In the corners of her eyes, Marcella could make out faint whisps of spirits, like smoke in the wind. She unwrapped the statue carefully and took some deep breaths to center herself. This was the kind of magic she had never been brave enough to reach for, and she didn't want to second-guess her intuition for a moment.
Lady Wisdom, Lady Minerva, guide me, she prayed, and took hold of the statue. Ancient presence and power rolled through the earth and up through Marcella's feet. She could hear the singing again, the prayers and petitions. There was a path in front of her, and she wasn't alone.
A tall woman with dark hair walked in front of her. She was dressed in jeans, scarred boots, a T-shirt, with a battered black backpack over her shoulders. She stopped every couple of meters to consult a map and a compass.
Marcella held on tight to the statue, hoping that Cosimo and the others could still follow her. She hurried after the woman, the path winding through the trees.
Marcella tried not to get distracted by the changes in the landscape or lose sight of the path the woman was on. She didn't want to analyze what the magic was doing to her. She just obeyed it.
Through the beech trees, the outline of a roof came into view. It shuddered and disintegrated until only the woman remained standing under the trees.
Marcella took a step toward it when something tangled in her feet. The statue fell from her hands onto the forest floor, and Cosimo's strong arms went around her before she hit the rocks and leaves.
"Breathe. I have you," Cosimo whispered in her ear.
Marcella was shaking, and she turned in his arms, holding him tight. "Oh, goddess. I saw her. I saw..."
"It's okay. We didn't let you fall. You were in a trance, and took us in a different direction than we had planned," Cosimo said, his hands rubbing her back. Marcella let his body warm her up, and her shaking stopped enough to look down. Around her feet was an old piece of rope.
"What is this?" she said and grabbed the end of it. She pulled on it, and it rose out of the dirt that covered it.
"Something left over from camping, probably," Reeve replied.
"It's going in the direction of where the woman stood," Marcella said, shaking her head. She continued to follow the rope, pulling it up out of the ground for another twenty meters, and then she couldn't lift any more. She got down on her hands and knees, heedless of the questions the others were asking.
Marcella's hand pushed through a loose bundle of branches and would have fallen straight into a black pit if Cosimo hadn't gripped her by the back of the jeans.
"Mio Dio, I'm going to tie you to me soon," he said, pulling her backward.
"That is a big hole," Bridget commented, coming to stand beside them and looking in.
Apollo dug about in his pockets and pulled out a glow stick. He cracked it and dropped it. It went down only a few meters and lit up the walls around it. A set of broken stone stairs led down to it, but the top ones were missing.
"Marcella? I think you have found it," Cosimo said with a bright laugh.
Marcella looked down into the darkness, her heart pounding hard in excitement. "We are going to need some more rope."
31
Cosimo felt like he had aged a year since watching Marcella go into a trance and stride off into the forest. They had all moved around her, getting obstacles out of her path as much as they could.
They may have found the entrance to the temple ruins, but there was no way in all the dark hells he was going to let Marcella go into the pit first.
"Val, Yelena, and I will go in and look for traps," Cosimo said, taking the rope that Lachlan offered him. He had tied it to a nearby tree with easy efficiency, which made Cosimo worry that dropping into holes in a forest was a regular occurrence for him.
"I haven't encountered such ancient magic before, so this is going to be fun," Valentine said. He took the rope from Cosimo. "Me first, old man."
"Hurry up, or I will push you for that comment," Cosimo replied.
Valentine only grinned wildly and dropped down into the hole.
"Remaining stairs seem okay, just the first ones that are crumbled," he called up.
"Be careful," Marcella said, catching Cosimo by the shirt. "Don't walk into any traps."
"Don't worry,tesoro. Valentine will walk into them first," he said, rubbing his thumb over her chin. He was aware of the others' eyes on them, so he resisted the urge to kiss her and followed Valentine down into the darkness.
There was a spark of light from further down into the tunnel as Valentine lit an old torch he had found.
