I woke to panic.

Not mine; my horse's. Its hooves stamped dully on the packed snow as it let out a low whicker of alarm. I was on my feet before I realized I was awake, fumbling for my sword-hilt with one mittened hand. The fire was burning low, casting a very small circle of light. Somewhere out there in the darkness, somewhat large was moving. Somewhat large enough to make the snow creak and groan. There was a rank, musky smell.

"No," I said. "Oh, no."

A bear roared.

My horse trumpeted with sheer equine terror and bolted, breaking its tether. I shouted a curse and dropped my sword, scrambling for the hunting bow. Flung off my mittens and nocked an arrow, tracking the darkness. A vast shadow moved; fast, faster than I remembered. I shot at it and missed. And then it was moving, fleeing. It could have killed me, but it didn't. It fled. Branches snapped in its wake. I ran blindly after it, floundering in the snow and crashing through branches, trying to fit another arrow to the string.

Gone.

I stopped, panting. I'd lost him. I'd also lost my hat, and probably my horse. I wasn't sure I hadn't lost myself. I closed my eyes and willed myself to breathe slowly.

There were stars overhead, but no moon. In the woods, there wasn't enough light by which to see. Still, a fleeing bear leaves a considerable path. I turned around and began the long, tedious process of following it backward by feel.

I don't think I'd chased the bear for more than a few moments, but it seemed like hours before I saw the flickering light of my campfire. With no hat or mittens, I was truly freezing. My horse was gone. I was lucky the fire hadn't gone out. I donned my abandoned mittens, then built up the fire with stiff, trembling hands and huddled beside it. My lungs ached from the exertion. My scars ached from the cold, from the memory the sight of him evoked.

"Damn you, Berlik," I said aloud. "Why now?"

It was him. I didn't harbor any doubts. In the deep winter of Vralia, any ordinary bear would have been slumbering until spring. I don't know why I'd been so damnably sure his magic was broken. He'd broken the oath he'd sworn on the troth that bound him to his diadh-anam. It didn't seem fair.

Then again, life seldom did. At least not mine.

I dozed a bit, waking periodically to stoke the campfire. Mostly I waited for sunrise. I kept the hunting bow across my lap, an arrow at the ready, because it would have been foolish not to. I didn't really think he'd be back, though. If Berlik had wanted me dead, he would have killed me while I slept. I didn't know what the hell he wanted.

In the morning, I went to find out.

He'd left a trail a blind man could follow. So had my horse, but I reckoned he was halfway to Miroslas by now. I hoped so. And if I followed him, I would lose Berlik's trail. I ate a breakfast of pottage. Scoured my kettle with snow, melted snow to refill my waterskin. I packed my bags, slung them over my shoulder, and began trudging after Berlik.

On that journey, I counted.

It took seven days. On the third day, I shot a hare. That was the best day. The first day was hard. I'd gotten spoiled, riding. Oh, there had been times when I'd have to go afoot, leading my horse up some tricky escarpment, but it hadn't been this endless, grueling trek. And my ears were cold, so cold I feared they'd freeze. I'd hoped to find my fur hat, but some animal had dragged it away during the night. I'd looked for the arrow I'd shot at Berlik, but I couldn't find that, either. When I made camp that evening, I cut a swath of cloth from one of my blankets and wound it around my head. It was good, because I could use it to muffle my face, too.

The fifth day was the worst.

That was the day it snowed. Not so hard that I couldn't see, but heavily; steadily. Big, white flakes, falling straight downward, drifting through the air. Adding another layer to the soft blanket of whiteness.

Obscuring Berlik's trail.

I managed to follow it throughout the day, but the impressions his massive paws had left were growing more shallow. The edges were soft and blurred. I could no longer make out the sharp gouges of his long claws; the claws that had laid open my flesh. That had slain my unborn son. I thought about the day I had met Berlik. I'd asked him what would happen if I challenged him for the mannekin trinket. Berlik had showed me his claws. You do not wish to do that. He'd tapped the croonie-stone around my neck and bade me accept his oath. Told me that I might be grateful for it one day.

"You were wrong about that," I said aloud.

I hated to make camp that evening, but his trail was growing too faint. There was no way I could follow it in darkness, not even by feel. With my dagger, I made a gash in the bark of a pine tree, indicating its direction. I tossed a few hunks of frozen hare into pot with a handful of grain. There hadn't been a lot of meat on the hare, and I was nearly out of grain. The arrow with which I'd shot the hare had gone clean through it and embedded itself in a tree trunk. When I'd tried to wrestle it loose, the shaft had snapped.

That left me with a hunting bow and two arrows. I'd watched Urist make arrows on the island where we were shipwrecked, carving points and hardening them in the fire. But there had been no end of birdlife there. We'd gathered feathers on the beach for fletching, then plucked better ones from the birds we shot. I didn't have that luxury here.

I tossed my lone dagger end over end, catching the hilt. Joscelin had taught me to throw, of course, and I was a passing fair shot at twenty paces. Mayhap good enough to bring down a hare. Mayhap not.

By my best guess, I wasn't more than three or four days' ride from Miroslas. I'd ridden for a long, long time, but I'd been crisscrossing the land, looking for Berlik. Still, on foot, it was another matter. It might take me weeks. And I might well miss it on my first pass. If I did, it could take days to find it or reach the village beyond.

I should have shot the deer.

Fat snowflakes fell, sizzling where they landed on the embers of my campfire. I sheathed my dagger and stirred the embers with a long stick, then laid a few sturdy branches on the fire. I watched the flames rise, licking at the dry wood. Snow fell, catching in my hair, gathering on my shoulders. Melting on my cheeks like tears. I watched the fire. Showers of sparks, snapping and rising. Golden flames. I thought about Sidonie standing in a shaft of sunlight, her golden hair backlit. Tangled on a pillow. Her eyes, black as a Tatar's, filled with tears.

Just come home.

"I'll try," I murmured. "Swear to Elua, I'll try, Sun Princess."

The silent snow continued falling.

I slept fitfully and woke to a world of pristine whiteness. Somewhere in the night, the snow had ceased. Tall pines stood shrouded in white, the dawn breaking over them. The world seemed hushed and sacred. I could understand why a god would seek to built a kingdom here.

There was no sign of Berlik's trail.

It was gone, gone so thoroughly it might never have existed. I shrugged off my snow-covered blankets. I built the fire back up from its embers and boiled the last of my grain, eating it methodically with my fingers. Melted snow and refilled my waterskin. After a few errors, I found the tree I'd marked and brushed off the snow covering my mark. It pointed deeper into the forest, all of which was covered in a dense blanket of snow.

Trees and snow, nothing else.

I sighed, shouldered my pack, and began trudging.

Chapter Fifty-Eight.

There were no tracks, but there was bear sign.As a boy in the mountains of Siovale, I'd been taught to look for it. Patches on trees where the bark had been rubbed smooth. Clumps of coarse hair. I'd never seen any near the sanctuary, but I'd been taught to look.

I looked.

It was hard. Snow covered everything. But here and there, I found it. From what I could determine, Berlik had been travelling in a straight line. I followed in the direction I'd marked, looking for broken branches. Looking for tufts of hair poking through their coating of snow.

Whenever I found one, I made a fresh mark. When I didn't, I backtracked along my own trail to the last mark, adjusted my angle, and tried anew.

I didn't find him on the sixth day. I did find a fox, which I tried to kill by throwing my dagger at it. It dodged effortlessly the moment my arm came forward. By the time I retrieved my dagger, it was gone. My empty stomach growled. When I saw one of the other animals digging beneath a tree, one of the ones I couldn't put a name to, I dropped my mittens and nocked an arrow. The creature scurried, a dark, anxious blur moving over the snow. I swung the bow wildly in an effort to track it, shot, and missed.

I lost that arrow, too.

It wasn't that I was careless or unobservant. There was just so much forest, so much snow. It could swallow up a castle without noticing. A man was nothing; an arrow, less. I tramped around searching for the better part of an hour before giving up. The quest I had abandoned compelled me.

On the evening of the sixth day, I made camp and melted snow for my dinner. I drank as much as I could hold, and more. Water was good, water was life. I'd learned that in the desert when I travelled to Meroe with Phedre and Joscelin.

I could live for days on water.

I could die on it, too.

It was snowing when I awoke on the seventh day. Not hard; almost idly, as though the snow were an afterthought. I felt a little weak, but clearheaded. I drank deep of snowmelt, then broke camp and struck out once more. It was another day like the others, filled with searching and backtracking.

Except that I found him.

If Miroslas had seemed like a mirage, I have no words to describe my reaction upon finding Berlik's cabin. It was small, very small. It stood in a tiny glade I could easily have missed. When I found it, I stood for a time and simply stared, my mouth agape. There were gaps between the rough-hewn logs of which it was composed. He must have built it himself.

I set down my pack and took up the hunting bow. Elua, it seemed like a long time since I'd borrowed it from the Shahrizai lodge. I nocked my last arrow and trudged across the glade. Around the cabin, the snow was packed hard, gouged by bear-claws and boot-heels alike.

I kicked the door open.

It wasn't much of a door, not really. It hung on leather hinges, sagging a little. Inside, the cabin was empty. No Berlik. Only strips of salted meat, hanging from the rafter poles to cure. There was a crude stone hearth in the center of the room, but the hearth was cold. A pallet of pine-boughs in the corner, covered in blankets and furs. On one wall, there was a cross; a pair of branches tied together with dried sinew. I surveyed it all, breathing hard.

Empty.

My heart ached. I was so tired.

There had been a tree outside. An oak tree, a barren tree. Dry branches reaching toward a stark, snowy sky. It nudged at my memory. There had been a tree in Dorelei's vision. I went outside. Trudged toward the tree, arrow nocked.

I would have seen him before if I'd looked more closely, but I'd been fixed on the cabin. He was sitting beneath the tree, still and motionless, watching me. A man, not a bear. There was an axe not far away from him, embedded in a stump, but his hands were empty, resting quietly atop his knees. As I approached, he stirred.

I aimed at his heart. "Don't move."

He did, though, rising to his feet. "I will not harm you."

My fingers trembled on the bowstring. "I've heard that before."

"This time it is true," he said in his deep voice. "I ask only that you kill me like a man, not a beast. Put down the bow."

"Damn you!" I shouted at him. "Why? Why here, why now? If you wanted to die, I'd have been glad to oblige you in Alba! Why?"

"So many questions." Berlik tilted his head and gazed at the sky. "It's beautiful here, don't you think? Wilder than Alba." He looked back at me. "When first I fled," he mused, "there was no thought behind it, only horror at what I had done. It seemed to me that perhaps if I fled far enough, I could carry it away from my people."

"And did you?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Not all of it. Only my death, freely offered, can make atonement. And only at your hands, for it was to you I swore the oath I broke." He was silent for a moment. "I would not have believed redemption was possible were it not for the Yeshuites. I broke an oath I swore on my diadh-anam. When I met them, I was a broken man."

"And Yeshua healed you?" I asked coldly.

"Yes." Berlik smiled. "He made me believe that the gods themselves are capable of forgiveness. That mayhap the Brown Bear of the Maghuin Dhonn herself would forgive me for breaking my oath to save our people."

My throat tightened. "Then why seek death?"

"Because it is the price," he said simply. "I am not a child of Yeshua ben Yosef. His sacrifice cannot pay the price for me."

My arms were beginning to shake with the effort of holding the bow drawn. Berlik watched me without comment. I sighed and lowered the bow, although I kept the arrow nocked. "And yet you hung Yeshua's cross on your wall."

"Yes." Berlik nodded. "To remind me." He was silent for a moment. "I do not know if it is presumptuous to call a god a friend, but if there is any god who would not mind, it is Yeshua ben Yosef. When Ethan first spoke of him, I thought it was a terrible thing to worship a god who let himself fall so low, who let himself be mocked and struck and hung to die like a criminal. But I came to see it. I came to see that he is the one god who understands what it is to fall low. That when every other face is turned away from you, he is the friend who is there, not only for the innocent, but for the guilty, too. For the thieves and murderers and oath-breakers alike, Yeshua is there."

I wanted to weep. "It doesn't change anything."

"It changed my heart," Berlik said. "And that is not a small thing." There was another heavy pause. "I prayed," he said. "I left a trail for you to follow, and I prayed that if you found me, the diadh-anam would accept my sacrifice as atonement, and not punish all of her people for my failure. When my magic returned to me, here in the woods, I knew it was so."

"Did you have to make it so hard?" I asked wearily.

"Would you have come here with a humble heart if I had not?" he asked.

"Probably not," I said. "Would it have mattered?"

"It does to me," Berlik said gravely. "It is my death. And I would have you understand what it is you are here to do. You could not do that with a heart filled with nothing but anguish and hatred."

I gave a short, bitter laugh. "So now I am here to do your bidding."

"We were never enemies, Imriel de la Courcel," he said. "If I had the chance to live my life a second time, I would do many things differently. I would not be so proud in seeking to force the future into a shape of my liking. I would place greater trust in the providence of our ancient diadh-anam, and less in my own gifts. I would have forced Morwen to give back the mannekin." He smiled sadly. "You told her it was not wise to cross D'Angelines in matters of love, that your Elua disliked it. I did not think his will could prevail on Alban soil. There were so many threads, so many futures. We were frightened. She thought that if we could control you, if we could bind you with your own desire, we could alter our fate."

I remembered the sorrow in his face. "You knew she was wrong."

"I feared it," he said softly. "I was not sure. Enough to offer my oath and pray you took it in friendship and trust. Not enough to gainsay her. There was one path, one future ...the child of both worlds, your child and hers, that could have brought a time of glory to Alba. That path, you refused. And in the end, Morwen was not wholly wrong. She, too, paid a terrible price."

It was growing late in the day. The light was dimming, the trees casting long shadows. I was tired and cold and hungry. " 'Tis all well and good to admit to mistakes and say there might have been a better way," I said. "Elua knows, I've made enough mistakes of my own. But you'd do it again if you had to, wouldn't you? Kill Dorelei and our son?

"For my people?" Berlik asked. "Yes. We are few. The Maghuin Dhonn will continue to diminish, to mingle and blend with the other folk of Alba. In time, we may become a memory. But we will not be stamped from the face of the earth, all our sacred places destroyed, our magic broken and our lore forgotten. And it may be that we have a role yet to play." He gazed at me with his pale, somber eyes. "You would have done the same. I pray you never have to make such a choice."

I was silent.

Berlik sighed. "It grows late. Shall we be done with it?"

I swallowed. "I suppose."

He knelt heavily in the snow. Even kneeling, he was a big man. He bowed his head and murmured a prayer, too low for me to hear, then raised his head and gazed up at me, snow falling on his face, catching in his shaggy black hair. "Let me die like a man. Please."

I put down the hunting bow and drew my sword.

"Thank you." Berlik smiled, genuine and startling. Somehow he looked humble despite it. There were tears in his pale eyes. He searched my face. "I'm so sorry. I promise you, it was swift. She felt no pain, only a moment's fear."

I nodded. "I'll try to do the same."

"My avenging angel," he said. "Thank you."

I nodded again, unable to speak. Berlik bowed his head. His coarse locks parted, revealing the nape of his neck. My blood beat hard in my veins and hammered in my ears like the sound of bronze wings clashing. I raised my sword high overhead in a two-handed grip. I was Kushiel's scion, here to administer his justice. For the sake of Dorelei, her life cut short too soon. For the sake of our unborn child. For the sake of the love I hoped to deserve.

For the sake of us all.

I was here to accept Berlik's sacrifice and to atone for my own sins. We had both transgressed against the wills of our gods. This was our moment of redemption. The gods had brought us here for a purpose.

And I understood for the first time what it meant that the One God's punisher had loved his charges too well.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

I brought the sword down hard, hard enough to shear through bone. Berlik's neck gaped and his head lolled. His body slumped. Crimson blood spurted, vivid against the white snow. I raised the sword again and struck a second blow, severing his head from his body. It rolled free. I could see his face. His eyes, framed by the woad claw-marks, were closed.