Smarna. Just the sound of the name was beginning to irritate Eugene. It seemed to represent all that frustrated him in his efforts to unite the empire. Just the sound of the name was beginning to irritate Eugene. It seemed to represent all that frustrated him in his efforts to unite the empire.

"The negotiations have broken down. Armfeld's latest report is frustratingly vague, but he may well need backup."

"Just give the word, highness," Janssen said loyally. "We'll be ready."

CHAPTER 15.

Gavril stumbles on across a hot, dark shore. Stars gleam red overhead, unfamiliar constellations half-obscured by poisonous fogs.

"I've been here before . . . but when?"

Every step burns the soles of his bare feet. The air stinks of sulphur; every breath he draws sears his mouth, his throat, his lungs.

Yet even as he wipes the sweat from his brow, he is aware that he has never visited such an inhospitable, desolate place.

This dream from which he cannot awake must be woven from someone else's memories.

"It's through here. It must be." He hacks his way through the dense vegetation with an axe, chopping at great creepers that snap and sting his skin like whips. He has no idea what he is searching for, only that some desperate obsession forces him onward.

In the distance, a cone of fire simmers; choking fumes and vapors drift past. The sulphurous air is becoming hard to breathe.

Suddenly he trips over a tree root and topples forward onto his knees. He raises his head. He is kneeling at the foot of a great overgrown archway, its ancient grey stones smothered in mosses and clinging lianas.

"Is this finally it?" he asks. "The Serpent Gate of Ty Nagar?"

Closer to, he can make out the forms of twisting snakes carved into the old stones. Fanged mouths snarl at him, baring forked tongues. He lifts one hand to touch the carven scales.

"This is the Gate," answers the voice in his head, "but where is Nagar's Eye?"

Gavril looks up and sees the carven head of a great winged serpent crowning the gateway. It stares balefully back at him from one empty eye socket.

"Without the Eye, the Gate remains shut." The soft voice is choked with anguish. "Shut for all eternity."

"What Eye? What do you mean?" Gavril cries out, his shout sending a flock of fire-feathered birds shrieking up into the air from the overhanging trees. "Have you brought us all this way for nothing?"

Gavril awoke in darkness, overwhelmed by a black mood of despair-and yet it felt as if the despair was not his own.

Those names in his dream, Ty Nagar, the Serpent Gate . . . He had read them somewhere before.

He sat up on his hard prison bed, suddenly alert.

In my grandfather Zakhar's books. I've been reliving Zakhar's last memories. The Drakhaoul must have planted them in my mind. Has it also left me the memories of other, far older ancestors?

He heard a quiet footfall on the stair outside.

He gazed up at the dark stripes of night sky that showed through his barred window. The prison day began early-but it was nowhere near dawn yet.

Was I shouting out in my sleep again?

A key creaked in the lock and the door swung slowly open.

"Who's there?"

Someone held up a shuttered lantern, its single beam directed right in his face. Dazzled, he flung up one hand to shield his eyes.

"You're to come with us." Two warders had entered his cell.

"Now? But I'm not dressed-"

"Come as you are."

Has Linnaius told Eugene that I am of no further use? Dear God, is this to be the end? Have they come to take me to some secret place of execution?

"At least let me put my shoes on."

They hurried him down the silent staircase and out across one of the many inner courtyards. The night air was fresh with a fine drizzle; no stars or moon could be seen overhead. Gavril, dressed only in shirt and breeches, shivered in the damp. Somewhere, a prison hound bayed dolefully into the empty night.

They hustled Gavril into another tower. The room into which they brought him was empty except for an iron chair and a wooden trolley covered in a cloth. Gavril halted in the doorway, staring at the chair and the leather restraints fixed on the arms and feet.

"Torture?" he said. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. "Do you mean to torture me?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Director Baltzar appeared. He was dressed in a brown overall and wore a bizarre headpiece with a single thick glass lens attached to it, not unlike a jeweler's loupe. "No, I've brought you here to cure you, Twenty-One."

"But I'm not ill!"

"Put him in the chair." Baltzar turned away and busied himself with unwrapping the contents of the cloth on the trolley.

The two warders began to drag Gavril toward the chair.

"Just what do you intend?" Panic overwhelmed him. He dug his feet in, resisting their efforts with all his strength. "Leave me be!" He rammed his foot into one of the warder's shins. The warder let go with a shout of pain, and hopped away, cursing.

The other kicked Gavril's legs out from under him and pinned him to the floor with the weight of his body.

"Stubborn to the end," Baltzar said with a shrug. "Hold him steady." He came up to Gavril and, even though Gavril squirmed and turned his face away, pressed a cloth to his nose and mouth. A strong chemical smell issued from the cloth and suddenly the room wavered as all the strength leaked from his body, leaving him weak and limp as a marionette.

A strong light shone above him. He blinked, unable to focus in its dazzling rays.

Where am I?

He tried to move his head-and found that it was firmly clamped. A thick leather collar had been buckled about his neck so that any movement other than blinking was impossible. He looked down and saw that his wrists were buckled to the arms of the chair in which he sat. Another wide belt secured him at the waist. When he attempted to move his feet, he found his ankles were secured as well.

A shadowy form appeared above him and leaned in close to raise one of his eyelids.

He recognized Director Baltzar.

"So you're awake," Baltzar said. His voice boomed hollowly, as if heard through water. "Good. This procedure only works if the patient is conscious."

Procedure? Gavril tried to narrow his eyes against the glare of the overhead lantern to see what Baltzar was about.

"Stand ready to swab, Skar," Baltzar said. "You know how profusely these incisions in the scalp bleed."

Gavril caught the glint of steel in Baltzar's hand as he leaned forward again. Behind him he saw an array of scalpels, probes, and tweezers laid out on the trolley.

"What-are you going to do-to me?" Each word came out so slowly, as his tongue and lips moved sluggishly against the effects of the drug.

"We are going to cut into your skull to free the pressure on the part of your brain that has been giving you these delusions, Twenty-One. You call it your 'daemon.' But from my extensive researches, I suspect it is the result of some injury or disease of the brain."

"No!" Gavril cried out with all his force. "The daemon is gone-"

"You will be so much more placid when we have finished the procedure. You may feel a little pain during the operation-but when it is done, I assure you, you will be an altered man." Baltzar's eye glinted through the single magnifying lens.

Terror surged up from deep inside Gavril in a black, choking wave. He had heard of the technique of trepanning and its frequently disastrous results. This self-styled doctor intended to cut into his brain. When he had finished with him, he would be no more than a drooling idiot, incapable of remembering his own name.

"Help me!" Gavril shouted, though he knew there was no one who could come to his aid. "Help-"

And then he felt the tip of the cold steel blade slice into his scalp. Something warm trickled down one side of his forehead-and was wiped away.

They are cutting into my head. They want to excise my daemon-but all they will do is amputate my memories, my dreams, all that goes to make me who I am. Why is there no one to help me?

And now he heard the sound of a small drill boring into his skull, felt the terrible juddering as the bone resisted the bite of the metal. Until, with a sickening crunch, the tip went right through, penetrating the soft tissue of his brain.

The lantern-lit room imploded in a chaos of colored shards and dark stars. And then there was only the darkness.

CHAPTER 16.

Every day Andrei forced himself out onto the long expanse of empty grey sands that stretched into the distant horizon, shrouded in sea fog. And every day he managed to walk a little farther, as his damaged body slowly, miraculously, repaired itself.

One evening, much like another, Kuzko and his adoptive son sat on either side of the fire as Irina cleared away the remains of the fish-and-onion stew they had eaten for supper.

"You'll be wanting to go find your own folks soon," Kuzko said with a sigh, lighting his tobacco pipe.

"If only I knew where to start looking." Andrei stared into the flames. "Or who they are . . ."

His name was Andrei. That much he remembered. But no more. There had been no clues in the waterlogged shreds of clothing that had clung to his body; the sea had washed them clean of any distinguishing marks.

"We know you're a sailor and we know you're from Muscobar." Kuzko drew on his pipe, letting out a slow, reflective puff of smoke. "Otherwise we'd have had trouble understanding each other, hm? But Muscobar's a big country with plenty of ports up and down the coast. We're out on the farthest tip here on Lapwing Spar. Land's end, with only the Iron Sea beyond. Far from anywhere. Nobody bothers much about us . . . and we don't bother them."

Andrei frowned, concentrating his gaze on a stick, forked like a stag's horn as it glowed white-hot, and then suddenly crumbled away to ash.

His memory, like the little island, was still shrouded in impenetrable fogs. Sometimes, in dreams, he knew he glimpsed familiar, well-loved faces and he would wake, calling out to them, arms longingly outstretched . . . only to find that the elusive memories had vanished again and he was calling out in gibberish.

"Now that spring's on its way, I'm planning on going over to the mainland for provisions." Kuzko tapped out the tobacco dregs and reached for his pouch. "Irina's been nagging me for days. . . ."

"You're running out of baccy, otherwise you wouldn't bother to make the journey, would you, old man?" called out Irina. "Never mind whether we have enough tea for the samovar!"

"I'll get news at the tavern," continued Kuzko, ignoring her. "Now that the thaw's under way, the merchantmen'll be stopping off at Yamkha again. Any wrecks, up and down the coast, they'll know. You come along too, Andrei. Maybe someone'll recognize you there."

Andrei shivered. And it seemed as if somewhere deep within his mind, a voice whispered, "No, not yet. It's too soon. . . ." "No, not yet. It's too soon. . . ."

Director Baltzar looked down at his patient. Twenty-One sat slumped in a chair, staring dully ahead. Skar stood behind the chair.

"Twenty-One?" Baltzar said crisply.

The patient did not even respond to the sound of his voice.

"How long has he been like this, Skar?"

"Since he came round, Director."

Baltzar stroked his chin pensively.

"But there have been no more fits? No more shouting out?"

"He doesn't seem too aware of anything."

"Any fever?" Baltzar lifted the bandages around the patient's skull, exposing the blood-encrusted stitches where he had sewn up the surgical incisions.

"A little oozing, a little pus from the wound, but it seems to be responding satisfactorily to treatment."

Baltzar bent over the patient and lifted one of his eyelids. The man's pupils were dilated.

"Gavril Nagarian," Baltzar whispered, "can you hear me?"

Very far away, a voice calls his name. But he is lost, wandering along an endless grey road where everything is shrouded in fog and nothing is familiar. And then there is only the monotonous grinding throb in his head, a horrible sound that vibrates throughout his whole being.

Lost. Never get home. Wherever home is . . .

Never.