a bit more than that, as Oracles often do. The truth was enough to break Jason Grace. He won’t be a threat to anyone now. Neither will you.’

‘You’re going to pay,’ Piper said.

‘Lovely!’ Medea rubbed her hands. ‘I’m feeling generous, so I’ll grant your request. A duel just between us, woman to woman. Choose your weapon. I’ll choose mine.’

Piper hesitated, no doubt remembering how the wind had knocked my arrow aside. She shouldered her blowpipe, leaving herself armed with just her dagger.

‘A pretty weapon,’ Medea said. ‘Pretty like Helen of Troy. Pretty like you. But, woman to woman, let me give you some advice. Pretty can be useful. Powerful is better. For my weapon, I choose Helios, the Titan of the sun!’

She lifted her arms, and fire erupted around her.





18


Whoa, there, Medea

Don’t be all up in my face

With your hot granddad





Rule of duelling etiquette: when choosing a weapon for single combat, you should absolutely not choose to wield your grandfather.

I was no stranger to fire.

I had fed nuggets of molten gold to the sun horses with my bare hands. I’d gone swimming in the calderas of active volcanoes. (Hephaestus does throw a great pool party.) I had withstood the fiery breath of giants, dragons and even my sister before she’d brushed her teeth in the morning. But none of those horrors could compare to the pure essence of Helios, former Titan of the sun.

He had not always been hostile. Oh, he was fine in his glory days! I remembered his beardless face, eternally young and handsome, his curly dark hair crowned with a golden diadem of fire that made him too bright to look upon for more than an instant. In his flowing golden robes, his burning sceptre in hand, he would stroll through the halls of Olympus, chatting and joking and flirting shamelessly.

Yes, he was a Titan, but Helios had supported the gods during our first war with Kronos. He had fought at our sides against the giants. He possessed a kind and generous aspect – warm, as one would expect from the sun.

But gradually, as the Olympians gained power and fame among human worshippers, the memory of the Titans faded. Helios appeared less and less often in the halls of Mount Olympus. He became distant, angry, fierce, withering – all those less desirable solar qualities.

Humans began to look at me – brilliant, golden and shining – and associate me with the sun. Can you blame them?

I never asked for the honour. One morning I simply woke up and found myself the master of the sun chariot, along with all my other duties. Helios faded to a dim echo, a whisper from the depths of Tartarus.

Now, thanks to his evil sorceress granddaughter, he was back. Sort of.

A white-hot maelstrom roared around Medea. I felt Helios’s anger, his scorching temper that used to scare the daylights out of me. (Ew, bad pun. Sorry.)

Helios had never been a god of all trades. He was not like me, with many talents and interests. He did one thing with dedication and piercing focus: he drove the sun. Now, I could feel how bitter he was, knowing that his role had been assumed by me, a mere dabbler in solar matters, a weekend sun-chariot driver. For Medea, gathering his power from Tartarus had not been difficult. She had simply called on his resentment, his desire for revenge. Helios was burning to destroy me, the god who had eclipsed him. (Ew, there’s another one.)

Piper McLean ran. This was not a matter of bravery or cowardice. A demigod’s body simply wasn’t designed to endure such heat. Had she stayed in Medea’s proximity, Piper would have burst into flames.

The only positive development: my ventus jailer vanished, most likely because Medea couldn’t focus on both him and Helios. I stumbled towards Meg, yanked her to her feet and dragged her away from the growing firestorm.

‘Oh, no, Apollo,’ Medea called out. ‘No running away!’

I pulled Meg behind the nearest cement column and covered her as a curtain of flame sliced across the garage – sharp and fast and deadly, sucking the air from my lungs and setting my clothes on fire. I rolled instinctively, desperately, and crawled behind the next column over, smoking and dizzy.

Meg staggered to my side. She was steaming and red but still alive, her toasted flowers stubbornly rooted in her ears. I had shielded her from the worst of the heat.

From somewhere across the parking garage, Piper’s voice echoed, ‘Hey, Medea! Your aim sucks!’

I peeked around the column as Medea turned towards the sound. The sorceress stood fixed in place, encircled in fire, releasing slices of white heat in every direction like spokes from the centre of a wheel. One wave blasted in the direction of Piper’s voice.

A moment later, Piper called, ‘Nope! Getting colder!’

Meg shook my arm. ‘WHAT DO WE DO?’

My skin felt like a cooked sausage casing. Blood sang in my veins, the lyrics being HOT, HOT, HOT!

I knew I would die if I suffered even another glancing blast from that fire. But Meg was right. We had to do something. We couldn’t let Piper take all the (quite literal) heat.

‘Come out, Apollo!’ Medea taunted. ‘Say hello to your old friend! Together you will fuel the New Sun!’

Another curtain of heat flashed past, a few columns away. The essence of Helios did not roar or dazzle with many colours. It was ghostly white, almost transparent, but it would kill us as fast as exposure to a nuclear core. (Public safety announcement: reader, do not go to your local nuclear power plant and stand in the reactor chamber.)

I had no strategy to defeat Medea. I had no godly powers, no godly wisdom, nothing but a terrified feeling that, if I survived this, I would need another set of pink camo pants.

Meg must have seen the hopelessness in my face.