The hall fell silent. Everyone was watching.

A convulsive little flicker of rage twisted Alvborg's face-and then, as quickly, changed to an arrogant grin as he lowered his blade. Wiping the bloodied tip on his sleeve, he presented his saber, hilt first, to Eugene.

Two of the household bodyguard came forward to escort Alvborg from the hall.

Eugene turned to Lindgren. The young man had pressed a handkerchief to the gash in his chin and a bright stain of blood was leaking through.

"And you, Lindgren, what have you to say for yourself?"

"I am as culpable as the lieutenant, highness," Lindgren said, eyes lowered. Beneath the brown of his tanned skin, he had turned milky pale. "I deserve to be punished too."

"This is your first offense, hm?" Behind Lindgren's back, Eugene saw the maitre nod in confirmation.

"Then take this as a warning. If you're ever caught dueling again, you'll be demoted to the ranks. If you want to put your blade skills to better use, Tielen has enemies in plenty to defeat. Now go get that wound cleaned up."

"Thank you, highness." Relief infused the young man's pale face with a healthier color.

A junior officer came hurrying up, smartly clicking his heels together as he saluted and presented Eugene with a folded paper.

"A message from the field marshal for your highness."

Eugene took the letter, handed his saber to his valet, and retired to the side of the hall where Anckstrom was presiding over a lively bout.

Snowed in by blizzards of unusual ferocity. Unable to comply with your orders until the weather breaks. Await further instructions.Karonen, Field Marshal.

Frustrated, Eugene crushed the paper in his fist and lobbed it into a nearby brazier.

"Azhkendir," said Anckstrom with a shrug. "What did I tell you? We're wasting valuable resources-and valuable men."

"And if we delay much longer, we will have a full-grown Drakhaon to deal with. We must move now, Anckstrom, or risk losing everything."

"Well, Magus?" Eugene could no longer disguise his impatience. "What's happening on the Saltyk Sea?"

"Patience, patience, highness . . ."

On the table stood a plain silver bowl of clear liquid. Linnaius passed his long, slender fingers over the bowl several times. Eugene blinked-and found he was gazing down onto a rocky shore. This trick of Linnaius' never ceased to astonish him. But instead of the rise and fall of the waves, there was nothing but ice, translucent gray, green, and white crests and sheets of ice. A frozen sea, frozen beneath a cloudmist of falling snow. Just to gaze on its bleakness made him feel cold, achingly cold.

"And inland?" he said.

Linnaius' fingers moved again across the skin of the water. The image shivered and broke into shifting fragments, re-forming into a mist of cloud and snow. The bowl shimmered with drifting wisps of gray. Behind the mists a smudge of darkness hovered, ominous as a thundercloud. Intermittent glitters of lightning, white-blue, lit the darkness.

And then-unmistakably-lightning eyes flickered suddenly from the turbulent snowclouds, chill and foreboding as winter.

"What is is that?" Eugene whispered. that?" Eugene whispered.

The Magus snatched his fingers away as if they had been singed.

"A powerful spirit-wraith is abroad, freezing the seas and wreathing the country with impenetrable snowstorms."

"A spirit-wraith?" Eugene could not hide the skepticism in his voice. "Surely this is nothing but a freak winter storm."

"The Azhkendi shamans use the crudest and most dangerous methods-they summon the spirits of the dead from the Ways Beyond to do their bidding. And the spirits of the dead are not always as biddable as they would wish."

"Spirit-wraith or not, I have sent word to the troops to stand ready. There's never been a better time to take Muscobar. But I cannot invade with the navy alone. I need Azhkendir! And I need Jaromir in Azhgorod, at the head of the council. Magus-" Eugene hesitated. Kaspar Linnaius was the only man in all Tielen who intimidated him. In his presence he felt like a stuttering schoolboy; even in conversation he could sense the elderly scholar's immense powers. "Can you subdue this spirit-wraith?"

"No, highness," replied Linnaius, giving him the mildest of smiles. "The magical sciences I practice are refined, sophisticated. I hesitate to include the dark forces abroad in Azhkendir in the same category."

"Then we must devise an alternative strategy." Eugene fought back the growing sense of frustration. He was not used to feeling so powerless.

"Are you truly determined to pursue this course of action, highness?" asked Linnaius, suddenly fixing him with his clear, unsettling stare. "Will nothing dissuade you?"

"Jaromir needs my help. If we strike now, we can draw the young serpent's fangs."

"But until the blizzards and fogs clear, the risks to you and your troops are too great to entertain."

"Then we must send in a different kind of army," Eugene said. "The kind of advance guard that can cross a frozen sea and will pay little heed to the weather."

"Ah," said Linnaius. "My Marauders."

A fierce snarling could be heard as they descended the rough steps toward the inner stable yard. The whole area had been converted into a cage with double iron bars to contain the Marauders. Eugene and Linnaius halted and gazed down; in the yard below, ragged-clothed men prowled around. A powerful stench rose from the cage: urine, rotting meat, and an unmistakably feral odor.

"But this is a disaster!" Eugene said. "This will never work! Look at them-"

"If anything the experiment has worked a little too well, highness," Linnaius said calmly.

"How so?"

"Don't be deceived by their human appearance. They have the souls of wolves. They have all but forgotten they were men. To effect the transformation you desired, it was necessary to take their human cruelty and cunning and meld it with the wolves' voracious hunger. Now they do not just kill for food, they kill for sport."

"They seem to have lost the power of speech, highness," said the Guardian, Eugene's captain of the hunt. "We've tried to make contact with them, but every time our attempts send them into a kind of frenzy. They only understand food-and blows."

And as if to prove the captain's point, one of the men, his yellow beard and hair shaggy and unkempt, hurled himself at the bars, grabbing the iron and shaking it frenetically, as if he could break through. His eyes gleamed in his unwashed face with an unnatural sulfurous light.

Disappointment and frustration overwhelmed Eugene again. The experiment was a failure.

"If they have no speech, how can they be expected to obey orders? Loose this ragged crew on the Azhkendi borders and we'll never see them again."

"They will listen to me." The Magus had focused all his attention on the occupants of the cage. "Within that unprepossessing human frame the wolf-shadow lies dormant." Slowly he raised his hands, like a diviner seeking water. "Watch what happens when I wake it."

Suddenly the nearest prisoner was seized with a convulsive spasm and thrown to the ground, his limbs and torso writhing so violently that a cloud of dust spun around him.

A long, chilling howl echoed around the yard, and Eugene felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickle at the sound.

Feral eyes gleamed as the dust settled. No longer an unwashed, unkempt man, a steppe wolf came loping forward, shaking the dirt from his shaggy coat. The other men growled, baring their teeth.

"Ugly brute," Eugene whispered, staring in fascination into the sulfur-bright eyes.

"This is our pack leader. His name is Loukas."

Suddenly the wolf gathered himself and sprang at the bars, snarling and snapping his yellowing teeth. Eugene stepped back.

"Loukas," the mage said softly, "show his highness some respect."

Loukas lowered his shaggy head. Slowly, eyes still gleaming, he backed away, tail between his legs.

Linnaius turned to Eugene.

"But can you be sure this wild beast will take the pack where we want it to go?"

"Loose them on the ice and they will find their way to their prey. Especially if they are hungry enough," Linnaius said. "They are wolves. They are used to harsh conditions. Though with respect, highness, this is not your usual style, to send assassins in the dark."

"And with respect, Magus, this young Drakhaon is not my usual adversary. We must fight sorcery with sorcery."

A polite cough alerted Eugene to the arrival of his chief private secretary, Gustave.

"An incoming message, highness. From Mirom."

"At least the Muscobar lines of communication are still functioning," Eugene said with a grimace.

He hurried to Gustave's office and sat down at his desk, drawing the Vox Aethyria in front of him. Gustave hovered behind, ready to assist.

Linnaius' invention, the Vox Aethyria, had proved invaluable in all of Eugene's recent campaigns. With these ingenious devices Eugene had been able to keep in communication with his commanders-even over vast distances. The principle, Linnaius had explained, was quite simple: it was merely a question of splitting crystals into two identical component parts so that they resonated to the same aethyric frequency. Once the crystals were in tune with each other, they worked by sending a series of sympathetic harmonic vibrations through the aethyr. The Artificier's skill lay in fashioning the crystal glasses so that they would transmit and receive these infinitesimally small vibrations. Though Eugene was certain that, as with all Linnaius' "simple" devices, the Magus had added some subtle touch of alchymy all his own.

Now he waited tensely for his informant to reply, tapping out a tattoo on the desktop.

With a rough crackle, a faint voice began to issue from the Vox Aethyria.

"I am delighted to inform your royal highness that Elysia Andar, once wife to Volkh Nagarian and mother of the new Drakhaon, Lord Gavril Nagarian, has arrived in Mirom."

Eugene frowned, turning the crystal rose around to speak. "To what purpose, precisely?"

"It seems she has come to ask for help in extracting her son from the clutches of Bogatyr Kostya. And she has specifically requested that I introduce her to Doctor Kazimir."

Eugene leaned closer to the device. "Kazimir? The inventor of the antidote?"

"I will keep you informed on the progress of these meetings. Oh-and I thought your highness would be interested to learn that she has entrusted to our care a certain antique jewel given her by her late husband."

"An antique jewel?" Eugene could not disguise a sudden surge of excitement. "Can you be certain-"

"Without a doubt, highness, it is the finest ruby I have ever seen-save one in the Grand Duke's treasury. We have here another of Artamon's Tears."

Eugene went across the courtyard to the workshop where the most skilled craftsmen of the Goldsmith's Guild had been busy at work for months on a unique commission.

Alongside tools and magnifying glasses on the workbenches lay ancient woodcuts, engravings, and jewel-bright miniatures. All depicted the last emperor of Rossiya, Artamon the Great, wearing the imperial crown.

As Eugene entered, Paer Paersson, his master goldsmith, rose and bowed, presenting him with a golden diadem.

"Look, your highness. We have fixed the Tear of Khitari in its setting."

Eugene took the crown and rotated it slowly, silently admiring the intricacy of the craftsmanship. Delicate strands of gold had been fashioned into the forms of heraldic creatures, claws clutching three great bloodred rubies: three of the legendary Tears of Artamon, from three of the five countries that made up ancient Rossiya. When Artamon died and the empire fell, his warring sons had divided the jewels of the imperial crown between them. And the legend had arisen that no man could unite the broken empire until the emperor's crown was made whole again and the five Tears of Artamon were united in one diadem.

Eugene, the rationalist, held no belief in legends, but he recognized the symbolic power that lay in the reforging of the ancient crown.

A swan held the Tielen ruby, a merman the gem from Smarna, and a phoenix the Khitari stone, latest of his acquisitions.

The Smarnan ruby had been acquired by his father Karl when the deposed Prince Giorgo of Smarna had fled a violent revolution, only to die in exile in Tielen, a broken man, rejected by his countrymen in favor of a republic.

"Fine work, Paer," Eugene murmured, turning the crown around in his hands again to the last two empty settings. Muscobar and Azhkendir. Azhkendir and Muscobar . . .

"Would you like to try the crown on, highness?" Paer asked, squinting at him through his jeweler's loupe, still screwed into one eye socket.

"No. I'll not tempt the anger of the gods," Eugene said, smiling as he handed him back the heavy crown. "Let's wait till we have the last two jewels. And I anticipate that won't be too long now."

Artamon's Tears. Called, so the legend said, for the tears of blood shed by the emperor at the heartless behavior of his ungrateful sons.

"Thank the gods I only have a daughter."

CHAPTER 13.

"Snowcloud . . . Snowcloud . . ."

Kiukiu heard the scratch of sharp claws on wood. A white shadow appeared in the twilight, moving jerkily toward her across the rotting boards of the summerhouse.

"Food, Snowcloud." Kiukiu put down the scraps of meat, grain, and bacon rind she had scavenged from the kitchen-and hastily withdrew her hand as the hooked beak descended, pecking greedily.

She watched, crouched down, trying to assess if the damaged leg was healing. It might be a trick of the fading light, but Snowcloud seemed to be growing larger. The rich food was obviously doing him good. But the more food he ate, the more he would need to sustain his size. . . .

"Somebody might notice what I was at," she told him, "and then what would happen to us both?"

Telltale stains of owl droppings marked the boards and little tufts of white down had drifted into the dusty corners.

The owl finished his meal and shook his beak. Tentatively she put out one hand and stroked the soft feathers. For the first time he did not jerk away or try to peck her.