The Tyrant’s Tomb

Frank appeared ready for battle in his full armor. Reyna looked like she was the one who’d just woken up. She wore her purple cloak hastily pulled over a too-large PUERTO RICO FUERTE T-shirt, which I wondered if she’d slept in—but that was none of my business. The left side of her hair was an adorable fuzzy black mess of cowlicks that made me wonder if she slept on that side—and, again, that was none of my business.

Curled on the carpet at her feet were two automatons I hadn’t seen before—a pair of greyhounds, one gold and one silver. They both raised their heads when they saw me, then sniffed the air and growled as if to say, Hey, Mom, this guy smells like zombie. Can we kill him?

Reyna hushed them. She dug some jelly beans out of the jar and tossed them to the dogs. I wasn’t sure why metallic greyhounds would like candy, but they snapped up the morsels, then settled their heads back on the carpet.

“Er, nice dogs,” I said. “Why haven’t I seen them before?”

“Aurum and Argentum have been out searching,” Reyna said, in a tone that discouraged follow-up questions. “How is your wound?”

“My wound is thriving,” I said. “Me, not so much.”

“He’s better than before,” Meg insisted. “I grated some unicorn-horn shavings on his cut. It was fun.”

“Pranjal helped, too,” I said.

Frank gestured at the two visitors’ seats. “You guys make yourselves comfortable.”

Comfortable was a relative term. The three-legged foldable stools did not look as cushy as the praetors’ chairs. They also reminded me of the Oracle’s tripod seat in Delphi, which reminded me of Rachel Elizabeth Dare back at Camp Half-Blood, who was not-so-patiently waiting for me to restore her powers of prophecy. Thinking about her reminded me of the Delphic cave, which reminded me of Python, which reminded me of my nightmare and how scared I was of dying. I hate stream of consciousness.

Once we were seated, Reyna spread a parchment scroll across the table. “So, we’ve been working with Ella and Tyson since yesterday, trying to decipher some more lines of prophecy.”

“We’ve made progress,” Frank added. “We think we’ve found the recipe you were talking about at the senate meeting—the ritual that could summon divine aid to save the camp.”

“That’s great, right?” Meg reached for the jar of jelly beans but retracted her hand when Aurum and Argentum began growling.

“Maybe.” Reyna exchanged a worried look with Frank. “The thing is, if we’re reading the lines correctly…the ritual requires a death sacrifice.”

The fish sticks began sword-fighting with the french fries in my stomach.

“That can’t be right,” I said. “We gods would never ask you mortals to sacrifice one of your own. We gave that up centuries ago! Or millennia ago, I can’t remember. But I’m sure we gave it up!”

Frank gripped his armrests. “Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s not a mortal who’s supposed to die.”

“No.” Reyna locked eyes with me. “It seems this ritual requires the death of a god.”

O book, what’s my fate?

What is the secret of life?

See appendix F

WHY WAS EVERYBODY LOOKING at me?

I couldn’t help it if I was the only (ex-)god in the room.

Reyna leaned over the scroll, tracing her finger across the parchment. “Frank copied these lines from Tyson’s back. As you can probably guess, they read more like an instruction manual than a prophecy….”

I was about to crawl out of my skin. I wanted to rip the scroll away from Reyna and read the bad news myself. Was my name mentioned? Sacrificing me couldn’t possibly please the gods, could it? If we Olympians started sacrificing one another, that would set a terrible precedent.

Meg eyed the jar of jelly beans, while the greyhounds eyed her. “Which god dies?”

“Well, that particular line…” Reyna squinted, then pushed the parchment over to Frank. “What is that word?”

Frank looked sheepish. “Shattered. Sorry, I was writing fast.”

“No, no. It’s fine. Your handwriting is better than mine.”

“Can you please just tell me what it says?” I begged.

“Right, sorry,” Reyna said. “Well, it’s not exactly poetry, like the sonnet you got in Indianapolis—”

“Reyna!”

“Okay, okay. It says: All to be done on the day of greatest need: gather the ingredients for a type-six burnt offering (see appendix B)—”

“We’re doomed,” I wailed. “We’ll never be able to collect those…whatever they are.”

“That part’s easy,” Frank assured me. “Ella has the list of ingredients. She says it’s all ordinary stuff.” He gestured for Reyna to continue.

“Add the last breath of the god who speaks not, once his soul is cut free,” Reyna read aloud, “together with the shattered glass. Then the single-deity summoning prayer (see appendix C) must be uttered through the rainbow.” She took a breath. “We don’t have the actual text of that prayer yet, but Ella is confident she can transcribe it before the battle starts, now that she knows what to look for in appendix C.”

Frank glanced at me for a reaction. “Does the rest of it make any sense to you?”

I was so relieved I almost slumped off my three-legged stool. “You got me all worked up. I thought…Well, I’ve been called a lot of things, but never the god who speaks not. It sounds like we must find the soundless god, whom we’ve discussed before, and, er—”

“Kill him?” Reyna asked. “How would killing a god please the gods?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. Then again, many prophecies seemed illogical until they played out. Only in retrospect did they appear obvious.

“Perhaps if I knew which god we’re talking about…” I pounded my fist on my knee. “I feel like I should know, but it’s buried deep. An obscure memory. I don’t suppose you’ve checked your libraries or run a Google search or something?”

“Of course we looked,” Frank said. “There’s no listing for a Roman or Greek god of silence.”

Roman or Greek. I felt sure I was missing something—like part of my brain, for instance. Last breath. His soul is cut free. It definitely sounded like instructions for a sacrifice.

“I have to think on it,” I decided. “As for the rest of the instructions: shattered glass seems like an odd request, but I suppose we can find some easily enough.”

“We could break the jelly bean jar,” Meg suggested.

Reyna and Frank politely ignored her.

“And the single-deity summoning thing?” Frank asked. “I guess that means we won’t be getting a host of gods charging down in their chariots?”

“Probably not,” I agreed.

But my pulse quickened. The possibility of being able to speak to even one fellow Olympian after all this time—to summon actual grade AA–quality, jumbo, cage-free, locally sourced divine help…I found the idea both exhilarating and terrifying. Would I get to choose which god I called, or was it predetermined by the prayer? “Nevertheless, even one god can make all the difference.”