The Burning Shadow (5 page)

M
idnight in the seal-cutters' workshop
, the woman had said.

It was nearly midnight now, but Userref had only just fallen asleep outside Pirra's room, and she was still trying to retrieve her gear from its hiding place.

Teetering on the lamp pedestal, she groped for the gap behind the roofbeam. At last she grabbed the calfhide bag.

The lamp tipped and she leaped for the bed, catching the pedestal a heartbeat before it hit the floor. The bed's latticework creaked. Behind the door-hanging, Userref murmured in his sleep.

Pirra held her breath.

He went on sleeping.

The bag held everything she'd collected over the winter and hidden from him and from her slave girls' prying eyes. Shakily, she emptied it and put on her disguise. A rough peasant tunic, a belt and knife-sheath of stained goathide, a plain bronze knife, a hairy cloak that stank of the weaver-woman who'd sold it to her for two carnelian beads. The sandals must stay in the bag; their cracked oxhide would be too noisy on the polished floors of the House of the Goddess.

Next came a handful of earth filched from the pot of the sacred olive tree in the Great Court: Pirra smeared it on every bit of her that showed, especially her scar. She'd already covered the amethyst sealstone on her wrist with clay, and the falcon feather and lion claw were safe in the pouch at her neck.

Recently, Userref had warned her that she'd reached the age when men looked at her.
Even if you did escape
, he'd said,
you couldn't go wandering on your own
. Well then, I'll be a boy, thought Pirra as she hacked her hair to shoulder length. She would take the cuttings with her, so that her mother couldn't use them in a charm to track her down.

With pounding heart, she stuffed everything back in the bag: a block of pressed figs wrapped in vine leaves, some dried lambs' tongues, eight salted and slightly mouse-eaten mullets; and two bundles of gold bracelets wrapped in linen to stop them clinking—one to pay the wisewoman, the other for herself.

There. Hylas would have been impressed. Or maybe not. He was used to living by his wits.

Again Userref stirred in his sleep. Pirra's heart twisted. She would never see him again. And she couldn't even say good-bye.

On impulse, she placed the little wooden leopard on her pillow. Would he understand how much she would miss him?

Quietly, she drew aside the door-hanging.

He lay as he always did, across the threshold. Pirra saw that he'd smeared some of his precious green
wadju
on his eyelids, to help him dream of Egypt. She hoped it was working.

Farther along the passage, her slave girls were snoring. At her evening meal she'd drunk little, and drugged the rest of her wine with poppy juice, knowing they'd finish what was left. She hoped she hadn't overdone it.

It was still early spring, and a chill breeze was moaning through the House of the Goddess. The passages were dark, except for the odd guttering lamp. She groped past chambers where people muttered in their dreams, and nearly trod on a sleeping slave. A sliver of darkness slunk toward her, and a cat's furry warmth brushed her calf.

Moonlight silvered the Great Court and the olive tree in the middle. Keeping to the shadows against the walls, she made for the far corner. The olive tree watched her go. Silently, she begged it not to betray her.

Footsteps echoed through the Great Court.

Pirra froze.

A priest emerged from a doorway, horrifyingly close.

Rigid with tension, she watched him make for the Hall of the Double Axe. She heard the faint rattle as he parted the beaded hanging and disappeared inside.

It was past midnight when she reached the workshops in the western wall, and she was terrified that the woman had gone.

In the darkness, she banged her shins against a pile of copper ingots, and nearly sent a shelf of clay jars crashing to the floor. Her heart jerked. Eyes glared at her from a corner. She breathed out in relief. The rock-crystal gaze of the ivory god followed her as she crossed to the seal-cutters' workshop.

It was empty. Had she missed her chance?

A shadow detached itself from the blackness, and in the gloom she made out the white magpie streak.

“You're late!” whispered the woman.

“I couldn't get away! I brought the gold—”

“Not now. There's an olive press in the next room. My cousin left rope. We tie it to the press and climb out. He'll untie it before dawn, to cover our tracks.”

By the faint light from a small window, they found the press—two massive grooved stones—and a thick coil of rope.

Pirra peered out of the window. The night wind blew cold in her face, and she couldn't see the rocks below. “How do we know the rope's long enough?” she breathed.

“We don't,” muttered the woman.

The rigging creaked and the sails snapped as the black ship sped across the waves. Huddled in the prow, Pirra drew her scratchy cloak around her and felt the salt spray stinging her face.

Freedom.

Where would she go? How would she survive in the White Mountains, far from everything she knew? She felt frightened and exhilarated. It was too huge to take in.

The rope
had
been too short, and she'd nearly broken her ankle jumping onto the rocks. The settlement dogs had sniffed her suspiciously, but Hekabi had brought scraps to keep them quiet.

After walking through the night, they'd reached the gray Sea and a ship rocking in the shallows. The captain was expecting them, and they'd set off along the coast.

Hekabi said that if the wind kept up, they should reach the White Mountains by the following dusk. To throw off pursuit, she'd laid a false trail, and if that failed, she knew secret places in the Mountains where no one would find them.

The stars faded and a red slash appeared on the eastern horizon: The Goddess was walking across the Sea to wake the Sun. Pirra cut a sliver of dried mullet and threw it over the side for an offering, then cut another piece for herself.

She stopped in mid-chew. The Sun was in the wrong place. If they were heading west, it should be behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes widened. Keftiu had dwindled to a black line on the edge of the Sea.

She lurched along the deck to where Hekabi stood staring across the waves. “We're heading
north
!” she cried.

“Well spotted,” Hekabi said drily.

“You said we were going to the White Mountains!”

“I lied.”

“But I
paid
you!” shouted Pirra.

The brown eyes studied her with amusement. “I needed gold to buy my passage. Now you're just a nuisance I'll have to put up with for a while.”

Pirra's outrage turned to unease. She seemed to have swapped one form of captivity for another. “Where are you taking me?” she said.

Hekabi turned back to the horizon. The red dawn lit the strong planes of her face, and the wind whipped her strange streaky hair across her cheeks. “There is a ring of islands with hearts of flame,” she told the waves. “Once long ago, the Lady of Fire tore off Her bright necklace and flung it across the great green Sea . . .”

“
Wh-at?
” said Pirra. “The Obsidian Isles? But that's halfway to
Akea
!”

“The ‘Obsidian Isles' may be what you Keftians call them,” said Hekabi with an edge to her voice, “but we who live there simply call them the Islands.” She paused. “Ten years ago, warriors came from Akea. They went from island to island till they found what they wanted.”

Pirra's belly tightened. “You mean the Crows.”

“The warriors of Koronos. Yes.”

It was Pirra's turn to stare out to Sea. Last summer, she'd narrowly escaped being wed to the son of a Crow Chieftain. Then another Crow Chieftain had beaten her up and nearly killed Hylas.

“On the island where I was born,” said Hekabi, “the Crows found what they wanted.” Her hands tightened on the side of the ship. “They dug deep into the earth, wrenching the greenstone from Her entrails, calling the island
theirs
.”

Pirra swallowed. “The copper mines. Is that where we're going?”

Hekabi nodded. “My poor, devastated homeland. Thalakrea.”

H
ylas had lost track of how long he'd been at Thalakrea.

Twice he'd tried to escape by creeping past the guards at the Neck under cover of darkness. Twice Zan had caught him and beaten him up. “Try that once more,” the older boy had warned, “and I'll have to turn you in.”

Then a spate of accidents had made Hylas forget about escape. A rope had snapped, sending a sack plummeting down the shaft and breaking a man's leg. A falling rock had nearly brained another, and a spilled lamp had set fire to a pile of ropes, badly burning three hammermen.

Fear is catching underground. Soon Hylas was flinching at shadows. Did that rock move? Was that a shadow, or a snatcher?

Once, he dreamed he was back on Mount Lykas, wading through crystal streams and cool green bracken. Issi was there. As always she was plaguing him with questions.
Where are the frogs, Hylas?
But when he woke, the dream felt as if it had happened to someone else: to Hylas the Outsider, not Flea the slave.

Despite the fear, he was growing almost accustomed to the mines. He knew that overseers were called “guts,” the girls who tended the lamps down the pit were “sparks,'” and the small children who sorted the greenstone were “moles.”

Apart from Spit, he got along all right with his fellow spiders. Bat was cheerful and keen to help. Beetle remained silent and fearful underground, but was friendly above, although he'd been more subdued of late. Zan was clever and resourceful, and he never pried. “We all got secrets,” he said with a shrug.

One night, Hylas stole a joint of smoked hog from a gut and they sat munching in the dark, swapping their stories. Zan said he was the son of a horse-breaker from somewhere called Arzawa, far to the east. Bat had been born at the mines: He
thought
his mother had been a slave and his father a gut, but was hazy on details. Beetle's father had been a rich Egyptian merchant.

“So he says,” said Zan, rolling his eyes. “But then he wants us to believe that in Egypt they got horses that live in rivers, and giant man-eating lizards!”

“We do,” said Beetle. “They're called crocodiles, they—”

Zan grinned and pelted him with pebbles.

Beetle sprang to his feet and went to stand at the mouth of the den.

“What's got into him?” said Hylas.

Zan shrugged. “What about you, Flea? You got any kin?”

Hylas hesitated. “My mother left me on a mountain. That's all I know.” It wasn't. He knew she had cared about him and Issi, because she'd wrapped them in a bearskin and stroked his face; but he didn't want to tell Zan, or reveal that he had a sister.

Two days later, they were crawling down to the seventh level to pick up another load when his sack snagged. By the time he'd freed it, the others had gone ahead.

As he hurried around a bend, he made out a couple of pit props a few paces in front. Between them crouched a small murky figure, gripping a hammerstone with both hands.

It took Hylas a moment to grasp that the figure was pounding at one of the props, trying to dislodge it. “Hey, you!” he yelled.

Whoever it was flung down the stone and fled, with Hylas scrambling after him.

Several frantic twists and turns later, Hylas crashed into Spit. Grabbing him by the hair, Hylas wrenched his arm behind his back. “Knocking out a pit prop?
Why?
You could've killed us all!”

Spit wriggled and squealed. Hylas jerked his arm higher.

Zan and Beetle arrived and hauled him off.

“He was trying to bring down the roof!” panted Hylas.

“It wasn't me, I swear!” whimpered Spit. “May the Lady of Fire strike me dead if I lie!”

“Leave him alone, Flea,” said Zan. “He says it wasn't him.”

“But I saw him!”

“I said leave it!”

A few days later, Hylas jolted awake from a bad dream.

It wasn't yet dawn, and on the furnace ridge the smith's hammer had fallen silent. Hylas lay listening to the crows cawing around the stronghold. Kreon had discovered what people called his clan, and he
liked
it. He'd ordered carcasses flung from the walls to attract the birds.

Hylas got up and started putting on his rags. These days, he moved in a fog of dread. There was something terribly wrong with Thalakrea, and it was getting worse.

It was whispered that the snatchers no longer stayed underground. Someone had glimpsed a shadow emerging from the pit and slipping downhill. A boy had woken from a nightmare and felt something squatting on his chest. And last night, a hammerman had rushed screaming up the slope and thrown himself down the shaft. Even the animals had sensed that something was wrong. The pools had fallen silent: The frogs had gone.

Some said the Mountain was angry because they were digging too deep, while others blamed Kreon for killing the lion. His warriors had been seen carrying the carcass toward the stronghold to be skinned; and soon afterward, the accidents had begun.

From the ridge, the smith's hammer rang out. Hylas wished the others would wake up.

Zan and Beetle were twitching in their sleep, as if they were still hauling sacks. Bat lay clutching the balding remains of his tunnel mouse. Spit's bony knees were drawn up to his ribs and his mouth hung open: a dark void surrounded by broken teeth.

Hylas stopped binding his knees and stared at that gaping mouth. A terrifying thought had occurred to him.

He woke Zan and dragged him to the mouth of the den.

“What's this about?” growled Zan, rubbing his eyes.

“If a snatcher gets you,” breathed Hylas, “it can reach down your throat—yes?”

“That's what they say. So?”

“So that means it can get
inside
you.”

“They're spirits, they can do anything. Why?”

“What's he saying?” Beetle stood behind them with his arms at his sides.

Hylas motioned him closer. “The first night I came, I asked what was wrong with Spit, and Zan said a snatcher'd nearly got him.” He swallowed. “I think you were wrong, Zan. I think a snatcher already has.”

Beetle's face went still. Zan's scowl deepened. “
What?
”

Hylas pointed at the sleeping boy and whispered, “He's possessed.
It's inside him
.”

They didn't believe him.

Zan got angry, while Beetle retreated behind a blank, uncomprehending stare. When Hylas insisted, Zan turned on him. “Why are you always accusing him?”

“Why are you always shielding him?”

“We're pit spiders, we stick together, that's how we survive!”

“Even if he gets us all killed?”

“He won't. He's one of us. So shut up!”

In stony silence they got dressed. Hylas watched Spit waken and pluck desultorily at his rags. He was skeletally thin, and his face was wizened, like that of an old man.

Hylas pictured the evil spirit coiled in the pulsing red darkness under his heart. Who knew what it would make him do next?