by Sarah Ash
I feel no link with this place. I don’t belong. My mother’s southern blood burns too strongly in my veins. Oh, for the warmth of the sun . . .
Four telescopes, their weather-dulled metal glinting in the cold light, had been placed at each of the four walls of the tower. Volkh the warlord indulging his hobby as amateur astronomer. It didn’t quite seem to tally.
“Tell me more about my father. Tell me about the Clan Wars.”
Kostya was staring out toward the mountains, his back to Gavril.
“Azhkendir was always divided. By the time Lord Volkh became Drakhaon, only the Clan Arkhel stood against him. And Lord Stavyor Arkhel, in his mountain stronghold, was invincible. See that forked mountain, there, to the right of the ridge? That was where Kastel Arkhel stood. And Azhkendir was divided into factions: Arkhel against Nagarian. Civil war.”
“Was there no hope of negotiations? Or a peace treaty?”
Kostya turned and looked at him, frowning.
“You’ve much to learn about Azhkendir. That’s not how we settle matters here. Your grandmother, Drakhys Marya, was killed in the raid on the East Wing. Your father was only a boy at the time. He barely escaped with his life. How could he forgive Stavyor Arkhel for murdering his mother?”
“So my father attacked Lord Stavyor?”
“Years later your father retaliated. As Drakhaon he had . . .” Kostya hesitated, as though searching for the right words. “He had a singular advantage. No mercy was shown. Stavyor and his family and followers—all were destroyed.”
“His family? My father had Stavyor’s children killed?”
“You think that Stavyor Arkhel would have spared you and your mother if he had been the victor?” Kostya said harshly. “Yes, they were all killed and the kastel burned to the ground.”
Echo of a young man’s voice, choked with emotion, sobbing out those words of hatred and exultation over the dying man’s body . . .
“This for my mother . . . my sisters . . . my father . . .”
“Did Stavyor Arkhel have a son?” Gavril whispered. “A year or so older than me?”
“Jaromir,” Kostya said. “What of it? He was killed with his sisters.”
For a moment Gavril caught a glimpse of a cruel and savage light in Kostya’s eyes. Kostya must have been there at his father’s side in the massacre. His hands were stained with the blood of the Arkhel children too.
And then the full import of the echoing mindvoice hit him with the shattering force of winter lightning.
Stavyor’s son Jaromir was not dead. He had “seen” Jaromir kill his father.
CHAPTER 8
A flock of wild swans wheeled up into the air from the gray mists covering the waters of the ornamental lake.
Prince Eugene of Tielen reined in his bay mare Cinnamor on the grassy promontory high above his Palace of Swanholm and gazed down at his creation. Falling birch leaves covered the frost-crisped lawns with a coverlet of faded gold, drifted like yellow butterflies about his head. The cold air of early morning smelled of moldering leaves and woodsmoke.
He had brought the architects for his new palace all the way from Bel’Esstar. They had designed him an impressive building of pale stone, marble, and glass: simple, yet magnificent in its formal park setting. Where once his father’s favorite hunting lodge had stood in a valley of birch and alders, an elegant house had arisen, flanked by kitchens, stables, servants’ quarters, and the barracks of the Royal Bodyguard. Even now, workmen were still busy in the East Wing, its gently curving colonnade mirroring the completed West Wing, and the ring of their hammers echoed across the quiet parklands.
It was a palace fit for the man who dreamed it was his destiny to reunite the divided princedoms of Rossiya into one powerful empire.
It was a palace fit for an emperor.
Yet the nearing of its completion only served to remind Eugene all too painfully of an absence in his life. Together they had pored over the plans and drawings, discussed features, details. The black and white floor tiles of the entrance hall had been his idea, rejecting the architects’ more fanciful suggestions. And he should have been here now to see the workmen finishing their long years of labor, to stroll along the polished parquet floors, to admire the soft brocade hangings of ivory, green, and gold—shades he had chosen to reflect the leaves and bark of the birch trees in the park. But his personal daemons had tormented him to the point when even the pleasures of Swanholm Palace could no longer distract him from his desire for revenge. One morning, news had come from an unexpected source—and after that, there was nothing Eugene could do to keep him in Swanholm. Since his departure, in spite of Eugene’s extensive network of intelligence agents, the subtle inquiries made of all the foreign ambassadors, even in spite of Magus Linnaius’ most ingenious scrying, his trail had gone cold.
But then, Eugene reflected, everyone he cared for had deserted him. One could not plan one’s life by relying on the constancy or affection of friends, wives, lovers. . . .
The thin autumn sunshine brightened a moment, flooding the wooded gardens with a wash of pale gold.
Distant laughter, a child’s laughter, joyous and carefree, disturbed his reverie. There, on the lawns below, was his daughter Karila, playing catch with her nurse Marta. A gilded ball spun to and fro through the air between them.
The frail little girl managed well enough with her twisted leg, but the doctors had told him that even if she survived childhood, she would be crippled for life.
If only he could play with her as lightheartedly as Marta did. But he must maintain a distance. To get to know her, to love her too well, would only tempt the fates again. Every time they were together, every time she snuggled up close to him, he glimpsed that malign shadow-specter hovering behind her, waiting to snatch her as it had snatched her mother.
“Papa! Papa!” Now she was waving at him. Sunlight glinted in her curls, which were fair as catkin pollen, the same delicate shade as her mother’s had been. He waved back. She started out eagerly toward him, arms outstretched—and, betrayed by her crippled leg, pitched forward on the grass.
Cinnamor gave a nervous, jittery whinny.
“What’s up there, girl?” He patted her neck to try to reassure her but she did not respond, shaking her head from side to side and rolling her eyes.
Now he looked—and looked again, hardly believing what he saw. Through the rising mists a wolf was loping toward his little daughter: a great, shaggy beast with an ill-kempt coat streaked with the lurid yellow of sulfur.
No ordinary wolf. A Marauder.
Cinnamor let out a whicker of terror and reared up, iron-clad hooves beating the air.
Eugene squeezed his heels into the bay’s side and urged her down the precipitous side of the hill.
On the green lawn below he saw Marta run to Karila, clutching her in her arms.
Leaning low in the saddle, Eugene steered Cinnamor straight toward Karila, plunging into the mists.
A shrill, high scream pierced the chill air, a child’s scream.
If anything has happened to her . . . Eugene reached down for his hunting pistols. Cinnamor was slowing, flakes of foam flying from her mouth, unable to sustain the mad gallop much longer.
Scuffing up great clods of earth and grass, the mare skidded to a halt on the lawn.
The Marauder crouched in front of Karila and Marta, spittle trailing from its jaws, poised to spring.
Raising the pistol, Eugene took aim and fired. The ball caught the creature in the side of the head as it leapt, flinging it across the lawn. Its flailing limbs shuddered once or twice, and then it lay still in a puddle of blood and spilling brain.
Karila let out another cry and buried her face in Marta’s shoulder.
Eugene jumped down from the saddle and ran over to his daughter, taking her in his arms, feeling her cling to him as if she would never let go.
“It’s all right, Kari, it’s all right now,” he whispered. Her clothes were soaked with dew.
Guard
smen of the Royal Bodyguard, alerted by the shot, came running out from the palace across the lawns.
“Are you all right, highness?” a young lieutenant cried anxiously. One of the bodyguard grabbed hold of Cinnamor’s reins and was patting her, speaking softly to calm the jittery mare.
“Take the little one inside and put her in some dry clothes.” Eugene placed Karila in Marta’s arms.
Marta was staring at where the attacker’s body lay.
“What was it, highness?” she asked shakily. “A . . . a werewolf?”
Eugene looked too. In death, the Marauder had reverted to its human form, limbs awkwardly splayed, skull split open by the pistol ball.
“My daughter will catch cold,” he said shortly. “Take her inside.”
The Guardian of the Marauders came hurrying over, his flintlock primed.
“Look,” Eugene said grimly, pointing at the twisted corpse on the grass. “Why did you let one escape? It attacked my daughter. I want an explanation.”
“News, highness!” General Anckstrom, Eugene’s chief of staff, came hurrying down the steps toward him, his aide-de-camp hovering behind. “News from Azhkendir.”
Azhkendir. Eugene felt his heart twist in his breast. “Shall we go in?” he said, making a supreme effort to conceal his feelings in front of his men.
Eugene’s study was an austere room, furnished as if for a campaign with regimental colors, maps, and weapons. The only concession to ornamentation were the gilded coronets set in the plaster ceiling moldings. Eugene and Anckstrom went to sit at the desk; the aide-de-camp stood stiffly to attention in front of the doors.
“Magus Linnaius was right,” Anckstrom said. “Volkh is dead.”
“Dead?” Eugene struck his fist on the desk, making the silver ink pots tremble. “How?”
“Assassinated,” Anckstrom said bluntly.
“And the assassin?”
“Escaped.”
“Thank God. Thank God.” Eugene realized that he had not taken a breath until that moment. The secret torment that had gnawed at his soul over the past weeks abated a little. “And has any claim been made to the throne?” he asked, unable to hide the tension in his voice.
“Ah. There the matter seems to become much more complex.”
Eugene raised one eyebrow questioningly. Anckstrom nodded to his aide-de-camp.
“We are not to be disturbed. Not by anyone.”
The aide bowed and left the study. Anckstrom waited until the doors clicked discreetly shut before he swung round to face Eugene.
“Volkh’s son is alive. If our information is correct, he has been made Drakhaon.”
This morning all the pieces of Eugene’s complex strategic gamble had been in place. Now he saw his carefully laid plans crumbling away. Everything had hinged on Azhkendir.
“Why,” he said eventually, “were we not informed about the son?”
Anckstrom’s eyes were fixed on the polished parquet floor. “Our agents did not—um—consider him a threat.”
“You mean our agents were unaware of his existence.”
“He’s hardly more than a boy. Apparently his mother has raised him to be a painter, like herself. Anyone less suited to the task of ruling Azhkendir I can hardly imagine—”
“And Jaromir?” Eugene said, unable to keep the rawness from his voice. “What’s become of him? He’s thrown himself into the dragon’s jaws.” The thought that his young protégé might be trapped in Azhkendir, lying burned by Drakhaon’s Fire, slowly dying alone. . . .
He stalked away from Anckstrom, hands clasped behind his back, trying to control this sudden, uncharacteristic swell of feelings.
On the farther wall two portraits hung, side by side. The first was of his wife Margret. Margret, dead at twenty years, giving birth to poor, lame Karila. Margret, forever young, sweet-faced, and smiling, in a striped summer gown, daisies in her pollen-bright hair, the canvas giving no hint of the cruel fate that would take her from him. Beside her hung the portrait of a young man with hair of dark gold, dressed in the gray and blue uniform of the Royal Dragoons, whose haunted eyes betrayed him as one who had looked on horrors no one so young should have to endure.
“Oh, Jaro, Jaro,” Eugene said under his breath, “why did I let you go?”
“He knew the risks,” Anckstrom said. “He chose to go. Nothing you said would have kept him here. Once we had that particular piece of intelligence, he knew it was time to make his move.”
Eugene nodded, only half-hearing.
“So we call off the invasion?” Anckstrom, thick brows knotted in a frown of concentration, was gazing down at the desk on which a map of the whole continent lay outspread.
“No.” The military strategist in Eugene reawoke. He walked swiftly over to Anckstrom’s side. “We’re going to destroy this young Drakhaon—and put Jaromir in his place. Who then will stand between us and Muscobar? But we must move fast or winter will confound all our plans.”
“So you’re willing to risk a direct confrontation?” Anckstrom said, still frowning.
“What did you tell me? ‘He’s just a boy.’ If he’s just a boy, he won’t have come into his full powers yet. And with our Marauders, we’re easily a match for his druzhina.”
“But the Marauders are still unproven, unreliable. Look what happened this morning—”
“This morning was an unfortunate error.” And then, seeing no change in Anckstrom’s dour expression, “Anckstrom, I want a message sent to all our troops on the Azhkendi borders: ‘Stand ready.’ As for the Marauders . . . I’ll go consult Linnaius.”
Magus Kaspar Linnaius, Court Alchymist and Royal Artificier, had recently taken up residence in his new rooms adjacent to the library in the West Wing. Eugene’s father, Karl the Navigator, had tempted the scholar to Tielen from the Thaumaturgical College in Francia with the promise of alchymical laboratories, a high-ranking position at court, and—perhaps, most significant of all—no interference. There had been growing hostility to the work of the alchymists in Francia and, not long after Linnaius left for Tielen, a surge of religious bigotry had closed the college and seen the magisters tried in ecclesiastical courts—then executed for heresy. A more enlightened attitude prevailed in the colder climes of Tielen: the princes had long encouraged the arts and sciences in equal measure.
For the last six months, Linnaius had been working with Eugene on a unique military experiment, the Marauders: a company of warriors from the northern steppes of Tielen transformed by skills Linnaius had learned and adapted from a tribal shaman.
To create the Marauders, Linnaius had visited jails and barracks prisons, assembling a group of convicts, all young and fit. Faced with the choice of the gallows or Linnaius’ experiment, all had readily agreed to take part.
At first, the Marauders had been comfortably housed in the new palace barracks. Well fed and clothed, they submitted daily to Linnaius’ thaumaturgical procedures. Early on, two broke their contract; both had been shot as they tried to sneak away through the parklands with a sack of palace silver. After that, no one else rebelled. But of late, a change had come over them. The Marauders had begun to snarl and snap at their keepers, almost as if the lupine nature of their transformation was beginning to overmaster their human traits. Eugene had been forced to order them confined.
As Eugene climbed the wide stone stair that led to the Magus’ rooms, his mind was still in turmoil. Had they created a team of uncontrollable monsters, too wild to respond to commands? Now he feared that the whole experiment had been proven a failure, and that he would be forced to destroy them.
Linnaius’ door swung silently open as Eugene reached the top of the stairs. He saw the Magus, his long wisps of silvered hair tied back with a black silk ribbon, standing on the threshold.
“You assured me, Magus, that the Marauders were responding to your commands,” Eugene said as the door silently closed behind him. He had almost grown used to Linnaius’ ability to anticipate his visits. “You assured me they were ready
for active service. And now—”
“Now another has absconded,” the Magus said, nodding.
“Absconded? It attacked Karila!” Eugene was still shaken by the encounter—and even more disturbed by his own reaction. “How can we send them into Azhkendir when they don’t respond to our commands?”
“So, you still plan to infiltrate Azhkendir,” said Linnaius, steepling his fingers. His voice was soft and contemplative, colorless as drifting ash.
“There is a new Drakhaon,” Eugene said.
“Ah . . .”
For a moment, Eugene wondered if he was right to place so much trust in the Magus’ powers. Was the elderly scholar losing his faculties? No one had any idea of Linnaius’ exact age. He was tall, lean, and clean-shaven, the skin stretched so tautly on his face that his skull protruded, as if countless years devoted to the rigorous study of the science of magic had honed away all softness of flesh, leaving only smooth, sculpted bone.
“And there is still no news of Jaromir.”
“Jaromir . . .” A veil descended across the Magus’ eyes, thin as spidersilk. Eugene tried to suppress a shudder; he had seen this trick before when the Magus withdrew into his own thoughts. Experience had taught him to be patient.
Suddenly Linnaius blinked and focused his gaze on the prince again. He rose and beckoned Eugene toward his laboratory. He paused at the open doorway and snapped his fingers. Eugene sensed, rather than saw, the air ripple as an invisible barrier was drawn aside. Passing through, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle—a disconcerting sensation—as though they were brushed by unseen fingers.
The laboratory beyond was scrupulously neat, glass phials and jars arrayed in ranks on the shelves.
“Is he still alive?”
Linnaius took a gold key from about his neck and unlocked a little ebony cabinet. The laboratory grew dim, as if clouds had suddenly drifted across the sun, and a soft humming vibration began to emanate from within the black depths of the cabinet. A dark light glowed within.
Taking care not to reveal what was inside, Eugene noted, the artificier carefully removed a tiny glass phial in the shape of a lotus flower, cupping it in between his spindly fingers. A faint gleam—dark, tenderly red as heart’s blood—lit his hands.