The Titan's Curse(66)

The dragon stirred, glittering like a mountain of pennies. The Hesperides yelped and scattered. The lead girl said to Zoe, "Are you mad?"

"You never had any courage, sister," Zoe said. "That is thy problem."

The dragon Ladon was writhing now, a hundred heads whipping around, tongues flickering and tasting the air. Zoe took a step forward, her arms raised.

"Zoe, don't," Thalia said. "You're not a Hesperid anymore. He'll kill you."

"Ladon is trained to protect the tree," Zoe said. "Skirt around the edges of the garden. Go up the mountain. As long as I am a bigger threat, he should ignore thee."

"Should," I said. "Not exactly reassuring."

"It is the only way," she said. "Even the three of us together cannot fight him."

Ladon opened his mouths. The sound of a hundred heads hissing at once sent a shiver down my back, and that was before his breath hit me. The smell was like acid. It made my eyes burn, my skin crawl, and my hair stand on end. I remembered the time a rat had died inside our apartment wall in New York in the middle of the summer. This stench was like that, except a hundred times stronger, and mixed with the smell of chewed eucalyptus. I promised myself right then that I would never ask a school nurse for another cough drop.

I wanted to draw my sword. But then I remembered my dream of Zoe and Hercules, and how Hercules had failed in a head-on assault. I decided to trust Zoe's judgment.

Thalia went left. I went right. Zoe walked straight toward the monster.

"It's me, my little dragon," Zoe said. "Zoe has come back."

Ladon shifted forward, then back. Some of the mouths closed. Some kept hissing. Dragon confusion. Meanwhile, the Hesperides shimmered and turned into shadows. The voice of the eldest whispered, "Fool."

"I used to feed thee by hand," Zoe continued, speaking in a soothing voice as she stepped toward the golden tree. "Do you still like lamb's meat?"

The dragon's eyes glinted.

Thalia and I were about halfway around the garden. Ahead, I could see a single rocky trail leading up to the black peak of the mountain. The storm swirled above it, spinning on the summit like it was the axis for the whole world.

We'd almost made it out of the meadow when something went wrong. I felt the dragon's mood shift. Maybe

Zoe got too close. Maybe the dragon realized he was hungry. Whatever the reason, he lunged at Zoe.

Two thousand years of training kept her alive. She dodged one set of slashing fangs and tumbled under another, weaving through the dragon's heads as she ran in our direction, gagging from the monster's horrible breath.

I drew Riptide to help.

"No!" Zoe panted. "Run!"

The dragon snapped at her side, and Zoe cried out. Thalia uncovered Aegis, and the dragon hissed. In his moment of indecision, Zoe sprinted past us up the mountain, and we followed.

The dragon didn't try to pursue. He hissed and stomped the ground, but I guess he was well trained to guard that tree. He wasn't going to be lured off even by the tasty prospect of eating some heroes.

We ran up the mountain as the Hesperides resumed their song in the shadows behind us. The music didn't sound so beautiful to me now—more like the sound track for a funeral.

At the top of mountain were ruins, blocks of black granite and marble as big as houses. Broken columns. Statues of bronze that looked as though they'd been half melted.

"The ruins of Mount Othrys," Thalia whispered in awe.

"Yes," Zoe said. "It was not here before. This is bad."

"What's Mount Othrys?" I asked, feeling like a fool as usual.

"The mountain fortress of the Titans," Zoe said. "In the first war, Olympus and Othrys were the two rival capitals of the world. Othrys was—" She winced and held her side.

"You're hurt," I said. "Let me see."

"No! It is nothing. I was saying… in the first war, Othrys was blasted to pieces."

"But… how is it here?"

Thalia looked around cautiously as we picked our way through the rubble, past blocks of marble and broken archways. "It moves in the same way that Olympus moves. It always exists on the edges of civilization. But the fact that it is here, on this mountain, is not good."

"Why?"

"This is Atlas's mountain," Zoe said. "Where he holds—" She froze. Her voice was ragged with despair. "Where he used to hold up the sky."

We had reached the summit. A few yards ahead of us, gray clouds swirled in a heavy vortex, making a funnel cloud that almost touched the mountaintop, but instead rested on the shoulders of a twelve-year-old girl with auburn hair and a tattered silvery dress: Artemis, her legs bound to the rock with celestial bronze chains. This is what I had seen in my dream. It hadn't been a cavern roof that Artemis was forced to hold. It was the roof of the world.

"My lady!" Zoe rushed forward, but Artemis said, "Stop! It is a trap. You must leave now."

Her voice was strained. She was drenched in sweat. I had never seen a goddess in pain before, but the weight of the sky was clearly too much for Artemis.

Zoe was crying. She ran forward despite Artemis's protests, and tugged at the chains.

A booming voice spoke behind us: "Ah, how touching."