The Burning Maze

Piper stepped out, raised her blowgun, and fired.

It was a fifty-foot shot, at the edge of what I consider practical blowgun range, but Piper hit her target. The dart pierced the man’s left trouser leg.

The guard looked down at the strange new accoutrement protruding from his thigh. The shaft’s fletching matched his white fur perfectly.

Oh, great, I thought. We just made him angry.

Meg summoned her golden swords.

Grover fumbled for his reed pipes.

I prepared to run away screaming.

“Wait,” Piper said.

The guard listed sideways, as if the whole city were tilting to starboard, then passed out cold on the sidewalk.

I raised my eyebrows. “Poison?”

“Grandpa Tom’s special recipe,” Piper said. “Now, come on. I’ll show you what’s really weird about Fuzz Face.”

“WHAT is he?” Meg asked again. “He’s fun.”

Fun would not have been my adjective of choice.

The guard lay sprawled on his back, his lips foaming, his half-lidded eyes twitching in a semiconscious state.

Each of his hands had eight fingers. That explained why they’d looked so large from a distance. Judging from the width of his black leather shoes, I guessed he had eight toes as well. He seemed young, no more than a teenager in human terms, but except for his forehead and cheeks, his whole face was covered in fine white fur that resembled the chest hair of a terrier.

The real conversation piece was his ears. What I had mistaken for a headdress had come unfurled, revealing two floppy ovals of cartilage, shaped like human ears but each the size of a beach towel, which told me immediately that the poor boy’s middle school nickname would have been Dumbo. His ear canals were wide enough to catch baseballs, and stuffed with so much hair that Piper could have used it to fletch an entire quiverful of darts.

“Big Ears,” I said.

“Duh,” said Meg.

“No, I mean this must be one of the Big Ears that Macro spoke of.”

Grover took a step back. “The creatures Caligula is using for his personal guard? Do they have to be so scary-looking?”

I walked a circle around the young humanoid. “Think how keen his hearing must be! And imagine all the guitar chords he could play with those hands. How have I never seen this species before? They would make the world’s best musicians!”

“Hmm,” Piper said. “I don’t know about music, but they fight like you wouldn’t believe. Two of them almost killed Jason and me, and we’ve fought a lot of different monsters.”

I saw no weapons on the guard, but I could believe he was a tough fighter. Those eight-fingered fists could have done some damage. Still, it seemed a waste to train these creatures for war….

“Unbelievable,” I murmured. “After four thousand years, I am still discovering new things.”

“Like how dumb you are,” Meg volunteered.

“No.”

“So you already knew that?”

“Guys,” Grover interrupted. “What do we do with Big Ears?”

“Kill him,” Meg said.

I frowned at her. “What happened to He’s fun? What happened to Everything alive deserves a chance to grow?”

“He works for the emperors,” she said. “He’s a monster. He’ll just dust back to Tartarus, right?”

Meg looked at Piper for confirmation, but she was busy scanning the street.

“Still seems odd there’s only one guard,” Piper mused. “And why is he so young? After we broke in once already, you’d think they’d put more guards on duty. Unless…”

She didn’t finish the thought, but I heard it loud and clear: Unless they want us to come in.

I studied the guard’s face, which was still twitching from the effects of the poison. Why did I have to think of his face as the fuzzy underside of a dog? It made killing him difficult.

“Piper, what does your poison do, exactly?”

She knelt and pulled out the dart. “Judging from how it worked on the other Big Ears, it will paralyze him for a long while but won’t kill him. It’s diluted coral-snake venom with a few special herbal ingredients.”

“Remind me never to drink your herbal tea,” Grover muttered.

Piper smirked. “We can just leave Big Ears. Doesn’t seem right to dust him to Tartarus.”

“Hmph.” Meg looked unconvinced, but she flicked her twin blades, instantly snapping them back into golden rings.

Piper walked to the metal door. She pulled it open, revealing a rusty freight elevator with a single control lever and no gate.

“Okay, just so we’re clear,” Piper said, “I’ll show you where Jason and I entered the maze, but I’m not doing the stereotypical Native American tracker thing. I don’t know tracking. I’m not your guide.”

We all readily agreed, as one does when delivered an ultimatum by a friend with strong opinions and poison darts.

“Also,” she continued, “if any of you find the need for spiritual guidance on this quest, I am not here to provide that service. I’m not going to dispense bits of ancient Cherokee wisdom.”

“Very well,” I said. “Though as a former prophecy god, I enjoy bits of spiritual wisdom.”

“Then you’ll have to ask the satyr,” Piper said.

Grover cleared his throat. “Um, recycling is good karma?”

“There you go,” Piper said. “Everybody good? All aboard.”

The interior of the elevator was poorly lit and smelled of sulfur. I recalled that Hades had an elevator in Los Angeles that led to the Underworld. I hoped Piper hadn’t gotten her quests mixed up.

“Are you sure this thing goes to the Burning Maze?” I asked. “Because I didn’t bring any rawhide chews for Cerberus.”

Grover whimpered. “You had to mention Cerberus. That’s bad karma.”

Piper threw the switch. The elevator rattled and began to sink at the same speed as my spirits.

“This first part is all mortal,” Piper assured us. “Downtown Los Angeles is riddled with abandoned subway tunnels, air-raid shelters, sewer lines….”

“All my favorite things,” Grover murmured.

“I don’t really know the history,” Piper said, “but Jason told me some of the tunnels were used by smugglers and partyers during Prohibition. Now you get taggers, runaways, homeless folks, monsters, government employees.”

Meg’s mouth twitched. “Government employees?”

“It’s true,” Piper said. “Some of the city workers use the tunnels to go from building to building.”

Grover shuddered. “When they could just walk in the sunlight with nature? Repulsive.”

Our rusty metal box rattled and creaked. Whatever was below would definitely hear us coming, especially if they had ears the size of beach towels.

After perhaps fifty feet, the elevator shuddered to a stop. Before us stretched a cement corridor, perfectly square and boring, lit by weak blue fluorescents.

“Doesn’t seem so scary,” said Meg.

“Just wait,” Piper said. “The fun stuff is up ahead.”

Grover fluttered his hands halfheartedly. “Yay.”