Chapter 11: I Get Some Useless Advice

Our quest group set out at dawn.

I was awake long before that, having been plagued by nightmares in which I'd found myself facing crossroad after crossroad. In one of them, Percy, Grover, and Tyson each took a path and insisted that I pick among them. In a more horrifying version, Percy and Luke stood at a fork in the maze. A guillotine hung above each of their heads, poised to fall. I could push one of them out of the way, but that would leave the other …

I couldn't go back to sleep after that.

Malcolm found me buried in the library at the back of our cabin, poring over old books and trying to commit as much as I could to memory. I'd already packed the essential maps in my bag, but I couldn't possibly bring along every source we had on Daedalus.

'Shouldn't you be resting before the big quest?' He rubbed his eyes groggily.

'Sorry to wake you,' I muttered, ignoring the question.

'You okay?'

'Just … taking some last minute notes.' I sighed and snapped the book shut.

He smiled sympathetically. 'Look, I don't know what happened with the Oracle yesterday, but … you're the smartest of all of us. If anyone can save the camp, it's you.'

'Of course,' I said lightly. 'That's the plan.'

Malcolm gave me a long, searching look. I wondered if he could see the uncertainty and indecision behind my tiredness. But he just shrugged and pulled one of the books towards him. 'So what's Daedalus's workshop look like?'

'Well, I don't know for sure,' I said. 'But it doesn't matter. It's the maze architecture that we have to identify. The workshop was part of the original structure, so it has to be in the most ancient part. The books mention some other landmarks—a freshwater spring they accidentally uncovered during construction, the chamber of the Minotaur …'

The more I talked, the more my confidence increased. I'd prepared for this. I had a plan to pinpoint our location in the Labyrinth. I could do this.

Many of our friends got up early to send us off. Or maybe they'd already been on guard duty at the maze entrance. Thanks to Beckendorf and Clarisse's hard work, a full battle station had sprung up around Zeus's Fist overnight. Guard tents sat in the shelter of the trees. The entire clearing was lined with deep trenches and a barrier of iron spikes. Beckendorf and two of his siblings were hammering away at it when Percy, Grover, Tyson, and I arrived.

'Did you guys sleep at all?' I marvelled.

Beckendorf shrugged. 'You all set?'

I nodded.

Silena popped her head out of one of the guard tents. Her hair was in curlers, which clashed bizarrely with the Greek armour she was wearing. I guess even a night watch couldn't mess with an Aphrodite girl's hair care routine.

'Annabeth!' She took my hand. 'Be careful in there, okay?'

Beckendorf reached into the front pocket of his mechanic's smock. He retrieved a bronze compact and handed it to me.

'What's this?'

'Open it.'

I flipped up the cover. Inside was a magnetic compass, similar to the one Daedalus had given Ariadne in my dreams. For a second, I almost thought it was the same gadget. But of course, this was just an ordinary compass.

'I don't know what good it will do down there—being underground might mess up the bearings—but I wanted you to have something,' Beckendorf said.

I put the compass in my supply pack, next to the map scrolls and emergency ambrosia. 'Thanks. You never know. It might come in handy.'

Percy came over as I was snapping my bag shut. Heavy bags ringed his eyes, which were bloodshot and squinty.

'Percy, you look terrible!'

'He killed the water fountain last night,' Tyson volunteered.

'What?'

Chiron joined our group, Quintus trailing just behind him. 'Well, it appears you are ready.' His voice was a little too cheerful.

Percy bit down on his lower lip. He pinched his forehead, then seemed to reach some private decision. He drew Chiron aside, indicating to the rest of us that he'd only be a minute.

I turned back to Beckendorf and Silena. Clarisse had joined us by now, decked out like Silena in full body armour, except she wore her plumed helmet instead of hair curlers.

'When you're down there,' she said grimly, 'just keep moving. And don't listen to the voices.'

'What voices? You mean like ghosts?'

She just scowled. 'They'll try to mess with your head. They—' She broke off, her gaze turning inwards. For a moment, she looked almost as crazy as Chris. Then she shook it off. 'I think you should pulverise that inventor if you find him. Stop him from helping Luke and from doing … anything else.' She stomped off to go patrol the clearing.

'We've set up a rotating watch,' Silena explained. 'Malcolm drew up a schedule. Three different cabin members at all times, so there's a mixed skill set.'

'I thought that's what you'd have done,' Malcolm said.

'It is,' I said approvingly.

They showed me a few more plans—battle formations, alarm protocols, rigged traps. The camp defences would be in good hands when we were gone.

If it made a difference. Somehow, I got the feeling that all this work—the Hephaestus kids' defences, the booby traps strung up by the Stolls, the phalanx shields Clarisse was organising—all of it would be no more than a minor annoyance for the full strength of Kronos's monsters.

The sun was creeping up above the tree line.

'We should probably get started,' I said to Grover and Tyson.

Grover looked nervously at Juniper, who clutched at his arm. She was weeping green tears again.

'I'll be fine,' he promised. 'I'm going to find Pan. I'll bring him here to meet you.'

Juniper hiccoughed and buried her face in Grover's shirt. He kissed her forehead.

I looked away. Chiron and Percy were still at the edge of the forest. Their 'just a minute' had already turned into ten.

'Percy, you ready?' I called, heading over.

He and Chiron wrapped up their conversation. Percy slipped a hand into his pocket, probably making sure his magic pen-sword, Riptide, was there. Together, we approached the boulders that hid the Labyrinth entrance. I reached into the gap and placed my hand on the smooth face of the rock. There was a flash of blue and the earth opened up. This time, I could see the ladder rungs down the side.

We climbed down, away from the sunlight and our worried friends. When I reached the bottom, I looked up for one last glimpse of their faces: Chiron, stoic and strong; Juniper, clutching her chlorophyll-tinted cheeks; Silena, turning her bracelet round and round on her wrist; Quintus with an indescribable expression on his face.

Then the ceiling slid shut, locking us in the Labyrinth.

It was like being in a city sewer. The tunnel was nothing like the one Percy and I had fallen into. Instead of mossy stone walls, we were surrounded by brick and iron. A cold, rancid wind blew through the tunnel, smelling worse than the public toilets in San Francisco. The passage ahead of us was so dark, our flashlight beams disappeared into nothingness.

We'd gone about thirty paces when I remembered the first rule of navigating a maze: always stick to the corners. I was loath to touch the sewer walls, with the reeking stains running down the brickwork, but I put my hand out.

'If we keep one hand on the left wall and follow it, we should be able to find our way …'

It was as if the walls heard me. The moment I finished my sentence, the bricks melted away from under my fingertips, leaving us in a large, open room. It formed a circle around us, a chamber like the one I'd seen in my dream, with multiple openings spaced out evenly in the marble walls.

This had to be good. It meant that we were near the entrance—or at least what the entrance had been in ancient times. As long as we could mark our progress in …

'Um …' Grover's flashlight lit up his scared face. 'Which way did we come in?'

I turned around. There were four dark tunnels behind us. We could have come from any of them.

Percy pointed towards the one nearest to him. Grover pointed to another. Tyson picked a third. I wanted to smack my head against the chamber walls. Ten minutes in and already we were lost.

I gritted my teeth. I was the leader. I had to make a decision.

Well, we might not know how to go back, but our goal was to go in. I ruled out the four tunnels behind us. That left eight, each identical to the others. None of their archways bore identifying marks.

I thought I heard a gleeful, maniacal voice snicker, 'Leading from nowhere to nowhere, girlie.'

What was it Clarisse had said? Just keep moving.

Maybe this whole chamber was an illusion, a wily trap of the maze. If we just kept going straight, it might revert to the original brick tunnel. I pointed to the opening directly ahead of us. 'That way.'

'How do you know?' Percy said. His challenging tone stung. It was hard enough staying confident without him second-guessing me.

'Deductive reasoning,' I said loftily.

'So … you're just guessing.'

I resisted the urge to throttle him. 'Just come on.'

I didn't want to admit it, but as we plunged ahead, my choice did seem no better than a random guess. We found ourselves in a narrow cement tunnel, like a utility shaft, only horizontal. The further we went, the tighter the space became, such that we were pressed together, bent double to keep our heads from scraping the ceiling. Grover's breathing got quicker and louder. Any moment, he was going to have a full-blown panic attack.

I was about to suggest that we turn back and try a different passage (I wasn't sure Tyson would even fit if this tunnel got any more cramped) when with no warning at all, we tumbled out into a massive, open space.

It was like stumbling through a time machine. The room carried the weight of a thousand years of history. Crumbling mosaic tiles lined the walls and ceiling, depicting the gods lounging around a grand feast. Holding court in the centre was Hera, resplendent with a goat-skin cloak over her white dress, a staff by her side. Her arms spread out like she was presenting the fountain that lay beneath her in the middle of the room. It was made of white stone. and rose towards the mosaic ceiling in three majestic tiers. The design reminded me of the Pulitzer Fountain in Central Park, only way older. It looked like it hadn't spouted water for centuries.

For a bright, hopeful moment, I wondered if it might be the ancient spring, one of the landmarks of the original maze. Then I realised that old though the fountain might be, it wasn't old enough. The gods in the mosaic were stern-faced and solemn, like they were attending a feast of war rather than a celebration. Hera took pride of place instead of Zeus. And my mother was shunted off to one tiny corner, depicted with a flute instead of her usual shield.

The frieze was Roman.

How much had the Labyrinth incorporated into its structure over the years? I remembered how Prof Daly had described it as living architecture. It must be growing constantly, adding spaces like fabric to a quilt, multiplying like the heads of a hydra.

A beast with its own life force.

As if to confirm my thoughts, the tunnel ahead of us groaned. Grover trembled. Tyson hung back warily.

I decided to focus on the positive. If the Labyrinth was a patchwork of various time periods, then a two-thousand-year-old room was a good sign. We were already getting close to the heart.

We forged on deeper into the maze. The flare of hope the Roman fountain had given me soon faded as the tunnel walls took on a more modern feel, returning to the red brick sewers we'd first seen. I thought maybe we'd taken a wrong turn, looped back the way we'd come, especially when the architecture turned to concrete façades and steel supports. But then we went another fifty paces and found ourselves in a dirt tunnel, then cracked marble walls, then concrete again.

It made no sense at all. Sure, the Labyrinth was magical architecture, but it had to have some logic to it. Not this mess of ancient and modern fragments, as if the newer bits had squeezed their way in between the older spaces like haphazard weeds.

That wasn't architecture. That was just chaos.

I lost track of how long we'd been wandering. We passed root cellars, and rusty crates, and even a human skeleton sitting among a pile of milk bottles—as if the man he'd once been had just given up and collapsed after days of fruitless wandering. I could commiserate.

How many of the Athenian tributes who'd been fed to the Labyrinth had actually run afoul of the Minotaur? More likely they'd simply died like this guy, of exhaustion and despair, the way we were probably doomed to as well …

'Er, Annabeth?' Grover pointed to the opening ahead of us. 'Haven't we been here before?'

It was the Roman room with the fountain. At least, it looked like the same room, with the mosaic tiles and the three-tiered fountain in the centre. But instead of a single tunnel at the end, there was a pair of heavy wooden doors, bolted across with huge iron locks. In front of them, leering cruelly, was the statue I'd seen in the Big House attic: a two-faced head. Only this was no statue but an actual man, wearing a trench coat and polished leather shoes. His head sat askew on his shoulders so that four eyes—two on each face—peered at us sideways.

The two-faced man angled his head such that his left face was looking at me. One bushy eyebrow arched. He clicked his tongue impatiently.

'Well, Annabeth? Hurry up!'

The head swivelled to allow the right face to peer at me.

'Don't mind him. He's terribly rude.' He raised his right arm to indicate the bolted door on the right. 'Right this way, miss.'

Was that the correct path? Who was this man? If only I'd paid more attention to the old statue in the attic. He was probably one of the minor gods … but which one?

Tyson leaned close to me and said in a stage whisper, 'That funny man has two faces.'

The left face snapped back to us. 'The funny man has ears, you know! Now, come along, miss.' A big metal key appeared in his hand, a perfect fit for the old-fashioned locks on the doors.

'No, no, this way, miss,' his other face objected. His right hand snatched the key away from his left. 'Talk to me, please.'

There was a moment's tussle between them. The man shook his head rapidly, each face grappling for control. Then, both scowling fiercely, they settled for glaring at me out of the corner of their eyes. He juggled the key from hand to hand.

I threw a glance over my shoulder, wondering if it might be better to backtrack. To my alarm, there was only a mosaic wall behind us. 'The exits are closed!'

'Duh!' The man spread his arms. His meaning was obvious. The only way out of this room was one of the doors behind him.

'Where do they lead?'

The man tapped a finger against his right chin. 'One probably leads the way you wish to go. The other …' He shrugged with only half his body, which made him look like he was having a seizure. 'The other leads to certain death.' He sounded almost apologetic.

Something clicked. The Roman friezes, the two doors, the two-faced man planted between them like a divider …

'I—I know who you are!'

Janus, god of doorways, his left and right faces perpetually looking front and aft, forward and back. His left face sneered at me, pressing me for a decision. 'But do you know which way to choose?' he taunted.

His faces had the good-cop-bad-cop routine down pat: one side of him pretending to help while the other tore me down. Which should I listen to?

'Why are you trying to confuse me?' I demanded.

'You're in charge now, my dear,' said the right face. 'All the decisions are on your shoulder.' He gave me the most intense sidewise gaze I'd ever seen. 'That's what you wanted, isn't it?'

My breath caught in my throat. 'I—'

'We know you, Annabeth. We know what you wrestle with every day. We know your indecision.'

Something sharp glinted over the door frames. The edge of a blade, threatening to fall.

'You will have to make your choice, sooner or later. And the choice may kill you.'

'It's because of him,' Luke said, his face twisted and bitter.

The blades fell, one over Percy, one over Luke.

I couldn't breathe. 'No … I don't—'

Percy stepped in front of me, chin lifted in challenge. 'Leave her alone. Who are you, anyway?'

Janus introduced himself in a sing-song way. 'I'll see you soon enough,' his right face told Percy. 'But for now …' He let out a gleeful laugh. 'It's Annabeth's turn! Such fun!'

Janus's left face snarled, 'Shut up! This is serious! One bad choice can ruin your whole life. It can kill you and all your friends. But no pressure, Annabeth.'

I shivered. My fears, my nightmares, the responsibility for this quest and my desperate need to succeed—they all rested on my shoulders, heavier than the weight of the sky. Everyone was depending on me.

No pressure. Yeah, right.

'Choose!' Janus insisted.

Percy grabbed my arm. 'Don't do it.'

But we couldn't stand here indefinitely with Janus taunting us. I was the leader. I had to choose …

I lifted my arm to pick a door. A crack seemed to run through the ceiling, threatening to collapse if I chose wrong.

A burst of white light blinded me. My hand rose instead to shield my eyes. When the intensity of it receded, it was like the mosaic image of Hera had floated down. She had shed her goat-skin cloak to stand before us in her simple white dress.

Hera's voice was sharp, but it was Janus whom she berated, not us. Janus's two faces nearly smashed into each other trying to appease her. Hera smiled serenely.

'You know very well your visit is premature. The girl's time has not yet come.'

Her words were meant to be reassuring, but my stomach felt heavier, like Hera had piled even more lead weights inside. She banished Janus and lit the domed ceiling with a wave of her hand. We were under a bright, sunny sky, with a picnic spread—also courtesy of Hera—laid out before us. The Roman fountain sprang to life, rippling melodiously in the background.

Percy, Grover, and Tyson fell excitedly on the platters of sandwiches Hera now produced. It had been ages since our last meal, but my throat was too dry to eat. The girl's time has not yet come. What was that supposed to mean? It sounded as though the dangerous choice Janus dangled before me was real and imminent.

'Queen Hera.' I could hardly wrap my mind around the image of the queen of the gods sitting cross-legged on a picnic blanket in front of us. 'What are you doing in the Labyrinth?'

A light breeze swept across my face, like a washcloth wiping off the grime I'd accumulated in the tunnels. It rustled through my hair as if the goddess herself was sorting out my tangles.

'I came to see you, naturally.' Hera's smile was pleasant, almost motherly.

I ran my fingers along my camp necklace. The only times I'd met Hera, she'd been supremely disdainful about half-bloods in general. And in the old legends … well, there was no shortage of stories about Hera tormenting heroes. 'I didn't think …' I stopped before I blurted out something undiplomatic. 'Well, I didn't think you liked heroes.

'Because of that little spat I had with Hercules?' Hera clicked her tongue impatiently. 'Honestly, I got so much bad press because of one disagreement.'

'Didn't you try to kill him, like, a lot of times?'

'Water under the bridge, my dear.' Hera sniffed, like it was all inconsequential. Which for her, it probably was. What did she care if a demigod had suffered a long, torturous life? 'Besides, he was one of my loving husband's children by another woman.' She related blithely the marriage counselling she and Zeus had been through since. I might have believed she was over it, had her eyes not flashed when she mentioned his most recent transgression.

'You mean when she sired Thalia?' Percy said.

Hera's head snapped to him. 'Percy Jackson, isn't it? One of Poseidon's children. As I recall, I voted to let you live at the winter solstice. I hope I voted correctly.' Her glare warned him not to give her an excuse to rescind her support.

She turned pointedly away from him, and it was like sun bursting through the clouds on her face. 'At any rate,' she said to me, '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.'

I shivered. 'Why was he here? He was driving me crazy.'

The two doorways were no longer barred; the locks had disappeared with Janus. The choice he'd waved like a guillotine over my head wasn't hovering between them any more. But the gleam of the blade, the crack in the ceiling—they still haunted me.

'Trying to.' Hera warned us that the minor gods could be fickle in their loyalties. This wasn't news; I already knew some of them had defected.

What was Hera's game? I still couldn't work out her purpose. Her monologue was hard to follow—she segued from the minor gods into perseverance, and faith, and believing in one's goals.

'What are your goals?'

She looked at me like it should be obvious. 'To keep my family, the Olympians, together, of course.'

How she thought she would achieve this by helping us, I wasn't sure. But I hoped it was a good sign. The ancient rules didn't allow godly interference, and Zeus was a stickler for them. Yet if he'd made an exception for her and allowed her to grant a wish …

'A wish?' Had any hero ever gotten a favour like this from Hera? Jason, maybe. She'd liked him.

Hera held up a finger. 'Before you ask it, let me give you some advice, which I can do for free. I know you seek Daedalus.' Unfortunately, she didn't offer me a map. But she told me to find her son, the blacksmith god. 'If anyone would have kept up with Daedalus and could tell you his fate, it is Hephaestus.'

'But how do we get there?' Without a map, we'd have no more success locating Hephaestus than we had Daedalus. At least with the workshop, I had a plan. 'That's my wish,' I decided. 'I want a way to navigate the Labyrinth.'

Hera shook her head like I was being foolish. 'So be it. You wish for something, however, that you have already been given.'

'I don't understand.' I was sure this was the wisest thing I could possibly ask for.

'The means is already within your grasp. Percy knows the answer.'

Percy blinked owlishly. 'I do?'

It was a trick. She wasn't going to help us.

'That's not fair—you're not telling us what it is!'

'Getting something and having the wits to use it …' Hera shrugged again. 'Those are two different things. I'm sure your mother, Athena, would agree'

I scowled and crossed my arms. Surely my mother would never renege on an offer. She kept her promises. For all Hera's talk about family and helping, I got the sense she never meant to help us at all. With her meaningless platitudes and false sympathy, she was no better than Janus with his cryptic taunts.

Before I could accuse the queen of heaven of being a hypocrite, the mosaic ceiling rumbled. Hera got up to take her leave. 'Think on what I have said, Annabeth. Seek out Hephaestus. You will have to pass through the ranch, I imagine.' She said this like we had a tedious chore to perform. 'But keep going. And use all the means at your disposal, however common they may seem.'

As she gestured towards Janus's doors, they opened up into two dark tunnels. There was still no sign as to which was the right way. How utterly useless.

'One last thing, Annabeth. I have postponed your choice. I have not prevented it. Soon, as Janus said, you will have to make a decision.'

Ice curled in the pit of my stomach. With a final farewell, Hera and all her fancy trappings—the picnic blanket, the food, the light in the room—went up in smoke.

I thought I heard an echo of Janus's taunt: 'Choose.'

I stamped my foot, drowning it out. I took the nugget of fear creeping up my chest and dissolved it into anger at Janus, at Hera, for toying with me.

'What sort of help was that? "Here, have a sandwich. Make a wish. Oops, I can't help you!" Poof!'

'Poof,' Tyson echoed. He was still holding a sandwich plate, but the food was long gone.

'Well, she said Percy knows the answer,' Grover said. 'That's something.'

Percy looked alarmed. 'But I don't. I don't know what she was talking about.'

There was no point arguing about it. I squared my shoulders and faced the doors. I'd just have to pick one.

'All right. We'll just keep going.' At least the others had gotten to eat a bit.

Grover and Tyson leapt to their feet at the same time. Their faces were mirrors of tension.

'Left.' They sounded absolutely positive about it.

I stared at the doors. They still looked identical to me. 'How can you be sure?'

'Because something is coming from the right.' Grover was already heading for the left passage.

'Something big,' Tyson added. He cocked his head to one side, listening intently. 'In a hurry.'

I didn't waste time arguing. We took the left tunnel.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

A/N: Aaaaand we are in the Labyrinth proper! So you guys can pretty much figure what's happening now. I won't cut chapters quite the same way as they happen in canon, but there's not that much I can deviate from the structure of events. But still, I hope it will all stay quite fresh with Annabeth's perspective of them, which I strive to keep different! (Mostly because I do believe she offers a very different perspective!)

Anyway, do let me know what you think. Thank you to Hello, groverspanpipes, randomstories7777, JustADerangedFanGirl, Thunderwolf7226, VCRx, Livvi May, Numberfivewithabullet, SG2000, and CQ816 for chiming in this past week. It's awesome to hear from you guys so regularly, and it's a great motivation to keep this story going!