Lord of Snow and Shadows (49 page)

Eugene, hand still raised in an answering wave, saw a man suddenly appear at a kastel window. For a moment, he could not believe what he saw. And then—late, too late—he realized.

“Look out!” he yelled.

Something flashed in the sunlight.

Eugene saw Jaromir stagger. Saw him pitch forward onto the muddy ground, hands clutching at the metal shaft protruding from his chest.

He seized a carbine from the soldier next to him. Raised it. Aimed. Fired.

He hit the crossbowman full in the forehead. And saw him topple over the edge of the broken window to crash to the courtyard below.

Then he was running down the hill toward Jaromir, all the cold calm of the execution gone—and nothing but a winter of desolation raging in his heart.

CHAPTER 39

Eugene dropped to his knees on the frozen snow and turned Jaromir over onto his side.

“Cover the prince!” he heard Anckstrom yell. All around him his soldiers appeared, carbines trained on the walls of the kastel, a human shield.

Blood stained the snow. A spreading stain of blood soaked Jaromir’s jacket; blood trickled from one corner of his mouth. He was still breathing—but any soldier of Eugene’s experience, well-used to the injuries of war, could see that those faint, shuddering breaths would soon fade. Eugene gently raised his head, supporting it against his knee, smoothing the bronze-gold hair from Jaromir’s forehead.

“A surgeon!” he shouted, hearing his own voice crack with desperation.

“Eugene . . .” Jaromir whispered. His face was gray except for the red stain of blood on his lips. “Promise me . . . take care of . . . Lilias . . .”

“Hold on now, Jaro,” Eugene urged, his voice shaking. “For God’s sake, hold on.” He could see Jaromir’s dark eyes no longer stared into his but through him, as if he were gazing into another distant dimension. If only words were enough. If only . . .

“Jaro,” he said brokenly. “My Jaro.”

Jaromir’s head lolled limply back against his knee.

“Oh, Jaro,” Eugene whispered. He laid the body down, then bent to kiss the bloodstained lips . . . and with trembling fingers closed Jaromir’s eyes.

The surgeon came hurrying through the cordon of soldiers, bag in hand.

“You’re too late,” Eugene heard himself say. He rose to his feet unsteadily, gazing at Kastel Drakhaon. He was aware that the whole hillside was silent, that all his men were staring at him.

The bloodred flame in the lifeglass wavered, faded, and went out.

“Show them no mercy. Use the poison shells. Raze Kastel Drakhaon to the ground.”

Kiukiu stopped on the forest path, listening. For a while now the ominous rumble of cannon fire had ceased. It was a sound unlike any she had heard in her life before: the unnatural whine of mortars, whistling and screaming in the distance like grotesque predatory birds—and the earthshaking rumble of explosions.

And now it had stopped.

She hefted the heavy gusly bag onto her other shoulder. The strings gave off a soft, dark shimmer of sound. She had set out eager to use her gifts to help Lord Gavril defend the kastel against the Tielen invaders.

But what use were her gifts against such terrible weapons? She could sing long-dead warrior spirits into the
druzhina
to inspire them to feats of great courage, but all her efforts would be in vain if these terrible cannonades brought the kastel walls crashing down on them.

The silence was all the more eerie after the cacophony of the cannons. She walked swiftly on between the great ivy-wreathed tree trunks, the sound of her feet muffled by the soft carpet of dry leaves and leaf mold.

Malusha—still too frail to leave her bed—had forbidden her to come. But she had come anyway. If Gavril was in danger, then she wanted to be at his side, to share the danger. She could not bear to think of him facing these hazards alone.

And then she felt a bright stab of pain about her heart. The forest went chill and dark about her. All the color leached from the day, and she stood alone in a cold, desolate place, gray as drifting ash.

She blinked—and the colors returned. But not the emptiness in her heart.

Death. She had felt it as if it had been her own. Someone close to her had died. Lord Gavril? Loss and panic gripped her. No, it could not have been Gavril. His death would have left her so bereft she would not have been able to think or act. Neither was it Malusha. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to sense the aura of the soul she had felt brush past her on its journey into the Ways Beyond.

She sensed warmth, honor, friendship, regret . . . a vivid brightness all too swiftly extinguished, a flame that should have lit Azhkendir.

“Jaromir?” she cried out in anguish. “Oh no, no . . .”

One moment Jaromir had been hurrying eagerly back toward the kastel, the winter sun bright in his hair. The next Gavril had seen him clutch at his chest—and fall.

The bolt that felled him had come from Kastel Drakhaon.

What followed seemed to flash past so swiftly—and yet each agonized moment etched itself, cut by cut, on Gavril’s mind.

The sharp crack of a pistol shot split the silence.

“Jaro!” he called uselessly. “Jaromir!” He started out across the courtyard, heedless of any danger to himself. He had to get to Jaromir, to tell him that someone had countered his orders, that he had not ordered his death.

“No, my lord!” Askold ran out after him, caught hold of him, restraining him, trying to drag him back. “They’ll kill you!”

“Who?” he yelled into the stillness. “Who dared to disobey me?”

And then he saw Kostya’s broken body—the crossbow lying beside him—blood leaking out from his shattered skull onto the cobbles.

“Kostya?”
he whispered.

Across the divide he saw Eugene slowly rise from where Jaromir’s still figure lay. Turn to stare at him. Even from this distance he could sense the menace and hatred in that long, cold look.

Show them no mercy.

“My lord!” The
druzhina
dragged him back toward the doorway, stumbling over the fallen debris in their haste. “There’s nothing to be done. It’s too late.”

Tears streamed down his cheeks. He did not care who saw. The only man who had shown him true friendship in Azhkendir—his enemy—lay dead. Slain by his Bogatyr, his right-hand man.

A cannon shell came whizzing above their heads—then another and another.

They tumbled back inside the doorway, hands pressed to their ears as the shells exploded and the kastel shook to its foundations.

“We’re done for,” one of the men shouted above the crash of tumbling masonry.

Gavril crouched amid the dust and rubble, paralyzed with grief and shock. All Jaromir had wanted was to preserve the kastel and the people in it—and with one ill-judged crossbow bolt, Kostya had undone everything he had striven to achieve.

“Lord Drakhaon!” Semyon chose that moment to come speeding across from the nearest watchtower just as more shells burst in the courtyard outside.

Gavril glanced up and saw one of the tall barley-sugar chimney stacks wavering, starting to topple down above the boy’s head.

“Look out!” Gavril dived to grab Semyon’s legs, bringing him down just as the stack came crashing onto the cobbles.

Brick, tiles, and stone spattered them. For a moment they lay entangled, hands still clasped to their heads as the dust settled, not daring to move.

“Th-thank you, my lord,” Semyon said crawling out, winded. “You saved me—”

Another cannon shell whined overhead.

“Inside, quick.” Gavril heaved Semyon to his feet as the shell exploded with a fizzing hiss.

Clouds of milk-white smoke billowed into the hallway. It gave off a bitter chymical odor, quite unlike the earlier sulfurous gunpowder fumes. The men began to cough and retch, staggering around, disoriented. Gavril found his eyes stinging from the thin, milky smoke. This was the same gas the Tielens had used to disable them at Narvazh. It stank of alchymy.

“Cover your mouths!” he yelled. “It’s poisoned! They’re trying to smoke us out!” He pulled up a corner of his jacket across his nose and mouth. “Retreat!” he ordered, backing away down the hall. “Follow me!”

And then he saw her. Standing lost, confused in the hallway, clutching her gusly to her to protect it from the falling rubble.

And he had thought her safe.

“Kiukiu?” he cried. She ran toward him—and another blast shook the building, throwing her toward him. He caught her as she fell forward, steadying her against himself.

“Where now, my lord?”

“Into the cellar!”

The
druzhina
kicked open the door as they fumbled their way through the smoke down the kitchen stairs to the fusty darkness of Oleg’s wine cellar. One of the older
druzhina
collapsed to his knees, vomiting and wheezing.

“We’ll—be trapped here—like rats!” spluttered Askold.

“We—need to—breathe!” Gavril gasped. His tongue and throat burned. “Who knows what this smoke does to your lungs?”

Askold swore. “If it gets down into the East Wing tunnels . . . what of the women and children? They’ll choke to death.”

“Why, Kiukiu? Why did you come back?” Gavril gazed at Kiukiu, his heart torn by mingled feelings of fear and joy. “You were safe at the monastery.”

“I came to help,” she said staunchly.

“Jaro’s d-dead.” He stumbled over the words, feeling the grief surge up again, a wave that could not be suppressed.

“I felt him die,” she said. He gazed into her eyes and saw his own desolation and uncomprehending loss mirrored there. She—she alone of all his household—understood. She had always understood. She had come back to be with him, heedless of the danger. And there was nothing for her here but destruction—and death.

“Kiukiu,” he said brokenly. He put his arms around her and pulled her to him again, holding her pressed tightly against his heart. She did not resist, but let herself be drawn into his embrace, nestling her golden head against his shoulder.

“Lord Drakhaon.” Semyon, trying to staunch the blood streaming from a gash on the cheek with his kerchief, turned to him. “Save us.”

Another cannon shell exploded overhead with a dull thud that made the wine bottles clink and shudder on their racks.

“This is no fair fight,” Askold cried. “What use are our weapons against these cannons? We’re outnumbered. Outmaneuvered.”

“Only you can save us, Lord Drakhaon.”

Gavril looked around at the exhausted, battered men sitting slumped against wine racks and barrels in the gloom of the cellar. He looked down at Kiukiu, felt the beat of her heart close to his.

“Your father would have destroyed those cursed Tielens,” said Askold accusingly.

“I gave my word,” Gavril said, “against my mother’s life.”

“What do they care for your mother? She’s probably dead already.”

Elysia dead? Gavril felt the cellar grow cold about him. Suppose what Askold said was true and she had been executed by Eugene’s troops in Tielen, so far from home, and all on his account . . .

“They’ve played us false, my lord,” said old Guaram, shaking his head, “on every turn.”

“But we broke the agreement.”

“Did you invite them in? They have no right to be here!”

When the steppe wolves had attacked, the Drakhaoul had woken deep inside him and caused the devastating conflagration. But the Drakhaoul still lay dormant, drugged by Kaspar Linnaius’ treacherous elixir.

“Kazimir! Where is Doctor Kazimir?” he cried.

“I have Count Velemir as you requested, highness.” Eugene’s adjutant beckoned him to the Vox Aethyria, which had been placed on a folding table for safekeeping during the bombardment.

“Highness.”
Velemir’s voice was barely audible above the crack and rumble of the cannon fire.

“I have new instructions for you.” Eugene heard his own voice as if it were miles away, speaking with arid detachment. “We are at war with Azhkendir. Madame Elysia Nagarian is to be executed. Firing squad.”

There was silence.

“Velemir?” Eugene tapped the crystal, wondering if the bombardment was interfering with their communication.

“Madame Nagarian—to be shot?”
Even at such a distance Velemir sounded stunned by the instruction.
“B-but why?”

“As a spy. A foreign agent. Report to me when it is done.” Eugene straightened up and signed to his adjutant to terminate the connection. He stalked out of the tent and went back to watch the destruction of Kastel Drakhaon.

A gaping hole had been blasted in the side of the Kalika Tower. Gavril clambered up the broken stairs over rubble and twisted metal to his father’s study, feeling the tower tremble to its foundations as the merciless bombardment went on, cannonade after cannonade.

As he pushed open the door, another blast flung him to the floor. The floor was covered with shards of broken chymical equipment. Many of Kazimir’s elaborate glass structures lay shattered.

“Kazimir!” he yelled.
“Kazimir!”

“H-here.” Kazimir was crouched under the desk, white-faced and shaking, clutching a vodka bottle.

“Come out!”

“No.”

Gavril caught hold of him by the ankles and tugged him out from under the desk.

“Do you want to live?”

Kazimir nodded, lower lip trembling like a child’s.

“You said you could reverse the effects of Linnaius’ drug!” Gavril grabbed the doctor by the lapels, thrusting his face close to his. Kazimir’s eyes were bloodshot, and his breath stank of vodka.

“N-not enough time,” babbled Kazimir.

“Where’s my antidote?”

“Hasn’t been scientifically t-tested.”

“It’s our only chance.”

“All my experiments—ruined—” Kazimir gestured lamely with the bottle at the smashed glass.

Gavril caught hold of him and pried the bottle from his fingers.

“No more vodka for you till you’ve given me the antidote.”