‘Can you advise us, at least?’ he asked. ‘Tell us what to do?’
‘Sail around the Peloponnese,’ said the goddess. ‘As you suspect, that is the only possible route. On your way, seek out the goddess of victory in Olympia. She is out of control. Unless you can subdue her, the rift between Greek and Roman can never be healed.’
‘You mean Nike?’ Annabeth asked. ‘How is she out of control?’
Thunder boomed overhead, shaking the hill.
‘Explaining would take too long,’ Juno said. ‘I must flee before Jupiter finds me. Once I leave, I will not be able to help you again.’
Jason bit back a retort: When did you help me the first time?
‘What else should we know?’ he asked.
‘As you heard, the giants have gathered in Athens. Few gods will be able to help you on your journey, but I am not the only Olympian who is out of favour with Jupiter. The twins have also incurred his wrath.’
‘Artemis and Apollo?’ Piper asked. ‘Why?’
Juno’s image began to fade. ‘If you reach the island of Delos, they might be prepared to help you. They are desperate enough to try anything to make amends. Go now. Perhaps we will meet again in Athens, if you succeed. If you do not …’
The goddess disappeared, or maybe Jason’s eyesight simply failed. Pain rolled through him. His head lolled back. He saw a giant eagle circling high above. Then the blue sky turned black, and Jason saw nothing at all.
V
Reyna
DIVE-BOMBING A VOLCANO was not on Reyna’s bucket list.
Her first view of southern Italy was from five thousand feet in the air. To the west, along the crescent of the Gulf of Naples, the lights of sleeping cities glittered in the predawn gloom. A thousand feet below her, a half-mile-wide caldera yawned at the top of a mountain, white steam pluming from the centre.
Reyna’s disorientation took a moment to subside. Shadow-travel left her groggy and nauseous, as if she’d been dragged from the cold waters of the frigidarium into the sauna at a Roman bathhouse.
Then she realized she was suspended in midair. Gravity took hold, and she began to fall.
‘Nico!’ she yelled.
‘Pan’s pipes!’ cursed Gleeson Hedge.
‘Whaaaaa!’ Nico flailed, almost slipping out of Reyna’s grip. She held tight and grabbed Coach Hedge by the shirt collar as he started to tumble away. If they got separated now, they were dead.
They plummeted towards the volcano as their largest piece of luggage – the forty-foot-tall Athena Parthenos – trailed after them, leashed to a harness on Nico’s back like a very ineffective parachute.
‘That’s Vesuvius below us!’ Reyna shouted over the wind. ‘Nico, teleport us out of here!’
His eyes were wild and unfocused. His dark feathery hair whipped around his face like a raven shot out of the sky. ‘I – I can’t! No strength!’
Coach Hedge bleated. ‘News flash, kid! Goats can’t fly! Zap us out of here or we’re gonna get flattened into an Athena Parthenos omelette!’
Reyna tried to think. She could accept death if she had to, but if the Athena Parthenos was destroyed their quest would fail. Reyna could not accept that.
‘Nico, shadow-travel,’ she ordered. ‘I’ll lend you my strength.’
He stared at her blankly. ‘How –’
‘Do it!’
She tightened her grip on his hand. The torch-and-sword symbol of Bellona on her forearm grew painfully hot, as if it were being seared into her skin for the first time.
Nico gasped. Colour returned to his face. Just before they hit the volcano’s steam plume, they slipped into shadows.
The air turned frigid. The sound of the wind was replaced by a cacophony of voices whispering in a thousand languages. Reyna’s insides felt like a giant piragua – cold syrup trickled over crushed ice – her favourite treat from her childhood in Viejo San Juan.
She wondered why that memory would surface now, when she was on the verge of death. Then her vision cleared. Her feet rested on solid ground.
The eastern sky had begun to lighten. For a moment Reyna thought she was back in New Rome. Doric columns lined an atrium the size of a baseball diamond. In front of her, a bronze faun stood in the middle of a sunken fountain decorated with mosaic tile.
Crepe myrtles and rosebushes bloomed in a nearby garden. Palm trees and pines stretched skyward. Cobblestone paths led from the courtyard in several directions – straight, level roads of good Roman construction, edging low stone houses with colonnaded porches.
Reyna turned. Behind her, the Athena Parthenos stood intact and upright, dominating the courtyard like a ridiculously oversized lawn ornament. The little bronze faun in the fountain had both his arms raised, facing Athena, so he seemed to be cowering in fear of the new arrival.