The Eye of the Falcon (17 page)

T
he falcon was worried that she might never find the girl. She
missed
her. And she could feel that the girl was in trouble.

The mountain was a strange echoing place with many narrow tunnels and lines of weirdly straight tree trunks with neither branches nor leaves. The falcon liked all the colors, and as she searched for the girl, she had fun practicing her flying by racing in and out between the tree trunks.

Now she was speeding through an echoey cave full of the musky smell of earthbound beasts. She glimpsed something huge moving in the dark. Then she was out again and there was another line of tree trunks, so she did some more in-and-out flying.

She nearly crashed into a giant shimmery cobweb—swerved, and bashed her wingtip against something hard that rattled alarmingly.

Frightened, the falcon perched on a ledge. She didn't like this place anymore. There was no earth and no Wind, and that giant cobweb had nearly gotten her.

To her surprise, she found herself missing the lion cub. The cub was grumpy and had an irritating habit of sneaking up when you were trying to roost, but you always knew what she was feeling. The falcon found that oddly comforting.

Bobbing her head to sharpen her sight, she set off again. More narrow tunnels, more leafless tree trunks; but this time, she did no in-and-out flying. Sparrows scattered before her and lizards darted into cracks. Although she was hungry, the falcon ignored them all.

Where was the girl?

It was getting late.

Pirra sat on her bed, gazing at the fire. Hylas thought she must be thinking about the Mystery, and all the other things that daughters of High Priestesses think about, which Lykonian goatherds can't possibly understand.

She was flushed from the wine, and looked handsomer than he'd ever seen her. Her hair was a shadowy river down her back, and her dark eyes reminded him of the painted women in the Great Court: just as highborn and just as inaccessible.

It was a long time since he'd thought about the difference between them, but now it became a chasm.

She'd dressed in a rush, which made it worse, because she was so used to it all. Her tunic was fine scarlet wool patterned with blue lilies made of tiny glittering stones that she called beads. At her waist, with casual grace, she'd knotted a belt of gold lizard skin with two silver tassels hanging down. When she moved, he caught a heady scent of jasmine.

What an idiot he'd been. He'd actually imagined that she could live with him and Issi and Havoc on Mount Lykas. Idiot. You can't take a girl like this to live on a mountain.

“D'you want more wine?” she said suddenly.

“No,” he replied.

She gave him a look that he didn't understand. Then she rose and spread the red rug carefully over her bed, and looked at him again.

She's trying to put me at my ease, he thought savagely. Because I'm an ex-slave with scars on my knees from crawling down mines, and part of my earlobe cut off to remove the mark of the Outsider.

He got to his feet, overturning his cup with a clatter. “We should get some sleep,” he growled.

“Right,” said Pirra.

“I'll sleep in the passage.”

She touched her scar. “Right,” she said again. “But you don't need to. I mean”—her flush deepened—“there's a bed in the next room.”

He snorted. “I've never slept in a bed in my life and I'm not going to now.”

She drew a breath. “I'll fetch you more sheepskins.”

He'd never slept in those either, but he wasn't going to tell her, so he watched her bring an armful of the cleanest fleeces he'd ever seen, along with a small soft pad. “What's that?” he said.

“It's a pillow. It's—for your head.”

“Oh.” Yet another thing he'd never heard of.

“Sleep well,” she mumbled. Her eyes were glittering, as if she was going to cry, and suddenly he wondered if he'd got it all wrong. He made to speak, but she let down the door-hanging between them.

“You too,” he muttered.

Silence on the other side. He pictured her standing there. Then he heard the whisper of her bare feet crossing the floor and the creak of her bed.

Still with the nagging sense that he'd made a mistake, he kicked the sheepskins along the passage. They were incredibly soft and smelled faintly of jasmine; curling up in them was like having his own little cloud. He'd scarcely closed his eyes when sleep reached up and dragged him under.

He dreamed he was standing beneath the Mountain of the Earthshaker, craning his neck at the peak. It turned into a huge bull and came thundering after him. Now he was in the House of the Goddess, running down endless passages, trying to find Pirra. He ran out into the Great Court and there she was, but to his horror, she'd become one of the painted women on the walls, and she was laughing at him.
What are you doing here, Outsider?

He woke with a start. He was hot and tangled in sheepskins. He could still hear Pirra's mocking laughter from the dream.

He hated Kunisu. He hated feeling these unnaturally smooth stones beneath him instead of earth, and these painted walls that shut him off from wind and sky.

He sat up. It was no good, he was never going to sleep.

Pirra lay curled in her scarlet rug, her face buried in her pillow in a storm of dark hair. She didn't stir when he lit a rushlight from the brazier. He would climb to that place where you could see out—the East Balcony?—and make sure there were still no Crows. At least that was something he could do.

By night, the House of the Goddess was alive with the secret rustlings of wild creatures. He found the stairs easily enough, and left his rushlight in an empty brazier before stepping onto the balcony. If anyone was out there, he didn't want them seeing his light.

To his relief, the woods along the river were dark: no red sparks of torches or campfires. He caught the tang of pine, and made out a tree not far from where he stood. He wished he was out in the forest.

The stairs seemed longer on the way back, and he heard a mysterious rhythmic clicking, some way off. At the bottom, he blundered into a silk hanging. That hadn't been there on the way out, he must've taken a wrong turn. In the mountains, he hardly ever got lost, but in here, everything looked the same.

That clicking was louder. He came to a shadowy hall where a massive loom leaned against the wall. Along its lower edge hung a row of clay weights, clicking against each other.

His scalp tightened. There was no draft that could've set them moving. Who—or what—had passed this way?

He swung his rushlight to and fro—and a painted face glared at him from the wall.

The Goddess wore a skirt of overlapping blue waves and a tight red open-breasted bodice. Her white features and fierce dark stare reminded him of Pirra's mother, the High Priestess.

He thought of the ghosts on the Ridge of the Dead. Did they come down by night and walk the silent halls of Kunisu?

Was Yassassara here now?

He ran.

More stairs, more passages. He burst through a doorway into the Great Court. Wherever he turned, painted crowds mocked him silently.
Which way, Outsider?

He chose a door at random and was relieved to recognize the paintings in the passage. There was that buck with the fly on its ear, and the dormouse on the barley spike; a few more paces and he'd reach the stone bull half emerging from the wall—

The bull was gone.

In disbelief, Hylas passed his hands over the smooth cold stone where it had been. This was the place, he was sure of it.

With a prickle of fear, he remembered Pirra telling him how when she was little, she used to believe that it came alive at night . . .

In the passage ahead, he heard the scrape of hooves, and loud snorting animal breath.

His rushlight shrank to a dim glow.

Just before it blinked out, he saw a vast horned shadow on the wall.

T
he 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.”