The Burning Shadow Read online

  “What you think doesn’t matter,” Telamon said coldly. “I knew the Outsider. This isn’t him. It’s just some runaway slave.”

  The men exchanged startled glances. “So then—do we take him back to the mines?”

  “No. If we put him with the others, he’d spread rebellion.”

  “Then what?”

  Telamon thought for a moment. “The furnaces. We’ll give him to the smith. He won’t last long up there.”

  “If I were to kill you now,” said Telamon, “I’d receive nothing but praise.”

  “But you won’t,” said Hylas, with more conviction than he felt.

  “You can’t know that for sure,” muttered Telamon.

  “If you’d wanted me dead, you’d have done it already.”

  Telamon put his hands to his temples. “I want you far away from here,” he said. “I want never to see you again. I hate this. Lying to my kin, and for what? To risk helping someone who was once my friend.”

  They were alone at the Crows’ camp in the thicket; Telamon had gotten rid of his men by sending them in search of the missing dogs. Hylas sat with his arms tied behind his back. They were beginning to ache, and his cheekbone hurt.

  He watched Telamon prowl around the campfire’s dead gray ashes. His warrior braids swung, and the little clay discs at the ends made a faint clinking that was painfully familiar. He’d grown taller, but he was still the same boy who used to run off and join Hylas and Issi on Mount Lykas.

  “If you’re not going to kill me,” said Hylas, “let me go.”

  Telamon snorted. “And tell them what? That fire spirits carried you away?”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Telamon fiddled with the sealstone at his wrist. “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “You. Here. Why?”

  “Not my choice. I got caught and sold as a slave.”

  Telamon shot him a searching look. “Is that true?”

  “Course it’s true, I’ve got the tattoo to prove it.” He twisted around to display the mark on his forearm.

  “But why here, on Thalakrea? And why now, when Koronos—when we’re all here together?”

  “I didn’t know you were coming. Look. Telamon. I don’t care about your wretched dagger. All I want is to get off this island and find Issi!”

  Telamon studied him with an unreadable expression. “I want to believe you. But I believed you before, and you lied.”

  “So did you.”

  Telamon flinched. Then he walked to the dead fire and kicked it, raising a bitter cloud of ash.

  For a heartbeat while his back was turned, Hylas thought about knocking him to the ground; but Telamon was stronger, and armed. Instead he said, “You don’t seem surprised that I’m alive.”

  “That’s because I’m not,” retorted Telamon. “I’ve known for a while.”

  “How?”

  He didn’t reply. “I wept for you, Hylas,” he said in a low voice. “I grieved for my dead friend. And all the time you were laughing at me.”

  “I wasn’t laughing,” said Hylas.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Bleakly they stared at each other across the ruins of their friendship.

  Men’s voices came to them through the thicket.

  Quickly, Telamon squatted beside Hylas and pretended to tighten his bonds. “When we reach the furnace ridge,” he whispered, “you’ll have to stay alive as best you can. They say the smith’s a hard man with strange ways. He’ll flog you, but if I stopped him they’d be suspicious, and I’m running enough risks as it is. Hold on for a few days, and I might be able to get you on a ship.”

  Hylas twisted around. “Are you telling me you’ll help me escape?”

  “Sh! Not so loud!”

  “But why?”

  “Why’s it so hard to understand? You were my friend. Even after everything that’s happened, I can’t—I can’t watch them kill you. If I get you off the island, I’ll be rid of you, once and for all.”

  “But if you help me, you’ll be betraying your own clan.”

  Telamon glared at him. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  The men returned with three cowed-looking dogs at their heels. In the blink of an eye, Telamon became their haughty young leader and hauled Hylas to his feet. “Move,” he snarled.

  The obsidian trail cut straight across the plain, so that by late afternoon they were already approaching the Neck.

  Once, Hylas glimpsed Pirra following at a distance. He hoped she’d have the sense to make for the village, and not try to rescue him. He’d seen no sign of Havoc. Had the lion cub made it down from the Mountain, or was she still up there, lost in the poisonous smoke?

  Telamon picked up a horse at the Neck, then they started for the ridge. As they passed the mines, Hylas saw slaves toiling to clear the shafts. Soon it would be as if the cave-in had never happened. He thought of the snatchers deep underground. He could almost feel their anger through the rocks.

  The track to the furnaces was steep, and edged with piles of burned slag. He trudged in a blur of exhaustion, surrounded by Telamon’s men. As they crested the ridge, the din of hammers grew.

  Telamon’s horse shied. “Steady,” he growled. He was trying to appear at ease, but Hylas could tell he was nervous. Smiths are different, Zan had said. Even the Crows are wary of them. Telamon was taking a risk, making the smith take on a new slave.

  Grimy slaves tended the furnaces, like ants tending enormous grubs. Each was a squat clay column pitted with holes spouting evil-smelling brown smoke. The slaves had just cracked one open: Hylas saw liquid fire spattering into a stone trough. Crush the greenstone, burn it till the copper bleeds out . . .

  From stone huts, fires glared and hammers rang. Hylas guessed that there, in some mysterious way, copper was being mated with tin to create bronze.

  Then they were out on a windswept headland, hearing gulls and gulping salty air. The drop to the Sea was dizzying. No escape that way, thought Hylas.

  Beneath a thorn tree, four slaves unloaded charcoal from an ox-wagon. Beyond, on the tip of the headland, a large stone hut stood alone. Hylas caught the sound of a single hammer. His belly tightened. That must be the smithy.

  Telamon dismounted and ordered his men to untie Hylas. Then to the slaves, “Tell your master I wish to speak to him.”

  They tapped their lips and shook their heads.

  “They’re mute, my lord,” said a warrior. “The smith only permits those who can’t speak near his smithy.”

  Hylas had forgotten that. Uneasily, he wondered what it meant for him.

  The warrior had had the same thought. “My lord, I’m not sure the smith will—”

  “He’ll do as I command,” said Telamon. But he was sweating.

  One of the slaves ran and beat a copper drum hanging from the tree.

  The hammering stopped. A man emerged and walked toward them. He was powerfully built, with broad shoulders and muscled forearms flecked with burns. He wore a leather apron to shield him from the heat of the forge, and his dark beard was clipped short, his shoulder-length hair held back by a headband of sweat-stained rawhide. Hylas couldn’t see the upper part of his face, which was hidden by a leather mask.

  Telamon inclined his head.

  The smith acknowledged him with the slightest of nods.

  “Master smith,” said Telamon with a careful blend of haughtiness and respect, “this slave’s a runaway. I want you to keep him separate, so that he can’t spread trouble.”

  Through the slits in his mask, the smith studied Hylas. Then he grunted at him to follow, and headed back to his smithy.

  Hylas risked a glance at Telamon, but he’d already remounted and was riding off. Hylas wondered if he’d meant what he said about helping him.

  “In here,” growled
the smith.

  Rubbing the feeling back into his wrists, Hylas followed his new master inside.

  He walked into a blast of heat and a strange sweet smell of raw metal that reminded him of fresh blood. A charcoal fire smoldered in a raised stone hearth. Beside it stood a massive stone block, and rawhide bellows with blackened clay snouts; stacks of bronze ingots shaped like oxhides, a cubit long; piles of axe heads, knives, spearheads, all with the pinkish luster of new bronze. On a workbench lay stone molds, hammers and chisels, a dish of dried anchovies and cheese, and a half-open pouch of leaves.

  Hylas blinked. Something about those leaves had jogged his memory . . .

  The smith took a horn cup and drank from a pail. “So,” he said. “Why’d they really send you to me?”

  That voice. Smooth. Powerful. He’d heard it before. And those leaves on the workbench were buckthorn. People chewed them to ward off ghosts—or the Angry Ones.

  He mustered his courage. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  The smith set down the cup. Behind his mask, his eyes gleamed.

  “It’s me,” said Hylas. “Flea. Last summer you took me captive. You weren’t a smith then, you’d been shipwrecked, you called yourself Ak—”

  Swift as a snake, the man called Akastos clapped a hand over his mouth. “The name’s Dameas,” he breathed. “Dameas the smith. Got that? Blink twice for yes, or you’ll regret it.”

  Hylas blinked twice.

  27

  Akastos dragged Hylas to the forge and held his fist over the fire. “Swear that you’ll never tell anyone my true name.”

  “I swear!” gasped Hylas.

  “Say it. Tell your oath to the fire.”

  “I swear I’ll never tell anyone your true name!”

  Akastos plunged Hylas’ fist into the water pail, then sat on a stool and forced him to his knees, bringing them face-to-face. Hylas knew better than to struggle; the grip on his shoulder could crush his bones like eggshell. He didn’t know if he was frightened or relieved to be at Akastos’ mercy again. This man had left him as bait for the Angry Ones; but at times he’d shown flashes of kindness.

  Akastos pulled off his mask and fixed him with a penetrating stare. His hair was shorter, his sharp beard no longer crusted with salt; but his unsettling light-gray eyes were just as impossible to read.

  “What are you doing here?” he barked.

  Hylas gulped. “I’m a slave. I ran away.”

  “No tricks, boy, you’re on a knife edge. Again. What are you doing here?”

  “It’s true!”

  Akastos snorted. “Last summer you turned up on the Island of the Fin People. You said the Crows were after you, they were killing Outsiders, you didn’t know why. You said you were a goatherd—and yet you knew about the dagger of Koronos. And now you just happen to cross my path again?”

  “I was trying to get home. They caught me and sent me here.”

  “Why didn’t they just kill you?”

  “They don’t know it’s me—I mean, that I’m the Outsider.”

  “So you’re asking me to believe that you’ve fetched up here on Thalakrea at the same time as the House of Koronos—and they don’t know?”

  Hylas nodded. “Don’t give me away. They’ll kill me.”

  Abruptly, Akastos released him and went to the forge. Firelight streaked his features with shadow and flame.

  Hylas risked a glance at the door.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Akastos, reading his thoughts. “You’d never get past the furnaces, and from the cliffs there’s only one way down; it’s quick, but you wouldn’t survive.”

  Resuming his stool, he rested his powerful forearms on his knees. Then he spoke to Hylas in a low voice that made the rest of the smithy disappear. “What do you know about the dagger? Leave nothing out.”

  Hylas took a breath. “A dying man gave it to me in a tomb. He said he’d stolen it and to keep it hidden.”

  The smith went very still. “What was he like?”

  “Young. Keftian. Rich, I think. Did you know him?”

  Not an eyelash stirred, but Hylas sensed the rapid flow of thought. “So,” said Akastos. “You had the dagger in your hands.”

  “Then Kratos got it back. We fought. He drowned. The Crows took it.”

  Akastos raised his eyebrows. “Kratos is dead? At last, some good news. But why are the Crows still after you?”

  “There was an Oracle, it said If an Outsider wields the blade, the House of Koronos burns. They think I’m the one. But I don’t care about any of that, I just want to find my sister.”

  Akastos took that in silence. “This has to be a trap,” he said. “They must know you’re here.”

  “They don’t, I swear! At least—Telamon knows, but he—”

  “Telamon?”

  “The boy who brought me here, he’s Thestor’s son. We used to be friends—when I didn’t know he was a Crow.”

  Akastos reached for a wineskin on a hook, half filled an earthenware beaker, and topped it up with water from the pail. Hylas watched thirstily as he drank.

  “Thestor of Lykonia,” said Akastos, wiping his mouth on his wrist. “That boy is his son?”

  Hylas nodded. “He says he’ll help me escape.”

  “And you trust him.”

  Hylas didn’t reply.

  Akastos turned the beaker in his long fingers. “So what am I going to do with you, Flea? I can think of one sure way of saving myself a lot of trouble.”

  “But you won’t,” Hylas said quickly. “You won’t kill me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  It was a struggle to control his breathing. “You made me swear never to tell your name. If you were going to kill me, you wouldn’t have bothered.”

  The lines at the sides of Akastos’ mouth deepened, as if he would have smiled if he hadn’t lost the habit.

  Suddenly, Hylas remembered the mute slaves by the thorn tree. “P-please,” he stammered, “don’t cut out my tongue!”

  That seemed to anger Akastos. “Why would you think I’d do that? Those slaves out there, they were born mute, I just took them out of the mines.”

  “Sorry,” said Hylas. He eyed the beaker. “Can I have a drink?”

  Again Akastos snorted. “Go ahead.”

  Hylas gulped three beakers of wine and water, then asked if he could have an anchovy.

  Akastos shrugged.

  “Aren’t you even a bit glad to see me?” mumbled Hylas as he wolfed the lot.

  “Why? You’re bad luck, Flea, I told you that last summer.”

  “You also said that we’re alike. We’re both survivors.”

  “So? Does that make you think you know me?”

  “No, but—”

  “What do you think you know about me, Flea?”

  Hylas swallowed the last of the cheese and decided it would be safest to hold nothing back. “You were a sailor. Maybe a warrior too, because you’re so strong. You’re cleverer than anyone I’ve ever met, and you’ve been on the run from the Crows for longer than I’ve been alive. Also you’re on the run from”—he dropped his voice—“the Angry Ones. Which means you must have done something terrible, but I don’t know what.”

  The fire crackled and spat. Hylas feared he’d gone too far.

  Akastos scratched his beard and sighed. “Why did you have to cross my path again, Flea?”

  “Wh-why?” said Hylas. “What are you going to do?”

  Akastos rose to his feet and prowled the smithy. Then he barked a laugh. “What a sense of humor the gods have!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Surely you can see that the best way for me to make use of you is to take you to Kreon?”

  “But—you can’t!”

  “If I give him the Outsider, it’ll gain his trust and ge
t me inside his stronghold.”

  “But the Oracle! I could help you defeat them! That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here?”

  “Oracles are tricky things, Flea, I never rely on them. This one could mean the gods have a use for you; or you might just be some goatherd out of your depth. There’s no way of knowing which.”

  “But—if you hide me from the Crows and I do turn out to be the one in the Oracle, you’ll have a better chance of beating them!”

  “True. But if I hide you, they’ll also have a better chance of finding you, and making you tell them my real name.”

  “I swore I’d never do that!”

  “Ah but Flea. Anyone can be broken if you know how.”

  Something in his voice told Hylas that Akastos knew how.

  “I thought you liked me,” Hylas said bleakly.

  “That’s got nothing to do with it,” snapped Akastos. “The point is—” He broke off and stared at the doorway.

  “What is it?” mouthed Hylas.

  Akastos signed him to silence.

  A sound outside: furtive. Listening.

  Stealthily, Akastos approached the doorway, taking care not to cast a shadow that might alert whoever was out there. With the speed of a snake he sprang, dragging in a struggling bundle.

  “Don’t hurt her!” cried Hylas.

  Akastos dropped the bundle and sucked a bitten hand.

  Havoc shot behind Hylas and snarled.

  28

  “Don’t hurt her!” repeated Hylas. He scooped Havoc into his arms and felt her shaking with fright, her heart hammering against his chest.

  Akastos loomed over them with his knife in his hand. “What does this mean?” he said harshly.

  “Please! She’s only a cub!”

  He was startled to see that Akastos’ forehead was beaded with sweat. “A lion,” muttered the smith. Then to Hylas, “Is this a trick? Making me think it’s an omen?”

  “No! I found her on the Mountain. Kreon killed her parents, she can’t fend for herself!”

  Akastos gave him a hard look. “Have you never heard of the Lion of Mycenae?”