The Battle of the Labyrinth

dog,” I said.
    “Funny.”
    She walked toward us. Mrs. O’Leary growled, but I patted her on the head and calmed her down.
    “Stupid hellhound,” Clarisse said. “Not going to keep me from practicing.”
    “I heard about Chris,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
    Clarisse paced a circle around the arena. When she came to the nearest dummy, she attacked viciously, chopping its head off with a single blow and driving her sword through its guts. She pulled the sword out and kept walking.
    “Yeah, well. Sometimes things go wrong.” Her voice was shaky. “Heroes get hurt. They . . . they die, and the monsters just keep coming back.”
    She picked up a javelin and threw it across the arena. It nailed a dummy straight between the eyeholes of its helmet.
    She had called Chris a hero, like he had never gone over to the Titans’ side. It reminded me of the way Annabeth sometimes talked about Luke. I decided not to bring that up.
    “Chris was brave,” I said. “I hope he gets better.”
    She glared at me as if I were her next target. Mrs. O’Leary growled.
    “Do me a favor,” Clarisse told me.
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “If you find Daedalus, don’t trust him. Don’t ask him for help. Just kill him.”
    “Clarisse—”
    “Because anybody who can make something like the Labyrinth, Percy? That person is evil. Plain evil.”
    For a second she reminded me of Eurytion the cowherd, her much older half brother. She had the same hard look in her eyes, as if she’d been used for the past two thousand years and was getting tired of it. She sheathed her sword. “Practice time is over. From now on, it’s for real.”
    * * *
    That night I slept in my own bunk, and for the first time since Calypso’s Island, dreams found me.
    I was in a king’s courtroom—a big white chamber with marble columns and a wooden throne. Sitting on it was a plump guy with curly red hair and a crown of laurels. At his side stood three girls who looked like his daughters. They all had his red hair and were dressed in blue robes.
    The doors creaked open and a herald announced, “Minos, King of Crete!”
    I tensed, but the man on the throne just smiled at his daughters. “I can’t wait to see the expression on his face.”
    Minos, the royal creep himself, swept into the room. He was so tall and serious he made the other king look silly. Minos’s pointed beard had gone gray. He looked thinner than the last time I’d dreamed of him, and his sandals were spattered with mud, but the same cruel light shined in his eyes.
    He bowed stiffly to the man on the throne. “King Cocalus. I understand you have solved my little riddle?”
    Cocalus smiled. “Hardly little , Minos. Especially when you advertise across the world that you are willing to pay a thousand gold talents to the one who can solve it. Is the offer genuine?”
    Minos clapped his hands. Two buff guards walked in, struggling with a big wooden crate. They set it at Cocalus’s feet and opened it. Stacks of gold bars glittered. It had to be worth like a gazillion dollars.
    Cocalus whistled appreciatively. “You must have bankrupted your kingdom for such a reward, my friend.”
    “That is not your concern.”
    Cocalus shrugged. “The riddle was quite simple, really. One of my retainers solved it.”
    “Father,” one of the girls warned. She looked like the oldest—a little taller than her sisters.
    Cocalus ignored her. He took a spiral seashell from the folds of his robe. A silver string had been threaded through it, so it hung like a huge bead on a necklace.
    Minos stepped forward and took the shell. “One of your retainers, you say? How did he thread the string without breaking the shell?”
    “He used an ant, if you can believe it. Tied a silk string to the little creature and coaxed it through the shell by putting honey at the far end.”
    “Ingenious man,” Minos said.
    “Oh, indeed. My daughters’ tutor. They are quite fond of him.”
    Minos’s eyes turned cold. “I would be careful of that.”
    I wanted to warn Cocalus: Don’t trust this guy! Throw him in the dungeon with some man-eating lions or something! But the redheaded king just chuckled. “Not to worry, Minos. My daughters are wise beyond their years. Now, about my gold—”
    “Yes,” Minos said. “But you see the gold is for the man who solved the riddle. And there can be only one such man. You are harboring Daedalus.”
    Cocalus shifted uncomfortably on his throne. “How is it that you know his