The Battle of the Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF Page B

like she was thinking about Grover’s problem with the council. I couldn’t blame her. Grover was nowhere to be seen, and I felt really bad for him. Finding the lost god Pan had been his lifelong goal. His father and his uncle had both disappeared following the same dream. Last winter, Grover had heard a voice in his head: I await you —a voice he was sure belonged to Pan—but apparently his search had led nowhere. If the council took away his searcher’s license now, it would crush him.
    “What’s this ‘other way’?” I asked Annabeth. “The thing Clarisse mentioned?”
    She picked up a stone and skipped it across the lake. “Something Clarisse scouted out. I helped her a little this spring. But it would be dangerous. Especially for Grover.”
    “Goat boy scares me,” Tyson murmured.
    I stared at him. Tyson had faced down fire-breathing bulls and sea monsters and cannibal giants. “Why would you be scared of Grover?”
    “Hooves and horns,” Tyson muttered nervously. “And goat fur makes my nose itchy.”
    And that pretty much ended our Grover conversation.
    Before dinner, Tyson and I went down to the sword arena. Quintus was glad to have company. He still wouldn’t tell me what was in the wooden crates, but he did teach me a few sword moves. The guy was good. He fought the way some people play chess—like he was putting all the moves together and you couldn’t see the pattern until he made the last stroke and won with a sword at your throat.
    “Good try,” he told me. “But your guard is too low.”
    He lunged and I blocked.
    “Have you always been a swordsman?” I asked.
    He parried my overhead cut. “I’ve been many things.”
    He jabbed and I sidestepped. His shoulder strap slipped down, and I saw that mark on his neck—the purple blotch. But it wasn’t a random mark. It had a definite shape—a bird with folded wings, like a quail or something.
    “What’s that on your neck?” I asked, which was probably a rude question, but you can blame my ADHD. I tend to just blurt things out.
    Quintus lost his rhythm. I hit his sword hilt and knocked the blade out of his hand.
    He rubbed his fingers. Then he shifted his armor to hide the mark. It wasn’t a tattoo, I realized. It was an old burn . . . like he’d been branded.
    “A reminder.” He picked up his sword and forced a smile. “Now, shall we go again?”
    He pressed me hard, not giving me time for any more questions.
    While he and I fought, Tyson played with Mrs. O’Leary, who he called the “little doggie.” They had a great time wrestling for the bronze shield and playing Get the Greek. By sunset, Quintus hadn’t even broken a sweat, which seemed kind of strange; but Tyson and I were hot and sticky, so we hit the showers and got ready for dinner.
    I was feeling good. It was almost like a normal day at camp. Then dinner came, and all the campers lined up by cabin and marched into the dining pavilion. Most of them ignored the sealed fissure in the marble floor at the entrance—a ten-foot-long jagged scar that hadn’t been there last summer—but I was careful to step over it.
    “Big crack,” Tyson said when we were at our table. “Earthquake, maybe?”
    “No,” I said. “Not an earthquake.”
    I wasn’t sure I should tell him. It was a secret only Annabeth and Grover and I knew. But looking in Tyson’s big eye, I knew I couldn’t hide anything from him.
    “Nico di Angelo,” I said, lowering my voice. “He’s this half-blood kid we brought to camp last winter. He, uh . . . he asked me to guard his sister on a quest, and I failed. She died. Now he blames me.”
    Tyson frowned. “So he put a crack in the floor?”
    “These skeletons attacked us,” I said. “Nico told them to go away, and the ground just opened up and swallowed them. Nico . . .” I looked around to make sure no one was listening. “Nico is a son of Hades.”
    Tyson nodded thoughtfully. “The god of dead people.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So the Nico boy is