The Burning Shadow by Michelle Paver Read Free Book Online Page A

brought scraps to keep them quiet.
    After walking through the night, they’d reached the gray Sea and a ship rocking in the shallows. The captain was expecting them, and they’d set off along the coast.
    Hekabi said that if the wind kept up, they should reach the White Mountains by the following dusk. To throw off pursuit, she’d laid a false trail, and if that failed, she knew secret places in the Mountains where no one would find them.
    The stars faded and a red slash appeared on the eastern horizon: The Goddess was walking across the Sea to wake the Sun. Pirra cut a sliver of dried mullet and threw it over the side for an offering, then cut another piece for herself.
    She stopped in mid-chew. The Sun was in the wrong place. If they were heading west, it should be behind her.
    She glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes widened. Keftiu had dwindled to a black line on the edge of the Sea.
    She lurched along the deck to where Hekabi stood staring across the waves. “We’re heading
north
!” she cried.
    â€œWell spotted,” Hekabi said drily.
    â€œYou said we were going to the White Mountains!”
    â€œI lied.”
    â€œBut I
paid
you!” shouted Pirra.
    The brown eyes studied her with amusement. “I needed gold to buy my passage. Now you’re just a nuisance I’ll have to put up with for a while.”
    Pirra’s outrage turned to unease. She seemed to have swapped one form of captivity for another. “Where are you taking me?” she said.
    Hekabi turned back to the horizon. The red dawn lit the strong planes of her face, and the wind whipped her strange streaky hair across her cheeks. “There is a ring of islands with hearts of flame,” she told the waves. “Once long ago, the Lady of Fire tore off Her bright necklace and flung it across the great green Sea . . .”
    â€œ
Wh-at?
” said Pirra. “The Obsidian Isles? But that’s halfway to
Akea
!”
    â€œThe ‘Obsidian Isles’ may be what you Keftians call them,” said Hekabi with an edge to her voice, “but we who live there simply call them the Islands.” She paused. “Ten years ago, warriors came from Akea. They went from island to island till they found what they wanted.”
    Pirra’s belly tightened. “You mean the Crows.”
    â€œThe warriors of Koronos. Yes.”
    It was Pirra’s turn to stare out to Sea. Last summer, she’d narrowly escaped being wed to the son of a Crow Chieftain. Then another Crow Chieftain had beaten her up and nearly killed Hylas.
    â€œOn the island where I was born,” said Hekabi, “the Crows found what they wanted.” Her hands tightened on the side of the ship. “They dug deep into the earth, wrenching the greenstone from Her entrails, calling the island
theirs
.”
    Pirra swallowed. “The copper mines. Is that where we’re going?”
    Hekabi nodded. “My poor, devastated homeland. Thalakrea.”

8
    H ylas had lost track of how long he’d been at Thalakrea.
    Twice he’d tried to escape by creeping past the guards at the Neck under cover of darkness. Twice Zan had caught him and beaten him up. “Try that once more,” the older boy had warned, “and I’ll have to turn you in.”
    Then a spate of accidents had made Hylas forget about escape. A rope had snapped, sending a sack plummeting down the shaft and breaking a man’s leg. A falling rock had nearly brained another, and a spilled lamp had set fire to a pile of ropes, badly burning three hammermen.
    Fear is catching underground. Soon Hylas was flinching at shadows. Did that rock move? Was that a shadow, or a snatcher?
    Once, he dreamed he was back on Mount Lykas, wading through crystal streams and cool green bracken. Issi was there. As always she was plaguing him with questions.
Where are the frogs, Hylas?
But when he woke, the dream felt as if it had happened to someone else: to Hylas