The Burning Shadow (2 page)

“W
hat
is
a mine?” muttered Hylas to the man with the broken nose.

After an evil trudge, they'd reached a crossroads. Tracks led off to both headlands, another inland—and the fourth ended here, at the mines: a great red hill heaving with half-naked slaves. Men pounded livid green rock, women and girls washed it in troughs, small boys picked it over; all under the watchful stares of overseers. Higher up, more slaves swarmed in and out of holes in the hillside, like flies at a wound.

“A mine,” said the man with the broken nose, “is what men do to get bronze. You dig till you hit the greenstone. Hack it loose, crush it, burn it till the copper bleeds out. Then mate it with tin.” He nodded at the smoky ridge. “Furnaces. That's the smith's domain.”

Hylas swallowed. In Lykonia, where he'd grown up, peasants said sorry to the earth before they plowed their barley patches—even though plowing didn't really hurt Her and the scars soon faded. This tortured hill had been cut too deep to heal.

At last their bonds were untied, and an overseer passed down the line, appraising each slave. “Hammerman,” he grunted, and the man with the broken nose was led away. “Hauler. Crusher.” He glanced at Hylas. “Pit spider.”

A bigger boy jerked his head at Hylas to follow, and they scrambled over piles of red rubble dotted with shards of glossy black rock. Hylas recognized it as obsidian. Crow warriors used it to make their arrowheads: Last summer, he'd dug one out of his arm. Pretending to stumble, he grabbed a shard and hid it in his fist.

They reached a hollow cut into the lower slope, and the boy told Hylas to wait for the other pit spiders, then left.

The hollow seemed to be some kind of den: Hylas saw four small piles of rags in four patches of trodden earth. He slumped down, too exhausted to care where he sat. He couldn't remember when he'd last eaten or drunk, and the din of hammers was making his head pound. His new tattoo stung. After they'd splashed ashore, a man had grabbed his forearm and pricked it over and over with a bone needle, rubbing in a paste that smelled like soot. The result was a grimy zigzag, like a mountain with twin peaks: his owner's mark.

The Sun set and the hollow filled with shadow. The hammers fell silent—except for one, which rang out from the furnace ridge.

Four boys appeared at the mouth of the den and glared at Hylas as if he was something they'd forgotten to chuck on the dung heap. They were covered in red dust and their scrawny limbs were pocked with odd greenish scars. They wore nothing except sweat-soaked rags tied around their heads, hips, and knees.

The tallest looked a couple of years older than Hylas, with a hook nose and heavy black brows that met in the middle. On a thong on his chest he wore a shriveled strip of dried meat the size of a finger. He was clearly the leader; he shot Hylas a challenging stare.

The youngest was about seven, with bandy legs and weak eyes. He squinted up at the older boy for reassurance.

The third had black hair and haughty features. He reminded Hylas of an Egyptian he'd seen last summer.

The fourth was a wild-eyed skeleton with collarbones that jutted like sticks. He kept flinching and darting fearful glances over his shoulder.

The Egyptian boy took a step toward Hylas. “Get out,” he snarled. “That's my spot.”

Hylas knew better than to back down. “Now it's mine,” he said, letting the boy see the obsidian shard in his hand.

The boy chewed his lips. The others waited. With a hiss, the boy snatched his rags and found another spot.

The small boy and the scared one glanced at the leader. He hawked a gobbet of red snot, then squatted and began unwinding his head-bindings.

Hylas shut his eyes. It was over for now—although he guessed that sooner or later, they'd have another go at him.

“How old are you?” the leader said brusquely.

Hylas opened one eye. “Thirteen.”

“Where you from?”

“Around.”

“Name.”

Hylas hesitated. “Flea.” A shipwrecked sailor had called him that last summer; it would do. “You?”

“Zan.” He nodded at the youngest boy. “Bat.” Then the Egyptian boy. “Beetle.” Then the bony one. “Spit.”

Spit gave a jittery snigger that bared a slobbery mouthful of broken teeth.

“What's he so scared of?” Hylas asked Zan.

Zan shrugged. “Snatcher nearly got him coupla days ago.”

“What's a snatcher?”

The others gaped and Zan sneered. “You don't know nothing, do you?”

“What's a snatcher?” Hylas repeated levelly.

“Bad spirits,” said Bat, clutching a furry amulet that appeared to be a squashed mouse. “They live down the pit and they follow you in the dark. They look like us, see? There can be a snatcher right next you and you won't know it.”

“If it looks like you,” said Hylas, “how d'you know it's a snatcher?”

“Um . . .” Bat's small face crumpled with confusion.

Beetle the Egyptian tapped the groove between his nose and his upper lip. “Snatchers got a ridge here. That's how. But you never see them for long enough to know.”

“They live in the rocks,” whispered Spit fearfully. “They come and go like shadows.”

Hylas considered that. Then he said, “Why are you called pit spiders?”

Zan snorted. “You'll find out.”

After that they ignored Hylas, and busied themselves with unwinding the rags from their heads and knees and laying them out to dry.

A wave of homesickness swept over him. He missed Issi, and Scram, his dog that the Crows had killed. He missed Spirit the dolphin, and Pirra. He even missed Telamon, the Chieftain's son who'd been his friend till he'd turned out to be a Crow.

If he cared about someone, he lost them. He always ended up on his own. He hated that.

Well so
what
, he told himself angrily. First things first, you got to get out of here.

“Don't even think about escaping,” muttered Zan, as if he'd spoken aloud.

“What's it to you?” retorted Hylas.

“You'll fail, we'll get punished, then we'll punish you.”

Hylas studied him. “I bet you never even tried.”

“Nowhere to go,” said Zan with another shrug. “Islanders too scared to help, Sea full of sharks. Nothing inland but boiling springs and man-eating lions. If they don't get you, Kreon's men will.”

“Who's Kreon?”

Zan jerked his head at the stronghold frowning down at them. “Kreon owns the island. The pit. Us.”

“No one owns me,” said Hylas.

All four burst out laughing and beat the ground with their fists.

At that moment, a whistle shrilled and they scrambled out of the den. Hylas followed, hoping this meant food.

Hordes of slaves were fighting over provisions. The pit spiders grabbed a basket and a rawhide pail, and Hylas elbowed his way to a few gulps of vinegary water and a handful of bitter gray mush that tasted like mashed acorns and grit.

He was licking the last of it off his fingers when he heard the thud of feet and the rattle of wheels.

“Get in line!” shouted Zan.

Red dust was rising on the westward track, and fear was rippling over the hillside like wind through barley. Hylas saw slaves bowing their heads and clamping their arms to their sides; overseers tapping their whips against their thighs and wiping their sweaty jowls.

First around the bend swept a pack of hunting dogs. They had shaggy red hides and wore collars spiked with bronze. They had the hot dull eyes of beasts who'd been beaten and starved to make them killers.

Next came a band of warriors: nightmare figures in breastplates and kilts of black rawhide, with heavy spears and vicious bronze knives. Despite the heat, black cloaks flew behind them like wings, and their faces were gray with ash.

Hylas swayed. He'd seen warriors like them before.

In their midst rode a Chieftain in a chariot drawn by two black horses. As it thundered up the track toward the stronghold, Hylas caught a glimpse of hooded eyes and a bristly black beard. Something about that face was terrifyingly familiar.

“Head
down
!” breathed Zan, elbowing him in the ribs.

In horror, Hylas stared from the Chieftain to the tattoo on his forearm. “It's not a mountain,” he whispered. “It's a crow.”

“Course it's a crow!” hissed Zan. “That's Kreon son of Koronos—he
is
a Crow!”

Hylas felt as if he was falling from a great height.

He was a slave in the mines of the Crows.

If they found out he was here, they would kill him in a heartbeat.

T
he Sun wasn't yet up when Hylas jolted awake, but already the others were preparing to head off. They hadn't bothered to wake him. They didn't care if he got a beating.

Hastily, he cut strips from his tunic and bound his head and knees, then tied another band around his hips and tucked the shard of obsidian in a fold at his waist.

Beetle told him to take another rag too. “Down the pit, pee on it and tie it across your nose and mouth. Keeps out the dust.”

“Thanks,” said Hylas.

“The pit” turned out to be two shafts dug into the hill. One was an arm-span wide, with a log laid across and a rope slung over that; Hylas guessed it was some kind of pulley. The other was narrower; before it, lines of men waited to climb down. Many were covered in greenish scars, and missing fingers and toes. All had bloodshot eyes and faces stony with defeat.

“Who are they?” Hylas asked Beetle.

“Hammermen,” muttered the Egyptian boy. “Stay outa their way.”

As they stood in line, Hylas saw warriors guarding the mines. Kreon's stronghold glared down at him. He told himself the Crows thought he was dead: drowned last summer in the Sea. It didn't help.

Noticing that there were more slaves than overseers and guards, he asked Zan why they didn't rebel.

The older boy rolled his eyes. “Pit's got nine levels, see? You try to escape, you're sent down the deepest.”

“So?”

Zan didn't reply. He was tossing pinches of dust over his shoulder and spitting three times.

“It keeps the snatchers away,” whispered Bat, clutching his squashed mouse. Spit was tugging at his bony collarbones and sweating with fear. Beetle was muttering a charm in Egyptian.

Hylas asked Bat if his mouse was an amulet, and the younger boy nodded. “Tunnel mice are clever, they always get out before a cave-in. Zan's got a amulet too, a hammerman's finger.”

“Shut up, Bat!” said Zan.

Ahead of them, a hammerman had noticed Hylas. It was the man with the broken nose. “You're Lykonian,” he said in an undertone.

Hylas' belly turned over.

“Don't deny it, I can tell from your speech. I hear the Crows had trouble there last spring. They were killing Outsiders, but didn't get them all.”

“You heard wrong,” muttered Hylas, avoiding the pit spiders' curious glances.

“I don't think so,” whispered the man. “I'm from Messenia, they were hunted there too, but some got away. Why are the Crows after Outsiders?”

Messenia
. That was where Issi had gone. “The ones who got away,” breathed Hylas. “Was there a girl about ten summers old?”

An overseer shouted at the man to move, and he shot Hylas an unreadable look and disappeared down the shaft.

“What's an Outsider?” Zan said sourly.

“Someone born outside a village,” said Hylas.

“That make you special?” he sneered.

“I'm not an Outsider,” lied Hylas.

The others were taking rawhide sacks from a pile, and Zan chucked one to Hylas. Copying the older boy, he slung it on his back with his arms through the straps. Then he tossed dust over his shoulders, spat three times, and asked the Lady of the Wild Things to protect him. She felt far away in Akea. He wondered if She'd hear.

Bat climbed in first, then Zan, Spit, and Beetle.

The Egyptian boy looked almost as scared as Spit. “Watch your head,” he told Hylas, “and breathe through your mouth.”

“Why?”

“You'll find out.”

He was struggling down a slimy rope ladder. A smell like a dung heap caught at his throat. He breathed through his mouth.

Fifty rungs . . . A hundred . . . By the time he reached the bottom, he'd lost count.

He was in a tunnel so low he couldn't stand up. It was dark, and the walls threw back the rasp of his breath. A log supporting the roof creaked. He was horribly aware of the weight of the hill pressing down. Here and there, a clay lamp on a ledge cast a smoky glimmer. Shadows leaped and skittered away. He thought of the snatchers, and crawled after the others.

As he groped around bewildering turns and sudden drops, the stink became eye watering. He sniffed his palm and gagged. He was crawling through the muck of hundreds of people.

Muffled voices reached him through the walls. He recognized Zan's, and guessed that the tunnel doubled back. “Nobody help him,” Zan was saying. “He's on his own.”

It grew hotter as they descended, and soon Hylas was sweating. He caught a distant sound of hammering. Nine levels, he thought. The whole hill must be riddled with holes. He tried not to think of the Earthshaker, the god whose stamping brings down mountains.

Suddenly the noise became deafening, and he found himself in a large shadowy cavern. The air was thick with dust, but here and there, little pools of lamplight glimmered in the murk. On ledges cut into the walls, naked men lay on their backs, pounding veins of green rock with hammerstones and antler picks. Boys and girls no more than five summers old flitted warily among them, collecting the fragments into piles. Hylas felt sick. The hammermen were hacking the earth's green blood from Her flesh. He was inside a giant wound.

The pit spiders had covered their mouths and noses with wet rags, and were filling their sacks with greenstone. Hylas did the same. When their sacks were full, Zan led them up a different tunnel. The straps bit into Hylas' shoulders. It was like dragging a corpse.

After an endless climb, they reached the main shaft. Two men grabbed Hylas' sack, tied a rope around its neck, and hauled. The sack rose jerkily.

Moments later, it burst and its load crashed down, narrowly missing Hylas.

“Whose sack was that?” yelled a furious hauler. He spotted Hylas. “You! You didn't check it!”

“Always check your gear,” jeered Zan.

Hylas set his teeth. Zan had given him a faulty sack on purpose. All right then, he thought. Time to sort this out.

Back at the cavern, he made sure that he stayed near Zan while they gathered another load, and he stayed near as they headed for the shaft. Halfway there, Zan clutched his chest and frantically searched the ground. By the time they reached the shaft, he was shaking.

“Looking for this?” Hylas said quietly. He gave Zan the shriveled finger, then brought his face close. “We'll keep this between ourselves,” he breathed, “and I don't want to take your place as leader—but never mess with me again. Understood?”

Slowly, Zan nodded.

They did two more exhausting rounds, then an overseer called a halt. Zan must have spread the word, because the others made room for Hylas and let him share a skin of vinegar and a grimy flatbread.

Zan and Beetle ate with grim concentration, while Bat tucked crumbs in cracks for the tunnel mice. Spit ate nothing, flinching at the dark.

Under his breath, Hylas asked Zan what snatchers did to people.

“Sometimes they whisper in your ear and follow you like a shadow, till you go mad. Sometimes they reach down your throat and stop your heart.”

Hylas swallowed. “And they live in the rocks?”

“Rocks, tunnels. They're spirits, they can go anywhere.”

“
Sh!
” hissed Beetle with a furious scowl. Aboveground, he'd been almost friendly, but down here he was silent and subdued.

Zan peered at Hylas. “You been underground before?”

“Once,” said Hylas. “There was an earthshake.”

Zan whistled. “What'd you do?”

“I got out.”

Zan laughed.

Hylas asked if they had earthshakes on Thalakrea, and the older boy shook his head. “Cave-ins, smoke from the Mountain, that's all.”

“
Smoke?
From a
mountain
?”

“Goddess lives inside. The smoke's Her breath, and from the fire spirits. They live in cracks in the ground, all spiky and hot.”

Hylas considered that. “Does She ever get angry?”

“I dunno. But it's only ever just smoke.”

At that moment, an overseer ordered them to haul greenstone from the eighth level.

A shudder ran through the pit spiders.

“Not so deep,” moaned Spit. Beetle shut his eyes and groaned, and even Zan looked scared. “Right,” he said. “Everybody stay close.”

Zan led them down a web of tunnels to the fifth level . . . the sixth . . . the seventh.

It grew hotter and more airless. Hylas brushed past a pile of leaves and something furry and dead. He guessed it was an offering to the snatchers.

He caught an uprush of foul air, and the ground beneath him creaked. He was on a log bridge spanning a cavernous shaft. Far below, he glimpsed lamplight and toiling bodies. A face peered up at him: the man with the broken nose.

“Flea! Stay close!” warned Zan.

Hylas got off the bridge fast. “That shaft, is that—”

“The deep levels,” said Zan.

“But there wasn't a ladder. How do they get out?”

“They don't. You're sent down the deep levels, you stay there till you die . . .” Zan's voice faded as he rounded a bend.

Hylas was appalled. To be trapped in darkness forever . . .

His empty sack caught on a rock. He freed it, bashed his head, and hurried after the others. “Zan! Wait!”

No reply. He must have taken a wrong turn.

As he backtracked, he heard the sound of hammering, and made for that. He fell down a drop. No, this wasn't right.

He reached a place where the walls bulged inward. This wasn't right either, but he could still hear hammering, and hammering meant people, so he squeezed through.

The hammering dwindled to one: tap tap tap.

He was in a low cavern lit by a sputtery stone lamp on a ledge. He couldn't see anyone, but the hammering was closer. Tap tap.

He edged forward.

The hammering stopped.

“Who's there?” he said.

Someone blew out the lamp.

Silence. Hylas sensed a presence in the dark.

He felt breath on his face: earthy and cold, like wet clay.

He fled. His sack snagged. He tugged it free.

Something tugged back.

Jerking the sack loose, he blundered against the wall. It seemed to move beneath his palm. Was it rock, or flesh? His fingers touched what felt like a mouth—and above it, a ridge. He recoiled with a cry.

The darkness was so thick he could touch it, he had no idea where he was going. Then the sound of his breathing changed: He was back in a tunnel.

Somehow, he reached the place where the walls bulged, and squeezed in sideways.

A hand grabbed his ankle. He kicked. His foot struck cold earthen flesh. In panic he kicked again. The grip on his ankle crumbled like wet clay. He burst through the gap. Behind him he heard harsh angry breath.

Whimpering, he fled. Stony laughter echoed in the dark.
Snatchers live in rocks, tunnels . . . They follow you in the dark.

“
Flea!” Zan's voice sounded far ahead.

Someone crashed into Hylas. “Get
off
me!” shrieked Spit.

“You're going the wrong way,” panted Hylas.

Spit grabbed him by the throat. “Get
off
me!”

He was alarmingly strong. Hylas clawed at his hands, then groped for his eyes and dug in his thumbs. Spit howled and vanished into the murk.

“Flea!” shouted Zan, much closer. “Where you
been
?”