The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo, #3)

by Rick Riordan

NO. I refuse to share this part of my story. It was the lowest, most humiliating, most awful week in my four-thousand-plus years of life. Tragedy. Disaster. Heartbreak. I will not tell you about it. Why are you still here? Go away!

One might enter the Labyrinth through a manhole in Rome, walk ten feet, open a door, and find oneself at a training camp for clowns in Buffalo, Minnesota. (Please don’t ask. It was traumatic.)

In all, she looked like a kindergartner who had just survived a vicious playground brawl for possession of a tire swing.

Ever since learning that Meg was a daughter of Demeter, the goddess of growing things, Grover Underwood had acted more intimidated by her than by me, a former Olympian deity. Life was not fair.

(Normally I would’ve said that was a blessing, not remembering my sister’s face, but I missed her terribly. Don’t you dare tell her I said that.)

I’d never liked the ’90s. (By which I mean the 1590s.)

“Meg!” I said. “I told you not to kill it! You’ll get cursed!” “I didn’t kill it. It committed suicide against that wall.” “I don’t think the Fates will see it that way.” “Then let’s not tell them.”

May the gods defend me from heroes with duct tape. And heroes always seem to have duct tape.

The arrow buzzed, no doubt trying to access Wikipedia. It denies using the Internet. Perhaps, then, it’s just a coincidence the arrow is always more helpful when we are in an area with free Wi-Fi.

“Once again,” I said, “your wisdom brings light to the darkness.” SHUT THEE UP, the arrow continued.

“It’s still searching Google,” I told Grover. “Perhaps, O Arrow, you could do a Boolean search, ‘strix plus defeat.’” I USE NOT SUCH CHEATS! the arrow thundered. Then it was silent long enough to type strix + defeat.

“What?” He turned, which was not an effective way of facing me, since I was duct-taped to his back.

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.

“TRY THE FRAGGLE ROCK!” I yelled. “Fragaria,” Meg corrected. “WHATEVER!”

It’s simply impractical to “spray and pray” when fighting a gorgon or a hydra.

I hated plans. They reminded me of annoying things like Zeus’s once-a-century goal-setting meetings, or dangerously complicated attacks. Or Athena.

guess it’s true what people say: ‘Never meet your gods. They’ll only disappoint you.’

silently agreed that we had to get out of the dumpster before we died of suffocation, heatstroke, or the smell of my pants.

Girl, I see you, I felt like saying. You are not subtle, and we really need to have a talk about crushing on dryads.

But, as they say, Lesters can’t be choosers.

We’ll explore this mazy place and free the Sibyl and stop the fires and whatever.” I admired her ability to summarize our quest in such eloquent terms.

This punishment was entirely unfair. Still, ugh. Is anything worse than realizing you might agree with your father?

“Unbelievable,” I murmured. “After four thousand years, I am still discovering new things.” “Like how dumb you are,” Meg volunteered. “No.” “So you already knew that?”

SUN dragons…I hate them. And I was a sun god.

As dragons go, they aren’t particularly large. With a little lubrication and muscle, you can stuff one inside a mortal recreational vehicle. (And I have done so. You should have seen the look on Hephaestus’s face when I asked him to go inside the Winnebago to check the brake pedal.)

“You would destroy your own grandfather?” I asked. Medea shrugged. “Why not? You gods are all family, but you’re constantly trying to kill each other.” I hate it when evil sorceresses have a point.

Bless Piper’s intuition, appealing to Meg’s stubborn streak. And bless Meg’s willful, weed-covered little heart. She interposed herself between me and Medea. “Apollo’s my dumb servant. You can’t have him.”

I enjoy running people over in a chariot as much as the next deity, but I did not like the idea of being the guy run over.

Piper shouted, “DRAGONS, HALT!” Medea countered, “DRAGONS, GO!” The result: chaos not seen since Plan Thermopylae.

“You killed Phil and Don!” snarled the sorceress. “They’ve been with me for millennia!” “WHAT?” Meg asked.

RULE of dueling etiquette: When choosing a weapon for single combat, you should absolutely not choose to wield your grandfather.

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 was burning to destroy me, the god who had eclipsed him. (Ew, there’s another one.)

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.)

It was a perfect opportunity to take a picture of Meg with green plugs sticking out of her nostrils, for blackmail purposes, but I was too relieved that she was alive. Also, I didn’t have a phone.

“All of this,” I announced, “is my fault.” You can imagine how difficult this was for me to say. The words simply had not been in the vocabulary of Apollo. I half hoped the collected dryads, satyrs, and demigods would rush to reassure me that I was blameless. They did not.

The smallest seedlings, Demeter often told me, grow into century oaks.

If by some miracle I survived the emperors’ various plots on my life, if I defeated the Triumvirate and freed the four other Oracles and single-handedly set everything right in the mortal world, I would still have to find a way to wrest control of Delphi from my most ancient enemy. Only then might Zeus let me become a god again. Because Zeus was just that awesome. Thanks, Dad.

On Jason’s wall hung a framed picture of his sister Thalia smiling at the camera, a bow slung across her back, her short dark hair blown sideways by the wind. Except for her dazzling blue eyes, she looked nothing like her brother. Then again, neither of them looked anything like me, and as the son of Zeus, I was technically their brother. And I had flirted with Thalia, which…Eww. Curse you, Father, for having so many children! It made dating a true minefield over the millennia.

Jason did not look proud. He looked worried. I remembered what Medea had said about the Oracle’s news: The truth was enough to break Jason Grace. He did not appear to be broken. Then again, I did not appear to be Apollo.

Jason took me by the shoulders—not out of anger, or in a clinging way, but as a brother. “Promise me one thing. Whatever happens, when you get back to Olympus, when you’re a god again, remember. Remember what it’s like to be human.”

“Thank you, Meg,” I said. “My heart is as warm as a partially thawed burrito.” “No problem.” She picked her nose, just in case she died and never got another chance.

Santa Barbara locals (Santa Barbarians?)

She put away her blades, but her voice remained cold and determined. I had a sudden horrible image of McCaffrey the Avenger assaulting the boat with nothing but her fists and packets of gardening seeds. Jason looked at me as if to ask Do you need to tie her down, or should I?

PERHAPS Jason, the physics expert, could explain to me how pandai flew. I didn’t get it. Somehow, even while carrying us, our captors managed to launch themselves skyward with nothing but the flapping of their tremendous lobes.

Amax suddenly reminded me of my father, Zeus, when he came storming down the hallway on Mount Olympus (literally storming, with thunder, lightning, and torrential rain) and ordered me to stop playing my infernal zither music. A totally unfair demand. Everyone knows 2:00 a.m. is the optimal time to practice the zither.

Meg picked up her other scimitar. “I’ll come with you.” Before I could argue, she took a flying leap out of the broken window—which was a pretty good metaphor for her general approach to life.

“So, when you said Caligula would eat me for breakfast—” “Oh, I didn’t mean that literally.” “Thank the gods.”

I summoned my courage, and issued a threat I never could have imagined in my previous four thousand years of life. “I’ll kill myself.”