The Battle of the Labyrinth

our magical boundaries, we wouldn’t stand a chance. He could wipe us out easy. He must’ve been planning this for months.”
    “He’s been sending scouts into the maze,” Annabeth said. “We know because . . . because we found one.”
    “Chris Rodriguez,” Chiron said. He gave Quintus a meaningful look.
    “Ah,” Quintus said. “The one in the . . . Yes. I understand.”
    “The one in the what?” I asked.
    Clarisse glared at me. “The point is, Luke has been looking for a way to navigate the maze. He’s searching for Daedalus’s workshop.”
    I remembered my dream the night before—the bloody old man in tattered robes. “The guy who created the maze.”
    “Yes,” Annabeth said. “The greatest architect, the greatest inventor of all time. If the legends are true, his workshop is in the center of the Labyrinth. He’s the only one who knew how to navigate the maze perfectly. If Luke managed to find the workshop and convince Daedalus to help him, Luke wouldn’t have to fumble around searching for paths, or risk losing his army in the maze’s traps. He could navigate anywhere he wanted—quickly and safely. First to Camp Half-Blood to wipe us out. Then . . . to Olympus.”
    The arena was silent except for Mrs. O’Leary’s toy yak getting disemboweled: SQUEAK! SQUEAK!
    Finally Beckendorf put his huge hands on the table. “Back up a sec. Annabeth, you said ‘convince Daedalus’? Isn’t Daedalus dead?”
    Quintus grunted. “I would hope so. He lived, what, three thousand years ago? And even if he were alive, don’t the old stories say he fled from the Labyrinth?”
    Chiron clopped restlessly on his hooves. “That’s the problem, my dear Quintus. No one knows. There are rumors . . . well, there are many disturbing rumors about Daedalus, but one is that he disappeared back into the Labyrinth toward the end of his life. He might still be down there.”
    I thought about the old man I’d seen in my dream. He’d looked so frail, it was hard to believe he’d last another week, much less three thousand years.
    “We need to go in,” Annabeth announced. “We have to find the workshop before Luke does. If Daedalus is alive, we convince him to help us, not Luke. If Ariadne’s string still exists, we make sure it never falls into Luke’s hands.”
    “Wait a second,” I said. “If we’re worried about an attack, why not just blow up the entrance? Seal the tunnel?”
    “Great idea!” Grover said. “I’ll get the dynamite!”
    “It’s not so easy, stupid,” Clarisse growled. “We tried that at the entrance we found in Phoenix. It didn’t go well.”
    Annabeth nodded. “The Labyrinth is magical architecture, Percy. It would take huge power to seal even one of its entrances. In Phoenix, Clarisse demolished a whole building with a wrecking ball, and the maze entrance just shifted a few feet. The best we can do is prevent Luke from learning to navigate the Labyrinth.”
    “We could fight,” Lee Fletcher said. “We know where the entrance is now. We can set up a defensive line and wait for them. If an army tries to come through, they’ll find us waiting with our bows.”
    “We will certainly set up defenses,” Chiron agreed. “But I fear Clarisse is right. The magical borders have kept this camp safe for hundreds of years. If Luke manages to get a large army of monsters into the center of camp, bypassing our boundaries . . . we may not have the strength to defeat them.”
    Nobody looked real happy about that news. Chiron usually tried to be upbeat and optimistic. If he was predicting we couldn’t hold off an attack, that wasn’t good.
    “We have to get to Daedalus’s workshop first,” Annabeth insisted. “Find Ariadne’s string and prevent Luke from using it.”
    “But if nobody can navigate in there,” I said, “what chance do we have?”
    “I’ve been studying architecture for years,” she said. “I know Daedalus’s Labyrinth better than anybody.”
    “From reading about it.”
    “Well, yes.”
    “That’s not enough.”
    “It has to be!”
    “It isn’t!”
    “Are you going to help me or not?”
    I realized everyone was watching Annabeth and me like a tennis match. Mrs. O’Leary’s squeaky yak went EEK! as she ripped off its pink rubber head.
    Chiron cleared his throat. “First things first. We need a quest. Someone must enter the Labyrinth, find the workshop of Daedalus, and prevent Luke from using the maze to invade this camp.”
    “We all know who