"I failed your father, Lord Gavril. I fell into a trap. I was not at his side to defend him when he needed me. For that I can never forgive myself: that I still live when my lord and master is dead."

"But how? How did he die?"

"He . . ." The old man seemed shamed even to say the words aloud. "He was betrayed. Betrayed-and murdered."

CHAPTER 2.

"Why, Mother? Why didn't you tell me?"

Elysia Andar stood unmoving, her back to Gavril, her hands resting on the windowsill as she gazed out over the blue waters of the bay. She stood so still, she could have been mistaken for one of the pale marble statues that graced her terraced gardens below.

Gavril took a faltering step toward her. Still she did not turn. Tears he could have understood. But this terrible cold, silent anger was new to him. He didn't know how to approach her. He felt as if it were somehow his fault.

White gulls swooped outside the villa's open windows, their mewing cries echoing over the bay. The hot, dusty scent of oleanders drifted in on the golden air. A half-finished canvas stood on an easel where the light was strongest; he caught a whiff of the oily smell of the drying paints. This was the essence of his childhood memories: the hot sun of Smarna, the lapping blue waters, his mother painting, humming to herself as she worked.

And yet now it was as if he looked at it all through a dark lens that made everything warped, distorted.

"Mother?" Gavril tried a more coaxing tone. He came closer, hands hovering behind her shoulders, wanting to touch her, to seek reassurance, yet not daring to. "Please, Mother." To his shame he heard his voice crack; he had not intended to break down in front of her. He had to be strong, if only to keep some semblance of sanity in the chaos that his life had become. "I need to know."

He heard her sigh as softly as the whisper of the waves on the gilded sands of the bay below.

"This is my home. Smarna. Isn't it?"

"My home," she said dully. home," she said dully.

"But I grew up here. This,"-and Gavril stretched out his arm, encompassing the villa and the gardens in his gesture-"this is all I remember. Now they-they tell me I am from Azhkendir and I must leave, leave you, leave my work unfinished, to go to Azhkendir. They tell me I have inherited this title, Drakhaon-and I have no idea what they are talking about!"

Elysia slowly turned around to face him. He saw that she had been silently crying, the tears leaving glistening traces on her peach-soft skin. "I was going to tell you," she said, her voice stifled, "when you come of age next year. Now, it seems, events have overtaken me."

"But is it true?" Gavril pleaded. "Was he my father?"

"Yes," she said. She gazed back at him, her eyes dark, shadow-haunted. He had always cherished the image of her as serene, as sunny-natured as Vermeille Bay below. Kostya Torzianin's sudden, unannounced arrival had destroyed that serenity. The woman who stared at him, distractedly picking at her lace fichu with her nails, was a distortion of the mother he thought he knew. He could not remember ever seeing her look so troubled-or so vulnerable-before.

"Why did you lie to me?" It hurt him to cause her pain. But hadn't he the right to learn the truth about his birth? "Why did you tell me you didn't know where he was?"

"You are still so young, Gavril," she said. "Sometimes a kind of lie is preferable to the truth."

"And the truth is?"

"That I had to get you away from him."

Still only these terse, enigmatic fragments.

"But why? Why? Why?"

She seemed to achieve some kind of control over herself, moving suddenly to the table and the cut-glass decanter of karvi, the orange-and-caraway-perfumed liqueur she usually offered to visitors. He saw her pour herself a glass and start to take small, shuddering sips of the liqueur, as though trying to calm herself. Was it going to be so difficult to tell him the truth? Had his father been such a monster? He began to dread what he had to hear.

Elysia sat down on one of the silk couches, the glass of karvi still in her hand.

"What has that old man told you?"

"Kostya?" Gavril grimaced. He had been forced to listen to the stern old man's repeated insistences that he had given his dying father his oath to lay down his life for his son and bring him back to Azhkendir. Palmyre had come to his rescue: the warriors were now busy eating in the kitchen and drinking their way through a keg of the household's best ale. "All Kostya says is that I must pack my bags and make ready to leave for Azhkendir." He wrinkled his nose. "Do the druzhina druzhina always smell so ripe?" always smell so ripe?"

"They all need a bath. And some fresh clothes. But that's the way of the Drakhaon's druzhina, druzhina, as you will soon discover if you go back with him, Gavril. They are not like us. They choose to live by ancient clan laws and clan loyalties. Have you seen Kostya's tattoos?" She made a little moue of disapproval. "Barbaric. Don't let them put a single clanmark on you." as you will soon discover if you go back with him, Gavril. They are not like us. They choose to live by ancient clan laws and clan loyalties. Have you seen Kostya's tattoos?" She made a little moue of disapproval. "Barbaric. Don't let them put a single clanmark on you."

"But my father," Gavril said, sitting down opposite her.

"Your father." He saw her take another sip of the karvi, turning the glass round and round in her fingers. Then Elysia suddenly leaned toward him, her voice huskily intense.

"I first met your father when he came here to sit for a portrait. And once he had recovered from his astonishment that the painter was a woman, we began to get to know each other. He was very good-looking then. Dashing. Rough and unpolished, by the standards of Smarnan society-but I liked him all the more for that. He had a . . . a kind of raw honesty, an impulsiveness that appealed to me. Beside him, the young men in my circle seemed colorless, dull. But love made me blind, Gavril, blind to any imperfections or flaws. I could not see that your father's impulsiveness hid a terrible, destructive temper-that the fearless spirit I had fallen in love with concealed a capacity for savage cruelty."

Gavril heard what she said but still did not understand. "He-he treated you badly? Did he-did he hurt you?"

He saw her try to conceal a shudder as she drained the last of the liqueur in her glass.

"What I'm trying to tell you is that your father changed. Not all at once, but insidiously, almost as though there were some slow-working poison in his veins. Or maybe he was always that way and he tried to change himself as a ploy to win me . . . and failed. Or maybe there is some malign influence at work in Azhkendir, something in the endless winters and the dark, lonely forests that sends them all mad. I don't know, Gavril, all I know is that it was no place for a little child, for my son to grow up in. . . ."

"So you left left him?" him?"

"I ran away, yes. With you. And he sent Kostya and his men after us and they caught us in the forest and brought us back." Her gaze had shifted from his. She was staring into emptiness . . . and through her eyes, he saw her, a terrified young woman, clutching her baby, surrounded by a ring of tattooed, fur-cloaked warriors.

"What did he do to you?" Gavril said in a whisper.

"At first he kept me locked in my room. Imprisoned. And then . . . then he came to me one night and I saw in his eyes a distant shadow of the man I had once loved. And he said, 'Terrible things are going to happen here, things over which I shall have little-or no-control. I want you to take Gavril and get out. Get out now. Before I change. Before it's too late.'"

"He let you go?"

Elysia nodded; her eyes had clouded with tears.

"'Before I change'? What did he mean?"

"A few days after I crossed the border, a clan war broke out in Azhkendir. I made my way back here to Smarna with you. I had only the clothes I was wearing and a few coins in my purse. But money, generous gifts of money, began to be paid into a trust fund for you. Instructions arrived in an anonymous letter. . . ."

"So no one knew?"

"Everything was done using false names. Your father had made too many enemies; if anyone found out you were his son. . . ."

"Was he . . ." Gavril hesitated to ask the question that had been tormenting him. "Was he really such a monster?"

She looked him in the eyes then. Her look chilled his heart, like a jagged splinter of ice.

"Yes."

The sunlit room seemed to grow darker, as if a cloud had drifted across the sun.

"What did he do?"

"If you really want to know, you must find out for yourself; please don't ask me to tell you. It sickens me just to think of it. Sometimes I wonder . . . if I hadn't run away, maybe I could have prevented it from happening." She looked away, her voice hardly audible above the whisper of the sea. "Or maybe no one could have influenced him. But I still wake in the dark before dawn, Gavril, and I wonder-did I help make him into the tyrant he became?"

Gavril sat staring helplessly at her. Tyrant. Savage. Monster. He wasn't sure he wanted to find out any more about this man who was said to be his father.

"They called me Drakhaon. What does that mean? You said my father's name was Volkh."

He saw his mother shiver as he said the name. Drakhaon. Drakhaon. She leaned across and took his hands in hers, looking closely down at them, almost as if she were examining them. She leaned across and took his hands in hers, looking closely down at them, almost as if she were examining them.

"Mother?" he said, puzzled.

"You don't have to go to Azhkendir if you don't want to, Gavril," she said, closing her slender, paint-stained fingers firmly around his. "You can renounce your inheritance. Let them find another Drakhaon."

"There is no other heir!" Kostya stood in the open doorway, his scarred, seamed face twisted with anger. "Not while my lord's son lives. He is is Drakhaon. By right of birth, by right of blood-" Drakhaon. By right of birth, by right of blood-"

"How long have you been lurking out there, eavesdropping?" Elysia turned on him, her brown eyes narrowed. "This is none of your business, this is between me and my son."

"Lord Gavril," Kostya said, ignoring her, "I made a blood vow to your father. I vowed I would bring his son home to his inheritance."

"Oh," cried Elysia, "and what is more important? The keeping of your vow or my son's future?"

"Has it not occurred to you, Drakhys," Kostya said, unwavering, "that the two are inextricably connected? How can young Lord Gavril-"

"What did you call me?" Elysia said, her voice suddenly hard and tense.

"Drakhys. It is your title. As Lord Volkh's consort-"

"His consort?" Gavril heard his mother begin to laugh. Her laughter had always reminded him of the throaty cooing of the white doves in the tall sea-pines. But this laughter was harsh; mocking and mirthless. It disturbed him. "And what of the others? Even here, in Smarna, I've heard the stories, Kostya."

"There have been other women, yes," Kostya said stiffly, "but no other heir. And you were the only one he cared for, lady. After you left he was inconsolable. . . ."

"I wish I could believe you, Kostya." Elysia turned away from him, going back out onto the balcony. Gavril saw how the dazzling sunlight turned her breeze-tousled hair to strands of antique gold. He felt a sudden stab of anguish for her. "I wish I could believe you."

Gavril could not sleep. Moonlight lit his room, silvering his tumbled sheets. If he slept, last night's nightmare might return to haunt him; he might find himself back in that bloodstained, smoke-choked hall.

He had not mentioned the vision to anyone. There had been fever dreams, childhood nightmares that had woken him screaming for Elysia, but never anything as chillingly vivid as this. The voice, the presence in his room, had all been so real. . . .

Murdered, Kostya had said. His father had been murdered.

I don't believe in ghosts.

And yet, hadn't a scientist at the Mirom University recently asserted that at the moment of death, some trace of energy might be etched on the atmosphere, an energy so intense that it could be measured? He and his fellow students had spent an evening hotly debating the point over several bottles of red wine in their favorite tavern down by the harbor.

He pushed aside the sweaty sheets and went out onto the balcony. The setting moon hung low over the bay, lighting the black waters with an opalescent glimmer. From the villa's steeply terraced gardens below, the drowsy summer scents of frangipani and night jasmine perfumed the warm, dark air. This was his home.

And now he had to leave, to go north to the winter country of Azhkendir. To leave his work incomplete. To leave Astasia's portrait only half-finished . . .

Until now, he had been nothing but a servant in Astasia's eyes. Now he found himself a lord, albeit lord of an impoverished land of snow and shadows. Now he was her equal. But to claim his inheritance, he must go away from her, far away from the summer pleasures of Vermeille . . . and by the time he returned, she would be betrothed to Eugene of Tielen.

A melody began to whisper through his mind: the sweet, wistful strains of "White Nights," to which they had danced last night.

He must go claim her as his. He would stalk past the guards who had manhandled him so brutally and demand an audience with the Grand Duchess Sofia. And if any of the disdainful Mirom aristocrats tried to stop him, he would shrug them aside, saying, "Do you have any idea who I really am?"

He vaulted over the balcony and went running through the dark garden toward the shore.

The moonlit beach was deserted. As Gavril hurried along the glistening sands, the only sound he could hear was the lapping of the gray tide and the slap of his feet over the wet strand.

Lord Gavril, Drakhaon of Azhkendir. How he would relish the looks of confusion on their haughty faces when he revealed his true identity! How he would relish the looks of confusion on their haughty faces when he revealed his true identity!

He glanced suddenly over his shoulder. Was there someone stalking him?

The beach was empty.

He followed the long curve of the bay round toward the headland. High above him, the Villa Orlova glimmered in the moonlight among the dark sea-pines.

"Astasia." He whispered her name to the night.

A sliver of moving shadow caught his eye. Instinct made him whirl around, fists clenched, ready to defend himself.

"You walk fast, Lord Gavril." Kostya Torzianin stood behind him, arms folded.

"Kostya!" Gavril's heart was thudding, fury and fear mingled. "How long have you been following me?"

"Quick reactions, too." Was it his imagination, or was the old man grinning at him? "We'll make a bogatyr of you yet."

"A what what?"

"Bogatyr. Warrior. Like your father."

"I've told you, I'm a painter, not a fighting man." How could he make Kostya understand? "And I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. I don't need a bodyguard."

Kostya shrugged. "As Gavril Andar, maybe. But now you are Gavril Nagarian. Lord Drakhaon. And the Drakhaon has enemies."

Enemies. Gavril felt another shiver of unease. His father had been murdered. Had he made enemies so ruthless they would pursue their vendetta far beyond the borders of Azhkendir? What bloody legacy of violence had he inherited with this bizarre title?

"We have a long journey ahead of us, Lord Gavril. Wind and tide are set fair for Azhkendir."

"We?" Gavril turned in exasperation on the old man. "I'm not coming with you."

"But you are Drakhaon."

"And there are things I must attend to here in Smarna. I will come to Azhkendir in my own good time."

The old warrior drew in his breath as if Gavril had stabbed him.