The Battle of the Labyrinth

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 gone now?”
    “I—I guess. I tried to search for him this spring. So did Annabeth. But we didn’t have any luck. This is secret, Tyson. Okay? If anyone found out he was a son of Hades, he would be in danger. You can’t even tell Chiron.”
    “The bad prophecy,” Tyson said. “Titans might use him if they knew.”
    I stared at him. Sometimes it was easy to forget that as big and childlike as he was, Tyson was pretty smart. He knew that the next child of the Big Three gods—Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades—who turned sixteen was prophesied to either save or destroy Mount Olympus. Most people assumed that meant me, but if I died before I turned sixteen, the prophecy could just as easily apply to Nico.
    “Exactly,” I said. “So—”
    “Mouth sealed,” Tyson promised. “Like the crack in the ground.”
    I had trouble falling asleep that night. I lay in bed listening to the waves on the beach, and the owls and monsters in the woods. I was afraid once I drifted off I’d have nightmares.
    See, for half-bloods, dreams are hardly ever just dreams. We get messages. We glimpse things that are happening to our friends or enemies. Sometimes we even glimpse the past or the future. And at camp, my dreams were always more frequent and vivid.
    So I was still awake around midnight, staring at the bunk bed mattress above me, when I realized there was a strange light in the room. The saltwater fountain was glowing.
    I threw off the covers and walked cautiously toward it. Steam rose from the hot salt water. Rainbow colors shimmered through it, though there was no light in the room except for the moon outside. Then a pleasant female voice spoke from the steam: Please deposit one drachma .
    I looked over at Tyson, but he was still snoring. He sleeps about as heavily as a tranquilized elephant.
    I didn’t know what to think. I’d never gotten a collect Iris-message before. One golden drachma gleamed at the bottom of the fountain. I scooped it up and tossed it