The Eye of the Falcon (22 page)

C
lutching her sodden cloak about her face to hide her scar, Pirra hurried after Hylas, who'd gone ahead to find Havoc. For two days they'd been desperately seeking Userref while the storm continued to rage—but still no sign of him.

Rounding a bend, she found Hylas confronting a gang of fishermen with three-pronged spears and weird purple skin. A flock of soggy sheep huddled in a pen adjoining a tumbledown farmhouse, and trapped between that and the pen was Havoc: wet, snarling, and terrified.

“Leave her alone!” shouted Hylas, grabbing one of the spear shafts.

“Don't you dare hurt her!” screamed Pirra.

“That thing's after our sheep!” yelled a fisherman.

Everyone shouted at once. Havoc seized her chance and shot off into the woods. “What's going on?” bellowed a voice.

At the door of the farmhouse Pirra saw a mountainous old woman swathed in what seemed to be a wet leather tent. She had a face like a purple sponge and only one eye, which lurched from Pirra to Hylas—and glared at him. “
You!
” she rasped.

“Who's she?” said Gorgo, jerking her head at Pirra.

“Just some girl,” said Hylas.

Gorgo snorted, and he sensed that she saw through Pirra's disguise, but didn't care.

They were all in the farmhouse, including Gorgo's elderly dog and the sheep, and her sons were busy ransacking the place. The air was a fug of wet livestock and dye-workers' stink of urine and rotting fish.

“Do you
know
this woman?” whispered Pirra beside him.

“I met her when I first got to Keftiu,” he hissed.

“Is this their farm?”

“No, but I wouldn't point that out!” Then to Gorgo, “Are we prisoners?”

Gorgo ignored that. “A few nights ago,” she said accusingly, “we hear of Crows on Setoya. Then this storm washes away the Plague, so we come to see what we can find. Suddenly there's a
lion
attacking our sheep—and now you!
You
tell
me
what's going on!”

“We're hiding from the Crows,” said Hylas, “and we're looking for—”

“Crows are gone,” snapped Gorgo. “Man called Deukaryo ganged up with a whole crowd of farmers, forced them at spear point onto a fishing boat.” Her laugh shook her vast bulk. “Some lad on board with a bandaged head yelling about the Angry Ones. They'll not be back to Keftiu in a hurry.”

A dreadful thought occurred to Hylas. Maybe the Crows had found Userref; maybe Telamon had the dagger.

Pirra had thought of that too. “You've got to let us go!” she cried. “We're looking for an Egyptian, we have to find him! Did the Crows catch him?”

Thunder shook the farmhouse. “You're not going anywhere in this,” growled Gorgo.

Pirra was curled up asleep and Gorgo sat snoring by the fire with her dog at her feet. Hylas listened to the creak of the rafters and wondered if the same storm was battering Messenia—and if Issi was sheltering somewhere, thinking of her brother.

Ever since Kunisu, his mother's death had weighed on his heart like a stone. He knew Pirra was wondering what was wrong, but he couldn't bring himself to tell her.

And he was worried about Havoc. Whether or not they found Userref, they couldn't stay on Keftiu, or someone would recognize Pirra and drag her back to Kunisu; but what about Havoc?

He was roused by the smell of singed fur: The dog's rump was beginning to scorch. Quietly, Hylas shifted its bottom, and it thumped its tail in its sleep.

“You're a long way from Mount Lykas, aren't you, lad?” rasped Gorgo.

He met her cloudy eye. “I never told you I was from there.”

“You didn't need to. I knew your mother.”

He went still. “My mother's dead. Her ghost came to me in the Great Court at Kunisu. How did you know her?”

She spat a gob of purple snot. “She was a Marsh Dweller; an Outsider of the coast. They got on well with us Messenians. I was older than her, but we were friends.” She gave a rumbling laugh. “We both fell for handsome foreigners. I fetched up here. She went north to the mountains near Mycenae—”

“
Mycenae?
” said Hylas.

“He was Mountain Clan. But you must know that, you've got his tattoo.”

Hylas stared at the mark on his forearm. “But—this is a Crow tattoo. They did it when I was a slave, I turned it into a bow by scratching a line along the bottom.”

“Well, it's the mark of the Mountain Clan. You're the image of your father.” With a blotchy purple paw, she scratched her chins. “They quarreled. Your mother knew the Crows would invade, but he didn't believe it, so she took you and Issi and went south.”

“You—you know my sister's name.”

Gorgo shrugged. “Means
frog
in your mother's tongue. She liked frogs.”

Hylas was reeling. His father had been Mountain Clan, the clan that had refused to fight the Crows. His father had been a coward.

“She never got as far as Messenia,” muttered Gorgo. “You were too small.”

“So she left us on Mount Lykas,” said Hylas in a low voice. “Wrapped in a bearskin.”

“Bears,” grunted Gorgo. “Sacred to your father's clan. She left you and went to fetch help.”

With a stick, Hylas jabbed at the fire. “Why didn't she come back?”

“She got sick and died,” Gorgo said brutally. “By the time her father heard about you, some peasant had taken you to his village.”

Her father . . . Hylas remembered the scrawny old Outsider who used to teach him the ways of the wild. “He was my grandfather. He never told us, why didn't he
tell
us?”

“Who knows? I heard all this long after, when someone from my village turned up here. Maybe the old man couldn't bear to talk about her, maybe he blamed your father for her death—”

“He was right about that, wasn't he?” Hylas burst out. “If it hadn't been for my father, she wouldn't have died and we wouldn't have spent years slaving for some lousy old peasant!”

“Well, it's
done,
” snapped Gorgo. “You're not the first boy to lose his parents.”

Shortly before dawn, Hylas shook Pirra awake. “Come on,” he muttered. “Dawn soon, we're free to go.”

“Didn't you sleep?” yawned Pirra.

“No,” he said curtly.

Outside it was still dark and as stormy as ever. As they headed off beneath the dripping trees, Gorgo appeared in the doorway and called to him.

“Watch yourself on the road, lad! Odd people about. My sons saw a weird one a while back. Face smeared with lime, said he was in mourning. Could've been a madman—or an Egyptian.”

“Where was he heading?” cried Pirra.

Gorgo jerked her head. “Turonija. East along the coast.”

P
irra asked Hylas if he was all right.

“Well, let's see,” he said, raising his voice above the storm. “We can't find Userref; sooner or later someone's going to recognize you and drag you back to Kunisu; and we can't find Havoc either, so she probably thinks I've abandoned her.”

Pirra pushed her wet hair out of her face. “She might just be lost, but she'll find us.”

“Mm,” he said gloomily.

Hoisting her bag on her shoulder, Pirra started up the hill. “We might be able to see her from the top.”

Instead of following her, Hylas grabbed a stick and decapitated a bush. He
wanted
to tell her about his parents, but he couldn't. Anger and shame churned inside him. He was the son of a coward who'd fled the Crows rather than fight.

“Wait for me!” he shouted after Pirra. But the wind was too loud and she didn't hear.

Miserably, the cub plodded through the thorn bushes. She couldn't find the boy, and it was frightening being alone in the storm. Trees flung branches at her, and she was nearly squashed by a falling pine. When she emerged from the bushes, her fur was all snarly with thorns. Wearily, she sat down to lick them off.

From high above came the falcon's shivering cry.

The cub stopped licking. The falcon was calling to the girl. And wherever the girl was, the boy wouldn't be far—so they were
bound
to find each other eventually.

Feeling better, the lion cub headed off, keeping the falcon in view.

And of course, the boy would be looking for her too. The cub was as sure of this as she was of the spots on her paws: He would never abandon her again.

The falcon
still
hadn't made her first kill. Bats, crows, magpies, they'd all escaped; it was
so
humiliating.

The Wind was lumpy and kept trying to fling her off, but at last she found an updraft, and below her the girl and the poor plodding lion cub dwindled to specks.

That cub. Why did she like it so much when the boy scratched her flanks? The thought of anyone scratching the falcon's feathers made her feel sick.

And yet. She couldn't help admiring the cub's stubborn determination to find the boy. It made the falcon feel that if she also kept trying, she might make her first kill.

Far below, she spotted a flock of birds, so she tilted one wing and slid across the sky to take a look. Pigeons. Flying upwind.

Again the falcon caught the updraft, this time soaring so high that she burst through the clouds into a dazzling glare. For the first time ever, she was face-to-face with the vast power she'd always sensed hidden beyond the clouds. She knew at once that this was the Sun.

Still she climbed, until the height made her ears sing. She would fly higher than she'd ever flown before.

And then she would dive.

On the hilltop, Pirra slitted her eyes against the rain. Below her the dirty Sea crashed on the shore, and a group of peasants straggled homeward. The storm was still punishing Keftiu and the Sun was never coming back. She had failed Keftiu and she'd failed her mother. And Userref had vanished without a trace.

Glancing skyward, she glimpsed a dark speck against the gray. It was Echo. Pirra's spirits lifted a little.

A flock of pigeons sped past. Echo was going after them. As Pirra watched, she felt that she too was hunting, experiencing the rush of limitless flight . . .

She is Echo. The earth falls away as she spirals higher and gets ready to dive. Now she's tucking her legs beneath her tail and folding her wings, she's hurtling toward the prey.

Faster than an arrow she plummets through the screaming air: faster than any creature who's ever lived. Her eyes lock on to a pigeon that's strayed from the rest. The pigeon swerves. She adjusts her dive to follow. As she hurtles closer, she swings her legs forward and clenches her talons—she punches into the pigeon, snapping its spine and knocking it out of the sky.

With a jolt, Pirra was herself again. “You did it!” she yelled, jumping up and down.

Echo caught the prey in one talon before it hit the ground and flew to a branch, where she ripped off its head and started plucking feathers from its breast.

“You did it,” murmured Pirra. She was breathless and exhilarated, as if she too had flown faster than thought.

It was then she became aware that the rain had stopped. The wind had sunk to a gentle breeze. The thornscrub was no longer grimy with ash; the storm had washed it clean. She was
hot
.

Below her Hylas was trudging uphill. Suddenly, a yellow blur burst from the bushes and streaked toward him. “Havoc!” he cried. Then the lion cub knocked him over and they were rolling together in the rain-washed thyme.

Pirra caught her breath. Hylas' hair was shining like gold. Then the gods tore away the last of the Great Cloud that had blighted Keftiu for so long, and she turned up her face to a sky of astonishing blue—and shielded her eyes from the life-giving glare of the eternal Sun.

“You did it,” said Hylas.

“But I didn't complete the Mystery,” said Pirra.

“No, but that's because the Goddess sent Echo to save you. Maybe—maybe the Goddess decided that you'd done enough.”

Pirra didn't reply. They stood watching the peasants on the shore falling to their knees and stretching out their arms to the Sun.

Havoc, washed a clean glossy gold, rubbed her forehead against Hylas' thigh, and he scratched her ears. Then she turned her head, and her tawny eyes caught something far to the west. Following her gaze, he made out the white shimmer of Kunisu. He felt a twinge in his temple, and glimpsed a tall gray figure on the Ridge of the Dead.

“I wonder if she knows,” Pirra said shakily.

Hylas saw the ghost of Yassassara nod once, then fade back into her tomb. “She knows,” he said.

By the time they reached Turonija, spring had arrived in a rush. Almond and olive trees burst into flower. Green spears of barley shot up, and flaxfields became drifts of brilliant blue. Hills throbbed with scarlet poppies, yellow broom, and white asphodel, and the wind was warm and fragrant with hyacinth. Crickets rasped, frogs piped—while in the Sea, shoals of tiny silver fish darted about, cleaning up the shallows. All Keftiu was on the move: washing, rebuilding, burying.

“I'm glad you're seeing it at its best,” said Pirra.

Hylas glanced at her. “Will you be sorry to leave?”

“No. Yes. I don't know.” She gave a crooked smile. Once they left Keftiu, she could never return. If the priests caught her, they would drag her back to Kunisu and keep her there, or sell her off in marriage to some chieftain far across the Sea. Daughters of High Priestesses were not allowed to be free.

But now that the Sun had returned, Hylas felt more hopeful. Pirra had told him that she'd overheard his talk with Gorgo, and that was a huge relief, as it meant he didn't have to talk about his mother. And to Pirra's lasting joy, although Echo was now hunting for herself, she seemed keen to stay close.

And yet they still hadn't found Userref.

Turonija was a big settlement that had been wrecked by the Great Wave, but was now a hive of activity: men rebuilding houses, women making offerings and cooking pots. Twice, Pirra hid her scar and went to seek news of Userref, but no one had heard of a wandering Egyptian. What she did learn was that the priests were preparing to choose a new High Priestess, and in Kunisu they'd found the remains of a Mystery; word had spread like wildfire that Yassassara's daughter had brought back the Sun—then turned into a falcon and flown away.

“I'm glad they know it was you,” said Hylas. “And it's good that they think you're gone. Now they won't be looking for you.”

Pirra didn't reply.

They were on a hill feathered with tamarisk trees, looking west toward Kunisu. As they watched, the sky was briefly dimmed by cloudshadow; then the Sun blazed out, and the House of the Goddess glittered like crystal.

“That's how I want to remember it,” said Pirra. Her face was taut, her fists clenched at her sides. Hylas put his arm around her, and for a moment she leaned against him. Then she ran off, calling for Echo.