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67 pages 2 hours read

Rick Riordan

The Mark Of Athena

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012

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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “Piper”

Sitting with a still unconscious Jason, Piper reluctantly draws her bronze dagger, Katoptris (meaning “looking glass”), which once belonged to Helen of Troy and shows prophetic images. It shows her Octavian is addressing the Roman demigods in the forum at Camp Jupiter, urging them to war. Piper feels guilty for not having wanted to befriend the Romans, scared of “losing Jason to his old life” (79). The blade shows a series of other images whose meaning Piper does not understand, including one of herself, Jason, and Percy standing in what resembles a well, up to their waists in black water. Jason and Percy both get pulled under. Piper asks the blade to show her “something helpful” (79, italics in original). She sees a man on the side of an empty highway in Kansas, offering her a silver goblet containing some sort of cure. At that moment, Jason wakes up.

Hazel and Leo arrive, holding a bronze sheet. Leo rushes to the engine room to get to work. Annabeth, Percy, and Frank arrive. When the ship begins listing, Hazel notes that the lake’s nymphs may be angry at them. Percy heads out to “hold off the water spirits” and sends Frank and Annabeth to help Leo (81). Seasick Hazel grabs her stomach and goes to lie down. Piper and Jason remain in his cabin listening to the commotion above. Eventually, all grows quiet. Leo returns to say they are on their way.

The seven demigods convene to review their options. Piper worries that she did not put enough effort into her charmspeak, but Jason reminds her that Gaea’s goal was to cause conflict. Hazel relays Nemesis’s claim that, in six days, Nico will die, and Rome will be destroyed. Piper shares the images she saw in her blade, including two giant twins. Annabeth connects the image to Ella’s prophecy and the old legend Reyna mentioned. Jason seems to know something but silently indicates to Piper that they should discuss it in private. Recalling the lines of the prophecy, Frank and Percy agree that they will need the gods’ help to kill giants. They need to find somewhere safe to set down so Leo can finish his repairs. Piper suggests Kansas.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Piper”

The following morning, they arrive in Kansas. When Piper again describes the vision in her blade, Jason says it sounds like Bacchus, which causes anxiety in Percy, since Bacchus's Greek form is Camp Half-Blood’s annoying counselor, Mr. D (for Dionysus). Annabeth, Leo, and Frank stay behind to work on and protect the ship. Jason and Percy will join Piper to scout the highway and find Bacchus/Mr. D.

Since they are still some distance away from the highway, Jason and Percy competitively summon rides. Jason calls Tempest, a storm spirit who arrives in a horse’s form, while Percy calls Blackjack, his black pegasus. The group heads off, arriving at the spot on the highway from Piper’s vision. Bacchus emerges from a wheat field, asking if they have seen Ceres (Demeter in Greek myth). The goddess of agriculture, Ceres had asked Bacchus to join forces against Gaea, whose plan was wreaking havoc with the crops.

When Percy and Bacchus butt heads, Piper intervenes, charming Bacchus. She tells him about the Katoptris vision, but he claims to have nothing to offer her. As he reminisces about killing giant twins Ephialtes and Otis, Piper realizes that Bacchus is part of their quest. He declines to help them but advises them to seek out Phorcys, Gaea’s son who hates his mother, in Atlanta. Worried that Ceres’s absence indicates a trap, Bacchus vanishes. Piper gets a cold feeling and realizes they too must leave, but a sleepy voice hums, “Too late” (97, italics in original).

It is Gaea, who now informs her that she needs the blood of one female and one male demigod and demands Piper choose which demigod will die with her.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Piper”

Jason and Percy attack each other. Both demigods are possessed by eidolons, spirits from the Underworld who Gaea has promised will be able to live again in the bodies they possess. Piper then realizes eidolons were controlling Leo when he fired on Camp Jupiter.

Percy knocks out Jason and is about to kill him, but Piper’s charmspeak causes him to pause long enough for Blackjack to knock him out. Piper secures the unconscious demigods onto Blackjack’s back, and the group returns to the ship. After some treatment in the sickbay, Jason and Percy wake up with hazy memories of what happened. They argue over who could have killed whom until Annabeth orders them to rest, but Percy wants to share what Bacchus told them.

Leo is relieved to learn it was the eidolons who caused him to fire on Rome. Jason wants Piper to use her charmspeak to explain to the Romans what happened, but she does not believe it will work on Octavian. Frank and Hazel agree. Octavian wants power and will see this as his opportunity. Jason concedes that they should keep moving. Once the group crosses into Europe, the Romans will stop following them, assuming they will die in the Mediterranean.

Percy turns the conversation to the twin giants. Piper cannot shake the feeling that Bacchus was “meant to help them,” though Percy does not believe he will (105, italics in original). Piper shares that Gaea wants the blood of one male and one female demigod, and Percy recalls how Polybotes wanted to take him prisoner to kill at the proper moment. Unsure how all the pieces fit together, the group sets their course for Atlanta to find the old sea god Phorcys, as Bacchus suggested. Piper mentions that the eidolons are still present in the room.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Piper”

Drawing on her knowledge of Cherokee spirits learned from her grandfather, Piper surmises that the eidolons are still present because no one has told them to leave. Hazel agrees, based on what she learned about them during her time in the Underworld. Using charmspeak, Piper addresses the eidolons, and they reply, from the bodies of Leo, Jason, and Percy. She orders them to leave the boys, but they refuse. Hazel tells them to obey Piper, then silently urges her to try again. Using her most forceful voice, Piper repeats her order, compelling them to promise on the river Styx that they will never possess anyone in the crew and leave. They obey.

As the ship travels east, Piper and Jason walk along the deck. Jason thanks Piper for saving him. She worries that Percy will never trust her again, but Jason reminds her that she saved them both. Piper asks Jason about the Mark of Athena, but he knows only that, after they conquered the Greeks in ancient times, the Romans supposedly stole something from them and hid it in Rome. Athena’s children have hated them ever since, and each generation, Athena selects a few demigods to search for it. Jason wants to help Annabeth find it, if she is one of those chosen, but worries about the consequences, given Nemesis’s warning about Rome’s impending destruction. Piper worries about the last lines of the Prophecy of Seven—“An oath to keep with a final breath”—and prays that Jason will not die.

Chapters 9-12 Analysis

Piper’s first set of chapters continue building an understanding of the Greek-Roman animosity from the Greek point of view, as all the chapters in The Mark of Athena are from Greek demigod perspectives. Like Annabeth, Piper struggles with her boyfriend Jason being Roman. Her fear that she will lose him to his old life holds her back. Through Piper, readers also see Jason struggle with conflicted loyalties of his own, notably in chapter nine. After the attack on Rome, however, Piper, like Leo, feels guilty for what she did not do and wonders whether her animosity impacted her charmspeak.

Foreshadowing continues to be an important literary device that creates tension and propels the plot forward. Piper’s dagger Katoptris shows the demigods events to come in Chapters 42-44. The images in the blade also allow Annabeth to connect the twins Ella mentions in the prophecy with Ephialtes and Otis, who the god Bacchus has previously killed. His appearance in chapter 10 also anticipates later events. Jason, Percy, and Piper will fight the giants in Chapters 45-48, when Bacchus will make a surprise appearance to save the day. Percy has a prophetic expectation of this, since he anticipates that they will need the god, though in the moment, he lacks surety.

These chapters resolve the question of why Leo fired on the Roman camp and why he, Annabeth, and Piper all experience a cold feeling at certain points; eidolons, or possessing spirits, are responsible. Piper’s command to the eidolons to swear never again to possess the demigods will later prove to have been too imprecise. The eidolons will return in Chapters 38-40, possessing machines in Archimedes’s workshop and trying to kill Leo, Frank, and Hazel.

The significance of the Mark of Athena grows somewhat clearer. It may provide a key to resolving the conflict between the Romans and Greeks, and it concerns something the Romans stole from Greece. Additionally, a layer of Gaea’s plot is revealed in these chapters, as she tells Piper that she will need one male and one female demigod whose blood she will sacrifice to regain her power. This retroactively answers an open question from a previous book in the series and anticipates events to come.

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