The Eye of the Falcon Read Free Page A

had brought her across the Great Gray Beast to this freezing land of ghosts.
    It hadn’t always been like this. Long ago when she was small, there had been a boy. She’d had a thorn in her pad, and he’d pulled it out with his thin clever forepaws, then smeared on some healing mud. The boy had looked after the cub and given her meat. She remembered his calm strong voice, and the warmth of his smooth, furless flanks. She remembered his ridiculously long sleeps, and how cross he would get when she jumped on his chest to wake him.
    There’d been a girl too. She’d been kind to the cub (except when the cub struck at her ankles to trip her up). For a few Lights and Darks, they’d been a pride together: boy, girl, and cub. They’d been happy. The cub remembered uproarious games of play-hunt, and the humans’ yelping laughs when she pounced. She remembered a magic ball of sticks that could fly without wings, and race downhill without any legs. She remembered much meat and muzzle-rubbing and warmth . . .
    A clump of Bright Soft Cold slid off a branch and spattered the cub. Wearily, she shook it off.
    It hurt to remember the boy, because he was the one who had sent her here to this horrible place. He had abandoned her.
    The lion cub snuffed the air, then plodded on between the cold unfeeling trees.
    She would never trust another human. Not ever again.

4
    â€œY ou speak Akean,” ventured Hylas as he stood shivering in the gloom.
    â€œWell of course I do,” snapped the one-eyed old woman, “I am Akean. Name’s Gorgo. What’s yours?”
    â€œFlea,” lied Hylas.
    â€œYour real one.”
    â€œ. . . 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.
    â€œFeed 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—”
    â€œThen 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