Ares and the Spear of Fear Read online

  “How come you can’t just climb to the top and get out?” Zeus asked. “Hestia, you’ve got your torch, and Demeter’s got magic seeds, and Poseidon, your trident could easily blow the lid off this thing.”

  “It could, if magic worked in here,” Poseidon replied. “But it doesn’t.”

  “He’s right,” Hera said. “I can’t get Chip to do anything.”

  “Hey, Hera, can I have my helmet back?” Hades asked. “I know it’s no use in here, but I’ve really missed it.”

  “Sure,” Hera replied, and there were shuffling sounds as she moved to find Hades in the dark of the urn.

  “It’s like when we were in the Underworld,” Zeus realized. “Our magical objects didn’t work there, either.”

  He sat down on the bottom of the urn. Things seemed hopeless. Those clumsy Cronies were going to deliver them right to the king! That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. The Olympians were supposed to fight King Cronus and defeat him.

  Pythia had told Zeus that he was the leader of the Olympians. As their leader he should know what to do. But right now he was out of ideas.

  The Olympians were quiet for a while, thinking about their fate. They kept bumping into one another as the clumsy Cronies carried the urn over the countryside.

  Finally, after what must have been hours, the Olympians felt the urn being set down.

  “My tummy’s grumbling!” they could hear Otus complain.

  “Mine too,” agreed Ephialtes. “Start the fire so we can heat up the stew.”

  “They’re not the only hungry ones,” mumbled Ares.

  “We’ve been surviving off the food in our packs but we’ve run out,” explained Hestia. “The Cronies haven’t given us anything.”

  Ares stomped his foot. “That is totally unfair! Even in war you’re supposed to feed your prisoners. Let’s revolt.”

  Zeus sat up. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea! Let’s get loud and demand some dinner. If they open the lid to feed us or just tell us no, we might have a chance to escape.”

  “Not a bad plan, Boltbrain,” Hera admitted. She started pounding on the side of the urn. “We want food! Prisoners’ rights!”

  “Yeah, King Cronus will be mad if we starve to death before you feed us to him!” Poseidon added.

  “We want food! We want food! We want food!” Apollo began to chant, and the other Olympians joined him.

  Outside the urn the Cronies just laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Olympians,” Ephialtes said loudly. “We’ll get you to King Cronus by morning. You won’t starve.”

  Apollo stopped chanting, and the others followed his lead—except Ares. He wouldn’t give up. He pounded on the side of the urn and yelled until his voice was hoarse.

  Zeus finally put an arm on his shoulder. “It’s not going to work, Ares,” he said. “But don’t worry. We’ll think of something else.”

  “Well, you’d better think fast,” Ares mumbled, but he’d stopped yelling.

  Hera moved to be next to Zeus. “So, what’s the plan now?”

  “I don’t know,” Zeus admitted. “If we can’t escape, we’re going to need a battle plan once we get to King Cronus. We won’t go down without a fight.”

  “I like the sound of that,” agreed Ares.

  Zeus yawned. It had to be nighttime by now, he guessed. They hadn’t felt the urn move in a while.

  Zzzzzzzz.

  A loud snoring sound came from outside the urn.

  “Do they snore like that every night?” Ares asked.

  “No,” replied Hades. “Most nights it’s even louder.”

  “We don’t need to sleep anyway,” Zeus said. “Everybody gather around. We need a battle plan for the morning.”

  The Olympians huddled up. Zeus still could barely see, but it felt good to have everyone together again.

  “Okay,” he said. “First we need to tell Hestia, Demeter, and Hades about the new magical object. It belongs to Ares, and it’s the Spear of Fear.”

  “Sounds cool!” said Hades. “How did you get it?”

  “Well—” Ares began.

  As Ares talked, Zeus felt himself dozing off. Suddenly he was jolted awake. “Wha—?” he asked, momentarily confused.

  Hera shushed him. “Listen!” she hissed.

  A female voice was talking in a loud whisper outside the urn.

  “Olympians! Can you hear me?”

  “We hear you!” Zeus called back.

  “I am Rhea,” the voice said, and Zeus felt a chill go through him.

  Rhea?

  Rhea was his mother—the mother he had never met. The mother he had been looking for his whole life! And she was the mother of most of the other Olympians too.

  Stunned, the Olympians went silent.

  “Know that I am proud of you all,” Rhea continued. “I’m doing what I do now only to keep you safe. It is the only way to save you from being delivered to King Cronus. Trust me.”

  “Wait!” Zeus cried. “Don’t go!”

  Suddenly they all went flying as the urn got turned over onto its side. The Olympians all yelled as they crashed into one another. Zeus could feel the urn rolling, moving faster and faster.

  “She pushed us down a hill!” he shouted.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lost and Found

  Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

  The Olympians screamed as the urn bumped and thumped its way down the hill. Then it came to an abrupt halt as it crashed into something hard—a boulder!

  The urn broke into pieces, sending the Olympians shooting in all directions. Zeus glanced down and saw a rushing river below him. Yikes! Just before he was about to hit the water, he quickly tossed Bolt toward the shore.

  Splash! Splash! Splash! One by one the Olympians landed in the river. Zeus tried to get his bearings and swim, but the swift water pushed him down the river. He might as well have been a leaf bobbing along.

  “Is everyone okay?” he asked, sputtering as he inhaled some river water. If anyone answered, he couldn’t hear them over the rushing water. He wasn’t even sure if they could hear him.

  Finally the water started to slow, and Zeus could see the heads of the others bobbing on top of the water. The current washed all of them up onto the riverbank, out of the water and onto dry land.

  “Bolt, return!” Zeus called out, and his magical weapon flew to him in an instant. Drenched and weary, he sat up. The other Olympians were slowly sitting up around him.

  “How’s everybody doing?” he asked. “Do we still have all our magical objects?”

  Ares ran up to him, his eyes shining. He was still holding a spear, but it didn’t look like the old Spear of Fear. Now it had a narrow, elm-shaped point made of gleaming bronze, with a sharp bronze spike on the other end. The handle of the spear was made of polished, flexible wood.

  “It changed!” Ares cried. “How did that happen?”

  “Well, maybe you and the spear bonded,” Zeus guessed. “You used good strategy back there, fighting the python. It was smart throwing the spear to Apollo.”

  “Yeah, it was,” Ares agreed proudly. He got into a fighting stance and started jabbing the spear in the air. “Take that! And that!”

  “Be careful with that thing,” Hera warned, ducking him as she searched the riverbank. “I think I lost my peacock feather in the river.”

  It was pretty, but at least you didn’t lose a magical object or anything,” said Demeter.

  Apollo started to strum his lyre.

  “The brave Olympians escaped the urn,

  Thanks to a Titan named Rhea.

  And now there is just one more thing to learn.

  Where on earth is Pythia?”

  As he strummed the last note, a crack opened up in the ground in front of him. Swirling mist poured from the crack, and a slender, dark-haired woman appeared inside the fog.

  “Pythia!” Zeus cried.

  Pythia adjusted her eyeglasses. “Yes, I am free again, thanks to you all,” she said. “That snake was annoyi
ng. So full of hot air! Anyway, I see you escaped from the urn.”

  “Rhea freed us,” Zeus informed her. “But for some reason she didn’t stick around. Wouldn’t she want to see her kids after all this time?”

  “Your mother’s heart is with you, although she cannot be with you herself,” Pythia said.

  “Why not?” Zeus asked, but Pythia had already turned to the others. “So, Hera, you finally found your magical object.”

  “You mean the aegis is mine?” Hera asked, surprised.

  Pythia looked confused. “No, not the aegis. The Feather of Eyes is your magical object.”

  It was Hera’s turn to look confused. Until she realized . . . “The peacock feather, you mean? That was my magical object?”

  Pythia nodded, and Hera looked heartbroken.

  “But I . . .” Her voice trailed off. She’d finally had her magical object, and then she’d lost it!

  Before Hera could ask Pythia how to find it again, Ares spoke up. “So what about the aegis, then? Is it mine?”

  Pythia shook her head. “It partly belongs to Zeus. But he must share it with the new Olympian you’ve found.”

  “What new Olympian?” Zeus asked, puzzled.

  Frowning, Pythia scanned the riverbank. “Oh, there she is. Step up, girl,” she said, waving to someone. Then she turned back to the group. “Let me introduce you to Hyena, the goddess of foreverness!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sticky Spidernets!

  A brown-haired girl with gray eyes stepped into the circle of confused Olympians.

  “Actually, my name’s Athena,” she said. “Goddess of cleverness, not foreverness.”

  “Sorry about that,” said Pythia. “Foggy spectacles can make seeing the future hard sometimes.” She took them off to polish away the steamy mist. “You all can get to know one another later. Right now I must tell you of your next quest. I am not clear which magical object you will find this time, however.”

  “So, what do we do?” Zeus asked.

  “First you must head to the center of a ‘trouble spot,’ ” she reported. “You will know it when you find it. There you must cut the Threads of Dread down to size.”

  “Threads of Dread? What in the world are those?” Poseidon asked.

  Zeus asked a question at the same time. “What about King Cronus? The Cronies said he was close by.”

  “And what about my feather?” Hera asked quickly. “What kind of magic can it do? And how can I find it again?”

  But Pythia was already starting to fade away. “You will have your answers soon enough . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.

  With a final wave she disappeared.

  “Noooo!” Hera wailed.

  Hestia and Demeter walked up to Athena.

  “Nice to meet you,” Hestia said. “I’m—”

  “Hestia,” Athena said quickly. “I got to know all of you from your voices inside the urn. You’re the protector of the hearth.”

  “You were in the urn with us all that time? Why didn’t you let us know?” Demeter asked.

  “Well, the urn was huge inside, so it was easy to hide,” Athena said. “And I didn’t know if I could trust any of you, so I figured it would be smart to just listen and gather information.”

  Hera put her hands on her hips. “So you were spying on us?”

  “Not exactly,” Athena said. Then she quickly changed the subject. “Hey! Didn’t you say something about a lost feather?”

  “Yeah!” Hera said. “And I am going back to search the length of that river for it. You guys don’t have to come with me. I’ll catch up to you.” She started to march off.

  Zeus ran after her and grabbed her arm. “You can’t go alone! It’s too dangerous. There are Cronies everywhere.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Hera said fiercely.

  “I know you can,” Zeus said. “Probably better than any other Olympian. That’s why we need you with us. We’ve got to stick to Pythia’s plan. We’ve got to find the center of a trouble spot and cut the Threads of Dread. And we don’t know where we’re going, which is why we need you to show us the way with Chip.”

  Hera folded her arms smugly. “Oh, I don’t need Chip to figure out where we need to head next,” she said. She pointed to the sky behind Zeus and the others. Everyone turned around.

  The morning sky was a pale shade of orange. Against it they could see the most massive spiderweb ever, strung high between the clouds.

  “That’s impossible,” Hades said, his mouth hanging open.

  As they stared at the web, tits woven strands started to move and change. At first, the Olympians weren’t sure what was going on, but slowly words started appearing in the sky web:

  Surrender, Olympians!

  The Olympians gasped.

  “Um, guys, are we sure we want to go toward that thing?” Poseidon asked nervously. “I mean, it looks— Aaaahhhhh!”

  A strong, silky thread shot down from the sky and wrapped itself around Poseidon’s ankle, yanking him away.

  “Sticky spidernets!” he cried.

  Zeus grabbed Bolt. “Bolt, large!” he commanded. As he ran to rescue Poseidon, another thread shot down and grabbed Hestia’s ankle. Then another thread grabbed Demeter, and the next one grabbed Hera!

  “Help!” they cried as the sticky threads dragged them away.

  “What’s happening?” Hades asked, catching up to Zeus as the two of them chased after the four captured Olympians. Apollo, Ares, and Athena followed at their heels.

  “I don’t know!” Zeus replied. “But I’m not going to lose any more Olympians—not again!”

  Heart pounding, he raced off after his captured friends, on a new quest that was quickly turning out to be one sticky situation!

  Joan Holub is the award-winning author of more than one hundred and thirty books for young readers, including Zero the Hero, Vincent van Gogh: Sunflowers and Swirly Stars, and Shampoodle. She lives in North Carolina. Visit her at joanholub.com.

  Suzanne Williams is the award-winning author of more than thirty-five books for young readers, including Library Lil, Ten Naughty Little Monkeys, and the Princess Power and Fairy Blossoms series. She lives near Seattle in Washington State. Visit her at suzanne-williams.com.

  ALADDIN

  SIMON & SCHUSTER, NEW YORK

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  KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Joan-Holub

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Suzanne-Williams

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Craig-Phillips

  DON’T MISS THE OTHER ADVENTURES IN THE HEROES IN TRAINING SERIES!

  Zeus and the Thunderbolt of Doom

  Poseidon and the Sea of Fury

  Hades and the Helm of Darkness

  Hyperion and the Great Balls of Fire

  Typhon and the Winds of Destruction

  Apollo and the Battle of the Birds

  COMING SOON:

  Cronus and the Threads of Dread

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors’ imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  First Aladdin hardcover edition August 2014

  Text copyright © 2014 by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Craig Phillips

  Also available in an Aladdin paperback edition.

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  ISBN 978-1-4424-8849-6 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8848-9 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8850-2 (eBook)