by Sarah Ash
He had no need to look for landmarks to navigate by; the pulsing of the scar on his wrist grew stronger, as did the confusion of voices in his mind as he neared Kastel Drakhaon.
There lay the vast, wild forest of Kerjhenezh, stretching on toward the distant mountains. And there was the Kalika Tower, rising up into the pale sky where the evening star glittered, even though the sun had still not set.
At the sight of Kastel Drakhaon, Gavril felt a sudden rush of emotion. He had escaped the Iron Tower, but he was not unscathed. He was not the same man who had left in a prison carriage with barred windows, his mind filled with fear and despair. He was even less the naÏve young painter who had come to Kastel Drakhaon with Kostya on a cold autumn evening so many months ago. He had been abused and experimented on by Eugene’s torturers in Arnskammar. And he had killed for prey.
Fluttering from every remaining tower in the evening breeze were the flags of Eugene’s army, the standards of New Rossiya. His first instinct was to rip them all down. And then he sensed cries again, much fainter than before. They were dying.
He had a duty to save his druzhina.
But where were they? Circling high above the kastel, he noticed now the extensive excavations on the escarpment—the pulleys, the carts, all the trappings of some kind of mineworks. And from the Tielens’ frantic activity below—the digging and shouting—he guessed that this was the heart of the problem.
His druzhina must be trapped underground.
Nils Lindgren threw down his shovel and wiped his damp forehead on his sleeve.
“It’s no use,” he said. “We’ll never reach them. Too much earth has come down.”
All around him, his men leaned on their spades and stared at him, their faces smeared with earth and sweat, their eyes dull with exhaustion.
“We can’t just leave them to suffocate to death,” said one of his men.
“For all we know, they’re dead already,” said another.
“I can assure you that some are still alive,” said a voice from outside the mine entrance.
Lindgren looked up.
A man stood there in the twilight, a man unlike any other he had ever seen. A mane of untamed black hair hung about his shoulders and his eyes gleamed in the torchlight, unnaturally blue and bright. He looked like some wild spirit from the forest.
“Who are you?” Lindgren demanded. “And what’s your interest in this matter?”
“I have come to help you,” said the stranger. “You’re wasting your time digging here.”
“And do you have a better suggestion?” jeered one of the Tielens.
The stranger turned, beckoning. “Come with me, Captain Lindgren.”
How did the stranger know his name? Lindgren picked up his shovel and set out after him. The Tielens and Lord Stoyan’s men followed, bringing torches.
“Where are you taking us?” Lindgren called, for the stranger was moving fast and purposefully.
“To the summerhouse,” he called back over his shoulder.
Lindgren had noticed the ramshackle summerhouse, covered in a tangle of rose briars, but never paid it much attention. Was this man mad, or was this something to do with the secret passages Ilsi had mentioned? He certainly seemed to know his way about the kastel as she led them into the neglected garden.
Inside the summerhouse, the stranger knelt down on the rotting boards. “There is a trapdoor here that leads down into one of the kastel passages. There’s another at the old watchtower up on the forest road. If these tunnels are still secure, we can use them to go back down beneath the kastel, toward the escarpment.”
“We?” Lindgren echoed warily. This could be a trap, plotted by the druzhina, to lead him and his men into an ambush. Their bodies could lie in the tunnels for weeks and no one would know. . . .
“You’ll need me to show you the way,” said the stranger, his blue eyes glinting in the gloom. He let himself down into the tunnel, gripping hold of the rim of the open trapdoor until he could drop into the dank darkness beneath. “Hurry,” he called, his tone urgent. “They’ve not got much time.”
Lindgren looked at his men, shrugged, and followed the stranger down into the tunnel. The others came after, handing down lanterns, picks, and shovels.
The tunnel was hardly high enough for a man to stand upright, but as they moved farther along, it slowly opened up until they came out into the dilapidated ruins of a great hall. Lindgren could not help noticing that the stranger’s skin gave off a faint glimmer, almost phosphorescent, in the darkness. It must be a trick of the light on his tired eyes.
The stranger moved swiftly ahead of them, counting shadowed doorways that led off the hall. He stopped at the fourth. “This one,” he muttered, more to himself than to Lindgren. “Yes, it must be this one.”
This tunnel stank of mold and the walls were moist; air vents, overgrown with moss and lichen, let in the occasional draft of damp night air.
“Quiet!” The stranger stopped suddenly, holding up his hand for silence. He put one hand to his forehead, as though concentrating on some sound no one else had detected. He looked around at Lindgren.
“They’re in there.” He pointed at the wall. “Open a tunnel here. We may yet get to them in time.”
Had he heard a faint call for help? Or a desperate tapping? But there was something so authoritative in his voice and manner that every man did as he was ordered. Lindgren took a pick and began to swing it at the bricks, sending mortar and chippings flying.
“Can’t you work any faster?” cried the stranger. He began to tear at the earth with his bare hands. “There’s hardly any air left. They’ll suffocate.”
And then he stopped, breathing hard. “Stand back,” he said. His blue eyes blazed warning. Lindgren took a stumbling step or two down the passage. This was no ordinary man; he knew it now for sure. “Stand farther back!”
He saw the stranger raise one hand, fingers extended toward the rock. Little flickers of brilliant blue began to crackle between his fingertips. And then a blinding burst of fire shot the length of his arm and pierced solid earth and rock, splitting them apart. A hole appeared. Faint cries and groans could now be heard, coming from the fetid darkness beyond.
Lindgren stared at the stranger. He knew him now. When they had last met, he had been New Rossiya’s prisoner.
“Drakhaon,” he whispered.
“Come, Lindgren,” said Gavril Nagarian, clambering through the hole he had blasted, “they’re through here.”
A young man lay close to the hole, white-faced and filthy, his fingers bleeding; he had been trying to claw his way out.
Gavril knelt down beside him, checking for a pulse. At his touch, the young man’s eyelids flickered open and Gavril recognized the emaciated face of Semyon beneath the dirt and sweat.
“Lord Drakhaon,” he whispered, “I said . . . you’d come for us.”
Gavril felt his throat tighten. “Hold on, Semyon,” he said, placing his hand on his shoulder. “This one’s alive!” he called. “Get him out, fast!”
But the Tielens were busy with their own casualties and seemed not to have heard him. Gavril slipped his arms beneath Semyon’s thin frame and tried to lift him. Only then did he see the shackles that bound him to the other prisoners.
A terrible anger burned through Gavril’s brain. He knew only too well what it was to be shackled. He could not bear to think his druzhina had been forced to endure this indignity. He looked at the Tielen soldiers through narrowed eyes. The blue fire began to crackle at his fingertips again.
“Lord Gavril,” came another faint voice. Distracted, he looked up and saw Askold, hollow-eyed and barely recognizable beneath several weeks’ growth of matted beard. “Gorian’s here. Out cold. And Barsuk doesn’t look too good.”
Gavril concentrated the energy at his fingertips on the shackles. Metal sizzled and the dim light in the cramped shaft turned a lurid blue as one by one, he burned through the links.
“Here. You take the boy’s head, I’l
l take his legs.” It was Lindgren, offering to help him carry Semyon out into the passageway.
The anger still simmered, but there were too many men to be brought out to give vent to it. As Gavril went back into the shaft for Askold, he sensed a faint but distinct tremor in the escarpment above.
“Captain!”
Lindgren turned around.
“Hear that? Get your men out. Now.”
Gavril pulled Askold’s arm about his shoulder and half-carried him out; Lindgren followed close behind, dragging Gorian by the legs. The Tielens came after as the rumbling grew louder.
“It’s all coming down!”
They dragged or carried the casualties into the passageway as rock and earth thundered down into the shaft behind them.
For a moment as they retreated, Gavril feared that the ancient kastel brickwork would not be strong enough to withstand the force of the earthfall and that they would all be crushed. But the rumbling subsided and the dustclouds slowly settled.
Gavril gave Lindgren a long shrewd look. They were filthy—Tielens and Azhkendi alike—but together they had brought fifteen men out alive from the collapsed shaft.
“They were good builders, our forebears; they built to last,” said Askold, coughing up a mouthful of dust and slapping the brickwork.
Gavril stood in the darkened garden, staring up at the lit windows in the kastel. He wanted to go in. He wanted news. But he was still a fugitive.
Elysia had told him Kiukiu was here at the kastel, but there was no sign of her. Perhaps, weary of waiting on the Tielens, she had gone back to Malusha. There was no way to know without risking discovery, though he sensed Nils Lindgren would not order his arrest tonight, nor begrudge him the shelter of his own kastel.
He went into the kitchen in search of Sosia. He could smell mulled ale: the scent of cloves and ginger reminded him of cold winter evenings in the kastel. Ilsi was busy ladling out ale. When she saw him, she let out a little cry and dropped the ladle in the pan.
“Drakhaon?”
He placed one finger over his lips. “Where’s Sosia?”
“Ilsi? Where’s that mulled ale for the men?” Sosia appeared, carrying an empty tray. Ilsi pointed with the dripping ladle, which she had fished out of the pan.
“My lord.” Sosia stared. “So it’s true what the men are saying.”
“Sosia.” Gavril felt suddenly weary; the spicy smell of the ale was not so pleasing now. “Sosia, where’s Kiukiu?”
Sosia put down her tray. He saw in the lamplight that her face was more lined, more drawn than he remembered; she had aged in the last months.
“We don’t know where she is,” she said. “We had a visitor some weeks back. An old man who came to see the captain on the Emperor’s business. He went up to your father’s study, my lord. He asked to see Kiukiu. An hour or so later, Ivar saw them go off up the lane together. Then they . . . disappeared. Since then, not a word.”
Gavril heard Sosia’s news with growing apprehension. “An old man? Did anyone catch his name?”
“I asked Captain Lindgren. He said he was ‘not at liberty to divulge such information’—you know how punctilious these Tielens can be. But Ilsi thought she heard him address the old man as ‘Magus.’ ”
“Kaspar Linnaius has taken Kiukiu?” Now he remembered the Magus using his dark arts to probe his mind when he was imprisoned in Arnskammar. He felt deathly cold at the thought. What had Linnaius learned? Why had he taken her? And how did he plan to use her?
“Kiukiu,” he whispered, choking on her name. “I didn’t mean to put you in danger. He was just too strong for me. . . .”
“Danger?” echoed Sosia. “What danger do you mean, my lord?”
“I must go to her.” Gavril hurried out of the warm kitchen and into the garden. He had first seen the Magus at Swanholm; that must be where he had taken Kiukiu, to the laboratory Elysia had told him about.
He stopped in the stableyard, his head spinning. Little specks of colored light swarmed across his vision. If only he had not expended so much of his strength on the flight here. That last burst of flame he had used to blast through the blocked tunnel had left him drained.
He pushed himself on toward the garden. He could rest in the summerhouse and then set out for Swanholm.
Halfway toward the summerhouse, his knees began to tremble. He stumbled.
“You are too weak to make it to Tielen.”
Figures moved across a lit window in the kastel. For a moment he stared, wondering if Captain Lindgren had brought his wife and child here from Tielen.
Suddenly he felt feverishly hot. Hands clutched to his belly, he doubled up and dropped to the ground. His skin burned. Not the clean burn of the sun or wind, but a terrible itching as if it had blistered up and was slowly peeling away. His throat was parched again, his mouth and tongue dry as sandpaper.
“No,” he whispered, “I can’t kill again.”
His brain conjured fevered images: he was not possessed by this shadow-creature at all; he was sick, his body corrupted by some virulent disease . . .
And then he caught a faint fragrance wafting from the lit window.
Fresh scent of a child’s translucent flesh, the blood pulsing just below the pale skin, deliciously clean and untainted . . .
“Why not just take what you need where you find it? You are still Drakhaon. Who will dare stop you?”
Dysis crooned a lullaby as she gently placed little Stavyomir back in his cradle. The drowsy baby began to protest, but then, too sleepy to resist, he relaxed into sleep. She stood, one hand rocking the cradle, waiting for the moment when she could steal away and continue with her chores.
A flicker of movement at the window made her glance up.
“Who’s there?”
The heavy brocade drapes had not been drawn quite to. The wind gusted in the chimney and a thin draft whispered about her ankles. It must have been a stray rose branch lashed against the panes by the wind. She went across to pull the curtains closed, to block out the draft. And then she saw the eyes. Drakhaoul eyes. A gleam of gold and electric blue, cruel and bright as lightning.
She froze.
Someone—something—was crouched on the sill, watching her. Waiting.
Suddenly the creature hurled itself at the glass. The window shattered in a shower of shards as it crashed onto the floor.
Dysis screamed and ran toward the cradle.
All the lamps went out. Curtains flapped and fluttered. It seemed as if the creature’s body gave off a faint glimmer, a shiver of phosphorescent blue against the turbulent darkness. Dysis half-saw, half-sensed the intruder rise to his feet.
“Help!” Her voice seemed so feeble. “Help me!”
It was moving toward her. Toward the baby.
She placed herself between him and the cradle.
“You shan’t touch him.” She heard her voice, thin and shrill with terror, defying the creature to come any closer—and despised herself for her weakness.
Somewhere far away it seemed she heard other voices outside, people running, fists pounding at the door.
“Can’t—control—any—longer—” Words came from the creature’s throat: hoarse, strangled words. Talons clawed out toward her. The darkness was scored with bright slashes, red as blood, white as pain.
“If not—him—then—you.”
Caught in its claws, she felt herself drawn helplessly into its dark embrace, felt a breath hot and dry as flame sear her skin, then the graze of burning lips and tongue against her throat. Kissing, licking, sucking . . .
“No,” she said faintly. “No . . .”
Drakhaoul eyes blazed blue in the darkness. Glittering wings enfolded her. She was flying; she was soaring up into the night sky . . .
Blue of thunder-flame, blue of angelfire, blue of dying stars.
The door burst open and Tielen soldiers came tumbling in. Torchlight illuminated the room—and the shadow-creature crouched at her feet, its lips wet with blood. Her blood.
Even as the soldiers threw themselves on it, the shadow-creature tore itself free and hurled itself through the broken window, disappearing into the night.
Gouts of red dripped across Gavril’s sight. All he could see was a woman’s face, white as snow, distorted by pain and fear. A white mask slashed with stains of scarlet.
He looked down at his hands. There was blood on the dark blue curve of the claw-nails. And a strange, metallic sweetness in his mouth. Had he done this terrible thing?
He felt sick with self-loathing. How could he have struck out so viciously again?
He could hear the Tielens blundering through the gardens, searching for the intruder. He turned his back on Kastel Drakhaon and made his way through the darkened forest to the ruined watchtower. There he sat down, hugging his knees, rocking to and fro in misery.
“Make it stop, Khezef,” he cried aloud, his voice more the howl of a forest beast than a man. “Please make it stop!”
CHAPTER 30
“Never trust a wind-mage,” muttered Malusha as she buckled the harness around Harim’s shaggy-coated body, “for they’re as fickle as a spring gale, blowing this way and that.”
Harim patiently allowed himself to be led to the cart. It was a fine spring day, with fresh gusts of wind sending little white clouds dancing across a pure blue sky. The air tasted of green buds and sweet spring rain.
“First he whisks my granddaughter away on the Emperor’s business.” Malusha stopped. “And where is she, my Kiukiu? You miss her too, don’t you, Harim? I know she used to give you apples sneaked from the winter store when I wasn’t looking.” She gave a sigh. She had not worried at first when Kiukiu failed to return, but now as the days stretched to weeks, she began to wonder if some harm might have befallen her. “I should never have let her go with that Kaspar Linnaius.”
And then there had been the dream last night. She had woken in the darkest hour, certain that lightning had shivered across the moorlands. Yet when she had opened the shutter, the night was calm and still, with not even the faintest tremor of distant thunder.