The Eye of the Falcon (12 page)

“The House of the Goddess,” repeated Hylas. “Which is standing empty. Unguarded. The Crows could just walk in and take it.”

“They'd never find it,” said Pirra, “not if they searched for ten years. Besides, they don't know it's there, they think I've got it.”

They fell silent, turning this over in their minds.

“We can't leave it there,” said Hylas. “As long as it exists, it's a threat.”

“I know. We have to get it before they do. We have to destroy it.”

Yes, but how? thought Hylas. To destroy the dagger of Koronos was no easy thing. He remembered what Akastos had told him in the smithy on Thalakrea:
No forge made by mortal men will ever be hot enough to destroy it. The dagger of Koronos can only be destroyed by a god.

And how, thought Hylas, are we to make that happen, when the gods have abandoned Keftiu?

“Of course,” said Pirra, “if the Crows pick up our trail, we'll be leading them straight to it.”

“I thought of that too,” said Hylas. “But we'll have to risk it.” Then he met her eyes. “Problem is, Pirra, how do we find the House of the Goddess? I've no idea where we are. Do you?”

H
ylas dreamed about Issi, and woke with an ache in his chest.

It was still dark, and Pirra was fast asleep. Silently, he got ready to go hunting by masking his scent with woodash; then he took his slingshot and crept out into the snow.

The sky was beginning to lighten and the forest was waking up. A pine marten peered down at him from a fir, and a pair of jays chattered overhead. This told him that the Crows couldn't be close; otherwise, these creatures would have fled.

In the gray half-light, he spotted more signs of life: the knife-sharp pattern of an owl's wings where it had punched into the snow after a vole, and the tracks of a badger, like those of a small purposeful bear. But not the paw prints of a lion.

The ache in his chest sharpened. He missed Havoc. He missed her eager little grunts when she told him things in lion talk, and her determined, mostly doomed attempts to sneak up on him unawares. Somehow when she was with him, Issi didn't seem so far away, and he felt that if he could look after Havoc, the Lady of the Wild Things would watch over his sister.

His hunting luck was good, and he downed a hare nibbling willow bark, and two partridges. He set the hare's head in a tree as an offering for the god of Mount Dikti, left the paws for the Lady of the Wild Things, and on impulse, placed one of the partridges under a bush for Havoc.

He couldn't bear to think of her out here alone. If he didn't find her, she'd be on her own for the rest of her life. And that wouldn't last long. Lions need company, or they die.

“Havoc!” he called softly.

A weasel glanced at him as it flickered past, and a raven lit onto a branch with a sonorous
cark!

“Havoc! Where
are
you?”

Snow sifted down as the raven hitched its wings and flew away.

“Havoc, where
are
you?”

Hylas' voice sounded rough with longing, and Pirra withdrew behind a boulder so that he wouldn't see her.

A bit later, she joined him. He was squatting in the snow, plucking a partridge. His face was open and raw, and she felt sorry for him.

“Sleep all right?” he said without raising his head.

She hesitated. She still felt a bit shaky, but she didn't want to go into that, so instead she asked if he'd seen Echo.

With his knife he pointed to a crag. “Up there, watching for prey.”

Pirra peered at the falcon-shaped dot. Suddenly Echo bobbed her head a few times, then spread her wings and swept down the gully. Pirra felt a tug in her chest, and the painful sense that she could almost fly.

“Bad choice, Echo,” murmured Hylas. “Don't go after magpies.”

“What's wrong with magpies?” said Pirra.

“They're too clever, they know all the tricks.”

Sure enough, the wily magpie sped straight for a patch of brambles and disappeared. Echo flew over it a couple of times, then realized it was hopeless, and returned to Pirra for reassurance.

“Better luck next time,” Pirra told her soothingly. The falcon drew a lock of her hair through her bill, as if to preen.

“She should stick to pigeons,” Hylas remarked.

He seemed to be feeling better, so Pirra asked him to show her how to use a slingshot. He gave in when she insisted, and back at the cave, while he butchered the hare, she loaded the slingshot with a pine cone and swung it over her head.

“Faster,” said Hylas. “You only get to swing it a couple of times before the prey hears, so you have to be
fast
. Now let go of the knotted end and you'll hit that bush . . . Or not.”

At the seventh attempt, she almost struck the bush, and at the tenth, she nearly got Hylas. “How long is this going to take?” she complained.

“In your case I'd say months,” he said drily. “Or I could just catch a squirrel and hold it down for you—”

Her snowball struck him smack in the chest. He chucked one back, and they forgot about the slingshot and pelted each other.

Suddenly, Hylas' face changed, and the snowball fell from his hand. Pirra glanced over her shoulder.

Havoc stood twenty paces away in a haze of frosty breath. She was much bigger and shaggier than when Pirra had last seen her, with a ridge of darker fur running from between her ears to her shoulder blades, like a full-grown lion. But her legs and paws were still spotted, and there was something cub-like about her face. Her large amber eyes were fixed on Hylas.

“
Havoc,
” he said.

The lion cub snuffed the air and made soft little
yowmp-yowmp
noises. In three bounds she was on him, flinging her forepaws around his shoulders in a powerful lion hug, and he was hugging her back and burying his face in her scruff, and they were rolling in the snow, so that Pirra could hardly tell boy from lion.

“I wonder how she survived the winter,” said Pirra, licking hare grease off her fingers.

“Scavenging, probably,” said Hylas. He'd given Havoc the hare's innards and ears, and was now feeding her the slippery marrow, which she loved just as much as when she was little.

“You don't think—she didn't eat
people
?” said Pirra.

“No,” he said firmly. “Not Havoc.”

Havoc got to her feet and rubbed her forehead against his, and he sank his hands into the deep hot fur of her flanks and scratched her hard, the way she loved, breathing in her musky lion smell.

I'll never leave you again
, he told her silently.

Echo flew to Pirra and perched on her shoulder, and Pirra gave her the partridge wing she'd saved. Havoc saw the falcon and started purposefully toward her. Echo took fright and flew to a tree with her prize.

Pirra cast Hylas an anxious glance. “D'you think they'll get along?”

“Not sure,” he said.

After erasing all trace of their camp, they set off. Their plan—such as it was—was to skirt the mountain's flank, then head north and
hope
to find the coast—and somewhere, the House of the Goddess.

They walked all day without incident, and camped for the night in another cave, sharing what was left of the partridge. After they'd eaten, Hylas sat whittling a fishhook from the hare's legbone, while Havoc lay against his thigh, quietly crunching the last of the partridge, held tight between her forepaws. Pirra curled on her side, gazing at the embers.

Echo perched on a rock beyond the cave mouth, one eye shut, the other fixed warily on Havoc. All day, lion and falcon had maintained a prickly distance. Hylas wondered how long it would last.

He put another log on the fire, and Pirra narrowed her eyes against the light. As dusk had fallen, she'd turned quiet, rubbing her wrist where her sealstone used to be.

“Are you thinking about your mother?” Hylas said carefully.

“No,” she said. But he could tell that she was.

“Were you with her when she died?”

“No,” she said again. She chewed her lower lip. “A priest came and told me. He said she was going to do a Mystery—that's a secret rite—to bring back the Sun and rid Keftiu of Plague; but it got her first.” Her dark brows drew together. “He said she was buried sitting up in her coffin, with a gold band around her head. It had eyes engraved on it. Wide staring eyes, so that she can watch over Keftiu forever . . .” She broke off. Hylas could see that she was struggling to hold back her feelings. She'd hated her mother, but she'd respected her too. Yassassara had been so strong, and now she was gone. The shock must run deep.

To change the subject, he said, “What did you do all winter at Taka Zimi?”

She made a face. “Walked round the courtyard and got bored. Learned some Egyptian with Userref and got bored. Squabbled with Silea, my slave girl, and—”

“Got bored,” finished Hylas.

She snorted a laugh.

Echo awoke and turned her head right around to glare at Havoc, who pretended not to notice.

Pirra said, “Do you think she'll ever learn to hunt? Echo, I mean.”

“In time,” said Hylas. “But she needs to go after pigeons. And she needs to hunt into the wind.”

“Why?”

“That's what falcons do. Their wings are stronger than the prey's, so the wind slows the prey down more than it does the falcon.”

“How do you
know
all these things?”

He shrugged. “It's boring being a goatherd. Nothing to do except watch goats. If I hadn't watched other creatures, I'd have gone mad.”

Again Pirra laughed.

After that there was a companionable silence, and a little later, Pirra rolled herself in her cloak and went to sleep.

Hylas sat on with Havoc. The lion cub had finished the partridge, and lay on her belly with one huge forepaw curled inside the other. Her face had lost that grim, taut look, and the wound in her shoulder was healing well.

Hylas scratched the pale fur under her chin, and she gazed up at him and rumbled happily. Over the winter, her large, slanted, black-rimmed eyes had darkened from the color of honey to the rich amber of beech leaves in autumn. She was going to be a beautiful lioness—and a powerful one. Although she wasn't yet full-grown, when she stood beside him, her head brushed his thigh, and she had at least five times his strength.

She yawned hugely, baring white fangs as long as his thumb, then rose, stretched, and rubbed her forehead against his.

I wish it was always like this, thought Hylas. Everyone together and safe. If Issi were here, it would be perfect.

When the lion cub awoke, it was the middle of the Dark. She lay contentedly snuffing the boy's warm foresty scent. Then she rolled over and flung one forepaw across his face to wake him up.

He mumbled and pushed her off, and she nosed his flank, but he went on sleeping. Such sleeps these humans had, she thought fondly. And always in the Darks, the best time to hunt!

The lion cub was
happy
. The boy
hadn't
abandoned her, he'd come all the way across the Great Gray Beast to find her. Now they would never be parted, not ever again.