22

“The prisoner says this is the way to the top,” said Ilarkos.

“It leads to the shrine, yes?” panted Kreon.

Ilarkos translated that into Keftian, and the captive gave a terrified nod.

“Then let’s go.” Kreon tore off his wolf-fur mantle and flung it to a slave.

Telamon hesitated. It wasn’t yet dawn, and the Mountain of the Earthshaker loomed black against the charcoal sky. The men’s torches were feeble glimmers in the dark, and from time to time he heard the echoing boom of rams’ horns. Who knew what awaited them up there?

“I said let’s go!” barked Kreon.

As they climbed higher, the wind whirled ash in Telamon’s face and whipped his cloak about his legs. Something felt wrong. If Hylas and Pirra were heading for the shrine, why were they blowing horns?

Below, he made out the dim line of the river snaking north to the House of the Goddess. A startling idea came to him, and he ran to catch up with Kreon. “This doesn’t feel right,” he said in a low voice, so that the men wouldn’t hear.

“Nothing about this cursed country feels right,” snarled his uncle.

“I mean, what if it’s a trick?”

“What?” snapped Kreon.

“What if they’re not here, on the mountain?”

“And what if they’re up at that shrine right now, calling on the gods to destroy our dagger? Do you want to tell Koronos that they succeeded and we failed?”

Telamon swallowed. “But if you’re wrong—”

“You saw the girl as well as I did!”

“I saw a girl at a distance, in the dark! I’m not even sure it was her!”

“And if it was?”

Telamon bit his lip. “Why don’t we split up? You take half the men to the top, I’ll take the others to the House of the Goddess—”

“What will you do when you get there?” sneered Kreon. “What if it’s not empty? They say it’s as big as a mountain! Could you conquer it with twenty men? You’re not even a warrior!”

Telamon flushed. “If I’m right, and I get the dagger—”

“Oh, so that’s your game,” cut in Kreon. “You want to be the one to put it in Koronos’ hands; you’d turn him against me, wouldn’t you? Well maybe, just to be sure, we should split up. Maybe we’ll send half the men up the mountain, with Ilarkos to lead them—and I’ll take the rest to the House of the Goddess!”

Telamon opened his mouth to reply—but at that moment, dawn broke and in the distance, a shaft of ashen light revealed a strange, glimmering hill.

Kreon sucked in his breath with a hiss. Their Keftian captive sank to his knees and murmured, “Kunisu.”

“H-he says it’s the House of the Goddess,” faltered Ilarkos.

For a heartbeat, as Telamon beheld the ancient heart of Keftian power, he was overwhelmed. Then he remembered Hylas and Pirra taunting him at the edge of the gorge, and his spirit hardened. He pictured himself leading a daring raid to seize the House of the Goddess. He would brandish the dagger of Koronos and proclaim himself ruler of all Keftiu—and Hylas would be dead, and Pirra would kneel before him in homage . . .

Kreon’s harsh voice wrenched him back. “Nephew! Did you hear what I said?”

“She’s not here,” said Telamon. “Send Ilarkos up to the shrine if you like, but it’s a trick. They’re taking it to the House of the Goddess.”

How much farther? Hylas wondered uneasily.

Pirra ran beside him with her fists clenched, and Havoc trotted behind. She’d joined them soon after they’d fled the camp, appearing silently, as lions do, and seeming to sense that this was no time for lengthy greetings.

At first they’d stumbled along the river in the dark, not daring to use the rushlights Deukaryo had given them. As dawn broke, they’d made out hills dotted with farms, and olive groves, vineyards, barley fields: all abandoned and gray with ash. It was now around noon, and Setoya was far behind. They’d heard no sounds of pursuit. Had Deukaryo’s trick worked?

It grew warmer. Flies buzzed and sparrows chirped in the Sunless gloom. Hylas took off his jerkin and tied it around his waist. To his right, a shadowy ridge frowned down on them, pitted with caves. He didn’t like the feel of it.

Havoc wrinkled her nose in the odd half-snarl that meant she’d caught a strong scent.

“She can smell the town,” said Pirra in a taut voice.

“There’s a town?” said Hylas.

“It surrounds Kunisu on three sides, with the river to the east. But it’ll be deserted. Come on. Not far now.”

Hylas peered at the ridge. “If the Crows get up there, they’ll pick us off as easy as spearing fish in a barrel.”

“They wouldn’t dare go up there,” said Pirra in a strange voice.

“Why not?”

She didn’t reply.

Havoc was also gazing at the ridge, her eyes following things Hylas couldn’t see. With a jolt, he realized that the caves were sealed with rocks. Pain stabbed his temple, and from the tail of his eye, he glimpsed black swarms of Plague, and shadowy figures emanating rage and loss. “They’re tombs,” he hissed. “Hundreds of them!”

“Yes,” said Pirra. “And more in the hills to the west and north. They’re all around Kunisu. The cities of the Dead.”

He shot her a glance. “Your mother—is she—”

“Yes. They buried her high on the Ridge of the Dead. She’s looking down on us.”

Before he could speak, she was hurrying ahead. Then the trees before them thinned and they emerged into the open—and Hylas gasped.

Before him sprawled a vast jumble of ash-gray houses, packed together like some impossibly huge village around a pale glimmering hill. But it wasn’t a hill; it was a stronghold bigger and more astonishing than any he could have imagined. Its walls were eerily smooth and untouched by ash, their tops spiked with giant stone horns of bulls. Even in this Sunless half-light, it possessed an unearthly radiance, as if lit from within.

“Kunisu,” said Pirra with an odd mix of bitterness and pride. “The House of the Goddess.”

At that moment, horns boomed in the distance, and Havoc took fright and fled for the woods.

“Havoc, come back!” cried Hylas. But the lion cub was gone.

Pirra grabbed his wrist. “Come on, it’s not far now!”

“But Havoc—she’ll never follow us through a town!”

“No time to go and find her! Come on, let’s get this over with!”

She was right. With a last desperate glance over his shoulder, Hylas followed her into the bewildering warren that was the town.

He had a blurred impression of towering walls and dark doorways, many with pus-eaters squatting outside. Then they were racing up a trail of treacherously smooth blue stone. On either side rose walls of green stone cut in blocks so huge, they must have been hewn by gods. Gates loomed ahead, encrusted with gilded Sea creatures—octopuses, flying fish, dolphins—and flanked by man-high wax figures speckled with Plague.

The giant gates looked shut, but when Pirra pushed, they creaked open, exhaling a whiff of incense and sulfur.

Pirra took his hand. Her fingers were icy, her face pale and set. “Stay close,” she said. “Strangers get lost inside.”

In his whole life, Hylas had only ever been in peasants’ huts, and once, Kreon’s stronghold. Nothing like this.

He was running along a dim passage painted with dizzying blue spirals. The floor was unnaturally smooth and patterned with swirling red and yellow waves. The slatted roof let in bars of gray daylight, so that Pirra flickered in and out of sight.

“We’ll need the rushlights,” she muttered.

Hylas lit two with his strike-fire, and around him a magic land sprang to life. Black swallows swooped in a blood-red sky over waving blue reeds and ice-white lilies. A green lion spread its yellow wings and uttered a silent roar.

“They’re paintings, Hylas,” said Pirra. “Follow me. I hid the dagger in my room, it’s on the other side. And mind your step.”

Glancing warily about her, she led him along twisting passages, across ditches that she called drains, past dead ends and sudden alarming drops. More painted worlds flashed past. Hylas felt very much an intruder: a rough Akean goatherd, far out of his depth.

Nothing here was as it seemed. The wall beneath his hand was cool white stone polished to shell-like smoothness, but a few paces on, it became a wooden screen that rocked at his touch. Some doors were wide enough for three to walk abreast. Others were narrow and flanked by tall red pillars with broad shoulders, like men standing guard. Hylas edged past, taking care not to touch.

Pirra ran straight into another door that turned out to be a curtain of crystal droplets that parted like frozen rain. He blundered into a hanging of slippery purple stuff that clung to his face like cobwebs; Pirra said it was silk, and made by worms. In a dim windowless chamber, he glimpsed baskets with snakes coiled at the bottom, fast asleep. “For rites,” muttered Pirra. “Later I’ll check if they need food.”

Now they were crossing an echoing hall where it felt as if people had only just left. Hylas barked his shins on a gilded bench with feet like claws, and nearly overturned a table set with clay drinking cups finer than eggshell. He could see no hearth, and he asked how they kept warm.

“We don’t have hearths,” murmured Pirra, “we use braziers.”

So even the fires move about, he thought in alarm.

Now she was heading up a series of stepping stones, very flat and straight. “Careful on the stairs,” she warned.

Is that what they are, thought Hylas.

“And keep close to the inside wall.” On the outer edge, there was no wall, just a lethal drop.

They turned into a passage with doors on either side; the doors were tied shut by cords that had been sealed with clay. “The storerooms,” said Pirra. “Once we’ve got the dagger, we’ll come back for food.”

Wherever they went, Hylas sensed no ghosts—but he caught the furtive noises of many unseen creatures. Sparrows and martins fluttered overhead, and he glimpsed a wasps’ nest on a roofbeam, and a snake’s tail flickering down a drain. Once, he heard a distant scrape of hooves. It seemed that after the people moved out, the wild had moved in.

He worried about Havoc. She would never dare follow him in here, and she wouldn’t understand why he’d gone. She would think he’d abandoned her all over again.

More passages, more rooms. “Workshops,” said Pirra.

“Who works in them?”

“Oh, weavers, potters, seal-cutters, gold-workers . . .”

“How do you find your way in all this?”

She gave him a grim smile. “I’ve spent my whole life in here. I’ve had nothing to do but find my way.”

Strange images leaped out at him from the workshops. A ceiling furred with a colony of sleeping bats, like lumpy black fruit. A pile of giant eggs, each bigger than a child’s head, and a stack of what appeared to be enormous tusks, taller than a man.

“The eggs are from a bird,” said Pirra, “I think it’s called ostrich. The tusks are ivory, from Egypt, some kind of monster. There’s an ivory god with golden hair in the Hall of Whispers . . .”

Whispers, whispers, echoed the walls.

“We’ll take a shortcut across the Great Court,” she said, pushing open a door and leading him out into daylight.

He found himself in a vast open space floored in yellow with a dizzying pattern of blue ivy leaves. The walls all around were two stories high, with gilded doors and tall windows, more red guardian columns, and a vast painted crowd, watching him.

Everywhere he turned, he saw haughty men and pale women of staggering beauty, with dark almond-shaped eyes that reminded him of Pirra’s. They looked so real that he felt they were only waiting for him to leave, so that they could start talking about him. What’s that Outsider doing here?

At the heart of the Great Court stood an olive tree in a huge gilded pot—and at the north end, a giant double axe of gleaming bronze, mounted on a pedestal of purple stone before a yawning darkness.

“That’s the ramp leading down to the understory,” said Pirra.

“You mean—there’s more, underneath?”

Again that mirthless smile. “Oh, yes. Above us too.” She pointed to a ledge high on the west wall. “That’s the balcony where my mother stands. I mean—stood.”

Hylas licked his lips. “What do they do out here?”

“Bull-leaping. Dancing. Sacrifices. Sometimes, when my mother was away, Userref used to give me rides in the chariot . . .” She frowned. “Come on. Nearly there.”

Another passage, this one painted with deer as big as real ones. Hylas glimpsed a buck about to twitch a fly off its ear, and a dormouse on a barley spike, its painted tail curled around the stem.

Pirra had disappeared round a corner. He ran to catch up—and came face-to-face with a bull.

“Pirra, watch out!” he yelled, whipping out his axe.

“It’s all right, it’s not real!”

The wild bull was even bigger than the one he’d encountered in the foothills, and it was charging with its head down. Hylas took in its bulging shoulder muscles and thick lolling tongue. Some god had turned it to stone as it half emerged from the wall.

“Looks real,” he muttered, ashamed at being fooled.

“When I was little,” said Pirra, “I used to think it came alive at night.”

Maybe it does, thought Hylas as he edged past, trying not to catch the bull’s bloodshot red eye.

They reached a dim windowless chamber guarded by more broad-shouldered columns. Hylas’ rushlight revealed painted fishes on the walls, a splendid claw-footed bench of gilded wood, a scarlet rug sewn with blue swallows, a tall lamp of purple marble, and a cedarwood chest inlaid with ivory panels.

He swallowed. “Is this where the Goddess lives?”

Pirra snorted. “Course not, it’s just my room.”

Her room? He was aghast. He’d always known she was rich. He’d never pictured this.

“The dagger’s over there behind a wall panel,” muttered Pirra. “Hold my light while I—” She broke off.

“What is it?” said Hylas.

In the gloom, he made out a hole low down in the wall, and a thin square of glittery white stone beside it on the floor. Near that lay a staff and a goatskin that had been flung aside in a rush.

“It’s gone,” Pirra said blankly. “The dagger’s gone.”