Lord of Snow and Shadows (34 page)

“This is all my fault,” Astasia said softly. Her lower lip trembled.

“How so, my dear?” Elysia asked, taking her hand and pressing it gently.

“Oh, Madame Andar, if only I’d agreed to the marriage with Prince Eugene sooner, then none of this would have happened and Andrei would still be alive. Now it’s too late—”

“We don’t know for sure—” began Elysia, hating herself for saying the meaningless words.

“I shall never, ever forgive myself!” cried Astasia, running from the dining room.

CHAPTER 27

The darkness is flecked with specks of gold. Gold specks spin, meld together, forming a disk, pale gold as the harvest moon. Not one disk—now twin full moons glimmer in the night sky. Moons—or eyes?

Owls’ eyes.

Kiukiu groaned. Her body felt as if it had been ripped apart. Every sinew ached.

Snowcloud was sitting on the back of a chair, staring intently at her.

She knuckled her eyes. Such a horribly vivid dream. Lord Stayvor had taken possession of her. She could still feel the cold, cruel anger of her Arkhel master, seeking to impose his will on her, forcing her to . . .

But no, it could only have been a dream.

“Free . . .”

The word sighed through the firelit room so softly that she was not sure whether she had imagined it.

“Grandma?” But Malusha was still sleeping soundly under her brightly colored quilt of patches.

“Alive.”
The voice was clearer this time. And there was no doubting where it came from.

“Wings
.
”
The owl stretched out one powerful white wing, retracted it, and extended the other.
“Fly, I can fly.”

She jumped up, alert now.

“Snowcloud?”

“You . . . will . . . address me”
—the creaking voice issued from the owl’s beak—
“as . . . my lord.”

For a moment, Kiukiu found herself completely speechless. Her owl had answered her back. She was not certain if Snowcloud had actually articulated actual words, or if she had heard the owl speech and understood it for the first time. Didn’t Malusha call the owls “my lords and ladies”?

“M-my lord Snowcloud?” she stammered eventually.

“Must you be so stupid?”
the owl snapped back spitefully.
“Don’t you know me? Stavyor Arkhel?”

At once all Kiukiu’s delight and amazement melted away. It had been no dream. Lord Arkhel had used her to return to the world of the living. She had tried to resist him, but he had been too strong; his will had overmastered hers.

How dare he!
Panic and anger clouded her mind.
Must send him back. But how, how?

She began to edge toward Malusha’s bed.

“Grandma?” she hissed. “Wake up.”

The owl rose off its perch, wings slowly beating, making an attempt to fly in her face. “No!” She gave a shriek, flinging up her arms to beat it off.

Snowcloud twisted awkwardly in the air, tumbling toward the floor, only just managing to right himself as he skidded into an ungainly landing. A few downy feathers floated down.

“You will learn to treat me with respect,”
he said aggrievedly.

“What’s all this commotion?” Malusha sat up suddenly in her bed, clutching her quilt to her. Then she saw Snowcloud, and her eyes narrowed. “Lord Stavyor,” she said quietly, “it’s not yet time. You must go back.”

“Do you presume to tell me what to do?”

“This young owl has not been properly trained, my lord.” Malusha swung her feet out from under the covers. “You will only harm yourself—and your host.”

“I want to see my son.”

Overhead, the rustling and low crooning of the other roosting owls grew louder.

“Didn’t I warn you, Kiukiu?” Malusha was tucking a shawl around her nightshirt; her voice was low and angry. “Never look in their eyes.”

Now Malusha was blaming her—as if she’d had any choice in the matter!

“He made me!” Kiukiu burst out. “He was in the mirror, the bronze mirror—”

“Don’t send me back!”
The cry tore out of the owl’s throat. The other owls above yikkered and shook their wings.

“It is deepest winter, my lord.” Malusha, muttering to herself, shuffled toward the fireplace. “Your owl host would not last more than a day in this bitter weather. We must wait for the thaw.” She took hold of the gusly and struck a shivering ripple of notes.

“No!”
The owl’s scream, a cry of rage and defiance, made Kiukiu clutch at her ears.

Malusha had begun to sing, a low, insistent chanting, plucking at the deepest string until her voice and the string’s dark vibration mingled and became one. The air trembled. A fissure began to gape open. The deep, thrumming note had opened a doorway into the void filled with rushing darkness, which Kiukiu recognized with growing terror.

Stavyor-Snowcloud recognized it, too, and flung himself upward, great white wingbeats stirring the gaping air.

“He’s getting away!” Kiukiu cried.

All the owls were gripped with Snowcloud’s panic now, whirring around like wild-clawed fiends, feathers and owlshit dropping down onto the room below like snow.

“Ugh!” Kiukiu grabbed a cloth, flinging it over her head for protection. In the confusion of flying feathers she thought she saw Snowcloud dash through the owl hole in the roof. Others followed, screeching and hooting.

With a small, sucking sound, the doorway collapsed in on itself.

Malusha laid down the gusly. She put her wrinkled hands to her head and rocked to and fro for a moment, as if about to faint.

“Grandma?” whispered Kiukiu, creeping close. “Are you all right?”

“I wasn’t strong enough,” Malusha said dully. “He resisted me. He fought me and he won. The dead should not control the living so easily. Am I losing my powers? Am I too old?”

“This is all my fault,” Kiukiu said. She felt shaky, near tears. “I was weak. He took advantage of my weakness.” If Malusha wanted to punish her, she deserved punishment.

Malusha leaned toward her and took her hand, squeezing it between her own.

“Weak? No. If anything your powers are too strong, child.” She shook her head. “I should have known Lord Stavyor would try to use you. Even as a child he was always headstrong, willful. I should have protected you better. I should have been more vigilant.”

“What will he do to Snowcloud?” demanded Kiukiu.

“He will drive him to fly to the limits of his own strength—and beyond.”

“I can’t let him do that.”

“Snowcloud is an Arkhel Owl. He is strong, bred to fight in battle. Bred to fight as host to a warrior spirit-wraith.”

“But—but I thought those were just old stories, Grandma. Legends. To scare the Nagarians.”

“And now you have seen the truth of it.”

“Owls trained to maul and maim in battle?” It seemed obscene to Kiukiu that such beautiful, noble creatures had been subjugated to the Arkhels’ will and used as killing machines. “I have to save Snowcloud. He will go mad with Lord Stavyor lodged in his head.” And then another thought, worse than the first, gripped her. “He said he wanted to see his son. But suppose—suppose he has gone to seek out Lord Gavril instead?”

Malusha shrugged. “My throat is dry. I need some tea.” She moved slowly toward the fire, tutting as she tried not to step in the mess left by the owls.

“Grandma.” Kiukiu followed her. “Lord Gavril helped to rescue Snowcloud. He wouldn’t know, until it was too late—”

Malusha ladled water into the pot and put it to heat over the flames. “Fire’s burning low. We need more kindling.”

“Grandma!”

Malusha turned to her, brown eyes gazing at her critically. “You still speak like a Nagarian, Kiukirilya.”

“Is that my fault?” Kiukiu blazed. “I was raised a Nagarian. I was taught to hate the Arkhels. And besides,” her voice dropped “you’ve got to believe me, Grandma, Lord Gavril is
not
like his father.”

“The Drakhaoul has taken your Lord Gavril as it took his father before him. If you go back to Kastel Drakhaon, you’ll be in for a rude shock, child.”

Why didn’t Malusha understand! “But I have to put things right. First Lord Volkh, and now Lord Stavyor. You have to teach me, Grandma. Teach me how to send them back.”

“Very well.” Malusha turned her back to the fire. “But it’s a dangerous business. The spirit-wraith will fight you. It will do all in its power to stay with its host—and even if you drive it out, if your will is not strong enough, it will possess you instead.”

“How can I track him?” Kiukiu persisted. “How can I be sure which way he’s gone?”

“Your only hope is to take my lady Iceflower with you. The two were getting on very nicely together before Lord Stavyor appeared; I have hopes of chicks in the spring. She’ll know which way he’s gone.”

Kiukiu glanced uncertainly up at the rafters. She had never known any other owl but Snowcloud, and from down here all the snow owls looked dauntingly fierce, their talons cruelly hooked and barbed.

“First my tea,” Malusha said, “then I shall teach you the Sending Song.”

The fire burned low as Malusha played, and Kiukiu imitated her as best she could. There was a sequence of notes to be learned but the art, Malusha showed her, was in a subtle retuning of the strings of the gusly. The slow, deep vibration of each plucked string seemed to bleed the brightness from the flames of the fire, to draw the winter shadows closer. Every dark pitch had to be matched with a long, low, ululating sound in the throat, closer to weeping than to singing. A hypnotic funeral chant, Kiukiu thought, at once peaceful and remote, a meandering path of sound leading far, far away, beyond a dim, distant horizon.

“You will weave the spirit-wraith within one of these chants. It will find it irresistible. Once you have trapped it and bound it, you’ll be able to lead it back into the Ways Beyond.” Malusha’s voice droned on; Kiukiu fought the growing urge to close her eyes. “But be careful that it doesn’t drag you with it, child, for it won’t go peacefully. It will fight you. All the way.”

Kiukiu shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. The notes still reverberated in her mind, each one as dark and somber as an autumn twilight.

“Now,” Malusha said, rising to her feet to go to stoke the fire, “you must practice.”

“The sleigh is ready.” Malusha placed her hand on Kiukiu’s shoulder. “I want you to wrap yourself up warmly. I’ve put in food and a little flask of cloudberry brandy for emergencies—but you will need a clear, keen head if you’re to entrap my lord Stavyor. Oh—and your mittens, child. What use is a Guslyar whose fingers are so chilled she cannot tell one string from another?”

In the yard, Harim the pony stood patiently waiting, harnessed to the sleigh. On the rail perched a white owl, regarding Kiukiu with its head inclined a little to one side. The owl was smaller, slighter, more elegantly groomed than Snowcloud.

“You must be Iceflower!” Kiukiu cried.

The owl retracted its head as if affronted at her crude greeting.

“My lady Iceflower,” she hastily corrected herself.

“My lady will lead you to Lord Snowcloud. Let her guide you through the snows.” Malusha tucked Kiukiu in among the furs and blankets she had piled in the sleigh, placing the gusly beside her. Then she leaned across and, to Kiukiu’s surprise, gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Now be off with you all.” She whispered in the pony’s furry ear and patted him on the rump.

Obediently, Harim set off at a slow trot, the runners of the sleigh grinding over the snowy cobbles of the yard.

At the gateway, Malusha stood, clutching her shawls to her against the snow wind’s icy breath. Kiukiu heard her murmuring a slow, mumbling chant beneath her breath. As they passed beneath the gateway she felt the invisible veil of protection part to let them through. And then the cruel wind off the moors hit her like a whip. Turning to wave to her grandmother, she saw that Malusha and the walls of the cottage had completely vanished into the snowmist.

Even though it was day, the skies were dark and threatening as thunder. A thin, dismal light shone through chinks in the snowclouds.

“Which way, Lady Iceflower?” she asked the owl, whose neat white feathers were being ruffled by the wind.

The owl haughtily lifted her head, turning it a quarter to the left.

“You’re certain?”

The owl turned her head right around and gave her a look of such chilling contempt that Kiukiu instantly pulled on the reins, turning Harim’s head to the left. Soon they were skimming over the frozen snowflats.

Exhilarated by the cold and the speed of the sleigh, Kiukiu tossed back her head and—because she couldn’t help herself—let out a loud whoop.

The owl gave her another disdainful look.

“So? Who’s about to hear us?” Kiukiu cried.

CHAPTER 28

“Hold on. Hold on, now.” Someone was speaking in a low, insistent voice.

Pain—agonizing pain—exploded like firecrackers through Gavril’s body. A restraining hand gripped his arm.

“Don’t move. Lie still.”

Through wavering lids, Gavril saw a figure bending over him in the night. Behind him shimmered a vast wall of rock and ice, glittering against the starry sky.

“Jaromir?” he whispered to the shadowed face above him.

And then another surge of pain swept sickeningly through him, and the night and his rescuer blurred into one cresting dark wave.

“So. You’re awake,” said Jaromir Arkhel.

Snowmist still swirled in front of Gavril’s eyes. Through the haze of concussion, he saw Jaromir gazing impassively down at him.

“Where . . . am . . . I?”

“In the monastery refuge. On the mountain.”

“I . . . remember falling. Thought I would die.”

“A ledge broke your fall. I heard your cry for help.”

“You?”
Gavril struggled to sit up—and gave a gasp as a stab of excruciating pain shot through his right side and arm. “B-but why?”

“I think your shoulder’s broken. I’ve bound it,” Jaromir said impassively. “You were lucky. It could have been so much worse.”

Another wave of sickness washed over Gavril. Suddenly he found himself retching uncontrollably. Jaromir produced a bowl and held his head until he was done.

“I’m—sorry.” Shamed, Gavril lay back, shakily wiping the spittle from his mouth with his good hand.

“Drink this.” Jaromir held a cup to his lips. “It will help control the nausea.”

Gavril gazed up at him, suddenly riven with mistrust. He was at Jaromir’s mercy. Jaromir could poison him here, and no one would ever know how he had died.

“The monks gave it to me to take when the pain was too much to bear.”

Gavril reluctantly drank down the draft. He had expected it to taste bitter, but the monks had masked the bitterness with a pleasant syrup of green mallow and ginger.

“Now you will sleep, and heal the faster for sleeping,” Jaromir said.

It was already working; his lids were drooping, the pain in his shoulder dulling to a bearable throb. And yet there was something still troubling him.

“B-but why,” he said, his voice sounding thick and drugged in his own ears. “Why not just leave me to die?”

“Why? Oh, I have my reasons. You are of much more use to me alive than dead on the mountain, Lord Drakhaon. Much more use.”

A girl stands alone in the middle of the darkened ballroom. She is weeping.

Moonlight silvers the broken glass in the panes, the dust powdering the cracked floor, the grimy cobwebs hanging like streamers from the chipped plaster. Moonlight lights her cloudy dark hair, her white organdy ballgown—all torn to tatters.

“Astasia,” Gavril cries. “Astasia!”

Slowly she turns, slowly she raises her face from her hands.

He is gazing at a blank. Where her features should be, there is nothing but a void.

Gavril, drowsy and feverish, lost count of the hours. Days and nights passed as he wandered through troubled dreams.

When he came back to himself it was dark. He could just make out Jaromir kneeling over the smoldering eye of the fire, stirring a pot that hung suspended above the flames. A thin, savory steam wafted out. Gavril’s stomach rumbled at the scent of the broth. He was ravenously hungry.

He shifted a little and pain flared through his right shoulder, tingling down his arm to his hand. Looking down he saw that Jaromir had strapped his right arm across his chest, and that the straps pinned him to the narrow wooden bed on which he lay.

“So I’m your prisoner.”

“Hostage.” Jaromir threw a handful of pinecones onto the fire; the flames crackled and spat sparks into the darkness.

“And your terms?”

“I’d have thought you’d have worked that out for yourself,” Jaromir said drily. “Your life for hers.”

“Lilias? Didn’t you know? She got away. Michailo rescued her.”

“But your
druzhina
went after her. Your
druzhina
will catch up with them. They will not treat them kindly.”

“They would never dare harm the baby. They still believe Artamon to be my father’s son.”

“And you?”

“The
druzhina
will track me down,” Gavril said, ignoring Jaromir’s question. “They’ll find me.”

Jaromir shrugged.

“Let them come. If they want you alive, my lord, they’ll have to let me go.”

Gavril felt too weak to argue. He lay back, closing his eyes.

“You should eat.” Jaromir went to the pot and spooned some of the contents into a bowl. Gavril could smell herbs mingled with the stronger savors of leek, celery, and onion.

“Shall I help you?” Jaromir set down the bowl and unfastened the restraints. Then he hoisted Gavril up into a sitting position, lifting a spoonful of broth to his lips.

I won’t be spoon-fed like a baby.
Gavril glowered at Jaromir. “Let me do it myself.”

“As my lord wishes.” Jaromir placed the spoon in Gavril’s left hand.

The broth, with pearly grains of swollen barley and chunks of potato, tasted delicious, even if in his clumsiness he spilled some down his chin.

“So,” Gavril said, to the shadowy figure who sat staring into the flames, “why did you do it? Why did you kill my father?”

Slowly Jaromir turned his head around to look at Gavril, but did not reply.

“I know it was you. I’ve known it was you since the night he died—although I didn’t guess your name until Kostya told me what my father did to your family.”

“How?” Jaromir said at last. His voice was hoarse. “How could you know?”

“A kind of . . . vision.” Gavril did not want to say the name of the Drakhaoul aloud, for fear of waking it.

“And did your vision also show what your father did to my family?”

“No.”

“I was at Saint Sergius’ the night it happened. Suddenly the sky was filled with a glittering blaze of blue fire, too bright to look upon. It was so beautiful—as if a star had burst in the sky and rained down its glittering dust on the land beneath. The mountains trembled. And as the monks and I ran outside, I saw . . .”

“What did you see?”

“A great winged daemon, blacker than shadow, wheeled over the forest, swooping low over the monastery towers and spires, as if seeking me out to destroy me. To sear me with its fire.”

“My father,” Gavril said under his breath.

“I flung myself on the ground. I was so terrified I thought I would die of fear.” Jaromir drew his knees close to him, as if hugging in the years of hurt. He seemed unwilling to continue. Eventually he said, “If Yephimy had not stood over me, defending me with his staff, I would have been destroyed that night. And many times afterward I wished I had been.” His voice dropped to the ghost of a whisper. “I still hear the sound of the beating of its wings in my dreams. I still see the blue, inhuman gleam of its eyes, blue—and gold.”

Blue . . . flecked with gold . . .
Like his own. Gavril had seen just such eyes in the mirror.

“Though those dreams are not the worst. The dreams that are hardest to bear are the ones where I hear my sisters laughing as they play, and my mother comes running to greet me, arms wide, smiling, as though all was as it had been . . .”

Gavril looked at Jaromir; his face was little more than a shadowed blur in the dying fireglow, but Gavril thought he saw a single tear roll silently down his cheek.

“And when the shadow of its passing had lifted from the valley, when the clouds of smoke had rolled away, my father’s great kastel was a smoldering ruin, filled with a gray, poisonous dust. They were all dead, my mother, my father, my little sisters. . . . Our lands were charred to cinders. Not one living creature survived.”

Jaromir let his head drop forward until his forehead rested on his knees.

“You had motive enough to kill my father,” Gavril said in the silence. “But Lilias—what does Lilias Arbelian have to do with it all?”

Jaromir did not answer.

“And why didn’t you use her pistol? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to shoot my father than to have to confront him, man-to-man?” There had been plenty of time to think as his shoulder mended. And there was still so much that Jaromir had not told him.

The fire was burning low. Jaromir jabbed suddenly, angrily, at the glowing cones, setting off an explosion of sparks.

“I wanted to see him face-to-face. I wanted him to know whom he was dealing with. I wanted him to die knowing who had killed him—and why.”

There was such a bitter ferocity in Jaromir’s voice that Gavril was stunned into silence.

“Or perhaps I was seeking something else. To die by Drakhaon’s Fire, like the others . . .”

A branch snapped in two, sinking into the embers with a sighing hiss. The room grew darker still; the snowchill seemed to be slowly seeping up through the cold flagstones.

Jaromir stood up, shivering in the sudden draft.

“We need more wood.” He went outside, his shadow flickering along the fire-stained wall.

Gavril lay back, listening to the moan of the wind. As his eyelids began to close, he wondered how far he could trust Jaromir. His instincts told him that Jaromir was a man of integrity, an educated man who had lived abroad, far from Azhkendir’s malign influence.

An uneasy kind of understanding was developing between the two of them which—had they not been born into opposing clans—might have ripened into a strong and enduring friendship.

But then there was the matter of Lilias. . . .

The last cones on the fire fizzed, sending up a shower of cindersparks.

He opened one eye and saw that Jaromir was bending over the fire, feeding it with fresh kindling.

Then he straightened up and began to shrug off his jacket, deftly using his left hand to untie the fastenings. He took up a small earthenware pot and pulled out the stopper, releasing a waft of a clear, aromatic smell, sharp as wintergreen.

Feigning sleep, Gavril watched with half-closed lids, curious to know what he was doing.

Peeling off his loose shirt, Jaromir began to dab the contents onto his arm, wincing as the healing unguent seeped in. And in the dying firelight Gavril saw the terrible burns that had shriveled his right arm and hand, searing the skin to a dark, angry crust.

The assassin drops, screaming, to his knees. His hand that holds the goblet is burning, bright with blue fire. Drakhaon’s Fire.

Jaromir had suffered for his crime—and would continue to suffer every day of his life. Maimed, burned, he would carry the scars to the end of his days. Wasn’t that, in its own way, punishment enough?

Jaromir seemed ill at ease next morning, restless, constantly going outside the log hut to scan the valley below.

“They should have traced you by now,” he said, coming in again, snowflakes melting to waterdrops in his dark gold hair.

“The
druzhina
?” Gavril forced himself up into a sitting position. He had slept badly, and the constant nagging pain in his shoulder had made him irritable, edgy. “Don’t you think I would have called them if I knew how? If there’s a way to do it, Kostya has not taught me.” And perhaps Kostya is dying, he thought, and they are rudderless, divided, with Drakhaon and Bogatyr gone. . . .

“There’s been fresh snow. Our prints have been covered up. I hope they haven’t concerned themselves with . . . other matters first.”

“Lilias?” Gavril said.

Jaromir did not reply.

Realizing he had touched on a sensitive nerve, Gavril said, “You think they’ve caught her? They’re interrogating her?”

Suddenly Jaromir snatched up his greatcoat, saying, “I’m going to Yephimy. He will negotiate with your
druzhina
.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Gavril said from his pallet, “You and I. Equal now. Left-handed. What a fine duel to the death that would make.”

Jaromir turned back. His face was drawn.

“Call them,” he said, “your
druzhina
. I don’t want your death. I just want to know she and the child are safe.”

“And I told you, I don’t know how to call them,” Gavril snapped. He had been trying to ease himself into a more comfortable position, but whichever way he shifted, the shattered shoulder bone only ached more.

“You’re still in pain.” Jaromir reached for the earthenware bottle, pulling the stopper out with his teeth. “Let me give you some more of the monks’ draft.”

“So you can keep me half-drugged? No, thank you.” Gavril shook his head. “I want my wits about me.”

Jaromir shrugged and pushed the stopper back in.

“You and Lilias.” Gavril stared at the firelit shadows flickering across the hut roof. “How did that come about?”

“We were passengers on the same ship bound for Arkhelskoye. There were terrible storms and our ship ran aground. We ended up in a little fishing port to the north of Smarna, waiting for the storms to subside.”

“My father’s mistress. Rather an unlikely form of revenge?”

“Revenge?” Anger glimmered in Jaromir’s eyes. “Is that how it seems to you? That I merely used her to get to him?”