26

The bull walked around the corner into the passage where Hylas stood frozen with horror. Taller than the tallest man, its dark bulk loomed before him. He breathed its hot rank smell. He took a step back.

The bull halted.

Hylas took another step back. The roof beams above him were too high to reach, and if he made a run for it, he’d be trampled to death.

Suddenly he became aware of a glimmer of light behind the bull. “Don’t move,” said Pirra’s voice from the gloom. A moment later, he saw her. In one hand she held a rushlight, in the other, a length of yellow silk.

At the sound of her voice, the bull swung around, its horns raking chunks of plaster off the walls. Pirra twitched the silk past its nose and disappeared the way she’d come. The bull threw down its head and clattered after her.

“Run!” she yelled.

But Hylas wasn’t going to let her face a monster on her own, and he raced after them: around the corner, down a ramp, through a big pair of bronze-studded doors flung wide and out into a vast, dim hall.

In a heartbeat he took in twin ranks of tall red columns supporting shadowy balconies, and a lamp at the far end, before a giant double axe of hammered gold. The floor was spattered with bull’s droppings; the smell hung thick in the air. Then he saw Pirra dodging behind a column, trailing the silk, with the infuriated bull in hot pursuit.

Hylas rushed toward them, waving his arms, shouting, “Here! After me!” But the bull was intent on Pirra. She fled for the next column, dropping the silk behind her. The beast trampled it and came on. She reached the column and ducked behind it. With startling agility the bull swerved to cut her off, the tip of one horn missing her thigh by a whisker.

“Here! Here!” yelled Hylas—but still the bull lunged at Pirra, trapping her behind the column.

Hylas put his hands to his mouth and howled like a wolf.

That got the bull’s attention, and it spun around, pawing the floor. Which of these infuriating humans should it attack—and where was the wolf?

Again Hylas howled. The bull flung up its head and bellowed. The ground shook and the great hall echoed with the roars of a hundred bulls.

Meanwhile, Pirra had seized her chance to escape: Hylas saw her making for some shadowy stairs halfway down the hall. The stairs were too narrow for the bull: If she reached them, she could climb to safety.

The bull had seen her; she wasn’t going to make it.

Suddenly out of the dark swooped a bolt of black lightning. It was Echo, skimming low over the bull’s back, then twisting around for another go. Enraged by this fresh intruder, the bull turned this way and that. Echo dived perilously low, drew in her wings at the last moment, and sped right between its front legs. Then she glided off and perched with a ringing eck-eck between the golden blades of the giant double axe.

For one frozen heartbeat, Pirra stared fixedly at the falcon on the axe; then she glanced back at Hylas. The bull was between them, he couldn’t reach the stairs.

“You go!” he shouted. “I’ll be all right!”

She vanished up the stairs and he raced back for the doorway—but the bull came thundering after him.

“Hylas!” yelled Pirra from somewhere behind. “There’s a beam in the passage!”

A beam? What did she mean? The bull was gaining on him, he could hear its grunting breath.

There’s a beam in the passage . . . Of course. Hurtling out of the hall, Hylas grabbed the brass-studded doors and swung them shut with a clang. He groped in the dark—found the beam propped against the wall—and dropped it in place, barring the doors the instant before the bull crashed into them.

The great doors of Kunisu shuddered, but held fast.

As Hylas leaned panting against the wall, he heard a furious bellow from the hall; then the diminishing clop of hooves as the bull trotted off—and finally a huffing snort that sounded not angry, but satisfied.

The bull had seen off the intruders, and regained possession of its domain.

“What were you doing over here?” cried Pirra when she found Hylas on his knees outside the Hall of the Double Axe.

“I got lost,” he panted. “And I didn’t expect to meet a giant bull! I thought—did it come out of the walls?”

“Of course not! The priests must’ve left it to guard Kunisu.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?” he exploded.

“All I knew was that they might have left some kind of guardian, I didn’t know it was a bull! What were you doing wandering about in the understory in the dark? I woke up and found you gone, I looked all over!”

“I told you, I got lost!”

She’d dropped her rushlight in the Hall, but in the gloom she saw that he was shaking. So was she. She was furious with him for scaring her like that—and appalled by Echo’s sudden appearance in the Hall. The image of the falcon perched on the sacred double axe was seared on her mind. It was surely no chance that Echo had alighted there. It was a sign from the Goddess.

“Well anyway, thanks,” muttered Hylas. “If you hadn’t come, I’d have been finished.”

She swallowed. “Next time you wander off, wake me. Or maybe I should do what Userref used to do when I was little, and tie a thread to my bedpost and the other end round your wrist; that way, you can’t get lost.”

He snorted a laugh. Then he said, “But you know what this means? Userref can’t be here, or he’d have heard us shouting and come running. It’ll be dawn soon, let’s clear out. Can you find your room in the dark?”

“Hylas, I’ve lived here my whole life, I could find my way blindfolded.”

They emerged into the Great Court as the sky was getting light. Pirra quickened her pace, uneasily aware of all the times her mother had performed public sacrifices out here.

Hylas asked what they should do about the bull. “We can’t just leave it down there.”

How like Hylas, she thought with a pang, to think about that. “The priests will have left it water and hay,” she said. “Sooner or later they’ll come and let it out.”

At that moment, she heard the faint rearrangement of air that told her Echo was near, and an instant later, the falcon settled on her shoulder.

For a moment, Echo’s great dark eye met hers, and Pirra felt a jolt of meaning course through her. “I understand,” she told the falcon quietly.

Echo shook out her wings with a snap, then took a lock of Pirra’s hair and drew it gently through her beak.

“That bird’s mad,” said Hylas. “Did you see her fly between its legs?”

“She—she was just practicing flying,” muttered Pirra.

He caught something in her tone and gave her a curious glance. “Down in that hall, there was a lamp burning in front of the axe. Was it you who lit it?”

“Yes. When I was looking for you.”

“Why?”

“Because—because I had a question that needed answering.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes.”

They reached the East Stairs, and Hylas touched her shoulder. “That’s the way to the balcony above the river, yes? We should go up and check it’s still clear of Crows.”

“You go,” said Pirra, “I’ll wait here.” She couldn’t face the Ridge of the Dead, or the stone eye of her mother’s tomb.

“Are you all right?” said Hylas.

“Fine. This time, don’t get lost.”

As he took the stairs two at a time, Pirra slumped on the bottom one and hugged her knees to stop them shaking.

There was no escaping it now. She’d asked for a sign, and the Goddess had sent her the clearest one of all: Echo perched on one of the most sacred objects in Kunisu.

Pirra knew now what she had to do. The only question was whether she had the courage.

Footsteps above her, and Hylas came flying down the stairs. “They’re down by the river,” he whispered, grabbing her wrist and dragging her to her feet. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

When they reached her room, he rushed about gathering their gear. He noticed that she wasn’t helping. “Hurry up!”

“You go,” she told him. “I have to stay.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“I can’t go with you, Hylas. I have to stay here.”

“But the Crows—”

“I know. But I have to perform the Mystery. There’s no one else but me.”