Kiukiu shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. The notes still reverberated in her mind, each one as dark and somber as an autumn twilight.

"Now," Malusha said, rising to her feet to go to stoke the fire, "you must practice."

"The sleigh is ready." Malusha placed her hand on Kiukiu's shoulder. "I want you to wrap yourself up warmly. I've put in food and a little flask of cloudberry brandy for emergencies-but you will need a clear, keen head if you're to entrap my lord Stavyor. Oh-and your mittens, child. What use is a Guslyar whose fingers are so chilled she cannot tell one string from another?"

In the yard, Harim the pony stood patiently waiting, harnessed to the sleigh. On the rail perched a white owl, regarding Kiukiu with its head inclined a little to one side. The owl was smaller, slighter, more elegantly groomed than Snowcloud.

"You must be Iceflower!" Kiukiu cried.

The owl retracted its head as if affronted at her crude greeting.

"My lady Iceflower," she hastily corrected herself.

"My lady will lead you to Lord Snowcloud. Let her guide you through the snows." Malusha tucked Kiukiu in among the furs and blankets she had piled in the sleigh, placing the gusly beside her. Then she leaned across and, to Kiukiu's surprise, gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Now be off with you all." She whispered in the pony's furry ear and patted him on the rump.

Obediently, Harim set off at a slow trot, the runners of the sleigh grinding over the snowy cobbles of the yard.

At the gateway, Malusha stood, clutching her shawls to her against the snow wind's icy breath. Kiukiu heard her murmuring a slow, mumbling chant beneath her breath. As they passed beneath the gateway she felt the invisible veil of protection part to let them through. And then the cruel wind off the moors hit her like a whip. Turning to wave to her grandmother, she saw that Malusha and the walls of the cottage had completely vanished into the snowmist.

Even though it was day, the skies were dark and threatening as thunder. A thin, dismal light shone through chinks in the snowclouds.

"Which way, Lady Iceflower?" she asked the owl, whose neat white feathers were being ruffled by the wind.

The owl haughtily lifted her head, turning it a quarter to the left.

"You're certain?"

The owl turned her head right around and gave her a look of such chilling contempt that Kiukiu instantly pulled on the reins, turning Harim's head to the left. Soon they were skimming over the frozen snowflats.

Exhilarated by the cold and the speed of the sleigh, Kiukiu tossed back her head and-because she couldn't help herself-let out a loud whoop.

The owl gave her another disdainful look.

"So? Who's about to hear us?" Kiukiu cried.

CHAPTER 28.

"Hold on. Hold on, now." Someone was speaking in a low, insistent voice.

Pain-agonizing pain-exploded like firecrackers through Gavril's body. A restraining hand gripped his arm.

"Don't move. Lie still."

Through wavering lids, Gavril saw a figure bending over him in the night. Behind him shimmered a vast wall of rock and ice, glittering against the starry sky.

"Jaromir?" he whispered to the shadowed face above him.

And then another surge of pain swept sickeningly through him, and the night and his rescuer blurred into one cresting dark wave.

"So. You're awake," said Jaromir Arkhel.

Snowmist still swirled in front of Gavril's eyes. Through the haze of concussion, he saw Jaromir gazing impassively down at him.

"Where . . . am . . . I?"

"In the monastery refuge. On the mountain."

"I . . . remember falling. Thought I would die."

"A ledge broke your fall. I heard your cry for help."

"You?" Gavril struggled to sit up-and gave a gasp as a stab of excruciating pain shot through his right side and arm. "B-but why?" Gavril struggled to sit up-and gave a gasp as a stab of excruciating pain shot through his right side and arm. "B-but why?"

"I think your shoulder's broken. I've bound it," Jaromir said impassively. "You were lucky. It could have been so much worse."

Another wave of sickness washed over Gavril. Suddenly he found himself retching uncontrollably. Jaromir produced a bowl and held his head until he was done.

"I'm-sorry." Shamed, Gavril lay back, shakily wiping the spittle from his mouth with his good hand.

"Drink this." Jaromir held a cup to his lips. "It will help control the nausea."

Gavril gazed up at him, suddenly riven with mistrust. He was at Jaromir's mercy. Jaromir could poison him here, and no one would ever know how he had died.

"The monks gave it to me to take when the pain was too much to bear."

Gavril reluctantly drank down the draft. He had expected it to taste bitter, but the monks had masked the bitterness with a pleasant syrup of green mallow and ginger.

"Now you will sleep, and heal the faster for sleeping," Jaromir said.

It was already working; his lids were drooping, the pain in his shoulder dulling to a bearable throb. And yet there was something still troubling him.

"B-but why," he said, his voice sounding thick and drugged in his own ears. "Why not just leave me to die?"

"Why? Oh, I have my reasons. You are of much more use to me alive than dead on the mountain, Lord Drakhaon. Much more use."

A girl stands alone in the middle of the darkened ballroom. She is weeping.

Moonlight silvers the broken glass in the panes, the dust powdering the cracked floor, the grimy cobwebs hanging like streamers from the chipped plaster. Moonlight lights her cloudy dark hair, her white organdy ballgown-all torn to tatters.

"Astasia," Gavril cries. "Astasia!"

Slowly she turns, slowly she raises her face from her hands.

He is gazing at a blank. Where her features should be, there is nothing but a void.

Gavril, drowsy and feverish, lost count of the hours. Days and nights passed as he wandered through troubled dreams.

When he came back to himself it was dark. He could just make out Jaromir kneeling over the smoldering eye of the fire, stirring a pot that hung suspended above the flames. A thin, savory steam wafted out. Gavril's stomach rumbled at the scent of the broth. He was ravenously hungry.

He shifted a little and pain flared through his right shoulder, tingling down his arm to his hand. Looking down he saw that Jaromir had strapped his right arm across his chest, and that the straps pinned him to the narrow wooden bed on which he lay.

"So I'm your prisoner."

"Hostage." Jaromir threw a handful of pinecones onto the fire; the flames crackled and spat sparks into the darkness.

"And your terms?"

"I'd have thought you'd have worked that out for yourself," Jaromir said drily. "Your life for hers."

"Lilias? Didn't you know? She got away. Michailo rescued her."

"But your druzhina druzhina went after her. Your went after her. Your druzhina druzhina will catch up with them. They will not treat them kindly." will catch up with them. They will not treat them kindly."

"They would never dare harm the baby. They still believe Artamon to be my father's son."

"And you?"

"The druzhina druzhina will track me down," Gavril said, ignoring Jaromir's question. "They'll find me." will track me down," Gavril said, ignoring Jaromir's question. "They'll find me."

Jaromir shrugged.

"Let them come. If they want you alive, my lord, they'll have to let me go."

Gavril felt too weak to argue. He lay back, closing his eyes.

"You should eat." Jaromir went to the pot and spooned some of the contents into a bowl. Gavril could smell herbs mingled with the stronger savors of leek, celery, and onion.

"Shall I help you?" Jaromir set down the bowl and unfastened the restraints. Then he hoisted Gavril up into a sitting position, lifting a spoonful of broth to his lips.

I won't be spoon-fed like a baby. Gavril glowered at Jaromir. "Let me do it myself." Gavril glowered at Jaromir. "Let me do it myself."

"As my lord wishes." Jaromir placed the spoon in Gavril's left hand.

The broth, with pearly grains of swollen barley and chunks of potato, tasted delicious, even if in his clumsiness he spilled some down his chin.

"So," Gavril said, to the shadowy figure who sat staring into the flames, "why did you do it? Why did you kill my father?"

Slowly Jaromir turned his head around to look at Gavril, but did not reply.

"I know it was you. I've known it was you since the night he died-although I didn't guess your name until Kostya told me what my father did to your family."

"How?" Jaromir said at last. His voice was hoarse. "How could you know?"

"A kind of . . . vision." Gavril did not want to say the name of the Drakhaoul aloud, for fear of waking it.

"And did your vision also show what your father did to my family?"

"No."

"I was at Saint Sergius' the night it happened. Suddenly the sky was filled with a glittering blaze of blue fire, too bright to look upon. It was so beautiful-as if a star had burst in the sky and rained down its glittering dust on the land beneath. The mountains trembled. And as the monks and I ran outside, I saw . . ."

"What did you see?"

"A great winged daemon, blacker than shadow, wheeled over the forest, swooping low over the monastery towers and spires, as if seeking me out to destroy me. To sear me with its fire."

"My father," Gavril said under his breath.

"I flung myself on the ground. I was so terrified I thought I would die of fear." Jaromir drew his knees close to him, as if hugging in the years of hurt. He seemed unwilling to continue. Eventually he said, "If Yephimy had not stood over me, defending me with his staff, I would have been destroyed that night. And many times afterward I wished I had been." His voice dropped to the ghost of a whisper. "I still hear the sound of the beating of its wings in my dreams. I still see the blue, inhuman gleam of its eyes, blue-and gold."

Blue . . . flecked with gold . . . Like his own. Gavril had seen just such eyes in the mirror. Like his own. Gavril had seen just such eyes in the mirror.

"Though those dreams are not the worst. The dreams that are hardest to bear are the ones where I hear my sisters laughing as they play, and my mother comes running to greet me, arms wide, smiling, as though all was as it had been . . ."

Gavril looked at Jaromir; his face was little more than a shadowed blur in the dying fireglow, but Gavril thought he saw a single tear roll silently down his cheek.

"And when the shadow of its passing had lifted from the valley, when the clouds of smoke had rolled away, my father's great kastel was a smoldering ruin, filled with a gray, poisonous dust. They were all dead, my mother, my father, my little sisters. . . . Our lands were charred to cinders. Not one living creature survived."

Jaromir let his head drop forward until his forehead rested on his knees.

"You had motive enough to kill my father," Gavril said in the silence. "But Lilias-what does Lilias Arbelian have to do with it all?"

Jaromir did not answer.

"And why didn't you use her pistol? Wouldn't it have been easier just to shoot my father than to have to confront him, man-to-man?" There had been plenty of time to think as his shoulder mended. And there was still so much that Jaromir had not told him.

The fire was burning low. Jaromir jabbed suddenly, angrily, at the glowing cones, setting off an explosion of sparks.

"I wanted to see him face-to-face. I wanted him to know whom he was dealing with. I wanted him to die knowing who had killed him-and why."

There was such a bitter ferocity in Jaromir's voice that Gavril was stunned into silence.

"Or perhaps I was seeking something else. To die by Drakhaon's Fire, like the others . . ."

A branch snapped in two, sinking into the embers with a sighing hiss. The room grew darker still; the snowchill seemed to be slowly seeping up through the cold flagstones.