"Don't listen to it."

"I made you strong. I made you powerful. Without me you are nothing!"

"I would rather . . . be . . . nothing." Gavril clung on, tugging, feeling the slender filaments snap, one by one, as it slowly relinquished its stranglehold.

"You think you can live without me, but without me you'll go mad. Insane."

Gavril gritted his teeth and tugged with all his strength. Suddenly he felt the Drakhaoul slither out of him and he fell, wrestling with a vast shadow-daemon, enmeshed in its serpentine coils.

"Malusha!" he cried, his voice half-stifled. "Now!" "Now!"

Malusha gazed at the Drakhaoul.

She saw it in all its alien glamor: terrible yet possessed of a glittering beauty, a spirit creature from the Ways Beyond, a stranger alone, abandoned in her world, unimaginably far from its own kind. For a moment she stood, pierced by sadness at its plight.

And then she remembered. This was the daemon that had ruined her life, destroying her lord and his household. This was the daemon that had ruled Azhkendir for centuries by fear.

She opened her mouth and a strong, dark note emerged from deep within her throat, an earsplitting resonance that tolled with the crackling intensity of rolling thunder.

In a flicker of darkness, the Drakhaoul reared round, like a snake about to strike. Eyes of blue and gold scanned her. She flinched. It was as if it had clawed through her mind, exposing her deepest, most intimate thoughts.

"Can't . . . control it much longer . . ." Gavril still clung on.

And then she found it. The pitch at which its very being, its essence, vibrated. Suddenly she was in tune with it, suddenly she she was in control. was in control.

Light was sucked from the air. Buzzing darkness smothered Gavril. Glimmers of blue phosphorescence lit the shadows. He could no longer breathe, he was suffocating. . . .

A convulsive shudder rippled through the strangling coils of the Drakhaoul.

He felt it cry out.

"Ahh, Gavril-"

The cry scored across his mind, a terrifying ululation of fury and loss.

He was flung down as the creature lifted from him, spinning helpless in a vortex of cloud and starshadow.

"Begone." Malusha stood over him, one arm raised.

And the glittering shadow-vortex blew away across the heavens, shredding clouds like dark feathers in its wake.

CHAPTER 43.

The instant Gavril opened his eyes and recognized the frescoes of Saint Sergius' shrine, he knew the Drakhaoul was gone from him.

He felt exhausted. Drained.

Empty.

He no longer saw the world through Drakhaoul-enhanced sight. Everything looked drab and dull.

Malusha stood over him, the gusly still clasped in her arms.

"You can untie him," she said. "He's no threat to you now."

Monks appeared and busied themselves untying the ropes that bound Gavril. He sat up, rubbing his chafed wrists and ankles.

"Has it really left me, Malusha?"

"Oof. I'm tired." She sat down on a bench and laid the gusly beside her.

"I feared it might have harmed you-"

"Who, me?" She looked up, her brown eyes fierce in her wrinkled face. "No, I'm made of stronger stuff. Besides, you did most of the work, Gavril Nagarian. That took courage. Great courage."

A tremor of guilt and loss shivered through him. He heard it cry out again, "I am the last of my kind." "I am the last of my kind."

"Where has it gone? Where did you send it?"

"In all truth, I don't know. Far from here. Far, far from here."

The monks silently helped Gavril down from the slab where he had been confined.

He stood-alone for the first time in many months-and looked at Malusha.

"I owe you so much," he said, voice unsteady with emotion. And then he saw that the gusly was broken and the strings snapped, with all its ancient painted decorations charred. "Your instrument-"

"You can start by getting it mended," she said wearily. "And no slapdash job. This instrument was my mother's and her mother's before her."

"No one but the most skilled craftsmen from Azhgorod shall be allowed to touch it, I promise."

Kiukiu drifted back to consciousness to see Lord Gavril sitting beside her. He looked pale, gaunt, unshaven, and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes. But those eyes were the deep summer blue she remembered from his portrait, deep as the warm seas she had never seen but dreamed about so often. There was no alien glitter any longer, only the sad, distant look of one who has lost something of great personal significance.

"My lord?" she said, puzzled.

He started. "Kiukiu? How are you?"

Without fully knowing what she was doing, she found herself touching the ragged wound at the base of her throat.

"I'm healing." She nodded. "Yes. Healing well."

"I . . . I hurt you," he said falteringly. "I never intended to do you harm, Kiukiu."

"I know." She put out one hand toward him. "I know."

He looked at her hand as if uncertain what to do. Then she felt his fingers curl around hers, felt the warmth of his grip.

"The Drakhaoul is . . . gone?" she said wonderingly.

"Gone. For good."

She forgot her weakness. She knew only that they were both alive, they had both survived. And a surge of happiness overwhelmed her.

This was a curious kind of homecoming, Elysia thought as she ventured out from her room to wander the dusty corridors, as she had so often done in dreams. Once as a young bride, she had been chatelaine of this desolate domain of snow and shadows. Now the towers of the kastel lay half-ruined, blasted by Eugene's cannons, and with them the memories of her life with Volkh.

She had slept more than two days and nights, Sosia told her, utterly exhausted by the journey from Swanholm. The flight had taken its toll. Her hands had been rubbed almost raw from clinging on to the Drakhaon's scaly back, and though Sosia had salved them and bound them with clean linen, they were still stiff and painful.

All she wanted was to reassure herself that Gavril was all right-but no one seemed to know where he was.

At the end of the dusty hall, two figures appeared: a man and a girl, hand in hand. And the man-even with the daylight behind him-looked very familiar.

"Gavril?" Elysia said uncertainly.

When he saw her, his face lit with recognition, and he came running toward her, arms outstretched to hug her tight.

"Look at me, Mother!" He held her at arm's length, gazing intently into her eyes. "I'm cured. The Drakhaoul is gone."

She raised her bandaged hands to his face, searching for any lingering signs. She saw none. He looked weary-and in need of a good wash-but she recognized him as her son once more. She hugged him a second time, just to make certain-and knew what he said to be true. Somehow, without the aid of the elixir, he had broken free and was whole, his old self again.

And then she remembered that they were not alone. The fair-haired young woman was still there, standing shyly behind him.

"But who is this, Gavril?" Elysia turned to her with a smile, sensing there was some special connection between them.

"This is Kiukiu. I owe her my life."

Elysia held out her hands to Kiukiu who-after a moment's hesitation-came forward and allowed herself to be kissed. Elysia glanced from one to the other-and, feeling tears of relief pricking at her eyes, wrapped one arm around each of them, clasping them close to her.

She did not trust herself to speak yet, for fear she would weep. There were so many things to be said, so many questions to be answered-but all that could wait till later.

Epilogue.

A storm-dark whirlwind passed over the northern wastes of Azhkendir, devastating all in its trail, blotting out the brief, pale light of the winter sun, casting noon into night.

Shafts of lightning crackled blue as the electric shimmer of the northern lights as it swept across the frozen Saltyk Sea and tore down through Tielen.

Those who witnessed its violence said afterward that the shrieking of the wind had sounded like a lost soul, a soul in agony, howling for salvation. Some even claimed they had heard words wailed on the wind.

Princess Karila was working hard at her cross-stitch. She and Marta were making a wedding sampler for Papa and her new mama that read, "Good health and long life."

And then she sensed a sudden quiver of darkness in the air. She started and pricked her finger. A tiny drop of blood marred the immaculate linen.

"Now I'll have to start all over again. I hate needlework!" She threw down the crumpled sampler and the skein of royal blue silk and limped to the window.

"So dark," she said, gazing up at the sky. "And it's not even tea-time."

"It's only another snowstorm coming, highness," said Marta with a sigh.

Karila felt the little golden hairs prickling on her arms. Shivers of intense cold ran through her whole body.

"Drakhaoul," she whispered. "Drakhaoul, what's wrong?" She raised her arms, imploring, hands extended. It was free. Free, yet filled with rage and confusion. It did not understand its freedom. Cast out into a world it did not comprehend, it knew only that it was alone-and vulnerable.

How could it understand her yearning? To move untrammeled through the air? No longer to be encumbered with this twisted, clumsy body but to fly as gracefully as the wild white swans?

The sky grew dark as night and a chill, cold wind stirred the bare branches in the park.

Karila looked up into the smoky stormclouds and saw eyes of electric blue piercing the dark haze.

"Use me, Drakhaoul. Let me help you."

"Use you?" There was scorn in the words that sizzled through her brain. There was scorn in the words that sizzled through her brain. "What use are you to me? You are too small, too weak to sustain my powers." "What use are you to me? You are too small, too weak to sustain my powers." She sensed its frenzied despair; it was dying. She sensed its frenzied despair; it was dying. "I would sear you to a cinder." "I would sear you to a cinder."

"I would risk it and gladly," she whispered, knowing what she said to be true, "to save you from destruction."

But the dying Drakhaoul was already whirling away from her.

Karila stood staring after it, her cheeks wet with tears of frustration and pity.

Another watcher silently observed the Drakhaoul's passing from his laboratory window.

Kaspar Linnaius followed its wild flight with his telescope until it had blown out of sight beyond the distant horizon.

Then he went to the Vox Aethyria and established a link with Mirom.

"Chancellor Maltheus? I have urgent news for the emperor. Tell him Lord Gavril is no longer Drakhaon. Azhkendir is defenseless."