Lord of Snow and Shadows

by Sarah Ash

  “They bring bad luck, Arkhel’s Owls. Cursed creatures. Kill ’em and string ’em up to rot, I say.”

  “Help me!”

  “Who’s going to hear you, you silly little bitch? Someone needs to teach you a lesson.”

  He swung the stick back to strike.

  “No!” Kiukiu flung up both arms to cover her face.

  “Who’s there?”

  Oleg hesitated, distracted, looking around.

  There were footsteps running through the orchard toward them. Kiukiu looked dazedly up to see Lord Gavril beneath the ancient apple trees. His eyes burned like blue flames in the gloom.

  “L-Lord Drakhaon.” Oleg dropped the stick.

  Lord Gavril advanced on Oleg, one hand outstretched, finger pointing. Oleg began to tremble.

  “You. Go. Get out.”

  “M-my lord—” Oleg, face suddenly pale as ale froth, turned and went loping clumsily away, leaving the stick where he had dropped it.

  “Are you all right?” Lord Gavril knelt beside Kiukiu. “Did he hurt you?”

  Kiukiu stared up at him, dizzy with gratitude and relief. Lord Gavril had saved her from Oleg! Her heart sang silently within her.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she whispered.

  “Who was that man? What was he doing here?”

  A blood-chilling shriek came again from the trap. Kiukiu jumped up, brushing the moss and dead bracken from her skirts.

  “He’s called Oleg. He was going to kill it,” she said, pointing to the trap. “I couldn’t let him do it.”

  The creature was a writhing ball of speckled snow-white feathers against the dark brambles. No blood-boltered fiend, just a young bird, injured and terrified.

  “Ohh,” Kiukiu said softly. “Poor thing. Poor little thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “See those ear tufts? I think it’s a young snow owl. But they rarely nest this far from the mountains. . . .”

  The bird hissed at her from a sharply curved beak. It was nearly exhausted from its struggles, and its feathers were bloodied and torn, but it was still ready to fight to defend itself.

  “We’ll have to pry the trap open.” She was untying her apron. If Sosia found out what it had been used for, she would beat her, but there was no other alternative.

  “There, there,” she crooned to the owl as she edged forward across the crushed bracken. “Hush now. We’ll soon have you out.”

  She held out the apron. Good, thick-woven linen. Tough as a sack. She hoped it would protect her from the sharp, snapping beak.

  “Here.” Lord Gavril had retrieved Oleg’s stick.

  “When I put the apron over its head, my lord, you open the trap.”

  Brilliant owl eyes blazed defiance. Gavril knelt beside her and the terrified bird tried to jerk away again. Hastily she threw the apron over its head.

  “Quick!” Its struggles beneath the coarse cloth were frantic as Lord Gavril fumbled with the iron teeth of the trap, trying to find the spring. “I—can’t hold it—much longer—”

  “I am hurrying!”

  With a sudden clang, the trap sprang open and Kiukiu swiftly drew out the owl. For a moment it went limp—whether due to loss of blood or relief, she couldn’t tell. She took a look at the injured leg. “It’s lame.”

  “It’ll never survive if we leave it here.”

  “Then I’ll care for it.” She began to wrap up the little creature again, swaddling it like a baby.

  “The hunting dogs’ll sniff it out and kill it. If Oleg doesn’t find it first. What does he have against snow owls?”

  She looked up at him. Didn’t he know? Had no one told him?

  “They still call them Arkhel’s Owls, my lord. They were the emblem of the House of Arkhel.”

  “Arkhel’s Owls,” Lord Gavril said pensively.

  “They bring bad luck, my lord. Bad luck for our House. Your father’s men kill them whenever they find them.”

  “Bad luck?” he echoed. His eyes had reverted to their normal sea blue again, calm waters now after the storm.

  “Poor little abandoned orphan,” Kiukiu crooned to the owl, trying to stroke it. “Ow!” She snatched her hand away, shaking fingers. “It pecked me.”

  Lord Gavril began to laugh. “There’s gratitude for you.”

  “But where shall we keep it? Till it can fly again?”

  “We? You’re involving me in this?”

  She grinned back, forgetting for a moment who he was, relishing the conspiratorial closeness.

  “I can see that it would be foolish to take it back into the kastel. Is there somewhere in the gardens—a tool shed, a disused aviary?”

  “The Elysia Summerhouse!” Kiukiu said, triumphant. “No one ever goes there now, the floor’s all rotted away.”

  “Elysia?” His eyes clouded over. “That’s my mother’s name. Was it her summerhouse? Did he build it for her?”

  He seemed to be talking to himself, thinking aloud, not anticipating an answer. Which was just as well, Kiukiu thought, as she had no idea who had built the summerhouse—only that it was a ruin, swathed in ivy and brambles. An ideal house for an owl.

  “And you—what’s your name?” he asked.

  “Kiukiu.”

  “Kiukiu?”

  She felt herself blushing with pleasure to hear him say her name out loud.

  “Does it have a special meaning?”

  “Oh, it’s just what everyone calls me. It’s short for Kiukirilya.”

  He nodded. “Quite a mouthful. No wonder everyone shortens it.”

  The Elysia Summerhouse had six sides, with a veranda around it. The delicate curving roof was ornamented with a little spire with a weather vane fashioned out of wrought iron like a barque in full sail.

  Once, Kiukiu reckoned, it had been prettily painted in white and green. But neglect and the ravages of the Azhkendi winter had stripped all but the stubbornest traces of paint from its trelliswork.

  “Watch where you tread, my lord,” she cautioned.

  She wasn’t sure if he had heard her; he was staring up at the ruined fretwork that decorated the veranda.

  “I wonder . . . did she used to sit here in the summertime?” His face had become wistful.

  Kiukiu swallowed. She so wanted to be able to say yes and console him. “I don’t know, my lord, I wasn’t born then.”

  “Of course not.” He seemed to collect himself. “I’ll go look for something to splint that leg.”

  Lord Gavril soon reappeared with a short, straight twig from which he stripped the bark with a little pocketknife, snapping it to make a little splint.

  “Now all we need is something to bind the leg to the splint, some twine, string. . . .”

  “Here.” She untied the blue ribbon securing one of her plaits and handed it to him.

  “Now hold it tight. It’ll struggle. I’ll fix this as fast as I can.”

  Kiukiu held the owl in the apron. It felt warm and soft beneath the linen; she was half afraid she might smother or crush it if it fought her.

  “Keep a firm hold,” Lord Gavril muttered. She watched as he bound the broken leg with deft fingers.

  The light was fading, the last of the daylight bleeding from the sky in streaks of fiery crimson. Kiukiu wondered how he could see what he was doing in the fast-gathering gloom.

  “It’s done. You can let it go now,” he said, letting out a slow breath of relief.

  Kiukiu eased the apron away from the feathery bundle and hastily drew back in case the owl decided to attack her again. But it merely ruffled its feathers as if deeply offended, and hopped in an ungainly, lopsided way into the darkest corner of the summerhouse.

  “If it survives the next two days, it’ll be fine,” Lord Gavril said, pushing his hair from his eyes. “As long as that brute Oleg doesn’t find it.”

  Kiukiu gazed at him, smitten. He had rescued her from “that brute Oleg.” She owed him. She wanted to help him in return—even if she put herself in danger.

 
“My lord,” she began. “There’s something else. Something you ought to know.”

  “Well?” he said.

  “There’s a secret door in your room.”

  “In my room?” Suddenly he was all attention. “Where does it lead, this secret door? Out of the kastel?”

  “I don’t know. But I—I saw someone use it to get into your bedchamber.”

  “Someone? Who?” he asked, frowning now.

  She swallowed. To tell him would be to take a dangerous path from which there was no turning back. And yet not to tell him . . .

  “Lilias,” she said softly.

  “Lilias? In my bedchamber? Doing what?”

  “She was looking for something.”

  “Did she find it?”

  “No. She unlocked that chest, the dragon chest. She seemed very angry. And I heard her say—oh dear.” Kiukiu clamped both hands to her mouth. She had said too much. Suddenly she was frightened.

  “What did she say?” The warmth had faded from his eyes.

  “Promise me, my lord, promise me you’ll never tell anyone.” Even now, her common sense was screaming at her not to say any more, to protect herself.

  “You have my word as Drakhaon.”

  She knew then she could not help herself. She would walk through fire for him.

  “There was something about not giving up without a fight. And then she said, ‘Wait till my son is born. Then we’ll find out who is really Drakhaon.’”

  “Ah,” he said.

  Darkness seeped into the summerhouse. The owl rustled its feathers in the shadows, letting out a soft, trilling hoot.

  Lord Gavril glanced round, almost as if glad for the distraction.

  “What shall we give this poor creature to eat till it can hunt for itself again?”

  “I can filch some little bits of raw meat from the kitchen,” Kiukiu offered. “Sosia won’t notice.”

  “And water. We must leave it water.”

  “What shall we call it?” Kiukiu was glad not to be talking of Lilias anymore. “It must have a name.”

  “We don’t even know if it’s male or female.”

  “What about Snowy, then?”

  “Too predictable.”

  “Blizzard?” Ideas came crowding into her mind. “Icefeather? Snowcloud?”

  “Snowcloud.” He repeated the name slowly, pensively. “A good name. An evocative name.”

  “Your name is Snowcloud,” she told the owl. It did not seem in the least impressed.

  “You go back first, my lord. Best we’re not seen together.”

  At the door of the summerhouse he paused and looked back.

  “You’re not afraid, then?”

  “Afraid, my lord?” She wasn’t sure what he meant. “Of Arkhel bad luck?”

  “Of me,” he said quietly. And before she could answer, he walked out into the dusk.

  Next morning Lord Gavril was still in bed when Kiukiu crept in with her bucket of coals.

  “I’ve come to do your fire, my lord. I didn’t mean to disturb you, I can come back later. . . .”

  “No. Come in, Kiukiu.”

  She was shocked to see how pale he looked. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, as if he had not slept all night.

  She hurried across the bedchamber to the grate and hastily began to scrape out the ashes of last night’s fire. She could not help but notice how golden-brown his skin was where the white cambric nightshirt gaped open at the neck. . . .

  What was she thinking of? Her cheeks burning, she tried to concentrate on the task in hand.

  “How is Snowcloud?”

  “Still alive, my lord.” Kiukiu carefully laid the last coals on top of the carefully constructed pile. “He tried to peck me when I brought fresh water and food.” She lit the kindling, then took up the bellows, coaxing the tiny flame. “But the frost was very harsh last night. The water I left was frozen over. Perhaps we should take some straw for him to sleep in?”

  “But he’s a snow owl,” he said absently, as if his mind were elsewhere. “Aren’t they used to the cold? Better used than us?”

  He was right, of course. What must he think of her? It was just that every time she gazed into those sea-blue eyes, she forgot what she was talking about.

  He threw off the bedclothes and swung his legs out of bed.

  “Show me the hidden door, Kiukiu.”

  “N-now?” She had told him about it; wasn’t that enough?

  “What better time?” He was alert now. “The guards outside think you’re busy lighting the fire. Who will know?”

  “But you’re not dressed,” she said, blushing.

  “Easily rectified.” He grabbed a pair of breeches and began to pull them on; hastily she turned her head away.

  “There!” He had put on the fur-lined black jacket that had been left slung over the dragon chest. “Will that do?”

  She wavered before the great hanging tapestries. Was it the one with the bowmen shooting down a stag? Or the one next to it with the falcons?

  She raised the tasseled and braided edge of the tapestry. A plain little door was set in the wall behind.

  “It’s here.”

  The heavy tapestry smelled of dust. Her arm was beginning to ache with the weight of holding it up, and the gilded threads felt as scratchy as strands of coarse string.

  Lord Gavril put out his hand and tried the handle; the little door swung slowly inward with a creak. Beyond lay a narrow stone passageway that wound away into utter darkness.

  Kiukiu shivered.

  “Where does it go?” Her voice echoed back to her from the cold passageway beyond.

  “Let’s find out,” he said. “Fetch a candle, Kiukiu.”

  “Suppose it goes straight to my lady Lilias’ rooms?” Kiukiu said, horrified at the thought. “Straight to her bedchamber?”

  “Then perhaps she’ll entertain us to breakfast.” The blue eyes flashed with grim humor.

  As Kiukiu crept along the cold, dark passageway behind Lord Gavril, she realized she had completely forgotten they were master and servant. He treated her as if she were his equal, and yet he was lord of all Azhkendir. She must never let herself forget again. It was just that he was so . . . nice.

  “Mind your head,” he whispered, “the passage’s getting lower. And narrower . . . Ah.” He stopped. The pale candleflame wavered in a gust of fresh, freezing air.

  “What is it, my lord?”

  “Two tunnels ahead. And some kind of grating. That’s where the air’s coming from. And the spiders.”

  “Spiders.” She pulled a face.

  “Generations of spiders. My guess is that the tunnel to the right is the one Lilias used. It’s much cleaner than the left-hand one.”

  “I should have brought my broom,” Kiukiu said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Kiukiu, you don’t have to come any farther.”

  “Oh, I’m coming, my lord, broom or no. I’ve got to make sure you get safely back.”

  “And protect me from the spiders.” She could hear self-mockery in his voice now.

  “Oh—I didn’t mean—”

  “My guess,” he said, turning into the left-hand tunnel, “is that this one leads to the East Wing.”

  His voice came back hollowly to her, muffled by the dusty darkness ahead. Strands of powdery webs tickled her face, clinging to her hair and hands.

  “Pah!” She spat out a wisp of spidersilk that clung to her mouth.

  “Another door.” She heard him rattling the handle. “Locked.” He fished out a ring of keys from his pocket. “Here, hold the candle, Kiukiu.”

  As he tried key after key, half-forgotten fragments of stories began to swirl like wisps of moor mist around Kiukiu’s mind. Stories of the lost brides of past Drakhaons, walled up in towers and left to die, of unfaithful wives incarcerated with the rotting corpses of their murdered lovers. Tales of gouts of black blood dripping through into the rooms below from hidden chambers above, the muffled, agonized cries of the
tortured heard through walls a handspan thick . . .

  And all in the East Wing.

  Several neglected chores began to nag. Suddenly the prospect of scrubbing a tubful of washing seemed infinitely preferable to waiting in this cold, spider-infested labyrinth.

  She shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.

  “Perhaps I should go back. . . .” she whispered.

  “Ah!” Lord Gavril said triumphantly. The key had turned in the lock—and the ancient door slowly opened.

  “Sosia’ll be wondering where I am,” she said, hating herself for sounding so fainthearted.

  “I’ll tell Sosia you were working for me. I’ll think of some excuse or other—she won’t dare to go against the word of the Drakhaon, will she?”

  His face, in the flickering candlelight, was twisted into a smile of wry self-deprecation.

  “No,” she said unhappily.

  A shaft of daylight, pale as milk, lit the passageway ahead. Lord Gavril, leading the way, stumbled and almost fell, putting out one hand to save himself.

  “Take care,” he said. “The floorboards are rotting away.”

  Kiukiu looked down and saw that he had nearly put his foot right through a worm-eaten board. A musty smell of decaying wood rose from the hole.

  “Didn’t Kostya say Doctor Kazimir was overfond of his liquor?” Lord Gavril said, testing the floor ahead, one step at a time. “It’s a wonder he didn’t fall and break his neck.”

  Lord Gavril reached the source of the light: a great oriel window, boarded and bricked up, with just a few cracked panes at the top still letting in the daylight . . . and the rain.

  “Look,” Kiukiu said, awed, forgetting all about Sosia. She could see now that they stood on a balcony with an ironwork balustrade that ran around three of the four sides. Opposite them a dilapidated marble stair curved drunkenly downward to the ground floor, which was worked in the same patterned tiles as those to be found in the Great Hall.

  There had been plaster on the walls and in places, fragments of fine gilt moldings still remained; the rest had faded to a chalky gray and was marred by great, dark blotches of damp and a telltale rash of mold.

  Lord Gavril set off toward the stairs and almost tripped as something small and furry shot out from under his feet and went squeaking away into the shadows.