The Burning Shadow (6 page)

T
elamon knelt with his hands in the cold mountain stream and wondered what to do next.

He couldn't go back to his father's stronghold, not yet. And he
must not cry
. He was fourteen summers old: almost a man. And Hylas was dead.

“I've kept my promise to you, Hylas,” he said as the water lifted the blood off his fingers. “I said I'd sacrifice a ram for you, and I have. Be at peace, my friend.”

Long after his hands were clean, he remained kneeling by the stream, while a chill wind from Mount Lykas dried the tears on his cheeks.

For the thousandth time, he told himself that Hylas' death wasn't his fault. How could he have known that his own kin—his father's brother—would hunt Hylas like prey? It wasn't his
fault
. It was the will of the gods.

Why then did the guilt always come back?

If only he'd warned Hylas sooner. Just a single day. Then he and Issi could have gotten away, and they'd still be alive.

As Telamon was heading for home, the gods rewarded him for making a sacrifice for his friend: His dogs flushed a boar.

He didn't have time to be scared. One moment the dogs were harrying the great beast; the next, it was crashing through the bracken toward him.

Without thinking, he dropped to one knee and jammed the butt of his spear in the earth to steady it, aiming its point at the boar and gripping the shaft with both hands.

The boar thundered closer. Its small eyes locked on Telamon's. He caught its hot rank smell and saw its lethal yellow tusks.

Suddenly it swerved and came at him from the side. He jerked the spear to meet it. The force of the beast's charge drove its chest onto the point, snapping the shaft and jolting Telamon to the marrow. The boar fell dead a cubit from where he knelt.

He gave a jittery laugh. This was his fourth boar—he had to kill twelve before he'd have enough tusks to make a helmet—but it was by far the biggest. He couldn't believe he'd killed it by himself.

He tried to stand, but was annoyed to find that his legs didn't work. He was shaking like a girl. Thank the spirits there was no one to see.

Moments later, two goatherds came down the track, idly slashing the bracken with sticks.

Telamon lurched to his feet.

The goatherds recognized the son of their Chieftain, and dropped their sticks.

Curtly, Telamon ordered them to carry the carcass back to Lapithos.

“What about our goats, my lord?” said one.

“Do as I say,” he snapped.

As he strode off, he heard them snigger. The blood rushed to his face. They'd seen him shaking.

Suddenly, Telamon despised himself for his weakness. With a stab of envy, he reflected that if it had been Hylas facing that boar,
he
wouldn't have gone all shaky. Hylas was brave and tough. No one dared laugh at him . . .

Shut
up,
Telamon told himself fiercely.

By the time he reached his father's stronghold at Lapithos, he was feeling a bit better. Thestor was delighted with his son's kill, and insisted that he sit beside him on his bench. Fire, roast venison, and strong wine mixed with honey and barley meal did the rest. Telamon sat warming himself before the great round ancestral hearth, enjoying the approval of his father's warriors and the pleasure in Thestor's eyes.

His new friend Selinos refilled his cup. “I hear it's the biggest boar in Lykonia,” he said with an ingratiating smile.

Telamon shrugged.

Hylas would never have flattered me like this, he thought with a pang. He'd have grinned and said,
So how many more till you can call yourself a man, eh?
Then he'd have dragged me off to the forest and we'd have roasted a hedgehog in river clay and washed it down with a skinful of barley beer stolen from the village . . .

“Your father's very proud of you,” said Selinos in an undertone. “I've no doubt High Chieftain Koronos will be too.” He cleared his throat. “You've not been to Mycenae, have you? Or met your grandfather? I'm sure he'll want to change that very soon.”

Telamon forced a smile. Selinos came from Mycenae. Telamon suspected that Koronos had sent him to take a look at his grandson, and report back.

This pleased and frightened Telamon in equal measure. Koronos was the most powerful Chieftain in Akea. And the most feared.

The heat and noise of the feast faded, and Telamon remembered last summer, when he'd stood in this very hall with the dagger of Koronos in his hands.

Proudly, he'd told his father how he'd taken it from the dead grip of his uncle Kratos. By retrieving the most precious heirloom of his clan, he'd gained great honor. And yet, Thestor's praise had been stilted, for with him were his terrible siblings: his two surviving brothers, Kreon and Pharax, and their cold-eyed sister, Alekto.

Apart from them, the hall had been empty. Earlier, Thestor's entire household had gathered to see the dagger that held the power of the House of Koronos—but after that, they'd been sent away. None but Koronos' closest blood kin must know of the perils their House faced. None must know what the Oracle had predicted: that an Outsider could bring them down . . .

“So tell me all about it,” said Selinos, wrenching him back. “
How
did you kill such a huge beast on your own?”

“Yes, how?” cried Thestor. Then to his warriors, “Listen to this, lads!”

Dutifully, Telamon embarked on his story. But somehow, it didn't feel real.

He was walled in by secrets.

The Oracle was a secret known only to Koronos and his kin.

Thestor had kept secrets from his own son. For years, he'd told Telamon nothing about his family, the House of Koronos. They'd done dreadful things and he wanted no part of them. Only latterly had he been forced to overcome his scruples.

Even Telamon had secrets. Hylas had been his best friend, the very Outsider who the Oracle had foretold would be the ruin of his House. And that was something only his father knew.

Layers of deception, like skin . . .

“What did I tell you?” cried Thestor, clapping him on the back. “He'll be a warrior before he's fifteen!”

It was nearly midnight. Dogs nosed the rushes for scraps, and most of the drinkers—including Selinos—had dragged sheepskins off the benches and fallen asleep.

Thestor sat cradling his gold drinking cup by the fire. These days, he drank too much. His kinsmen might be far away in Mycenae, but they cast a long shadow.

He caught Telamon watching and smiled sadly. “So, Telamon,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “While you were out killing monsters, a party of merchants came up from the coast. They've set out their wares in the east chamber. Why don't you go and choose whatever you like?”

Telamon was surprised and pleased. “Thank you, Father.”

Thestor gave him an affectionate punch on the arm, and turned back to the fire.

The merchants were sharp-faced foreigners who sprang awake when Telamon entered the chamber. He felt pleasantly fuddled. The wine had blunted the edge of his worries.

The treasures on the blanket shimmered before his eyes. What about that silver cloak pin with the back-to-back eagles? Or the copper wrist-guard. Or the bronze knife with the green lion inlaid on the blade . . .

Suddenly, he noticed a belt of tooled leather with two square gold plaques on either side of the clasp. His wits cleared in a heartbeat. The plaques were beautifully worked with interlocking spirals formed of tiny gold beads. He'd seen them before.

One of the merchants sensed his interest. “The young lord has a good eye,” he murmured. “Finest workmanship. Keftian, of course.”

Telamon already knew that. Those gold squares had once been part of a bracelet that had belonged to the girl he was supposed to wed. Pirra was her name. He remembered her standing at his side as they'd watched the flames of his uncle's funeral pyre shooting into the sky. He remembered the smell of burning flesh, and how he'd pretended to be mourning Kratos, when inside he was grieving for Hylas.

Later, the girl hadn't been wearing the bracelet, and when he'd asked why, she'd said she'd lost it; although he could tell she was lying. At the time, he hadn't thought anything of it.

But now.

“Where did you get this?” he asked the merchant.

“My lord, it was my friend . . .” He indicated his companion.

The companion was Makedonian; the other one had to translate. “He says, lord, that he was given it by some boy in exchange for passage on his ship.”

Telamon swayed.

The merchant looked worried. “Is something wrong, my lord? I assure you, it was bought in good faith—”

“This boy,” cut in Telamon. “What was he like?”

The merchant was puzzled.

“Tell me everything,” said Telamon. “And tell
no one
else. If you disobey me, you will suffer.”

Both merchants turned pale.

It was just some boy, they said. About the young lord's age, maybe a year or so less, and not so tall. Narrow tawny eyes. Strange hair, the color of barley. And a notch in one earlobe . . .

Telamon left them and staggered back to the hall. He snatched his drinking cup and stared at it. He gulped wine, splashing his tunic.

Hylas was alive.

W
hat would Hylas do now? thought Pirra, shifting uncomfortably on the hard earth floor.

First rule of survival
, he'd told her once:
Before anything
,
sort your day's food and water
.

Well, she had, but that didn't help much. How was she going to survive on this strange, fiery island ruled by Crows?

The hut was sturdily built of basalt and pumice, with a door that faced south, to avoid the strong north wind. It was also fugged with the smells of unwashed people and the smoky dung fire.

On the other side of the wall, Pirra heard a pig snuffling for scraps. Her belly growled. On the shore she'd seen men gutting tuna fish bigger than dolphins, but the Islanders had only offered them a porridge of chickpeas and mackerel, and sour wine mixed with terebinth that tasted like tar.

“The Crows take everything,” they'd apologized. “If we protest, they send us down the mines.”

Despite their poverty, they were friendly. Hekabi's mother had shyly welcomed Pirra—“All strangers are honored guests”—then scolded her daughter for being too thin, and bustled off to make the porridge.

Merops, the village headman and Hekabi's father, had politely shown Pirra how to bow to the fire and ask its permission to sleep in the hut. Even Hekabi had unbent a little. She was younger than Pirra had thought, maybe thirty summers or so, and she seemed actually to
like
her mother. Pirra found this intriguing, as she hated hers.

The Islanders reminded her of Keftian peasants, with sunburned limbs and horny feet—although unlike Keftians, the men had beards, and their amulets weren't seashells, but beads of black obsidian and yellow sulfur. Everyone had burn scars on their arms, and they admired Pirra's scar, which they said brought good luck.

On the other side of the wall, the pig stopped snuffling. Pirra turned over. No use. She couldn't sleep.

At the doorway, she nearly trod on a small snake drinking milk from a little pottery dish. Murmuring an apology, she waited for it to finish and slither away.

It was cooler outside because of the wind, but a sulfurous whiff from the Mountain made her head ache.

Thalakrea puzzled her. So far, she'd seen no Crows—the village was on the north coast, the mines to the south—and the island was beautiful. Their ship had entered a bay of emerald and amethyst water enclosed by white cliffs banded with yellow and orange, like a sunset turned to stone. The village was set amid silver olive trees and feathery green tamarisks, and in the distance rose a great black Mountain with smoke seeping down its flanks.

A few paces from the hut, Merops sat by a fire, sharpening an obsidian blade. “Can't sleep?” he said, motioning to Pirra to sit.

He had a leather pad on one knee, and was carefully pressing a piece of antler against the blade's edge, to remove tiny flakes of stone. His face had the same strong planes as Hekabi's, although unlike his daughter, he looked as if he laughed more than he frowned.

“You were good with that snake,” he remarked.

“I like snakes,” said Pirra. “I made friends with one once. It used to coil around my wrist and rest its head in my palm.”

He blew away stone-dust and examined the blade. “Do you regret leaving Keftiu?”

She tensed. Had Hekabi told him who she was? “No,” she said warily. “But I miss Userref. He's my sl—a friend. I'm worried he'll be punished because I left.”

Merops nodded. “We too fear the wrath of High Priestess Yassassara.”

So he knew. “If she sends people after me,” said Pirra, “will you give me up?”

He looked horrified. “Of course not! You're a stranger here, we have to shelter you, it's the law of the gods.”

“I didn't mean to offend you.”

He chuckled. “You didn't. But you need to learn our ways. You Keftians worship the Sea, we worship the Lady of Fire.” He bowed to the Mountain. “So we, er, never turn our back on a fire—as you did just now when you left the hut.”

“Sorry.”

“You didn't know.”

In the moonlight, the smoke on the Mountain glowed. Pirra thought of the stories they told on Keftiu about the fabulously wealthy island that the Earthshaker had destroyed.

“It looks dangerous,” she said.

“
Dangerous?
The Lady keeps us
safe
! When our Ancestors first came to Thalakrea, She took human form and told them to build a village here. She warned them that everything beyond the Neck belongs to the Wild, and is guarded by Her sacred creatures, the lions. Our Ancestors honored Her wishes—and in return, She taught them how to free the copper from the stone.”

“But that smoke . . . Don't such mountains wake the Earthshaker? On Keftiu we fear earthshakes more than anything.”

“So do we, but the Lady
protects
us from the Earthshaker. Never in a thousand years have we had more than a tremor.”

Hekabi emerged from the hut and came toward them. “I thought you'd run away,” she said to Pirra.

“Where would I go?” Pirra said tartly.

Merops glanced from one to the other, then got to his feet. “Watch the fire,” he told his daughter. “And look after our guest.”

When he'd gone in, Pirra said, “Am I a captive here?”

Hekabi's lip curled. “What makes you say that?”

“Was
any
of what you told me true? Have you even
been
to the White Mountains?”

“No.”

“So—why were you on Keftiu?”

Hekabi hesitated. “There are others like me, who hate the Crows. We talk. We share what we've heard.”

“You're taking a risk telling me that.”

“Am I?” Her bright eyes pierced Pirra's.

“Is that why you came back to Thalakrea?” said Pirra. “To fight the Crows? Where do I fit in?”

Hekabi shrugged. “I needed gold to get home. You needed to escape.”

Pirra chewed her lip. She had more gold hidden in her pouch; maybe she could buy passage off the island. But where would she go?

Hekabi woke the fire with a stick, loosing a flurry of sparks. “Tomorrow I'll show you what the Crows have done to Thalakrea. The forests they've cut down for their furnaces, the holes they've dug in Her flesh. You Keftians don't realize what it costs to make all your bronze tripods and your mirrors . . .”

“Why are you angry with Keftiu?” said Pirra. “We've always been friends with the Islands. We even speak the same tongue.”

Hekabi glared at her with sudden animosity. “Would friends have stood by and watched us overrun?”

“What could we have done?”

“Has the High Priestess no power?”

“Of course! But the Crows are
warriors
. We're not.”

“So that's your answer? Do nothing?”

“What's yours?”

“It's late,” snapped Hekabi. “Go and get some sleep.”

Afterward, Pirra lay staring at the rafters. Hekabi's outburst had unsettled her; and reminded her uncomfortably of her mother.

In her mind, she saw Yassassara standing on the topmost balcony of the House of the Goddess. She wore a skirt of Keftian purple, its folds sharply scented with oil of myrrh. Her sea-blue bodice was open at the breasts, her waist cinched with a belt sewn with green glass beads. Her arms were twined with silver snakes, and from her neck hung her great gold collar of many Suns. Her coiled black hair was pierced by bronze pins with rock-crystal heads the size of pomegranates. Her hawk-like face was painted white, her eyes and lips fierce red, and she was spreading wide her saffron talons, sending spells far out into the night to find her daughter . . .

Pirra was woken by Hekabi shaking her.

It was dark, but everyone was awake, and frightened. Then Pirra saw the warriors in the doorway.

“Kreon's sick,” Hekabi said tersely. “He needs a wisewoman.” She hauled Pirra to her feet. “You're coming too.”

“What?”

Hekabi leaned closer. “You speak Akean, I don't. As far as the Crows are concerned, you're my slave.”

Pirra made to protest, but Hekabi clamped a hand over her mouth. “You will do as I say or I'll tell them who you are. I'm sure Kreon would be delighted to learn that he has a high-born Keftian in his power. So. Will you come quietly?”

“He'll find out you're a fake,” muttered Pirra as they stumbled along in the moonlight.

“Not so loud,” breathed Hekabi. A few paces behind, the warriors were dark shapes in the gloom.

“What's Kreon like?” whispered Pirra.

Hekabi moved closer to her. “Greedy,” she said in an undertone. “Unpredictable. He's the weakest of his father's children, and he knows it. This makes him dangerous. He works his slaves to death in the mines.”

Pirra frowned. “But your father said that you Islanders also had mines.”

“Yes, but
we
followed the teachings of the Lady. We never dug too deep and we always gave Her time to heal. Kreon doesn't care about that. And he calls the island
his
. No one owns Thalakrea. It belongs to the Lady.” She clenched her fists. “He thinks he can do what he likes because he's a Crow, and they can't be beaten while they have the dagger.”

The dagger
. Something must have shown in Pirra's face, for Hekabi was instantly alert. “You know of it?” she said sharply.

“Only that while they've got it, they can't be beaten.”

But Pirra knew more than that. She knew that an Oracle had made a prophecy:
If an Outsider wields the blade, the House of Koronos burns . . .
And for a few days last summer, Hylas—an Outsider—
had
wielded it. Then the Crows had taken it back.

That was her fault. Hylas had told her to keep it safe, and she'd failed.

“What do you know about the dagger?” repeated Hekabi.

“Nothing,” lied Pirra.

Clouds hid the Moon, and two warriors moved past them to take the lead. Pirra heard the creak of their rawhide armor, and caught an acrid taint that was horribly familiar. Last year, on a lonely hillside, a Crow Chieftain had attacked her. She remembered the ashy stench of his sweat.

“
Why
do they smear themselves with ash?” she whispered.

Hekabi's hand went to the little lump of sulfur on a thong at her breast. “They're bodyguards of the House of Koronos,” she hissed. “They worship the nameless ones who haunt the dark.”

Pirra caught her breath. “You mean the—the
Angry Ones
?”

“Sh!” warned Hekabi.

Despite the heat of the night, Pirra went cold. The Angry Ones came from the very fires of Chaos. They were drawn to darkness and burned things, and they hunted those who'd murdered their kin. They were relentless. They didn't care who got in their way. Once, Pirra nearly had, and now they haunted her nightmares. She remembered a shadowy gully and the leathery
thwap
of wings. A creeping horror in the dark . . .

“That's why the Crows burn their sacrifices,” Hekabi said quietly. “That's why they make arrowheads of obsidian: the burned blood of the Lady of Fire, perverted for their foul rites . . .”

“But to
worship
them—
why
?”

“If they could gain the favor of the Angry Ones,” said Hekabi, “think of the power . . .”