The Heir of Olympus and the Forest Realm (35 page)

The paved road disappeared just past the museum entrance and was replaced with a wide dirt path. Gordie glanced around, embarrassed by the fact that he was wearing no shoes, and hoping that a lone sixteen-year-old in such a beleaguered state would not attract the attention of concerned adults. Fortunately, he was left to his own devices.

Tightknit families tittered as they made their way to the ruins. Parents pointed out over the misty green mountains to their broods as kids and adolescents alike broke into wide grins, entranced by the majesty and mysticism of the place. Gordie felt a pang of loneliness and wished his mom were with him, questioning why he thought he had to make this trip alone in the first place. He shook it off and put on a brave face, for himself more than anyone else.

Five minutes later, when the terrain really began to climb, Gordie stood at the base of great stone steps, which led upward to a collection of stone structures in varying states of dilapidation, cypress trees scattered amongst the ruins.

Up high was a stone amphitheater built right into the side of the mountain. The semi-circular seating area looked out over the valley. A small group of people were milling around on the round, level surface at the foot of the seats, which Gordie figured was once the stage. Below that a little round shrine stood isolated in the morning light, with three adjacent columns that looked like the last survivors of what was once a full circle of the thin pillars. One level below that, six towering columns formed a right angle, all different heights, and only one completely intact.

Gordie climbed the stone steps in front of him to get a better look at the structure beneath the six hulking columns. When he reached the terrace on which the building stood, his heart sank. A small sign at the top of the steps read, “Temple of Apollo,” and Gordie looked at the building with dismay.

The temple no longer had walls, just the six columns on the stone porch in front of him. According to the sign, great columns had once wrapped the entire façade. Gordie climbed the few steps of the porch and stood beneath the pillars, looking out at what had been an enormous temple, but was now only a patchwork of great stones that had made up the foundation. His heart sank lower.

If this was the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where could Bridget be? There was no building she could have been hauled into, no secret chamber off the temple-proper in which she could be held.
This
was the entire temple: a ruin that now only showed what the floor may have looked like, and not even that remained whole, as square patches of grass lay in the grid of stones here and there.

Gordie looked around at the people on the terraces above and below him snapping pictures of the various monuments. He had some idea that he wasn’t supposed to be climbing on the ruins and didn’t want to have any run-ins, but he needed to investigate. He hopped down into the grass between the parts of the foundation that still remained. He ran his hand over the rough stones placed thousands of years earlier. The remains made something reminiscent of a maze, and he wound his way through the nooks and crannies, looking for some sign of Bridget’s presence. Occasionally, he would glance around before lifting a stone that didn’t appear to be attached to anything. He did this numerous times, sometimes with boulders that forklifts would have struggled with. Despite his rising panic, he still stopped to relish in his prodigious strength.

After making his way around the entire ruin, checking every crevice he could for clues, he gave up hope. He walked back towards the colonnaded porch with his head down, no idea what to do or where to go. He had hoped that he would arrive and find Bridget tied to a stake next to a roaring fire with crazy Apollo zealots dancing around her and he would beat them up and wrap her in his muscled arms before—

He froze. Sitting propped against the only whole column was a cell phone. He hopped onto the porch and snatched it up. When he pushed the power button, it came to life, and a flame of excitement ignited inside him.

“Come on, come on!” he growled at it as it slowly woke. When the home screen popped into existence, he was staring at the smiling face of Bridget, and he pumped his fist. He stuck the phone in his pocket and looked around. The column was made in sections: great stones had been carved into drums and stacked atop one another. On the bottommost drum Gordie saw a little niche, just large enough to fit his hand. He crouched and approached it, sticking his hand in to feel for a secret lever, but there was nothing inside. Feeling around the circumference of the stone, he found another similar niche on the other side. He looked up and guessed the column was thirty feet high, and couldn’t even estimate how much it weighed, but he knew what he had to do.

With a hand in each niche, he hugged the column from a crouched position. He took a couple deep breaths and blew the last one out hard before he began to lift. He felt the strain on his entire body and told himself to lift with his knees, which were trembling under the weight. At first nothing happened, and he could feel the blood rushing into his face like a tomato with a pulse. Then the column began to budge. A cry of triumph gurgled out of him, but he wasn’t done. He grunted with effort and lurched backwards onto his rear, dropping the column three feet from its original position between his spread legs. The mass swayed, and he clambered to his feet to hug it, stabilizing it so that the whole thing wouldn’t come crashing down.

Gordie exhaled as the upper stones slowed and finally came to rest. He walked around the pillar to find a square hole in the place where the column had stood. It was just wide enough for him to fit. He looked into its depths, but it was pitch-black, so he couldn’t determine how far it dropped. Sitting on the edge of the hole with his legs dangling in the darkness, he exhaled again. “Gotta do what ya gotta do,” he told himself, and slid into the hole.

He clawed at earthen walls, plummeting straight downward. His screams echoed around the narrow chute as he fell. Then the walls of the tunnel disappeared as he tumbled into a dark, open chamber. His momentum stopped abruptly when he smacked into hard-packed dirt.

He groaned as he lay in the dirt looking up at a patch of light. He heard a grinding noise and the square of light was pierced by the edge of a round object before it disappeared entirely: the column had somehow moved back into place. He was in absolute darkness for a few seconds, but before his eyes could adjust, green light burst into them. Blinking a few times, he slowly rose to his feet to see a Great Hall lined with bright green torches identical to those he had seen in Chiron’s cave.

“I am getting
really
tired of falling,” he told the emptiness, dusting himself off and looking around the subterranean chamber. There was nothing in the room—just brown stone walls reminiscent of the corner of Hades he had dropped into not two weeks earlier. Then he heard the sound of running water and looked to his right to see a small stream. He recoiled, thinking for a second that he
had
fallen back into Hades and was looking at the River Styx, but it was too small. Walking over to the spring, he realized that it was manmade—an aqueduct, judging by its perfectly square dimensions. He followed it with his eyes until it disappeared under a far wall near a corridor that led out of the room. Thinking he heard voices coming from it, he crept towards the passage.

He snuck into the narrow hallway, disconcerted by the lack of hidey-holes, but pressed on toward the source of the voice. The path wound and curved, not affording him a view of what lay in wait, but also, he thought gratefully, shielding his approach from any potential adversaries. Then he rounded a bend and all thought of concealing his position escaped him as he gawked at the scene before his eyes.

He stood in the entrance to a great shrine. The green lights of the passage behind Gordie disappeared—the chamber was lit by an enormous, bronze chandelier in the shape of an old-fashioned lantern. A giant obsidian waterwheel on the right turned, silent as a ghost, as it lifted water from the aqueduct up to a shelf thirty feet above the gleaming marble floor, which was flecked with deep blues and dark greens. The shelf ran the width of the back wall and dropped the water in two rushing falls on either side of the room where it was captured in pools decorated with sculptures of frolicking cherubs, some splashing in the pool, some peeing into it. Four massive, monolithic columns rose to the distant ceiling a hundred feet up, which was veneered with the same marble as that on the floor. The columns were marble as well, but a pale golden color similar to the light that radiated from the chandelier. But what was most remarkable about this place was the origin of the light source.

In the middle of the four columns stood a stone god . . . and Gordie knew on sight that this god was Apollo. The statue rose to the distant ceiling, his carved curls just brushing the marble tiles ten stories up. Apollo wore only a pteryx—a Greek armored skirt—for which Gordie was very grateful. Every inch of his exposed, chiseled musculature was flexed for display. In his right hand he held a lyre against his hip with twenty-foot-long strings of stone. The monument’s left arm was held straight out, the hand grasping a handle atop the thirty-ton chandelier in midair with no apparent strain. The smooth, beardless face displayed a benevolent smile beneath the playful curls, but Gordie only had eyes for
Apollo’s
eyes.

Beams of brilliant, golden light poured out from beneath the statue’s brow. Gordie followed the beams and saw that they were directed at the lantern, which somehow refracted that light to the rest of the chamber. The light was so pure that Gordie was sure it came directly from the sun—he knew that wasn’t possible, but was certain all the same that nothing else could produce such a light.

“
Gordie?
” A female voice dripping with incredulity brought him back to his senses. He looked down to the foot of the statue and saw a beautiful, dark-haired girl chained to an ornate gold throne, which actually looked austere compared to its surroundings. Both the chair and the girl looked comically small in front of the towering monument. His stomach flooded with butterflies and he forgot all about the enigmatic elements of the room; now he only had eyes for Bridget Clemens. The slap of his bare feet on the marble floor echoed as he hurried over to her.

“Bridget, thank God! Are you okay?” He grabbed the thick iron chain in two places and pulled. It snapped in half as easily as if he were pulling apart a strand of licorice. Bridget’s eyes widened in amazement, looking from the dangling chain, over Gordie’s chiseled physique, and then up into his smiling face.

Gordie unwound the chain from around Bridget’s body and dropped it to the floor. She stood up and looked at him in disbelief.

“Yeah. Thanks,” she said, still sounding bemused. “You look . . . buff.” She gave him another once-over while the lion in Gordie’s chest purred like a Hemi. It took every ounce of concentration he possessed to stem the giant, moronic smile that his cheeks wanted to display. “How did you find me?” She looked back up at him.

“It’s a long story. I thought I heard voices before—were you talking to yourself?”

“No!” She slapped him on the arm and the lion roared. “I was talking to, well, I guess . . . my kidnapper,” she said, looking away with her eyebrows knit together.

“He’s here!” Gordie’s blood rose. “Where is he?” He looked around with his fists clenched.

“No, it’s not like that!” She touched his arm and his anger melted. “He’s actually really sweet . . . a little strange, but sweet. He felt really bad about kidnapping me.” She shrugged, as Gordie looked at her with an eyebrow raised.

“Um, I should hope so . . . he kidnapped you,” said Gordie. “When did it happen? Where was it?”

“Two days ago in Paris. I was in a park with my parents. A guy jumped out from behind a tree and grabbed me. Then he threw a little ball and a green,” she swung her arms to create an arch in the air, “portal thingy popped up in front of me and he pulled me through it and I ended up here.” She gave him an ‘I-don’t-really-get-it-either’ type of look as she threw out her hands and shrugged again. “But seriously, what’s going on? This guy has been ranting and raving about you since he brought me here. He’s head over heels for you. You’re like his idol, or something.”

“Well, I don’t know who this guy is, and I’m not sure I can really explain what’s going on. I doubt you would believe it. Did this guy leave?”

“I think so, but listen—at this point I would believe pretty much anything.” She shook her head and exhaled in an exaggerated gesture. “Try me.” She looked into his eyes and he decided to tell her everything. He would have told her anything at that moment.

He talked for a while, telling her all about the attack on his home and Hermes’s arrival; his stint in the Underworld and Chiron; his training and Herculean strength as a result of his lineage; his foray to Portaria and the text message that led him to her. At this point he remembered he had her phone, and pulled it out of his pocket, handing it to her.

“You might want to call your parents,” he suggested after he finished his tale. She just looked at him dumbstruck, and didn’t even take the phone. “Your phone?” He nudged her with it, and she took it uninterestedly and stuck it in the pocket of her jeans.

“So you’re telling me that you’re a descendant of Hercules? And Zeus is trying to kill you? And a Centaur is your teacher? And that all these people
exist?
”

He shrugged. “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I don’t
not
believe you,” she said, with little conviction.