The Burning Shadow (8 page)

T
he thing that had stolen Beetle's body slammed Hylas against the rocks. His nostrils clogged with the smell of earth. Cold fingers crawled up his chest, feeling their way like spiders toward his mouth . . .

With a huge effort he shook his mind free, pushed Beetle off, and fled.

Stony laughter echoed behind him, and he heard the earthy flap of feet.

He hadn't gone far when the ground beneath him creaked. He felt the roughness of wood and an uprush of hot foul air. He guessed he was on the log bridge that spanned the other shaft over the deep levels. As he blundered across, he glanced over his shoulder.

All was dark—and yet somehow, he sensed what was there. He knew that on the other side of the bridge, there were
two
tunnels: the one he'd just left, and beside it another, a gaping mouth guarded by stone teeth jutting from the floor. And among them, flitting like half-seen shadows, were the vengeful spirits of the earth. In his mind he saw hair like spun dust, and eyes of lightless clay; earthen fingers groping for the tremors that betrayed the movements of their mortal prey.

Hylas backed away, loosing a trickle of pebbles.

The darkness tensed. They knew where he was. Now they'd found the bridge. They were surging across.

He raced up the tunnel. Beneath the noise of his flight and his urgent breath, he caught a whisper of voices.
Lone
 . . .
sss
 . . .
leave
 . . .

Some mad impulse made him wheel around. “What do you
want
?” he cried.

Dark against dark, they swayed, their lipless mouths snapping at his words.

“What do you want?” he said again.

Leave . . . lone . . . sss . . . leave . . . sss

“
But how
can
we leave?” he shouted. “You won't let us out!”

Sss . . . leave . . . lone . . .

Suddenly the sounds came together in his mind and he grasped their meaning. He knew what they were trying to say.

A man was calling him, somewhere close.

Hylas lurched around a bend and thudded into him. Panting with terror, his fingers groped a matted beard and a broken nose—and below it, not the ridge of a snatcher, but the groove of a mortal man. “They're behind us,” he gasped. “I think I—”

“Come on,” muttered Periphas, “it's not far to the others.”

“I think I know what they want!”

“He's lost his mind,” said Zan. “It can't be Beetle!”

Murmurs of agreement from the others.

“It is,” insisted Hylas. “He's the one who's possessed, not Spit. It was him all along.”

They were in a low echoing cavern, faintly lit by their final rushlight.

“How do we know
Flea's
not the snatcher?” said Zan. “How do we know he didn't kill Beetle, and it was
him
all along?”

Hylas set his teeth. He knew that Zan was ashamed of his earlier failure, and desperate to reassert himself. “It's Beetle,” he said. “There's a snatcher inside him. It made him bring down the roof, and it'll do it again.”

“It's true,” said Spit.

All eyes turned to him.

His skull-like face was shiny with sweat, but for once he was looking them in the eye.

“Why didn't you
tell
us?” said Hylas.

“I couldn't,” said Spit. “Beetle—the thing inside him—it said it'd kill me. It said such terrible things. I've been so frightened—”

“None of this matters now,” cut in Periphas. “What matters is getting out.”

“That's what I'm trying to
tell
you,” said Hylas. “We've got to give them what they want—or they'll never let us go!”

“And what's that?” demanded Periphas.

Hylas took a deep breath—and told them.

Snarls of disbelief.

“Now we know he's mad!” said one of the hammermen.

“I say we kill him and give him to the snatchers,” said another. “Maybe then they'll let us go.”

Periphas was staring at Hylas. “We're seven levels down, with who knows what ahead—and you want to make it
worse
?”

“It's the only way,” said Hylas. “Look. I know I can't prove any of this, but I also know I'm right. This is what they've been trying to tell us. Don't you see? They want the deep levels. If we can't make that happen, they'll never let us out.”

Out, out, out
 . . . His voice echoed through the cavern.

“He's right,” whispered Spit. “Can't you feel them? They're here in the walls, listening to everything we say . . .”

The others glanced at one another, then at Periphas.

He licked his lips and rubbed a hand over his beard.

Hylas crawled back down the tunnel with one end of the rope over his shoulder and the last rushlight clamped between his teeth: back toward the bridge, and the angry spirits of the earth.

This was the price the others had exacted for doing what he said. They would wait in the cavern, gripping the other end of the rope—which was actually the three ropes, knotted together—while he found his way to the main prop on this side of the bridge, and tied the rope around it. Then, when he'd rejoined the others, they would pull as hard as they could, and yank out the prop.

If
it worked, it
might
bring down the roof without killing them all—and seal the deep levels forever.

The murmurs of the others faded behind him as he reached the bridge. All was eerily still. Shadows shrank from his rushlight and hid behind the stone teeth on the other side. No sign of snatchers—or Beetle—but Hylas could feel them watching.

He found the pit prop, a sturdy log supporting the tunnel roof near the bridge. It looked immovable. He prayed it wasn't.

Jamming the rushlight in a crevice, he passed the end of the rope around the prop.

At the corner of his vision, one of the stone teeth seemed to move. He forced himself not to look.

The braided rawhide was thick, and his hands were slippery with sweat. He struggled to tie a knot.

Laughter like falling stones echoed around the walls.

“We're doing what you want,” he panted. “We're giving the deep levels back to you . . .”

The laughter sank to an angry hiss.

“Flea?” called Periphas. “Have you done it yet?”

“Nearly,” he called back. There. That
had
to hold.

Another hiss from across the bridge. He saw a figure crouching in front of the stone teeth. It was Beetle. He was
beckoning
.

“Flea come
on
!” shouted Periphas.

Hylas froze. Was that a draft gusting from between the stone teeth, cooling his sweat-soaked skin? Were those mice scurrying between them? And what was that dim light filtering through?

In the gloom, Beetle's face was empty of expression; but he was still beckoning.
This way
 . . .

Hylas caught his breath. That light . . . Was it the gray glow of the spirit world—or daylight? Was Beetle playing one last lethal trick—or showing him another way out?

His mind raced. If he returned to the others, they would make it to the surface, but they'd be back at the mines: They'd still be slaves. This other tunnel headed
away
from the mines. If it led anywhere, it might just lead him to freedom.

“Hylas . . .” whispered Beetle. And for a moment, his expression changed and he was a boy again. “This way, Hylas,” he urged. “
Freedom . . .
”

Hylas glanced from him to the rope. Then he shouted to Periphas: “Pull!”

“
What?
What about you?”

“Pull! Pull!” yelled Hylas.

The rope snapped taut against his thigh. The wooden prop creaked. He crawled across the bridge toward Beetle.

As he reached the stone teeth, the wooden prop creaked—tilted—and fell with a crash. Rocks thundered onto the bridge behind him, snapping it in two and sending it hurtling into the shaft.

The stone teeth juddered as he squeezed between them. Beetle was gone. The last of the mice were streaming up the tunnel.

It was endless and steep, and Hylas climbed till his breath was sawing in his chest.

Far above, he saw a dazzle of light.

From below came a deafening roar—then a
whump
and a rush of air blasting him forward. Through the noise and the billowing dust, he thought he heard shrill laughter. Glancing down, he seemed to glimpse shadowy figures whirling and twisting in a wild gleeful dance. The snatchers were reclaiming the deep levels.

Wheezing and coughing, Hylas crawled toward the light.

A
s the Light grew stronger, the lion cub finally understood that her mother wasn't going to wake up. Her face was crusted with flies, and when her fur moved, it wasn't her, it was maggots. This made the cub feel shaky inside.

Leaving the trees, she padded into the open, where the whispering grasses arched over her head and the Great Lion shone fierce in her eyes.

She heard a whooshing of wings.
Buzzard
.

She shot under a bush.

It wasn't a buzzard, it was a vulture.

The cub never used to be scared of vultures. Vultures don't hunt lion cubs, and they can be helpful, as their squawks tell lions where to find carcasses; but now, the cub was scared of everything.

Cowering beneath the bush, she watched the vulture rip her mother's belly with its beak. Another vulture lit down. Soon her mother had vanished beneath flapping, squabbling birds.

Miserably, the cub huddled under the bush, waiting for her father or the Old One to fetch her. It grew hotter. Flies crawled in her eyes, and although she lashed out with paws and tail, they never gave up.

At last it came to her. Her father and the Old One weren't coming back. The terrible men and their dogs had gotten them too.
She was on her own
.

This was so frightening that the lion cub put up her muzzle to cry. But there was no one to hear her.

She would have to go against everything she'd been taught, and set off alone.

She would have to look after herself.

Flies tormented her as she plodded along, and twice, as she watched anxiously for buzzards, she nearly fell down a hole.

She'd left the Mountain behind, and was in a dangerous place of sharp black rocks and thorny scrub; but something made her keep going.

She found a boulder and scrambled on top to catch the smells. She smelled
wet
. Somewhere close.

Eagerly, she bounded over the rocks. There: a small shining pool!

Mewing with delight, the lion cub lapped till she was full, then rolled so that she was beautifully muddy and cool. Thorn trees murmured encouragingly, and she heard the squawks of more vultures, not far off.

They were fighting over a dead deer. Greatly daring, the cub charged, snarling and swiping with her paws. To her astonishment, the vultures lifted into the Up.

The meat was tough, and the lion cub was too tired to tackle it for long. She would eat more when she'd had a sleep.

She woke from a sleep in which she'd heard the Old One calling to her. It was Dark. For a moment she thought she still heard those faraway grunts; but it was only the wind.

Her spirit sagged. Foxes and vultures had made off with the deer carcass, and the pool had dried up.

She prowled about, trying to hunt. She snuck up on a weasel, but it was too fast. A hedgehog was better, but when she pounced, it rolled into a ball and refused to be eaten. All she got was a prickle in her forepaw, and when she tried to pull it out with her teeth, it broke, leaving the point in her pad.

She was so hungry it hurt. Worse even than that, she was
lonely
.

In the blackness of the Up, the Great Lion shone silver, surrounded by his glittering females and his many cubs. His was the greatest pride of lions ever, but it was so far away that it only made the cub lonelier.

She missed her mother. When she was small, her mother would carry her in her jaws, sometimes putting one huge, comforting paw under her bottom; and the cub would bob along, washed in warm meaty breath . . .

It was beginning to get Light. Wearily, the lion cub hauled herself to her feet. She found a stick and did some scratching, but her pad hurt from the hedgehog prickle, so she stopped.

Suddenly, she sensed danger. She sped under a bush.

This time, it really
was
a buzzard. The cub watched it settle in a thorn tree just a pounce from where she hid. It knew she was here.

She was trapped. She'd scared off those vultures by pretending to be a full-grown, but that wouldn't work with the buzzard.

The lion cub was beginning to lose hope when suddenly the buzzard spread its wings and flew away.

Something had startled it. Could it be a lion?
Could it be her father, come to fetch her?

Then, on the wind, the cub caught a strange smell that was horribly familiar. Fear tightened her pelt.

It wasn't a lion who'd scared off that buzzard.

It was a human.