Something Pirra had said came back to him. “She had a tunic of Keftian purple!” he blurted out. “She said they make the purple from mashed-up sea snails, thousands of them, and it costs more than gold!”
The woman barked a command, and the pressure on his neck lifted. Panting, he lurched to his feet.
“Quite a few people know that too,” the woman called drily. “You’ll have to do better if you want to live.”
“She—um—once she told me there were only two robes like it in all Keftiu,” he gasped, “but nobody’s ever seen the other because it’s Yassassara’s, they made it in secret, she only wears it for secret rites.”
Silence. The gray Sea lapped hungrily at his thighs.
“I dyed that wool myself,” said the woman. “By moonlight. In secret. Now, how’d you know that?”
“Like I said, Pirra told me!”
Another command—and Hylas was hauled back to the shore. The noose was removed, the spears withdrawn. Someone chucked him his axe and his knife.
The old woman hawked and spat a gobbet of purple snot on the stones. Then she turned and lumbered back into her hut. “Yassassara’s dead,” she said over her shoulder.
Hylas flinched. “What about Pirra?”
“You better come inside.”
3
The lion cub heard ravens calling from the ridge and quickened her pace. Ravens meant carcasses, and she was hungry.
The Bright Soft Cold lay deep on the mountain, and by the time she’d struggled onto the ridge, the ravens had left only bones. The cub crunched them up, but the hunger didn’t go away.
The cub was always hungry. Long ago, men had brought her to this horrible land of shadows and ghosts. She remembered fleeing in terror as the Great Gray Beast came roaring in and savaged the shore. Afterward, there had been piles of carcasses—dogs, sheep, goats, fish, humans—and swarms of vultures. The lion cub had fought for her share, until men had chased her away with their great shiny claws.
She’d fled to the mountain, because she knew mountains, but this was nothing like the fiery Mountain where she’d lived with her pride. There were no lions, only frozen trees and Bright Soft Cold; hungry creatures, ragged men, and ghosts.
It was a land of shadows. When the cub sat on her haunches and gazed at the Up, she couldn’t see the Great Lion whose mane shone golden in the Light and silver in the Dark. And there was no real Light, only this gray not-Light, in between the Darks.
The cub had grown used to the not-Light, as it helped her hide from men; but as the Darks and the not-Lights passed, the cold bit harder. Her breath turned to smoke, and she couldn’t find any wet to drink, so she ate the Bright Soft Cold. She learned to crawl into caves when the white wind howled, and her pelt grew thick and matted with filth. It kept her warm, but she was too hungry and frightened to lick herself clean.
Then, alarmingly, her teeth started falling out. She was horrified, until new ones thrust painfully through. They were larger and stronger than the old ones: She could rip open a frozen carcass with one bite. And she got bigger. Now when she stood on her hind legs to scratch a tree, her forepaws reached much higher than before.
Here on the mountain, there weren’t as many dead things as on the shore, so as well as scavenging, the cub tried to hunt. Mostly she did it wrong, charging too soon, or getting confused about which prey to chase; but finally she felled a squirrel with a lucky swipe. It was her first kill. If only there’d been someone with her, to see.
That was the worst of it, the loneliness. Sometimes the cub sat and mewed her misery to the Up. She longed for warmth and muzzle-rubs—and to sleep without fear, because other ears and noses were keeping watch.
A jay cawed to its mate, and from high on the ridge came the squawks of vultures. The lion cub struggled toward them through the Bright Soft Cold.
The vultures were squabbling over a dead roebuck. The cub wasn’t yet able to roar, so she rushed at them, snarling as loud as she could and lashing out with her claws. It was good to see the vultures flying off in a clatter of wings; and the buck was still warm. Tearing open its belly, the cub hunkered down to feed.
She’d hardly gulped a mouthful when two men burst from the trees, shouting and waving big shiny claws.
The cub fled: down a gully and up some rocks, anywhere, as long as she got away. She didn’t stop until she could no longer smell that horrible man-stink.
The lion cub hated and feared all men. It was men, with their terrible flapping hides and their savage dogs, who had killed her mother and father when she was little. It was men who had brought her across the Great Gray Beast to this freezing land of ghosts.
It hadn’t always been like this. Long ago when she was small, there had been a boy. She’d had a thorn in her pad, and he’d pulled it out with his thin clever forepaws, then smeared on some healing mud. The boy had looked after the cub and given her meat. She remembered his calm strong voice, and the warmth of his smooth, furless flanks. She remembered his ridiculously long sleeps, and how cross he would get when she jumped on his chest to wake him.
There’d been a girl too. She’d been kind to the cub (except when the cub struck at her ankles to trip her up). For a few Lights and Darks, they’d been a pride together: boy, girl, and cub. They’d been happy. The cub remembered uproarious games of play-hunt, and the humans’ yelping laughs when she pounced. She remembered a magic ball of sticks that could fly without wings, and race downhill without any legs. She remembered much meat and muzzle-rubbing and warmth . . .
A clump of Bright Soft Cold slid off a branch and spattered the cub. Wearily, she shook it off.
It hurt to remember the boy, because he was the one who had sent her here to this horrible place. He had abandoned her.
The lion cub snuffed the air, then plodded on between the cold unfeeling trees.
She would never trust another human. Not ever again.
4
“You speak Akean,” ventured Hylas as he stood shivering in the gloom.
“Well of course I do,” snapped the one-eyed old woman, “I am Akean. Name’s Gorgo. What’s yours?”
“Flea,” lied Hylas.
“Your real one.”
“. . . Hylas.”
Gorgo subsided onto a bench before a large fire and arranged her vast belly over her knees. An elderly sheephound heaved himself to his feet and limped over to her, swinging his tail. From a pail, she sloshed milk into a potsherd and watched the dog lap it up. “You just going to stand there?” she barked.
It took Hylas a moment to realize she was speaking to him.
“Feed the fire, then sit,” she commanded. “I can see you’ve not got the Plague, but if you don’t dry off, you’ll die anyway.”
Hylas fed the fire with dried cowpats, then poured seawater out of his boots and huddled as close to the fire as he could without getting scorched. The hut was dark and cramped; he tried to ignore the stink of urine and rotten fish.
With a blotchy purple paw, Gorgo scratched the bristles on her chin. Her cloudy gray eye veered all over the hut, then skewered Hylas. “So. You were a slave of the Crows.”
He nodded. “In the mines of Thalakrea.”
Gorgo grunted. “I hear that’s where it started. The Crows dug too deep and angered the gods. Because of the Crows, the Sun’s gone, we’ve had the coldest winter anyone can remember, and there is no spring.”
Hylas bit back the urge to ask about Pirra. He sensed that the old woman would tell him when she was ready, not before. “What happened here?” he said, his teeth chattering with cold. “I’m a stranger on Keftiu, I—”
“Then your luck just ran out,” said Gorgo. Jabbing her knuckle in her empty eye socket, she gave it a vigorous scratch. “First we knew, the Great Cloud was blotting out the Sun and the ash was raining down. Then the Great Wave.” She scowled. “They say some people just stood and star
ed. Others fled. Wave got them all. Faster than a horse can gallop. Didn’t see it myself. We’d taken a load of wool inland to be weighed. Bit of luck, or we’d of drowned.”
With a stick, she stabbed the fire. “My sons say they never smelled anything like the stink of the bodies, but I wouldn’t know.” A juddering laugh shook her mountainous flesh. “I can’t smell. Never have.” She spat, narrowly missing the dog. “Since that first fall of ash we’ve had many more. Then the Plague came about a moon ago. It struck the heart of Keftiu. Yassassara ordered everyone out of the House of the Goddess and for all around as far as a man can ride in a day. Villages, farms, emptied. She sent them to the settlements in the west. They can’t come back till the priests say the Plague’s gone.”
Hylas swallowed. “I’m trying to find the House of the Goddess.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? There’s no point, it’s deserted! The High Priestess was going to do a Mystery, get rid of the Plague and bring back the Sun. Ha!” Another juddering laugh. “Plague got her instead.”
Hylas was appalled. He’d only seen Yassassara once, but she’d radiated power like heat from embers. How could she have succumbed to Plague?
“Didn’t expect that, did you?” Gorgo said drily. “Nobody did. Not even her. They say she had herself carried to her tomb when she was still alive. Had her priests purify the House of the Goddess with sulfur, then seal it up. So now it’s empty. Rest of Keftiu’s not doing much better. Great Wave got most people on the coast, Plague got half the rest. Priests have been busy, sacrificing rams, bulls, but nothing’s worked. Survivors still holed up in the west, a few hiding out in the mountains.” She sniffed. “And with no one to bury the bodies, we’ve got all these ghosts wandering about. They’re angry, no proper rites, no one to put them at rest in the tombs of their kin.”
Hylas went still. “Can you—see them?”
She glared at him. “Course not! Why’d you think that?”
He ducked the question. “Aren’t you afraid of the Plague? I mean, why are you still here?”
Again her bloated body shook with laughter. “We smell so bad, not even Plague comes near us! Nobody comes near dye-workers, we’ve always lived apart. And now with all this rotten meat in the Sea, why wouldn’t we stay? It’s the best sea snail harvest we’ve ever had! Plenty of wool about too, all those lost sheep wandering around for the taking.” She slapped her belly. “That’s why I’m so fat!”
“But who’s going to buy your wool?”
“Look,” snapped Gorgo. “If the Sun never comes back, the crops fail and we all die. If the Sun does come back, things’ll get better and we’ll be rich. Either way, we keep working.”
Hylas held his hands over the fire and watched his tunic steam. “Why was Keftiu hit harder than anywhere else?”
“Because of Yassassara!” roared Gorgo, causing the dog to set back his ears, and one of her sons to put his head in the door.
Hylas sat very still and waited for Gorgo to calm down.
“You said it yourself,” she growled, waving her son away. “Yassassara tried to bargain with the Crows. So when the gods punished them by blowing up Thalakrea, they punished us too. Oh, she knew it was her fault. That’s why she was going to do the Mystery, to make up for it.”
Hylas mustered his courage. “So where’s Pirra?”
Gorgo’s eye became opaque, like that of a snake before it sheds its skin. Hylas had a sudden sense that she knew a lot more than she was letting on. “How should I know?” she said. “Now suppose you stop asking questions, and tell me what an Outsider from Lykonia is doing on Keftiu.”
Hylas tensed. “What makes you think I’m an Outsider?”
For a heartbeat, she hesitated. “They’re the only people I know with yellow hair.”
He wondered how much to reveal. “I was a goatherd. The Crows attacked my camp and killed my dog. I got separated from my little sister. That was”—he caught his breath—“nearly two years ago.”
Gorgo narrowed her eye. “Why’d they attack you?”
“I don’t know.” But he did. The Crows wanted him dead because an Oracle had foretold that if an Outsider wielded their ancestral dagger—the dagger of Koronos—it would be their ruin. But he wasn’t about to tell a stranger that.
“What’s your sister’s name?” Gorgo said abruptly.
“What?—Issi.”
Again she scratched her bristly chin. “Did you find her?”
“No. I think she’s in Messenia. If—if she’s still alive.”
“Messenia.” Gorgo’s eye turned inward, remembering. “Long time since I heard that name.” The dog put his muzzle on her knee, but she ignored him. “Dark soon,” she said abruptly to the fire. “You got till nightfall to get out of arrowshot of my village. Don’t ever come back.”
Hylas blinked. “You mean—you’re letting me go?”
Reaching under the bench, she pulled out a small wovengrass pouch and chucked it at him. “Fleabane and sulfur. Might keep off the Plague for a bit.”
“Thanks,” faltered Hylas.
Gorgo glared at him. “Don’t you dare thank me!” she bellowed. “Get out and never come back!”
Hylas was leaving the village at a run, when she shouted after him: “That daughter of Yassassara’s! I hear they took her to the mountains—to Taka Zimi! But that was moons ago, just after the Great Wave, and they say there’s Plague up that way, and some monster stalking the forest—she’ll be dead by now!”
5
Pirra is on the deck of the ship, screaming at Hylas. “I hate you! I’ll hate you forever!” She goes on screaming as the ship pulls away and he is lost from sight.
Now the voyage is over, the ship has reached Keftiu, and Pirra is watching the sailors unload Havoc’s cage. The lion cub is frightened and miserable. She’s been seasick all the way, and has rubbed her forehead raw on the bars, but Pirra couldn’t let her out in case she jumped overboard.
They’re hardly ashore when something terrible happens: The Sea begins to withdraw. Pirra stares in disbelief at glistening mounds of seaweed and stranded, flapping fish. Then the captain remembers a story of the old times and bellows a warning. “It’s going to attack! To the hills! Run!”
Now the sailors are fleeing in panic and Userref is dragging Pirra up a cliff. She sees Havoc in her cage, abandoned on the rocks, and screams at the men to set the cub free, but Userref won’t let go of her wrist and the Great Wave is roaring toward them with vast white claws . . .
Pirra woke up.
She was in bed at Taka Zimi. Her chamber was warm: Embers crackled in the brazier, and she lay in a nest of sheepskins. She smelled the wormwood that Userref burned to ward off the Plague, and heard the distant roar of the waterfall and the gurgle of water collecting in the cistern under the sanctuary. But the dream clung to her. She remembered the terrible silence after the Great Wave had gone.
She shut her eyes. She hadn’t actually seen Havoc washed away. Maybe someone had let the cub out, and she’d escaped in time . . .
Round and round Pirra’s thoughts circled: from grief for Havoc, to shock and disbelief over her mother, to rage and anxiety—mostly rage—about Hylas.
As her heartbeats slowed, she realized she was clutching her amulet pouch, which held the falcon feather he’d given her two summers before. Falcons are creatures of the Goddess, but Pirra loved them simply because they enjoyed a freedom she didn’t have. It had meant a lot when Hylas had given her this feather.
But things were different now. All through the winter she’d had fights with him in her head. “I told you I’d die if I was sent back to Keftiu—and yet you did it anyway!”
“I was saving your life,” replied the Hylas in her head.
“You should’ve left that to me! If you hadn’t forced me onto the ship, I’d have found another—probably the same one as you—and I’d be free! Ins
tead I’m shut up here forever, and it’s all your fault!”
“And me?” said the imaginary Hylas. “What if I drowned in the Great Wave, and you’re arguing with a ghost?”
And so it went on.
Suddenly, Pirra couldn’t take it anymore. Yanking open the pouch, she pulled out the small tattered feather. She’d kept it through fire and flood. Well, not anymore. She had to get Hylas out of her head.
Swiftly, she drew on woolen leggings, a long-sleeved tunic of otter fur, and calfskin boots lined with fleece, then flung on her fox-fur mantle. Ripping a twist of wool from her hair, she found a small stone lamp and tied on Hylas’ feather, to weigh it down. Then she slipped quietly out of her chamber.
At the shrine, lamps glimmered before the bronze Watchers who sent their metal prayers to the Goddess while Her human worshippers slept. Pirra put her fist to her forehead and bowed, then crept out onto the steps.
Her spirits plummeted, as they always did when she saw the sky. Though it was night, she couldn’t see the Moon or the stars. The Great Cloud shrouded the world. It was like being in a tomb.
The sanctuary of Taka Zimi perched like an eyrie high on a shoulder of Mount Dikti, with its back against the mountainside and a precipice in front. It was a long narrow building split into four: Pirra’s chamber at one end, then the shrine, then two chambers for Userref and Pirra’s hated slave girl, Silea, with the cellar and cistern beneath.
In front of the sanctuary was a small snowy courtyard enclosed by massive stone walls twenty cubits high. At the far end of the courtyard, the guards’ quarters and the heavy barred gates occupied one corner, while in the other, stone pegs jutting from the wall led up to a windy lookout post, where a shaggy old juniper tree clung to life on the edge of the precipice.
Torches burned between the stone bulls’ horns on top of the walls, but the guards’ quarters were dark. All Pirra could hear was the thunder of the waterfall and the hiss of windblown snow.