The Mark of Athena

Page 55

“Or I passed a test,” she said aloud.
Her torch sputtered out, leaving her with only the light of her dagger. She realized that she’d left her makeshift crutch on the other side of the chasm.
She felt exhausted and out of tricks, but her mind was clear. Her panic seemed to have burned up along with that woven bridge.
The weaver, she thought. I must be close. At least I know what’s ahead.
She made her way down the next corridor, hopping to keep the weight off her bad foot.
She didn’t have far to go.
After twenty feet, the tunnel opened into a cavern as large as a cathedral, so majestic that Annabeth had trouble processing everything she saw. She guessed that this was the room from Percy’s dream, but it wasn’t dark. Bronze braziers of magical light, like the gods used on Mount Olympus, glowed around the circumference of the room, interspersed with gorgeous tapestries. The stone floor was webbed with fissures like a sheet of ice. The ceiling was so high, it was lost in the gloom and layers upon layers of spiderwebs.
Strands of silk as thick as pillars ran from the ceiling all over the room, anchoring the walls and the floor like the cables of a suspension bridge.
Webs also surrounded the centerpiece of the shrine, which was so intimidating that Annabeth had trouble raising her eyes to look at it. Looming over her was a forty-foot-tall statue of Athena, with luminous ivory skin and a dress of gold. In her outstretched hand, Athena held a statue of Nike, the winged victory goddess—a statue that looked tiny from here, but was probably as tall as a real person. Athena’s other hand rested on a shield as big as a billboard, with a sculpted snake peeking out from behind, as if Athena was protecting it.
The goddess’s face was serene and kindly…and it looked like Athena. Annabeth had seen many statues that didn’t resemble her mom at all, but this giant version, made thousands of years ago, made her think that the artist must have met Athena in person. He had captured her perfectly.
“Athena Parthenos,” Annabeth murmured. “It’s really here.”
All her life, she had wanted to visit the Parthenon. Now she was seeing the main attraction that used to be there—and she was the first child of Athena to do so in millennia.
She realized her mouth was hanging open. She forced herself to swallow. Annabeth could have stood there all day looking at the statue, but she had only accomplished half her mission. She had found the Athena Parthenos. Now, how could she rescue it from this cavern?
Strands of web covered it like a gauze pavilion. Annabeth suspected that without those webs, the statue would have fallen through the weakened floor long ago. As she stepped into the room, she could see that the cracks below were so wide, she could have lost her foot in them. Beneath the cracks, she saw nothing but empty darkness.
A chill washed over her. Where was the guardian? How could Annabeth free the statue without collapsing the floor? She couldn’t very well shove the Athena Parthenos down the corridor that she’d come from.
She scanned the chamber, hoping to see something that might help. Her eyes wandered over the tapestries, which were heart-wrenchingly beautiful. One showed a pastoral scene so three-dimensional, it could’ve been a window. Another tapestry showed the gods battling the giants. Annabeth saw a landscape of the Underworld. Next to it was the skyline of modern Rome. And in the tapestry to her left…
She caught her breath. It was a portrait of two demigods kissing underwater: Annabeth and Percy, the day their friends had thrown them into the canoe lake at camp. It was so lifelike that she wondered if the weaver had been there, lurking in the lake with a waterproof camera.
“How is that possible?” she murmured.
Above her in the gloom, a voice spoke. “For ages I have known that you would come, my sweet.”
Annabeth shuddered. Suddenly she was seven years old again, hiding under her covers, waiting for the spiders to attack her in the night. The voice sounded just as Percy had described: an angry buzz in multiple tones, female but not human.
In the webs above the statue, something moved—something dark and large.
“I have seen you in my dreams,” the voice said, sickly sweet and evil, like the smell in the corridors. “I had to make sure you were worthy, the only child of Athena clever enough to pass my tests and reach this place alive. Indeed, you are her most talented child. This will make your death so much more painful to my old enemy when you fail utterly.”
The pain in Annabeth’s ankle was nothing compared to the icy acid now filling her veins. She wanted to run. She wanted to plead for mercy. But she couldn’t show weakness—not now.
“You’re Arachne,” she called out. “The weaver who was turned into a spider.”
The figure descended, becoming clearer and more horrible. “Cursed by your mother,” she said. “Scorned by all and made into a hideous thing…because I was the better weaver.”
“But you lost the contest,” Annabeth said.
“That’s the story written by the winner!” cried Arachne. “Look on my work! See for yourself!”
Annabeth didn’t have to. The tapestries were the best she’d ever seen—better than the witch Circe’s work, and, yes, even better than some weavings she’d seen on Mount Olympus. She wondered if her mother truly had lost—if she’d hidden Arachne away and rewritten the truth. But right now, it didn’t matter.
“You’ve been guarding this statue since the ancient times,” Annabeth guessed. “But it doesn’t belong here. I’m taking it back.”
“Ha,” Arachne said.
Even Annabeth had to admit her threat sounded ridiculous. How could one girl in a Bubble Wrap ankle cast remove this huge statue from its underground chamber?
“I’m afraid you would have to defeat me first, my sweet,” Arachne said. “And alas, that is impossible.”
The creature appeared from the curtains of webbing, and Annabeth realized that her quest was hopeless. She was about to die.
Arachne had the body of a giant black widow, with a hairy red hourglass mark on the underside of her abdomen and a pair of oozing spinnerets. Her eight spindly legs were lined with curved barbs as big as Annabeth’s dagger. If the spider came any closer, her sweet stench alone would have been enough to make Annabeth faint. But the most horrible part was her misshapen face.
She might once have been a beautiful woman. Now black mandibles protruded from her mouth like tusks. Her other teeth had grown into thin white needles. Fine dark whiskers dotted her cheeks. Her eyes were large, lidless, and pure black, with two smaller eyes sticking out of her temples.
The creature made a violent rip-rip-rip sound that might have been laughter.
“Now I will feast on you, my sweet,” Arachne said. “But do not fear. I will make a beautiful tapestry depicting your death.”
Chapter 37
Leo wished he wasn’t so good.
Really, sometimes it was just embarrassing. If he hadn’t had such an eye for mechanical stuff, they might never have found the secret chute, gotten lost in the underground, and been attacked by metal dudes. But he just couldn’t help himself.
Part of it was Hazel’s fault. For a girl with super underground senses, she wasn’t much good in Rome. She kept leading them around and around the city, getting dizzy, and doubling back.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just…there’s so much underground here, so many layers, it’s overwhelming. Like standing in the middle of an orchestra and trying to concentrate on a single instrument. I’m going deaf.”
As a result, they got a tour of Rome. Frank seemed happy to plod along like a big sheepdog (hmm, Leo wondered if he could turn into one of those, or even better: a horse that Leo could ride). But Leo started to get impatient. His feet were sore, the day was sunny and hot, and the streets were choked with tourists.
The Forum was okay, but it was mostly ruins overgrown with bushes and trees. It took a lot of imagination to see it as the bustling center of Ancient Rome. Leo could only manage it because he’d seen New Rome in California.
They passed big churches, freestanding arches, clothing stores, and fast-food restaurants. One statue of some Ancient Roman dude seemed to be pointing to a nearby McDonald’s.
On the wider streets, the car traffic was absolutely nuts—man, Leo thought people in Houston drove crazy—but they spent most of their time weaving through small alleys, coming across fountains and little cafés where Leo was not allowed to rest.
“I never thought I’d get to see Rome,” Hazel said. “When I was alive, I mean the first time, Mussolini was in charge. We were at war.”
“Mussolini?” Leo frowned. “Wasn’t he like BFFs with Hitler?”
Hazel stared at him like he was an alien. “BFFs?”
“Never mind.”
“I’d love to see the Trevi Fountain,” she said.
“There’s a fountain on every block,” Leo grumbled.
“Or the Spanish Steps,” Hazel said.
“Why would you come to Italy to see Spanish steps?” Leo asked. “That’s like going to China for Mexican food, isn’t it?”
“You’re hopeless,” Hazel complained.
“So I’ve been told.”
She turned to Frank and grabbed his hand, as if Leo had ceased to exist. “Come on. I think we should go this way.”
Frank gave Leo a confused smile—like he couldn’t decide whether to gloat or to thank Leo for being a doofus—but he cheerfully let Hazel drag him along.
After walking forever, Hazel stopped in front of a church. At least, Leo assumed it was a church. The main section had a big domed roof. The entrance had a triangular roof, typical Roman columns, and an inscription across the top: M. AGRIPPA something or other.
“Latin for Get a grip?” Leo speculated.
“This is our best bet.” Hazel sounded more certain than she had all day. “There should be a secret passage somewhere inside.”
Tour groups milled around the steps. Guides held up colored placards with different numbers and lectured in dozens of languages like they were playing some kind of international bingo.
Leo listened to the Spanish tour guide for a few seconds, and then he reported to his friends, “This is the Pantheon. It was originally built by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to the gods. After it burned down, Emperor Hadrian rebuilt it, and it’s been standing for two thousand years. It’s one of the best-preserved Roman buildings in the world.”
Frank and Hazel stared at him.
“How did you know that?” Hazel asked.
“I’m naturally brilliant.”
“Centaur poop,” Frank said. “He eavesdropped on a tour group.”
Leo grinned. “Maybe. Come on. Let’s go find that secret passage. I hope this place has air conditioning.”
Of course, no AC.
On the bright side, there were no lines and no admission fee, so they just muscled their way past the tour groups and walked on in.
The interior was pretty impressive, considering it had been constructed two thousand years ago. The marble floor was patterned with squares and circles like a Roman tic-tac-toe game. The main space was one huge chamber with a circular rotunda, sort of like a capitol building back in the States. Lining the walls were different shrines and statues and tombs and stuff. But the real eye-catcher was the dome overhead. All the light in the building came from one circular opening right at the top. A beam of sunlight slanted into the rotunda and glowed on the floor, like Zeus was up there with a magnifying glass, trying to fry puny humans.