Free Gods and Warriors by Michelle Paver Page A

from the prints, he guessed that Hylas had been here before it, and Issi after.
    Her trail led west, down toward the marshes of Messenia. From where Telamon stood, he could just make them out in the distance, and beyond them the blue-gray blur of the Sea. Maybe he could catch up with her and together they’d find Hylas, coming to look for them. What a reunion that would be…
    He was about to start west when he saw the old woman crouching under the pine tree.
    She squatted on her haunches, her mountainous flesh juddering as she rocked on her heels. Telamon knew her. Everyone did. He was instantly on his guard.
    He should have guessed that Paria wouldn’t be deterred from roaming the Mountain. What did she care about warriors? She was Neleos’ mate and the village wisewoman; she could read the will of the gods in the ashes of a fire or the rustling of leaves, and she was skilled in curses and spells. No one wanted to cross a wisewoman, not even warriors of the House of Koronos.
    “You’re far from home, young master,” she said, baring a fetid ruin of black teeth.
    “And you, Old One,” he said warily. Drawing nearer, he caught her stink of stale urine, and saw lice moving in the folds of her tunic.
    “Where are you off to?” she said with an obsequious bow.
    He flushed. They both knew that her servility was asham and a form of mockery. She knew he was scared of her.
    With a wheezy laugh, she patted the pine trunk. “Paria came to hear what her oracle has to say. But you, young master, you’re heading the wrong way. The Chieftain wants you at Lapithos.”
    He bristled. “You can’t know what my father wants.”
    “Ah, but Paria knows much without being told. Bad things afoot at Lapithos. Thestor wants his son.”
    Telamon hesitated. Should he follow Issi west, or turn back for home? “Read the leaves,” he told the wisewoman. “Tell me which way I should go.”
    From between her pendulous breasts she drew a little birdskin pouch. Shaking grit into her palm, she sprinkled it over the tree’s roots. “Bones,” she told him with a chuckle. “Bones ground fine, to feed my tree. The rich pay to ask the seer, while the poor pay Paria to listen to a tree—but it’s the same god that speaks through them both.”
    “If you want payment,” Telamon said impatiently, “you’ll have to wait.”
    She leered at him. “Paria is patient. She knows the young master will pay.”
    From nowhere a wind got up and soughed in the pine, and she cocked her head to listen, fixing Telamon with her black beetle eyes. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades and stung the weals on his back. He felt her probing the dark corners of his spirit.
    At last she spoke. “The ways of men are tangled as roots. So is your heart, young master. That’s what my tree says.”
    “Th-that’s no answer,” stammered Telamon.
    Another fetid grin. “But it’s the truth.”
    “I didn’t ask for a riddle,” he cried angrily.
    Paria laughed and went back to feeding her tree.
    He paced up and down, thrashing at thistles with a stick. He had to find Issi and meet Hylas on the other side of the mountains—but his father needed him at Lapithos.
Bad things afoot
…
    He threw away the stick. His friends needed him more.
    With a curt nod to the wisewoman, Telamon shouldered his food sack and started west, toward the Sea.

11

    T he seabird had been following the boat all morning, glancing down at Hylas as if to say,
What, still alive?
He’d given up trying to hit it with an oar. He always missed.
    He’d been rowing north, but the Sea kept dragging him south. And still no sight of land. The Sun scorched his shoulders and made his head throb. Salt stung his wounded arm. He was so thirsty he couldn’t swallow—and
hungry.
He thought with longing of his food sack, left behind at the coast.
    He’d been scanning the horizon for ships till his eyes ached, but so far nothing, although he kept spotting