The Burning Maze

Piper shares that she knows the dryads and satyrs have been fighting droughts and fires. After experiencing revelatory dreams, she and Jason searched the maze to find the person responsible for all their miseries. She then reveals that things changed between her and Jason; they broke up. Meg points out Caligula’s familiar letterhead on Piper’s papers. Piper says that Triumvirate Holdings went to a great deal of trouble to destroy her father. She and her father will be returning to their Cherokee allotment in Oklahoma: the only property they have left. Apollo notes the parallel with Meg’s father, who was similarly driven east by Caligula. He shares Meg’s story with Piper.

Piper wonders why her father was targeted. Apollo surmises that Caligula is distracting her with her father’s problems in order to get her “out of the way” (127), but he is not sure what Caligula’s intention for Meg’s father was. Everything is connected, but they do not know how. Apollo wants to speak to the Sibyl; he implies that he wants Piper to bring him to her. She offers to get her weapons and “go for a ride” (129).

Piper outfits herself with her Cherokee blowgun and her dagger, Katoptris, which once belonged to Helen of Troy. The dagger usually shows visions, but it has been silent ever since Apollo was expelled from Olympus. Piper uses her powers to convince her neighbor to let them take his Escalade. She tells Apollo to drive.

On the way to the maze’s entrance, Piper explains that she never found the Oracle, but while they were in the maze, she and Jason were briefly separated. She does not believe that he told her everything he saw there. Grover wonders why he would lie. Piper would like to find out by returning to the maze itself. The entrance to the maze is in downtown Los Angeles and is guarded by a single fur-faced guard. Piper incapacitates the guard with a poison-laced dart.

The fur-faced guard, one of the “Big Ears” that Caligula uses as his guards, is young and alone, suggesting that Caligula may have intended for him to be overpowered so that Apollo and the demigods would have easy access to the maze. Realizing that they might be walking into a trap, they nonetheless descend into the maze and find two badly injured nature spirits, Agave and Money Maker. Meg attempts to heal them, but without sunlight and water, her efforts have a limited effect. The dryads obscurely tell Grover that they got close, but “[s]he came out of nowhere” (146). Grover insists on taking them to the surface alone because they have sustained their injuries as part of a search party acting on his orders.

The others continue without Grover. Piper takes them to the place where she and Jason were separated, noting that when he returned, he told her only that “[t]he answers were elsewhere” (148). Observing the scent of honey and clover mixed with sulfur and recalling Macro’s reference to a magical friend of the emperor, Apollo feels a sense of foreboding. Just as Piper and Meg realize who they will be facing, a chariot pulled by two dragons appears. The sorceress Medea is in the driver’s seat.

Piper orders Meg and Apollo not stare at Medea’s sun dragons because doing so will paralyze them. Medea attempts to enchant Meg into coming with her, but Piper again intervenes. Medea reveals that she has brought Apollo here to extract what remains of his godly essence. She wants to unite his essence with what is left of Helios—the sun god whom Apollo supplanted. She then plans to invest Caligula with their combined power, thereby anointing him as the new sun god, Neos Helios.

Apollo realizes that the malevolent flames in the maze are caused by Helios’s anger, which has been summoned by Medea. Medea uses magic to compel Meg to come with her, saying that Nero will forgive her. However, Piper appeals to Meg’s stubborn side, urging her to “[m]ake up [her] own mind” (157). Meg tells Medea that Apollo is her servant, and she will not give him up. This prompts Medea to order her dragons to attack.

Piper throws her dagger into the left dragon’s eye, causing him to pull the chariot off course. As the dragons pull Medea down a corridor, the heroes and Apollo regroup. To prevent herself from being influenced by Medea’s magic, Meg stuffs her ears. When Medea comes charging back toward them, Meg stands her ground in their path. Piper and Medea use a form of magical compulsion to shout opposing orders to the dragons, causing them to crash together and topple the chariot. Meg swoops in with her twin scimitars and decapitates them both, enraging Medea, who summons wind spirits to contain Apollo in a vortex and slam Meg into a wall. Meg crumples, unconscious.

To distract Medea and give Meg and Apollo time to recover, Piper taunts the sorceress, but she taunts back, saying that she led Jason to the Oracle so that it would break him. Piper tells Medea that she will pay, and they agree to a one-on-one duel. Medea announces that her weapon will be Helios, then summons fire.

As Helios’s fire rages, Apollo reflects that Helios had “not always been hostile” (166). Although Helios is a Titan, he supported the Olympians in the wars against Kronos and the giants. However, as the Olympians gained power and influence, Helios faded from human memory. Though Apollo never asked for it, he became the recipient of what had previously been Helios’s honors, and Helios became resentful and angry.

Now, Apollo can feel the Titan’s anger. Medea has summoned Helios’s resentment and “desire for revenge” (167). While Piper hides among the columns, taunting Medea, Meg urges Apollo to consult the Arrow of Dodona, which instructs them to use the blowgun. Piper fires a poisonous dart at Medea, who reminds Piper that she is “the world’s foremost expert on poison” (171) just before collapsing from the dart’s effects. As Medea loses consciousness, she reveals that her power does not summon Helios; it holds him back. Apollo orders the heroes to run as the room goes “supernova” (172).

Apollo does not remember how they escape the maze, but they find Grover waiting for them. Grover immediately begins playing his panpipes. Apollo loses consciousness and has troubled dreams about Caligula. The first dream features an irreverent costume party that Caligula hosted, during which the emperor dressed as Helios and Apollo. The gods tolerated such irreverence from the emperors because as the emperors expanded their power, they also expanded the gods’ influence. Caligula confronted a nervous poet, saying that he admired the man’s “silver tongue” (176) and promising to reward him. He then ordered a guard to rip out the satirist’s tongue, dip it in silver, and put it on display. In the second dream, Herophile tells Apollo that he “must come” and “must hold them together in their grief” (177).

When he wakes up, Apollo learns that Meg and Piper are still asleep. Agave might pull through but not Money Maker. No one knows what happened to Medea. Apollo calls for another meeting with the dryads to put the “Burning Maze out of business, once and for all” (180).

Still nursing their wounds, Piper, Meg, and Apollo meet with Grover and the nature spirits. Apollo announces that everything is his fault. He reveals that Caligula wants to be more than a minor god; he wants to replace Apollo among the Olympians. The gods will not stop Caligula themselves because they expect the heroes “to set things right” (184). Helios’s fires, coupled with pollution and climate change, are destroying the land. Agave asks whether Caligula’s intention of absorbing Apollo’s power will make the fires stop, but Grover reminds the dryads that Caligula is causing the current destruction and cannot be trusted with “the full power of a sun god” (185).

Apollo tells the dryads about Meg’s father and his work. Piper adds that Meg is a descendent of Plemnaeus, a Greek king whose children dedicated themselves to Demeter’s work. Apollo does not remember Plemnaeus, prompting one of the dryads to remark that only “[t]he killers are remembered as heroes” (186), while only the nature spirits remember the growers. The dryads tell Meg that they are honored that she has come home. They consider how to kill Caligula. Recalling a line of the prophecy that they will have to walk “in thine own enemy’s boots,” (189), Apollo says that they will need to obtain Caligula’s shoes. Apollo asks Piper to take him to Jason.

The night before their visit to Jason, Apollo sleeps poorly. He dreams of Python threatening Nero. In the dream, Nero swears that Meg will return to him. Apollo wakes up determined to protect Meg from Nero, then wonders what he would do if Zeus promised to allow him to return to Olympus; he questions whether he would abandon his new friends without looking back.

He finds Meg holding seven seeds: the same ones he saw in her memories. She had a dream about them and was therefore able to recover them from where they had been hidden. Now, Apollo helps her plant them. Meg asks why Demeter has never appeared to her. Apollo does not know but tells her that Demeter would be proud that she is “[s]tubbornly insisting on creating life” (197). Piper drives them to Jason’s boarding school. Jason recognizes Meg and Apollo and says that he has been waiting for them.

The group confers in Jason’s dorm room, where he has been working on his layout for Camp Jupiter’s Temple Hill, which will hold temples for all the gods, including the minor, forgotten ones. Jason admits that he did not tell Piper everything about their time in the maze. He then recounts his meeting with Herophile. She prophesied that Apollo and Meg would come to Jason, and when they did, he should provide whatever assistance he could. She also revealed where they could find the emperor and told Jason that Apollo would need a pair of shoes. Piper chides Jason for withholding this information. He attributes his decision to their strained relationship following their breakup. He then asks Piper to use her magic to charm the school administrators so that he can leave campus. She takes Meg with her in case they run into any monsters. After they leave, Apollo asks Jason what the Sibyl really told him.

Jason takes his time answering Apollo. Finally, he admits that Herophile warned him that if he and Piper went after the emperor, one of them would die. Knowing how much Piper has been looking forward to spending time with her father, Jason intended to find Apollo and Meg after Piper and her father were safely out of town. Apollo admires Jason’s strength and nobility but reminds him that “avoiding prophecies never works,” and neither does “keeping secrets from friends” (215).

Jason apologizes for not being able to convince Zeus to spare Apollo, who thanks him for the attempt. Jason asks a favor of Apollo, saying that if something happens to him, he wants Apollo to make sure that his temple project is fulfilled. Jason extracts one final promise from Apollo to “[r]emember what it’s like to be human” (216). Before they leave to find the girls, Jason reveals that Piper broke up with him long before they entered the maze.