Lord of Snow and Shadows (53 page)

“Why does he have to come now?” she said, irritably shaking herself free of the abbot’s helping hand.

“Who are you talking about?”

“You should never have brought that foreign prince here, Yephimy. Look!”

There were clouds in the sky, but scudding faster than a cloud came a craft the like of which Malusha had never seen—or imagined—in all her long life.

“What in Sergius’ name—” Yephimy shaded his eyes.

“A ship. A little sky ship,” she murmured.

Now that it was coming nearer, she could hear the creak of its rigging, the swish of the unnatural mage-wind that propelled it along. The ship itself was no bigger than a lake coracle, light and flimsy—but above it billowed a vast balloon. She caught a glimpse of the pilot steering it, one man alone, head protected from the elements by a plain, tight-fitting leather cap tied beneath his chin.

Gusts of wild wind eddied above their heads, almost toppling them over as the wind craft began to descend, circling slowly down above the monastery spires. Eventually it bumped along the monastery courtyard, grazing across the frozen ground until it came to a stop. With a loud exhalation of air, the balloon slowly deflated, collapsing like a spent sail on a windless day.

The sky sailor had tethered his craft to a mounting post and was unfastening his leather cap by the time Malusha reached him.

For a moment, a long moment, they stared at each other, assessing. He was old, she saw to her surprise, much older than she, with only a few wisps of white hair still clinging to his smooth, narrow-domed head. Yet in spite of his years and his mild demeanor, she knew she stood close to the cool, calculating mind she had sensed earlier, emanating its chill aura of sorcerous glamor.

“You’re not wanted here,” she said.

“Where is Prince Eugene?” he said, ignoring her. His voice was smooth and quiet—a bland voice, all the more dangerous for its deceptive ordinariness.

The monks came out of the chapel. Yephimy went straight up to the stranger.

“You have disturbed our morning prayers. Who are you, and what do you want?”

“My name is Linnaius. I am Court Artificier to Prince Eugene.” The stranger gestured to the sky craft. “I have come to take him home.”

“Artificier?” Yephimy frowned.

“A scholar of the natural sciences, if you prefer,” Linnaius said calmly.

“Fancy words!” Malusha spat. “I know what you are.” The stranger might call himself scholar, Artificier, and other titles that would deceive ordinary folk, but she recognized a fellow sorcerer when she encountered one.

“I have come for Prince Eugene,” repeated Linnaius.

“I’ll take you to him, but I fear you’ll find he is still too badly injured to be moved.”

Prince Eugene lay in a cell within the infirmary.

Such a tall, broad-shouldered man,
Malusha noted.
And well-favored too, I’d guess, before his encounter with the Drakhaon. If he recovers, he’ll bear such a deep and bitter grudge against Azhkendir that I dread to think what manner of revenge he will take on us all. . . .

The prince’s burned face and hands had been smeared with Brother Hospitaler’s glossy healing salve, and the salve’s pungent, bitter odor filled the cell.

As Linnaius and Yephimy approached his bed, Malusha saw the prince’s eyes flick open, eyes that seemed startlingly pale against the red of his swollen lids and seared skin.

“Highness,” said Linnaius in his quiet voice.

“Linnaius?” Eugene managed a whisper. “Why are you here? Is Karila—”

“The princess is well, highness. I have come to take you wherever you wish to go. Home to Swanholm, or on to victory in Mirom.”

“Dead,” Lilias repeated. “What do you mean, all dead?”

The regiments that had remained in the gorge awaiting the prince’s orders stood silent, dumbfounded, as the officer relayed the news of the defeat. They had seen the blinding light crackle through the sky, turning the snow-covered rocks from white to dazzling blue. They had sensed the vastness of the surge of power that shook all Azhkendir to its foundations. They had not fully understood its import until now.

“All dead, but his highness the prince, whom God in His mercy has spared.”

A murmur ran around the massed ranks of men.

“Prince Eugene has ordered us on to Mirom. We are to strike camp and march into Muscobar to join the army there.”

Lilias stood clutching little Artamon to her, Dysis at her side, as the Tielen soldiers hurried about them, taking down the tents.

“And what of us? You’re not going to abandon us here?”

The officer shrugged. It was obvious he had other priorities than two women with a squalling baby.

“The prince promised me protection. He promised!”

He hesitated. “You can hitch a ride in the baggage train. You’ll have to fend for yourselves as best you can.”

A man’s cry, hoarse and agonized, echoed through the kastel walls. It twisted in Kiukiu’s breast, sharp as the blade of a knife.

“Doesn’t anyone know what to do?” she said again, turning from Sosia to Askold and back again.

“Only the Bogatyr, and he’s dead,” said Askold, roughly blunt.

They had locked Gavril in the Kalika Tower for fear he would harm himself—or anyone who came near him.

“Someone must remember! He’s saved all our lives, and we can do
nothing
to help him?”

“Kostya Torzianin was the only man Lord Volkh would let come near when the madness was on him.”

Another cry shivered through the ruined kastel, raw with desperation.

“Doctor Kazimir, then,” Kiukiu said. “What about his elixir?”

Sosia let out a little tut of disapproval.

“Seems like the doctor’s helped himself to a different kind of elixir,” Askold said, mouth wryly twisted. “He must have crawled down into the wine cellar during the bombardment. Judging by the state of him, he’ll be sleeping it off for days.”

“The Drakhys, his mother?”

“Let the poor lady sleep a little longer; she’s exhausted,” chided Sosia. “Have you seen the state of her hands? Rubbed almost raw. I’ve put salve on them, but they’ll take a while to heal.”

Again the agonized cry shuddered through the kastel.

Kiukiu bit her lip. How could they stand by discussing so dispassionately while Lord Gavril was suffering such agony? She started to edge away.

“And where d’you think you’re going, my girl?” Sosia had guessed what she was intending. She went up to Kiukiu and took hold of her, staring into her face with eyes sharp as pineneedles. “Don’t even think of it.”

“But no one’s—”

“That’s because no woman in her right mind would go near him until he’s come back to himself again.”

Thirst. Burning, excoriating thirst. The black taste of pitch fouled his throat, his mouth, his gullet.

Gavril squirmed forward, trying to drag himself across the floor toward the bowl of water they had left for him. Every movement was an agony; every torn sinew ached, sending shivers of fire through his body. It was as if he had been stretched on a rack and each of his limbs had been tugged out of its socket.

He plunged his face into the cool water and gulped down mouthfuls, feeling it sizzle down his throat.

The next moment he was doubled over again, retching up the stinking tarry sludge that had clogged his lungs and stomach.

Groaning, he lay back on the floor. Tears of self-pity leaked from his eyes, hot as sulfur springs, and trickled down his cheeks.

“You are weak,”
the Drakhaoul’s voice, smoke-dark with scorn, whispered.
“Weak-willed. Unworthy to be Drakhaon.”

Another wave of nausea rippled through his whole body. He convulsed again, vomiting up a burning slime that smirched his throat and mouth. At last the spasm passed and he rolled over onto his back, gasping. The inside of his throat was dry, sand-dry as a baking desert under a merciless sun. There was not an ounce of moisture left in his veins. He was parched, a living mummy.

“Still thirsty?”
the Drakhaoul asked slyly.

“You . . . know I am. . . .”

“
And you think water will quench your thirst?
”

“What . . . else is there?”

“Remember the young men and women who used to model for you at the College of Arts? Those naked limbs, so seductively posed, that you sketched in Life Class, day after day? Remember the tantalizingly sweet scent of their fragrant flesh?”

Gavril remembered the burnished light of Smarnan summer gilding flame-haired Amalia as she posed for the students, remembered freckled throat and shoulders, stippled like tiger lilies, yet so soft, so smooth to the touch. . . .

“Amalia . . .”

“You’re dying, Gavril. A slow, agonizing death.”

“Dying . . . ?” Gavril repeated. His own voice seemed so faint, so far away.

“
If you want to live, you must replenish yourself. You know what you need. Go, take it.
”

“No,” Gavril whispered, knowing only too well what it meant. “I can’t do it. Don’t make me—”

There came the metallic grating sound of a key turning in the lock. The door opened.

A girl stood in the doorway.

Kiukiu blinked, eyes watering at the stench filling the tower room; vomit and hot pitch mingled into a dry, burning vapor.

Lord Gavril lay in the slimed shreds of his torn clothes, hair fouled with his own vomit. Her first instinct was to back away—and yet she forced herself to confront it. It was not as if she hadn’t seen the like before, especially on winter solstice nights when the
druzhina
drank themselves stupid on Oleg’s home-distilled spirits. Was it his fault that he was so sick? She took a tentative step into the room.

“Kiukiu?” The voice was barely recognizable as his; a smoke-dry whisper, seared by internal fires too intense for her to imagine. “Go away. For God’s sake, go away.”

So he was ashamed that she should see him in this state. At least that meant he was no longer possessed by the Drakhaoul.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, forcing the unwanted tremor from her voice. It was time to be practical. She had brought a bucket of hot water, clean linen, and soap from the kitchen.

“You mustn’t come near me.” He tried to move farther away, drawing himself into a corner. “I . . . I’m not yet . . . in control . . . of myself. . . .”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, going closer. “I’ve cleaned up after the men here many times before. Though if you were Ivar or Semyon, I’d tell you to go stick your head under the water pump for a half hour or so.”

“You . . . don’t understand. . . .” He kept shaking his head.

“Hush, now.” Kiukiu immersed one of the linen cloths in the hot soapy water, wrung it out, and, kneeling beside him, began to wipe his face with gentle yet firm strokes. The soiled shirt was so badly ripped there was little to do but peel the last tatters from his shoulders.

“There,” she said briskly, as if speaking to a sick child, “that’s better, isn’t it?”

He sat huddled up, knees drawn to his chest, shuddering at the touch of the hot cloth as if he had a fever. His breathing came hard and fast and his eyes gleamed, blue-bright as starfire, under dark-bruised lids.

“There’s still time,” he said hoarsely. “You can still go. Please, Kiukiu, please go.”

She hesitated, hearing the urgency in his voice.

“You want to be alone. But perhaps it’s not good for you to be alone.”

“Alone?” A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “But I shall never be alone now. Not until I die.”

She sat back on her heels, looking at him uncertainly. The dry laughter was tinged with scorn. Maybe they were right and this was not the same Gavril she had known. . . .

“You mean . . . ?”

“Drakhaoul,”
he said. “That’s what it calls itself. That’s what you saw. My own dark daemon.”

His eyes still gleamed in the darkness: blue, dangerous. They were no longer human eyes but weirdly striated, enameled cobalt glinting with veins of molten gold. Why had she not noticed before?

“Daemons can be cast out,” she said defiantly. “Why don’t you let me try?”

“You?” A look of hope flickered briefly across his drawn face, and for a moment she glimpsed again something of the Gavril she remembered—but deeply hurt and painfully vulnerable. Then just as swiftly, it was gone. “No. It’s no use. It’s too late for me, as it was for my father. It’s made itself a part of me; it’s gone too deep.”

“Is that you talking, Lord Gavril,” she said, “or the daemon?”

He did not reply, but she heard him draw in a long, thin breath between gritted teeth, as though still in pain.

“What’s wrong?” She laid her hand on his shoulder; his skin was burningly hot to the touch. She snatched her fingers away as if they had been singed.

“Ahh.” He shook his head, eyes squeezed shut, hands clenched into fists as though trying to control a sudden spasm.

“Lord Gavril, what’s wrong?”

He doubled up, arms crossed, knees drawn up, hugging the pain into himself. Alarmed, she drew back, hardly able to bear seeing him suffering like this.

“I’ll go get help.”

“Yes . . .”

She rose to her feet and hurried across the room. But at the door she stopped, looking back. She saw him lying slumped on the floor, and she knew what she had to do.

She went back over to him, kneeling beside him, raising his head till she could support it against her breast.

“Why . . . have you come back?” he whispered.

“I know what you need,” she said simply.

“No, Kiukiu.” He tried to push her away. “I’ve little control left. I don’t want to hurt you—”

“I’m young, I’m strong. Let me help you.”

He turned his face away from her. “No. I can’t do it. I won’t.”

“Gavril,” she said, gently touching his face, running one fingertip across his lips as if to silence his protests. There. She had dared to say his name as if they were equals.

And suddenly his eyes glimmered bright, blue wildfire in the gathering shadows. His taloned fingers gripped her shoulders. He reared up and pressed his mouth to hers. She tasted the flicker of fire on his tongue, felt the scorching heat of his body against hers. The swiftness, the violence of his response caught her off guard, and she felt a flutter of panic overwhelm her.