The Eye of the Falcon (3 page)

“Y
ou speak Akean,” ventured Hylas as he stood shivering in the gloom.

“Well of course I do,” snapped the one-eyed old woman, “I
am
Akean. Name's Gorgo. What's yours?”

“Flea,” lied Hylas.

“Your real one.”

“. . . Hylas.”

Gorgo subsided onto a bench before a large fire and arranged her vast belly over her knees. An elderly sheephound heaved himself to his feet and limped over to her, swinging his tail. From a pail, she sloshed milk into a potsherd and watched the dog lap it up. “You just going to stand there?” she barked.

It took Hylas a moment to realize she was speaking to him.

“Feed the fire, then sit,” she commanded. “I can see you've not got the Plague, but if you don't dry off, you'll die anyway.”

Hylas fed the fire with dried cowpats, then poured seawater out of his boots and huddled as close to the fire as he could without getting scorched. The hut was dark and cramped; he tried to ignore the stink of urine and rotten fish.

With a blotchy purple paw, Gorgo scratched the bristles on her chin. Her cloudy gray eye veered all over the hut, then skewered Hylas. “So. You were a slave of the Crows.”

He nodded. “In the mines of Thalakrea.”

Gorgo grunted. “I hear that's where it started. The Crows dug too deep and angered the gods. Because of the Crows, the Sun's gone, we've had the coldest winter anyone can remember, and there is no spring.”

Hylas bit back the urge to ask about Pirra. He sensed that the old woman would tell him when she was ready, not before. “What happened here?” he said, his teeth chattering with cold. “I'm a stranger on Keftiu, I—”

“Then your luck just ran out,” said Gorgo. Jabbing her knuckle in her empty eye socket, she gave it a vigorous scratch. “First we knew, the Great Cloud was blotting out the Sun and the ash was raining down. Then the Great Wave.” She scowled. “They say some people just stood and stared. Others fled. Wave got them all. Faster than a horse can gallop. Didn't see it myself. We'd taken a load of wool inland to be weighed. Bit of luck, or we'd of drowned.”

With a stick, she stabbed the fire. “My sons say they never smelled anything like the stink of the bodies, but I wouldn't know.” A juddering laugh shook her mountainous flesh. “I can't smell. Never have.” She spat, narrowly missing the dog. “Since that first fall of ash we've had many more. Then the Plague came about a moon ago. It struck the heart of Keftiu. Yassassara ordered everyone out of the House of the Goddess and for all around as far as a man can ride in a day. Villages, farms, emptied. She sent them to the settlements in the west. They can't come back till the priests say the Plague's gone.”

Hylas swallowed. “I'm trying to find the House of the Goddess.”

“Didn't you hear what I said? There's no point, it's deserted! The High Priestess was going to do a Mystery, get rid of the Plague and bring back the Sun. Ha!” Another juddering laugh. “Plague got her instead.”

Hylas was appalled. He'd only seen Yassassara once, but she'd radiated power like heat from embers. How could she have succumbed to Plague?

“Didn't expect that, did you?” Gorgo said drily. “Nobody did. Not even her. They say she had herself carried to her tomb when she was still alive. Had her priests purify the House of the Goddess with sulfur, then seal it up. So now it's empty. Rest of Keftiu's not doing much better. Great Wave got most people on the coast, Plague got half the rest. Priests have been busy, sacrificing rams, bulls, but nothing's worked. Survivors still holed up in the west, a few hiding out in the mountains.” She sniffed. “And with no one to bury the bodies, we've got all these ghosts wandering about. They're
angry,
no proper rites, no one to put them at rest in the tombs of their kin.”

Hylas went still. “Can you—see them?”

She glared at him. “Course not! Why'd you think that?”

He ducked the question. “Aren't you afraid of the Plague? I mean, why are you still here?”

Again her bloated body shook with laughter. “We smell so bad, not even
Plague
comes near us! Nobody comes near dye-workers, we've always lived apart. And now with all this rotten meat in the Sea, why
wouldn't
we stay? It's the best sea snail harvest we've ever had! Plenty of wool about too, all those lost sheep wandering around for the taking.” She slapped her belly. “That's why I'm so fat!”

“But who's going to buy your wool?”

“Look,” snapped Gorgo. “If the Sun never comes back, the crops fail and we all die. If the Sun does come back, things'll get better and we'll be rich. Either way, we keep working.”

Hylas held his hands over the fire and watched his tunic steam. “Why was Keftiu hit harder than anywhere else?”

“
Because of Yassassara!
” roared Gorgo, causing the dog to set back his ears, and one of her sons to put his head in the door.

Hylas sat very still and waited for Gorgo to calm down.

“You said it yourself,” she growled, waving her son away. “Yassassara tried to bargain with the Crows. So when the gods punished them by blowing up Thalakrea, they punished us too. Oh, she
knew
it was her fault. That's why she was going to do the Mystery, to make up for it.”

Hylas mustered his courage. “So where's Pirra?”

Gorgo's eye became opaque, like that of a snake before it sheds its skin. Hylas had a sudden sense that she knew a lot more than she was letting on. “How should I know?” she said. “Now suppose
you
stop asking questions, and tell
me
what an Outsider from Lykonia is doing on Keftiu.”

Hylas tensed. “What makes you think I'm an Outsider?”

For a heartbeat, she hesitated. “They're the only people I know with yellow hair.”

He wondered how much to reveal. “I was a goatherd. The Crows attacked my camp and killed my dog. I got separated from my little sister. That was”—he caught his breath—“nearly two years ago.”

Gorgo narrowed her eye. “Why'd they attack you?”

“I don't know.” But he did. The Crows wanted him dead because an Oracle had foretold that if an Outsider wielded their ancestral dagger—the dagger of Koronos—it would be their ruin. But he wasn't about to tell a stranger that.

“What's your sister's name?” Gorgo said abruptly.

“What?—Issi.”

Again she scratched her bristly chin. “Did you find her?”

“No. I think she's in Messenia. If—if she's still alive.”

“Messenia.” Gorgo's eye turned inward, remembering. “Long time since I heard that name.” The dog put his muzzle on her knee, but she ignored him. “Dark soon,” she said abruptly to the fire. “You got till nightfall to get out of arrowshot of my village. Don't ever come back.”

Hylas blinked. “You mean—you're letting me go?”

Reaching under the bench, she pulled out a small wovengrass pouch and chucked it at him. “Fleabane and sulfur. Might keep off the Plague for a bit.”

“Thanks,” faltered Hylas.

Gorgo glared at him. “Don't you dare
thank
me!” she bellowed. “Get out and never come back!”

Hylas was leaving the village at a run, when she shouted after him: “That daughter of Yassassara's! I hear they took her to the mountains—to Taka Zimi! But that was moons ago, just after the Great Wave, and they say there's Plague up that way, and some monster stalking the forest—she'll be dead by now!”

P
irra is on the deck of the ship, screaming at Hylas. “I hate you! I'll
hate
you for
ever
!” She goes on screaming as the ship pulls away and he is lost from sight.

Now the voyage is over, the ship has reached Keftiu, and Pirra is watching the sailors unload Havoc's cage. The lion cub is frightened and miserable. She's been seasick all the way, and has rubbed her forehead raw on the bars, but Pirra couldn't let her out in case she jumped overboard.

They're hardly ashore when something terrible happens: The Sea begins to withdraw. Pirra stares in disbelief at glistening mounds of seaweed and stranded, flapping fish. Then the captain remembers a story of the old times and bellows a warning. “It's going to attack! To the hills!
Run!
”

Now the sailors are fleeing in panic and Userref is dragging Pirra up a cliff. She sees Havoc in her cage, abandoned on the rocks, and screams at the men to set the cub free, but Userref won't let go of her wrist and the Great Wave is roaring toward them with vast white claws . . .

Pirra woke up.

She was in bed at Taka Zimi. Her chamber was warm: Embers crackled in the brazier, and she lay in a nest of sheepskins. She smelled the wormwood that Userref burned to ward off the Plague, and heard the distant roar of the waterfall and the gurgle of water collecting in the cistern under the sanctuary. But the dream clung to her. She remembered the terrible silence after the Great Wave had gone.

She shut her eyes. She hadn't actually
seen
Havoc washed away. Maybe someone
had
let the cub out, and she'd escaped in time . . .

Round and round Pirra's thoughts circled: from grief for Havoc, to shock and disbelief over her mother, to rage and anxiety—mostly rage—about Hylas.

As her heartbeats slowed, she realized she was clutching her amulet pouch, which held the falcon feather he'd given her two summers before. Falcons are creatures of the Goddess, but Pirra loved them simply because they enjoyed a freedom she didn't have. It had meant a lot when Hylas had given her this feather.

But things were different now. All through the winter she'd had fights with him in her head. “I told you I'd die if I was sent back to Keftiu—and yet you did it anyway!”

“I was saving your life,” replied the Hylas in her head.

“You should've left that to
me
! If you hadn't forced me onto the ship, I'd have found another—probably the same one as you—and I'd be
free
! Instead I'm shut up here forever, and it's all your fault!”

“And me?” said the imaginary Hylas. “What if I drowned in the Great Wave, and you're arguing with a ghost?”

And so it went on.

Suddenly, Pirra couldn't take it anymore. Yanking open the pouch, she pulled out the small tattered feather. She'd kept it through fire and flood. Well, not anymore. She had to get Hylas out of her head.

Swiftly, she drew on woolen leggings, a long-sleeved tunic of otter fur, and calfskin boots lined with fleece, then flung on her fox-fur mantle. Ripping a twist of wool from her hair, she found a small stone lamp and tied on Hylas' feather, to weigh it down. Then she slipped quietly out of her chamber.

At the shrine, lamps glimmered before the bronze Watchers who sent their metal prayers to the Goddess while Her human worshippers slept. Pirra put her fist to her forehead and bowed, then crept out onto the steps.

Her spirits plummeted, as they always did when she saw the sky. Though it was night, she couldn't see the Moon or the stars. The Great Cloud shrouded the world. It was like being in a tomb.

The sanctuary of Taka Zimi perched like an eyrie high on a shoulder of Mount Dikti, with its back against the mountainside and a precipice in front. It was a long narrow building split into four: Pirra's chamber at one end, then the shrine, then two chambers for Userref and Pirra's hated slave girl, Silea, with the cellar and cistern beneath.

In front of the sanctuary was a small snowy courtyard enclosed by massive stone walls twenty cubits high. At the far end of the courtyard, the guards' quarters and the heavy barred gates occupied one corner, while in the other, stone pegs jutting from the wall led up to a windy lookout post, where a shaggy old juniper tree clung to life on the edge of the precipice.

Torches burned between the stone bulls' horns on top of the walls, but the guards' quarters were dark. All Pirra could hear was the thunder of the waterfall and the hiss of windblown snow.

She thought of the endless walks she'd made around the courtyard, and of her pathetic plan of escape. Whenever Silea was busy, she would sneak into the slave girl's room and kick aside the mat that covered the hatch to the cellar. Down there in the freezing dark, she would hack at the wall where the pipe carried water from the stream outside into the cistern in the cellar. Over the winter, she'd managed to dislodge one stone, creating a hole about the size of her fist.

“This is your fault, Hylas,” she whispered. “You're why I'm here.”

Racing across the courtyard, she climbed the pegs to the lookout. The screaming wind blasted her with snow, and she grabbed the trunk of the juniper tree to steady herself. In her free hand she gripped the lamp with the feather tied on. When she threw it, it would be gone for good.

Somewhere, a crow cawed, and for a moment, Pirra thought of the Crow warriors on Thalakrea. They'd escaped to safety. Had they found out that she'd taken their precious dagger?

Hylas hadn't given her the chance to tell him; he'd been too busy forcing her onto the ship. Well, if he believed the Crows still had the dagger, that only served him right.

“Get out of my head, Hylas,” she muttered, and leaned over the precipice as far as she dared.

“Pirra, what are you
doing
?” shouted Userref. He stood on the sanctuary steps, frozen with horror.

“Getting rid of something!” she yelled. Drawing back her arm, she flung the lamp—and the wind tore it away into the whirling void. “There!” she shouted. “That's the last of you gone!”

“You
promised
you wouldn't climb up there,” admonished Userref when they were back in her chamber and he'd dealt with the guards, who'd been woken by the shouting.

“I didn't
promise,
” retorted Pirra.

“Mistress, how
could
you?” scolded Silea. Her plump face puckered with disapproval, although she loved it when Pirra got into trouble.

“Silea, go away,” snarled Pirra.

“I wish I could,” muttered the slave girl. That was a lie: She was enjoying Taka Zimi, safe from the Plague, and with little to do except flirt with the guards.

“Just
go,
” commanded Pirra.

Rolling her eyes, Silea went.

Userref studied Pirra. “What you threw away, was it that falcon feather Hylas gave you?”

Pirra turned on him. “I told you never to speak his name! I
ordered
you! And in case you've forgotten, you're still
my slave,
just like Silea!”

There was a prickly silence. Userref crossed his arms and glowered at the brazier. Pirra snatched up her bronze mirror and glared at herself. The cold made her scar show livid on her cheek. She'd burned her face deliberately when she was twelve, to avoid being wed, but now that she was nearly fourteen, she hated her scar. She'd tried everything to make it fade. Nothing had worked.

Userref looked unhappy. He loathed being angry. Pirra felt a flash of affection for him. He was the big brother she'd never had.

Despite the cold, he still shaved his head in mourning for his beloved Egypt, and painted black stripes across his eyes, in the hopes that it would bring back the Sun. For him even more than for the Keftians, the Sun's disappearance was a catastrophe: He lived by its daily rebirth.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

He gave her a smile that lit up his handsome face. “Doesn't matter, I understand. It's this terrible place.”

The frozen mountain had appalled him. “This thing you call
snow,
” he'd exclaimed on their first day at Taka Zimi, “it's everywhere! And some demon has put a spell on my breath and turned it to smoke!”

Pirra had had a struggle to make him wear warm clothes, as he refused to touch wool, regarding sheep as unclean. At last she'd persuaded him into a linen tunic and leggings padded with goosedown, a harefur cloak, and calfskin boots stuffed with hay.

Pirra noticed that his pouch was slung over his shoulder. “You're going out,” she said.

“Down to the village to get more wormwood.”

“Let me go with you,” she begged.

He sighed. “You know I can't. I swore to your mother.”

Pirra blinked. She hated it when he mentioned Yassassara. “The High Priestess is dead,” she told him levelly.

“Which makes her wishes sacred.”

“For how long? Am I to be shut in here forever?”

“You know the answer. Till the Sun returns and rids the land of Plague.”

“What if that never happens?”

“Your mother sent you here to be safe. Now that she's dead, the priests—”

“They don't care about me any more than she did!” Pirra burst out. “They only want me alive so they can trade me in marriage when this is over!”

Userref turned to go, but she ran to him. “Userref,
please!
Let me come with you, even just outside the gates! I won't run away, where would I go? There's nothing but mountains and snow!”

“Pirra—”

“All winter I've been pacing that courtyard! If I do it any more I'll go mad!”

“Pirra I can't! I swore to your mother!”

“My mother is dead dead dead!”

There was a shocked silence. Pirra folded her arms and turned her back on Userref. She had hated her mother, but she'd been stunned by her death, and she was haunted by their last exchange. “You ran away,” Yassassara had said coldly. “You shirked your duty to Keftiu.”

Pirra had wanted to tell her that on Thalakrea, she'd risked her life for Keftiu—but she'd never gotten the chance. That day she'd been banished to Taka Zimi, and she'd never seen her mother again. Now she couldn't ever make Yassassara proud of her. It was too late.

She turned to find Userref observing her thoughtfully. “You're more like her than you know,” he said. “Just as brave and just as strong-willed.”

Pirra flinched. Once, Hylas had said something similar.
You're brave and you don't give up.

With a snarl, she ground her fist against the wall.
Stop
thinking about Hylas.

“And Pirra,” said Userref from the doorway. “That feather. It's an emblem of
Heru,
my falcon-headed god. You can't get rid of it as easily as that.”

“What do you mean?” Pirra said sulkily.

“You sent it out on the wind. Who knows what the wind will send back?”