The Golden Amulet (PJO, Sequel to The Silver Ring)

Chapter 46

Rosaline explained the importance of the dagger as we made our way through the base. "What was your plan of getting into Deeplige?"

"Er . . . I always thought you would be able to teleport us into it after we were close enough," I admitted to her sheepishly. I dodged a Chaos soldier who was sparring with her friend as she sprang backward.

"I can only teleport into places I've been in before," Rosaline corrected me. "Sort of like your mist travel thing, however, it doesn't work if I have a picture of the place."

I winced at that; mist traveling was quite a sore spot for me, because, well . . . I couldn't do it anymore. "Then how were you planning to get into Deeplige?"

"I wasn't. Not until I got this." She held up the knife, stepping over a sword that had been left on the ground. The blade was so bent that it looked like the letter "U," though, so I didn't really blame the person for abandoning it.

I suddenly understood what her plan was. "That's why you were so friendly with the Void soldiers."

"I was certain that they would betray us—heck, I've done the same thing with a group of Void soldiers before, since it's an easy way to gain information, or something I needed. Though I have to admit that I was fooled by Adriana's acting." She sounded disappointed with herself.

Something occurred to me. "How will a dagger help us get into Deeplige?"

"Er . . . I'm not sure yet," Rosaline said. "But a prophecy talked about it."

Stupid prophecies, I groaned silently. But I didn't push the argument any further; prophecies were the best help we were going to get. That being said, they usually made me question everything, so I wasn't going to ask Rosaline what it said.

We swiftly entered the map room. Impossibly, it was even busier before, giving me the feeling that we were running out of time before the Chaos invasion would take place. There were hundreds of cartographers and soldiers running around trying to do what they needed to do. However, in this small space, all that succeeded in doing was significantly increasing the percentage that one would crash into someone else. The room was filled with the sounds of frantic apologizing as this exactly happened.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

"Just want to pick one thing up," Rosaline said cryptically.

Through all of the chaos, a cartographer quickly came our way. I recognized her as the one who had tried to help Psi find a map before I interrupted them.

"Can I help you?" the cartographer asked, giving a small bow toward Rosaline. (Everyone knew Rosaline. Even Void soldiers, though in the sort of way that every Chaos soldier knew the face of Void.) She glanced at me quickly, and given the small look of recognition on her face before she turned her attention back to Rosaline, she remembered me too.

Rosaline dismissed the bow; unlike Psi, and similarly to me, she hated any signs of respect toward her. "We'd like a map that shows us the way to Deeplige."

"Certainly." The cartographer hurried toward the back wall, where hundreds—if not thousands—of maps were kept in tight scrolls. She looked a segment of the wall over and picked a few out. She unfurled them, chose the correct one, then rolled the other ones and put them back into their place before coming back and handing the map to Rosaline.

Rosaline studied it while I peeked at it over her shoulder. It was exactly like my map, but a bit bigger, and it had a clear trail marked with red of how to get to Deeplige from the Chaos base. 

This also had the "Forbidden Forest" marked on the map.

I looked at the cartographer incredulously. "Why didn't you give this one to Psi?" There was no question about if she forgot about this one; given her confident and quick moments, there was no way that it was a possibility.