Lord of Snow and Shadows

by Sarah Ash

  A sudden gust of wind battered the kastel, and in the grate the log fire began to crackle and spit sparks.

  “It is blocking us.” Jaromir shivered, glancing uneasily over his shoulder toward the window. “Do you have any idea what we unleashed when we—we did what we did?”

  She held up a hand as if to silence him. “Please. No more of these archaic Azhkendi superstitions.”

  “Can’t you sense it, Lilias? There will be no end to this bitter winter until I am dead.”

  She let out a little exclamation of annoyance.

  “If you won’t take action, then I must. I have my son’s interests to consider now.”

  Her son’s interests. Gavril’s throat tightened, knowing she meant his death.

  “I’ve heard enough.” Jushko drew his saber. “Now!” He kicked the door to Lilias’ salon open and ran in, followed by the waiting druzhina. “Arrest them!”

  The baby let out a terrified yell and began to cry, a high, breathless sobbing.

  Behind Lilias, a small secret doorway lay open, the gold and magenta tapestry that had concealed it pulled to one side. Jushko and the two druzhina struggled to haul out their quarry from the secret passageway.

  Gavril watched as Jaromir was dragged back into the chamber. He saw how the druzhina caught hold of him by the arms, yanking them behind his back, roughly forcing him down onto his knees.

  “Here he is, my lord,” Jushko said, breathless but triumphant. He jabbed the point of his saber under Jaromir’s chin until Jaromir sullenly raised his head. “I believe this is the one we’ve been looking for.”

  “How dare you invade my privacy, Jushko?” Lilias spoke, her voice low yet controlled. “Where is Dysis? What have you done with her?”

  “Take them away for questioning,” said Jushko, ignoring her.

  Two of the druzhina went toward Lilias.

  “Don’t you dare to touch me!” she spat, drawing away from them. “I am a citizen of Muscobar. A visitor in your country. I have rights. I demand to see a lawyer.”

  “Let her go.” Jaromir spoke for the first time. Gavril could see a tiny trickle of crimson on Jaromir’s neck where Jushko’s blade had drawn blood. “Whatever your charges are, she is innocent.”

  “Did I say you could speak?” Jushko struck Jaromir with the back of his hand. Jaromir’s head snapped back with the force of the blow. “Keep silent.”

  Artamon yelled even more furiously. Gavril’s ears began to ring with the sound.

  “Take the woman to the Bogatyr’s rooms for questioning,” Jushko commanded. “Under armed guard.”

  “Lord Gavril!” Lilias cried as she was hustled past him. Her green eyes glistened with tears. “Don’t let them hurt my baby.”

  Gavril looked away.

  “At least let me have Dysis.” Tears spilled out, down her pale cheeks. “Don’t leave me all on my own with your soldiers, my lord. Please.”

  Gavril, distracted, half-heard himself saying, “Very well. Let the maid be brought to Madame Arbelian.” All he could think was that Jaromir Arkhel was his prisoner. Now there was no escaping the blood curse his father had placed on him. He stood alone in Lilias’ empty room, paralyzed, unable to move.

  What, in God’s name, would the druzhina expect of him now? To take part in some archaic ritual, a barbaric duel to the death? He shuddered at the thought.

  In the hallway below, he could hear Kostya briskly issuing orders.

  “No one allowed in or out but myself. No matter what story she spins, no matter what excuse, ‘My baby’s sick, dying. . . .’”

  “What have you done to my mistress?” Dysis hurried up, escorted by Michailo and several of the druzhina. Her usually neat clothes were in disarray; locks of brown hair were escaping from her lace coif.

  “Michailo?” Kostya broke off in the midst of his orders, frowning. “I put you on keep watch. What are you doing here? You were forbidden kastel duties.”

  “Are you all right, my lady?” Michailo asked Lilias, ignoring Kostya.

  “Back to the keep!” thundered Kostya. “Till you’ve learned some respect.”

  “I’m taking no more orders from you, old man,” Michailo said. “Let her go.”

  “You young fool—”

  Gavril heard the rasp of steel. Then a sharp retort.

  Light and fire exploded in his mind.

  Pistol shots. How could there be pistol shots in Azhkendir, where he had never yet seen a single firearm?

  Flares of violent red splashed across his vision, fire and blood. Darkness gusted, cold as winter stormclouds through his mind.

  A terrifying void gaped at his feet.

  He blinked—and found the whole kastel was in disorder. Maids were screaming; men of the druzhina clattered up and down the stairs, brandishing sabers and axes.

  Now the shouts were coming from outside the kastel. Gavril ran to the window to look down on the courtyard.

  A sleigh sped away across the snow, drawn by two sturdy horses. Behind it galloped a small escort of horsemen.

  Druzhina were leading out their horses from the stables, scrambling up into the saddle, spurring after them.

  “She’s escaped,” Gavril said under his breath.

  “Lord Drakhaon!”

  In the hall below, he saw several of the druzhina leaning over a prostrate form. A slowly pooling stain of red leaked out onto the black and white tiles. As he leaned far out over the stair rail, he saw from the iron-gray braids that it was Kostya.

  He flew down the stairs toward the gathering crowd.

  “Let me through!” They drew aside when they heard his voice. “What’s happened here?”

  Sosia was crouched beside Kostya. She had lifted the Bogatyr’s head and was supporting it on her knees. From the gray pallor of his battle-scarred face, from the blood trickling at the side of his mouth, Gavril could see he was badly wounded.

  “How could Michailo do such a thing?” Sosia said, her voice tight with unshed tears. “To his own commander?”

  “Where’s the surgeon?” Gavril cried. “Bring the surgeon here!”

  “Lord Gavril?” Kostya’s hand reached out and gripped his. His eyes opened, but they were unfocused. “She’s gone. I tried to stop them. . . .”

  “Don’t try to talk,” Gavril said. “Save your strength.” His voice trembled; he made an effort to steady it. “And that’s an order, Bogatyr.” Now he could see that blood was oozing from a hole in Kostya’s side, the ruined fabric scorched and burned. Whoever had fired had done so at close range.

  The surgeon came hurrying up, shooing the crowd out of the way.

  “What’s this, Bogatyr?” he said briskly. “A pistol wound?” He began to peel away the layers of bloodstained clothing.

  “Never held with all those newfangled gunpowder contraptions,” grumbled Kostya weakly. “No honor in them. Weapons for cowards . . .”

  “Who brought pistols into Kastel Drakhaon?” Gavril turned to the watching servants. As he looked up at them, he saw the apprehension in their faces, saw them draw back. They were afraid of him.

  “That . . . cursed . . . Muscobar whore . . .” Kostya said from between clenched teeth.

  “Lilias shot you?”

  “We’ll have to move him, my lord,” the surgeon said, keeping one hand on Kostya’s pulse. “He’s losing blood too fast.”

  “Not Lilias . . .” Kostya’s voice was fading. “Michailo . . . betrayed me . . . divided the druzhina . . . broke the bloodbond. . . .”

  “Easy now, Kostya,” Gavril said, squeezing his hand.

  “Shameful . . . way to die . . .” Kostya whispered.

  “No talk of dying here!” the surgeon said. “And no more talking, Bogatyr. Save your strength.”

  Four of the druzhina lifted Kostya and carried him away.

  Gavril stood watching them, his heart chill and cold. First Kiukiu, now Kostya. Lilias had worked a subtle kind of destructive mischief in his household, attacking those closest to him. Now whom was t
here left to trust?

  A smothered sniffling sound distracted him. In a doorway, he saw Ilsi weeping into her apron.

  “Don’t cry; the Bogatyr is strong, he’ll pull through,” he said, trying to sound reassuring.

  “I’m not crying for Kostya, I’m crying for Michailo, the deceiving, two-timing bastard!”

  “Stop sniveling, Ilsi!” Sosia came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of steaming water in which pungent wound-herbs were steeping. “Take this to the Bogatyr’s chamber—and don’t spill it.”

  “Lord Drakhaon.” It was Jushko; his usually impassive face was twisted into a scowl. “We’ve failed you, my lord. He’s given us the slip. Got away. In the confusion.”

  “The prisoner?”

  “The gold-haired Arkhel. The one she called Jaromir.”

  “You let him go?”

  “When the Bogatyr was shot, my lord—”

  “There are other casualties?”

  “We’ve two druzhina dead, that’s Nicolai and young Boris; both cut down in the stables. Three others wounded, not counting the Bogatyr. I reckon that about twenty or so have followed Michailo.”

  Two dead. So it had been their deaths that had flared bloodred through his mind, disorienting him, bringing him to the brink of the abyss.

  “We’ll track them down,” Jushko said grimly. “They’ll pay the price. And after we’ve done with them, no one in Azhkendir will ever dare betray the clan again.”

  “And this Jaromir Arkhel went with them?”

  “No, my lord. We’re searching the grounds for him now. Though we did find this.” He held out a little pistol, exquisitely fashioned for so lethal a weapon, the handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the muzzle stained black with burned powder.

  Gavril took it and examined it. Michailo would never have thrown it away if he had fresh powder or shot. Perhaps, in his ignorance of firearms, he had neglected to bring fresh supplies with him?

  He hurried back to Lilias’ rooms and began to search, pulling out drawers, throwing open chests, tossing their contents on the floor. In vain. Until he remembered the baby’s crib. The last place anyone would think to look . . .

  Concealed beneath two soft down mattresses he found the box, rosewood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver. And inside, nestling in the gray velvet lining, a little phial of gunpowder and one single bullet.

  As he loaded the little pistol, his mind moved on one matter alone.

  The druzhina had failed to find Jaromir Arkhel the first time. But they had been searching the grounds and outhouses. Any fugitive who knew the hidden passageways could lie low in any of the ruined rooms in the East Wing, deep inside the bowels of the kastel, until the search was called off.

  Snowlight filtered into Doctor Kazimir’s abandoned laboratory, turning the dust to glittering powder frost.

  Gavril moved noiselessly through the empty rooms, examining the dusty floor for any traces of an intruder. Finding nothing, he hurried on toward the hall.

  The blizzard had blown snow through chinks in the boarded windows to lie in little drifts on the floor.

  From the upper gallery he leaned over the rail and saw—with bitter satisfaction—the unmistakable pattern of footprints leading away below the ruined stair.

  Carefully edging his way down the precarious sweep of the broken staircase, he checked again for prints in the chill light. Bending down, he saw the marks of a man’s boots in the wet snow. Fresh marks. His hand crept to check the little pistol, which he had concealed in his jacket pocket. Lilias had—unwittingly—given him one significant advantage over his quarry.

  The wet trail of prints led him to a low doorway so obscure he had completely missed it on his last exploration. He would have to go mole-blind into the darkness, with no lantern to give his quarry warning.

  He squared his shoulders and drew out the pistol, gripping the handle with sweating fingers.

  The tunnel wound on into earthy blackness. Doggedly he moved onward, one hand feeling his way along the rough wall, the other clutching the pistol.

  And then a glimmer, faint as a daystar, wavered far ahead. He began to hurry, moving gladly toward it without thought of anything but escape from this claustrophobic tomb.

  Daylight pierced the darkness like a shard of ice. This tunnel, unlike the one that ended so abruptly beneath the summerhouse, had been more subtly engineered, and wound gradually upward until he could see a grating—the source of the light overhead.

  Gavril moved warily now, placing one foot before the other as stealthily as he could, listening for the slightest sound.

  His adversary could be waiting for him in the darkness. It could all end here in one swift, assassin’s blow.

  Metal rungs in the wall led up to a trapdoor. It required all his strength to lift it, putting his shoulder into the task. Emerging from the tunnel headfirst, he felt a rush of cold air, snowchilled.

  He was in what looked at first glance to be an abandoned watchpost, an old tower whose mossy stones were smothered with ivies and old-man’s beard.

  Gavril pulled himself up out of the tunnel and heaved the rotting wooden trapdoor back in place. Close to the trapdoor, he noticed a rusting brazier choked with fresh cinders. When he tested them, some were still warm to the touch.

  Someone had been hiding out in here, sheltering from the blizzard.

  Heart beating fast, he hurried to the doorway.

  The tunnel had brought him to a ridge on the edge of the forest. He was gazing down at the sprawl of buildings that was Kastel Drakhaon. Below he could see sentries patrolling the boundary walls, the watchtowers, the black pennants fluttering on the weather vanes, smoke rising from the chimneys.

  He wanted to shout aloud in sheer frustration at the fate that had doomed him to find an escape only when it was too late to be of any use to him.

  Snow had covered the forest, muffling it in a white winter’s cloak. Gavril’s breath clouded the cold, still air as he searched for prints. The birds were silent; only the meandering trails of tiny claw marks in the snow hinted that they had been out scavenging for food.

  Soon he found what he had been searching for: fresh boot prints winding away from the watchpost deep into the forest.

  For a moment, he hesitated. He was in the forest alone, and with only a single bullet for self-defense.

  And then that chill, weary voice sighed again through his mind:

  “So . . . cold . . . So . . . very . . . tired . . . Help me, Gavril. Help me end it. Set me free.”

  Gavril buttoned the collar of his fur-lined jacket against the cold and set off in among the trees, eyes fixed on the trail of prints.

  The snow was so thin here, beneath the thick canopy of the branches of the great trees, that the trail of prints was petering out, difficult to distinguish in a carpet of old pine needles, dry leaves, and moss. And for the last hour or so the trail had led upward, a slow ascent through mountain firs and whispering pines.

  Frustrated, Gavril halted and leaned his aching back against a knotted pine trunk. He was thirsty now, and his feet were sore from tramping through the forest over tree roots and pinecones.

  To have come this far, only to lose the trail . . .

  Disheartened, he sank down, back sliding against the rough trunk until he was sitting on one of its gnarled roots. He had not taken as much trouble as he should to mark his way. Now the light was beginning to fade.

  He began to suspect that Jaromir Arkhel had purposely led him on this wild-goose chase to shake him off his trail. Jaromir had been born in this wild country; he must know it as intimately as Gavril knew the coves and cliffs around Vermeille Bay.

  Damn it all! Gavril struck his fist against the pine trunk. He had not come this far to be Jaromir Arkhel’s dupe.

  Somewhere on the borders of his mind he could sense a dull confusion of voices; the druzhina were still at large, searching the snowbound moorlands for Lilias and Michailo.

  “We will always know where you are . . .”

>   Did they know precisely where he was now?

  And if he needed them, would they come to his rescue in time?

  Gavril tramped on toward the fading light until he saw that what he had thought to be the brow of the incline he had labored up was the rim of a steep escarpment.

  Above and beyond loomed the grim shadow of a jagged mountain peak, half-hidden in snowclouds. He stood on the brim of a deep drop; the land fell away beneath the ridge in gullies and gray screefall. Behind him the dark green of the forest went rolling away into the distance—but immediately below lay an endless expanse of bleak moorland, powdered white with snow. And on the far western horizon, the angry flames of the setting sun pierced the lowering pall of gray.

  The prospect was at once so desolate, yet so starkly beautiful, that Gavril stood staring down at Azhkendir, all fatigue and frustration forgotten.

  He was alone. There was no sign or sound of life in this still mountainscape, not even the cawing of crows or mountain choughs.

  Was this where the Arkhel lands began? Was this the wasteland his father had created in his devastating quest for revenge?

  And then he heard the sound of a distant bell tolling from deep in the forest below. Puzzled, he gazed back over the forest trees, searching in vain for a sign of a bell tower or spire. If it were the sound of the monastery bells, the buildings must be hidden close by in the heart of the forest.

  Better to make his way toward the sound of the bell and ask the abbot to give him refuge for the night. But how far could he trust Yephimy, knowing he had sheltered the very man who was now his quarry? For all he knew, this could be another plot to lure him to his death. . . .

  He turned back to the drab mountainside, scanning the rocks for one last time.

  He looked and then looked again, blinking, in case his eyes had betrayed him in the failing light.

  Something—no, someone—was moving against the sheen of snow, slowly, steadily progressing upward.

  Gavril let out a shout.

  The figure paused a moment, glancing back over its shoulder. And then it continued its unhurried ascent, as if ignoring the fact that he was in pursuit, confident that it would elude him.