by Ash, Sarah
“It’s just an old song, a fanciful superstition.” She tried to make light of it. “The Guardian of the Springs had a grudge of her own against Prince Nagazdiel. She wanted us to make sure he was never set free from the Realm of Shadows. She knew that if my powers as a Spirit Singer were restored, I could help you and the Emperor defeat him.” There was a grain of truth in the explanation.
His grip loosened but he did not let go of her. “So that was the bargain?”
“Why?” She forced a laugh. “What did you think?”
“Oh, all kind of crazy jealous stuff. The product of an overheated imagination.”
“Such as?”
Now he was the one to look away. “You’re the last of the Spirit Singers. I thought maybe that you had been forced to sleep with Khan Vachir to infuse his bloodline with your powers. Or—”
Kiukiu let out a snort of derision. “Do you remember how old and hideous I was then? The Khan was surrounded by women, each one as beautiful as Khulan. He hardly even noticed me.” Then, as the full impact of his words sank in, she cried, “Now wait a moment! Were you suggesting that Larisa isn’t your child, my lord? That I deceived you?”
He retreated, hands raised appeasingly. “I should never have said it. I—”
A piercing wail arose from Larisa’s crib. Kiukiu shot Gavril a resentful look and went to pick up the baby. When she turned around, Gavril had left the room.
***
The snow-covered garden was icily chill yet Gavril hardly noticed, walking stubbornly on, shivering, toward the summerhouse.
What on earth possessed me to make such a crass accusation? He opened the door, ducking as a small avalanche slid off the sloping roof . How could I be so insensitive?
Inside, his breath fogged the cold air . Too cold to paint until I get a fire going. He’d had a little wood-burning stove installed for winter days but had neglected to clean it out since his last visit. He squatted to scrape the cold ashes into a pail, and then laid fresh wood inside, using the tinder box and dry kindling to start a blaze. He stamped his feet as he waited for the logs to catch alight, blowing on his frozen fingers. At least these practical tasks were keeping his mind occupied. His conscience was pricking him, urging him to return to Kiukiu and apologize for his hasty and irrational words. But something held him back: pride, maybe, mingled with guilt at having acted with such insensitivity.
And yet I’m sure she’s hiding something from me. Sometimes I catch a strange look in her eyes: distracted, almost desperate.
He stopped in front of the little self-portrait of his mother that he had brought from the Villa Andara; Elysia had dashed it off one day when he was about twelve “in an idle moment” and then lightly flavored it with a dash or two of watercolors. That “idle moment” had resulted in a remarkably honest piece of work; she had not flattered herself in any way, showing her rich auburn hair touched with the first streaks of silver, and the little worry lines between her brows. But what Gavril loved most about the sketch was the way she had captured something of her indomitable zest for life: the ghost of a smile curving her full, generous mouth upward as she gazed at, through, beyond her own reflection into an unknowable future. They had been living off her earnings as a portrait painter in her ramshackle family villa, poor yet carefree, untroubled by the distant shadow of the Drakhaoul.
“What would you have advised, Mother? You’d have just laughed and said, ‘You’ll have to work it out, the two of you. If you love each other, you’ll find a way.’”
Yet just as he was basking in the warmth of his cherished childhood memories, a sudden cold stab of pain shot through his wrist, so intense that it made him suck in his breath. Peeling back his cuff and sleeve to expose the bare skin, he saw that the place where Morozhka had slashed his flesh with her ice-blade was still raw.
It’s not healing. If Kiukiu had secrets she was not ready to share, so had he. Thus far he had avoided telling her what drove him back to the studio, day after day, to paint like one possessed. He had not mentioned the hold that Lady Morozhka had over him.
He gritted his teeth as he tried to bind the wound with his clean handkerchief. What poison did Morozhka inject into me? Is this her way of keeping track of me, insuring that I don’t renege on our bargain?
There was no way out of the deal but to keep painting.
He removed the cloth that he’d slung over the current work in progress and shuddered as the unsettling sensations were reawakened.
It was almost as if the very act of dipping a brush in a dark, oily gray or daubing vivid shafts of stormy light only served to enhance the disorienting dream images until they bled into his waking life, tainting everything he did. The quiet domestic routine that he had longed for was fast slipping away from him as the compulsion to keep working dominated his waking hours.
There’s been no peace since I met Morozhka. It must be her doing.
At first he had been reluctant to commit these visions to canvas but now he had started, he could not stop.
“What do they mean, Khezef? Why did you leave these images with me?” He took a step back to assess the latest bleak landscape, absently rubbing his forehead as he peered at it, leaving a smear of ultramarine behind and hastily wiping it off on his sleeve. “One clue. Just one clue, that’s all I need.”
The building pressure in his head made his temples throb; he reached for the mug of tea he’d brought with him, only to find it had gone stone-cold.
How long have I been out here? The light’s fading.
The temperature was dropping fast too; the glass panes in the windows were icing over with a sugary tracery of frost flowers. The gash in his left wrist began to tingle.
“Good day, Drakhaon.”
He turned around and saw that a woman had silently entered his studio; the dusky light lent her white hair a faint crystalline shimmer.
“Lady Morozhka?” His heart was beating too fast; her unexpected appearance had spooked him. She smiled at him and the smile sent a shiver through him.
“I’ve come to see what you’ve done since we last met. Show me.”
***
The warm scent of cinnamon and ginger filled the kitchen.
Gavril’s avoiding me. Kiukiu had tried to concentrate on other tasks all day since they had argued: helping Ninusha with the washing; baking spiced biscuits and generally getting in Ilsi’s way.
“For heaven’s sakes, Kiukiu, go to the parlor and I’ll bring you some tea,” Ilsi cried. “I’ve got to prepare dinner and the oven’s full of half-cooked biscuits.”
If she hadn’t felt so unhappy, Kiukiu would have given Ilsi a tart answer back, but she was too downhearted to bother.
She gathered up Larisa and went to the parlor where she set the baby down on the rug at a safe distance from the hearth and went to draw the curtains. A single light burned at the far end of the garden, casting a streak of yellow light over the darkening snow . So that’s where Gavril’s been hiding; he’s painting again in the summerhouse. She sighed. He doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s still furious and I can’t really blame him. She tugged the worn blue velvet curtains closed, shutting out the lonely sight of the solitary lamp-flame.
There’s no one here I can confide in. No one who understands me, as Grandma did. If only I could talk to her one more time.
Ninusha appeared in the doorway, holding a wriggling Kion in her arms. “I’m just going to give Kion his bath; shall I bathe Larisa at the same time?”
Kiukiu sniffed; the air in the parlor was tainted by an unmistakably ripe odor of smelly baby. “Please do,” she said, grimacing as she passed her cheerfully squawking daughter to Ninusha. “I think she must be teething again.”
No sooner had she sat down than a pine log in the grate spat noisily, releasing a cloud of sparks. Kiukiu got up hastily to seize the poker and push the wildly-flaring log to the back of the chimney-place before any damage was done.
But I could go to look for Grandma in the Ways Beyond. The thought sne
aked its way into her mind before she could suppress it. “No,” she said aloud. “I promised Grandma I‘d never go back there again. I promised I’d only perform the Soul-Sending rites for the dead, not Soul-Seeking Songs.” She drank her tea, listening to the crackle of the pine-scented logs and the snow-muffled silence beyond the kastel walls.
“But this is different. Larisa’s future is at stake. And my marriage. If I just ventured in for a few moments . . .”
As she made her way to the bedchamber, she heard the sound of splashing and happily gurgling babies issuing from the nursery. “Here comes Mister Duck,” Ninusha was singing, and the babies joined in with the chorus, “Quack, quack, quack . . .”
Kiukiu’s gusly lay beneath the bed, gathering dust. She dragged it out and wiped it clean, dampening the strings to mute their dissonant twang. She felt guilty to have let it lie there neglected for so long. This was, after all, the precious instrument that had once belonged to her grandmother and that had been left behind in Kaspar Linnaius’s rooms at Swanholm. The Emperor himself had arranged for it to be sent back to her, carefully wrapped in fine cloth and sealed in a metal casket.
So long since I played, even to please myself. She began to tune, plucking very softly. Babies take up so much time and energy. The gusly was a Spirit Singer’s pathway to the Ways Beyond but finding the right sequence of notes to open up a gateway that would let her pass safely through was always a considerable challenge. Her fingertips had grown soft and she was badly out of practice. Soon, even though she was wearing the special plectra, she was wincing as she gently plucked the sonorous strings and felt the twisted metal bite into her flesh.
Forget the pain. Concentrate. She closed her eyes, letting each deep pitch resonate through her whole body, letting it take her drifting consciousness and carry it far out into the winter night and beyond.
“Grandma, can you hear me? Where are you?”
Grandma and I were walking through a grove of silvered birch trees. The light was soft, like the spring sun glimpsed through drifting clouds, with the shimmer of a great lake in the distance.
Her fingers instinctively begun to pick out notes that she had not played in a long while: a praise song written by Malkh, her father, to honor his clan lord, Stavyor Arkhel. Out of the insubstantial gray mists swirling around her she saw slender tree trunks appearing, mottled white and gray. She paused, and heard someone continue with the next phrase.
Who else would know that song?
A woman was singing nearby, in a low, throaty voice that sounded like the purring coo of a wood dove. Each phrase was accompanied by a swirl of reverberant notes from a gusly.
Kiukiu hastened eagerly onward, letting the music guide her. The last trails of mists melted away and she saw the form of a woman sitting with her back against the papery bark of a silver birch tree, holding a gusly in her lap. But this was not the gray-haired, stooped Malusha she remembered; this singer was straight-backed, her brown hair plaited in braids threaded through with colored cords of red and blue, and her eyes were clear and piercing as crystal.
“Grandma?” Kiukiu cried. “Oh, Grandma, it is you.”
The shaman woman set down her gusly. “What are you doing here, child? Go back. Go back now while you still can.”
“But Grandma—” Kiukiu began, then stopped, her voice choked by sudden tears. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Didn’t I warn you before?” Malusha said sharply. “If you get lost in the Ways Beyond, I won’t be there to call you back into the world of the living. And what would become of my great-grandchild if her mother couldn’t take care of her?”
Great-grandchild ? Kiukiu gazed at her grandmother through tear-blurred ideas. “How did you know?”
“It’s written all over your face.” Malusha’s stern tone softened a little. “Such happiness in your eyes, it does my heart good to see it. What name have you given the baby?”
“Larisa,” Kiukiu said. And then, overcome by emotion again, she burst out, “I wish you could see her, she’s so beautiful, with dark sea-blue eyes just like her daddy’s.”
“So why have you taken such a risk coming here, Kiukiu?”
“I badly need your advice. I promised never to tell a living soul, so you’re the only one I can turn to.” Kiukiu hung her head, unable to meet Malusha’s penetrating stare any longer.
“Never to tell what precisely?”
“I made a promise to Lady Anagini. In exchange for restoring my youth I promised—I promised to—”
“Give her your firstborn child?”
Kiukiu nodded, too miserable to say the words aloud, as if in saying them—even here—she was sealing her child’s fate forever.
Malusha let out a sigh. “This wouldn’t be the first time that Anagini has exacted such a harsh price. And what does Lord Gavril think about this bargain?”
Kiukiu winced. Malusha had guessed.
“You haven’t told him.”
“How could I, Grandma? She said if I tell, I’ll lose my youth and become an old woman once more.”
Malusha let out a slow sigh.
“I don’t want to be old again before my time, Grandma.” The desperation that had been building within her since Larisa’s birth began to pour out. “But Gavril’s already guessed that something’s wrong. He knows I’m hiding something from him. And it’s driving us apart. What can I do?”
“You’ve endured so many hardships together—and come through, thanks to your love for each other.” Malusha nodded encouragingly. “You’ll find a way.”
“Should I go back to Anagini and ask her to spare our baby? Suppose I offered myself in her place?”
“And how would that make matters any better for your child—or for your husband?” A breeze shivered through the golden leaves of the birches overhead and Kiukiu suddenly felt uneasy, as if others might be listening to their conversation.
“Can you tell him?”
Malusha laughed. “And how would I do that? I refuse to take over some poor living soul’s body as a conduit; it’s messy and it’d be risky for the both of us.”
“Couldn’t you speak to him in a dream, then? There has to be some way to warn him.”
“And even if I could, what good would it do? There’s no way the snake goddess is going to change her mind. You sealed a bond with her; she marked your ankle with her forked tongue, didn’t she, as proof? It’s written on your skin and in your blood.”
Even as Malusha reminded her, Kiukiu felt as though the mark had begun to burn, like the envenomed sting of a wasp or a bee. How is that, when I’m only here in spirit? It’s as if Anagini put her mark on my soul as well as my body . The thought filled her with dread and despair; there seemed no way to escape this impossible contract. “Is there no one else who can help me?” she heard herself asking.
“If I were a callous woman, I’d say to you: Have more children. Accept that you’ve borne Larisa for Lady Anagini; she’s always been the snake goddess’s child and you’re merely acting as her nursemaid until she’s old enough to go back to her mother.”
“How can you even suggest such a thing?” Kiukiu felt tears filling her eyes. “I—I love Larisa. She’s our firstborn. I can’t just give her away. It would break Gavril’s heart.”
Malusha shrugged and a breath of breeze stirred the strings of her gusly, making them give off a metallic whisper of notes. “And suppose Lady Anagini has looked into the future and foresees a better life for your little one if she stays in her care?”
Kiukiu shook her head vehemently. “How could Larisa have a better life apart from her parents?” Unless Anagini had foreseen a terrible event that was yet to occur. Was someone coming after Gavril for revenge? He’s made many enemies. The possibilities made her brain ache . The future’s not graven in stone. No point worrying about what might happen.
“You said that Lady Anagini has done this before. What happened then?”
“I only heard snips and snaps of rumors. But they all concerned Kaspar
Linnaius.”
“The Magus? He had a child?” This thought was so astonishing to Kiukiu that she could hardly imagine one as old and cold-hearted as Linnaius ever falling in love, let alone siring children. But then she remembered his younger spirit-self, encountered once before in the Ways, tall, and well-favored in a lean, scholarly fashion, with hair the light brown of alder bark. He must have had many women sighing over him in his time. “I could go to seek him out and ask for his help. But . . .” She shuddered. “It was his fault I lost my youth in the first place. How could I ever trust him not to trick me again?”
The breeze stirring the gilded birch leaves began to gust in earnest; Kiukiu sensed—with a sudden chill of foreboding—that she had outstayed her time in the Ways. Mist was seeping in between the silvered trunks, drifting between her and her grandmother so that Malusha’s beloved, familiar face was already becoming indistinct.
“Don’t linger, child,” she heard her grandmother say, her voice harsh with warning. “I sense Others are watching us.”
Others . Lost Souls wandered the margins of the Ways Beyond, seeking to suck the life force out of unwary Spirit Singers who were trespassing in the lands of the dead—or to return to the mortal world as revenants to trouble the living. They usually gave off a disturbing, unwholesome aura that made Kiukiu’s senses crawl. But this felt different.
Malusha leaned in close and whispered, “Remember the Golden Scale?”
Kiukiu remembered. “But the Heavenly Guardians warned us never to use it again. When they threw us out of the Second Heaven.”
“Use it. But only when all else fails.” The mist came rolling in so swiftly that Kiukiu could hardly make out her grandmother’s face any longer. But the urgency of her words reached her even through the shifting veils. “ Now go back home straight away.”
“What are you doing here, trespassing in the Ways Beyond?” The voice rang out like a trumpet call: clear and commanding.
Kiukiu fled.
***
Lady Morozhka came closer to the easel and Gavril placed first one canvas, then another and another for her to look at.
