Lord of Snow and Shadows (36 page)

CHAPTER 30

The fire had almost burned down to cinders, and the mountain hut was dark and chill.

Gavril lifted his head—and cursed as the pain hit him.

He stared dazedly around him, wondering if he were still unconscious or hallucinating. Jaromir lay on the floor as if dead; beside him was the still, broken body of Snowcloud. And slumped in a corner, a young woman sat, fair head drooping, fingers on the strings of a large wooden zither.

“Kiukiu?”

He moved closer, staring in disbelief. Was he seeing ghosts everywhere? She was so like dead Kiukiu . . .

He put out one hand and gently touched her shoulder. She murmured something inaudible but did not wake.

His fingers touched her fair hair; it was the same rich shade as hers, the ripe gold of summer wheat. Yes, it was she, he was certain of it, and felt his heart twist in his chest, torn between joy and anguish.

“Kiukiu!” He spoke her name louder. She seemed locked in some kind of trance, deeper than sleep. He pinched her cheek. Still no response.

“Kiukiu, come back.” He knelt before her, stroking her face. “It’s me. Gavril. Can you hear me?”

Her lashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes, gazing into his as if she had been very far away.

“My lord?” she murmured. “You’re safe. You’re safe now. I’ve sent
him
back.”

An extraordinary confusion of feelings swept through him. She was alive. And he was more glad than he had ever imagined he could be to see her. He forgot the headache, forgot his sadness for Snowcloud. He wanted to hug her.

“We thought you were dead,” he stammered out. “We thought the steppe wolves had got you.”

“And I thought you were dead when I saw you lying there and I was so
angry. . . .” Now the words came tumbling out.

There came a groan from beside the dying fire. Jaromir slowly got to his feet, steadying himself with one hand. Gavril glanced around, fearing to see the golden blaze of spirit possession distorting his face, but Jaromir’s eyes were dark again, dulled with confusion.

“What . . . happened here?” Jaromir swayed a little on his feet and then sat down.

“What do you remember?” Gavril asked warily.

“White wings . . . the owl. Then . . . nothing. There’s a darkness in my mind. Like fog. And somewhere someone was singing. Slow and sad . . .”

“That would have been me,” Kiukiu said.

Jaromir lifted his head and stared at her through narrowed lids.

“And who are you?”

“Kiukirilya, Malkh’s daughter,” she said in a small steady voice.

“Malkh?” he repeated. “Malkh, who betrayed my father?”

“Is that what they told you, my lord?”

Gavril, sensing tension, moved to put more wood on the embers of the fire.

“That’s what Abbot Yephimy told me. Volkh’s men caught your father in the grounds of Kastel Drakhaon and tortured him. He broke and revealed everything to Volkh: the plans my father had drawn up to take Kastel Drakhaon, the night of the attack—everything.”

Kiukiu let out a small, tired sigh. “I never knew my father.”

“You’re a Guslyar?” Jaromir said, pointing to the instrument on her lap.

She nodded.

“A Guslyar?” Gavril repeated under his breath, remembering his father’s will. Volkh had believed in the power of the Guslyars.

Jaromir went over to Kiukiu and touched the strings which gave off a soft shimmer of sound. “They told me you were all dead.”

“My grandmother is still alive.”

“What, old Malusha?” He sat down beside her and Gavril saw his face suddenly alight, eager. “I used to listen to her tales when I was little. How my mother loved her songs! Malusha was such a wonderful singer—and the stories she spun—” He broke off as if the memory was suddenly too painful to continue.

Kiukiu a Guslyar . . . Gavril still stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. Was there a hope, the faintest of hopes, that she could help him rid himself of the Drakhaoul?

“How did you find us?” Jaromir asked.

“We followed Snowcloud.”

“We? Your grandmother’s here?”

“No.” A look of weariness suddenly washed across Kiukiu’s face. “Lady Iceflower. Snowcloud’s mate . . .” Her head drooped forward again.

Gavril started up from the fireside.

“Is she all right?”

Jaromir leaned forward to listen to her breathing. “I think she’s fallen asleep.”

Gavril and Jaromir sat opposite each other beside the fire. Silence hung in the air between them, an awkward, uncomfortable silence that Gavril was in no mood to break. He had wrapped Snowcloud’s stiffening body in a piece of cloth and Lady Iceflower stood a silent, respectful guard over it. Kiukiu lay sleeping, strands of her wheat-gold hair spilling out from beneath the blankets they had tucked around her.

Outside, the snow had begun to fall again.

“In Tielen they have a saying, ‘Sleeping like the dead,’” Jaromir said softly.

“She traveled a dangerous road to send your father’s spirit back,” Gavril said. “And a painful one. Did you see her fingertips? The strings were wet with blood.”

The silence fell again between them, cold as the empty snow wastes outside.

“Your owl,” Jaromir said eventually. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It was no longer Snowcloud,” Gavril said abruptly. “Your father’s spirit had sent it mad.”

“In the morning we can make a cairn. There’s no earth up here for burying.”

Gavril nodded. He was still staring at the sleeping Kiukiu. He had not forgotten the heady rush of emotion that had overwhelmed him on seeing her. He had called it gladness, joy, relief at knowing she was alive. But deep inside him, a small, insidious voice whispered that he was deceiving himself. There had also been the stirrings of some stronger, darker feeling.

He hastily turned his head away. He had promised his heart to Astasia Orlova. But now Astasia seemed no more than a distant, impossible dream. When he tried to remember her face, her voice, he saw only a shadow girl, insubstantial and unreal.

He ventured a glance at Jaromir, who sat hunched, staring into the fire, his burned arm and hand hanging uselessly. Jaromir Arkhel had suffered enough at the hands of his father’s clan. If Kiukiu could lay Volkh’s ghost, the blood curse would be lifted from both their heads—without another drop of blood being shed.

Hope glimmered, a tiny crocus flame of clear light, in the darkness.

And then he remembered the power and fury of the revenant, the way it had flung him across the tower room in Kastel Drakhaon. If it could attack him with such violence, what would it do to Kiukiu?

No, he had no right to ask her to risk her life, her sanity—her very soul itself—on such a dangerous mission.

He would have to find some other way.

“I’ve never seen anyone heal so fast,” Jaromir said in puzzled tones as he examined Gavril’s shoulder. “Is it your Drakhaon blood?”

Gavril was testing how far he could move his right arm before the first telltale warning twinge told him to stop. “Only a few days,” he said, flexing his fingers, “and look!” He was astonished at the speed at which the damaged bone and sinews were knitting back together. Perhaps there was some advantage to his blood inheritance after all.

Kiukiu sat suddenly bolt upright, the blankets dropping from around her.

“Harim!” she said. She looked as if she was still half-asleep, her hair all mussed, her eyes unfocused. Then she saw Gavril. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Who is Harim?” asked Gavril.

“My grandmother’s pony. I left him in a gully before I started the climb up here.” Clutching a blanket around her, she wandered over to the shutter and opened it. “Look. It’s been snowing all night.”

“If he’s out of the wind, he’ll weather the storm. Those moorland ponies are very tough,” Jaromir said.

“But I promised her I’d take good care of him—”

“You’ll have to wait till the snow stops. Have some porridge. You must be hungry.”

Jaromir handed her a bowl of porridge sweetened with a spoonful of heather honey; she bolted it down enthusiastically.

There was something different about her, Gavril thought, watching her . . . an almost indefinable quality of . . .
strength.
Yes, there was strength but also a new vulnerability. And her face had changed; the softness of early youth had gone. He wished he had a pen and paper to capture what he saw.

“Still no word,” Jaromir said edgily.

“It’s been snowing all night,” said Gavril.

“You must call your
druzhina.
Summon them. I can’t bear to stay here and not know how she is.”

“And I told you, I don’t know how.”

Kiukiu had been glancing from one to the other, evidently puzzled by the exchange.

“What’s happened while I’ve been away?” she asked.

“Lilias,” said Gavril. “Michailo helped her escape—and shot Kostya.”

Kiukiu’s gray-blue eyes widened. “The Bogatyr’s dead?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Gavril said uneasily.

Jaromir rose to his feet in one sudden restless movement, knocking over his stool. “If they won’t come to me, then I’ll have to go to them.”

“And they’ll kill you,” Gavril said. “At least up here you have the advantage. When they come for me, you can bargain more effectively.”

“But right now we have no dialogue, no bargaining, nothing!” Jaromir struck his sound fist on the table, making the porridge bowls rattle.

“Then I’ll try,” Gavril said grudgingly. He tried to empty his mind, listening intently for the distant murmur of voices he had first heard the night of the blood oath.

“We will always know where you are.”

But all he could hear was silence, a rushing, empty silence, like the wind-stirred darkness at night.

“It’s no good,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t been trained how to do it. Or if Kostya is dead, the link is broken.”

“Can I help, my lord?” Kiukiu hefted up the gusly onto her lap. She plucked a low note or two and he saw her wince as her scarred fingertips brushed the cruel metal strings. Before he knew what he was doing, he had reached across and gently covered her injured fingers with his own. He saw her glance up at him, startled.

“You’re hurt,” he said. “You must let your fingers heal first. Lord Jaromir has a medicinal salve that the monks make. It might help.”

Jaromir nodded and brought over the earthenware pot. As he opened it, the soothing aromatic scented the air, sharp as witch hazel, sweet as mallow.

“It smells like the moorlands in spring,” she said, taking in a deep breath.

“It smells sweet,” Jaromir said, “but it stings like hell.”

Cautiously, she dipped her fingertips into the green salve and grimaced as it began to bite. She shook her fingers furiously as if to shake the pain away.

“Try again,” Jaromir said to Gavril in a low voice.

Gavril went to the door of the hut and opened the top half, gazing far out across the cloud-shrouded valley.

“Kostya,”
he called silently to the bleak mountains.
“Jushko! Can you hear me? It’s me, Gavril. I’m trapped, injured—and I need your help.”

This time he thought he sensed a faint answer, faint and ominous as the distant flicker of winter lightning. Had he made contact at last? He waited, but there was nothing else.

He turned his back on the winter wastes and closed the door.

“Well?” demanded Jaromir.

“There was something there, this time . . . but so far off, I couldn’t tell if it worked.”

A sudden violent gust of wind made the whole hut shudder. The door blew inward, banging on its hinges. Gavril whirled around. The sky had gone leaden dark, and the temperature plummeted. He hurried to the doorway, gazing out.

The wind came shrieking back up the valley, wild as a tornado, tearing at the roof of the hut as if it meant to wrench it apart.

Overhead turbulent stormclouds churned, gray, shot through with sudden flickers of violent white lightning. Claps of thunder made the ground shake beneath his feet.

“Where did this storm come from?” cried Jaromir above the din.

“This is no ordinary storm!” Gavril shouted back, gripping the doorframe to keep upright.

Jagged hailstones came pelting down, slivers of ice as sharp as broken glass. The wind spun around the hut again, a high, menacing whine.

He had called—and
something
had answered him, some dark, savage force of winter. . . .

“Get back inside!” He pushed Jaromir back into the hut.

“What the hell’s going on?” Jaromir twisted around, eyes blazing.

Kiukiu stood, white-faced in the hut, clutching her gusly to her. Lady Iceflower perched on her shoulder.

“It’s Lord Volkh,” she said.

Thunder crashed again overhead. Dazed, ears ringing, Gavril heard a sudden rending sound. Looking up, he saw that a gaping hole had appeared in the roof.

“We must get out!” he cried.

Lightning almost blinded him. Silver fire crackled in the wooden roof as the turfs caught alight. The hut was ablaze.

“Run!” he cried.

The snow outside glittered with hailstones. They ran, sliding and slipping over the carpet of crushed ice, as lightning bolts sizzled around them and the turbulent wind roared on, tearing at their clothes and their hair. Behind them the hut flamed like a pitch torch.