Eugene shook his head. All he wanted was to look again on the face of the man who had bested him and nearly brought all his plans to nothing.

He stood a little apart from his soldiers, to watch the prisoner emerge from the carriage.

The prisoner descended slowly, awkwardly, to the cobbles, hampered by his shackles. Pale and unkempt, with several days' growth of stubbled beard, he looked around him, blinking dazedly in the daylight.

The last time they had met, those blue eyes had stared at him, filled with hatred and anger as the Drakhaon swept down on him and his men from the wintry sky.

Now all he saw was a bewildered young man, alone and bereft of his powers.

He would almost have felt pity for his enemy had the rain not started to fall, the cold drops stinging his burned skin. He had to live with the pain of the injuries the Drakhaon had inflicted, to the end of his days.

Now Gavril Nagarian would learn what it was to suffer the bitterness of defeat.

CHAPTER 8.

"Stop moping around, Kiukiu, and fetch me some beeswax."

Kiukiu started. Where did her grandmother keep the beeswax? In the earthernware jar next to the honeypot? Or alongside the wood varnish in the row of tarnished little glass bottles on the high shelf? As she stood staring up at the rows of jars and pots on the shelf she could think of only one thing.

Gavril Nagarian.

He had promised he would come for her as soon as the work on the Kalika Tower was complete.

"Do you want me to mend this gusly for you in this life or the next?"

Malusha was regaining her strength by the day, and as her strength increased, her tongue grew more tart. Kiukiu went up on tiptoe to reach a little black pot on the end of the shelf. Uncorking it, she smelled the pungent richness of the deep ochre beeswax gathered from her grandmother's hives.

"Here it is." She brought the pot to Malusha, who was bending over the wooden frame of the damaged instrument, fiddling with pliers and wisps of wire.

"If you want to call yourself a proper Guslyar, you'll have to learn to do all this for yourself. I won't be here forever and I want some peace and quiet in the Ways Beyond. I can't have you popping up whenever you've broken a peg or snapped a string. . . ."

Kiukiu slipped back into the shadows. It was best to let Grandma mutter and complain to herself while she carried out the repairs.

The heat from the fire was becoming stifling in the little cottage. She felt muzzy-headed. She needed fresh air.

She crossed the courtyard, stepping over the hens as they skittered around on the frozen earth. As she passed underneath the archway that led out onto the moorlands, she murmured the secret words Malusha had finally taught her. Mists parted in a swirl . . . then formed again behind her, concealing the cottage from view.

Malusha had insisted on maintaining the charmed skein of invisibility she spun around the cottage to hide it from passersby-not that there were any, Kiukiu reasoned, so close to the desolation of the Arkhel Waste.

Kiukiu stood for a while, dazzled by the paleness of the daylight. The moors were still white with snow, and the horned peak of Arkhel's Fang was half-hidden by a wreath of woolly snowclouds. But the air tasted sweeter and the wind that blew from the mountains had lost its keen bite. And here and there, spines of gorse and lingonberry protruded from the snow, darkly green. High overhead, a skein of grey-winged geese flew, returning to their summer nesting grounds.

Winter was slowly dying.

How long had it been since Gavril had kissed her good-bye? His absence had cast her life into shadow. The first spring light seemed muted; the slight hint of warmth in the air brought her no pleasure.

Kiukiu set out, her worn leather boots squishing through the slushy snow, tramping away from the cottage.

"I will come for you. . . ."

Kiukiu frowned up at the cloudy sky. How long did it take to finish work on the Kalika Tower? She had thought it would be a matter of days. Now the days had become weeks.

But he had promised. He had promised he'd come back for her. Unless . . .

Another skein of grey geese skimmed past overhead, startling Kiukiu with their forlorn cries.

"Why can't I fly like you?" she cried. "Why can't I fly straight to Kastel Drakhaon and find out for myself what's happening?"

At this rate of thaw, travel by sleigh would be impossible in a few days. And then the journey would turn into a long, dreary trudge across the moors, skirting the treacherous marshlands and quagmires that still lay icebound.

If only I didn't have this sick, sore feeling around my heart . . .

She turned and marched back into the cottage. Her grandmother glanced up at her from the coil of wire she was twisting to make a new string.

"I'm going back to Kastel Drakhaon," Kiukiu announced, "and nothing you say can stop me."

Something was wrong at the kastel. Very wrong.

Kiukiu pulled on the reins, standing up in the sleigh as Harim slowed to a halt.

The main road leading to the kastel was trampled to the bare earth as though many horses and heavy carts had passed over it. No fresh snow had fallen for several days now. She would have to dismount and lead Harim.

"What's happened here, Harim?" she whispered.

Looking down from the high road among the trees, she saw flags fluttering from the kastel towers, flags of grey and blue.

The colors of Tielen.

And now she noticed men at work on the scarred earth of the escarpment where Lord Gavril had attacked the besieging army. She let the reins drop and hurried to the edge of the road, peering down through the low-hanging branches of fir and pine.

What were the Tielens doing? Building new fortifications? Great mounds of raw earth had been piled up. They seemed to be tunneling deep into the ground; she could see shafts lined with planks of wood, pulleys from which swung huge buckets filled with earth. Sentries armed with carbines patrolled the perimeter.

Kiukiu felt a cold, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

The Tielens had taken the kastel. Where was Lord Gavril?

"Hey, you up there!" A sentry had spotted her. He pointed his carbine directly at her. "Come down! Identify yourself."

"P-please don't shoot. I'm coming, I'm coming . . ."

The Tielen soldiers guarding the gate took charge of Harim and brought Kiukiu before their commanding officer, Captain Lindgren.

The captain had installed himself in the Great Hall. All the Nagarian portraits had been taken down. Where Lord Volkh had once stared sternly down from the dais, a new picture in an ornate gilded frame had been hung, garlanded with Tielen colors. Kiukiu kept gazing at it, recognizing the tall, imposing figure as Eugene of Tielen. A flash of memory jolted her back to the barren, burned battlefield-and her first sight of Eugene, lying horribly burned outside the kastel . . . though this portrait depicted him clean-skinned and unscarred, staring proudly out as though scanning the world for new countries to conquer.

Beneath his royal master's portrait sat Captain Lindgren, engrossed in reading a sheaf of dispatches. He glanced up at Kiukiu and spoke in Tielen to the soldiers who had brought her in. Then he set the dispatches down.

"Who are you and what is your business here?" he said in the common tongue. He did not speak brusquely, yet Kiukiu felt her knees trembling.

"My name-Kiukirilya. I-I work here." She saw him reach for a brown-bound ledger, open it, and scan a list of names.

"Your name is not on this list. Can you explain why?"

"I've been away. Caring for my grandmother."

He shut the ledger with a snap and looked up at her, unsmiling.

"Can anyone here vouch for you?"

Her mind was in a turmoil. All she could think was: "What's happened to Lord Gavril? Where is he?"

"Anyone in the kastel?"

"My aunt. Sosia."

"The housekeeper?" He clicked his fingers to the soldiers. "Bring her here."

One of them left the Hall and returned with Sosia-a subdued Sosia, who followed him without a word of protest.

"Auntie?" Kiukiu cried, relieved to see her alive.

Sosia's eyes widened on seeing her. She shook her head as if in disbelief.

"Whyever did you come back, Kiukiu? You should have stayed with Malusha!" she cried in Azhkendi.

"I didn't know. I didn't know-"

"Please identify this young woman for me," interrupted Captain Lindgren.

"This," Sosia said, her manner suddenly meek and cowed, "is my niece, Kiukiu."

"Please confirm her role in the kastel household."

"Maidservant."

"Why was I not given her name before?"

"She was given leave to go care for her grandmother. I didn't expect her back so soon."

"If she is to stay, she must earn her keep," the captain said. "We have too many mouths to feed here as it is. I will not tolerate idlers. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Captain," Sosia said. "She can take up her old duties in the kitchens again."

"Young woman, please inscribe your name on the household role here."

"M-my name?" Kiukiu shot Sosia an agonized glance.

"Do your best," Sosia mouthed at her.

With reluctant fingers, Kiukiu took up the pen and dipped it in the inkwell. She had had so little opportunity to practice writing-let alone sign her name. When she laid the pen down again, the untidy, blotched result marring the captain's neatly inscribed list made her glance away, her face red with shame.

He took back the ledger and she saw him shake his head as he looked at her efforts.

"In Tielen, all children must attend school until they are twelve; obviously this doesn't happen in Azhkendir." But there was no censure in his words. "Well . . . all that will change now."

Was the interview at an end? Kiukiu shot another glance at Sosia.

"So my niece is free to go?" Sosia ventured. "Back to her tasks in the kitchen, that is?"

Captain Lindgren looked up at Kiukiu again. His expression was severe. "You must understand that no one leaves or enters the kastel without my permission. Written permission. Anyone caught breaking this rule will be severely punished. Is that clear?"

Kiukiu nodded.

"Now, you may both resume your duties."

Sosia took hold of Kiukiu by the wrist and hurried her outside.

"What's happened?" Kiukiu burst out.

"Ssh! Not here." Sosia pushed her toward the servants' quarters. Only when they were in Sosia's little room, with the door shut tight, did Sosia let go of Kiukiu's wrist. She had clutched her so tightly, her fingers had left red marks.

"Where is he?" Kiukiu demanded. "Where is Lord Gavril?"

"Oh, Kiukiu, such troubles here-" Sosia began to speak and burst into tears, wiping her eyes with a corner of her apron.

Kiukiu's imagination overflowed with terrible possibilities. "Is he dead? Tell me, Auntie!"

"Lord Gavril was getting ready to take his mother to the port. And then-they came." came."

"The Tielens?"

"They arrested him. They took him away, Kiukiu."

"Where?"

"To Muscobar, the Tielen commander said."

"Why didn't the druzhina druzhina defend him?" defend him?"

"Lord Gavril forbade it. There were too many in the Tielen army. He gave himself up to stop them attacking the kastel."