The Burning Shadow Read online

  “Who’s Kreon?”

  Zan jerked his head at the stronghold frowning down at them. “Kreon owns the island. The pit. Us.”

  “No one owns me,” said Hylas.

  All four burst out laughing and beat the ground with their fists.

  At that moment, a whistle shrilled and they scrambled out of the den. Hylas followed, hoping this meant food.

  Hordes of slaves were fighting over provisions. The pit spiders grabbed a basket and a rawhide pail, and Hylas elbowed his way to a few gulps of vinegary water and a handful of bitter gray mush that tasted like mashed acorns and grit.

  He was licking the last of it off his fingers when he heard the thud of feet and the rattle of wheels.

  “Get in line!” shouted Zan.

  Red dust was rising on the westward track, and fear was rippling over the hillside like wind through barley. Hylas saw slaves bowing their heads and clamping their arms to their sides; overseers tapping their whips against their thighs and wiping their sweaty jowls.

  First around the bend swept a pack of hunting dogs. They had shaggy red hides and wore collars spiked with bronze. They had the hot dull eyes of beasts who’d been beaten and starved to make them killers.

  Next came a band of warriors: nightmare figures in breastplates and kilts of black rawhide, with heavy spears and vicious bronze knives. Despite the heat, black cloaks flew behind them like wings, and their faces were gray with ash.

  Hylas swayed. He’d seen warriors like them before.

  In their midst rode a Chieftain in a chariot drawn by two black horses. As it thundered up the track toward the stronghold, Hylas caught a glimpse of hooded eyes and a bristly black beard. Something about that face was terrifyingly familiar.

  “Head down!” breathed Zan, elbowing him in the ribs.

  In horror, Hylas stared from the Chieftain to the tattoo on his forearm. “It’s not a mountain,” he whispered. “It’s a crow.”

  “Course it’s a crow!” hissed Zan. “That’s Kreon son of Koronos—he is a Crow!”

  Hylas felt as if he was falling from a great height.

  He was a slave in the mines of the Crows.

  If they found out he was here, they would kill him in a heartbeat.

  3

  The Sun wasn’t yet up when Hylas jolted awake, but already the others were preparing to head off. They hadn’t bothered to wake him. They didn’t care if he got a beating.

  Hastily, he cut strips from his tunic and bound his head and knees, then tied another band around his hips and tucked the shard of obsidian in a fold at his waist.

  Beetle told him to take another rag too. “Down the pit, pee on it and tie it across your nose and mouth. Keeps out the dust.”

  “Thanks,” said Hylas.

  “The pit” turned out to be two shafts dug into the hill. One was an arm-span wide, with a log laid across and a rope slung over that; Hylas guessed it was some kind of pulley. The other was narrower; before it, lines of men waited to climb down. Many were covered in greenish scars, and missing fingers and toes. All had bloodshot eyes and faces stony with defeat.

  “Who are they?” Hylas asked Beetle.

  “Hammermen,” muttered the Egyptian boy. “Stay outa their way.”

  As they stood in line, Hylas saw warriors guarding the mines. Kreon’s stronghold glared down at him. He told himself the Crows thought he was dead: drowned last summer in the Sea. It didn’t help.

  Noticing that there were more slaves than overseers and guards, he asked Zan why they didn’t rebel.

  The older boy rolled his eyes. “Pit’s got nine levels, see? You try to escape, you’re sent down the deepest.”

  “So?”

  Zan didn’t reply. He was tossing pinches of dust over his shoulder and spitting three times.

  “It keeps the snatchers away,” whispered Bat, clutching his squashed mouse. Spit was tugging at his bony collarbones and sweating with fear. Beetle was muttering a charm in Egyptian.

  Hylas asked Bat if his mouse was an amulet, and the younger boy nodded. “Tunnel mice are clever, they always get out before a cave-in. Zan’s got a amulet too, a hammerman’s finger.”

  “Shut up, Bat!” said Zan.

  Ahead of them, a hammerman had noticed Hylas. It was the man with the broken nose. “You’re Lykonian,” he said in an undertone.

  Hylas’ belly turned over.

  “Don’t deny it, I can tell from your speech. I hear the Crows had trouble there last spring. They were killing Outsiders, but didn’t get them all.”

  “You heard wrong,” muttered Hylas, avoiding the pit spiders’ curious glances.

  “I don’t think so,” whispered the man. “I’m from Messenia, they were hunted there too, but some got away. Why are the Crows after Outsiders?”

  Messenia. That was where Issi had gone. “The ones who got away,” breathed Hylas. “Was there a girl about ten summers old?”

  An overseer shouted at the man to move, and he shot Hylas an unreadable look and disappeared down the shaft.

  “What’s an Outsider?” Zan said sourly.

  “Someone born outside a village,” said Hylas.

  “That make you special?” he sneered.

  “I’m not an Outsider,” lied Hylas.

  The others were taking rawhide sacks from a pile, and Zan chucked one to Hylas. Copying the older boy, he slung it on his back with his arms through the straps. Then he tossed dust over his shoulders, spat three times, and asked the Lady of the Wild Things to protect him. She felt far away in Akea. He wondered if She’d hear.

  Bat climbed in first, then Zan, Spit, and Beetle.

  The Egyptian boy looked almost as scared as Spit. “Watch your head,” he told Hylas, “and breathe through your mouth.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  He was struggling down a slimy rope ladder. A smell like a dung heap caught at his throat. He breathed through his mouth.

  Fifty rungs . . . A hundred . . . By the time he reached the bottom, he’d lost count.

  He was in a tunnel so low he couldn’t stand up. It was dark, and the walls threw back the rasp of his breath. A log supporting the roof creaked. He was horribly aware of the weight of the hill pressing down. Here and there, a clay lamp on a ledge cast a smoky glimmer. Shadows leaped and skittered away. He thought of the snatchers, and crawled after the others.

  As he groped around bewildering turns and sudden drops, the stink became eye watering. He sniffed his palm and gagged. He was crawling through the muck of hundreds of people.

  Muffled voices reached him through the walls. He recognized Zan’s, and guessed that the tunnel doubled back. “Nobody help him,” Zan was saying. “He’s on his own.”

  It grew hotter as they descended, and soon Hylas was sweating. He caught a distant sound of hammering. Nine levels, he thought. The whole hill must be riddled with holes. He tried not to think of the Earthshaker, the god whose stamping brings down mountains.

  Suddenly the noise became deafening, and he found himself in a large shadowy cavern. The air was thick with dust, but here and there, little pools of lamplight glimmered in the murk. On ledges cut into the walls, naked men lay on their backs, pounding veins of green rock with hammerstones and antler picks. Boys and girls no more than five summers old flitted warily among them, collecting the fragments into piles. Hylas felt sick. The hammermen were hacking the earth’s green blood from Her flesh. He was inside a giant wound.

  The pit spiders had covered their mouths and noses with wet rags, and were filling their sacks with greenstone. Hylas did the same. When their sacks were full, Zan led them up a different tunnel. The straps bit into Hylas’ shoulders. It was like dragging a corpse.

  After an endless climb, they reached the main shaft. Two men grabbed Hylas’ sack, tied a rope around its neck, and hauled. T
he sack rose jerkily.

  Moments later, it burst and its load crashed down, narrowly missing Hylas.

  “Whose sack was that?” yelled a furious hauler. He spotted Hylas. “You! You didn’t check it!”

  “Always check your gear,” jeered Zan.

  Hylas set his teeth. Zan had given him a faulty sack on purpose. All right then, he thought. Time to sort this out.

  Back at the cavern, he made sure that he stayed near Zan while they gathered another load, and he stayed near as they headed for the shaft. Halfway there, Zan clutched his chest and frantically searched the ground. By the time they reached the shaft, he was shaking.

  “Looking for this?” Hylas said quietly. He gave Zan the shriveled finger, then brought his face close. “We’ll keep this between ourselves,” he breathed, “and I don’t want to take your place as leader—but never mess with me again. Understood?”

  Slowly, Zan nodded.

  They did two more exhausting rounds, then an overseer called a halt. Zan must have spread the word, because the others made room for Hylas and let him share a skin of vinegar and a grimy flatbread.

  Zan and Beetle ate with grim concentration, while Bat tucked crumbs in cracks for the tunnel mice. Spit ate nothing, flinching at the dark.

  Under his breath, Hylas asked Zan what snatchers did to people.

  “Sometimes they whisper in your ear and follow you like a shadow, till you go mad. Sometimes they reach down your throat and stop your heart.”

  Hylas swallowed. “And they live in the rocks?”

  “Rocks, tunnels. They’re spirits, they can go anywhere.”

  “Sh!” hissed Beetle with a furious scowl. Aboveground, he’d been almost friendly, but down here he was silent and subdued.

  Zan peered at Hylas. “You been underground before?”

  “Once,” said Hylas. “There was an earthshake.”

  Zan whistled. “What’d you do?”

  “I got out.”

  Zan laughed.

  Hylas asked if they had earthshakes on Thalakrea, and the older boy shook his head. “Cave-ins, smoke from the Mountain, that’s all.”

  “Smoke? From a mountain?”

  “Goddess lives inside. The smoke’s Her breath, and from the fire spirits. They live in cracks in the ground, all spiky and hot.”

  Hylas considered that. “Does She ever get angry?”

  “I dunno. But it’s only ever just smoke.”

  At that moment, an overseer ordered them to haul greenstone from the eighth level.

  A shudder ran through the pit spiders.

  “Not so deep,” moaned Spit. Beetle shut his eyes and groaned, and even Zan looked scared. “Right,” he said. “Everybody stay close.”

  Zan led them down a web of tunnels to the fifth level . . . the sixth . . . the seventh.

  It grew hotter and more airless. Hylas brushed past a pile of leaves and something furry and dead. He guessed it was an offering to the snatchers.

  He caught an uprush of foul air, and the ground beneath him creaked. He was on a log bridge spanning a cavernous shaft. Far below, he glimpsed lamplight and toiling bodies. A face peered up at him: the man with the broken nose.

  “Flea! Stay close!” warned Zan.

  Hylas got off the bridge fast. “That shaft, is that—”

  “The deep levels,” said Zan.

  “But there wasn’t a ladder. How do they get out?”

  “They don’t. You’re sent down the deep levels, you stay there till you die . . .” Zan’s voice faded as he rounded a bend.

  Hylas was appalled. To be trapped in darkness forever . . .

  His empty sack caught on a rock. He freed it, bashed his head, and hurried after the others. “Zan! Wait!”

  No reply. He must have taken a wrong turn.

  As he backtracked, he heard the sound of hammering, and made for that. He fell down a drop. No, this wasn’t right.

  He reached a place where the walls bulged inward. This wasn’t right either, but he could still hear hammering, and hammering meant people, so he squeezed through.

  The hammering dwindled to one: tap tap tap.

  He was in a low cavern lit by a sputtery stone lamp on a ledge. He couldn’t see anyone, but the hammering was closer. Tap tap.

  He edged forward.

  The hammering stopped.

  “Who’s there?” he said.

  Someone blew out the lamp.

  Silence. Hylas sensed a presence in the dark.

  He felt breath on his face: earthy and cold, like wet clay.

  He fled. His sack snagged. He tugged it free.

  Something tugged back.

  Jerking the sack loose, he blundered against the wall. It seemed to move beneath his palm. Was it rock, or flesh? His fingers touched what felt like a mouth—and above it, a ridge. He recoiled with a cry.

  The darkness was so thick he could touch it, he had no idea where he was going. Then the sound of his breathing changed: He was back in a tunnel.

  Somehow, he reached the place where the walls bulged, and squeezed in sideways.

  A hand grabbed his ankle. He kicked. His foot struck cold earthen flesh. In panic he kicked again. The grip on his ankle crumbled like wet clay. He burst through the gap. Behind him he heard harsh angry breath.

  Whimpering, he fled. Stony laughter echoed in the dark. Snatchers live in rocks, tunnels . . . They follow you in the dark.

  “Flea!” Zan’s voice sounded far ahead.

  Someone crashed into Hylas. “Get off me!” shrieked Spit.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” panted Hylas.

  Spit grabbed him by the throat. “Get off me!”

  He was alarmingly strong. Hylas clawed at his hands, then groped for his eyes and dug in his thumbs. Spit howled and vanished into the murk.

  “Flea!” shouted Zan, much closer. “Where you been?”

  By the time Hylas and Zan rejoined the others, Spit had also found his way back. Hylas slammed him against the tunnel wall. “What was that for?” he shouted. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “I—I thought you were a snatcher!” stammered Spit.

  “Leave him alone, Flea!” barked Zan.

  Hylas turned on him. “Is this a trick? We had a truce!”

  “He made a mistake. Come on, we got work to do.”

  In grim silence they found the piles of greenstone and filled their sacks. Hylas kept Spit where he could see him. He was either extremely cunning—or the snatchers had turned him mad. Hylas didn’t know which would be worse.

  At last a ram’s horn blew and the mines began to empty.

  Hylas was exhausted, but as he hauled himself out of the shaft, an overseer chucked three waterskins at him and told him to go and fill them at the “splash.”

  Bat offered to show him where, and Beetle came too; he seemed like a different boy, now that he was out of the pit.

  Dusk was falling and the mines were quiet, but on the furnace ridge, one hammer beat a lonely rhythm. Hylas asked who it was.

  “That’s the smith,” said Beetle. “Sometimes he works all night. He won’t let anyone near the smithy, it’s guarded by slaves who can’t speak. If someone comes, they warn him by beating a drum.”

  “Why?” said Hylas.

  Beetle shrugged. “Smiths are different, they know the secrets of bronze. Not even the Crows like to cross a smith.”

  They skirted the hill, and Hylas saw that the island narrowed to a neck, then bulged out, like some huge humpbacked creature. At the neck, an encampment of Crows kept watch.

  So no escape that way, he thought.

  “That’s where they keep the horses,” Bat said wistfully.

  Hylas didn’t reply. Beyond the neck, an arid black plain stretched to the Mountain. Its steep flanks blotted out the sky,
and smoke seeped endlessly from its weird, lopped-off summit.

  Pirra had said once that there was only one Goddess, but Hylas didn’t think that was right. The immortal who ruled this harsh land felt utterly unlike the Lady of the Wild Things, or the shining blue Goddess of the Sea he’d encountered last year.

  The “splash” turned out to be three dismal pools scummed with pollen from a few dusty willows, and noisy with frogs. Proudly, Bat pointed out some swallows swooping to drink. “But I like the frogs best, ’cuz they’re so beautiful.”

  Frogs reminded Hylas painfully of Issi; they were her favorite creature. “They’re not beautiful,” he snapped, “they’re just frogs!”

  Bat blinked.

  Hylas rubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry,” he muttered. “You and Beetle go back to the others. I’ll manage on my own.”

  When they’d gone, Hylas plunged in the waterskins and watched them fill like bloated bodies. He ached all over, and his mind was full of darkness. The terror of the snatchers. That angry, inhuman breath . . .

  Far away on the Mountain, a lion roared.

  The swallows flew up in alarm. Hylas went still. On the furnace ridge, even the smith stopped hammering. He too was listening.

  There were lions on Mount Lykas, where Hylas had grown up. They hadn’t troubled him or the goats because Scram was such a good guard dog, but sometimes at night, Hylas and Issi would lie by their campfire and listen to them roar.

  When a lion roars, he is telling all the other creatures whose land this really is. It is mine! Mine! Mine! he roars.

  It is mine! roared the lion of Thalakrea.

  As Hylas listened, rebellion kindled inside him. This was the voice of the mountains: wild and strong and free. It was telling him that someday, he too would be free.

  The lion’s roars changed to sawing grunts, then ceased, but the sound stayed with Hylas long after the echoes died.

  He thought of the lion he’d encountered by the spring. He had drunk from its paw print. Maybe some of its strength had entered his spirit.

  Shouldering the waterskins, he started back to the others.

  4