Percy Jackson The Complete Collection (20 page)

Now imagine a field a million times that big, packed with people, and imagine the electricity has gone out, and there is no noise, no light, no beach ball bouncing around over the crowd. Something tragic has happened backstage. Whispering masses of people are just milling around in the shadows, waiting for a concert that will never start.

If you can picture that, you have a pretty good idea what the Fields of Asphodel looked like. The black grass had been trampled by aeons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees – Grover told me they were poplars – grew in clumps here and there.

The cavern ceiling was so high above us it might’ve been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint grey and looked wickedly pointed. I tried not to imagine they’d fall on us at any moment, but dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass. I guess the dead didn’t have to worry about little hazards like being speared by stalactites the size of booster rockets.

Annabeth, Grover and I tried to blend into the crowd,
keeping an eye out for security ghouls. I couldn’t help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but the dead are hard to look at. Their faces shimmer. They all look slightly angry or confused. They will come up to you and speak, but their voices sound like chatter, like bats twittering. Once they realize you can’t understand them, they frown and move away.

The dead aren’t scary. They’re just sad.

We crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main gates towards a black-tented pavilion with a banner that read:

To the left, spirits flanked by security ghouls were marched down a rocky path towards the Fields of Punishment, which glowed and smoked in the distance, a vast, cracked wasteland with rivers of lava and minefields and miles of barbed wire separating the different torture areas. Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music. I could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And I saw worse tortures, too – things I don’t want to describe.

The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better. This one led down towards a small valley surrounded by walls – a gated community, which
seemed to be the only happy part of the Underworld. Beyond the security gate were neighbourhoods of beautiful houses from every time period in history, Roman villas and mediaeval castles and Victorian mansions. Silver and gold flowers bloomed on the lawns. The grass rippled in rainbow colours. I could hear laughter and smell barbecue cooking.

Elysium.

In the middle of that valley was a glittering blue lake, with three small islands like a vacation resort in the Bahamas. The Isles of the Blest, for people who had chosen to be reborn three times, and three times achieved Elysium. Immediately I knew that’s where I wanted to go when I died.

‘That’s what it’s all about,’ Annabeth said, like she was reading my thoughts. ‘That’s the place for heroes.’

But I thought of how few people there were in Elysium, how tiny it was compared to Asphodel or even Punishment. So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.

We left the judgment pavilion and moved deeper into Asphodel. It got darker. The colours faded from our clothes. The crowds of chattering spirits began to thin.

After a few miles of walking, we began to hear a familiar screech in the distance. Looming on the horizon was a palace of glittering black obsidian. Above the parapets swirled three dark batlike creatures: the Furies. I got the feeling they were waiting for us.

‘I suppose it’s too late to turn back,’ Grover said wistfully.

‘We’ll be okay.’ I tried to sound confident.

‘Maybe we should search some of the other places first,’
Grover suggested. ‘Like, Elysium, for instance…’

‘Come on, goat boy.’ Annabeth grabbed his arm.

Grover yelped. His trainers sprouted wings and his legs shot forward, pulling him away from Annabeth. He landed flat on his back in the grass.

‘Grover,’ Annabeth chided. ‘Stop messing around.’

‘But I didn’t –’

He yelped again. His shoes were flapping like crazy now. They levitated off the ground and started dragging him away from us.

‘Maia!’
he yelled, but the magic word seemed to have no effect.
‘Maia,
already! 911! Help!’

I got over being stunned and made a grab for Grover’s hand, but too late. He was picking up speed, skidding downhill like a bobsled.

We ran after him.

Annabeth shouted, ‘Untie the shoes!’

It was a smart idea, but I guess it’s not so easy when your shoes are pulling you along feet-first at full speed. Grover tried to sit up, but he couldn’t get close to the laces.

We kept after him, trying to keep him in sight as he zipped between the legs of spirits who chattered at him in annoyance.

I was sure Grover was going to barrel straight through the gates of Hades’s palace, but his shoes veered sharply to the right and dragged him in the opposite direction.

The slope got steeper. Grover picked up speed. Annabeth and I had to sprint to keep up. The cavern walls narrowed on either side, and I realized we’d entered some kind of side
tunnel. No black grass or trees now, just rock underfoot, and the dim light of the stalactites above.

‘Grover!’ I yelled, my voice echoing. ‘Hold on to something!’

‘What?’ he yelled back.

He was grabbing at gravel, but there was nothing big enough to slow him down.

The tunnel got darker and colder. The hairs on my arms bristled. It smelled evil down here. It made me think of things I shouldn’t even know about – blood spilled on an ancient stone altar, the foul breath of a murderer.

Then I saw what was ahead of us, and I stopped dead in my tracks.

The tunnel widened into a huge dark cavern, and in the middle was a chasm the size of a city block.

Grover was sliding straight towards the edge.

‘Come on, Percy!’ Annabeth yelled, tugging at my wrist.

‘But that’s –’

‘I know!’ she shouted. ‘The place you described in your dream! But Grover’s going to fall if we don’t catch him.’ She was right, of course. Grover’s predicament got me moving again.

He was yelling, clawing at the ground, but the winged shoes kept dragging him towards the pit, and it didn’t look like we could possibly get to him in time.

What saved him were his hooves.

The flying sneakers had always been a loose fit on him, and finally Grover hit a big rock and the left shoe came flying off. It sped into the darkness, down into the chasm.
The right shoe kept tugging him along, but not as fast. Grover was able to slow himself down by grabbing on to the big rock and using it like an anchor.

He was three metres from the edge of the pit when we caught him and hauled him back up the slope. The other winged shoe tugged itself off, circled around us angrily and kicked our heads in protest before flying off into the chasm to join its twin.

We all collapsed, exhausted, on the obsidian gravel. My limbs felt like lead. Even my backpack seemed heavier, as if somebody had filled it with rocks.

Grover was scratched up pretty bad. His hands were bleeding. His eyes had gone slit-pupilled, goat style, the way they did whenever he was terrified.

‘I don’t know how…’ he panted. ‘I didn’t…’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Listen.’

I heard something – a deep whisper in the darkness.

Another few seconds, and Annabeth said, ‘Percy, this place –’

‘Shh.’ I stood.

The sound was getting louder, a muttering, evil voice from far, far below us. Coming from the pit.

Grover sat up. ‘Wh – what’s that noise?’

Annabeth heard it too, now. I could see it in her eyes. ‘Tartarus. The entrance to Tartarus.’

I uncapped Anaklusmos.

The bronze sword expanded, gleaming in the darkness, and the evil voice seemed to falter, just for a moment, before resuming its chant.

I could almost make out words now, ancient, ancient words, older even than Greek. As if…

‘Magic,’ I said.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Annabeth said.

Together, we dragged Grover to his hooves and started back up the tunnel. My legs wouldn’t move fast enough. My backpack weighed me down. The voice got louder and angrier behind us, and we broke into a run.

Not a moment too soon.

A cold blast of wind pulled at our backs, as if the entire pit were inhaling. For a terrifying moment, I lost ground, my feet slipping in the gravel. If we’d been any closer to the edge, we would’ve been sucked in.

We kept struggling forward, and finally reached the top of the tunnel, where the cavern widened out into the Fields of Asphodel. The wind died. A wail of outrage echoed from deep in the tunnel. Something was not happy we’d got away.

‘What
was
that?’ Grover panted, when we’d collapsed in the relative safety of a black poplar grove. ‘One of Hades’s pets?’

Annabeth and I looked at each other. I could tell she was nursing an idea, probably the same one she’d got during the taxi ride to L.A., but she was too scared to share it. That was enough to terrify me.

I capped my sword, put the pen back in my pocket. ‘Let’s keep going.’ I looked at Grover. ‘Can you walk?’

He swallowed. ‘Yeah, sure. I never liked those shoes, anyway.’

He tried to sound brave about it, but he was trembling as badly as Annabeth and I were. Whatever was in that pit was nobody’s pet. It was unspeakably old and powerful. Even Echidna hadn’t given me that feeling. I was almost relieved to turn my back on that tunnel and head towards the palace of Hades.

Almost.

Up close, I saw that the engravings on the gates were scenes of death. Some were from modern times – an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a trench filled with gas mask-wearing soldiers, a line of African famine victims waiting with empty bowls – but all of them looked as if they’d been etched into the bronze thousands of years ago. I wondered if I was looking at prophecies that had come true.

Inside the courtyard was the strangest garden I’d ever seen. Multicoloured mushrooms, poisonous shrubs and weird luminous plants grew without sunlight. Precious jewels made up for the lack of flowers, piles of rubies as big as my fist, clumps of raw diamonds. Standing here and there like frozen party guests were Medusa’s garden statues, petrified children, satyrs and centaurs, all smiling grotesquely.

In the centre of the garden was an orchard of pomegranate trees, their orange blooms neon bright in the dark. ‘The garden of Persephone,’ Annabeth said. ‘Keep walking.’

I understood why she wanted to move on. The tart smell of those pomegranates was almost overwhelming. I had a sudden desire to eat them, but then I remembered the story of Persephone. One bite of Underworld food, and we would never be able to leave. I pulled Grover away to keep him from picking a big juicy one.

We walked up the steps of the palace, between black columns, through a black marble portico and into the house of Hades. The entry hall had a polished bronze floor, which seemed to boil in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling, just the cavern roof, far above. I guess they never had to worry about rain down here.

Every side doorway was guarded by a skeleton in military gear. Some wore Greek armour, some British redcoat uniforms, some camouflage with tattered American flags on the shoulders. They carried spears or muskets or M-16s. None of them bothered us, but their hollow eye sockets followed us as we walked down the hall, towards the big set of doors at the opposite end.

Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.

‘You know,’ Grover mumbled, ‘I bet Hades doesn’t have trouble with door-to-door salesmen.’

My backpack weighed a ton now. I couldn’t figure out why. I wanted to open it, check to see if I had some-how picked up a stray bowling ball, but this wasn’t the time.

‘Well, guys,’ I said. ‘I suppose we should… knock?’

A hot wind blew down the corridor, and the doors swung open. The guards stepped aside.

‘I guess that means
“entrez,”,’
Annabeth said.

The room inside looked just like in my dream, except this time the throne of Hades was occupied.

He was the third god I’d met, but the first who really struck me as godlike.

He was at least three metres tall, for one thing, and dressed in black silk robes and a crown of braided gold. His skin was albino white, his hair shoulder-length and jet black. He wasn’t bulked up like Ares, but he radiated power. He lounged on his throne of fused human bones, looking lithe, graceful and dangerous as a panther.

I immediately felt like he should be giving the orders. He knew more than I did. He should be my master. Then I told myself to snap out of it.

Hades’s aura was affecting me, just as Ares’s had. The Lord of the Dead resembled pictures I’d seen of Adolph Hitler, or Napoleon, or the terrorist leaders who direct suicide bombers. Hades had the same intense eyes, the same kind of mesmerizing, evil charisma.

‘You are brave to come here, Son of Poseidon,’ he said in an oily voice. ‘After what you have done to me, very brave indeed. Or perhaps you are simply very foolish.’

Numbness crept into my joints, tempting me to lie down and just take a little nap at Hades’s feet. Curl up here and sleep forever.

I fought the feeling and stepped forward. I knew what I had to say. ‘Lord and Uncle, I come with two requests.’

Hades raised an eyebrow. When he sat forward in his throne, shadowy faces appeared in the folds of his black robes, faces of torment, as if the garment were stitched of trapped souls from the Fields of Punishment, trying to get out. The ADHD part of me wondered, off-task, whether the rest of his clothes were made the same way. What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get woven into Hades’s underwear?

‘Only two requests?’ Hades said. ‘Arrogant child. As if you have not already taken enough. Speak, then. It amuses me not to strike you dead yet.’

I swallowed. This was going about as well as I’d feared.

I glanced at the empty, smaller throne next to Hades’s. It was shaped like a black flower, gilded with gold. I wished Queen Persephone were here. I recalled something in the myths about how she could calm her husband’s moods. But it was summer. Of course, Persephone would be above in the world of light with her mother, the goddess of agriculture Demeter. Her visits, not the tilt of the earth, created the seasons.

Annabeth cleared her throat. Her finger prodded me in the back.

‘Lord Hades,’ I said. ‘Look, sir, there can’t be a war among the gods. It would be… bad.’

‘Really bad,’ Grover added helpfully.

‘Return Zeus’s master bolt to me,’ I said. ‘Please, sir. Let me carry it to Olympus.’

Hades’s eyes grew dangerously bright. ‘You dare keep up this pretence, after what you have done?’

I glanced back at my friends. They looked as confused as I was.

‘Um… Uncle,’ I said. ‘You keep saying “after what I’ve done”. What exactly have I done?’

The throne room shook with a tremor so strong they probably felt it upstairs in Los Angeles. Debris fell from the cavern ceiling. Doors burst open all along the walls, and skeletal warriors marched in, hundreds of them, from every time period and nation in Western civilization. They lined the perimeter of the room, blocking the exits.

Hades bellowed, ‘Do you think I
want
war, godling?’

I wanted to say,
Well, these guys don’t look like peace activists.
But I thought that might be a dangerous answer.

‘You are the Lord of the Dead,’ I said carefully. ‘A war would expand your kingdom, right?’

‘A typical thing for my brothers to say! Do you think I need more subjects? Did you not see the sprawl of Asphodel?’

‘Well…’

‘Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century alone, how many subdivisions I’ve had to open?’

I opened my mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now.

‘More security ghouls,’ he moaned. ‘Traffic problems at the judgment pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!’

‘Charon wants a pay raise,’ I blurted, just remembering
the fact. As soon as I said it, I wished I could sew up my mouth.

‘Don’t get me started on Charon!’ Hades yelled. ‘He’s been impossible ever since he discovered Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and I’ve got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving.
No
, godling. I need no help getting subjects!
I
did not ask for this war.’

‘But you took Zeus’s master bolt.’

‘Lies!’ More rumbling. Hades rose from his throne, towering to the height of a football goalpost. ‘Your father may fool Zeus, boy, but I am not so stupid. I see his plan.’

‘His plan?’

‘You
were the thief on the winter solstice,’ he said. ‘Your father thought to keep you his little secret. He directed you into the throne room on Olympus. You took the master bolt
and
my helmet. Had I not sent my Fury to discover you at Yancy Academy, Poseidon might have succeeded in hiding his scheme to start a war. But now you have been forced into the open. You will be exposed as Poseidon’s thief, and I will have my helmet back!’

‘But…’ Annabeth spoke. I could tell her mind was going a million miles an hour. ‘Lord Hades, your helmet of darkness is missing, too?’

‘Do not play innocent with me, girl. You and the satyr have been helping this hero – coming here to threaten me in Poseidon’s name, no doubt – to bring me an ultimatum. Does Poseidon think I can be blackmailed into supporting him?’

‘No!’ I said. ‘Poseidon didn’t – I didn’t –’

‘I have said nothing of the helmet’s disappearance,’ Hades snarled, ‘because I had no illusions that anyone on Olympus would offer me the slightest justice, the slightest help. I can ill afford for word to get out that my most powerful weapon of fear is missing. So I searched for you myself, and when it was clear you were coming to me to deliver your threat, I did not try to stop you.’

‘You didn’t try to stop us? But –’

‘Return my helmet now, or I will stop death,’ Hades threatened. ‘That is my counter-proposal. I will open the earth and have the dead pour back into the world. I will make your lands a nightmare. And you, Percy Jackson –
your
skeleton will lead my army out of Hades.’

The skeletal soldiers all took one step forward, making their weapons ready.

At that point, I probably should have been terrified. The strange thing was, I felt offended. Nothing gets me angrier than being accused of something I didn’t do. I’ve had a lot of experience with that.

‘You’re as bad as Zeus,’ I said. ‘You think I stole from you? That’s why you sent the Furies after me?’

‘Of course,’ Hades said.

‘And the other monsters?’

Hades curled his lip. ‘I had nothing to do with them. I wanted no quick death for you – I wanted you brought before me alive so you might face every torture in the Fields of Punishment. Why do you think I let you enter my kingdom so easily?’