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could be the beginning of a great career for me. Both of us should be pleased that the Czar chose me. Halya, do you see . . . ?”
    â€œYuri, stop it. He’s using you. Ivan never does anything without some insane reason behind it. Why can’t I make you see? There are older, more responsible men than you, and far more capable of handling this mission, and that is what concerns me. Why is he sending a boy to do a man’s mission?”
    â€œAre you saying you have no faith in me?” Yuri asked angrily.
    â€œIt’s Ivan I have no faith in. I know you will do well and I wish you well. It’s just that I feel so protective toward you and I want nothing to go wrong. You’re all I have and I don’t want to lose you,” she cried tearfully.
    â€œYou won’t lose me, Halya. When my mission is completed I think we should ask permission to travel to Moldavia to see our parents. Would you like that?” he asked, hoping to divert her from her unhappy thoughts.
    â€œOf course I would, and I’ll look forward to it. Godspeed, Yuri.”
    â€œI leave at dawn, Halya, so let this be our temporary farewell. I want you to spend your time thinking about how happy our parents will be to see us. Promise me, Halya, that you will not worry about me, for if you do, then I will not be able to function with a clear head.”
    â€œYou have my promise,” his sister said, throwing her arms around Yuri and smothering him with wet kisses.
    As she ran to her room she cried over and over, “If it’s the last thing I do, if it takes my last breath, you’ll pay dearly, Ivan, for what you’re doing to my brother. Yuri is all I have and you’re taking him away from me, just as I was taken from my one true love to be brought here to be your mistress.”
    Inside her room, with the door bolted, she threw herself on the bed and cried brokenheartedly. Later, when she dried her tears, her face was cool and composed. Looking in the mirror, Halya spoke slowly and distinctly. “If anything happens to Yuri, I will kill you without a second thought!”

Chapter 3
    K aterina lay in the middle of the fluffy pedina and delighted in the warmth the goose-down quilt exuded. Warmth, precious warmth. “God, I thought I would never be warm again,” she sighed. For now, she had the comfort of the soft quilt, her home, and the fire burning in the oven. She felt safe and protected with the devoted Prokopoviches, Stepan’s parents. This was what she wanted, and what she needed, this secure feeling. Here in her own bed, the Mongol couldn’t reach her. All he could do was invade her mind. In her bed, in her house, he couldn’t reach out his long arms and touch her, nor ravage her as he had on the steppe. Here, in her room, she was Katerina Vaschenko; on the steppe, she had been an animal taken by another animal, a wild, ferocious animal. “It’s over, I’m alive and it’s over,” she whimpered as she buried her head in the pedina. “On the outside I’m no different than I was when I rode from the mountains. No one will ever know what happened to me unless I tell them. I’m still the same. Then why do I have trouble looking in the mirror? Why can’t I look at myself? Why do I feel that somewhere, somehow, the Mongol will find me again? Will he be the hunter and I the hunted? Will he be the fox and I his prey? If he catches me, will he devour me as he did on the steppe? God, help me,” she sobbed again. “Make me forget, make me the same as I was before. Help me!”
    She was fully awake, but she stayed beneath the pedina, unable to leave its warmth, as she remembered the last two days and that cold, vicious night. Katerina let her arms creep above the cover, and at the first touch of the chill air against her bare flesh, she quickly snuggled down into the depths of the soft comforter.
    Her hazel eyes focused on a closed shutter where