by Sarah Ash
“You saw what my father wanted you to see. A clever illusion, maybe. Some trick with gunpowder and poisonous smoke.”
“I know what I saw,” Kostya said, his face closed.
“But look at me. I’m a man, like any other. Where are my wings, my talons, my fire-breathing nostrils?” He could not stop the laughter now; it burned hard and mirthless in his throat.
Kostya seized hold of his hands, turning them over, thrusting them, nails upward, in front of his face.
“Look. Look! These stains on your nails. Blue stains. See? That’s one of the first signs.”
“Old paint stains, nothing more. I’m a painter, remember? Or I was until you kidnapped me.”
“You thought these paint stains? This is just the beginning.”
“You’re asking me to believe that if you had not come to tell me, one day I would have woken in my bed to find myself covered in scales, breathing flames, and scorching holes in my sheets?”
“That is not how it happens,” Kostya said curtly.
The laughter died. Gavril stared down at his hands, suddenly sobered, as if Kostya had dashed cold water over him.
“Then how exactly does it happen?”
Kostya shook his grizzled head. “Have you still not understood me? The Drakhaoul claimed you as its own. You are Drakhaon, whether you will or no, until your dying day. Your father’s blood runs in your veins. And it is blood proof that your people will demand to see when we make landfall.”
“What kind of barbaric custom is this?” Gavril cried, drawing back from Kostya. Were they going to sacrifice him?
“If you had been raised in Azhkendir, lord, you would not find anything unnatural in this. But you know nothing of our ways, nothing of our history. Your history.”
“Blood, Kostya? My blood?” The anger was beginning to simmer again. “What possible point can there be in the letting of my blood?”
“The renewing of an ancient contract, lord. Between the Drakhaon and his clan. A contract of mutual trust. Besides, there is a power in your blood, Lord Gavril.”
Speechless, Gavril turned his back on the Bogatyr, gazing out over the shimmering expanse of ice. White as far as the eye could see. White sea, white sky. For a moment his anger gave way to bleak despair. He was not just a prisoner of these savage clan warriors with their crazed beliefs in dragons, but a prisoner of his own birthright, condemned by the blood that pulsed through his veins to a future dark beyond his darkest imaginings.
Gavril gripped the rail as the Drakhaon’s barque was brought alongside the jetty. The timbers ground against stone as sailors leaped ashore, grabbing ropes to make her fast.
Arkhelskoye was a sorry place, more a huddle of deserted wooden buildings, warehouses, and customs houses than a prosperous port.
A bell began to clang from the harbor tower, an iron clamor shattering the icebound calm. Suddenly the shore was thronging with people. Gavril blinked. Where had they appeared from? There were women, thick shawls wrapped around their heads, rough-bearded sailors trudging through the snow, fur-cloaked clan warriors, and yet more clan warriors.
“They have come to welcome you,” Kostya said, nudging Gavril toward the quay. Their feet crunched on tightly packed snow as they walked to the end of the jetty.
The crowd stared at Gavril in silence. Expectant silence. Now all he could hear was the thin whisper of a wind that cut like wire . . . and the distant crackling of the ice.
Kostya turned to him. He had drawn a curved-edged knife from his belt. The white light glittered on the blade, which was keen and translucent as ice.
“Do I have to go through with this?” Gavril asked through gritted teeth. The utter stillness of the watching crowd disturbed him. He could feel their eyes boring into him. What did they expect to see?
“Right-hander, yes?” Kostya gripped hold of Gavril’s left hand, palm upward. Before Gavril could twist away, he had drawn the thin blade across his palm. The cut stung, keen as the whisper of the icy wind.
Gavril stared down at the open wound, too surprised to cry out.
Blood dripped from his palm, a slash of dark liquid welling from his scored skin. But . . . had Kostya smeared the blade with some chemical substance to alter it? Shouldn’t his blood run red? This was dark, too dark for human blood. Somewhere behind the pain and outrage, his artist’s mind tried to define the color accurately. It was more porphyry-purple than crimson. No, closer to indigo than purple . . .
With a grunt of satisfaction, Kostya lifted Gavril’s palm high in the air, showing it to the crowd. Blood dripped onto the snow. Where it touched the snow, there was a faint sizzling sound, as though the blood were burning its way down to the soil beneath, staining the white snow dark as ink.
And now, at last, the crowd broke its silence, the people hushedly, excitedly nudging each other, pointing, exclaiming.
“Say these words after me,” Kostya whispered in Gavril’s ear. “With my blood.”
“‘With my blood,’” Gavril repeated, almost speechless with anger.
“I, Gavril Nagarian, claim my birthright as Lord of Azhkendir.”
“‘I, Gavril Nagarian.’” The knife slash stung, cold as the icy breath of the wind on his cheeks. “‘Claim my birthright as Lord of Azhkendir.’”
He looked up, then, into the faces of the druzhina who stood silently watching him, and it seemed to him that there was a glint of hunger in their eyes, the hunger of a starving wolf pack encircling its prey, waiting for the kill.
Then the shouts of “Drakhaon!” began. People rushed forward, straining to touch Gavril. But the druzhina moved swiftly to hold them back, arms linked, forming an alley. Kostya took hold of Gavril’s arm and hastily led him between the two lines toward a cluster of horses, saddled and bridled, heads down against the wind. Ears ringing from the shouting, Gavril saw nothing but a blur of staring, eager faces and grabbing hands.
As Kostya helped him up into the saddle of a sturdy black gelding, he looked back to the quay. People were pushing and jostling each other to get to the place where he had been standing, scrabbling in the snow. Dully he realized they were fighting to collect the snow that had been stained with his blood. His blood! What primitive superstition made men and women place such faith in the blood of their chosen lord?
He looked down at his palm in disbelief. The blood was clotting already in the searingly dry cold air. In the ice-light it was difficult to tell what color it was oozing now.
“Let me bind that for you, my lord.” Kostya pressed a linen pad onto the gash and swiftly tied it in place.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” Gavril said, glaring at him.
“Gloves, Lord Gavril.” The old warrior passed him a pair of leather gloves, fur-lined, ignoring his question. “You’ll need these. We have a long ride ahead of us.” And he raised his hand in a gesture of command, impatiently signaling to the druzhina, beckoning them toward the waiting horses.
The crowd surged forward as Gavril’s bodyguard vaulted onto the backs of their mounts with whoops and wild shouts of exultation. Kostya grabbed hold of Gavril’s reins. Hooves rattled on the compacted snow, a muted thunder that shook the timbers of the wooden houses.
Gavril looked at the eager sea of faces as they swept through the crowd. One alone caught his attention. A glint of burnished gold hair; dark eyes staring at him from a pale face with a singularly intense, unreadable expression. For one moment all the shouts and the dinning of hooves receded into a blur of sound.
A young man’s face, eyes dark with pain and horror . . .
Gavril swung around in the saddle, scanning the following crowd. But the face had vanished and the townspeople were dropping behind, only a few energetic ones still pursuing them, waving and shouting his name.
They had been riding north across the moors for two days since they had disembarked at the port of Arkhelskoye. Inland from the bleak icebound coastline, the snows had not yet settled on the bracken-brown moorlands.
At first, Gavril had
been sunk too deep in despair to notice anything but the bitter cold and the desolation. Hunched in his thick fur cloak, he rode along the moorland trails in a drugged daze, shoulders braced against the gusts of icy wind that buffeted them.
But as the last effects of the sedation gradually lifted from his mind, he found himself going over and over what had happened in Arkhelskoye. Again he felt the blade bite into his palm, saw the blood sizzle into the snow, staining it with drops as dark as midnight. The knife cut, tightly bound, still stung beneath his leather riding gloves every time he adjusted the reins.
It was a clever trick to impress the crowd, he allowed, now that he could be more rational about what had happened. Kostya must have used some secret dye on the knifeblade to change the color of his blood. Maybe it was even a side effect of the sedative. As for the other talk of dragons and flying . . . he was certain it must be metaphorical. Much as past warrior princes had been named “the Bear” or “the Hawk,” so the lords of Azhkendir must have gained the title of “Drakhaon” for their ruthless skills in battle.
Gavril glanced uneasily at the druzhina riding on either side of him. Their dour silence was less a trial than a relief. He was in no mood for conversation. They might call themselves his bodyguard, but he knew himself their prisoner. Besides, he had not forgotten the look in their eyes when Kostya held aloft his bleeding hand to the crowd in Arkhelskoye. That strange look, hunger and terror intermingled. What was in his blood that they both desired and feared?
A sudden gust of wind swept across the purpled moorlands, and Gavril began to shiver. Days away from the sun-gilded shores of Smarna . . . would he ever feel warm again?
In the far distance lay a range of jagged mountains he heard Kostya call the Kharzhgylls. Kostya told him—in one of his rare communicative moments—that they were making for his father’s kastel, which lay on the borders of the vast forest of Kerjhenezh. On the open moorlands the only trees they passed were single and sparsely branched, but now the wind-bent clumps increased to small groves, and from small groves to bristling woods.
That night they camped in a sandy clearing, and the druzhina built a small fire of cones and pine twigs. They had nearly used up their store of provisions; all that remained were hunks of stale black bread, strips of dried fish, and the water in their flasks. And when Gavril suggested calling at a farmhouse or village to buy food, Kostya turned such a strange look on him from beneath his bushy, iron-gray brows that he did not dare repeat his question.
While Gavril helped water the horses at a nearby stream, Kostya sent the younger men of the druzhina in search of wild mushrooms, herbs, and pungent berries in the wood. Soon he was brewing a savory, salty fish broth in which to soften the stale bread.
Gavril sat gazing into the flames of Kostya’s fire. He was too exhausted to find the energy to be angry with his abductors anymore. His whole body ached from the long hours in the saddle. He reckoned he could feel every muscle in his thighs and calves. Now all he could think of was a bath: a long soak in a hot, steamy tub.
Kostya spooned some of the broth into a bowl and handed it to him. Gavril cupped the hot bowl in his hands, breathing in the savor of wild herbs in the steam. He had not realized till then how ravenous he was.
The druzhina ate in silence, draining the bowls to the dregs with satisfied grunts, then wiping the clinging drops of broth from their moustaches with the backs of their hands.
Gavril watched them with a kind of fascinated disgust. Was this what his father had been like? Rough-mannered, taciturn, and battle-scarred? What had Elysia seen in him to make her leave her home and family in Smarna for this wild, desolate place?
He mopped the last of the broth from the sides of the bowl with the bread.
Thinking of Smarna only brought Astasia back into his mind. For a moment the firelit glade blurred as tears filled Gavril’s eyes. He had not even been given the chance to send word from Arkhelskoye as Kostya had promised. Was he to be trapped here until the ice melted in the spring? By then she would be married, beyond his reach forever. Furiously, he blinked the tears away. Tears were no use. He must start to plan his escape.
Kostya hunkered down in front of the fire beside him, stretching his scarred, knotted hands out over the flames to warm them.
“Tomorrow we reach your father’s kastel,” he said, “and you come into your inheritance, Lord Gavril.”
Gavril’s wits were sharper now that he had eaten.
“This initiation I must undergo,” he said drily. “What does that entail? More bloodletting? More conjuring tricks?”
Kostya gave him a long, appraising look. Gavril suddenly felt like a young, raw recruit whose pretense of bravado has been exposed as a sham.
“It is a ceremony or a contract,” Kostya said at length, “between the Drakhaon and his druzhina. Do you think that hardened warriors like these would be impressed by conjuring tricks?”
“If I agree to go through with this ceremony,” Gavril said wearily, “then I want my freedom. I want to be free to come and go as I please. To go back to Smarna.”
“That would be unwise in these circumstances, my lord.”
“Unwise! Didn’t my father meet my mother when he was traveling abroad?”
“Your father had no blood feud to settle when he met your mother.”
“Blood feud?” This time it was Gavril who looked searchingly at the old warrior. “What blood feud?”
“Whenever a Clan Lord dies dishonored in Azhkendir, murdered in bed or in his own hall—” Kostya threw a handful of pinecones on the glowing embers of the fire. “His clan are blood-bound to find the murderer and exact their revenge.”
“Revenge?” Gavril echoed, dreading what must come next.
“If the murder is not avenged, the spirit of the Clan Lord cannot rest in peace. The land begins to die. Crops fail. Winters never end.”
The cones crackled and spat, drops of crystallized resin flaring up into little flames, giving off the bittersweetness of burning incense into the black night.
“And the honor of vengeance falls, by right of blood, to the Clan Lord’s eldest son.”
“You mean me? I must kill my father’s murderer?” Anger flared again, impotent, cold anger. “Is that what this is about? You’ve kidnapped me to perpetuate your barbaric bloodfeud?”
Smoke billows across his sight, blue smoke, spangled with iridescent firesparks. A young man’s face, blood-smeared, turns toward his, eyes dark with pain and horror. . . .
Gavril felt the old man’s hand on his shoulder, gripping hard, steadying him.
“Are you all right, Lord Gavril?”
Gavril shook his head, trying to clear his sight. The only smoke he could see now was the twisting woodsmoke from their fire, gray and dull.
“But—no one knows who the murderer is. You told me so yourself.”
Dark eyes staring at him from the crowd at Arkhelskoye with a singularly intense, unreadable expression.
“We’ll twist a few more tongues.” Kostya turned his head aside and spat. “People talk . . . sooner or later.”
That acrid stink of chymicals, the phial of liquid, his father’s shuddering cry, “Who let you in?”
“No assassins will come near you, my lord. You will be well protected in Kastel Drakhaon.”
Well protected?
The sliding secret panel, the low voice whispering, “Come this way . . .”
Gavril sat, hugging his knees to his chest. However faithful the druzhina professed to be to their Lord Drakhaon, someone within the kastel had betrayed his father. Someone who hated all of the Nagarian blood with an unrelenting, unassuageable hate. Someone who was waiting for him.
CHAPTER 4
The youngest and most insignificant housemaid of Kastel Drakhaon came hurtling along the painted corridor, not looking where she was going. Coming toward her was Sosia the housekeeper, weighed down by a pile of clean linen. Kiukiu skidded to a halt—but too late to avoid a collision. Sheets, pillowcases, and towels
cascaded to the floor.
“Clumsy child!”
A sharp slap to the face; Kiukiu ducked—but not quite fast enough. Her cheek stung.
“Sorry, Auntie Sosia.” Kiukiu dropped to her knees, trying to help Sosia pick up the spilled sheets.
“You’ll have to mind your manners, my girl, when our new master arrives. Best stay in the kitchen, out of the way. He won’t want—”
A bell began to tinkle. Sosia looked up.
“What does she want now?”
The bell went on tinkling, a high, insistent, irritating sound. Lilias’ bell; Kiukiu pulled a face. Beautiful Lilias, indolent and heavy with child. Refusing to leave her rooms. Demanding attention at all hours of the day and night. Sosia’s slaps might sting, but her anger was soon forgotten. Lilias never forgot a transgression, no matter how small.
Sosia shoved the sheets into Kiukiu’s arms.
“Well, I can’t send you to see to her wants, can I, not after last time? Where’s that good-for-nothing maid of hers?”
The bell continued its insistent, petulant tinkle.
“You’ll have to make up the bed for Lord Gavril.” Sosia pushed herself up again, shaking the creases from her gray skirts. “I’ll go see to my lady Lilias. Oh—and don’t you dare touch anything. Just make the bed. And go.”
Since the time she was old enough to take up service, Kiukiu had been sent to clean the grates and lay the fires in the kastel bedchambers. She had lugged the heavy buckets of sea-coal and logs up from the outhouses; she had swept and scraped the ashes from the grate, rubbing the iron firedogs clean, day after day. But it was an honor to be allowed into the Drakhaon’s chamber, to perform even the most menial task—a fact that Sosia never let her forget, reinforced with many cuffs, slaps, and beatings. But Kiukiu never minded being accorded this particular honor, because it meant she could sneak a look at the portrait.
She wandered around, drifting a duster over the dark, carved wood of the brocade-curtained bed, the tall chest of ivory-inlaid ebony, the lower chest encrusted with carved dragons, all sharp spines and curved wings until . . .
