"You will find peace here," she said, remembering what Malusha had taught her, her voice unsteady. "Go, Volkh Nagarian. Go in peace."

"Yes," he said, dazedly. Silver-gold leaves whispered, stirred by a soft breeze. "In peace . . ."

He turned and walked away among the eternal trees.

The whitewashed monastery room was dim with a fast-dwindling twilight. A sudden, soft breath of wind rattled the open shutter, tinged with the faint mold odor of fallen leaves from the great forest outside.

Kiukiu lay as one dead on the little wooden bed.

Gavril reached for the tinderbox and lit a candle. It gave off a dark, honeyed smoke, perfuming the room with a memory of summer.

From one of the towers, a bell began to clang to call the monks to their evening devotions, a deep, solemn note that was soon answered by other higher-tongued bells, setting up a repetitive metallic clamor.

Gavril watched Kiukiu's still face intently, but she did not stir, even when the loud jangling of the bells began.

He got up and paced around the room, frustrated and angry with himself that there was so little he could do. Abbot Yephimy had tried to reach her, but his efforts had failed. Now the monks were saying prayers for her as if she were already dead.

Gavril knelt beside her and stroked a stray lock of pale gold from her smooth forehead.

"But you're not dead, are you, Kiukiu, just very far away . . ."

Not dead yet . . . but the longer her spirit was lost in the Ways Beyond, the harder it would be for it to return. And all the time it was gone, her body was slowly slipping into a decline.

"I won't let you waste away," Gavril whispered into her ear.

A whole day had passed since Jaromir set out in search of Malusha, hoping that the pony Harim would find his way home across the moors. Gavril had wanted to go with him, but Jaromir had reminded him that the sudden appearance of a Nagarian lord would be seen by the old woman as a threat.

In the warm candlelight, Kiukiu's skin seemed to glow with a faint translucence. Her face was a serene void.

She had hazarded so much to exorcise his father's ghost. Too much.

A girl is weeping.

Kiukiu sees a young woman, standing shivering on the edge of the trees, her arms clasped tightly to her, as if she were freezing cold.

Some instinct drives Kiukiu toward her-even though she knows she must not linger in the Ways Beyond.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"C-cold. So cold." The girl's fair hair gleams in the light of the distant sun. "Where is he? I c-can't find him."

"Who are you looking for?"

"They killed him. Broke his fingers, tore out his nails, tortured him. . . ."

Kiukiu draws closer still. She recognizes this young woman. She sees in her features a reflection of herself.

"Where are you, Malkh? I've been searching for you so long-and now I can't find my way back home."

"Would you like me to help you?" Kiukiu says gently. Mother, Mother, she says softly in her heart. she says softly in her heart.

"Yes." The girl nods. "Oh yes. But it's so cold-"

"The sun is shining. Can't you feel its warmth?"

Slowly the girl raises her head, eyes squinting into the light as if emerging from darkness.

"Warmth," she says slowly, wonderingly. "Yes. Oh yes. Now I can feel it." Her hands drop down to her sides. She has stopped shivering. She gazes at Kiukiu from a wan, sad face.

All the long-buried anger Kiukiu has endured at being abandoned by her poor, mad mother vanishes. She sees only a young girl, not much older than herself, broken by events beyond her control.

"Come with me, Afimia," she says, wanting to heal Afimia's hurt and confusion. "We're going to find your Malkh."

"Where is she? Where's my granddaughter?" demanded a querulous voice.

Gavril awoke with a start. He had fallen asleep in the wooden chair beside Kiukiu's bed. The door burst open wide, and a wild-haired old woman marched in. On seeing him, her face darkened in a snarl of such virulent hatred that he shrank back, alarmed.

"How dare you!" she said in a hiss. "How dare you sit in the same room as my beautiful girl? You're not fit to clean her boots." And she spat on the floor at Gavril's feet.

Jaromir appeared in the doorway.

"Now, Malusha, you promised me," he said, gently chiding. "Lord Gavril is quite different from his father. You'll see."

"Different, pah!" Malusha spat again. "They're all the same, the Drakhaons. Can't you smell the darkness in him, my lord? Can't you see the Drakhaoul curled around his heart? Sooner or later, he'll turn for the bad. They They always do." always do."

Darkness. Why could she only see darkness in him? Hadn't he sat at Kiukiu's bedside day and night, speaking to her, holding her hand, trying to call her back?

"If it hadn't been for your cursed father, she wouldn't have wandered so far away." Malusha laid her hand on Kiukiu's pale forehead, closing her eyes as if listening. "And I don't know if I can reach her now. Or if she'll come when I find her. You can get out, both of you." Malusha unslung the gusly she had been carrying on her back. "Off with you. Leave us alone." Already her gnarled fingers were quietly testing the strings.

"But-" Gavril began.

"Go."

Jaromir beckoned him outside and shut the door.

In the darkness of the cold stone passageway outside, they heard the first urgent ripple of notes, a wave crashing on a distant beach. More waves followed, a stormtide of fierce, elemental sound.

And then Malusha's voice drifted out to them. Gavril had expected the old woman's voice to sound feeble and cracked. He had not thought to hear such strong, deep singing, such power.

Maybe there was still a chance. . . .

The birch leaves glimmer above her head, silver-gray and gold in the hazy light.

Kiukiu wanders on through the forest. She is looking for someone. But she has been wandering for so long now that she has almost forgotten who he is . . . and why she has to find him.

Afimia trails after her.

"So peaceful here . . ." she whispers.

The soft, calm light has lulled her. Her footsteps gradually slow.

"Don't wander away, Afimia. Stay with me."

"Why the hurry?" Afimia asks dreamily.

A bird is singing in the tracery of branches high above her head, a little ripple of notes like drops of falling water.

Singing . . . It was something to do with singing. . . . It was something to do with singing. . . .

Through the slender trunks, Kiukiu catches sight of the gleam of water. A lake, a vast gray lake stretches far into the distant mists. Its still waters lap slowly against a gently shelving shore.

A man, his back against a birch trunk, is sitting, staring out into the mists.

Kiukiu ventures closer. He doesn't look round. He doesn't seem to know-or care-that she is there.

Now she can see he is young, maybe no more than twenty-two, twenty-three, with straight, fair brown shoulder-length hair. And there is something familiar about his face, although she cannot quite say what it is: the strong chin and cheekbones, maybe . . . and the wide forehead?

"I think I know you," she says tentatively.

He doesn't even look up. And now she is sure of it, and with it comes a strange pain about her heart. And she had not thought she could feel pain in this place.

"Your name is Malkh," she says. "Malkh the Guslyar."

He glances up at her. Gray-blue eyes as clear as her own look at her as though she were almost invisible.

"I came here to forget that name," he says after a while, a long while. His voice is light and pleasant, a singer's voice. But his gaze drifts away from her as if he has already lost interest in her.

Kiukiu kneels down beside him.

"I'm your daughter," she stammers out. "Kiukiu."

He shakes his head slowly. "You are mistaken. I had no children."

"I was born after you died. My mother was Afimia. You must remember Afimia."

And at last a faint shadow flickers across his face.

"Afimia?" he repeats.

"Please remember," Kiukiu says, anguished that he shows so little reaction. Yes, Malusha did warn her to expect this, but she had so hoped she might be able to bring about some kind of reunion.

"There was a girl. Her hair was your color, maybe lighter when the sun caught it. . . ." The effort of trying to remember seems almost too much, and he lapses back into silence again.

"She is here. With me."

"Afimia is here?" Again that brief flicker of interest.

"Look." Kiukiu beckons Afimia toward her. In the gold-dappled shade of the leaves, she looks more wood-spirit than human, her wide eyes as wild and nervous as a fawn's.

"Malkh?" Afimia says uncertainly. Kiukiu looks imploringly at her mother-and suddenly sees a bloodstained splash of memory, a glimpse of a man's torn and mutilated corpse hung up to rot in the kastel courtyard.

"Never look in their eyes," Malusha's voice breathes in her memory. Malusha's voice breathes in her memory.

"Afimia." Malkh rises slowly to his feet.

"Th-they killed you." Afimia stares at Malkh warily. "And all because of me. If I hadn't begged you to stay-"

"We are beyond death here. Here, none of that matters any longer."

"Malkh," Afimia says again. She is smiling. Her wan face is radiant, transformed. "It is is you." you."

Malkh moves toward her. Their figures seem to blur, to merge together for a moment, one indistinguishable from the other.

"Be at peace," Kiukiu murmurs.

Together, they drift away from Kiukiu along the shores of the lake, into the sun-gilded mists.

All gray and silver here, touched with gold. Muted color, soft wash of gray water lapping on a silver-sand shore, soft whisper of breeze through silvered leaves . . .

"Well, here you are at last, child!"

Kiukiu looked up. A woman was walking along the lakeshore toward her.

"Time to go back, Kiukiu."

Kiukiu gazed up at the woman. She had no idea what she was talking about.

"Go back where?"

The woman hunkered down beside her. "Kiukiu, don't you know me? Heavens, child, you've only been here a short while; has this place worked its charm on you so soon?"

"This place?"

"These waters are the Waters of Forgetfulness. It's a place of healing. But it's not your time yet, child. You must come back with me now."

Kiukiu shook her head.

"I don't want to go. It's so quiet here, so peaceful. . . ."