The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan

Prophecies don’t mix

With Tofurky and biscuits

Just give me dessert

MAY THE FATESconsign all root vegetables to the depths of Tartarus.

That is all I will say on the matter.

By dinnertime, the main hall had been mostly put back together.

Even Festus, amazingly, had been more or less reconstructed. He was now parked on the roof, enjoying a large tub of motor oil and Tabasco sauce. Leo looked pleased with his efforts, though he was still searching for a few last missing parts. He’d spent the afternoon walking around the Waystation, shouting, “If anyone sees a bronze spleen about yea big, please let me know!”

The Hunters sat in groups around the hall, as was their habit, but they had integrated the newcomers we’d freed from Commodus’s cells. Fighting side by side had created bonds of friendship.

Emmie presided at the head of the dining table. Georgina lay asleep in her lap, a stack of coloring books and markers in front of her. Thalia Grace sat at the other end, twirling her dagger on its point like a top. Josephine and Calypso were shoulder to shoulder, studying Calypso’s notes and discussing various interpretations of the prophetic lines.

I sat next to Meg. What else is new? She seemed fully recovered, thanks to Emmie’s healing. (At my suggestion, Emmie had removed her enclosure of curative snakes from the infirmary while treating Meg. I feared if McCaffrey woke up and saw serpents, she might panic and turn them into chia pets.) Her three peach-spirit attendants had gone off, for now, to the extra-dimensional plane of fruit.

My young friend’s appetite was even more voracious than usual. She shoveled in her Tofurky and dressing, her movements as furtive as if she’d gone back to being a half-feral alley child. I kept my hands well away from her.

At last, Josephine and Calypso looked up from the yellow legal pad.

“Okay.” Calypso let out a deep sigh. “We’ve interpreted some of these lines, but we need your help, Apollo. Maybe you could start by telling us what happened at the Cave of Trophonius.”

I glanced at Meg. I was afraid if I recounted our horrible adventures, she might crawl under the table with her plate and snarl at us if we tried to get her out.

She merely belched. “Don’t remember much. Go ahead.”

I explained how I had collapsed the Cave of the Oracle at Trophonius’s request. Josephine and Emmie did not look pleased, but they didn’t yell or scream, either. Josephine’s submachine gun stayed safely in its gun cabinet in the kitchen. I could only hope my father, Zeus, would react as calmly when he learned I’d destroyed the Oracle.

Emmie scanned the main hall. “Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen Agamethus since before the battle. Has anyone?”

No one reported sighting a headless orange ghost.

Emmie stroked her daughter’s hair. “I don’t mind the Oracle being destroyed, but I worry about Georgie. She’s always felt connected to that place. And Agamethus…she likes him a lot.”

I looked at the sleeping girl. I tried, for the millionth time, to see some resemblance to godly me, but it would have been easier to believe she was related to Lester Papadopoulos.

“The last thing I want,” I said, “is to cause more pain to Georgina. I think, though, the destruction of the cave was necessary. Not just for us. But for her. It may free her to move forward.”

I remembered the dark crayon drawings on the girl’s wall, made in the throes of her prophetic lunacy. I hoped, perhaps, that by sending me away with that ugly pipe cleaner man, Georgie was attempting to send away her entire experience. With a few cans of pastel paint, Josephine and Emmie could now give her a fresh canvas of bedroom walls.

Emmie and Josephine exchanged a look. They seemed to come to silent agreement.

“All right, then,” Josephine said. “About the prophecy…”

Calypso read the sonnet aloud. It sounded no more cheerful than it had before.

Thalia spun her knife. “The first stanza mentions the new moon.”

“Time limit,” Leo guessed. “Always a dang time limit.”

“But the next new moon is in only five nights,” Thalia said.

Trust a Hunter of Artemis to keep track of the phases of the moon.

No one jumped up and down in glee. No one shouted, Hooray! Another catastrophe to stop in just five days!

“Bodies filling up the Tiber.” Emmie hugged her daughter closer. “I assume the Tiber refers to the Little Tiber, the barrier of Camp Jupiter in California.”

Leo frowned. “Yeah. The changeling lord…that’s gotta be my homeboy Frank Zhang. And the Devil’s Mount, that’s Mount Diablo, right near the camp. I hate Mount Diablo. I fought Enchiladas there once.”

Josephine looked like she wanted to ask what he meant, then wisely decided not to. “So the demigods of New Rome are about to be attacked.”

I shivered, partly because of the words of the prophecy, partly because of the Tofurky gravy dribbling down Meg’s chin. “I believe the first stanza is all of a piece. It mentions the words that memory wrought. Ella the harpy is at Camp Jupiter, using her photographic memory to reconstruct the lost books of the Cumaean Sybil.”

Meg wiped her chin. “Huh?”

“The details aren’t important right now.” I gestured for her to continue eating. “My guess is that the Triumvirate means to eliminate the threat by burning down the camp. The words that memory wrought are set to fire.”

Calypso frowned. “Five days. How do we warn them in time? All our means of communication are down.”

I found this irritating in the extreme. As a god, I could have snapped my fingers and instantly sent a message across the world using the winds, or dreams, or a manifestation of my glorious self. Now, we were crippled. The only gods who had shown me any sort of favor were Artemis and Britomartis, but I couldn’t expect them to do more—not without them incurring punishment as bad as what Zeus had done to me. I wouldn’t wish that even on Britomartis.

As for mortal technology, it was useless to us. In our hands, phones malfunctioned and blew up (I mean, even more than they did for mortals). Computers melted down. I had considered pulling a random mortal off the street and saying, Hey, make a call for me. But who would they call? Another random person in California? How would the message get through to Camp Jupiter when most mortals couldn’t find Camp Jupiter? Besides, even attempting this would put innocent mortals at risk of monster attacks, death by lightning bolt, and exorbitant data-plan overage fees.

I glanced at Thalia. “Can the Hunters cover that much ground?”

“In five days?” She frowned. “If we broke all the speed limits, perhaps. If we suffered no attacks along the way—”

“Which never happens,” Emmie said.

Thalia laid her knife on the table. “The bigger problem is that the Hunters must continue their own quest. We have to find the Teumessian Fox.”

I stared at her. I was tempted to ask Meg to order me to slap myself, just to make sure I wasn’t stuck in a nightmare. “The Teumessian Fox? That’s the monster you’ve been hunting?”

“Afraid so.”

“But that’s impossible! Also horrible!”

“Foxes are cute,” Meg offered. “What’s the problem?”

I was tempted to explain how many cities the Teumessian Fox had leveled in ancient times, how it gorged on the blood of its victims and ripped apart armies of Greek warriors, but I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s Tofurky dinner.

“The point is,” I said, “Thalia’s right. We cannot ask the Hunters to help us any more than they already have. They’ve got their own problem to solve.”

“That’s copacetic,” Leo said. “You’ve done enough for us, T.”

Thalia inclined her head. “All in a day’s work, Valdez. But you do owe me a bottle of the Texas hot sauce you were telling me about.”

“That can be arranged,” Leo promised.

Josephine crossed her arms. “Well and good, but we’re left with the same dilemma. How do we get a message to California in five days?”

“Me,” Leo said.

We all stared at him.

“Leo,” Calypso said. “It took us six weeks just to get here from New York.”

“Yeah, but with three passengers,” he said. “And…no offense, one of them was a former god who was attracting us all kinds of negative attention.”

I could not argue with that. Most of the enemies who had attacked us on our journey had introduced themselves by screaming, There’s Apollo! Kill him!

“I travel fast and light,” Leo said. “I’ve covered that much distance before by myself. I can do it.”

Calypso did not look pleased. Her complexion turned just a shade lighter than her yellow legal pad.

“Hey, mamacita, I’ll come back,” he promised. “I’ll just enroll late for the spring semester! You can help me catch up on my homework.”

“I hate you,” she grumbled.

Leo squeezed her hand. “Besides, it’ll be good to see Hazel and Frank again. And Reyna, too, though that girl still scares me.”

I assumed Calypso was not too upset by this plan, since aerial spirits did not pick up Leo and hurl him through the rose window.

Thalia Grace gestured to the notepad. “So we’ve got one stanza figured out. Yippee. What about the rest?”

“I’m afraid,” I said, “the rest is about Meg and me.”

“Yep,” Meg agreed. “Pass the biscuits?”

Josephine handed her the basket, then watched in awe as Meg stuffed her mouth with one fluffy biscuit after another.

“So the line about the sun going southward,” Josephine said. “That’s you, Apollo.”

“Obviously,” I agreed. “The third emperor must be somewhere in the American Southwest, in a land of scorching death. We get there through mazes—”

“The Labyrinth,” Meg said.

I shuddered. Our last trip through the Labyrinth was still fresh in my mind—winding up in the caverns of Delphi, listening to my old enemy Python slithering and hissing right above our heads. I hoped this time, at least, Meg and I would not be bound together for a three-legged race.

“Somewhere in the Southwest,” I continued, “we must find the crossword speaker. I believe that refers to the Erythraean Sybil, another ancient Oracle. I…I don’t remember much about her—”

“Surprise,” Meg grumbled.

“But she was known to issue her prophecies in acrostics—word puzzles.”

Thalia winced. “Sounds bad. Annabeth told me how she met the Sphinx in the Labyrinth once. Riddles, mazes, puzzles…No thanks. Give me something I can shoot.”

Georgina whimpered in her sleep.

Emmie kissed the girl’s forehead. “And the third emperor?” she asked. “Do you know who it is?”

I turned over phrases of the prophecy in my mind—master of the swift white horse. That didn’t narrow it down. Most Roman emperors liked to portray themselves as victorious generals riding their steeds through Rome. Something unsettled me about that third stanza: to westward palace, in thine own enemy’s boots. I could not wrap my mental fingers around the answer.

“Meg,” I said, “what about the line Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots? Do you have any family in the Southwest? Do you remember ever going there before?”

She gave me a guarded look. “Nah.”

Then she shoved another biscuit in her mouth like an act of rebellion: Make me talk now, sucker.

“Hey, though.” Leo snapped his fingers. “That next line, The cloven guide alone the way does know. That means you get a satyr? They’re guides, aren’t they, like Coach Hedge was? That’s, like, their thing.”

“True,” Josephine said. “But we haven’t seen a satyr in these parts since—”

“Decades,” Emmie finished.

Meg gulped down her wad o’ carbs. “I’ll find us one.”

I scowled. “How?”

“Just will.”

Meg McCaffrey, a girl of few words and much belching.

Calypso flipped to the next page of her notepad. “That just leaves the closing couplet: When three are known and Tiber reached alive, / ’Tis only then Apollo starts to jive.”

Leo snapped his fingers and began dancing in his seat. “About time, man. Lester needs more jive.”

“Hmph.” I did not feel like getting into that topic. I was still sore that Earth, Wind & Fire had rejected my audition in 1973 because I was jive-deficient. “I believe those lines mean we will soon know the identity of all three emperors. Once our next quest is complete in the Southwest, Meg and I can travel to Camp Jupiter, reaching the Tiber alive. Then, I hope, I can find the path back to my former glory.”

“By…jive talkin’,” Leo sang.

“Shut up,” I grumbled.

No one offered any further interpretations of the sonnet. No one volunteered to take on my perilous quest duties for me.

“Well!” Josephine patted the dining table. “Who wants carrot cake with blowtorched meringue for dessert?”

The Hunters of Artemis left that night at moonrise.

As tired as I was, I felt the need to see them off. I found Thalia Grace in the roundabout, overseeing her Hunters as they saddled a herd of liberated combat ostriches.

“You trust them to ride?” I had thought only Meg McCaffrey was that crazy.

Thalia arched her eyebrows. “It’s not their fault they were trained for combat. We’ll ride them for a while, recondition them, then find a safe place to release them where they can live in peace. We’re used to dealing with wild animals.”

Already the Hunters had freed the ostriches from their helmets and razor wire. The steel fang implants had been removed from their beaks, making the birds look much more comfortable and (slightly) less murderous.

Jimmy moved among the herd, stroking their necks and speaking to them in soothing tones. He was immaculate in his brown suit, completely unscathed from the morning’s battle. His strange bronze hockey-stick weapon was nowhere to be seen. So the mysterious Olujime was a pit fighter, an accountant, a magical warrior, and an ostrich whisperer. Somehow I was not surprised.

“Is he going with you?” I asked.

Thalia laughed. “No. Just helping us get ready. Seems like a good guy, but I don’t think he’s Hunter material. He’s not even, uh…a Greek-Roman type, is he? I mean, he’s not a legacy of you guys, the Olympians.”

“No,” I agreed. “He is from a different tradition and parentage entirely.”

Thalia’s short spiky hair rippled in the wind, as if reacting to her uneasiness. “You mean from other gods.”

“Of course. He mentioned the Yoruba, though I admit I know very little about their ways.”

“How is that possible? Other pantheons of gods, side by side?”

I shrugged. I was often surprised by mortals’ limited imaginations, as if the world was an either/or proposition. Sometimes humans seemed as stuck in their thinking as they were in their meat-sack bodies. Not, mind you, that gods were much better.

“How could it not be possible?” I countered. “In ancient times, this was common sense. Each country, sometimes each city, had its own pantheon of gods. We Olympians have always been used to living in close proximity to, ah…the competition.”

“So you’re the sun god,” Thalia said. “But some other deity from some other culture is also the sun god?”

“Exactly. Different manifestations of the same truth.”

“I don’t get it.”

I spread my hands. “Honestly, Thalia Grace, I don’t know how to explain it any better. But surely you’ve been a demigod long enough to know: the longer you live, the weirder the world gets.”

Thalia nodded. No demigod could argue with that statement.

“So listen,” she said. “When you’re out west, if you get to LA, my brother Jason is there. He’s going to school with his girlfriend, Piper McLean.”

“I will check on them,” I promised. “And send your love.”

Her shoulder muscles unknotted. “Thanks. And if I talk to Lady Artemis…”

“Yes.” I tried to swallow down the sob in my throat. Oh, how I missed my sister. “Give her my best.”

She extended her hand. “Good luck, Apollo.”

“To you as well. Happy foxhunting.”

Thalia laughed bitterly. “I doubt it will be happy, but thanks.”

The last I saw the Hunters of Artemis, they were trotting down South Illinois Street on a herd of ostriches, heading west as if chasing the crescent moon.