The Burning Shadow

by Michelle Paver

“Do it,” Hekabi told Pirra again.

  Her blood roared in her ears. Swiftly, she grasped two snakes behind their heads, as she’d seen her mother do, and held them up. She felt their soft coils wrapping around her arms. Their tiny tongues flickered like black lightning. Kreon watched every move, his terror and loathing coming at her like heat from a fire.

  “Approach the Chieftain,” commanded Hekabi.

  With her arms raised, Pirra took a step toward the Chieftain, who sat hunched on the bench, gripping his knees.

  Close up, Pirra saw that his beard and his long greasy hair were entwined with bronze wire. She saw ash crusting his cheeks. She caught the rank smell of his fear. But his red-rimmed eyes stared as if she didn’t exist. He saw only the snakes.

  Hekabi circled the chamber, strewing herbs. “To banish the dream snakes,” she said calmly, “we need to know why they came.” She caught Pirra’s eye. Stay there. “The spirits tell me that you’ve dug too deep. You’ve offended the Lady of Fire.”

  Kreon snorted. “We worship powers not even She can withstand.” But a thick vein was throbbing in his temple.

  “The spirits send me a vision of a dagger,” said Hekabi.

  He licked his lips. “My father’s bringing it to hallow the rites at the dark of the Moon. The Angry Ones will bend the Lady to our will. Then at last Thalakrea will truly belong to me.”

  Hekabi nodded, and Pirra saw how clever she was, using the snakes to distract him, and pretending she knew more than she did, to make him talk.

  “I see other hands reaching for the dagger,” Hekabi said softly.

  His face darkened. “My brother and sister. Plotting to take Thalakrea for themselves.”

  Suddenly, Pirra noticed that a snake had escaped the basket and was slithering toward him. With her foot she tried to shoo it away.

  Too late. With a cry of loathing, Kreon seized the snake, crushed it in his fist, and tossed it on the fire.

  In horror, Pirra watched it twitch and go still. The snakes in her hands sensed their brother’s death and became agitated. Gently, she rubbed their jaws with her thumbs, and made a silent promise to release them into the Wild.

  “What else do the spirits tell you?” panted Kreon.

  “They tell me that Kreon is master of Thalakrea,” said Hekabi soothingly. “Kreon will seal the treaty with Keftiu—”

  “Keftiu!” he spat. “We don’t need treaties. We’ll take Keftiu for our own, then all its riches will be ours.”

  Pirra nearly dropped the snakes.

  Hekabi shot her a warning glance.

  “They look down on us as savages,” Kreon went on, “but who has the warriors? Who has the power? Soon we will—” He broke off and put his hands to his temples. “The pain. It’s gone.”

  Ilarkos gaped.

  Kreon stared at Hekabi in wonder.

  “I told you it would be,” she said. From her pouch, she took a goathorn vial and a shriveled root. “Rub this oil on your temples twice a day and chew a piece of this root the size of a pomegranate seed before sleep. If the snakes return, send for me again.”

  “You did it,” murmured Ilarkos when they were out in the passage.

  Pirra hardly heard him. The Crows planned to invade Keftiu. This was why they were so hungry for bronze: to make war on her people.

  In front of her, Hekabi staggered and sank to her knees.

  “Hekabi?” said Pirra.

  The wisewoman was writhing on the floor, her face clammy and pale.

  “What is it?” said Ilarkos.

  “What’s happening?” cried Kreon from the doorway.

  Hekabi was arching her back and thrashing from side to side. Her lips were flecked with foam, her eyes rolled up into their sockets. “I see him . . .” she whispered in a deep voice not her own. “He crawls out of the earth . . . the red river swallows Thalakrea . . . The Outsider lives . . .”

  “What?” roared Kreon. “What does she say?”

  “She’s raving, my lord,” said Ilarkos. “Guards! Take them to their cell!”

  “The Outsider lives,” rasped Hekabi.

  “The Outsider is dead!” bellowed Kreon. “With my brother’s dying breath he called to the Angry Ones and They heard him, the Outsider is dead! Dead!”

  Dead! Dead! The echoes followed them down the passage.

  Back in their cell, Pirra set the snake basket on the floor and slumped down with her hands to her mouth. The dagger of Koronos was coming to Thalakrea. The Crows were going to invade Keftiu. Hylas was alive.

  With a moan, Hekabi sat up. Her face was waxen, but she seemed herself again. “What happened?” she mumbled. “How long did it last?”

  “You’re not a fake,” said Pirra.

  The wisewoman leaned against the wall and shut her eyes. “Of course I’m not. It came on when I was your age. I fell and hit my head. That’s how I got this.” She touched her magpie streak.

  “Why pretend to be a fake?”

  “Work it out.”

  Pirra thought for a moment. “You needed me to believe I was forcing you to help me, so that I wouldn’t suspect that you wanted me here all along.”

  “Very good,” said Hekabi drily.

  “You knew the Crows were planning to invade Keftiu—”

  “I only suspected. Now I know.”

  “—and you wanted me to hear it, so that I’d tell my mother.”

  “And then she’ll do what Keftiu should have done ten years ago. She’ll rid the Islands of the Crows.”

  Footsteps in the passage, and Ilarkos came in, shaking his head in disbelief. “I thought he would have you killed—but he’s impressed. He wants you to stay.”

  “I’ll attend him whenever he likes,” Hekabi said firmly, “but I won’t stay here. I must be free to come and go.”

  Ilarkos inclined his head with new respect. “As you wish.”

  When he’d gone, Hekabi wiped the sweat from her face. “What did I say when I was in the trance? Tell me exactly.”

  Pirra hesitated. “You said the Outsider lives.”

  Hekabi frowned. “The Outsider . . . But who is that? And why does he frighten Kreon?”

  Again Pirra hesitated. She moved closer to Hekabi. “There was an Oracle,” she whispered. “It said, If an Outsider wields the blade, the House of Koronos burns. I’m pretty sure they’ve kept it secret. All their warriors know is that Outsiders must be killed.”

  Hekabi’s eyes gleamed. “That boy you spoke to at the pools. It’s him, isn’t it? The Outsider. Don’t deny it, I can see it in your eyes.”

  Pirra licked her lips. “You said he’s alive. You said you saw him crawl out of the earth. That must mean he survived the cave-in.”

  “Go to him. I’ll tell them I need you to gather herbs. Find him. Warn him that they know. Find him,” she repeated. “If he’s an enemy of Kreon, then he’s my friend! Now go!”

  19

  The lion cub shoved her head under the boy’s forepaw and gave an impatient mew. He went on sleeping, so she climbed on his belly and flexed her claws—and he woke with a yelp.

  Yawning and growling, he crawled to the hot wet. Earlier, he’d fished out the hare’s paws and tail and flung them into the bushes for her to find. Now she watched curiously as he drank, not lapping like a lion, but scooping the wet in his long thin forepaws.

  After this, he grabbed a stick and dug under a plant. She pushed in to sniff, but he wouldn’t let her. Then he pulled out a root and ate it. The cub was impressed.

  She’d been wondering why he didn’t lick her clean, but now she realized that his tongue was too smooth: useless for giving one’s fur a nice rasping lick. His teeth weren’t much good either, and his claws were hopeless, he couldn’t even pull them in and out. He had no tail, so he couldn’t lash it when he was angry, and without a tail-tuft, he couldn’t signa
l in long grass. Oddest of all, he had neither whiskers nor fur, except for a shaggy little mane that didn’t go all around his face. This worried the cub. How did he keep warm?

  He was sitting on the ground, talking to her. She liked his voice, it was calm and strong, so she stood on her hind legs, put her forepaws on his shoulders, and licked his nose. He yelped, but she sensed this was his way of laughing, so she licked harder. Now they were rolling about, play-fighting. The lion cub felt better than she had since her mother was killed.

  After this, the boy splashed her to wash her clean, which she didn’t mind, then took hold of her bad paw—which she did. He yanked the prickle out of her pad. She shot under a bush and hissed. That hurt.

  Shaken, she watched him chewing leaves and mixing them with mud. Now what was he up to?

  Talking softly, he crawled toward her and again reached for her bad paw. She snarled, but to her astonishment, he grabbed it and smeared the pad with the leafy-smelling mud. She was so startled that she forgot about biting and licked it off. The boy smeared on some more. She licked that off too. They played this game for a while until he got cross and chewed some different leaves, which tasted so awful that she left them alone.

  After that she had a nap, and when she woke up, her paw was better.

  Later, the boy rose to his full, tree-like height and spoke to her. The cub was instantly alert. He was going hunting, and he wanted her to go with him.

  Feeling important, she trotted behind this tall furless creature who’d taken the place of her pride. He wasn’t a lion, but his mane was the color of a lion’s mane, and his strange narrow eyes were lion-colored too.

  The cub felt in her fur that although he was not lion, there was lion in his spirit.

  The day before, Hylas had trapped two partridges, and this morning a lucky shot killed a small deer.

  Havoc pushed in to investigate. “No,” he told her firmly.

  The lion cub gazed up at him imploringly.

  He snorted. “After what you did to that hare?”

  With the deer over one shoulder, he started back for camp, Havoc trotting behind him.

  After lots of food and sleep—much of it sprawled on top of him—she’d recovered with astonishing speed. Her belly was plump, her fur fluffy and soft. Best of all, she was learning to trust him. She would bound toward him with eager little grunts—ng ng ng—then flop onto her back and waggle her big spotty paws, asking to be scratched.

  It was wonderful to have someone to talk to and look after. In some ways, she reminded him of his dog, Scram. She was insatiably curious, always scrambling into his lap to be part of what he was doing; always wanting attention. But she had a lion’s unnerving ability to vanish in long grass, and unlike a dog, she didn’t wag her tail when she was pleased, she lashed it when she was annoyed. What annoyed her most was being ignored. She hated that.

  She was still limping a bit, so at camp he made another poultice of bitter wormwood and smeared it on her pad and on the cut on her nose. Then he tossed her the deer’s guts to keep her quiet.

  While she was happily getting filthy again, he butchered the carcass with his new obsidian knife. He would dry some meat and bury the rest in hot mud by the spring; no need to risk a fire with so much heat in the ground. Then he’d wash the hide, rub it with mashed brain, and sling it over a branch; it might be big enough to make a waterskin and a kilt.

  All this would take time, and he needed to go after Pirra. But he wouldn’t be much use to her if he died of thirst on the way.

  Around dusk, he cracked open the mud and ate the juicy, tender meat. Havoc was awake, gazing up at the deerskin on its branch. Hylas could see her plotting to climb the tree, so to distract her, he wove a rough wicker ball out of fireweed. “Look, Havoc! Fetch!”

  She didn’t know about fetching, but she adored the ball. They had an amazing game of toss and catch around camp and in and out of the spring; then Havoc was suddenly tired, and flopped down and fell asleep.

  Hylas sat chewing a deer rib, while she lay against him, her tail twitching in her dreams. Strange. A few days ago, he hadn’t known she existed. Now it felt as if they’d always been together.

  Havoc trotted ahead, then turned and looked back at Hylas. Keep up. She seemed surprisingly at ease on the Mountain, and had found this goat trail winding up its shoulder.

  Hylas trudged after her. The noonday Sun beat down on him, and he was laden with the waterskin, a bundle of meat, and Havoc’s beloved wicker ball, which she’d refused to leave behind.

  A glance over his shoulder revealed that they’d climbed higher than he’d thought. The forest and the thickets, the obsidian ridge and the wild pear tree, lay far below.

  He’d decided not to risk retracing his tracks to the Neck, so he was climbing this spur, to spy out the land from there. He might spot some way of avoiding the mines—although as yet he had no idea how he was going to rescue Pirra.

  He hated to think of her shut up in Kreon’s stronghold. If Kreon found out who she was, he would use her for his own ends. Hylas’ mind skittered away from what those might be.

  He’d climbed too far. He was on a slope of coarse black sand dotted with clumps of brittle red grass. No cover except for a rocky outcrop, and above that, charcoal cliffs rising to the summit. Smoke wafted down. He caught its rotten-egg stink.

  As he neared the outcrop, the stink grew suddenly worse and the earth turned hot underfoot. He stopped.

  Two paces ahead, smoke spurted angrily from a crack in the ground. It was about the size of his fist, and around it the black sand was spattered with astonishing crystals of deep, throbbing yellow. Like the droppings of some fiery creature, they formed a spiky crust around the crack—from which jetted that stinking smoke and a fierce, continuous, bubbling hisss.

  Something Zan had said came back to him. Fire spirits live in cracks in the ground, all spiky and hot.

  Hylas felt a blast of heat: as if some unseen spirit had swept past him out of its lair. He backed away. But to his astonishment, Havoc padded toward the crack, quite unafraid.

  “Havoc, come down,” he called sharply. He didn’t dare raise his voice, or go and fetch her. There is a veil that separates the world of men from that of immortals, and he knew he was far too close.

  “Havoc!” he said again.

  Suddenly the wind shifted and he was engulfed in choking hot smoke. The stink was a kick in the throat. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

  “Havoc!” he gasped, blundering down the slope.

  She came bounding toward him, then turned her head, as if to follow something he couldn’t see.

  “What is it?” he panted.

  In her tawny eyes, he glimpsed little flickers of flame—although on the Mountainside, he could see no fire. Then she sneezed and rubbed her forehead against his calf.

  “We’ve come too high,” he muttered. “We’ve got to go back.”

  That fire spirit had been warning him. This was a place for immortals, not for men.

  The lion cub watched the fire spirit pass within a tail-flick of the boy—but to her surprise, he didn’t see it.

  Around him on the Mountainside, more fire spirits were flickering in and out of their lairs. Some were big and crackly, others silent and small. The boy didn’t seem to see any of them.

  The lion cub wondered what to do. She’d brought him here because she’d sensed that he wanted to climb the Mountain, but now she worried that he would get bitten.

  Sure enough, he was just about to tread in the lair of a small fire spirit.

  The lion cub raced down and threw herself against his leg. Not that way!

  The fire spirit spat, and the boy yelped and hopped away.

  After this, the lion cub stayed close and did her best to steer him out of danger.

  A large fire spirit drifted in front of her, and she smoothed back her ear
s respectfully. The fire spirit crackled past her and shimmered into its den.

  Completely unaware, the boy stumbled to some rocks and stopped to pour some wet on his burned hind leg. Feeling quite grown-up, the lion cub followed.

  She realized now that although he was supposed to look after her, in some ways, she had to look after him.

  Hylas finished washing his burned ankle, and smeared on a gobbet of deer fat. Havoc glanced back at the fire spirits’ lairs, then padded down to lie beside him, stretched on her belly with her forelegs straight in front and her golden head held high.

  “Can you actually see fire spirits?” he asked her quietly.

  She turned her head and looked at him. Her eyes were clear tawny, marked with darker amber, like the rings in a tree. He could no longer see the tiny leaping flames.

  “Can you?” he said again.

  She gave a huge yawn that ended in a whine, then rubbed her forehead against his thigh.

  For the first time since he’d found her, he wondered what power had brought them together. When she’d wrecked his camp, she’d eaten the offerings he’d set out. If a wild creature does that, it means they’ve been sent by an immortal.

  But Havoc? This mischievous little cub, a messenger from the gods?

  And yet. Hylas remembered the lion he’d encountered on the day he was taken for a slave. If it hadn’t been for that lion, he wouldn’t have been caught and brought to Thalakrea.

  Had it wanted him to be caught? Had it meant him to find Havoc?

  All he knew was that in some way, they were meant to be together.

  Suddenly, Havoc sprang to her feet and raced to the edge of the rocks. She was staring east and her ears were pricked. Listening.

  “What is it?” whispered Hylas.

  Then he heard it too, and his belly tightened.

  The baying of dogs.

  20

  Pirra ducked behind the wild pear tree and listened.

  Wind. Crickets. No dogs. But she had heard them.

  Creeping to the edge of the ridge, she peered down at the sweltering black plain she’d just struggled across. No men and no dogs, although in places the thorn scrub was too dense to see.