by Sarah Ash
Gavril forgot that his legs and back ached, forgot the brooding despair that had haunted his progress through the forest.
So Jaromir Arkhel thought he could best him! Did he think he was some soft southerner, too scared to save his own skin to venture into mountainous terrain?
And then the need to concentrate on finding a firm foothold amid the treacherous shale drove all other thoughts from his head. Now as the gully narrowed, it became a matter of clinging to the jagged rocks to pull himself up, hand over hand.
Even though the last rays of the sinking sun still lit the western sky with a flare of fire, night began to darken this side of the mountain. And with the night came the cold, intense and penetrating. Gavril struggled up to the top of the gully to find that the snowfield above and overhanging rock buttresses were glistening with fast-freezing ice crystals.
And yet, in spite of nightfall, Jaromir Arkhel still toiled on upward across the snow.
Gavril’s labored breath gusted in puffs of steam on the chill air. His ribs were sore. He stared at his quarry, now little more than a blurred shadow against the dull sparkle of snow. Jaromir Arkhel must be making for a hut, a mountain refuge, hidden high above the snow line. Why else would he be trudging on upward into the night?
At this moment, he was aware that Gavril Andar the painter would have shrugged, turned away, and gone home. But this new Gavril could not go back. He could only go on.
The snow was not as thick here as it had looked from the forest ridge; it had settled in crevices, sheening the rocks with a glistening of white. As night’s cold intensified, it was rapidly freezing underfoot. Now he began to understand why Jaromir had been moving so slowly. But Gavril was used to climbing slippery rocks. Even though those in Vermeille Bay were treacherous with the slime of seaweed and algae, they were no less difficult to negotiate.
As he moved doggedly on, teeth clenched against the burning cold of the night air, he realized he was gaining on Jaromir. His quarry was slowing, tiring. The distance between them had halved.
He stumbled, clutching at an overhanging rock to steady himself.
One foot slid out over the edge.
His heart thudded as dislodged stones went spinning away from beneath his dangling foot into the gully below, rattling far down into the darkness.
He forced all his strength into pulling his whole body back onto the rock. He slumped there, cheek against the rough granite, clutching the contours of the rock.
Narrow escape.
The air seemed thinner here. His head was spinning. When he gazed back down at the darkening moorlands, the dizziness increased.
Steady there, steady . . .
He forced himself to control his gasping breaths, to look upward, not at the dizzying drop below.
So close now.
So close he could see his quarry clearly against the snowfield. His hand crept to the pistol’s handle. At this distance he reckoned he could easily pick him off. If . . .
A sudden gust of wind came shivering from out of the night. Its keen bite woke him, cleared his head.
He primed the pistol and set off again, head down against the wind, tramping on upward.
“Jaromir!” He had shouted the challenge aloud before he knew what he had done. The name echoed around the mountain like a trumpet call to battle.
He saw the toiling figure up ahead halt and look round. But then—almost as if thumbing his nose at his pursuer—he merely turned away and carried on.
A flare of rage blurred Gavril’s sight.
“It’s over, Jaromir Arkhel!” he shouted, hastening his pace. His words came echoing back, ringing with ice and fire. He raised his arm, taking aim, closing one eye as he took a step forward. “It’s—”
His feet slid from under him.
The shot—a crack as loud as splintering ice—went wide.
This time he couldn’t save himself. The pistol fell from his hand and went bouncing away down into the ravine. He grabbed in vain at the icy rock and felt the jagged stone grazing his fingers, sharp as razors.
He tried to cling on, but the burn of the ice was numbing his bleeding hands. Blood smeared the clear sheen of ice. Even as his dangling feet fumbled for a foothold, his numbed fingers lost their grip.
And then he was sliding, clutching helplessly at the ice-sheened stone, tumbling down, down—till he plummeted over the edge.
Into the void.
CHAPTER 24
It had started to snow again. Kiukiu lay huddled under blankets beside the embers of the dying fire. A blizzard howled about the chimney, and stray flakes were sucked down to sizzle among the embers. She thought she could make out another sound behind the wind’s howling, the distant, eerie song of wolves prowling for prey. Although she knew she was safe, protected by the thick, rugged stones of the cottage, she still shivered to hear that desolate sound. Even the owls shifted uneasily from claw to claw on their rafter perches high above.
She could not sleep. Her fingertips were scored raw from the wire strings of the gusly, and her head jangled with the clumsy, tuneless sounds she had made. She had worked hard to try to please her grandmother, but each lesson always ended with Malusha’s sighing. A lifetime’s work to make up. What if she wasn’t good enough? What if Malusha gave up on her? What if . . .
Kiukiu’s mind jittered from one worry to another. What was happening back at the kastel? Was Lord Gavril safe? Had he come looking for her? That cataclysmic blue blaze, lighting the dusk sky like the ripple of northern lights—had that truly been his doing? She shifted onto her other side, pulling the blankets up over her head, but still she couldn’t sleep. Malusha’s words kept repeating in her mind, a dull, distant chant:
“Your young Lord Gavril is no longer human, Kiukiu. Nagarian bad blood will out, sooner or later. He has become truly Drakhaon.”
She had tried to reason with her grandmother, had tried to explain that Gavril was different from the other Drakhaons, but Malusha was resolutely deaf to her pleading. She had even, in a moment of vexation, rapped out, “If your Lord Gavril is such a hero, then go back to him, young lady! See if he is as kind to you now that the Nagarian blood has caught fire in his veins. See if he can resist the urge to put you to other uses.”
“What other uses, Grandma?” Kiukiu had asked.
“Heavens, child, you grew up in Kastel Drakhaon and you ask me to tell you?” Firelight flickered on Malusha’s lined face. “Have you never heard of Drakhaon’s Brides?”
“Sosia said it was all nonsense to frighten wicked children,” Kiukiu said defensively.
“The Drakhaons cannot keep their human appearance for long without young, fresh blood. You know the old dragon tales. The maiden sacrifices, the children found dead in the forest—”
“But Lord Volkh found a cure,” Kiukiu insisted. “He brought a man from Muscobar, a scientist—”
“A what?” Malusha screwed up her eyes in a frown of incomprehension.
“A learned doctor. And he made up some kind of elixir which cured Lord Volkh. Only it reduced his powers as well . . .”
“That’s as may be,” Malusha sniffed, “but you saw what I saw, plain as plain. Drakhaon’s Fire. Your Lord Gavril doesn’t seem much interested in using that elixir.”
Kiukiu opened her mouth to argue, and then shut it again. What was the use? Malusha hated the Clan Nagarian and would hate them to her dying day.
“And you should hate them too,” Malusha said. Kiukiu jumped. How had she read her thoughts? “They took your father and mother from you.”
“My father.” Kiukiu was grateful to change the subject. “You said you would teach me how to seek out my father.”
“Pfft!” Malusha made a little noise of contempt. “You are not going to meet your father until I’ve made a proper Guslyar of you. Besides, you haven’t the skills yet. You must practice, practice, practice. Why are we wasting time talking, child? Get back to your exercises.”
A blizzard howled about the little cottage, fierce gus
ts of wind rattling the shutters and doors.
Kiukiu winced as she plucked at the cruel wire strings of the gusly. Little drops of red shimmered on the strings; her fingertips had begun to bleed again. She blinked back tears of pain and frustration. It was so hard. Learning to find the right notes was difficult enough, but the mental challenge combined with the constant bleeding of her raw fingers made it almost impossible to pluck the strings.
“It’s no use!” she cried, pushing aside the instrument of torment so roughly that the strings let out a mocking little jangle of sound. “I can’t do it. I shall never be able to do it. It hurts too much.”
A sudden violent gust burst the door open, slamming it against the rough stone wall. Startled, she leapt up and ran to force it shut. The wind moaned in the chimney as snow spattered down onto the fire, dampening the flames. And it seemed to her now that she could hear words in the blizzard wind as it stormed across the moors.
“That’s no ordinary storm,” Malusha said, pulling her patchwork quilt closer about her shoulders. “That’s the raging of a spirit-wraith out of control. Can’t you sense it?”
“Lord Volkh?” Kiukiu said in a whisper.
“Who else?” Malusha went over to stoke the failing fire.
“So it’s all my fault,” said Kiukiu miserably. “Can nothing be done to stop it? Even Abbot Yephimy and all his monks failed.”
“Well, of course they failed.” Malusha turned, the flaring firelight emphasizing the scorn in her eyes. “They were not the ones who brought the spirit back, were they?”
Kiukiu began to understand. “You’re saying I must do it?”
“It’s that or seek out and kill his murderer.”
“His murderer?” Now Kiukiu could only think of the overheard conversation in the summerhouse. Even if Jaromir had fought Lord Volkh face-to-face, Lilias was part of the conspiracy. And much as she hated Lilias Arbelian, she had no desire—or stomach—to kill her.
“Blood will lay one ghost, but only create another. That’s not our way.”
“But I don’t know where to start.” Kiukiu held up her swollen, scored fingers to the firelight. “And how can I try when my fingers just won’t heal?”
“Then we must harden your fingertips first.” Malusha took out an earthenware pot of a vile-smelling salve and began to rub it gently into the cuts. “You can do little until they are healed.” Kiukiu bit her lip, trying not to cry out as the salve burned its way into her raw flesh.
“At least this way the only blood on my hands is my own,” she said, attempting a wry smile.
Kiukiu lost count of the days she had spent with her grandmother. The endless winter snows blotted out the passing of time; the short daylight hours seemed to flicker swiftly past.
Her raw fingertips began to heal. Her nails grew, and Malusha made her paint them every night with a foul-smelling unguent to strengthen and harden them. And as the pain of playing the sharp strings grew less, Kiukiu’s skills increased. Now she could remember the whole sequence of note patterns Malusha had patiently taught her.
She still fumbled some of the individual notes—but as Malusha had also taught her to relate each of the seven fundamental pitches to the vibrant colors of the rainbow, she would murmur as she played. “Blue . . . yellow . . . blue . . . red . . .” And after a while, the colors would vibrate in her mind as vividly as the sounds, creating starbursts of intense rose crimson, dazzling sun yellow, or piercing azure blue. Outside the winter landscape was a dull shimmer of white, but in Kiukiu’s sound world, the colors were as bright and clear as summer.
One bitter cold morning, Malusha opened the old lacquer chest and took out a rolled scroll of vellum, soft and creased with age. She spread it out on the floor and Kiukiu saw that it was dark with writing in a strange and antique script. Illuminated letters, jeweled with tiny birds and flowers, were dotted here and there amid the slanting penstrokes.
“Now it is time for you to learn the names and lineage of the House of Arkhel. Off you go, here at the top.”
Kiukiu stared unhappily down as her grandmother stabbed one gnarled finger at the unfamiliar letters. Malusha had never thought to ask her if she had learned to read.
“What’s the matter, child?” Malusha said sharply. “Can’t read?”
“Not well,” Kiukiu said in a shamed whisper. “Sosia started to learn me my letters, but she was always so busy . . .”
Malusha let out a little sigh of exasperation.
“Then we shall have to do it all by rote. At least you should know Lord Stavyor first and his poor, dead children. Such beautiful daughters, such brave sons . . .” She began to recite in a low, singsong voice a list of names, making Kiukiu repeat them back to her.
“Dead, all dead,” Malusha whispered under her breath. “Even my little Jaromir, whom I sang to sleep in his cradle when his mother was too sick to nurse him . . .”
“Jaromir Arkhel?” Kiukiu stared at her grandmother. “But he isn’t dead.”
“Child, don’t be foolish. They were all killed.”
“It’s true,” Kiukiu said staunchly. “I’ve heard him speaking. I almost caught sight of him.”
“It must be some pretender, some impostor—”
“He mentioned a monastery. Saint Sergius. Said the monks sheltered him.”
“Why do you only tell me this here, now?” hissed Malusha.
Kiukiu fell silent. She had her reasons.
“Surely,” she said hesitantly, “you would have seen him with his father in the Ways Beyond, if he were dead?”
“Child, child, he was only a boy, no more than nine years old. His father’s spirit is bound to reside with the other ancestor warriors in the Hall of Arkhel. There are no children in that place. D’you understand me, Kiukiu? Lord Stavyor believes all his family died that night of fire and devastation.”
Kiukiu’s dreams began to be woven through with little threads of glittering sounds, evanescent wisps of melody that melted away as soon as she awoke. When she told Malusha about them, her grandmother nodded her head for a while, eventually contenting herself with saying, “Good, good, good.”
“Why can’t I remember them?” Kiukiu said, frustrated.
“Oh, you will one day, child, you will. These are dream-songs. They emanate from the Ways Beyond.”
“From the dead?”
“Is that so very difficult to accept?” Malusha’s eyes had become dark and deep as a forest pool. “Soon we will go across together.”
“To find my father?” Kiukiu cried excitedly.
“Not yet, not yet. It is still too soon.”
“Why can’t we go find him?”
“Because—” Malusha let out a grunt of irritation. “Because he doesn’t know you exist, child. You were born after his death, remember?”
“But surely my mother—”
Malusha laid a hand on Kiukiu’s arm. “He has no knowledge of your mother.”
“What do you mean?” Kiukiu stared at her. “My mother is dead, I’d assumed she—I mean, they—” She broke off, too distressed to finish.
“I told you, child, that your father had moved far into the Ways Beyond. He has little memory of earthly matters—and little interest in them. That is how the dead are.”
Kiukiu suddenly burst into tears. “I’d thought—at least if they can’t be with me—they’re together. And now you say—all these years—they’ve been apart—”
“There, there, child, don’t upset yourself so.”
“But where is my mother? Suppose she’s in that terrible place of dust and ashes? Suppose she’s lost, looking for my father, wandering year after year over that endless scorching plain?”
“Time is different in the Ways Beyond. Time has no meaning. You will see for yourself. . . .”
Kiukiu blew her nose. “I’ve got to find her. I’ve got to go find my mother.”
“Don’t even consider it!” Malusha said sharply. “I warned you, Kiukiu, didn’t I? You have the gift to leave your body
and wander the Ways Beyond, but you must use it sparingly. If you stay too long, your lifeforce will slowly seep away until you become a Lost Soul, eternally trapped between life and death, a sad, pathetic remnant. And every visit you make will age you in this world. It is dangerous.” And then she sighed. “I will take you there, child. If you will only promise me not to attempt the journey on your own yet. Not till you have acquired all the skills—and practiced them.”
“So,” Kiukiu said, sniffing loudly, “where do I start? How do I start?”
“There is a tea that relaxes the body and lets the mind roam free.” Malusha went over to the fire and started to spoon dried leaves into a pot, pouring on hot water. A fragrant aromatic steam, slightly bitter, filled the room. Kiukiu’s nose twitched.
Malusha brought over two little cups. The hot liquid inside was green and smelled—Kiukiu sniffed, wrinkling her nose—yes, it smelled of forest rain and bark, earthy and bitter.
“We are merely going to initiate you into the House of Arkhel, no more than that, a brief visit,” Malusha said, sitting down next to Kiukiu, cross-legged. “First you place the gusly on your lap, so.”
Kiukiu copied her grandmother.
“Now, the tea. Drink it down in one gulp. That’s right.”
Kiukiu pulled a face. The bitter tea burned her throat—and then the fumes, green and cleansing, seemed to rise in a gentle cloud.
“Listen to the notes I play and copy them, one at a time. Let the vibrations die before you pluck the next string.”
Kiukiu concentrated hard. The pattern of notes her grandmother was playing tolled with the solemn sonorities of clanging bells. The vibrations set shivers of color in the air, shadow shimmers of sound. Her mind began to vibrate in time with the slow, solemn procession of notes. The color flares rippled and burst, rippled and burst like the dazzle of sun through fast-falling rain.
Now she was floating, moving up through a glittering veil toward a radiance so intensely bright she was blinded. . . .
Her senses deserted her. She was blind, deaf, and dumb, tumbling through utter darkness.