Gods and Warriors (21 page)

“
What? Camp
down here?”

“It’s got everything! Water, space, air.”

“But the ships have gone!”

“They might come back.”

He saw that she was afraid, and his face hardened. “They may not have gone far, Pirra. It’d be madness to camp on the beach where they could see us. Much better down here.”

“Well then, go ahead,” she said stonily. “I’m turning back.”

“Don’t be stupid, we can’t split up now, that’d increase the chance of being seen.”

“Why can’t we? You’re planning to
abandon
me tomorrow.”

He ignored that. “Listen—”

“No,
you
listen! Your nightmare is not finding your sister; mine’s being buried alive. So do what you like, but I’m getting out of here!”

She ran, clutching her torch in one hand and groping at the rocks with the other. Hylas didn’t come after her, which made her even angrier.

The way back felt shorter than the way in, and she soon passed the red rock like a hand that marked the turn. Just as her fennel stalk was flickering out, she glimpsed the
black pillars and the blessed light pouring in through the mouth of the cave.

Chucking away the fennel, she grabbed a rock and hauled herself up. The rock came away in her hand. She grabbed another. It moved.

She just had time to wonder what was happening. Then the earth growled—and she knew. In the blink of an eye the growl grew to a roar and the rocks were shaking, the daylight above her juddering from side to side. Rocks were crashing down and the earth roaring louder and louder, roaring
through
her. The Bull Beneath the Sea was stirring in His sleep, and she was in the worst place possible: She was inside a cave.

“Hylas!” she screamed, but her voice was engulfed by the Earthshaker’s furious roars.

Somehow she found a hollow and crawled in. Then she pictured it collapsing on her, and crawled out again.

Something hit the back of her head, and sparks exploded in her eyes. She struggled to get up, but the earth was shuddering so hard she couldn’t stand.

The last thing she saw was the daylight turn black as the mouth of the cave snapped shut upon her.

H
ylas opened his eyes. Closed them. Opened them. No difference. Everything black.

He lay with his arms over his head, feeling the last of the Earthshaker’s anger growling through him. He was covered in dust and he coughed till his eyes ran, but amazingly, he wasn’t hurt. And he still had the knife in the scabbard at his hip.

When at last the growls had died to silence, he got to his feet. Wherever he was, it was high enough to stand up, if he stooped. Behind him he caught a whiff of air and a glimmer of light. Ahead—nothing.

With pounding heart, he felt the rocks before him. Solid. The earthshake must have brought down the roof of the cave.

He called to Pirra. No answer. Only a distant gurgle of water, and the watchful hush of stone.

Again and again he called. He sounded frightened. He stopped. The silence was worse.

He couldn’t take it in. One moment she’d been right there, shouting at him. Now there was only a pile of rocks
and a plunging sense of loss. She’d deserved better than to be crushed by an earthshake. He hoped it had been quick, and that she’d felt no pain.

Blinking and spitting out dust, he turned and stumbled toward the light.

He hadn’t gone far when he heard a faint, echoing squeal.

Spirit.

He tried to whistle back—managed a dusty wheeze—tried again.

An agonizing wait.

Then a distant, answering call.

Hylas gulped. He was
not
alone, not while he had Spirit. He pictured the dolphin swimming up and down before the mouth of the cave, perhaps even venturing up the stream that poured from the cave into the Sea, while sending his clear call ringing through the dark, like a silver thread leading Hylas toward the light.

If he could just get back to the Sea, then with Spirit’s help he could swim around into the bay. And then he could—

What about Pirra?
said a voice in his mind.

What about her?
countered Hylas.
Nothing I can do for her now. She’s dead.

But if she isn’t. She might be alive, somewhere behind those rocks. Trapped. Injured. Terrified.

Spirit’s whistles rang through the dark, drawing him to safety.

Hylas ground his fist against stone. He had to look after himself. If he didn’t, he was finished, and so was Issi.

“Your nightmare is not finding your sister,” Pirra had told him. “Mine’s being buried alive.”

She might last for days, even without food or water. Dying slowly. Alone in the dark.

Pirra lay huddled on her side. She knew from the rasp of her breath and its heat on her face that she was in a horribly cramped space. She didn’t dare find out how cramped.

The back of her head hurt, and the scab on her cheek was throbbing, but she didn’t think she’d been injured anywhere else. It was so dark that she couldn’t see her fist in front of her face. The whole world was gone. She was the only one left.

“Hylas?” she called.
“Hylas!”

No answer. He was either dead, or trying to find his way back to the Sea. She was on her own: trapped like an ant under a mountain of rock.

Panic gripped her. She clutched her sealstone, tracing the familiar bird with her finger. She tried to see a real falcon in her head, like the one she’d watched with Userref on the ship. She tried to make it dive fast and free through the limitless sky…

She couldn’t do it. The falcon in her head was trapped, just like her. She could almost hear its panicky fluttering as it dashed itself against the rocks.

Awkwardly, she turned onto her belly, and her hair
snagged on stone a finger’s breadth above her head. She tried to stretch one arm in front. Her fingers hit stone. She flexed one leg, and stubbed her toes. Her heart hammered against her ribs. The falcon in her head went wild.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought the urge to scream, to lash out with feet and fists.
Breathe. Breathe. Slowly. In, out.

Her heart steadied a little. The falcon in her head grew calmer.

This tiny victory made her feel a little stronger. She decided to pass her hands over every patch of stone around her, in case she could find a way out.

Blindly, she moved her hands over the crusted stone in front of her face. She found a hollow about the size of her fist. Inside, something rattled. A—a
drinking cup
? It was broken; she caught the earthy smell of pottery. She sniffed deeply. People had made this cup. The world above still existed.

Groping beneath her, she was startled to come upon what felt like a needle of polished bone; then an oval lump of clay with a hole in it that she recognized at once. It was a loom-weight. In the House of the Goddess, women tied groups of threads to weights like this one, to keep the wool in their looms hanging taut. On windy days, the lines of weights made a dull clacking noise. Pirra had grown up with that sound.

But what was it doing down here? People didn’t offer loom-weights to the gods.

A suspicion flickered at the edge of her mind, but she pushed it away.

Her hands traveled above her and around. Not even a crack. Ahead of her—dead end. Again her heart began to race. Biting back panic, she felt behind her with her toes.

A gap.
Was it big enough to squeeze through?

Twisting like a snake, she pushed herself backward. The spangles on her tunic scraped stone, and for one heart-stopping moment she was stuck. Then she was shooting through and half falling, half sliding down a clattering slope of loose rock.

She landed in a heap, streaming sweat and gulping air.

Wherever she was, it felt bigger, and less impenetrably dark. And she could see.

In the gloom she made out a long, narrow cave with a floor covered in strange, glistening mounds of yellowish stone, and a roof so low she could touch it. The roof was dark red and ridged, like an enormous mouth. At the far end, about thirty paces away, a spear of dusty light slanted down.

Pirra licked her lips. If that light could get in, maybe she could get out?

Panting with eagerness, she started toward it. The cave was too low even for crawling, so she hauled herself on her elbows, boosting herself with her toes. Grabbing one of the yellow mounds, she pulled herself forward. The stone was slimy, and her fingers slipped. She got a better grip on an outcrop shaped like a hand…

She froze.

It
was
a hand. A hand turned to stone.

With a cry, she recoiled—and came face-to-face with the head.

Stone had flowed like thick mud over the skull, sealing in flesh and bone forever. The stone mouth gaped at her in a silent scream. Stone eyes glared with terrible hunger.

In one horrified heartbeat, the truth about those yellow mounds crashed upon her. She’d been crawling over dead people turned to stone.

Everywhere she looked, they thronged the cave: men, women, and children, lying where they’d fallen as they’d crawled over each other to reach the light; frozen forever in their final agony.

This was the long-kept secret of what had become of the Vanished Ones. They must have taken refuge in these caves, just as she and Hylas had taken refuge; but the Earthshaker had brought the roof crashing down, shutting them in.

Perhaps when the earthshake had first started, they’d had time to bring a few random possessions; that would explain the cup and the needle and the loom-weight. And down here they would have had air, and they could have licked water off the rocks. They might have survived for days. But they would have known that they would never get out.

Pirra’s belly tightened. To reach that crack, she had to crawl over them, trying not to wake them from their long sleep.

Baring her teeth, she started feeling her way over the bodies. Here and there the light showed her a nightmare glimpse of an arm flung out, or a knee drawn tight to a chest. She saw splayed fingers webbed with stone. Stone pooling in a mouth that would never shut.

As she passed, her shadow seemed to give them life. Was that a stone hand reaching for her ankle? She shot forward, squeezing between two corpses that lay face-to-face, their crusted arms outstretched. Again her tunic snagged. She couldn’t get loose. She reached out to pull herself forward. With a brittle crack a stone finger snapped off in her hand.

A whisper echoed through the cave.

Her mouth went dry. In horror, she stared at the finger on her palm. With a cry she flung it from her.

Had that stone arm just twitched? Had that head ripped free from the rock and turned to follow her with blind, angry eyes?

Around her she saw dim hollows in the walls, where shadowy figures crouched just beyond the reach of the light. The whispering grew louder. The shadows began to move.

Whimpering, she crawled faster. Behind her she felt the dreadful eagerness of the hungry dead.

At last she reached the light. Her last hope snuffed out. The crack in the roof was too narrow; she couldn’t even thrust in her fist. And before her the cave was blocked by another fall of rocks.