Lord of Snow and Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

some kind of spirit-mischief at work here. Ice at sea when the berries are still red on the moors?”
    “Spirit-mischief?” echoed Gavril in disbelief. This must be some old Azhkendi folk-superstition, he supposed.
    Kostya gave him a long, hard look. “Has she taught you nothing of your heritage?”
    “So we’re cut off?”
    “Unless my lord wishes to fly back to Smarna,” Kostya said with a wry shrug.
    Gavril drew in a breath to reply. The air seared his tongue, dry and stingingly cold. The shock silenced him.
    He was trapped. Trapped in a barbaric little country, far from any hope of rescue. And if the last ships had left, what means was there of getting a message to Smarna—or to Astasia?
    He began to shiver uncontrollably.
    “You must be cold, my lord.”
    Kostya wrapped a heavy cloak about his shoulders, a fur cloak pungent with a rank civet smell.
    “There is to be a small ceremony, lord, when we make landfall. To welcome you. To prove to your people that you are Lord Volkh’s son. It is the custom in Azhkendir.”
    “Proof?” Either the sedatives had not quite worn off yet, or the cold had numbed his brain. He had no idea what Kostya was talking about.
    “So it’s true. Your mother told you nothing. Nothing at all.”
    “What should she have said?” Gavril rounded on him. How dare the old man insult his mother? “That my father never once tried to find us after she left Azhkendir? Left her to raise his son without a sou to her name?”
    “You never received any of his letters?” Kostya said. There was a bleak bitterness in his voice.
    “Letters!” Gavril’s mind was in a whirl. “He wrote me letters?”
    “She must have destroyed them, then. Ah.” Kostya passed his hand back and forth across his forehead as though trying to order his thoughts. “So you know nothing of your heritage.”
    “Nothing!” Gavril flung back at him. He was shaken now, wondering what terrible truth the old warrior was so reluctant to tell him.
Savage
, Elysia had said, weeping.
Cruel
.
    “I knew it was wrong to let you go. I tried to reason with your father, but he was blinded by his love for your mother; he would not keep her against her will. It was always his intention to visit you on your twenty-first birthday to instruct you about your powers. But that was not to
be. . . .”
    “Powers? What powers?”
    “It should not have fallen to me to tell you.” Tears glittered once more in the old man’s eyes. “It should have been between father and son. It’s not fit.”
    “My father is dead. There is no one else!”
    Kostya swallowed hard. “You are Drakhaon. The blood that burns in your veins is not the blood of ordinary men.”
    “So you have told me a hundred times and more. But what
is
Drakhaon?”
    “Look.” Kostya raised his arm, pointing to the barque’s mainsail. On the white canvas, an emblem was painted in black and silver, an emblem that caught the light of the morning sun and glittered, cold and cruel as winter. Now Gavril could see it was a great hook-winged creature that seemed to soar as the wind caught it, swelling the sail.
    “Dragon?”
Gavril whispered, transfixed. “But surely . . . it must be a figure of speech, a title, a . . .”
    “You are Drakhaon, lord,” repeated Kostya doggedly.
    “But how could my father be a man . . . and a . . . a . . .” Gavril could not bring himself to say the word; the concept was just too ridiculous. Dragons were legends in storybooks for children.
    “Drakhaon is not merely dragon, lord. Drakhaon is dragon-warrior. A man who can wither his enemies with his breath, who fires the warriors of his clan with the power of his burning blood.”
    “No,” Gavril said, laughing aloud at the ludicrous implications. “No!”
    “I was there when your father soared high above the Arkhel stronghold and seared the Arkhel clan with his breath. The night sky glittered—and our enemies died where they stood.”
    “You saw what my father wanted you to see. A