The Burning Shadow

by Michelle Paver

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 . . .”

  At last the sky turned gray and they reached a trio of silent pools at the foot of a stark red hill. Pirra heard the din of hammers. She saw crows circling another rocky hill on a headland, from which a squat, uncouth stronghold glared down.

  The warriors halted near the pools and sat on boulders, unslinging their food pouches and easing their shoulders. Pirra watched hungrily as they drew out leather wine flasks and mouthwatering slabs of dried tuna.

  A gang of boys was filling waterskins. They were painfully thin and covered in red dust, with the cropped hair of slaves. Pirra guessed they were from the mines.

  Hekabi told her to go and fill the waterskins, but she refused; she wasn’t going near the warriors, or those slaves. Hekabi leaned closer. “Shall I tell them who you are?”

  Pirra glared at her. Snatching the skins, she stalked off.

  To her relief, the warriors were too hungry to notice her, and she found a spot some distance from them and the slaves.

  As she knelt by the shallows, she saw one of the boys edging toward the warriors. When the nearest man opened his food pouch, the boy sidled closer. When the man glanced up, the boy stopped and tended to his waterskins.

  Now the warrior was sharpening his knife on a whetstone.

  What happened next was so fast that Pirra didn’t even see it. One moment there was a chunk of tuna jutting from the man’s pouch; the next, it was gone, the sack’s contents were deftly rearranged so that he wouldn’t notice, and the boy had shot under the willows and was gobbling his prize with the ferocity of a wild beast savaging its kill.

  Pirra froze.

  The boy was Hylas.

  11

  He seemed to sense her staring, and lifted his head.

  For one astonished heartbeat, his tawny eyes widened. Then he went back to demolishing his fish. He was pretending he hadn’t recognized her, but he had.

  Squatting with her waterskin, Pirra sidled closer. “Hylas, it’s me!”

  “Shut up!” he hissed.

  She remembered that the Crows knew his name; he’d be using a false one. “Sorry. I—”

  “I thought you were safe in Keftiu! How’d they get you too?”

  “What? Oh—no, I’m not a slave, I just look like one. I escaped from Keftiu. I thought I’d ended up here by chance—but not anymore . . .” She was gabbling. But it was so incredibly good to see him.

  On the other side of the pool, an older boy with a hook nose and a scowl shouted at someone called Flea to hurry up. Hylas shouted back that he was coming.

  “Did you find your sister?” whispered Pirra.

  “Does it look like it?”

  “What happened to your earlobe?”

  “I got a man to cut it off.”

  She winced. “Was that so they wouldn’t know you’re an Outsider?”

  “Sh!” He cast about him. “Shouldn’t have bothered,” he added. “Nobody’d recognize me like this.”

  He was right. He’d been skinny before, but now his shoulder blades jutted like knives, and she could see every one of his ribs. He was caked in red filth, and his back was covered in weals. Only the way he moved had alerted her, and his straight nose that made an unbroken line with his brow.

  “Stop staring,” he muttered.

  She bristled. “You must be a bit glad to see me. And thank you, yes,” she added tartly, “I did manage to escape from the House of the Goddess, and it was actually quite hard.”

  He snorted a laugh, and was suddenly much more like himself. “So how’d you do it, then?”

  “I bribed a wisewoman. That’s her over there. She said we were going to the White Mountains, but she lied.” She gulped. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  He frowned, but she could tell he was pleased. “What,” he said, “stinking like a dung heap and crawling with lice?”

  “Well, I bet I don’t look much better.”

  He flashed her a grin. “You’re right about that. Bit of a change from gold spangles and Keftian purple.”

  She laughed, and smoothed her tunic over her knees. “I got it from a peasant. Do I look like a boy?”

  “No. You haven’t got a hope of looking like a boy.”

  “Oh,” said Pirra, oddly pleased.

  Hylas splashed her.

  She splashed him back. “You’re a really good thief,” she said enviously.

  He shrugged. “Lots of practice. You’re going to need to learn how.”

  “But you did take a chance stealing from a Crow. What if he’d recognized you?”

  “He wouldn’t. I’m a slave. Nobody looks at slaves.”

  The Sun was rising, and farther off, the other boys had filled their waterskins.

  “I’ll help you escape,” said Pirra.

  He threw her a strange, lost look. “You can’t. I tried twice. Got as far as the Neck over there. Zan
tracked me—”

  “Who’s Zan?”

  “Pirra, listen! I’m a slave, see? A pit spider. That means I go down the pit every day and don’t come out till dark. Down there it’s not just rockfalls you got to watch out for, it’s snatchers. And one’s got into Spit and he’s . . .” He could see that she had no idea what he was talking about.

  One of the warriors ambled to the pool’s edge not five paces away from them. Hylas retreated farther into the willows, and Pirra bent over the water.

  The warrior dipped in his head, then returned to the others, wringing out his long black hair.

  “Spit’s what?” prompted Pirra. The Crows were ready to move off, and Hekabi was beckoning.

  “Can a spirit get inside a person?” Hylas said abruptly.

  “What? Yes, sometimes. It sends them mad. They bring people like that to the House of the Goddess to be cured. It doesn’t always work.”

  “That’s what’s happened to Spit, but the others don’t believe me.” His jaw tightened. “I watch him all the time. And I’ve learned the places where there are beams propping up the roof. They’ll be our only hope if he tries anything. Although what good will that be if the tunnel caves in and we’re trapped?”

  He was talking to himself; she couldn’t follow. “What do you mean, if he tries anything?”

  He swallowed. “He’s going to bring down the mine.”

  Pirra’s spine prickled. Hylas was scared. It took a lot to frighten him.

  Hekabi was coming to fetch her, looking annoyed.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  Hylas jerked his head at the warriors. “Do they know who you are?”

  “Of course not!”

  “So where are they taking you?”

  “Kreon.”

  “Kreon? What’s he want with you?”

  “Not me, Hekabi. I’m supposed to be her slave.”

  He was struggling to take it in. “Whatever you do, keep your head down and don’t say anything! Someone might remember what you look like.”

  “Thanks, I’d managed to think of that myself.” She gave him a wry smile, but he didn’t smile back.