At least Annabeth had a good night's sleep before going on the quest, right?
Wrong.
That night, her dreams took her to a round room with brick walls. Torches hanging from the walls lit the room. Even though this was a dream, she thought she could feel a cold breeze whipping through her. It must just be her imagination.
Y/N was sitting cross-legged against one of the walls, his sword resting on his lap, his head thrown back. You would have thought he was asleep, if not for his fingers occasionally clenching on the hilt of his sword and his eyelids sometimes opening wide. His orange camp shirt was stained, but she couldn't see with what—she tried to push away the idea that it might be his blood.
Y/N closed his eyes; then he sat up suddenly, like when you feel as if you're falling while sleeping.
Then footsteps came from one of the two hallways leading off the room. Y/N stood up. He weighed his sword, pushed aside the strands of hair that fell into his eyes, and took a deep breath.
A dracaena entered, undulating on the snake part of her body.
She licked her lips. "Hello."
Y/N lunged at her, his sword forward, as she showed her fangs.
Annabeth woke up with a start, her heart pounding.
Her brothers and sisters were tossing and snoring in their beds. She forced herself to listen to their breathing, to calm down. This wasn't normal. Once was too much, but two dreams like that with so little time between them. . . . Not normal at all.
It was a clear morning. The fog had burned off and the sky was blue. Campers would be having their lessons today, flying pegasi and practicing archery and scaling the lava wall. Meanwhile, she would be heading underground.
Juniper and Grover stood apart from the group. Juniper had been crying again, but she was trying to keep it together for Grover's sake. She kept fussing with his clothes, straightening his rasta cap and brushing goat fur off his shirt. Since they had no idea what they would encounter, he was dressed as a human, with the cap to hide his horns, and jeans, fake feet, and sneakers to hide his goat legs.
Chiron, Quintus, and Mrs. O'Leary stood with the other campers who'd come to wish them well, but there was too much activity for it to feel like a happy send-off. A couple of tents had been set up by the rocks for guard duty. Beckendorf and his siblings were working on a line of defensive spikes and trenches. Chiron had decided they needed to guard the Labyrinth exit at all times, just in case.
Annabeth checked on her supply pack one last time—her invisibility cap, her bronze knife, a canteen of nectar, and a bag of ambrosia. She also had a change of clothes, but she felt she wouldn't have any time to change.
She saw a couple of pairs of legs walking toward her. When she raised her eyes, she frowned. "Percy, you look terrible."
"He killed the water fountain last night," Tyson explained.
"What?" she asked.
Before Tyson could say more, Chiron trotted over. "Well, it appears you are ready!"
He tried to sound upbeat, but Annabeth could tell he was anxious.
At this moment, Ethan arrived. He had a somber look on his face that was totally unlike him. Even in the depths of the Underworld, up in the air hoisted by Scylla, or confronting Luke on top of Mount Tamalpais, he hadn't had this . . . depressed . . . expression. Panicked, he had been plenty of times. Depressed, this must be the first time.
"Didn't sleep so well," he explained. "Dreams . . . again."
"Don't worry," Annabeth told him. "We'll find Y/N." She was reassuring him as much as she reassured herself.
"Got to," Ethan said. He tried to smile, but all he managed was a grimace. Annabeth noticed that he had something around his waist: Y/N's lion coat
"That can always come in handy," Ethan said. "If I can avoid getting hit in the back, I don't say no."
"And the spear?" Annabeth asked, pointing at the one he was holding.
He himself looked at it as if he wasn't quite sure it was palpable. It was larger than the big staff he usually used.
"I'm not going to fight with wood all my life," he said. "Not very effective against monsters. This, on the other hand, works better. A shame it's so big."
Chiron put a hand on Ethan's shoulder. "Take care. And good hunting."
Annabeth, Ethan, Percy and Tyson walked over to the rocks, where Grover was waiting. Annabeth stared at the crack between the boulders—the entrance that was about to swallow them.
"Well," Grover said nervously, "goodbye sunshine."
"Hello rocks," Tyson agreed. And together, the five of them descended into darkness.
They made it a hundred feet before they were hopelessly lost.
The tunnel looked nothing like the one Annabeth had stumbled into with Ethan before. Now it was round like a sewer, constructed of red brick with iron-barred portholes every ten feet. Ethan shined a light through one of the portholes out of curiosity, but they couldn't see anything. It opened into infinite darkness. Voices seemed to come from the other side, but it may have been just the cold wind.
Annabeth guided the others. "If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it," she said, "we should be able to find our way out again by reversing course."
Unfortunately, as soon as she said that, the left wall disappeared. They found themselves in the middle of a circular chamber with eight tunnels leading out, and no idea how they'd gotten there.
"Um, which way did we come in?" Grover said nervously.
"Just turn around," Annabeth said.
They each turned toward a different tunnel. Ridiculous. None of them could decide which way led back to camp.
"Left walls are mean," Tyson said. "Which way now?"
Annabeth swept her flashlight beam over the archways of the eight tunnels. They were identical. "That way," she said, choosing one randomly.
"How do you know?" Percy asked.
"Deductive reasoning," she lied.
"In other words, you're guessing," Ethan said.
"Shh, goat boy," she said. "Just come on."
The tunnel she'd chosen narrowed quickly. The walls turned to gray cement, and the ceiling got so low that pretty soon they were hunching over. Tyson was forced to crawl.
Grover's hyperventilating was the loudest noise in the maze. "I can't stand it anymore," he whispered. "Are we there yet?"
"We've been down here maybe five minutes," Annabeth told him.
"It's been longer than that," he insisted. "And why would Pan be down here? This is the opposite of the wild!"
They kept shuffling forward. Just when Annabeth began to think she'd made a bad choice and was sure the tunnel would get so narrow it would squish them, it opened into a huge room. She shined her light around the walls and Percy said, "Whoa."
The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but you could still make out the colors—red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast. There was Annabeth's mother, Athena, with her shield, chatting with Ares—it looked more like an argument. Zeus was partying with satyrs, Dionysus turned grapes into wine, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren't very accurate. Dionysus was not that handsome, and Ares's eyes weren't normal.
In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain. It looked like it hadn't held water in a long time.
"What is this place?" Percy muttered.
"It looks—" Ethan began.
"Roman," Annabeth said. "Those mosaics are about two thousand years old."
"But how can they be Roman?" Percy asked.
"The Labyrinth is a patchwork," she said. "It's always expanding, adding pieces. It's the only work of architecture that grows by itself."
"You make it sound like it's alive."
A groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of them.
"Let's not talk about it being alive," Grover whimpered. "Please?"
"All right," Annabeth said. "Forward."
"Down the hall with the bad sounds?" Tyson said nervously.
"Yeah," she said. "The architecture is getting older. That's a good sign. Daedalus's workshop would be in the oldest part."
But soon the maze was toying with them—they went fifty feet and the tunnel turned back to cement, with brass pipes running down the sides. The walls were spray-painted with graffiti. A neon tagger sign read MOZ RULZ.
"I'm thinking this is not Roman," Percy said.
Annabeth took a deep breath—Yeah, none of us had understood that—then forged ahead.
Every few feet the tunnels twisted and turned and branched off. The floor beneath them changed from cement to mud to bricks and back again. There was no sense to any of it. They stumbled into a wine cellar—a bunch of dusty bottles in wooden racks—like they were walking through somebody's basement, only there was no exit above them, just more tunnels leading on.
Later the ceiling turned to wooden planks, and Annabeth could hear voices above them and the creaking of footsteps, as if they were walking under some kind of bar. It was reassuring to hear people, but then again, they couldn't get to them. They were stuck down here with no way out. Then they found their first skeleton.
He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform. A wooden crate of glass bottles sat next to him.
"A milkman," Annabeth said.
"What?" Ethan asked.
"They used to deliver milk," she explained.
"Yeah, I know what they are, but . . . that was like, a million years ago. What's he doing here?"
"Some people wander in by mistake," Annabeth said. "Some come exploring on purpose and never make it back. A long time ago, the Cretans even sent people in here as human sacrifices."
Grover gulped. "He's been down here for a long time." He pointed to the skeleton's bottles, which were coated with white dust. The skeleton's fingers were clawing at the brick wall, as if he had died trying to get out.
"Only bones," Tyson said. "Don't worry, goat boy. The milkman is dead."
"The milkman doesn't bother me," Grover said. "It's the smell. Monsters. Can't you smell it?"
Tyson nodded. "Lots of monsters. But underground smells like that. Monsters and dead milk people."
"Oh, good," Grover whimpered. "I thought maybe I was wrong."
"We have to get deeper into the maze," Annabeth said. "There has to be a way to the center."
She led the others to the right, then the left, through a corridor of stainless steel like some kind of air shaft, and they arrived back in the Roman tile room with the fountain.
This time, they weren't alone.
What Annabeth first noticed were his faces. Both of them. They jutted out from either side of his head, staring over his shoulders, so his head was much wide than it should've been, kind of like a hammerhead shark's. Looking straight at him, all she saw were two overlapping ears and mirror-image sideburns.
He was dressed like a New York City doorman: a long black overcoat, shiny shoes, and a black top hat that somehow managed to stay on his double-wide head.
"Well, Annabeth?" his left face said. "Hurry up!"
"Don't mind him," the right face said. "He's terribly rude. Right this way, miss."
Annabeth's jaw dropped. "Uh . . . I don't . . ."
Tyson frowned. "That funny man has two faces."
"The funny man has ears, you know!" the left face scolded. "Now come along, miss."
"No, no," the right face said. "This way, miss. Talk to me, please."
The two-faced man regarded Annabeth as best he could out of the corners of his eyes. It was impossible to look at him straight on without focusing on one side or the other. She had to choose which side to look at each time he spoke. . . . Suddenly she realized that's what he was asking—he wanted her to choose.
Behind him were two exits, blocked by wooden doors with huge iron locks. They hadn't been there their first time through the room. The two-faced doorman held a silver key, which he kept passing from his left hand to his right hand. She wondered if this was a different room entirely, but the frieze of the gods looked exactly the same.
Behind them, the doorway they'd come through had disappeared, replaced by more mosaics. They wouldn't be going back the way they came.
"The exits are closed," Annabeth said.
"Duh!" the man's left face said.
"Where do they lead?" she asked.
"One probably leads the way you wish to go," the right face said encouragingly. "The other leads to certain death."
Annabeth's mind worked as hard it could to assess the situation. At once its machinery clicked. "I—I know who you are," she said.
"Oh, you're a smart one!" The left face sneered. "But do you know which way to choose? I don't have all day."
"Why are you trying to confuse me?" she asked.
The right face smiled. "You're in charge now, my dear. All the decisions are on your shoulders. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"I—"
What I wanted? she thought. Indeed, she'd wanted to be in charge. She'd always felt that she could deal with problems better than others could. But she'd known for quite some time this was her fatal flaw. She hadn't fooled herself upon accepting this quest. . . . Or have I?
"We know you, Annabeth," the left face said. "We know what you wrestle with every day. We know your indecision. You will have to make your choice sooner or later. And the choice may kill you."
The color drained out of Annabeth's face. "No. . . ." This was more than a choice between doors. The two-faced man's smiles told her that he knew. He knew her prophecy. And he very well knew the last line. "I don't—"
"Leave her alone," Ethan said. "Who are you, anyway?"
"I'm your best friend," the right face said.
"I'm your worst enemy," the left face said.
"I'm Janus," both faces said in harmony. "God of Doorways. Beginnings. Endings. Choices."
"I'll see you soon enough, Ethan Moore," the right face said. "But for now it's Annabeth's turn." He laughed giddily. "Such fun!"
"Shut up!" his left face said. "This is serious. One bad choice can ruin your whole life. It can kill you and all your friends. But no pressure, Annabeth. Choose!"
"Don't do it," Percy said.
"I'm afraid she has to," the right face said cheerfully.
Annabeth moistened her lips. She looked alternatively at the two doors. Exactly the same doors. How was she supposed to choose? There's no choice between two identical things. "I—I choose—"
Before she could point to a door, a brilliant light flooded the room.
Janus raised his hands to either side of his head to cover his eyes. When the light died, a woman was standing at the fountain.
She was tall and graceful with long red hair pulled up so it looked like a crown—actually, she wore a circlet. Her eyes were the same color as the sun at dawn, when the sun still hides under the horizon but its light wipe the night's darkness away.
"Janus," she said, "are we causing trouble again?"
"N-no, milady!" Janus's right face stammered.
"Yes!" the left face said.
"Shut up!" the right face said.
"Excuse me?" the woman asked.
"Not you, milady! I was talking to myself."
"I see," the lady said. "You know very well your visit is premature. The girl's time has not yet come. So I give you a choice: leave these heroes to me, or I shall turn you into a door and break you down."
"What kind of door?" the left face asked.
"Shut up!" the right face said.
"Because French doors are nice," the left face mused. "Lots of natural light."
"Shut up!" the right face wailed. "Not you, milady! Of course I'll leave. I was just having a bit of fun. Doing my job. Offering choices."
"Causing indecision," the woman corrected. "Now be gone!"
The left face muttered, "Party pooper," then he raised his silver key, inserted it into the air, and disappeared.
The woman turned toward Annabeth and the others, and fear closed around Annabeth's heart. The eyes looking at her shined with power. For a second, she almost wished she'd taken her chances with Janus. But then the woman smiled.
"You must be hungry," she said. "Sit with me and talk."
She waved her hand, and the old Roman fountain began to flow. Jets of clear water sprayed into the air. A marble table appeared, with way too many platters of sandwiches and way too much lemonade.
"Who—who are you?" Percy asked.
Annabeth thought she already knew. The resemblance was not immediately apparent, but the more you looked the more striking it became.
"I am Hera." The woman smiled. "Queen of Heaven."
Annabeth had seen Hera twice, each on winter solstices, when all the Olympian gods held council. The first time in the winter before Y/N and Percy came at the Half-Blood Camp, she'd only half glanced at Hera. The second last winter, she'd interrupted her talking with Y/N. At any rate, she didn't remember Hera so . . . casual. Now, Hera acted like any mother you could've seen with her kids at the park—if you took the circlet out of the equation, of course; with her smile she managed to make you forget it so easily.
She served them sandwiches and poured lemonade.
"Grover, dear," she said, "use your napkin. Don't eat it."
"Yes, ma'am," Grover said.
"Ethan, you're wasting away. Would you like another peanut butter sandwich?"
Ethan nodded. "Yes, my Lady."
"Queen Hera," Annabeth said. "I can't believe it. What are you doing in the Labyrinth?"
Hera smiled. She flicked one finger, and Annabeth felt her hair combing itself. When she touched her face, all the dirt and grime disappeared from her face.
"I came to see you, naturally," the goddess said.
Next to her, Tyson was inhaling one peanut butter sandwich after another, and Grover was loving the lemonade, crunching the Styrofoam cup like an ice-cream cone.
"I didn't think—" Annabeth faltered. She'd realized what she was going to say may be rude. And you don't want to be rude to Hera; everyone knows that. Anyway, she couldn't stop right now. "Well, I didn't think you liked heroes."
Hera smiled indulgently. "Because of that little spat I had with Hercules? Honestly, I got so much bad press because of one disagreement."
"Didn't you try to kill him, like, a lot of times?" Annabeth asked.
Hera waved her hand dismissively. "Water under the bridge, my dear. Besides, he was one of my loving husband's children by another woman. My patience wore thin, I'll admit it. But Zeus and I have had some excellent marriage counseling sessions since then. We've aired our feelings and come to an understanding—especially after that last little incident."
"You mean when he sired Thalia?" Percy let slip. As soon as he said the name of Thalia, half-blood daughter of Zeus, Hera's eyes turned toward him frostily.
"Percy Jackson, isn't it? One of Poseidon's . . . children." Annabeth got the feeling she was thinking of another word besides children. "As I recall, I voted to let you live at the winter solstice. I hope I voted correctly."
She turned back to Annabeth with a sunny smile. "At any rate, I certainly bear you no ill will, my girl. I appreciate the difficulty of your quest. Especially when you have troublemakers like Janus to deal with."
Annabeth lowered her gaze. "Why was he here? He was driving me crazy."
"Trying to," Hera agreed. "You must understand, the minor gods like Janus have always been frustrated by the small parts they play in the universe. Some, I fear, have little love for Olympus, and could easily be swayed to support the rise of my father. We must watch them. Janus. Hecate. Morpheus. They give lip service to Olympus, and yet—"
"That's where Dionysus went," Percy interrupted again. "He was checking on the minor gods."
"Indeed." Hera stared at the fading mosaics of the Olympians. "You see, in times of trouble, even gods can lose faith. They start putting their trust in the wrong things, petty things. They stop looking at the big picture and start being selfish. But I'm the goddess of marriage, you see. I'm used to perseverance. You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind."
"What are your goals?" Annabeth asked.
Hera smiled. "To keep my family, the Olympians, together, of course. At the moment, the best way I can do that is by helping you. Zeus does not allow me to interfere much, I am afraid. But once every century or so, for a quest I care deeply about, he allows me to grant a wish."
"A wish?"
"I would have given it to my son, but I fear that might be overstepping the rights my husband gives me. So, before you ask it, let me give you some advice, which I can do for free. I know you seek Daedalus. His Labyrinth is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. But if you want to know his fate, I would visit my son Hephaestus at his forge. Daedalus was a great inventor, a mortal after Hephaestus's heart. There has never been a mortal Hephaestus admired more. If anyone would have kept up with Daedalus and could tell you his fate, it is Hephaestus."
"But how do we get there?" Annabeth asked. "That's my wish. I want a way to navigate the Labyrinth."
Hera looked disappointed. "So be it. You wish for something, however, that you have already been given."
"I don't understand."
"The means is already within your grasp." The goddess looked at Percy. "He knows the answer."
"I do?"
"But that's not fair," Annabeth said. "You're not telling us what it is!"
Hera shook her head. "Getting something and having the wits to use it—those are two different things. I'm sure your mother Athena would agree."
The room rumbled like distant thunder. Hera stood. "That would be my cue. Zeus grows impatient. Think on what I have said, Annabeth. Seek out Hephaestus. You will have to pass through the ranch, I imagine. But keep going. And use all the means at your disposal, however common they may seem."
She pointed toward the two doors and they melted away, revealing twin corridors, open and dark. "One last thing, Annabeth. It is not for nothing I consider your quest important. My son is lost inside this maze."
"Why is he there?"
"He thought he could help someone who doesn't want any help," Hera said. "Farewell!"
She waved a hand and turned into white smoke. So did the food, just as Tyson chomped down on a sandwich that turned to mist in his mouth. The fountain trickled to a stop. The mosaic walls dimmed and turned grungy and faded again. The room was no longer any place you'd want to have a picnic.
Annabeth stamped her foot. "What sort of help was that? 'Here, have a sandwich. Make a wish. Oops, I can't help you!' Poof!"
"Poof," Tyson agreed sadly, looking at his empty plate.
"Well," Ethan sighed, "she said Percy knows the answer. That's something."
Everyone looked at Percy.
"But I don't," he said. "I don't know what she was talking about."
Annabeth sighed. "All right. Then we'll just keep going."
"Which way?" Grover asked, just before suddenly tensing with Ethan and Tyson. They stood up together, as if they'd rehearsed it.
"Left," they all said.
Annabeth frowned. "How can you be sure?"
"Because something is coming from the right," Grover said. "Something big," Tyson agreed.
"In a hurry," Ethan said.
"Left is sounding pretty good," Percy decided. Together they plunged into the dark corridor.