A voice made him look up. ‘Did Aeneas ever talk to you about Troy?’ Tisamenos was there, standing loosely, with his arms crossed over his shoulders.

Silvius stood up. ‘All the time. But only about what happened here. Not so much about the layout of the city itself. I only know that he gathered his followers by some tree. And there aren’t any trees left.’

‘How on earth are we going to find the Temple of Apollo?’ Tisamenos was squinting into the sunlight.

‘We know what his statues look like,’ said Elissa. ‘We’ll have to look for one. It might have fallen near his temple.’

Silvius led the way, continuing on the road into the heart of the citadel. There was rubble everywhere. Some of the stones were too large to move. As they searched, he began to wonder whether the gods had really left this city once and for all.

There was no sign of a statue, or an altar of any kind.
After about an hour, during which they found nothing but an old battered helmet, Silvius turned to Tisamenos. He was beginning to get desperate. ‘Talk to the stones.’ This Achaean, whose grandfather had wasted the city, he had to make reparation now.

Tisamenos slumped and put his hands on his face. ‘I can’t. It’s too much. It’s too painful. The stones – they don’t like me here. They know who my grandfather was. In the Underworld, it was awful. And here I can sense them, their hatred.’

‘I don’t see that we have any other way,’ said Silvius. The heat was getting to him. He was thirsty. ‘You do it by touching them with your hand, don’t you? I’ve seen you. Does it work if someone else makes you touch them?’ He moved forwards, his shadow falling over Tisamenos. He was trembling a little.

‘I wouldn’t want you to try that,’ said Tisamenos. He tightened his grip on the neck of the bag in which the Last Gorgon’s head was kept.

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Wait!’ Silvius turned to see Elissa, standing proudly by a large block of marble. With her back to the sun, it looked as if she was outlined in light. ‘I’ve found a statue!’

Ashamed of his anger, but now feeling a jagged sense of annoyance that it was Elissa who had found it, Silvius went to look.

Lying on its side, toppled from its pedestal, was a larger-than-life statue of a young man. Its bright colours were still there, though now faded. It was a youth with golden hair, carrying a lyre. ‘It must be him,’ said Elissa. ‘Apollo, Lord of Light, Lord of the Lyre. So his temple must be near here.’

With renewed energy, Silvius began to scramble around, looking for where the temple might have stood. He would find it first, he was sure of it. The others dispersed to different parts of the small square.