The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus #3)(108)

“The ordeals!” Annabeth said. “I know about them!”

Another round of incredulous gasping.

“Ridiculous!” The pater yelled. “The girl lies! Daughter of Athena, choose your way of death. If you do not choose, the god will choose for you!”

“Fire or dagger,” Annabeth guessed.

Even the pater looked stunned. Apparently he hadn’t remembered there were victims of past punishments lying on the floor.

“How—how did you… ?” He gulped. “Who are you?”

“A child of Athena,” Annabeth said again. “But not just any child. I am…uh, the mater in my sisterhood. The magna mater, in fact. There are no mysteries to me. Mithras cannot hide anything from my sight.”

“The magna mater!” a ghost wailed in despair. “The big mother!”

“Kill her!” One of the ghosts charged, his hands out to strangle her, but he passed right through her.

“You’re dead,” Annabeth reminded him. “Sit down.”

The ghost looked embarrassed and took his seat.

“We do not need to kill you ourselves,” the pater growled. “Mithras shall do that for us!”

The statue on the altar began to glow.

Annabeth pressed her hands against the bricked-in doorway at her back. That had to be the exit. The mortar was crumbling, but it was not weak enough for her to break through with brute force.

She looked desperately around the room—the cracked ceiling, the floor mosaic, the wall paintings, and the carved altar. She began to talk, pulling deductions from the top of her head.

“It is no good,” she said. “I know all. You test your initiates with fire because the torch is the symbol of Mithras. His other symbol is the dagger, which is why you can also be tested with the blade. You want to kill me, just as…uh, as Mithras killed the sacred bull.”

It was a total guess, but the altar showed Mithras killing a bull, so Annabeth figured it must be important. The ghosts wailed and covered their ears. Some slapped their faces as if to wake up from a bad dream.

“The big mother knows!” one said. “It is impossible!”

Unless you look around the room, Annabeth thought, her confidence growing.

She glared at the ghost who had just spoken. He had a raven badge on his toga—the same symbol as on the floor at her feet.

“You are just a raven,” she scolded. “That is the lowest rank. Be silent and let me speak to your pater.”

The ghost cringed. “Mercy! Mercy!”

At the front of the room, the pater trembled—either from rage or fear, Annabeth wasn’t sure which. His pope hat tilted sideways on his head like a gas gauge dropping toward empty. “Truly, you know much, big mother. Your wisdom is great, but that is all the more reason why you cannot leave. The weaver warned us you would come.”

“The weaver…” Annabeth realized with a sinking feeling what the pater was talking about: the thing in the dark from Percy’s dream, the guardian of the shrine. This was one time she wished she didn’t know the answer, but she tried to maintain her calm. “The weaver fears me. She doesn’t want me to follow the Mark of Athena. But you will let me pass.”

“You must choose an ordeal!” the pater insisted. “Fire or dagger! Survive one, and then, perhaps!”

Annabeth looked down at the bones of her siblings. The failures of your predecessors will guide you.

They’d all chosen one or the other: fire or dagger. Maybe they’d thought they could beat the ordeal. But they had all died. Annabeth needed a third choice.

She stared at the altar statue, which was glowing brighter by the second. She could feel its heat across the room. Her instinct was to focus on the dagger or the torch, but instead she concentrated on the statue’s base. She wondered why its legs were stuck in stone. Then it occurred to her: maybe the little statue of Mithras wasn’t stuck in the rock. Maybe he was emerging from the rock.

“Neither torch nor dagger,” Annabeth said firmly. “There is a third test, which I will pass.”

“A third test?” the pater demanded.

“Mithras was born from rock,” Annabeth said, hoping she was right. “He emerged fully grown from the stone, holding his dagger and torch.”

The screaming and wailing told her she had guessed correctly.

“The big mother knows all!” a ghost cried. “That is our most closely guarded secret!”

Then maybe you shouldn’t put a statue of it on your altar, Annabeth thought. But she was thankful for stupid male ghosts. If they’d let women warriors into their cult, they might have learned some common sense.

Annabeth gestured dramatically to the wall she’d come from. “I was born from stone, just as Mithras was! Therefore, I have already passed your ordeal!”

“Bah!” the pater spat. “You came from a hole in the wall! That’s not the same thing.”

Okay. So apparently the pater wasn’t a complete moron, but Annabeth remained confident. She glanced at the ceiling, and another idea came to her—all the details clicking together.

“I have control over the very stones.” She raised her arms. “I will prove my power is greater than Mithras. With a single strike, I will bring down this chamber.”

The ghosts wailed and trembled and looked at the ceiling, but Annabeth knew they didn’t see what she saw. These ghosts were warriors, not engineers. The children of Athena had many skills, and not just in combat. Annabeth had studied architecture for years. She knew this ancient chamber was on the verge of collapse. She recognized what the stress fractures in the ceiling meant, all emanating from a single point—the top of the stone arch just above her. The capstone was about to crumble, and when that happened, assuming she could time it correctly…