The Shining Falcon

Finist gave a sigh of frustration. Once he'd recovered from the strain of his ill-starred attempt into necromancy—and what a damnably foolish thing that had been! — he'd gone in search of the boyar's knife. But there'd been no trace of it. And his appeals to courtiers and servants alike had met only with blank, innocent stares. Anyone in the palace could have picked up the blade, or simply thrown it away!

Nor had he any more success in tracking down any plot behind Erema's attack. There hadn't been, thank Heaven, any secret, slowly fermenting revolution brewing. No, it really was beginning to look more and more as though the young boyar had been acting on his own insane behalf. Unless Ljuba… Dammit, he knew—no matter how illogically—that Ljuba had something to do with it. Yet there wasn't any proof, there never had been, not the slightest shred, magical or mundane. And lately his lovely cousin had been living as innocently and quietly as a little nun (hardly a nun, thought Finist, not Ljuba!), being as remotely polite to him at the Yule celebrations as though there'd never been that feverish night, those heavy-scented candles…

She, it would seem, had taken his warning to heart.

And he? Try to ignore it as he would, he kept recalling that frantic I love you! And for all and all, as the winter dragged on, he was beginning to find his magician's will sorely tested. What if he visited her just once more, without the candle-spell or any other enchantments this time, just to see what would happen if…

The very thought of it stifled him. God, had he come to this, lusting for a woman he neither liked nor trusted? All at once the walls of the Golden Chamber were too close about him. Finist thrust his head out of the window, gulping in lungfuls of air so clean and cold it ached. It wasn't enough. Recklessly he tore off his regal robes, letting them fall unheeded. Falcon once more, Finist took flight, trying to outrace his thoughts.

Oh, God, would this winter never end?

Deep in the forest, it grew colder still, and terrifyingly bleak. In the farmhouse, the exiles lived in growing fear of death by freezing or starvation. The latter seemed increasingly more likely. Their careful hoard of food had run alarmingly low. But there was no larder to raid, nothing to do but cut their rations and move as little as possible to conserve their strength. Faces grew gaunt and tempers short, and Maria began to wonder if a quick death at the hands of Svyatoslav's executioner might not have been more merciful after all…

And then one morning she woke to an unfamiliar, regular sound. For a time she lay still, trying to puzzle it out, then at last threw a blanket over the clothes in which she'd been sleeping for warmth, and struggled to pull open the complaining door. A blast of cold air staggered her—but it no longer had that bitter bite to it. The farm was bright with sunlight. And the sound she'd heard—

Was the steady drip of melting icicles.

«Spring," breathed Maria. «Oh, dear God… Father, Lissa, come, hurry! It's spring!»

Chapter Xll Leshiye

You could only live with fear so long, thought Maria, whether it was fear of capture or of starvation, before it stopped being fear and changed to something else entirely. Hopelessness, perhaps. She glanced to her father, laboring behind Brownie with the plow, breaking up the newly thawed soil, his face as carefully empty of thought as any serfs. By now, they dared believe the winter had passed them by and left them alive. And it seemed pretty clear that even if Svyatoslav's men were still looking for them after so long, they weren't going to be found. But Danilo had never quite come back from the grim, hungry time, slipping little by little into his own dour world, a world as remote from reality as any of Vasilissa's wild fantasies of forest demons waiting to pounce. Maria sighed, looking down at her work-roughened hands without really seeing them. She'd hoped the dawning of spring would help Lissa. Instead, those demons were becoming more and more real to her; the young woman stumbled through the day as though shrouded in gloom, and there was seldom a night in which she didn't wake sobbing or screaming.

If only I could get through to her. Yes, and poor father, too.

But Maria sadly suspected that the only cure for them would be a return to their former life. And that seemed about as likely as an angel descending from Heaven.

Enough of this, Maria told herself. At least we've got a

house and a garden, and that's a good deal more than we might have had.