by Ash, Sarah
Gerard blinked. The wind had dropped and with it the feeling of unbearable pressure in his pounding temples. He turned his back on the stone circle and the unrepentant miners; as he passed Kartavoi, he said quietly, “And no more ale. Not till the work’s finished and the mine’s in working order. Understood?”
Kartavoi nodded. For once he didn’t come back with a cheerful response.
***
Gerard left Kartavoi haranguing his workforce and set out down the track, his mind and body still tingling with the wind’s shrill song.
It was as well Kartavoi came when he did. I have the feeling that I might have done something regrettable if he hadn’t appeared. It was almost as if I’d somehow managed to summon the wind to do my bidding.
“No.” He dismissed the ridiculous idea, shaking his head as if the movement would clear the lingering oppressive sensation . There must be a logical explanation; a sudden drop in barometric pressure, most likely. That—or I must be going crazy up here, with only the miners and Kartavoi for company.
The memory of Berse Heath had only served to remind him of Toran—and for some reason all he could think of as he came down the mountainside was how much he missed him; his lively conversation, his ardent enthusiasm for anything mechanical, the way his eyes lit up whenever he spoke of his grandfather . . .
Didn’t I come all this way to give him the time he needs to mature and develop his talents? That was one reason why he had deliberately put so much distance between them. Although there was another darker, less noble reason too. To give myself time to come to terms with my feelings for him. To forget.
He had run away.
And then as Gerard turned a steep twist in the path, ducking beneath an overhanging boulder, he came out above the ridge where the mountainside fell sharply away, affording a breath-stopping view of the valley far below. He halted, gazing in awe. The thick coverlet of morning mist had burned off, revealing the moorland spread out in all the vivid colors of the Azhkendi spring that had burst through the melting snow: the tender green of new leaves unfurling, acidly bright against the muted purples of heathers.
But it was the cool kiss of the breeze that suddenly wreathed about his body that surprised him the most.
Almost as if some lithe, translucent aethyrial spirit had streaked past me, then returned to tousle my hair and stroke my cheek.
Chapter 37
Kaspar Linnaius opened the door of the mountain hut, peered out, and sniffed the morning air. There was a new softness to it, even a faint hint of sweetness.
“I can smell spring,” he said.
At first, Izkael’s wouivre kin had hidden Linnaius and Izkael in one of the caves high in the Sapaudian Mountains, close to the waterfall from which he drew much of his strength. But the winter’s chill proved too harsh for Linnaius to endure and he had set out in search of the remote chalet in which he had learned his craft from his mentor, Izkael’s sister, Eliane. Eliane had once been a wouivre, Elimariel, but had fallen in love with a mortal man and renounced her immortal shape-shifting form to live with him.
With the passing of so many years, the chalet was gone but he soon located a hut belonging to Bertran, a local farmer who used it when grazing his goats on the high summer pastures. Money was exchanged and Kaspar moved in, with a few books, plenty of firewood, a small cask of Sapaudian gentian brandy, and a few other necessities to see him through the bitter cold months. Most important of all, was the weaving of impenetrable barriers to protect the two of them—or so he hoped—from the penetrating, vengeful gaze of Galizur’s Warriors; Chinua had taught him a useful concealment trick or two used by the shamans in Khitari. And so he passed the dark days filling page after page of a ledger with his memories, trying to piece together the fragments that would lead him to his lost daughter . . . or her descendants. All the while, Izkael lay in a profound, strength-restoring sleep, slowly mending in the clean, cold mountain air that had given birth to him and his kin.
“But what use am I to Eliane and her children if I can’t find them and protect them too?” Linnaius had written. “If the curse of the silver eyes has skipped a generation or two, there may even now be one of my bloodline awakening to their heritage, only to be hunted down and destroyed by Ardarel before I can warn them. Where to start? In Tielen?” He sighed and laid down his pen; to return to Tielen when he had retired from Eugene’s service would lay all manner of temptations before him. He longed to see his imperial master one more time and even more so, Princess Karila; his talented young protégée, who must already be ten years of age and maturing too fast.
“No,” he said aloud. “I said my farewells. Kazimir has taken my place. Alchymy has been superseded by science.”
Linnaius went into the henhouse and collected the fresh-laid eggs while his hens tutted and squawked around his feet. Such simple, essential tasks were a daily pleasure: deciding whether to boil the eggs or make an omelette was probably the hardest choice he would have to make that day. “And I could grate some cheese into the mix; mountain cheese melts in such a satisfactorily gooey and appetising way.”
But as he went back in, he saw that the dark interior of the hut was no longer lit with the wouivre’s dull-silver glimmer. Carefully placing his eggs in a bowl, he approached the narrow bed on which Izkael, still in human form, had been lying for the past long weeks of winter.
The bed was empty.
I didn’t sense him outside. Can he have recovered . . . and flown off without telling me?
Linnaius went back outside. “Izkael!” he called across the valley, his voice sounding deplorably feeble and agitated in his own ears. And then, when there was no reply, he called again, “ Azhkanizkael! ” using the wouivre’s full name to formally summon him. The bond between them meant that the wouivre would be compelled to respond.
It was just then that he sensed it. Indistinct as the call of a distant mountain bird and just as fleeting. A mere vibration in the air. But a shiver of power so similar to his own that it made his skin prickle.
“Another wind magus.” He closed his eyes, trying to divine the direction it was coming from. But it was no use and when he looked again across the valley, shading his eyes against the pale, intense brightness of the blue spring sky, the moment had passed. Wherever the wind mage might be, he was not close by.
The air vibrated as Izkael swooped down, sleek and graceful in his true wouivre form, to hover above his head.
“Don’t run off like that without telling me first.” Linnaius heard the tetchiness in his voice; he didn’t mean to scold Izkael but his sudden disappearance after the long weeks of lying as one dead for so many weeks had troubled him deeply. Even though he knew that wouivres had their own way of healing themselves, to have to watch and wait at his bedside had been a test of his fortitude and patience.
“And I’m glad to see you well, too, Kaspar.” A mischievous glint flickered in Izkael’s brilliant eyes. Linnaius was relieved beyond words to see that his companion was restored to health but knowing the wouivres disdained being made a fuss of, he contented himself with asking, “So you sensed him too, Izkael?”
Izkael inclined his silver head. “Far away. But so clear, so distinct, his presence woke me.”
“Can we be sure that this is the one?”
“One of your blood, Kaspar. The one you’ve been seeking. The one we both sensed before—but this time, the aura was so much stronger. He must be waking to his powers.”
Linnaius nodded, trying to control the growing agitation building inside him. The realization that he could feel—even at a great distance—one of his descendants, maybe even Eliane’s child, was almost too frustrating to bear. If we come too late, how will I ever be able to forgive myself?
“Can you take me there?”
“The very instant I rise from my healing sleep?” But Linnaius knew that Izkael’s indignation was feigned, another mischievous dig. “And he’s far away to the north from here. In Tielen, maybe.”
“Tielen would
make sense.” Linnaius returned to his half-finished memoirs lying open on the table and frowned down at what he had written:
“A tall, narrow house, painted ocher, on a leafy little street in the university quarter of Tielborg, the faint scent of linden blossom in summer perfuming the air, floating from the trees in the nearby square.”
A long time ago, he and Ilona had fled Sapaudia, taking the wouivres with them, and had sought refuge at Karantec in Francia where they both studied under Magister Hoel at the College of Thaumaturgie. But the desire for a normal life and children of their own drew them to the University of Tielborg, a safe haven for scientists and philosophers in liberal Tielen.
“The time you sent us away.” Izkael had followed him inside. “The time you said you had no need of us.” There was no censure in his voice, only a hint of sadness.
“I was trying to put my past behind me and lead a normal life as an academic.” Linnaius closed the memoirs. “But my father was right: there’s no escaping the curse of the silver eyes.” He placed the ledger in a metal casket, locked it and hung the key on a slender chain around his neck. “Whoever he may be, this cursed child, he’ll need to read what I’ve written. Bring him back here to Sapaudia, Izkael, if the need arises.”
“The need?” Linnaius felt Izkael’s translucent eyes pierce him, sharp and cold as icicles.
“You know very well what I mean,” Linnaius said, more tetchily than he intended. “There are things he needs to know that no one else can tell him.”
“Is there no way to trace him more accurately?”
Eliane’s child. No, my grandchild. Linnaius was itching to be off—but first he had to make sure that the goats and hens that had sustained him throughout the harsh winter found a new home with his nearest neighbor , Bertran.
“Only if he uses his powers again.” And one more unwitting use could be all it took to draw the vengeful Ardarel to obliterate him. There was no time to lose.
Chapter 38
The atmosphere at the copper mine camp was strained. The miners shuffled listlessly about their work, only stopping to shoot resentful glances at Gerard as he supervised the ongoing construction of the pump; gray-faced and unshaven, they were obviously still suffering from hangovers.
And serve you all bloody well right. You should be thanking me for not sacking the whole useless bunch for incompetence. Though Kartavoi should take his share of the blame as well.
“Until you can get that pump working, I’m going to use the traditional Azhkendi method of extracting the copper ore,” Kartavoi said to Gerard. He seemed remarkably unrepentant. “We’ll light fires in this seam to heat the ore and then, tomorrow, see what we can break out of the rock without risking blasting. Ruzhko and a few of the older miners are experts. By the way, where is Ruzhko?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his glistening forehead with the back of his sleeve.
“He went up the mountain with one of the apprentice lads to get dry firewood,” said one of the miners.
“Shouldn’t he be back by now?” said another, laying down his pick.
“You carry on with the preparations here,” said Gerard. He was not convinced about the efficacy of this traditional Azhkendi method but until they could pump out the water from the second tunnel, there was not much choice; Lord Ranulph wanted results. “I’ll go and find him.”
He was halfway up the stony track to the hidden valley when he heard someone cry out. He stopped.
That’s the scream of a man in pain. He’d heard just such a blood-chilling cry when one of Cardin’s workmen had lost his footing and tumbled into the pumping machinery. The sight of his mangled body and the blood-splattered cogs and shafts had haunted his dreams for weeks afterward as he tormented himself with the thought that maybe there was something he could have done to prevent the accident.
He found himself running, feet sliding on the scree underfoot, grabbing at the jagged rocks to keep himself from slipping. The day was cloudy but as he reached the little glen at last, a shaft of watery sun suddenly illuminated Morozhka’s Round. Bending over to break the sharp stitch stabbing his side, Gerard scanned the dell, seeing no sign of Ruzhko or his apprentice, only a flutter of little brown birds, fleeing into the distant bushes.
“Ruzhko?” Gerard’s voice echoed back to him off the craggy rock face. When no one answered, he set out toward the stone circle. A day before, he had stood over the miners as they scrubbed the paint off. but a few traces still stubbornly remained, giving the disturbing impression that blood was oozing from inside the ancient stones.
And then Gerard spotted them. Ruzhko lay unmoving on his face at the far side of the circle; a few feet away sprawled the body of the apprentice boy, a bundle of firewood abandoned, next to him.
“What in hell’s name—?” Gerard ran over to the miner, dropping to his knees beside him on the grass, reaching out to check for a pulse. And then he stopped himself, hand still outstretched. Blood had seeped onto the grass beneath Ruzhko’s face, a glossy slick of rusty red. Now that Gerard was at close quarters, he saw the ugly gash in the side of the miner’s head. Felled with one blow.
What happened? Did they argue? Did the boy attack his master?
Gerard pressed on the side of Ruzhko’s neck; the skin was still faintly warm but Gerard could feel no throb of life beneath his fingertips. In spite of himself, he felt his stomach contracting and fought the growing urge to retch.
Was it his scream I heard?
Only then did he realize that he must have disturbed the murderers. And he had come up here alone, unarmed, never dreaming for one moment that he might be in danger.
The boy suddenly let out a low, guttural moan and tried to move his head.
Still alive . . . but only just.
“Easy there, lad.” Gerard dug in his capacious pocket for the little metal flask of Tielen aquavit he carried for emergencies. He gently turned the boy over; causing him to let out another moan. “It’s all right. I’m here.” But even as he raised his head and shoulders against him, he saw the blood leaking from a deep gash at the base of his neck—probably inflicted with an axe. He tugged his scarf from around his neck and pressed it tightly against the gaping wound. But the boy’s pallor and shallow breathing told him that his efforts might be in vain.
“What happened?” Gerard asked. “Who attacked you?”
The boy’s graying lips moved and his wandering gaze fixed on Gerard’s face. He whispered a few halting words in Azhkendi that were almost inaudible. But as Gerard leaned closer, he distinctly heard, “Dru . . . zhi . . . na . . .”
“Druzhina? Lord Nagarian’s druzhina?” he repeated. “Are you sure?”
“What’s happened here?” Kartavoi’s voice, wheezily breathless from climbing, startled Gerard; he turned his head to see the foreman, followed by several miners entering the glade. “You’re covered in blood, Bernay.”
But before Kartavoi reached them, Gerard felt the boy let out a rasping sigh and his head lolled back against his chest. He laid him down gently on the grass and covered his face with his handkerchief. It seemed the only respectful thing he could do; inwardly he was seething with impotent rage that he had come too late to protect or save him.
“What in hell—?” Kartavoi stared down at the two bodies, eyes bulging with shock. “Who attacked my men?”
Gerard unstoppered his flask and took a mouthful of the rough local aquavit to calm his jangled nerves.
“Druzhina. Or that’s what the boy said before
he . . .” Gerard couldn’t finish the sentence.
“God preserve us all. This is bad.” Kartavoi held out his hand. “Give me a swig of that, Bernay. I need it.”
Gerard passed him the flask.
“You know what this means?” Kartavoi said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before passing the flask back.
“The Nagarians want us off the mountain.”
“Remember those two horsemen who threatened us? Bloody savages.”
“We have n
o proof. Only the words of a dying boy. They might have been bandits in disguise.”
“Ruzhko was a good man. A good friend. And the apprentice . . . he was only here to learn his trade.” Kartavoi’s voice had dropped to a low, troubled rumble.
“What do we do now?”
“I’ve a long memory, Bernay.” Kartavoi’s expression was grim, all traces of his usual good humor erased. “I don’t want to see the old clan feud stirred up again.”
“ The Arkhels and the Nagarians have been at each other’s throats for as long as anyone can remember.” Toran’s warning came vividly back to Gerard’s mind.
“Has Lord Ranulph ever met with Lord Gavril?” Gerard began to wonder if he had unwittingly helped to reignite a generations-old vendetta. “Are we trespassing on Nagarian land? Does this land really belong to Lord Ranulph’s family?”
Chapter 39
The tall, slightly lopsided house, painted in flaking ocher, looked sadly neglected and dilapidated. The linden trees in the square had grown taller, spreading a shady canopy over the cobbles but, so early in the year, had only just begun to unfurl leaves of the tenderest, palest green; there would be no honey-scented flowers for many weeks yet to come.
Linnaius, assaulted by emotions he had long forgotten, stared up at what had once been his home after he had fled to Tielen with his pregnant wife Ilona. A change of name (from Vernier to Linnaius) and a position at Tielborg University had earned them enough money to rent the ground floor of the ocher-painted house.
How could Anagini have taken all these precious memories from him?
It was my own doing, not hers; I made the bargain in full knowledge of what I was doing. And now I must take responsibility for my actions.
He steeled himself and went up to the tarnished doorknocker, rapping several times, then waiting even though there was little hope of finding anyone inside who remembered his family. It had all been so long ago and as he stood waiting on the doorstep and a breath of cold spring breeze stirred the lindens, he felt so frail that he could have closed his eyes and let himself be borne away on the breeze like thistledown.