CHAPTER 28
Shifting patterns of dappled light filtered through breeze-stirred leaves, moving across Gavril’s face as he opened his eyes. He lay staring up at the tree branches above him, hearing the faint rustle of the wind and the distant splash of fast-flowing water.
Where am I?
He sat up and found he had been lying on a bed of dried fallen leaves, moss, and twigs; his clothes were covered in grime. From the position of the sun overhead it must be nearly midday.
The sound of rushing water told him there was a stream or river nearby. He got to his feet, brushing the woodland debris from his clothes and hair. When he moved, he found his back and legs were stiff from sleeping on roots and hard earth.
What am I doing out here?
He went toward the sound of the water, out of the dappled shade, and found himself on the banks of a mountain river. Up above him, on either side, towered the steep walls of a gorge, overhung with bushes and glossy ivies. The water rushed past, tumbling over massive boulders and eddying around smaller stones.
And as he leaned over the rushing river, he suddenly saw the image of a bloodstained girl, half-naked, her clothes torn, her moonlit eyes wide and terrified.
“Gulvardi.” He remembered her name, and dear God, now he began to remember the terrible things he had done to her.
He sank to his knees, overwhelmed with self-loathing. All he could see was the terror distorting her face as she ran from him. All he could hear was her voice, screaming out to him to stop.
“I am a monster.” He covered his face with his shaking hands. “I attacked her. I—I did worse—”
“You were dying,” whispered the Drakhaoul. “You took what you needed to survive.”
Only once before had he been driven to drink innocent blood—and then it had been willingly offered. Kiukiu’s self-sacrifice had saved his life. But this time the Drakhaoul had driven him to attack a helpless stranger.
“How can I live with myself, knowing what I’ve done?” He looked down at his clothes, seeing now that what he had taken for earth stains was dried blood. Gulvardi’s blood. “And now she’s fallen to her death, and all because I hadn’t the self-control to, to—”
“Her blood healed you.”
Gavril heard at last what the daemon was telling him and knew it to be true. He had not felt so well in many months. His sight was clear, there was no throbbing in his skull, and no constant pain cramping his stomach. But that was little consolation for the shame and guilt that burned to the core of his soul.
“But how can I go back and pretend that nothing happened, knowing what I have done?”
“You will go back. And you will live with that knowledge. Because you must.”
“First my fleet. My Rogned sunk. Now Froding and his brave men seared to ashes—” Eugene could hardly contain his fury. He looked up from the latest communication from Smarna and saw Gustave watching him warily. He had even retreated a step or two, as if fearful of his master’s temper.
“Is this Gavril Nagarian’s revenge?” Eugene dropped his voice. He felt as if New Rossiya were a castle of sand crumbling under the assault of a fast-flooding tide. A tide that could rapidly sweep him and all he had fought for away.
“The council is awaiting you, highness.”
“He’s gone. Vanished.” RaÏsa came back down the mountain path, arms open wide in a gesture of bewilderment. “We’ve searched everywhere.” She seemed utterly desolate at the thought.
Flown away, Pavel thought, unable to refrain from grinning.
“Pavel, you don’t think he’s lying hurt somewhere, do you?” She caught hold of him, her eyes wide with worry. “That head wound of his wasn’t properly healed. . . .”
Ironic that she was touching him, her hand on his arm, yet all her thoughts were about Gavril Andar. Don’t waste your affections on him, RaÏsa, he wanted to tell her. A man like Gavril Andar could break your heart.
“And your wound?” he said tenderly.
“Just a scratch. Almost healed.” But she was pale beneath the golden sheen the sun had burned into her skin.
Iovan came swaggering up to them. He looked pleased with himself.
“No sign of Tielens. No sign of Muscobites either. We’ve been talking to a couple of shepherds in the high pastures up beyond Anisieli. They said they saw soldiers making for the border.”
“A strategic retreat? Or just regrouping, waiting for reinforcements?”
“We must send word to Colchise,” RaÏsa said.
Gavril climbed a winding path that led up through twisted tree roots and humid, fly-infested forest to the top of the gorge. After an hour’s walking he found himself on a high, scrubland plain with a clear view to the north of the hazy outline of Mount Diktra. A buzzard skimmed overhead, letting out a desolate cry. There was no sign of the rebels up here, or the Tielens.
If he was to find them, there was no alternative but to take to the air, like the buzzard.
Eugene glowered at the assembled ministers of the Rossiyan council. He did not like what they had come to tell him. And they had chosen Chancellor Maltheus to deliver their ultimatum.
“We judge the situation in Smarna to be critical, imperial highness. It is the council’s opinion that we cannot afford to lose any more men. I fear we have no alternative but to withdraw and discuss terms.”
“Withdraw?” Eugene thundered. “You mean capitulate?”
“My terminology was perhaps a little vague—”
“Lose Smarna?” Had they never studied history? “If we give in, all we have gained will be lost. Azhkendir will rise up. Then Khitari.”
“But the men are becoming demoralized, highness.”
“My men, demoralized?” Eugene could hardly believe what he was hearing. “I will travel to Smarna and lead them myself. I’ve been out of the field for too long.”
“Is that advisable in the current situation? Now that you are Emperor, there are other considerations—”
“Could we not at least offer to talk terms with the Smarnan council?” ventured the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
“I will not be dictated to by a rabble of students and anarchists!”
“A rabble who possess a secret weapon vastly superior to anything the Magus has been able to devise,” said Chancellor Maltheus, gazing levelly at Eugene.
“The Magus and Captain Lindgren are working even now on a new type of powder,” Eugene said, not rising to Maltheus’s challenge.
“Time and money, highness; it all comes down to time and money. Money to support widows and fatherless children; the time it will take to develop and produce this new gunpowder. I advocate a strategic withdrawal—”
“And is it strategic for Tielen, Chancellor, to leave the Smarnan waters unprotected?” Eugene, both hands on the table, leaned toward Maltheus.
“We have nothing to fear at present from other nations,” said Maltheus, not even blinking under Eugene’s fierce gaze.
“Can we be so sure of that? What about this Francian ‘naval regatta’? Since when did Enguerrand take such a passionate interest in his fleet? Do we have any new intelligence?”
“Let me see . . .” Maltheus shuffled through the pile of dispatches on the table in front of him. “Enguerrand embarking on pilgrimage to the holy sites in Djihan-Djihar, accompanied by members of the Francian Commanderie.”
“ ‘A pilgrimage’?” Eugene fell silent, his mind working on the information. Djihan-Djihar lay to the far south of Smarna. “And how many ships has he taken for this pilgrimage?”
“We have no further details yet.”
“Enguerrand is by all accounts a very devout man,” put in the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Eugene did not respond. He could sense all his ministers watching him warily, bracing themselves to withstand his next outburst.
You’ve bested me and my men again, Gavril Nagarian.
“A withdrawal it is, then,” he said. “But only to regroup.”
“We haven’t much left on the Smarnan borders to regroup, highness.”
Eugene left the council chamber, silent with fury. There was no other course of action left to him. He sent a message containing a single word to Linnaius: Tonight.
The Drakhaon flew over the gorge on long, slow wing-beats, drifting on the currents. Now that he was airborne again, he felt the guilt and shame melt away. Up here, floating so high above Smarna, he felt detached, free of the cares that obsessed him. He could be one with the sunlit blue of the sky.
When he finally caught sight of the rebel column, marching away from Anisieli, their tattered standard fluttering in the afternoon breeze, he shadowed them a while, trying to guess where they would make camp for the night.
The column was considerably shorter than when they had set out from the citadel. It looked, from the air, as if they had lost almost a third of their number in the Tielen ambush.
He spied RaÏsa, her head still bandaged, riding beside Pavel; Capriole was on a leading rein behind Luciole. And at the sight of her, even so far below, he felt the stirring again of that dark flame of hunger.
Now I can never allow myself to be alone with her. Now I can never trust myself with any woman again.
“Don’t you remember, Gavril Nagarian? You are Drakhaon. You can do as you please.”
“What am I doing here?” Kiukiu rubbed her sleep-crusted eyes; she felt as if she had slept in too long and was not yet wholly awake. She gazed around her, suddenly suspicious. This didn’t look like a prison. She was lying on a comfortable feather mattress covered in sheets of the finest linen. She felt the linen between finger and thumb, remembering the countless sheets she had laundered and ironed at Kastel Drakhaon. She sniffed it, scenting the faintest sharp hint of lavender. She was certain they did not give prisoners lavender-scented sheets.
Unless the Magus has housed me in the prison governor’s house?
She pushed back the sheets and left the bed to gaze out of the wide-paned window.
“What is this place?” she whispered. She saw tall buildings all around, beautiful buildings of the palest honeyed stone, decorated with elegant carvings. And beyond the buildings she could see green lawns and formal gardens with bobble-headed trees stretching to the horizon, where fountains sprayed great jets of sparkling water high into the air.
“It’s so . . . grand. It can’t be Arnskammar.”
As she watched, mouth open, she saw guards marching in a neat column to a steady drumbeat across the courtyard below, carbines on their shoulders. Their uniforms, grey and purple, were similar to those of the regiment stationed at Kastel Drakhaon. They seemed to be performing some changing of the guard ceremony involving much saluting.
“Arnskammar is by the sea. I don’t see any sea. So where—”
She went to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. She knocked, she called, but no one answered.
“It seems that I’m the prisoner.” A fluttery, panicky feeling had begun in her chest. “Now, Kiukiu, don’t get all flustered.” She sat down on the bed again and forced herself to breathe more slowly. “There has to be a reason I’m here, locked up. For my own safety, maybe?”
But in the back of her mind she kept hearing Malusha’s voice warning her of the Magus’s trickery.
The room was simply furnished, the paneling painted in a delicate shade of ivory outlined in duck-egg blue. The window and bed hangings were of a cream brocade, fringed with gold and blue. The soft tapestry rug beneath her feet and the china ewer bore the same design of two gilded swans, beak to beak, making a heart with the curve of their necks.
Now she noticed that a tray had been placed on the other side of the bed; she lifted the silver cover and saw a plate of fruit, cheese, and little sugared almond cakes.
Her stomach was empty. She must have been asleep for some time, for, judging by the sun, it was approaching noon. Her hand crept out; she nibbled at an almond cake. It was delicious. She ate another, and another. Just as she was eating the last cake, she heard soft footsteps outside. Guiltily wiping the crumbs and sugar from her lips, she jumped up as the locked door opened.
“You’re awake, Kiukirilya. Good.” Pale eyes gleamed in the Magus’s lined face.
“Kaspar Linnaius,” she gasped, recovering. “I should have known this was your doing. Where am I? And why am I here?”
“This is the Emperor’s palace. It’s called Swanholm.”
“I’m in a palace?”
“If there was one wish I could grant for you, what would it be?”
Kiukiu heard the question and found herself drowning in a wave of longing for what could not be.
“There is only one thing I want,” she said quietly, “and that is beyond your powers to give me.”
“Think carefully. I cannot bring him back to life, true. But is there nothing else? A comfortable house with land for your grandmother? A friend on whose behalf I could petition the Emperor?”
He was tempting her. Why?
“Think of Kastel Drakhaon, Kiukirilya.”
She could not help but fall under the suggestive spell of his words; she saw Semyon limping along in chains, horribly thin, his ribs showing like a skeleton’s beneath his skin. She saw the half-healed scars of the overseer’s whip scoring Gorian’s back. And she knew what Lord Gavril would have wanted her to ask.
“The druzhina. Free the druzhina.”
“And if the Emperor agrees to free the druzhina, will you agree to use your skills one more time?”
“No more summonings,” she said, shuddering at the memory.
“This will not involve a summoning. This is, I suspect, a simple case of possession.”
“Simple?” He could have no idea of the risks involved. But for Semyon’s sake alone, she would do it.
“The Emperor will reward you generously if you cure his daughter.”
“The little princess?” Kiukiu began to wish she had not agreed so rashly. What would the Emperor do to her if she failed?
Kiukiu hugged her gusly tightly, holding it like a shield between her and this unfamiliar world that was the Palace of Swanholm. She glimpsed maidservants in neat grey dresses, silently disappearing into doorways as they approached. The palace was so light and clean. And she knew, better than most, how much painstaking work had gone into polishing the floorboards and cleaning the great windowpanes till they sparkled; she could smell the beeswax.
Tall guardsmen stood outside the gilded door to the princess’s apartments.
“We are not to be disturbed,” said the Magus.
Inside, Kiukiu saw a comfortable sitting room with a fire burning in the grate. Chairs and a couch in a pretty sprigged brocade of blue and pale yellow had been placed close to the fire, but the room was empty. Close by someone was coughing; a high, painful, repetitive rasp.
“Put down your instrument, Kiukiu.”
Kiukiu gratefully placed the heavy gusly on the table next to a little slate with chalks and open books. A half-sewn sampler was stretched across a frame, with colored wools hanging down. The princess must have been at her lessons.
An inner door opened and a little girl in a blue gown appeared. She spoke to Linnaius in Tielen.
“This is Kiukirilya, a Spirit Singer, Princess,” said Linnaius in the common tongue.
As Princess Karila came toward her, Kiukiu saw how badly twisted her body was; she only managed to walk with a strange lurching gait. But as she bobbed a curtsy to the princess, she could not sense any evidence of spirit possession at all.
“Is that a zither, Kiukirilya?” asked the princess.
“It’s called a gusly, highness.”
“I’m learning the fortepiano, but my music-master is very strict and makes me practice boring scales.”
“Practice is important if you want to play well,” Kiukiu said guiltily, aware that she had been neglecting her instrument.
“Can I try?” One hand crept out toward the strings and plucked a few notes. “Ow. The strings bite!”
“You have to wear these little metal hooks to protect your fingers until your nails grow strong and hard.” Kiukiu slipped the plectra onto her fingertips for the princess to see and struck a playful volley of notes, light and fast and bright as shooting stars.
“You’re so clever!” cried Karila. “It’s sky music. Flying music!”
Kiukiu was unused to playing to an appreciative audience; she was about to delight the princess with more of her improvisation when she heard Linnaius clearing his throat. Glancing up, she saw him pointing sternly to the clock.
“Sit down, please, highness,” she said, suppressing a little sigh.
Kiukiu began to play a Sending Song to try to charm out any elusive spirit that might be haunting the princess.
“I don’t like this tune,” said Karila, kicking her heels against the couch. “It’s too slow and sad.”
Kiukiu tried to ignore the princess’s complaints and played on, weaving a mist of dark notes until the firelight dwindled to a distant dull glimmer.
“Why are we here?” Karila’s voice came clearly through the darkness. “What is this place?”
If there was another spirit inhabiting the princess’s body, then it had concealed itself with great skill.
“Show yourself,” Kiukiu commanded. “I am here to help you.”
Suddenly the dark mists melted away, revealing a great expanse of azure water.
“The sea!” cried Karila happily. A long, white shore stretched into the distance.
And then the children came clustering about them, the children Kiukiu had seen in her vision in Kastel Drakhaon, the poor, dead children with their dark, imploring eyes and their terrible wounds.
“Who are you?” Kiukiu said, backing away.
And now, as she looked at Princess Karila, she saw another child standing beside her, half in shadow; a girl with dark hair and dark eyes.
“We are the children of the Serpent God,” said the girl. “We died to bring the Drakhaouls from the Realm of Shadows.”
“This is Tilua,” said Karila.
“Help us,” said another child, a boy, stretching out his hands to her.
“But what do you want?”
“We want to go home.”
“I’ll take you, then. I’ll sing you all home.”
“We can’t go home. Our blood is mingled with the blood of the Drakhaoulim. We are part of them—and they are part of us,” said Tilua. “We are their children.”
“Grandma,” whispered Kiukiu to Malusha, so far away in Azhkendir, “I don’t know what to do. There’s so many of them.” This was much more complicated than she had imagined. She needed time to think. “Come, Karila,” she commanded. “Come with me.”
“But I want to stay and play,” said Karila, her hand entwining with Tilua’s. “I’m free here, Kiukirilya. I can run and not fall over.”
Kiukiu shivered. The light was fading fast. And she could see shadows creeping toward them across the white sand. “But it’s not where you’re meant to be, Princess.” She grabbed hold of Karila’s other hand and tugged. “We must go.” This place was not what it seemed to be at all; she could sense it now.
Clouds overhead darkened the white sand to a dull, dusty grey. And a wind began to whine, whipping up the dunes. The azure sea vanished beneath drifting mounds of sand, even as she stared at it, horrified.
She knew this place. And she must get Karila out as swiftly as possible.
She turned to see the portal she had sung for them shrinking fast.
“Now!” she cried, tugging again. And she shoved Karila, with Tilua still clinging to her hand, through the portal just as it closed, leaving her beating her hands on empty air.
“Why won’t Kiukirilya wake up, Linnaius?” asked Karila, her eyes wide with alarm. “Why is she staring like that?”
“I think she is unwell,” said Linnaius. His mind raced, trying to invent a plausible reason for what had happened. “Some people suffer from this unfortunate affliction: the falling sickness. Let me ring for help.”
He saw Karila gently touch the Guslyar girl’s face. And the fact that there was no response from Kiukirilya, not even the slightest twitch or blink, confirmed what he feared the most. She was lost in the dark spirit-world of the dead that the Azhkendi shamans navigated at their peril. “Crude, dangerous magic,” he muttered under his breath. Now what was he going to do with her?
“You rang, highness?” A little red-cheeked maid appeared, bobbing a curtsy. And then she caught a glimpse of Kiukiu lying on the couch and let out a squeak of alarm.
“Our Azhkendi musician has been taken ill,” Linnaius said, steering her toward the door, away from the couch. “Please fetch two strong men to help carry her back to her room. I will call Doctor Amandel to attend to her.”
As two footmen lifted Kiukiu up and a third followed, carrying the gusly, Linnaius said pointedly, “Let’s take the servants’ stair. We don’t want to excite vulgar comments.” Perhaps in the confusion of preparations and the many musicians milling about in the palace, no one would pay particular attention to one more, seemingly the worse for drink. . . .
Karila came up to him as he bowed to her, and touched his arm. “She wanted to take the children home, Linnaius. But they can’t go home. Not without the Drakhaouls.”
The Drakhaon scouted the surrounding area: hills, woods, and valleys. There was no sign of the Tielens at all this morning. Those that could escape must have made a hasty retreat into Muscobar.
Thirsty now after flying in the sunlight all day, he searched for water. He caught the rushing sound of fast-falling water; a waterfall tumbled down the rocky hillside, the spray glinting with little rainbows. He drank from the icy mountain cascade and then followed the course of the clear-flowing stream until it brought him to a lake.
Wading birds moved among the reeds; tufted goldeneyes dived and preened on the still water. There was no sound but the whisper of the breeze in the reeds and the burbling cries of the waterfowl.
He walked beside the lake, listening to the quiet and relishing the calm. Damselflies darted low across the surface. One settled on a reed and he crouched down to try to get a better look at its jeweled body.
He started back, catching sight of the face that bent toward the glassy sheen of the lake. His stunted hair had completely regrown, hiding the scars left by Baltzar’s scalpel.
“Had you forgotten? You needed blood, innocent blood to restore your human face.”
Now he remembered the terrible pleasure he had taken in Gulvardi’s body, her screams, her struggles. He remembered the sweet taste of her flesh, her living blood as she writhed and arched beneath him. But whose pleasure did he recall, his own, or that of the daemon that drove him to ravish an innocent stranger?
And why, when that soft, persuasive voice whispered of innocent blood, did he suddenly think of RaÏsa? Why did he find himself overwhelmed with images of her: the way the sunlight caught copper strands in her boyish hair, the open-necked man’s shirt, all the more intriguing for the occasional glimpse it afforded of small, firm breasts, brown nipples dark beneath the whiteness of the crumpled linen . . .
Suddenly he was unbearably hot, his whole body burning with the unquenchable hunger of his daemon-blood. He sat down beside the lake and let his face sink into his hands. Despair overcame him, dark as a stormcloud.
I daren’t go near her. I can’t control this gnawing bloodlust any longer. I can’t go back.