‘Not far now,’ panted Pirra as she scrambled up the slope.

Above her, Havoc glanced back and waited for her to catch up. It was two days since the lioness had saved Pirra’s life by fighting off the lion, but although the gash in her shoulder remained oozing and smelly, she seemed much happier. She’d stopped pining for Hylas, and had been staying close to Pirra: as if she felt it her duty to protect her.

It was Echo who occupied Pirra’s every waking thought. The Marsh Dwellers’ medicine clearly didn’t work on falcons. Echo was desperately ill, and couldn’t last much longer. To keep her warm, Pirra had tucked her inside her tunic, where she made a bulky yet pathetically light bulge and lay frighteningly still, her only sign of life an occasional feeble scratch of talons.

Now and then, Pirra was assailed by a wave of dizziness; she knew that she was feeling what the falcon felt. Sounds fell away, and the bright air darkened to a pinpoint as her spirit drifted with Echo’s in a blaze of fever.

‘Nearly there, Echo,’ she mumbled. ‘We’ll find Hekabi, she’ll make you better, I promise!’

Olive trees shone silver in the last of the Sun, and the wind stirred thistles and dry yellow grass: they were nearing the top of Dentra Mountain. The river they’d been following upstream had dwindled to a gurgling trickle, and only a belt of tall pines separated them from the peak.

Pirra could feel that the shrine was very close. The air was filled with a strange, low buzzing, just beyond the edge of hearing. What if Hekabi was gone? Or if it wasn’t Hekabi at all, but some stranger who refused to help?

And even if it was Hekabi, would she help? When Pirra had known her on Thalakrea, she’d been ruthless and secretive. Sometimes her spells had been real, sometimes fake; it had been hard to tell the difference. The one thing that had never altered was Hekabi’s all-consuming love for her fiery island home – which the Crows, in their greed for bronze, had destroyed.

Havoc trotted down to her and gently nosed the falcon-shaped bulge in Pirra’s tunic. Echo didn’t stir. Pirra quickened her pace.

The buzzing grew louder. Havoc, once more waiting for Pirra at the edge of the pines, didn’t seem scared, only wary.

The slopes below had been shrill with swallows, but up here there were no birds. Pine needles muffled Pirra’s footsteps as she entered the cool, sharp-scented shade. The buzzing was eerie and unsettling, it seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. With a jolt, Pirra saw that it was coming from the trees themselves. They were alive with bees: thousands of them going about their mysterious lives in their realm among the branches, between earth and sky.

The Sun sank behind the western peaks, and the buzzing turned slightly threatening. Wind chilled the sweat on Pirra’s skin as she left the trees and stepped out on to naked rock. Dentra’s jagged grey peak reared above her.

Keftian peak shrines had altars and bulls’ horns, but Dentra had only the black mouth of a small cave at the base of the peak, half-hidden by a fig tree hung with ragged offerings. The stream trickled from the cave; the shrine must lie within.

‘Hekabi?’ Pirra called softly.

Behind her, the buzzing rose angrily: the bees didn’t like her speaking out loud.

‘Hekabi!’ she whispered. ‘It’s me! Pirra!’

No answer: only the bees and the wind soughing in the pines, and the echoing gurgle of the unseen spring. Pirra touched the bulge in her tunic where Echo drifted in fever. If she couldn’t find Hekabi, the falcon would die.

Beside her, Havoc caught some scent and bounded off downhill. Pirra didn’t call her back, she knew the lioness would stay within earshot; besides, calling would anger the bees.

She glimpsed a wisp of smoke drifting from the cave. Her heart quickened. There was someone in there.

‘Hold on, Echo,’ she panted. ‘If she’s in there, I’ll make her cure you!’

But at the cave mouth, she faltered. One of the offerings on the fig tree was a dead crow, dangling by its wing. The bird had been ripped messily open, as if in fury; its eye sockets were seething with maggots. Stepping sideways to avoid it, Pirra nearly trod in an earthenware basin on the ground. It was brimful with blood, gone sludgy, and swarming with flies.

After the heat of the mountainside, the inside of the cave struck chill. It was dark, except for three dim points of light a few paces in, and it rang with the voice of the spring. Smoke stung Pirra’s eyes: not the heady scent of incense, but foul fumes that made her gorge rise.

‘Hekabi?’ she whispered.

Hekabi, Hekabi, whispered the cave.

Bent double and groping blindly, Pirra stumbled past a small black pool; that must be the spring. She touched wet rocks. Her palms came away dark. It smelt like blood.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that the cave was high enough for her to stand upright. All around, in every crack and crevice, someone had placed little clay creatures: bulls, foxes, pine martens, snakes, frogs – all facing inwards, their painted eyes gazing past her to a small three-legged offering-table of grey plaster, set at the shrine’s stony heart.

Pirra caught her breath. Everything about this offering was wrong. The table was upside-down, its three legs pointing at the roof, and to each of these had been tied a smouldering stick tipped not with incense, but reeking dung. The offerings themselves were on spikes stuck in the table’s underbelly. One was a scrap of blood-crusted bandage wound around the shrivelled corpse of a viper. The second was a fragment of a fine drinking cup, cradled in the ragged wing of a bat. The third was a narrow braid of dark hair with a small clay disc at one end, twisted around a dead scorpion.

Pirra’s skin crawled. A curse, she thought. This is a curse.

At that moment, she became aware of a low muttering beneath the voice of the spring: hissing, spitting, filling the air with venom.

In the shadows at the back of the cave, something moved. Pirra took in a shock of matted grey hair and a malevolent grey face rushing towards her. ‘Get out!’ it screeched in a blast of foetid breath. ‘Get out get out get out!’

Pirra ducked. Grey fingers clawed the air by her throat. ‘It’s me, Pirra!’ she cried.

The creature froze. Its wild gaze fixed on the crescent-moon scar on Pirra’s cheek.

‘You!’ rasped Hekabi.

‘The spirits have abandoned me,’ muttered Hekabi, pacing up and down outside the cave. ‘Nothing works, nothing, and now this girl … What does it mean?’

‘Echo’s sick,’ said Pirra. ‘You have to save her!’

Hekabi flung her a distracted look and went on pacing.

Pirra was appalled. The wisewoman was unrecognizable. She’d been almost handsome before, with strong, ageless features. Now she was ragged, skeletally thin, and caked from head to foot in grey clay. The ritual burn scars on her forearms which all Islanders bore had become fresh scabs, clawed open in mourning for her vanished home. Her dark eyes darted feverishly, and she gave off rage like heat from a fire.

Pirra was horrified. If grief for her lost homeland had sent the wisewoman mad, then Echo was doomed.

‘Nothing works,’ muttered Hekabi, twisting her hands till the knuckles cracked. ‘Something’s missing, but what?’

‘Hekabi, listen! Echo’s dying, you’ve got to save her!’

‘What do I care?’ snarled the wisewoman. ‘Nothing matters but destroying the Crows – and it can’t be done by weapons alone!’

‘You used to care,’ said Pirra. ‘You were kind to Havoc on Thalakrea!’

The wisewoman flinched as if the memory hurt. ‘Darkness and pain, nothing left … Hekabi lives only to crush the Crows.’

Pirra thought of the upside-down offering in the cave. She remembered the little clay disc at the end of the braid. Suddenly, she knew. That hair was Telamon’s.

‘You’re trying to curse the Crows,’ she said. ‘That potsherd – it belonged to Koronos, didn’t it? He only ever uses a vessel once, then it’s smashed. And that bloody bandage, it must have belonged to Pharax –’

‘But why won’t it take?’ shouted Hekabi. ‘Hekabi’s tried everything but nothing works! Something’s missing, but what?’

‘I know a bit about curses,’ Pirra said reluctantly. ‘I did one in Egypt. It drew the crocodiles that killed Alekto.’

Hekabi swung round. ‘That was you?’

Pirra nodded. ‘I’ll help you. But first you must help Echo.’

Hekabi hesitated. ‘Show,’ she commanded.

Gently, Pirra drew the falcon from inside her tunic. Echo felt terrifyingly light. Her head drooped, and through her yellow eyelids, only a dark slit showed. Her beautiful slate-grey wings were dull, and her pale flecked breast felt emaciated. With a clutch of terror, Pirra wondered if even Hekabi could save her.

The wisewoman ran one filthy clay-caked finger down the falcon’s breast, and frowned. ‘This bird has power. Where’s she from?’

‘Keftiu.’

‘But where?’

‘Taka Zimi. That’s a peak sanctuary on Mount –’

‘I know where it is.’ Hekabi was pacing again, and her eyes had a hectic glitter. ‘That’s it,’ she muttered. ‘Yes, to make it work, I must have help from many lands, wherever the Crows have defiled! This sacred bird from Keftiu –’

‘No!’ cried Pirra. ‘You can’t have Echo!’

‘Not for sacrifice,’ spat Hekabi. ‘A feather will do!’

‘Not even that, the shock might kill her!’

Hekabi went on pacing as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Many lands, yes, that’s it!’ She halted. ‘But what about Thalakrea? I have nothing from my own land!’

‘What about those obsidian beads you used to wear,’ said Pirra, cradling Echo protectively. ‘Or your seeing-stone, or sulphur from the Mountain of Fire –’

‘All gone,’ moaned the wisewoman, her face twisted in anguish. ‘Lost in the scramble to escape, nothing left! The curse will fail!’

‘No it won’t,’ said Pirra in an altered voice. Wrenching open her pouch, she pulled out her little ivory comb and flung it at Hekabi’s feet. ‘There, that’s from Egypt. And here …’ She threw down her last gold poppy-head. ‘That’s from Keftiu, from the House of the Goddess itself, it’s far more powerful than a feather!’

Hekabi pounced on the things and snatched them to her breast. ‘What about Thalakrea?’

Pirra’s thoughts darted. ‘If I give you something from there, then in return, you must swear to help Echo.’

Hekabi’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘You have something from my Island? How can that be, when it no longer exists! The Crows angered the Lady of Fire and She blasted it from the Sea!’

‘I have something,’ insisted Pirra. ‘But first, swear to cure Echo!’

‘Not till you show me.’

Pirra cleared her throat and called. She waited. She called again.

Hekabi caught movement on the slope below – and gasped.

Havoc stood at the edge of the pines. Her ears were pricked, and she glanced warily from Pirra to Hekabi as she sniffed the wisewoman’s scent. In the last of the Sun, her fur blazed golden, and her great black-rimmed eyes were filled with light.

‘I’ll give you one tuft of her fur,’ said Pirra, ‘but no more. And first, you must swear to cure Echo – and not hurt Havoc.’

‘Hurt her?’ whispered Hekabi, sinking to her knees. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, carving runnels in the cracked grey clay. ‘Hurt a sacred creature of the Lady of Fire?’

‘Swear,’ repeated Pirra.

‘I swear,’ murmured Hekabi. ‘By my lost Island – by the Lady of Fire Herself – I swear.’ She drew a ragged breath and held out her hands. ‘Give me the falcon. I’ll do what I can. Although I think it may already be too late.’