The Tower of Nero Page 15

  “It’s not just crust-dwellers,” Nico was saying, his tone remarkably calm. “Lizards, skinks, frogs, snakes…Your food supply will burn.”

  This caused some uneasy mumbling, but I sensed that the trogs were still not swayed. They might have to range as far as New Jersey or Long Island to gather their reptiles. They might have to live on breadsticks for a while. But so what? The threat wasn’t critical to their lives or their stock prices.

  “What about hats?” Will asked. “How many haberdasheries will burn if we don’t stop Nero? Dead haberdashers cannot make trog haberdashery.”

  More grumbling, but clearly this argument wasn’t enough, either.

  With a growing sense of helplessness, I realized that we wouldn’t be able to convince the troglodytes by appealing to their self-interest. If only a few hundred of them existed, why should they gamble their own lives by tunneling into Nero’s doomsday reservoir? No god or corporation would accept that level of risk.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I had risen to my feet. “Stop! Hear me, troglodytes!”

  The crowd grew dangerously still. Hundreds of large brown eyes fixed on me.

  One trog whispered, “Who is that?”

  His companion whispered back, “Don’t know, but he can’t be important. He’s wearing a Mets hat.”

  Nico gave me an urgent sit-down-before-you-get-us-killed look.

  “Friends,” I said, “this is not about reptiles and hats.”

  The trogs gasped. I had just implied that two of their favorite things were no more important than crust-dweller lives.

  I forged ahead. “The trogs are civilized! But what makes a people civilized?”

  “Hats!” yelled one.

  “Language!” yelled another.

  “Soup?” inquired a third.

  “You can see,” I said. “That is how you greeted us. You saw the son of Hades. And I don’t mean just seeing with your eyes. You see value, and honor, and worthiness. You see things as they are. Is this not true?”

  The trogs nodded reluctantly, confirming that, yes, in terms of importance, seeing was probably up there with reptiles and hats.

  “You’re right about the crust-dwellers being blind,” I admitted. “In many ways, they are. So was I, for centuries.”

  “Centuries?” Click-Wrong leaned away as if realizing I was well past my expiration date. “Who are you?”

  “I was Apollo,” I said. “God of the sun. Now I am a mortal named Lester.”

  No one seemed awed or incredulous—just confused. Someone whispered to a friend, “What’s a sun?” Another asked, “What’s a Lester?”

  “I thought I knew all the races of the world,” I continued, “but I didn’t believe troglodytes existed until Nico brought me here. I see your importance now! Like you, I once thought crust-dwellers’ lives were common and unimportant. I have learned otherwise. I would like to help you see them as I have. Their value has nothing to do with hats.”

  Screech-Bling narrowed his large brown eyes. “Nothing to do with hats?”

  “If I may?” As nonthreateningly as I could, I brought out my ukulele.

  Nico’s expression changed from urgency to despair, like I had signed our death warrants. I was used to such silent criticism from his father. Hades has zero appreciation for the fine arts.

  I strummed a C major chord. The sound reverberated through the cavern like tonal thunder. Trogs covered their ears. Their jaws dropped. They stared in wonder as I began to sing.

  As I had at Camp Jupiter, I made up the words as I went along. I sang of my trials, my travels with Meg, and all the heroes who had helped us along the way. I sang of sacrifices and triumphs. I sang of Jason, our fallen shareholder, with honesty and heartache, though I may have embellished the number of fine hats he wore. I sang of the challenges we now faced—Nero’s ultimatum for my surrender, the fiery death he had in mind for New York, and the even greater menace of Python, waiting in the caverns of Delphi, hoping to strangle the future itself.

  The trogs listened with rapt attention. No one so much as crunched a breadstick. If our hosts had any inkling that I was recycling the melody from Hall and Oates’s “Kiss on My List,” they gave no indication. (What can I tell you? Under pressure, I sometimes default to Hall and Oates.)

  When the last chord ceased echoing through the cavern, no one moved.

  Finally, Screech-Bling wiped tears from his eyes. “That sound…was the most—GRR—horrible thing I have ever heard. Were the words true?”

  “They were.” I decided perhaps the CEO had confused horrible with wonderful, the same way he’d confused eat with disable. “I know this because my friend here, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, sees it. She is a prophetess and has the gift of clear sight.”

  Rachel waved, her expression hidden under the shadow of her pith helmet. “If Nero isn’t stopped,” she said, “he won’t just take over the wor—the Crusty Crust. Eventually he will come for the trogs, too, and every other hat-wearing people. Python will do worse. He will take away the future from all of us. Nothing will happen unless he decrees it. Imagine your destiny controlled by a giant reptile.”

  This last comment hit the crowd like blast of arctic air. Mothers hugged their children. Children hugged their breadstick baskets. Stacks of hats trembled on every troglodyte head. I supposed the trogs, being eaters of reptiles, could well imagine what a giant reptile might do to them.

  “But that is not why you should help us,” I added. “Not just because it is good for trogs, but because we must all help one another. That is the only way to be civilized. We…We must see the right way, and we must take it.”

  Nico closed his eyes, as if saying his final prayers. Will glowed quietly under his lampshade. Meg gave me a stealthy thumbs-up, which I did not find encouraging.

  The trogs waited for Screech-Bling to make his decision as to whether or not we would be added to the dinner menu.

  I felt strangely calm. I was convinced we’d made our best case. I had appealed to their altruism. Rachel had appealed to their fear of a giant reptile eating the future. Who could say which argument was stronger?

  Screech-Bling studied me and my New York Mets hat. “What would you have me do, Lester-Apollo?”

  He used Lester the same way he used screeches or clicks before other names, almost like a title—as if showing me respect.

  “Could you dig under the emperor’s tower undetected?” I asked. “Allowing my friends to disable the vats of Greek fire?”

  He nodded curtly. “It could be done.”

  “Then I would ask you to take Will and Nico—”

  Rachel coughed.

  “And Rachel,” I added, hoping I was not sentencing my favorite priestess to die in a pith helmet. “Meanwhile, Meg and I must go to the emperor’s front door so we can surrender.”

  The trogs shifted uneasily. Either they did not like what I said, or the skink soup had started to reach their intestines.

  Grr-Fred glared at me from under his police hat. “I still do not trust you. Why would you surrender to Nero?”

  “I see you, O Grr-Fred,” Nico said, “Mighty of Hats, Corporate Security Chief! You are right to be wary, but Apollo’s surrender is a distraction, a trick. He will keep the emperor’s eyes away from us while we tunnel. If we can fool the emperor into letting down his guard…”

  His voice trailed off. He looked at the ceiling as if he’d heard something far above.

  A heartbeat later, the trogs stirred. They shot to their feet, overturning soup bowls and breadbaskets. Many grabbed obsidian knives and spears.

  Screech-Bling snarled at Nico. “Tauri silvestres approach! What have you done, son of Hades?”

  Nico looked dumbfounded. “Nothing! W-we fought a herd on the surface. But we shadow-traveled away. There’s no chance they could’ve—”

  “Foolish crust-dwellers!” howled Grr-Fred. “Tauri silvestres can track their prey anywhere! You have brought our enemies to our headquarters. Creak-Morris, take charge of the tu
nnel-lings! Get them to safety!”

  Creak-Morris began gathering up the children. Other adults started pulling down tents, collecting their best rocks, hats, and other supplies.

  “It is well for you we are the fastest runners in existence,” snarled Click-Wrong, his chef’s hat quivering with rage. “You have endangered us all!” He hefted his empty soup cauldron, jumped onto the roadway, and vanished in a skink-scented whoosh.

  “What of the crust-dwellers?” Grr-Fred asked his CEO. “Do we kill them or leave them for the bulls?”

  Screech-Bling glowered at me. “Grr-Fred, take Lester-Apollo and Meg-Girl to the Tower of Nero. If they wish to surrender, we will not stop them. As for these other three, I will—”

  The platform shook, the ceiling cracked, and cows rained down on the encampment.

  THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES WEREN’T JUST chaotic. They were what Chaos is like when Chaos wants to let her hair down and go nuts. And believe me, you never want to see a primordial goddess go nuts.

  Tauri silvestres dropped from cracks in the ceiling—crashing into tents, flattening troglodytes, scattering hats and soup bowls and pots of mushrooms. Almost immediately, I lost track of Will, Rachel, and Nico in the pandemonium. I could only hope Screech-Bling and his lieutenants had whisked them to safety.

  A bull landed in a heap right in front of me, separating me from Meg and Grr-Fred. As the beast scrambled to gain its footing (hoofing?), I parkoured over it, desperate not to lose my young master.

  I spotted her—now ten feet away, Grr-Fred rapidly dragging her toward the river for reasons unknown. The close quarters and obstacles on the platform seemed to hamper the trogs’ natural running skills, but Grr-Fred was still moving at a fast clip. If Meg hadn’t kept tripping as they wove through the destruction, I would’ve stood no chance of catching up.

  I leaped over a second bull. (Hey, if the cow could jump over the moon, I didn’t see why the sun couldn’t jump over two cows.) Another barreled blindly past me, lowing in panic as it tried to shake a bull-hide tent off its horns. To be fair, I would’ve panicked too if I’d had the skin of one of my own kind wrapped around my head.

  I’d almost reached Meg when I spotted a crisis unfolding across the platform. The little trog with the propeller beanie, my server during dinner, had gotten separated from the other children. Oblivious to danger, he was now stumbling after his ball of crystal as it rolled across the platform, straight into the path of a charging bull.

  I reached for my bow, then remembered my quivers were exhausted. With a curse, I snatched up the nearest thing I could find—an obsidian dagger—and spun it toward the bull’s head.

  “HEY!” I shouted.

  This accomplished two things: it stopped the trog in his tracks, and it caused the bull to face me just in time to get a dagger in its nostril.

  “Moo!” said the bull.

  “My ball!” shouted Beanie Boy as his crystal sphere rolled between the bull’s legs, heading in my direction.

  “I’ll get it back to you!” I said, which seemed like a silly thing to promise, given the circumstances. “Run! Get to safety!”

  With one last forlorn glance at his crystal ball, Beanie Boy leaped off the platform and disappeared down the road.

  The bull blew the dagger out of its nose. It glared at me, its blue eyes as bright and hot as butane flames in the gloom of the cavern. Then it charged.

  Like the heroes of old, I stepped back, stumbled on a cooking pot, and fell hard on my butt. Just before the bull could trample me into Apollo-flavored marmalade, glowing mushrooms erupted all over its head. The bull, blinded, screamed and veered off into the bedlam.

  “Come on!” Meg stood a few feet away, having somehow convinced Grr-Fred to double back. “Lester, we’ve got to go!” She said this as if the idea might not have occurred to me.

  I snatched up Beanie Boy’s crystal ball, struggled to my feet, and followed Grr-Fred and Meg to the edge of the river.

  “Jump in!” ordered Grr-Fred.

  “But there’s a perfectly good road!” I fumbled to secure the crystal ball in my pack. “And you dump your chamber pots in that water!”

  “Tauri can follow us on the road,” shouted Grr-Fred. “You don’t run fast enough.”

  “Can they swim?” I asked.

  “Yes, but not as quickly as they run! Now, jump or die!”

  I liked a good simple choice. I grabbed Meg’s hand. Together we jumped.

  Ah, subterranean rivers. So cold. So fast. So very full of rocks.

  You’d think all those jagged, spearlike stones in the water would have been eroded over time by the swift current, but no. They clubbed and clawed and stabbed me relentlessly as I sped by. We hurtled through darkness, spinning and somersaulting at the mercy of the river, my head going under and coming back out at random intervals. Somehow, I always picked the wrong moment to try breathing. Despite it all, I kept my grip on Meg’s hand.

  I have no idea how long this water torture lasted. It seemed longer than most centuries I’d lived through—except perhaps the fourteenth CE, a horrible time to be alive. I was starting to wonder whether I would die of hypothermia, drowning, or blunt-force trauma when Meg’s grip tightened on mine. My arm was nearly wrenched out of its socket when we lurched to a stop. Some superhuman force hauled me out of the river like a dugong in a fishing net.

  I landed on a slick stone ledge. I curled up, spluttering, shivering, miserable. I was dimly aware of Meg coughing and retching next to me. Someone’s pointy-toed shoe kicked me between the shoulder blades.

  “Get up, get up!” Grr-Fred said. “No time to nap!”

  I groaned. “Is this what naps look like on your planet?”

  He loomed over me, his police hat miraculously intact, his fists planted on his hips. It occurred to me that he must have pulled us out of the river when he spotted this ledge, but that seemed impossible. Grr-Fred must have had to have enough body strength to bench-press a washing machine.

  “The forest bulls can swim!” he reminded me. “We must be gone before they can sniff out this ledge. Here.”

  He handed me a piece of jerky. At least it smelled like it had been jerky before our dip in the River Ouch. Now it looked more like deli-sliced sea sponge.

  “Eat it,” he ordered.

  He handed a piece to Meg as well. Her beekeeper’s hat had been swept away in the flood, leaving her with a hairdo that looked like a dead wet badger. Her glasses were cockeyed. She had a few scrapes on her arms. Some of her seed packages had exploded in her gardening belt, giving her a bumper crop of acorn squash around her waist. But otherwise she looked well enough. She shoved the jerky in her mouth and chewed.

  “Good,” she pronounced, which didn’t surprise me from a girl who drank skink soup.

  Grr-Fred glared at me until I relented and tried a bite of jerky, too. It was not good. It was, however, bland and edible. As the first bite went down my throat, warmth coursed through my limbs. My blood hummed. My ears popped. I swore I could feel the acne clearing up on my cheeks.

  “Wow,” I said. “Do you sell this stuff?”

  “Let me work,” growled our guide. “Wasted too much time already.”

  He turned and examined the wall of the tunnel.

  As my vision cleared and my teeth stopped chattering quite so violently, I took stock of our sanctuary. At our feet, the river continued to roar, fierce and loud. Downstream, the channel shrank until there was no headroom at all—meaning Grr-Fred had pulled us to safety just in time if we wanted to keep breathing. Our ledge was wide enough for us all to sit on, barely, but the ceiling was so low even Grr-Fred had to stoop a little.

  Other than the river, I saw no way out—just the blank rock wall Grr-Fred was staring at.

  “Is there a secret passage?” I asked him.

  He scowled like I was not worth the strip of sponge jerky he’d given me. “No passage yet, crust-dweller.”

  He cracked his knuckles, wriggled his fingers, and began to dig. Under his
bare hands, the rock crumbled into lightweight chunks like meringue, which Grr-Fred scooped away and tossed in the river. Within minutes, he had cleared twenty cubic feet of stone as easily as a mortal might pull clothes from a closet. And he kept digging.

  I picked up a piece of debris, wondering if it was still brittle. I squeezed it and promptly cut my finger.

  Meg pointed to my half-eaten jerky. “You going to finish that?”

  I’d been planning to save the jerky for later—in case I got hungry, required extra strength, or got a bad attack of pimples—but Meg looked so ravenous I handed it over.

  I spent the next few minutes emptying the water from my ukulele, my quivers, and my shoes as Grr-Fred continued to dig.

  At last, a cloud of dust billowed from his excavation hole. The trog grunted with satisfaction. He stepped out, revealing a passage now five feet deep, opening into a different cavern.

  “Hurry,” he said. “I will seal the tunnel behind us. If we are lucky, that will be enough to throw the tauri off our scent for a while.”

  Our luck held. Enjoy that sentence, dear reader, because I don’t get to use it often. As we picked our way through the next cavern, I kept glancing back at the wall Grr-Fred had sealed, waiting for a herd of wet evil red cows to bust through, but none did.

  Grr-Fred led us upward through a winding maze of tunnels until at last we emerged in a brickwork corridor where the air smelled much worse, like city sewage.

  Grr-Fred sniffed in disapproval. “Human territory.”

  I was so relieved I could have hugged a sewer rat. “Which way to daylight?”

  Grr-Fred bared his teeth. “Do not use that language with me.”

  “What language? Day—?”

  He hissed. “If you were a tunnel-ling, I would wash your mouth out with basalt!”

  Meg smirked. “I’d kinda like to see that.”

  “Hmph,” said Grr-Fred. “This way.”

  He led us onward into the dark.

  I had lost track of time, but I could imagine Rachel Elizabeth Dare tapping her watch, reminding me I was late, late, late. I could only hope we would reach Nero’s tower before sundown.