by Rick Riordan
‘And that map shows Long Island,’ Percy said.
‘They’re scouting the territory,’ Jason guessed. ‘Discussing invasion routes.’
Piper did not want to see that. She concentrated harder. Light rippled across the blade. She saw ruins – a few crumbling walls, a single column, a stone floor covered with moss and dead vines – all clustered on a grassy hillside dotted with pine trees.
‘I was just there,’ Percy said. ‘That’s in the old Forum.’
The view zoomed in. On one side of the stone floor, a set of stairs had been excavated, leading down to a modern iron gate with a padlock. The blade’s image zoomed straight through the doorway, down a spiral stairwell and into a dark, cylindrical chamber like the inside of a grain silo.
Piper dropped the blade.
‘What’s wrong?’ Jason asked. ‘It was showing us something.’
Piper felt like the boat was back on the ocean, rocking under her feet. ‘We can’t go there.’
Percy frowned. ‘Piper, Nico is dying. We’ve got to find him. Not to mention, Rome is about to get destroyed.’
Her voice wouldn’t work. She’d kept that vision of the circular room to herself for so long that now she found it impossible to talk about. She had a horrible feeling that explaining it to Percy and Jason wouldn’t change anything. She couldn’t stop what was about to happen.
She picked up the knife again. Its hilt seemed colder than usual.
She forced herself to look at the blade. She saw two giants in gladiator armour sitting on oversized praetors’ chairs. The giants toasted each other with golden goblets as if they’d just won an important fight. Between them stood a large bronze jar.
The vision zoomed in again. Inside the jar, Nico di Angelo was curled in a ball, no longer moving, all the pomegranate seeds eaten.
‘We’re too late,’ Jason said.
‘No,’ Percy said. ‘No, I can’t believe that. Maybe he’s gone into a deeper trance to buy time. We have to hurry.’
The blade’s surface went dark. Piper slipped it back into its sheath, trying to keep her hands from shaking. She hoped that Percy was right and Nico was still alive. On the other hand, she didn’t see how that image connected with the vision of the drowning room. Maybe the giants were toasting each other because she and Percy and Jason were dead.
‘We should wait for the others,’ she said. ‘Hazel, Frank and Leo should be back soon.’
‘We can’t wait,’ Percy insisted.
Coach Hedge grunted. ‘It’s just two giants. If you guys want, I can take them.’
‘Uh, Coach,’ Jason said, ‘that’s a great offer, but we need you to man the ship – or goat the ship. Whatever.’
Hedge scowled. ‘And let you three have all the fun?’
Percy gripped the satyr’s arm. ‘Hazel and the others need you here. When they get back, they’ll need your leadership. You’re their rock.’
‘Yeah.’ Jason managed to keep a straight face. ‘Leo always says you’re his rock. You can tell them where we’ve gone and bring the ship around to meet us at the Forum.’
‘And here.’ Piper unstrapped Katoptris and put it in Coach Hedge’s hands.
The satyr’s eyes widened. A demigod was never supposed to leave her weapon behind, but Piper was fed up with evil visions. She’d rather face her death without any more previews.
‘Keep an eye on us with the blade,’ she suggested. ‘And you can check the baseball scores.’
That sealed the deal. Hedge nodded grimly, prepared to do his part for the quest.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But if any giants come this way –’
‘Feel free to blast them,’ Jason said.
‘What about annoying tourists?’
‘No,’ they all said in unison.
‘Bah. Fine. Just don’t take too long, or I’m coming after you with ballistae blazing.’
XLII
Piper
Finding the place was easy. Percy led them right to it, on an abandoned stretch of hillside overlooking the ruined Forum.
Getting in was easy, too. Jason’s gold sword cut through the padlock, and the metal gate creaked open. No mortals saw them. No alarms went off. Stone steps spiralled down into the gloom.
‘I’ll go first,’ Jason said.
‘No!’ Piper yelped.
Both boys turned towards her.
‘Pipes, what is it?’ Jason asked. ‘That image in the blade … you’ve seen it before, haven’t you?’
She nodded, her eyes stinging. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you. I saw the room down there filling with water. I saw the three of us drowning.’
Jason and Percy both frowned.
‘I can’t drown,’ Percy said, though he sounded like he was asking a question.
‘Maybe the future has changed,’ Jason speculated. ‘In the image you showed us just now, there wasn’t any water.’
Piper wished he was right, but she suspected they wouldn’t be so lucky.
‘Look,’ Percy said. ‘I’ll check it out first. It’s fine. Be right back.’
Before Piper could object, he disappeared down the stairwell.
She counted silently as they waited for him to come back. Somewhere around thirty-five, she heard his footsteps and he appeared at the top, looking more baffled than relieved.
‘Good news: no water,’ he said. ‘Bad news: I don’t see any exits down there. And, uh, weird news: well, you should see this …’
They descended cautiously. Percy took the lead, with Riptide drawn. Piper followed, and Jason walked behind her, guarding their backs. The stairwell was a cramped corkscrew of masonry, no more than six feet in diameter. Even though Percy had given the ‘all clear’, Piper kept her eyes open for traps. With every turn of the stairs, she anticipated an ambush. She had no weapon, just the cornucopia on a leather cord over her shoulder. If worse came to worst, the boys’ swords wouldn’t do much good in such close quarters. Maybe Piper could shoot their enemies with high-velocity smoked hams.
As they wound their way underground, Piper saw old graffiti gouged into the stones: Roman numerals, names and phrases in Italian. That meant other people had been down here more recently than the Roman Empire, but Piper wasn’t reassured. If monsters were below, they’d ignore mortals, waiting for some nice juicy demigods to come along.
Finally, they reached the bottom.
Percy turned. ‘Watch this last step.’
He jumped to the floor of the cylindrical room, which was five feet lower than the stairwell. Why would someone design a set of stairs like that? Piper had no idea. Maybe the room and the stairwell had been built during different time periods.
She wanted to turn and exit, but she couldn’t do that with Jason behind her, and she couldn’t just leave Percy down there. She clambered down, and Jason followed.
The room was just like she’d seen it in Katoptris’s blade, except there was no water. The curved walls had once been painted with frescoes, which were now faded to eggshell white with only flecks of colour. The domed ceiling was about fifty feet above.
Around the back side of the room, opposite the stairwell, nine alcoves were carved into the wall. Each niche was about five feet off the floor and big enough for a human-sized statue, but each was empty.
The air felt cold and dry. As Percy had said, there were no other exits.
‘All right.’ Percy raised his eyebrows. ‘Here’s the weird part. Watch.’
He stepped to the middle of the room.
Instantly, green and blue light rippled across the walls. Piper heard the sound of a fountain, but there was no water. There didn’t seem to be any source of light except for Percy’s and Jason’s blades.
‘Do you smell the ocean?’ Percy asked.
Piper hadn’t noticed at first. She was standing next to Percy, and he always smelled like the sea. But he was right. The scent of salt water and storm was getting stronger, like a summer hurricane approaching.
‘An illusion?’ she asked. A
ll of a sudden, she felt strangely thirsty.
‘I don’t know,’ Percy said. ‘I feel like there should be water here – lots of water. But there isn’t any. I’ve never been in a place like this.’
Jason moved to the row of niches. He touched the bottom shelf of the nearest one, which was just at his eye level. ‘This stone … it’s embedded with seashells. This is a nymphaeum.’
Piper’s mouth was definitely getting drier. ‘A what?’
‘We have one at Camp Jupiter,’ Jason said, ‘on Temple Hill. It’s a shrine to the nymphs.’
Piper ran her hand along the bottom of another niche. Jason was right. The alcove was studded with cowries, conches and scallops. The seashells seemed to dance in the watery light. They were ice-cold to the touch.
Piper had always thought of nymphs as friendly spirits – silly and flirtatious, generally harmless. They got along well with the children of Aphrodite. They loved to share gossip and beauty tips. This place, though, didn’t feel like the canoe lake back at Camp Half-Blood, or the streams in the woods where Piper normally met nymphs. This place felt unnatural, hostile and very dry.
Jason stepped back and examined the row of alcoves. ‘Shrines like this were all over the place in Ancient Rome. Rich people had them outside their villas to honour nymphs, to make sure the local water was always fresh. Some shrines were built around natural springs, but most were man-made.’
‘So … no actual nymphs lived here?’ Piper asked hopefully.
‘Not sure,’ Jason said. ‘This place where we’re standing would have been a pool with a fountain. A lot of times, if the nymphaeum belonged to a demigod, he or she would invite nymphs to live there. If the spirits took up residence, that was considered good luck.’
‘For the owner,’ Percy guessed. ‘But it would also bind the nymphs to the new water source, which would be great if the fountain was in a nice sunny park with fresh water pumped in through the aqueducts –’
‘But this place has been underground for centuries,’ Piper guessed. ‘Dry and buried. What would happen to the nymphs?’
The sound of water changed to a chorus of hissing, like ghostly snakes. The rippling light shifted from sea blue and green to purple and sickly lime. Above them, the nine niches glowed. They were no longer empty.
Standing in each was a withered old woman, so dried up and brittle they reminded Piper of mummies – except mummies didn’t normally move. Their eyes were dark purple, as if the clear blue water of their life source had condensed and thickened inside them. Their fine silk dresses were now tattered and faded. Their hair had once been piled in curls, arranged with jewels in the style of Roman noblewomen, but now their locks were dishevelled and dry as straw. If water cannibals actually existed, Piper thought, this is what they looked like.
‘What would happen to the nymphs?’ said the creature in the centre niche.
She was in even worse shape than the others. Her back was hunched like the handle of a pitcher. Her skeletal hands had only the thinnest papery layer of skin. On her head, a battered wreath of golden laurels glinted in her roadkill hair.
She fixed her purple eyes on Piper. ‘What an interesting question, my dear. Perhaps the nymphs would still be here, suffering, waiting for revenge.’
The next time that she got a chance, Piper swore she would melt down Katoptris and sell it for scrap metal. The stupid knife never showed her the whole story. Sure, she’d seen herself drowning. But if she’d realized that nine desiccated zombie nymphs would be waiting for her she never would’ve come down here.
She considered bolting for the stairs, but when she turned the doorway had disappeared. Naturally. Nothing was there now but a blank wall. Piper suspected it wasn’t just an illusion. Besides, she would never make it to the opposite side of the room before the zombie nymphs could jump on them.
Jason and Percy stood to either side of her, their swords ready. Piper was glad to have them close, but she suspected their weapons wouldn’t do any good. She’d seen what would happen in this room. Somehow, these things were going to defeat them.
‘Who are you?’ Percy demanded.
The central nymph turned her head. ‘Ah … names. We once had names. I was Hagno, the first of the nine!’
Piper thought it was a cruel joke that a hag like her would be named Hagno, but she decided not to say that.
‘The nine,’ Jason repeated. ‘The nymphs of this shrine. There were always nine niches.’
‘Of course.’ Hagno bared her teeth in a vicious smile. ‘But we are the original nine, Jason Grace, the ones who attended the birth of your father.’
Jason’s sword dipped. ‘You mean Jupiter? You were there when he was born?’
‘Zeus, we called him then,’ Hagno said. ‘Such a squealing whelp. We attended Rhea in her labour. When the baby arrived, we hid him so that his father, Kronos, would not eat him. Ah, he had lungs, that baby! It was all we could do to drown out the noise so Kronos could not find him. When Zeus grew up, we were promised eternal honours. But that was in the old country, in Greece.’
The other nymphs wailed and clawed at their niches. They seemed to be trapped in them, Piper realized, as if their feet were glued to the stone along with the decorative seashells.
‘When Rome rose to power, we were invited here,’ Hagno said. ‘A son of Jupiter tempted us with favours. A new home, he promised. Bigger and better! No down payment, an excellent neighbourhood. Rome will last forever.’
‘Forever,’ the others hissed.
‘We gave in to temptation,’ Hagno said. ‘We left our simple wells and springs on Mount Lycaeus and moved here. For centuries, our lives were wonderful! Parties, sacrifices in our honour, new dresses and jewellery every week. All the demigods of Rome flirted with us and honoured us.’
The nymphs wailed and sighed.
‘But Rome did not last,’ Hagno snarled. ‘The aqueducts were diverted. Our master’s villa was abandoned and torn down. We were forgotten, buried under the earth, but we could not leave. Our life sources were bound to this place. Our old master never saw fit to release us. For centuries, we have withered here in the darkness, thirsty … so thirsty.’
The others clawed at their mouths.
Piper felt her own throat closing up.
‘I’m sorry for you,’ she said, trying to use charmspeak. ‘That must have been terrible. But we are not your enemies. If we can help you –’
‘Oh, such a sweet voice!’ Hagno cried. ‘Such beautiful features. I was once young like you. My voice was as soothing as a mountain stream. But do you know what happens to a nymph’s mind when she is trapped in the dark, with nothing to feed on but hatred, nothing to drink but thoughts of violence? Yes, my dear. You can help us.’
Percy raised his hand. ‘Uh … I’m the son of Poseidon. Maybe I can summon a new water source.’
‘Ha!’ Hagno cried, and the other eight echoed, ‘Ha! Ha!’
‘Indeed, son of Poseidon,’ Hagno said. ‘I know your father well. Ephialtes and Otis promised you would come.’
Piper put her hand on Jason’s arm for balance.
‘The giants,’ she said. ‘You’re working for them?’
‘They are our neighbours.’ Hagno smiled. ‘Their chambers lie beyond this place, where the aqueduct’s water was diverted for the games. Once we have dealt with you … once you have helped us … the twins have promised we will never suffer again.’
Hagno turned to Jason. ‘You, child of Jupiter – for the horrible betrayal of your predecessor who brought us here, you shall pay. I know the sky god’s powers. I raised him as a baby! Once, we nymphs controlled the rain above our wells and springs. When I am done with you, we will have that power again. And Percy Jackson, child of the sea god … from you, we will take water, an endless supply of water.’
‘Endless?’ Percy’s eyes darted from one nymph to the other. ‘Uh … look, I don’t know about endless. But maybe I could spare a few gallons.’
‘And you, Piper McLean.’ Hagno�
��s purple eyes glistened. ‘So young, so lovely, so gifted with your sweet voice. From you, we will reclaim our beauty. We have saved our last life force for this day. We are very thirsty. From you three, we shall drink!’
All nine niches glowed. The nymphs disappeared, and water poured from their alcoves – sickly dark water, like oil.
XLIII
Piper
Piper needed a miracle, not a bedtime story. But right then, standing in shock as black water poured in around her legs, she recalled the legend Achelous had mentioned – the story of the flood.
Not the Noah story, but the Cherokee version that her father used to tell her, with the dancing ghosts and the skeleton dog.
When she was little, she would cuddle next to her dad in his big recliner. She’d gaze out of the windows at the Malibu coastline, and her dad would tell her the story he’d heard from Grandpa Tom back on the rez in Oklahoma.
‘This man had a dog,’ her father always began.
‘You can’t start a story that way!’ Piper protested. ‘You have to say Once upon a time.’
Dad laughed. ‘But this is a Cherokee story. They are pretty straightforward. So, anyway, this man had a dog. Every day the man took his dog to the edge of the lake to get water, and the dog would bark furiously at the lake, like he was mad at it.’
‘Was he?’
‘Be patient, sweetheart. Finally the man got very annoyed with his dog for barking so much, and he scolded it. “Bad dog! Stop barking at the water. It’s only water!” To his surprise, the dog looked right at him and began to talk.’
‘Our dog can say Thank you,’ Piper volunteered. ‘And she can bark Out.’
‘Sort of,’ her dad agreed. ‘But this dog spoke entire sentences. The dog said, “One day soon, the storms will come. The waters will rise, and everyone will drown. You can save yourself and your family by building a raft, but first you will need to sacrifice me. You must throw me into the water.” ’
‘That’s terrible!’ Piper said. ‘I would never drown my dog!’
‘The man probably said the same thing. He thought the dog was lying – I mean, once he got over the shock that his dog could talk. When he protested, the dog said, “If you don’t believe me, look at the scruff of my neck. I am already dead.” ’