Free Lord of Snow and Shadows by Sarah Ash Page B

want to cross the threshold. He wanted to turn and run, to find the crisp brightness of the autumn day outside.
    “Come, my lord,” Kostya said, ushering him over the threshold.
    No torches lit the Great Hall, guttering their smoke into the shadows. But beneath his feet Gavril saw the same black and ocher patterned tiles which, in his vision, had been slimed with blood.
    He was standing only a few feet from where his father had lain dying.
    If he closed his eyes, he could see again the flash of spangled light that seared the eyes, could smell again the reek of burning flesh, could feel the dying man’s last, agonized gasps as his consciousness faded. . . .
    “Remember.”
    He opened his eyes. Etched against the daylight a figure of shadow wavered, tall, broad-shouldered.
    The air breathed cold as winter fog; there was an unpleasant, moldering taint to it, like decaying leaves and chill earth.
    “
Gavril.
”
    “Father?” Gavril whispered.
    “My son.”
The revenant’s voice shuddered through him, each word a sliver of ice. Then the revenant suddenly crumpled to the floor, a figure sprawled in the ungainly attitude of death, dark blood leaking like ink onto the tiles from the slack mouth.
    A second shadow came billowing like curling smoke from Lord Volkh’s breast until it towered above Gavril, blotting out the daylight, the shadow of a great daemon-serpent, hooked wings outspread, darker than a thundercloud.
    Sick and faint, Gavril felt himself swaying, falling. . . .
    Strong hands gripped his shoulders, supporting him.
    “Steady, lad,” muttered Kostya’s voice in his ear.
    Gavril blinked.
There’s nothing there. Look.
In the daylight, he could see that the tiles had been washed clean. But Kostya and the young guard who had let them in were staring at the same spot, transfixed.
    “This is where he died, isn’t it?” Gavril said shakily.
    “Aquavit for Lord Gavril!” barked Kostya, recovering. “Hurry, Michailo!”
    The young guard went running out, returning with a metal flask that Kostya thrust into Gavril’s hands.
    “Drink.”
    Gavril put the flask to his lips and took a mouthful. The aquavit burned his throat like fire. Cleansing fire. Coughing, eyes watering, he handed the flask back to Kostya, who took a long swig himself before passing it to the young guard who had brought it.
    “This is bad, very bad,” Kostya muttered. It was the first time Gavril had seen him disconcerted.
    “You saw it too?”
    “I saw what I saw. And you, Michailo?”
    The young man started; beneath his sunburned cheeks, Gavril noticed that he had turned as pale as whey.
    “I saw my lord Volkh as he was when he was alive. May the Blessed Sergius preserve me from such a sight again. The dead should not walk with the living.”
    “My father’s ghost?” Gavril said softly. He did not believe in ghosts. But there had been something here in this room for which he could find no other name.
    “Once a spirit-wraith has been called back into our world, it is very hard to persuade it to return,” Kostya said.
    “And who could have summoned it?” said Michailo.
    “I aim to find out,” Kostya said darkly.
    Gavril’s eyes kept returning to the distinctive patterns on the tiles, the black serpent, wings spread against the ocher background. How could he have dreamed all this so accurately? And the painted panels and beams, the wreathing carved friezes of ivy in which bright-beaked wooden birds nested?
    Why?
he silently asked his dead father.
Why have you laid this burden on me? I didn’t ask to be born your son. I didn’t ask to be Lord of Azhkendir. Why must I inherit your feuds, your hatreds, your vendettas?
    The wall behind the dining table was hung with spiked oval shields, each one painted with the black and silver device Gavril had first seen darkening the barque’s mainsail: the winged serpent. And beneath the shields hung a gold-framed portrait draped with black funeral cloths and crowned with dried sprigs of