The Battle of the Labyrinth: Chapters 16–20

She led us to the car and got in without even looking at the flustered guy who’d rented it.

Annabeth asked her more about her background, but Rachel was evasive, so they started talking about architecture.

They talked about different facades on buildings around New York—“Have you seen this one,” blah, blah, blah, so I hung back and walked next to Nico in uncomfortable silence.

I glanced up at the mountain’s peak, where a black marble fortress loomed, just like I’d seen in my dreams. It reminded me of an oversized mausoleum, with walls fifty feet high.

Reverently, he lifted the weapon, and my blood turned to ice.

“We must sanctify it in blood,” the telkhine said.

The lid was decorated even more intricately than the sides—with scenes of carnage and power.

Pledge him your service. Renounce the gods.

I glanced back and saw him approaching leisurely, swinging his scythe as if he were enjoying the feel of having it in his hands again.

My limbs were freed and I ran straight into Rachel, Nico, and Annabeth, who were standing in the entry hall, their eyes wide with dismay.

But she got to her feet, and we started straggling through the Labyrinth again.

Finally we got to the bottom of a slope and found ourselves in a large cave with huge stalagmite columns.

Grover's swooning episode had happened when we passed through New Mexico. That’s where he’d felt closest to the power of Pan.

As the crystal pillars loomed larger, I started to feel the power emanating from the next room.

My weariness fell away, as if I’d just gotten a good night’s sleep. I could feel myself growing stronger, like one of those plants in a time-lapse video.

And the scent coming from the cave was nothing like the dank wet underground. It smelled of trees and flowers and a warm summer day.

In the center of the cave stood a Roman-style bed, gilded wood shaped like a curly U, with velvet cushions.

She pecked at Pan’s knee and hummed something that sounded like a funeral dirge.

“I have slept many eons,” the god said forlornly.

“My dreams have been dark. I wake fitfully, and each time my waking is shorter. Now we are near the end.”

“You sweet, stubborn satyrs refused to accept my passing. And I love you for that, but you only delayed the inevitable. You only prolonged my long, painful passing, my dark twilight sleep. It must end.”

“I know you believe you cannot make amends,” he said. “But you are just as important as your father.”

“But my name, Pan...originally it meant rustic. Did you know that? But over the years it has come to mean all. The spirit of the wild must pass to all of you now. You must tell each one you meet: if you would find Pan, take up Pan’s spirit. Remake the wild, a little at a time, each in your own corner of the world. You cannot wait for anyone else, even a god, to do that for you.”

"Percy...my dad’s a land developer. He flies all over the world, looking for tracts of undeveloped land.”

The Ares cabin was on the front line, drilling in phalanx formation with Clarisse calling orders.

Annabeth went to join her brethren from the Athena cabin, who had set up a command tent and were directing operations.

But perhaps it will limit Kronos’s power. For a time, at least, he is confined to a human form. It binds him together. Hopefully it also restricts him.

He looked at me reproachfully. “You and your friend Nico, son of Hades.”
A lump formed in my throat. “I’m sorry, Chiron. I know I should’ve told you. It’s just—”

A fissure opened in front of the dracaenae, and a dozen undead warriors crawled from the earth—horrible corpses in military uniforms from all different time periods—U.S. Revolutionaries, Roman centurions, Napoleonic cavalry on skeletal horses.

I tossed it into the hellhound’s maw, and the creature went up in flames.

“You’re giving me this? But this is priceless! This is worth...I don’t even know how much!”
“Small compensation for the way I have acted,” Daedalus said.

I looked around at the carnage in the clearing, and the weary faces of my friends.

“Sacrilege! Perhaps the wild god favored us with a blessing. Or perhaps Grover’s music was so awful it scared the enemy away!”

“Never! We must continue the search. Exile the traitor!”
Some of the older satyrs muttered assent.

“But unfortunately for you, a god’s vote counts twice. And as I voted against, we are tied.”
Silenus stood, indignant. “This is an outrage! The council cannot stand at an impasse.”

“I doubt you’ll be lonely down there,” I said a little wistfully, because I’d never even been in Poseidon’s kingdom.

“Regardless, I suppose it was mildly competent, what you two did. I thought you should know—it wasn’t a total loss.”

She would tend to Chiron until his leg was fully recovered, and keep studying Daedalus’s laptop, which had engrossed her for the last two months.

It was kind of disconcerting, because Poseidon listened so intently. His eyes never left my face.

Even now the ocean is at war with itself. It is all I can do to keep hurricanes and typhoons from destroying your surface world, the fighting is so intense.