by Sarah Ash
“But the dream. How did you—how did I—”
“You have the gift,” Malusha said. She laid her gnarled hand on Kiukiu’s forehead. “That was what finally convinced me. I thought the gift would die with me, the last of our line. Our little Lord Snowcloud must have sensed it. . . .”
“You are my grandmother,” Kiukiu said wonderingly. This should have been such a sublimely happy moment—and suddenly there were tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Hush now, child.” The old woman leaned forward and hugged her. “Dry your eyes and eat your porridge; it’ll go cold and there’s nothing worse than cold porridge.”
Kiukiu, swathed in Malusha’s blanket, began to look about her. There were little hints of a once prosperous life in the cottage. The walls were bare—yet the bed in the corner was covered with a patchwork quilt of rich cloths: Kiukiu could make out velvets and threads of gold in the squares of material. A metal jug by the fireplace was swan-necked, too elegantly fashioned for a peasant’s cottage. And there was a lacquer chest at the bottom of Malusha’s bed. In the firelight’s glint, Kiukiu could see it was kin to the dragon chest in Lord Volkh’s room—although instead of dragons, golden owls adorned its lid and sides.
Now that she was fully awake, she could hear the distant clucking croon of hens. Somewhere beyond the firelit room there must be the barn where the pony was stabled.
“How do you manage here, Grandmother?” Kiukiu ventured. “So far from the village?”
“I’ve enough for my needs,” Malusha said. “A well of clean water, a few apple trees. There’s lingonberries to be gathered on the moors, and wild mushrooms.”
“But weren’t all the Arkhel lands withered by the Drakhaon? They told us they were laid waste, that nothing will grow there.”
“Child, you’d have had to have walked for three full days to reach Arkhel’s domains. But yes, my home was once in Kastel Arkhel. Guslyars were valued members of Lord Arkhel’s household. But everything—and everyone—was destroyed by Lord Volkh.”
“How did you escape?”
“I was away from Kastel Arkhel that night, searching for my boy. I knew something terrible had happened to him.” Malusha’s eyes darkened. “He hadn’t told me much about your mother—only that he had fallen in love. I shouldn’t have left my lord Stavyor. But what was I to do? Malkh was my only son, I had to go find him.” The old woman fell silent, staring at her hands, which were crossed in her lap.
“They say my mother was never the same after my father—” Kiukiu hesitated, “after he died. Even after I was born. I don’t really remember her. My Auntie Sosia brought me up.”
“Your mother? Oh, for a long time I hated your mother.” Malusha looked up at Kiukiu, and Kiukiu felt a sudden chill that was nothing to do with the snow. There was still a lingering shadow of that bleak, unreasoning hatred that allowed no forgiveness. “I called down every curse I knew on her head for leading my boy to his death.”
“She didn’t mean to get him killed,” Kiukiu said hotly. “She loved him. And they made her suffer for loving him.”
“And you, child?” Malusha slipped her gnarled fingers under Kiukiu’s chin, turning her face to hers. “Why were you allowed to live? An Arkhel child in the Drakhaon’s household?”
“I don’t know.” Kiukiu looked away, embarrassed by her grandmother’s intense scrutiny. “I don’t know.”
For the next few hours, Kiukiu puttered about helping her grandmother. That was what, Kiukiu reasoned, she was best at: kitchen chores. She swept up the dust with a broom, she drew water from the well outside, kneaded dough for bread and set it to rise in a warm place near the fire.
Malusha watched her, nodding her head from time to time. She seemed weary now, as if the shock of finding her granddaughter had exhausted much of her energy.
“You’re a good, useful girl, Kiukiu, and no mistake.”
“You’ve lived here all alone, all these years?”
“Not alone, Kiukiu. I’ve had my duty to my lords and ladies here to keep me busy.” There was a strange, fey glint in Malusha’s eyes now as she pointed to the rafters, where some of the snow owls were roosting, hunched white shadows high overhead. “There were still songs to be sung in praise of my lords’ hunting exploits and my ladies’ broods of owlets. I’ve nurtured a whole dynasty of Arkhel’s Owls here, no thanks to the Drakhaon’s men.” Malusha made the sign against evil and spat eloquently three times.
“But . . . no other people?” Kiukiu, who had spent all her life in the kitchens, surrounded by people, could not begin to imagine such a solitary existence.
“Oh, now and then there’s a farmer stops by or a peddler woman going to Klim. They give me things in exchange for my skills: a sack of flour here, a length of cloth there. I get by.”
Kiukiu was growing weary. She had set the bread to bake and had chopped some vegetables Malusha gave her from her homegrown supply to make soup. She sat down in front of the newly laid fire and warmed her fingers and toes at the blaze.
“Where’s Snowcloud?” she asked.
“Roosting, where else? It’s day; my lords and ladies of the night won’t stir till the sun sets.”
“Tell me, Grandmother.” Kiukiu sat back on her heels, face glowing with the fire’s blaze. “Tell me about the Guslyars.”
“You’ve had no training, child, have you?” Malusha sighed. “Where to begin? A Guslyar should be trained from childhood in her art. I fear it may be too late for you. My mother started training me when I was four.”
“Too late?” Kiukiu tried not to sound too disappointed, but the thought that by an accident of birth she had been deprived of the chance to develop her gift was devastating.
“You know no more of the art than any other Nagarian.” Malusha’s voice had become dry, deprecating.
“That’s not my fault! And how can I know if you won’t tell me?” Kiukiu burst out.
“All this talking has dried my throat.” Malusha got up stiffly, awkwardly as if her bones had become set in the hunched sitting position. “I need some tea.”
Kiukiu watched her grandmother taking pinches of dried leaves from earthenware pots, muttering to herself as she poured hot water onto the leaves, pressing them with a spoon to release the flavor.
A curiously fragranced steam wafted toward Kiukiu as Malusha brought over two bowls of tea. She sniffed suspiciously. This wasn’t the kind of tea Sosia brewed in the kitchen.
“What’s in this?” she demanded.
“Special herbs.” Malusha grunted as she eased herself back down beside her. “To ease my aching bones. To keep the cold from getting into yours.”
Kiukiu took a tentative sip and pulled a face.
“It tastes odd.” And then the bitter taste altered on her tongue, releasing unfamiliar savors that were both sweet and tantalizingly elusive. It was as if the tea reminded her of some lost childhood memory.
“Ah. That’s better,” Malusha said after taking a long sip. “Now, where were we?”
“Guslyars,” Kiukiu said. Her voice sounded different—muzzily distant as if she were trying to call through thick, swirling mists.
Malusha set down her tea bowl and went to the lacquered chest. Throwing the lid open, she took out what looked at first to Kiukiu like a large, rectangular wooden tray. She settled herself down with it on her lap and Kiukiu saw now that it was an instrument, many-stringed, its case intricately painted and gilded with patterns of animals, birds, and flowers. The metal strings, even though unplucked, gave off a slight shimmer of sound as though vibrating in sympathy with Malusha’s breathing.
“This was my mother’s gusly.” Malusha ran her hard, curved nails over the strings, releasing a wild quiver of notes that set Kiukiu’s flesh tingling. “Needs tuning.” Malusha plucked at the strings, head on one side, twisting the metal pegs that glinted like gold, adjusting the pitch until it reached her satisfaction.
“I’ve never seen—never heard—anything quite—” Kiukiu stammered, overwhelmed.
“How could you?” Malusha snapped. “This is Arkhel magic. Subtle magic. What would the House of Nagarian understand about subtlety?”
“Play for me, Grandmother.”
“What shall I play? I know. A song to welcome home young Lord Snowcloud.” Malusha bent her head over the strings and began to play.
Kiukiu listened, entranced. The little flurries of notes evoked fast-falling snow. And suddenly she was flying through the snow-spun darkness, soaring and swooping, her senses alert to the tiniest sounds of the moorland night.
As the last notes died, she realized she was gazing down at herself and Malusha from the rafters. Slowly, softly as a falling feather she floated down, and found herself looking at her grandmother through her own eyes again.
“I was flying,” she whispered. “Was that you, Grandmother, or the tea?”
“Tsk, child, a little of both.” Malusha laid down the gusly. “And a little of your own gift. Look at me.” Malusha placed her fingers on Kiukiu’s cheek, staring into her eyes as she had done the night before. “You’ve been out of your body before, haven’t you?”
“Only once,” Kiukiu looked away, ashamed.
“And how did that come about?”
“Lord Volkh,” Kiukiu whispered. “He made me bring him through the mirror. From the Ways Beyond.”
“You’ve traveled that dark road? Unguided, untrained? Alone?” Malusha shook her gray head. “Child, child, what a foolishly dangerous thing to do. But then, how were you to know?”
“To know what?” Kiukiu said, alarmed now.
“A Guslyar can use her gift in many ways. But others can take advantage of her—and each journey she makes into the Ways Beyond drains a little more of her lifeforce. It is not a journey to be lightly undertaken.”
“Lifeforce? You mean strength?”
“Each time you return, you return a little more diminished, leaving a little more of yourself in the world of spirits.”
“But why do you have to go there at all?” Kiukiu shuddered, remembering the chill winds sweeping the bleak plain where she had found Lord Volkh.
“You’ve heard one of our other names? Ghost Singers? Did no one ever tell you how the Arkhels became so powerful?”
Kiukiu shook her head.
“There were many hero warriors among the ancestors of the House of Arkhel. Bogatyrs, golden knights, who once ruled Azhkendir in ancient days. Before battle, the Ghost Singers summoned the spirit-wraiths of the ancient heroes to possess Lord Arkhel and his clan warriors. Fired with the strength of their ancestors, they were invincible. And no one knew, no one guessed the secret until . . .” Malusha’s voice died away, her eyes staring into the distant shadows.
“Until?” prompted Kiukiu uncertainly.
“Destroy the Singer, and you leave the Arkhels vulnerable. Unprotected by the ancestor warrior spirits, open to attack. Not even my lord and lady owls could save them.”
“The Singer?” Kiukiu understood now. “You mean my father.”
“I mean my poor Malkh.”
“But what about you, Grandmother? Why didn’t you—”
“Because I was his mother,” Malusha snapped. “I was out searching for him on the moors when I should have been at Kastel Arkhel. When the sky grew dark and the Drakhaon swept out across the moorlands toward the mountains, I knew too late that I and my son had failed. Failed in our duty to the Lords of Arkhel. Beneath that terrible shadow, I fell to the ground and wept. I could do nothing, nothing but watch. I saw the distant flare of blue fire, I saw the glittering cloud that enveloped the kastel—and I felt them die, so many extinguished, all at once. I felt their deaths even from so far away, like a dark wave engulfing me. When I came back to myself, I was alone and the day was spent.”
“But could you and my father have withstood the Drakhaon’s powers?” Kiukiu whispered. “Wouldn’t you have been destroyed too?”
“Aye, and that would have been a merciful thing. But then who would have cared for my lords and ladies? And who would have been here to rescue you from the snows?”
Her grandmother’s logic was a little skewed, but Kiukiu could see that, in a way, it made sense.
“Some nights, when the loneliness is hard to bear, I go down those mist-shrouded, winding paths into the Ways Beyond,” Malusha said distantly, as if she were talking to herself. “But ghosts make sad company. . . .”
“You went there looking for my father?”
“When I could not find him in the land of the living, I knew where I had to look. We said a kind of farewell to each other.”
“He wasn’t in that . . . that terrible place of dust and ashes?”
Malusha leaned across and squeezed Kiukiu’s hand.
“No, child, he passed across that barren landscape long ago. As a Guslyar he knew how to find the Ways that lead Beyond. But wretched souls, such as Lord Volkh, weighed down, blinded by their burden of cruelty, cannot see where the true paths lie.”
“I couldn’t see any paths.”
“Because you have not been trained. But now that will change.” Malusha turned Kiukiu’s hand over, raising it to inspect her fingers. “Good, long fingers. Strong fingers. But your nails, child! All worn and chewed. A Guslyar needs nails of iron to pluck these metal strings.”
“I had to wash dishes,” Kiukiu said. It seemed a feeble excuse.
“You’ll have to use these.” Malusha fished out some pieces of curiously fashioned metal and slipped one onto Kiukiu’s index finger. “These are plectra. Until your nails grow strong and hard, you’ll have to practice with these.”
“But why do Guslyars need to play songs? I didn’t make any music before Lord Volkh appeared in the mirror.”
“Mirrors? Bah,” Malusha said dismissively. “Crude peasant magic. A Guslyar uses music for many purposes. The first is to sing the Praise Songs, the bylini. Each Lord of Arkhel has his own Praise Song. I shall teach you all the Songs of the House of Arkhel. And then there is the other music.”
“Other music?” Kiukiu echoed.
“We can make the sound of the gusly act as a bridge between our world and the Ways Beyond.” Malusha plucked two of the strings, setting up a weird and disconcerting resonance that seemed to pulse to the core of Kiukiu’s body. “We can summon spirit-wraiths by the sounds we make with our voices and these strings. These sounds send us into the trance state where we unlock the hidden portals and travel the Ways unknown to ordinary men, the Ways untraveled by the living.”
“You said you went to find Malkh, my father. Can I find him too? And my mother?”
“Child, child, have you not heard a single word I’ve been saying? Every time you walk those paths, you shorten your own life span. You must be properly trained before you venture out on those uncharted paths again. Or the Lost Souls will drain you of your life- force, and you will have no strength to return to your body.”
“You mean I have to learn to play first?” Disheartened, Kiukiu looked down at the strings. How was she ever to make sense of them all?
“You have a lifetime’s work to make up. So we’d better get started!”
At sunset, Kiukiu went to feed Harim the pony. She was glad to escape Malusha and her scolding for a little while. She was well used to scolding, but her brain was dizzy with all the instructions her grandmother had given her in her first gusly lesson. “Hold the instrument this way, your left-hand fingers are here, no, here . . .”
Her arm ached from the unfamiliar weight of the gusly, and her fingers were sore. Her mind jangled with the discordant sounds she had made. It was a relief to come outside and listen to the quiet.
She ventured out beyond the gateway to the edge of the moorlands. It had stopped snowing, and the setting sun had stained the snowfields with a glitter of pale fire. The intense cold took her breath away. Now that the wind had dropped, it was so quiet. It was as if she were the last living being in this winter wilderness.
She turned to go back into the warmth of her grandmother’s cottag
e.
Suddenly the twilight sky flashed blue, intense lightning blue. The air shuddered and crackled. The ground shook beneath her feet. In his stall she heard the pony whinnying in terror. The snow owls burst up out of the tower in a flurry of white wings, shrieking and jickering.
Malusha came running out of the cottage. Kiukiu moved toward her, clutching at her in her fright. Her grandmother’s face had turned gray.
“Grandmother,” Kiukiu stammered. “What was that?”
Malusha could not speak for a moment. Her lips moved, but no sounds came out. One hand waved feebly in the direction of the moors. At last the words began to come, faint yet tainted with a virulent and bitter hatred.
“Hoped . . . never to have to see that again in my lifetime . . .”
“What, Grandmother?”
“Arkhel’s bane. Drakhaon’s Fire. Your young Lord Gavril is no longer human, Kiukiu. Nagarian bad blood will out, sooner or later. He has become truly Drakhaon.”
CHAPTER 21
Madame Andar-Nagarian,
I must apologize for my behavior; it was quite unpardonable. To make amends, I wish to propose a meeting at the Tea Pavilion in the Water Gardens at three today.
Altan Kazimir.
Elysia glanced around again. She had gone out unaccompanied on the pretext of needing to purchase some new oil paints. Yet since she left the shop with her purchases, she had been certain someone was shadowing her.
Now that she had reached the Water Gardens, she hurried along the winding paths, following the signs to the Tea Pavilion, hoping she had been mistaken. Frost still dusted the frozen grass. The last of the autumn leaves were slowly drifting down from the bare branches; as she reached the lake, she saw the Tea Pavilion, a graceful summerhouse painted a delicate shade of willow green, standing beside the gray, still waters.
The Tea Pavilion was busy, and the scent of roasting coffee beans warmed the steamy air. To Elysia’s astonishment, many of the customers were eating ices in spite of the frosty temperature outside. She saw glass after glass of pale green pistachio, apricot, and vivid pink raspberry being eagerly consumed as she gazed across the room, searching for Doctor Kazimir.