The Burning Shadow

by Michelle Paver

  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.

  14

  As 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.

  15

  Hylas chucked another stone at the buzzard. “Go away!” he croaked. He couldn’t risk it telling the Crows where he was.

  In the distance, Kreon’s stronghold glared down at him. Did they think he’d been killed down in the pit? Or had they found his trail and were coming after their runaway slave?

  The cave-in and the snatchers were an evil blur. He’d emerged from the tunnel to find himself on the Neck, so close to the guards’ camp he could hear them breathe. He remembered waiting till dark, then creeping up a gully and collapsing.

  After that, nothing till dawn.

  Had Zan and the others gotten out alive? And what had happened to Pirra? He’d been leaving signs for her as he went, but how would she ever escape from Kreon’s stronghold?

  From the Neck, he’d stumbled across a blistering plain of thornscrub and poisonous oleander. Instead of earth, there was brittle black rock: It looked as if it had once bubbled like mud, until a god had turned it to stone.

  The Sun was punishingly fierce, even though he’d used his knee-bindings for footcloths and to cover his head. He was thirsty, but when he came upon a spring, he was startled to find that the water was hot, and so salty he spat it out. His spirit quailed. Thalakrea didn’t want him. Here’s water, but you can’t drink.

  The Mountain loomed over him. Its lower slopes were green with thickets of prickly broom, and above them rose naked black cliffs. Smoke seeped endlessly from the weird, lopped-off summit. Hylas thought of fire spirits and the terrible Goddess who lived inside. But behind him in the distance, Kreon’s stronghold still glared down at him. He had to get into those thickets. Silently, he begged the Lady of Fire to let him.

 
Soon afterward, he killed a lizard with a rock. It was barely a mouthful, but he took it as a sign that She’d granted him leave. He tucked the lizard skin in his kilt—he’d find a use for it later—and felt a bit better. Come on, Hylas. The gods help those who help themselves.

  As he walked, he sensed eyes on him, and glimpsed a flash of lion-colored fur. It was a relief when it turned out to be a tussock of grass.

  At last he reached the thickets, and Kreon’s stronghold disappeared from view. In places, the broom grew as tall as trees, with gnarled roots and gullies where he could hide. Again he fancied he was being watched. Again it was nothing.

  He came to some straggly pines and the bones of a lioness, picked clean by scavengers. This was good. Lions need prey, there must be something here to eat.

  He followed a trail up a shoulder of the Mountain, hoping it led to another spring. It didn’t. He was now above the thicket, on a windswept ridge.

  A lonely wild pear tree clung to life amid great drifts of black obsidian pebbles. Scattered among them were marble hammerstones. It looked as if people had been coming here for years, to hack the obsidian from the ridge and make their weapons. Hylas found this encouraging. Now it was his turn.

  Back in Lykonia, he’d made weapons of flint. Obsidian was sharper and more brittle, shattering into vicious slivers; but it broke cleanly, and soon he’d shaped an axehead the length of his hand. As he worked, he sensed the ghosts of those long-dead weapon-makers watching with approval. Maybe they’d been Outsiders like him, used to living in the wild.

  For a shaft, he hacked a branch off the pear tree—muttering a hasty apology to its spirit—then gouged a slot in one end and jammed in the axehead. A clump of fireweed near the thicket would do for twine. Slitting the stems with his thumbnail, he chucked the pith and twisted what was left into cord, which he wound securely around the axehead.

  There. Sunlight glinted on the axe’s vicious black edges, and his spirits rose. It was good to have a weapon again. Now he was a hunter, not a slave.

  He still had the lizard skin, so he decided to make a slingshot. With a shard of obsidian, he trimmed the hide to an oblong, then scraped it clean to make a pouch for holding a stone. He cut slits in either end, then threaded through another length of fireweed twine, tying a knot at one end for a handy grip, and a loop at the other, to slip over his thumb.

  The slingshot made him feel even more like himself: He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known how to use one.

  The Sun was getting low. To the west, he spotted another ridge jutting from the Mountain, this one covered in trees. Leaving a few more signs for Pirra, he started down toward it. He passed a clump of rue and rubbed some on his limbs, to mask his scent and keep off the flies; he didn’t want them settling on his skin, then carrying his smell to the prey.

  It was cooler under the pines and the air smelled fresh and sweet. He munched goosefoot leaves and crunchy little bulbs of tassel hyacinths. He saw the shiny pellets of wild goat, and a patch of flattened grass where a hare had rested.

  He found another hot spring, ringed by vivid orange mud. The water wasn’t as hot as the last spring, and it tasted all right. He drank greedily, and strength coursed through him. Maybe Thalakrea wasn’t out to get him. Maybe he just had to learn its ways.

  The hare lolloped out of the brambles twenty paces away.

  Hylas froze.

  The hare was young and foolish. It sat up with its back to him and its paws on its belly.

  Not daring to breathe, Hylas swung his slingshot and let fly.

  He couldn’t risk a fire in case the Crows saw the smoke, so he ate the hare raw, drinking the blood and gobbling the sweet slithery liver. He chewed the knobbly little heart and as much meat as he could, but it was the first he’d had in moons, and he soon felt sick.

  Hastily, he thanked the hare for letting itself be eaten, and sprinkled dust on its nose to help its spirit hop off and find a new body. He set its forepaws on a boulder as an offering for the Lady of the Wild Things, its hind paws for the Lady of Fire, and stuck its tail in a bush for the long-dead stoneworkers on the ridge; they were the closest he’d ever gotten to having Ancestors of his own.

  He slung what was left of the carcass over a branch, to tackle tomorrow. Right now, he barely had enough strength to wash his hands.

  The hot water stung, but it felt good. Maybe it was a magic spring. On impulse, he slid all the way in.

  In his whole life, Hylas had only ever bathed in cold lakes and streams, and being in hot water felt incredibly strange. But he could feel it healing his cuts and soothing his knotted muscles; washing away the grime of the pit and the last traces of Flea the slave. When he climbed out, he was Hylas the Outsider. He was free.

  He was also dizzy with fatigue. He cut an armful of ferns, dragged them under a rocky overhang, and curled up.

  Tomorrow he would make needles from the hare’s bones and thread from its sinews, then sew a waterskin and a kilt from its hide. After that, he’d work out how to rescue Pirra . . .

  A knife, he thought hazily. You forgot to make a knife.

  An image of the dagger of Koronos floated into his mind. He saw its lethal bronze blade in all its savage beauty, and his fingers tightened to grasp its hilt. He’d only possessed it for a few days last summer, but it had made him feel stronger and less alone. He wished it were with him now.

  Gradually, his thoughts loosened. He was dimly aware of the song of the night crickets and bubbling of the spring . . .

  Was that something larger making its way through the ferns?

  Not big enough to be dangerous. Probably a badger or a fox.

  The ferns rocked him to sleep on a cool green-scented Sea.

  16

  The lion cub didn’t know what to make of the human.

  He was different from the ones who’d killed her mother and father. He was half-grown, and he had no dogs and no terrible flapping hide. And he’d scared off the buzzard.

  This made the cub wonder if he might be the one who was supposed to look after her. She’d thought it would be a lion; but somehow, this human felt right.

  All through the Light, she’d padded after him: past the hot wet and into the thickets, past the bones that had been her mother, up the ridge and down to the forest. They’d wandered for ages, and her bad paw hurt a lot. Why did he walk when it was glarey and hot, then sleep through the beautiful cool Dark?

  Now he was whiffling in the ferns, so she crept out from under the bushes.

  She was encouraged to find that he’d left his kill for her, and even playfully hidden some of the bits. The paws and tail were too furry to eat, so she had a wonderful game of toss-and-catch before drowning them in the hot wet. Then she attacked the carcass, which he’d slung over a branch. In one huge leap she caught it in her jaws, then pretended it was trying to get away, and pounced. Like a full-grown lioness hauling her kill, she dragged it about between her front legs. When she got bored, she ate as much as she could, and clawed the rest to shreds.

  After this, she climbed on a log and lay with her legs on either side, to have a nap. At last she was sure about the human. He was definitely the one.

  Hylas knows he is dreaming, and he doesn’t want it to end. He’s with Issi on Mount Lykas, playing bears and wolves. She’s the wolf and he’s the bear, and as usual she’s cheating, wielding her slingshot with deadly accuracy and pelting him with chestnuts.

  “Wolves don’t use slingshots!” he shouts.

  “Neither do bears!” she yells when he pelts her back.

  Now Pirra is with them too, and she and Issi are ganging up on him, chasing him through the bracken with wild wolf howls as they hurl pebbles and sticks. He’s laughing so hard he can barely run. Then he has an idea, and doubles back to sneak up on them.

  He bursts out with a roar, and now they’re running away, squealing and sputtering wit
h laughter. He glimpses a flash of fair hair, that’s Issi up ahead. He pushes through the undergrowth, he’s gaining on her—

  Hylas woke up.

  Moonlight slanted through the pines. He heard the night crickets and the bubbling spring. Dejection crashed over him. It had felt so real.

  Was Issi trying to dream to him? Was Pirra? Or was it one of those false visions the gods send to make fun of a mortal?

  Sometimes, down the pit, he had imagined what it would be like if he and Pirra ever got back to Mount Lykas and found Issi. At first, Issi would be wary of Pirra, but they’d soon become friends. And Pirra would like the mountains, and he would show her all his favorite places . . .

  Scowling, Hylas turned onto his side. Issi was far away, and Pirra was trapped in Kreon’s stronghold. He didn’t know what to do. If he managed to escape Thalakrea and went after Issi, then Pirra would never get free. If he went back to rescue Pirra, he might lose his chance of finding Issi.

  In the forest, an owl uttered a wavering oo-hoo. Much closer, something heavy fell with a thud.

  Hylas was instantly alert. Reaching for his axe, he crept out into the moonlight.

  His camp had been wrecked. Every part of the hare’s remains—even the offerings—had been savaged. What hadn’t been eaten had been shredded, flung about and trampled into the mud.

  A scavenger would have eaten what they could, then hidden the rest. This devastation must be an attack by some bad spirit . . .

  At the corner of his vision, he caught movement. There, behind that log.

  The lion cub wasn’t much good at hiding. Its bottom stuck out, but because it couldn’t see Hylas, it seemed to think that he couldn’t see it.

  “Shoo!” shouted Hylas, waving his axe. “Go on, shoo!”