The Burning Shadow

by Michelle Paver

  Hylas shook his head.

  “It’s what people used to call the High Chieftain. I had a farm, not far from Mycenae. And now here’s this cub. That’s some kind of sign.”

  “But—it’s not her fault!”

  Slowly, Akastos sheathed his knife. “Get it out of here,” he said thickly.

  Hylas thought fast. “I could hide her behind the smithy. I could take her food—”

  “Do it.”

  Hylas hesitated. He hardly dared remind Akastos of what he’d been saying before Havoc had appeared, but he had to know. “You won’t—you won’t give me to Kreon, will you?”

  Akastos rubbed a hand over his face. “Just get that creature out of here.”

  The big dark-maned human glared at them as the boy staggered from the den with the lion cub in his forepaws.

  She was too frightened to struggle. Her pads hurt and she was hungry. On the Mountain, the girl had killed a lizard for her, but on the plain they’d lost each other, and for a desperate time the cub had been alone.

  At last she’d caught the boy’s scent, but he was with the bad humans, so she’d stayed hidden. She’d followed him to this dreadful noisy place where humans attacked the earth as if it had done something wrong, and the earth growled back—although they didn’t seem to hear. The lion cub hated it, but she had to stay close to the boy.

  Now he carried her to some boulders behind the den. They smelled of dust and beetles. No lions. Fearfully, she padded to the edge. Far below, a vast glittery creature with a wrinkled gray pelt pawed at rocks with a low, unceasing roar. The cub flattened her ears and shot back to the boulders.

  Speaking softly, the boy pushed her into a little hollow behind a bush. It smelled friendly. The cub felt a bit safer. The boy ran off and returned with some fish. While she was eating, he ran off again. Wearily, she heaved herself up to follow.

  Something yanked her back. With an indignant yowl, she tried to pull free. The same thing happened. The cub was astonished. Something was wound around her neck. It was attached to the bush, that was why she couldn’t get away. It wouldn’t take long to gnaw through. But suddenly, she was too tired.

  As her head drooped onto her paws, she thought of the dark-maned human. She wasn’t sure what to feel about him. She sensed that he was always alert, like a hunting lion, and that his heart was a tangle of good and bad.

  What frightened her most was that under his human scent, she’d caught a whiff of something else: the black, biting smell of the terrible spirits who haunted her very worst sleeps.

  The molten bronze trembled like a pool of liquid Sun.

  Hylas labored at the bellows. Akastos twisted a withe around the crucible and lifted it clear of the embers. Hylas dropped the bellows, and grabbed a stick with a flat piece of slate mounted on the end. Akastos poured a dazzling stream of fire into the mold, while Hylas held the slate’s edge just above the lip of the crucible to keep back any specks of charcoal floating on the bronze. Blazing white flames splashed over the mold, and Hylas glimpsed the throbbing red form within. Akastos wiped his forehead. Another axe was born.

  Hylas had been at the smithy for three days. Telamon hadn’t been back, and there’d been no sign of Pirra. Hylas hoped she was all right, because there was nothing he could do to help.

  Havoc had chewed through three tethers, but hadn’t touched the fourth, which he’d smeared with scat. By day, the threat of buzzards and the din from the smithy kept her in her hiding place. At night she grew restless, and Hylas worried that she’d throttle herself, so he’d persuaded Akastos—who remained wary of her—to allow her in the smithy, provided she gave no trouble. Hylas kept her occupied with scraps of sacking and another wicker ball, which she loved just as much as the old one.

  Akastos drove Hylas hard, making him tend the fire and burnish the newborn weapons; but he fed him well, and he taught him things. He said the most precious metal was silver, and the rarest was iron, which fell from the stars—but the most desired was gold. It came from rivers, and you found it by washing sand over sheepskins, so that the grains snagged in the wool and turned the fleece gold.

  At other times, Akastos questioned Hylas closely. How long had he had the dagger? What could he remember of the cave-in, and Periphas? Then Hylas wondered if the smith was merely keeping him safe for some secret purpose of his own.

  Hylas hoped he was wrong. Akastos was ruthless, but Hylas liked him and wanted his approval. If he’d had a father, he would have wanted him to resemble the smith.

  “Wake up, Flea,” growled Akastos. “Fire’s dying down.”

  Hylas re-applied himself to the bellows. Their clay nozzle poked through a hole in a stone slab that shielded him from the embers, but he was still streaming sweat.

  A hiss of steam as Akastos cooled the mold in the trough, then up-ended it and tapped the bottom with the butt of his hammer, to release the axe head. The new bronze was a beautiful, shiny dark-gold.

  “Why do people make bronze?” said Hylas. “I mean, why not just use copper?”

  Akastos’ lip curled. “You’re always asking questions, Flea. Bronze is harder than copper, and it takes a sharper edge.”

  “Is that why the Crows—”

  “Yes.” He lowered his voice. “The Crows made their dagger of bronze so that they could gain its endurance and strength.” He studied the axe. “Bronze never grows old. It heals like flesh, and draws lightning from the sky. Which is why,” he added drily, “it’s a good idea not to raise your weapon in a storm.”

  He seemed to be in a forthcoming mood, so Hylas risked the question he’d been longing to ask. “How did you learn to be a smith?”

  “On my father’s farm,” Akastos said curtly. With his hammer, he struck the axe. He went on striking, as if to obliterate his thoughts. Hylas knew not to ask any more.

  Akastos made hammering look easy, but once, he’d let Hylas try. The hammer was so heavy he could barely lift it one-handed, and his blow had bounced off with a clang. “Harder, Flea, you won’t hurt it! Bronze is a survivor, like you and me. The harder you hit it, the tougher it gets.”

  By now, the axe was battle-hard. Akastos turned to the crucible, where more bronze was heating, and they began again. And when they’d amassed a pile of axes, spearheads, arrowheads, and knives, that would be another day done.

  Hylas had swiftly realized that by pretending to be a smith, Akastos had created the perfect disguise. The mute slaves kept others from the smithy and warned him when to don his mask; and as he ruled the ridge, he could order the ash from the forge and the slag from the furnaces hauled away each day, without anyone guessing that this was to avoid attracting the Angry Ones.

  But why had he come to Thalakrea? And what terrible crime had he committed, that he was haunted by the spirits of vengeance?

  Dusk fell and the furnaces went quiet—although at the smithy, Hylas and Akastos would take turns through the night to feed the fire and mutter the ancient spell against the Angry Ones.

  It was Hylas’ turn to stay awake. On a pallet by the wall, Akastos slept more restlessly than usual; he’d caught his thumb with his hammer, and the nail was turning black.

  Hylas sat by the forge with Havoc at his feet. She seemed subdued, and lay quietly shredding a scrap of sacking with her claws.

  Hylas nodded with fatigue as he mumbled the charm. The smithy was full of shadows. He thought of the haunted gully last summer, where the Angry Ones had nearly driven him mad with terror. They were drawn to burned things. And the Crows daubed ash on their cheeks . . . Could it be that they worshipped them?

  His head sank onto his chest. The spell blurred to a meaningless jumble.

  From the rafters, something dropped to the floor and came lurching toward him—

  He jerked awake.

  On his pallet, Akastos stirred and muttered in his sleep.

  Havoc stood tensel
y, her ears pricked.

  “What is it?” whispered Hylas.

  She turned her head, and her golden eyes threw back the firelight.

  Despite the heat, he went cold. Something had thudded onto the roof.

  Shakily, he took a burning brand and swept the smithy. Shadows fled the light. Nothing else. And yet his skin crawled and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  With pounding heart, he stepped outside. For once, Havoc didn’t push past him, but stayed in the smithy.

  The roof loomed against the stars. Hylas remembered that tomorrow was the dark of the Moon, when the Angry Ones would be at their most powerful.

  Something black hitched itself off the thatch and flew away.

  With a cry, Hylas recoiled—and backed into Akastos.

  “It’s not them,” said the smith.

  “Y-you’re sure?”

  “Oh, I’d know it, Flea.”

  Hylas breathed out. “How long till they find you?”

  “Who knows?” He touched the thong at his wrist. “I bear the smith’s sealstone; it’ll help throw them off for a while.”

  “What happened to the real Dameas?”

  Akastos hesitated. “Let’s just say he gave it to me.”

  Back in the smithy, Hylas fed Havoc a rind of goat’s cheese and sat hugging his knees to stop them trembling.

  Akastos woke the fire in the forge and made it blaze. In the leaping light, Hylas saw the scars on his shoulders and chest. Not for the first time, he wondered if they were battle scars. He’d noticed that the smith’s right arm was slightly more muscled than the left. Was that from wielding a hammer, or a sword?

  “Why are the Angry Ones after you?” he said quietly. “Who did you kill?”

  29

  “Strange,” said Akastos, watching the flames. “They hate fire because it gives light, and yet they’re drawn to burned things. As bitter as guilt.”

  “I know about guilt,” said Hylas.

  “At your age? I doubt that.”

  Hylas told him how he’d decoyed the Crows away from Issi, then hadn’t been able to find her.

  “You were a boy against warriors,” said Akastos. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But she’ll think I abandoned her.” He picked a scab off his knee. “Sometimes I think that if I keep Havoc safe, the Lady of the Wild Things will look after Issi.”

  A shadow of pity crossed Akastos’ face. “Be careful, Flea, you’re growing too attached to that cub. If you become attached to things, you get hurt.”

  Hylas swallowed. “Do you still think Havoc’s an omen?”

  Akastos prodded the fire with a stick. “Well, people did call the High Chieftain of Mycenae a lion—I mean the real High Chieftain, before Koronos took over—and my farm was on the plains, just below the citadel. Then years later, a boy walks into my smithy: an Outsider with a lion claw around his neck and a lion cub at his heels. So yes, Flea, I think she’s an omen—although I don’t know what it means.”

  As if she knew they were talking about her, Havoc came and leaned against Hylas. He scratched her scruff, and she licked his knee, then lay down on his feet and went to sleep.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in omens,” said Hylas.

  “I said I don’t rely on oracles. Oracles are riddles spoken by seers; omens are signs made by animals. Seers lie. Animals don’t.”

  Hylas said, “Where I come from, farmers have bent backs and crooked legs. You don’t look like a farmer to me.”

  Akastos shrugged. “The Mycenaean plains are the richest in Akea, the farming’s easy. I had barley fields, olive groves. And vines . . . my wine was the darkest, the strongest . . . The Crows took it all.”

  “Did you have a family?”

  He hesitated. “My son would be about your age if he’d lived.” His face grew distant, remembering. “At first it was only Koronos and his blood kin, with a small band of warriors. They came from their ancestral chieftaincy, Lykonia, and they brought gifts. The High Chieftain wasn’t fooled, but others were—till it was nearly too late. For a time, the struggle for power lay on a knife edge. It would be decided in the mountains around Mycenae. They were home to a tribe of Outsiders—”

  “Outsiders?” cried Hylas.

  “They weren’t outcasts, as they are where you come from, but proud people, incredibly skilled at woodlore. They knew the mountains like nobody else. You never heard of them?”

  Hylas shook his head. “What happened then?”

  “The High Chieftain went to their leader and sought his help against the Crows.” His voice hardened. “The leader of the Outsiders wanted no part in it. He said it was no concern of his people. Soon after, the tide turned in favor of the Crows. The High Chieftain was killed. Mycenae fell to Koronos.” He paused. “About that time, the Angry Ones came after me.”

  Hylas waited, not daring to breathe.

  “I had a brother,” said Akastos. “He was also my best friend. The Crows told him lies about me and we fought.” He opened his hands and let something fall that only he could see. “I killed him. I killed my brother.”

  The fire crackled. The smithy felt airless and hot.

  “The Angry Ones descended like a plague,” Akastos told the flames. “Blighting my crops, my cattle. I had to leave the farm, or there’d have been nothing left.” He drew a breath. “So. That’s why I’m always moving on to the next hiding place, the next disguise. Because I killed my brother.”

  Hylas forced himself to look Akastos in the eye. “It was the Crows’ fault, not yours. They made you do it.”

  “It was my fault, Flea.”

  “Maybe it was the will of the gods—”

  “That’s the coward’s way out. I wielded the knife. I spilled his blood. Except ‘spilled’ sounds too clean, and there’s nothing clean about killing a man. When you kill a man, Flea, you feel your knife pushing into his flesh. You hear his agony, you smell his terror as he realizes he’s going to die. Then you see his eyes grow dull, and you feel the full horror of what you’ve done, but it’s too late, you’ve taken his life, you can never give it back . . .” He passed his hand across his mouth, and Hylas saw how it shook.

  “Sometimes they come to me in my dreams,” Akastos whispered, “and they have my brother’s face. I see him with the blood streaming from his eyes. Angry. Accusing me.” He fell silent. “I’m doing you no favors by keeping you here, Flea.”

  “You’re keeping me alive. But why are you here, on Thalakrea? I think the Crows worship the Angry Ones—so how can you bring yourself to stay here, when they might be so close?”

  Akastos’ light-gray eyes pierced his, and Hylas sensed his supple mind deciding what to reveal. “For fourteen years, I’ve been on the run. Two things I’ve sworn to do before I die. Nothing else matters. To destroy the dagger of Koronos—and appease my brother’s ghost. For that I’ll risk everything. Even getting caught by the Angry Ones.”

  A log shifted in the forge, and Hylas jumped. “How can you appease a ghost?”

  “By feeding him the blood of vengeance: the lifeblood of a highborn Crow. Only then will his spirit be at peace. Only then will I be rid of the Angry Ones.”

  On the cliffs, the gulls were awake. Hylas heard the ox-carts rumbling up from the charcoal pits. Red light stole into the smithy and lit Akastos’ haunted features.

  Hylas thought of what he’d just learned. He said, “Why did you tell me all this?”

  To his surprise, Akastos nodded approvingly. “That’s good, you’re thinking like a survivor.”

  “So—why?”

  “I told you all this, Flea, because oddly enough, I’d rather not have to hand you over to Kreon to be gutted like a pig. But if you get in my way, I will. So now you know what I’m after. Don’t get in the way.” Before Hylas could reply, he’d gotten up and left the smithy.

/>   Hylas ran to the doorway and watched him go. Akastos the wanderer had become Dameas the smith, heading off to see that the furnaces were properly loaded with greenstone and charcoal. He glanced back, and his meaning was clear: What I’ve told you changes nothing. Now get to work. Then he put on his mask and was gone.

  As Hylas fed the fire, he wondered how Akastos had borne it. Most men haunted by the Angry Ones went mad within a year. Akastos had lasted fourteen.

  Footsteps outside, and he turned to speak to the smith.

  It wasn’t him. It was a slave Hylas didn’t know, a sweaty young man with the bulging eyes of a frightened hare.

  “Message from the lord Telamon,” he whispered. “Midnight. Here.”

  “Here?” said Hylas. “I should wait here?”

  “There’ll be a boat below the cliffs. He knows a way down.”

  “Come back! Is that all?”

  “That’s all I know,” muttered the slave as he scuttled off.

  Hylas’ mind reeled. But he had no time to take it in. Thirty paces away under the thorn tree, two people stood waiting.

  One was a tall woman with a white streak in her hair and wild eager eyes fixed on him.

  The other was Pirra.

  30

  “I’m so glad you found Havoc,” said Pirra, kneeling on the floor of the smithy and rubbing foreheads with the cub.

  “I didn’t,” said Hylas, “she found me.”

  They exchanged grins.

  The lion cub stood with her forepaws on Pirra’s thighs and gave her cheek a rasping lick. Hylas knelt and trailed a wicker ball—a new one—and Havoc pounced.

  Hylas had darkened his hair with charcoal, which was wearing off in streaks. Pirra thought he looked stronger than she’d ever seen him. She was pleased that he still wore the lion claw on his chest, and relieved that there were no welts on his back.

  “I was so worried the smith would have you flogged,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “I was worried you wouldn’t get back to the village.”