The Tower of Nero Read online

  “Those forest bulls were amazing,” Meg said after a while. “If you could train them to carry…”

  I groaned. “It was bad enough when you weaponized unicorns.”

  “Yeah. That was great.” She looked down the tunnel in both directions. “Does anyone know how we can get out of here?”

  “Nico does.” Will’s eye twitched. “Although he’s not going to take us out so much as down.”

  “To the troglodytes,” Rachel guessed. “What are they like?”

  Will moved his hands as if trying to shape something out of clay or indicate the size of a fish he’d caught. “I—I can’t describe them,” he decided.

  That wasn’t reassuring. As my child, Will was bound to have some of my poetic ability. If the troglodytes defied description in your average sonnet or limerick, I didn’t want to meet them.

  “I hope they can help.” Rachel held up her palm to ward off Will, who was coming to check on her bruised head again. “I’m okay now, thanks.”

  She smiled, but her voice was strained. I knew she liked Will. I also knew she had issues with personal space. Becoming the Pythia tended to do that to you. Having the power of Delphi possess your body and soul at random intervals could make you tetchy about people getting too close without your consent. Having Python whispering inside your head probably didn’t help, either.

  “I get it.” Will sat back. “You’ve had a rough morning. I’m sorry we brought that kind of trouble to your door.”

  Rachel shrugged. “Like I said, I think I’m supposed to be in this trouble. It’s not your fault. A Dare reveals the path that was unknown. For once, I’m part of the prophecy.”

  She sounded strangely proud of this fact. Perhaps, after issuing perilous quests for so many other people, Rachel found it nice to be included in our communal death-wish adventure. People like to be seen—even if it’s by the cold, cruel eyes of fate.

  “Is it safe for you to come along, though?” Meg asked. “Like…if you’ve got Python in your head or whatever? Won’t he see what we’re doing?”

  Rachel pulled her ankles into a tighter crisscross. “I don’t think he’s seeing through me. At least…not yet.” She let that idea settle around us like a layer of swamp gas. “Anyway, you’re not getting rid of me. Python has made this personal.”

  She glanced at me, and I couldn’t escape the feeling that Python wasn’t the one she really blamed. This had been personal for her ever since I’d accepted Rachel as my priestess. Ever since…well, ever since I’d been Apollo. If my trials as a mortal had done anything, they had shown me how many times I’d abandoned, forgotten, and failed my Oracles over the centuries. I could not abandon Rachel in the same way. I’d neglected the basic truth that they did not serve me; I was supposed to serve them.

  “We’re lucky to have you,” I said. “I only wish we had more time to figure out a plan.”

  Rachel checked her watch—a basic windup model, which she’d probably chosen after seeing how easily technology went haywire around demigods, monsters, and the other sorts of magical people she hung out with. “It’s past lunchtime. You’re supposed to surrender to Nero by nightfall. That doesn’t give us much leeway.”

  “Oh, lunchtime,” Meg said, staying reliably on-brand. “Will, have you got anything besides Kit Kats? I’m starv—”

  She jerked her hand away from Will’s supply kit as if it had shocked her. “Why is there a tail sticking out of your bag?”

  Will furrowed his brow. “Oh. Uh, yeah.” He pulled out what appeared to be a foot-long desiccated lizard wrapped in a handkerchief.

  “Gross!” Meg said with enthusiasm. “Is that for medicine or something?”

  “Er, no,” Will said. “You remember how Nico and I went hunting for a gift for the trogs? Well—”

  “Ick.” Rachel scooted away. “Why would they want that?”

  Will glanced at me like Please don’t make me say it.

  I shuddered. “The troglodytes…If the legends are true…they consider lizards a great, you know…” I mimed putting something in my mouth. “Delicacy.”

  Rachel hugged her stomach. “Sorry I asked.”

  “Cool,” said Meg. “So if we find the trogs, we give them the lizard and they’ll help us?”

  “I doubt it will be that simple,” I said. “Meg, has anyone ever agreed to help you simply because you gave them a dead lizard?”

  She pondered the question so long it made me wonder about her past gift-giving practices. “I guess not?”

  Will slipped the desiccated animal back in his bag. “Well, this one is apparently rare and special. You don’t want to know how difficult it was to find. Hopefully—”

  Nico snorted and began to stir. “Wh-what—?”

  “It’s okay,” Will reassured him. “You’re with friends.”

  “Friends?” Nico sat up, bleary-eyed.

  “Friends.” Will gave us a warning look, as if suggesting we shouldn’t startle Nico with any sudden moves.

  I gathered Nico was a grumpy napper like his father, Hades. Wake up Hades prematurely and you were likely to end up as a nuclear-blast shadow on his bedroom wall.

  Nico rubbed his eyes and frowned at me. I tried to look harmless.

  “Apollo,” he said. “Right. I remember.”

  “Good,” Will said. “But you’re still groggy. Have a Kit Kat.”

  “Yes, doctor,” Nico muttered.

  We waited while Nico refreshed himself with chocolate and a swig of nectar.

  “Better.” He rose, still looking wobbly. “Okay, everybody. I’m going to lead you into the troglodyte caverns. Keep your hands away from your weapons at all times. Let me go first and do the talking. The troglodytes can be a little…jumpy.”

  “By jumpy,” Will said, “Nico means likely to murder us with no provocation.”

  “That’s what I said.” Nico popped the last of his Kit Kat in his mouth. “Ready? Let’s do this.”

  Want directions to the troglodyte caverns? No problem!

  First you go down. Then you go down some more. Then you take the next three downward turns. You’ll see a path going slightly up. Ignore that. Keep going down until your eardrums implode. Then go down even more.

  We crawled through pipes. We waded through slime pits. We navigated brick tunnels, stone tunnels, and dirt tunnels that looked like they had been excavated by the earthworm chew-and-poop method. At one point, we crawled through a copper pipe so narrow I feared we’d end up popping out of Nero’s personal toilet like a bunch of beauty queens emerging from a giant birthday cake.

  I imagined myself singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. Emperor,” then quickly tamped down the thought. The sewer gas must have been making me delirious.

  After what seemed like hours of sewage-themed fun, we emerged in a circular room fashioned from panels of rough-hewn rock. In the center, a massive stalagmite erupted from the floor and pierced the ceiling like the center pole of a merry-go-round. (After surviving Tarquin’s Tilden Park–carousel tomb, this was not a comparison I was pleased to make.)

  “This is it,” Nico said.

  He led us to the base of the stalagmite. An opening had been chipped away in the floor just big enough for someone to crawl through. Handholds had been carved into the side of the stalagmite, extending down into the darkness.

  “Is this part of the Labyrinth?” I asked.

  The place had a similar feel. The air coming from below was warm and somehow alive, like the breath of a sleeping leviathan. I had the sense that something was monitoring our progress—something intelligent and not necessarily friendly.

  Nico shook his head. “Please don’t mention the Labyrinth. The trogs detest Daedalus’s maze. They call it shallow. From here on down is all trog-built. We’re deeper than the Labyrinth has ever gone.”

  “Awesome,” Meg said.

  “You can go ahead of me, then,” I said.

  We followed Nico down the side of the stalagmite into a massive natural cavern. I couldn’t see th
e edges, or even the bottom, but from the echoes I could tell it was bigger than my old temple at Didyma. (Not to brag about temple size, but that place was HUGE.)

  The handholds were shallow and slippery, illuminated only by faintly glowing patches of lichen on the rock. It took all my concentration not to fall. I suspected the trogs had designed the entrance to their realm this way on purpose, so anyone foolish enough to invade would be forced to come down in single file—and might not make it to the bottom at all. The sounds of our breathing and our clinking supplies reverberated through the cave. Any number of hostiles could have been watching us as we descended, taking aim with all sorts of delightful missile weapons.

  Finally, we reached the floor. My legs ached. My fingers curled into arthritic claws.

  Rachel squinted into the gloom. “What do we do now?”

  “You guys stay behind me,” Nico said. “Will, can you do your thing? The barest minimum, please.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What is Will’s ‘thing’?”

  Will kept his focus on Nico. “Do I have to?”

  “We can’t use our weapons for light,” Nico reminded him. “And we’ll need a little bit more, because the trogs don’t need any. I’d rather be able to see them.”

  Will wrinkled his nose. “Fine.” He set down his pack and stripped off his linen overshirt, leaving just his tank top.

  I still had no idea what he was doing, though the girls didn’t seem to mind letting him do his thing. Did Will keep a concealed flashlight in his undershirt? Was he going to provide light by rubbing lichen on himself and smiling brilliantly?

  Whatever the case, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the trogs. I vaguely recalled a British Invasion band from the 1960s called the Troggs. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this subterranean race might all have mop-top hairdos and black turtlenecks and would use the word groovy a lot. I did not need that level of horror in my life.

  Will took a deep breath. When he exhaled…

  I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. We’d been in near-total darkness so long, I wasn’t sure why Will’s outline suddenly seemed clearer. I could see the texture of his jeans, the individual tufts of his hair, the blue of his eyes. His skin was glowing with a soft, warm golden light as if he’d ingested sunshine.

  “Whoa,” Meg said.

  Rachel’s eyebrows floated toward her hairline.

  Nico smirked. “Friends, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.”

  “Could you not make a big deal about it?” Will asked.

  I was speechless. How could anyone not make a big deal about this? As far as demigod powers went, glowing in the dark was perhaps not as showy as skeleton-summoning or tomato-vine mastery, but it was still impressive. And, like Will’s skill at healing, it was gentle, useful, and exactly what we needed in a pinch.

  “I’m so proud,” I said.

  Will’s face turned the color of sunlight shining through a glass of cranberry juice. “Dad, I’m just glowing. I’m not graduating at the top of my class.”

  “I’ll be proud when you do that, too,” I assured him.

  “Anyway.” Nico’s lips quivered like he was trying not to giggle. “I’ll call the cavern-runners now. Everybody stay calm, okay?”

  “Why are they called cavern-runners?” Rachel asked.

  Nico held up his hand, indicating Wait or You’re about to find out.

  He faced the darkness and shouted, “Troglodytes! I am Nico di Angelo, son of Hades! I have returned with four companions!”

  Shuffling and clicking filled the cavern, as if Nico’s voice had dislodged a million bats. One moment, we were alone. The next moment, an army of troglodytes stood before us as if they’d materialized out of hyperspace. With unsettling certainty, I realized they had run here from wherever they’d been—yards away? miles away?—with speed that rivaled that of Hermes himself.

  Nico’s warnings suddenly made sense to me. These creatures were so fast they could have killed us before we had time to draw a breath. If I’d had a weapon in hand, and if I’d raised it instinctively, accidentally…I would now be the grease spot formerly known as Lester formerly known as Apollo.

  The troglodytes looked even stranger than the 1960s band that had appropriated their name. They were small humanoids, the tallest barely Meg’s height, with vaguely froglike features: wide thin mouths, recessed noses, and giant, brown, heavily lidded orbs for eyes. Their skin came in every shade from obsidian to chalk. Bits of stone and moss decorated their dark plaited hair. They wore a riot of clothing styles from modern jeans and T-shirts to 1920s business suits to Colonial-era frilly shirts and silk waistcoats.

  The real showstopper, however, was their selection of hats, some piled three or four high on their heads: tricorns, bowlers, racing caps, top hats, hard hats, ski caps, and baseball caps.

  The trogs looked like a group of rowdy schoolchildren who’d been set loose in a costume store, told to try on whatever they wanted, and then allowed to crawl through the mud in their new outfits.

  “We see you, Nico di Angelo!” said a trog in a miniature George Washington costume. His speech was interspersed with clicks, screeches, and growls, so it actually sounded like “CLICK. We—grr—see you—SCREEE—Nico—CLICK—di Angelo—grr.”

  George Washingtrog gave us a pointy-toothed grin. “Are these the sacrifices you promised? The trogs are hungry!”

  MY LIFE DIDN’T FLASH BEFORE MY EYES, but I did find myself reviewing the past for anything I might have done to offend Nico di Angelo.

  I imagined him saying Yes, these are the sacrifices!, then taking Will’s hand and skipping away into the darkness while Rachel, Meg, and I were devoured by an army of costumed, muddy miniature frogmen.

  “These are not the sacrifices,” Nico said, allowing me to breathe again. “But I have brought you a better offering! I see you, O great Screech-Bling!”

  Nico did not say screech, mind you. He screeched in a way that told me he’d been practicing Troglodytish. He had a lovely, ear-piercing accent.

  The trogs leaned in, sniffing and waiting, while Nico held out his hand to Will like gimme.

  Will reached into his bag. He pulled out the desiccated lizard and handed to Nico, who unwrapped it like a holy relic and held it aloft.

  The crowd let out a collective gasp. “Oooh!”

  Screech-Bling’s nostrils quivered. I thought his tricorn hat might pop off his head from excitement. “Is that a—GRR—five-lined skink—CLICK?”

  “It is—GRR,” Nico said. “This was difficult to find, O Screech-Bling, Wearer of the Finest Hats.”

  Screech-Bling licked his lips. He was drooling all over his cravat. “A rare gift indeed. We often find Italian wall lizards in our domain. Turtles. Wood frogs. Rat snakes. Occasionally, if we are very lucky, a pit viper.”

  “Tasty!” shrieked a trog in the back. “Tasty pit vipers!”

  Several other trogs screeched and growled in agreement.

  “But a five-lined skink,” Screech-Bling said, “is a delicacy we seldom see.”

  “My gift to you,” Nico said. “A peace offering in hope of friendship.”

  Screech-Bling took the skink in his long-fingered, pointy-clawed hands. I assumed he would shove the reptile in his mouth and be done with it. That’s what any king or god would do, presented with his favorite delicacy.

  Instead, he turned to his people and made a short speech in their own language. The trogs cheered and waved their chapeaus. A trog in a mud-splattered chef’s hat pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He knelt before Screech-Bling and accepted the skink.

  The chieftain turned to us with a grin. “We will share this bounty! I, Screech-Bling, chief executive—CLICK—officer of the troglodytes, have decreed that a great soup shall be made, so that all shareholders may taste of the wondrous skink!”

  More cheering from the troglodytes. Of course, I realized. If Screech-Bling modeled himself after George Washington, he would not be a king—he would be a chief executive.

>   “For this great gift,” he continued, “we will not kill and eat you, Nico di Angelo, even though you are Italian, and we wonder if you might taste as good as an Italian wall lizard!”

  Nico bowed his head. “That is very kind.”

  “We will also generously refrain from eating your companions”—a few of Screech-Bling’s shareholders muttered, “Aww, what?”—“though it is true that, like you, they do not wear hats, and no hatless species can be considered civilized.”

  Rachel and Meg looked alarmed, probably because Screech-Bling was still drooling profusely as he talked about not eating us. Or perhaps they were thinking about all the great hats they could have worn if they’d only known.

  Glow-in-the-dark Will gave us a reassuring nod and mouthed, It’s cool. Apparently, the giving of a gift, followed by the promise of not killing and eating your guests, was standard troglodyte diplomatic protocol.

  “We see your generosity, O Screech-Bling!” Nico said. “I would propose a pact between us—an agreement that would produce many hats for us all, as well as reptiles, fine clothing, and rocks.”

  An excited murmur rippled through the crowd. It seemed Nico had hit upon all four things on the troglodytes’ Christmas wish list.

  Screech-Bling summoned forward a few senior trogs, who I guessed were his board of directors. One was the chef. The others wore the hats of a police officer, a firefighter, and a cowboy. After a short consultation, Screech-Bling faced us with another pointy-toothed grin.

  “Very well!” he said. “We will take you to our corporate headquarters, where we will feast upon skink soup and—CLICK, GRR—talk more about these matters!”

  We were surrounded by a throng of cheering, growling shareholders. With a total lack of regard for personal space, as one might expect from a tunnel-dwelling species, they picked us up and ran with us on their shoulders, sweeping us out of the cavern and into a maze of tunnels at a speed that would’ve put the tauri silvestres to shame.