The Burning Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

was
hungry
.
    Above her in a pine tree, an owl peered down at her, then spread its wings and flew away.
    The cub didn’t know this place. The tree smelled of her father, but the scent-marking was old: He hadn’t been here for a long time.
    There was no sign of him or the Old One, but a couple of pounces away, her mother lay asleep among some bushes. With a grateful mew, the cub limped over to suckle.
    She drew back in alarm. Her mother’s teat was
cold—
and no milk came.
    Cautiously, the cub crept nearer and patted her mother’s nose.
    She didn’t wake up. Her eyes were open and staring, but they weren’t the shining silver they should be in the Dark. They were dull—
and they didn’t see the cub
.
    Mewing with fear, the cub squirmed under her mother’s paw and tried to
make
her move.
    It didn’t work. The great watchful eyes went on staring at nothing.
    Frantically, the cub batted her mother’s face with her forepaws. She nose-nudged her mother’s flank, she licked the big gentle muzzle.
Please please please!
    Still nothing. The lioness who lay sprawled in the bushes
looked
like her mother, and smelled like her—but all the warmth and the meaty-smelling breath—all the motherness was gone.
    The cub put up her muzzle and yowled.
Come back, come back.
    Her yowls sounded loud in the stillness, and horribly alone.
    Trembling, she crept beneath a thornbush.
    Maybe if she kept very quiet, and waited like a
good
cub, her mother would wake up.

5
    S ometimes, Pirra thought her mother never slept.
    When the High Priestess wasn’t making a sacrifice or dealing with her priests, she was listening to the voice of the Goddess; and always the lamp in her chambers burned like an all-seeing eye.
    If you wanted to escape, you had to think fast and grab your chance. Pirra knew that. But now things seemed to be going wrong.
    There should have been a rope ladder hanging from the wall. It had been there yesterday—she’d seen a slave climbing over the edge to repair the outer face of the House of the Goddess—but today there was only a crow and a thirty-cubit drop.
    From the Great Court, she caught the distant smells of juniper smoke and roasting swordfish, then a roar from the crowd: The bull-leaping was about to begin. The crow flew off with a startled croak, and Pirra crouched behind one of the huge limestone bull’s horns that lent the top of the wall its spiky grandeur.
    It had rained in the night, and the horn felt slippery and cold. With a scowl, Pirra pondered her next move. This was beginning to look like a mistake.
    And yet it had begun so
well
. She’d been pushing through the throng on her way to the Great Court when she’d become separated from her slaves. She’d seized her chance and fled.
    The storeroom had been shadowy and deserted: a long way from the Feast, and heady with fumes from its man-high jars of wine. Pirra had scrambled up one, then through a repair hatch, and onto the roof. It was flat-trodden clay limed a dazzling white, and beyond it lay more roofs: a whole shining hillside of shrines, cookhouses, chambers, smithies, and workshops. Her vast stone prison.
    Keeping low, she’d raced over them till she’d reached the edge of the westernmost roof. Between her and the outer wall lay a gap: a passageway without a roof. She’d jumped it, thudding onto the outer wall and grabbing one of the bull’s horns.
    That was when she’d realized that the ladder was gone.
    Now what to do? Behind her, a nasty fall to the passage. Before her, that thirty-cubit drop, then a jumble of rocks leading down to the settlement, whose mudbrick houses huddled against the great House like calves against a cow. Beyond them—freedom.
    Because of the Feast, the settlement was deserted, except for a magpie hopping about on the rocks. Perfect. But how to get down without a ladder?
    Hooking one arm around the bull’s horn, Pirra leaned