The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus #3)(125)

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 color. 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. All 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 honor 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 disheveled 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 center 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!”