When he came upon the black, foul-smelling river, he began to chant a snake spell under his breath. While in his body he was unable to shift his shape but a shaman's haamu had powers beyond the body. And so his shadow-soul flowed and lengthened, changing into a powerful water snake. As the snake, he plunged into the icy water of the river and began swimming to the far side.

Other snakes glided closed to him, hissing, "Stranger, where do you go?"

He knew better than to answer. In Tuonela you replied to no questions, ate no food nor drank any liquids if you wished to ever leave again.

A bright red snake with green eyes struck at him with poisonous fangs but the fangs grated on metal instead of penetrating his haamu and the venom dissipated in the water, burning along his scales without seriously poisoning him. Grandfather's steel cross, he knew, had saved him.

"This is the time of Kekri," the red snake hissed before gliding away.

Kekri, the time of sacrifice at the end of October.

In the middle world it was not October but the end of January, with a gray tule fog blanketing Volek House. Tuonela, though, was not ruled by the middle world's time, weather or customs.

A boat glided near him and Wolf slid deeper into the murky waters as the daughter of death struck at him with an oar. He was obviously not a welcome visitor.

"Kekritar," she called to him, her voice mocking. Sacrifice? Not him! They'd have to find some soul more willing. Or one unable to fight.

He reached the other side of Tuonela's river and slithered onto the rocky bank. One word of power was all it took to shed the snake-shape.

"Find Tuoni's inner chambers," Liisi had told him, "but avoid Death himself. In his chambers will be the charm against fire-starting. It's up to you to recognize what you need and to bring it back."

Wolf turned away from the river and scanned the three shadowy caverns before him. He bent, picked up three stones, and said a separate spell over each. Because the middle stone glowed for a moment, he chose the middle cavern. Just inside its entrance, a warty gray frog the size of an elephant materialized to block his way.

"Stranger, you cannot pass," the frog croaked.

"I am no stranger for I have faced death before," he said.

The frog flicked out its long, sticky tongue at him but Wolf leaped aside, tossing the middle stone onto the tongue. The frog swallowed the stone and disappeared in a flash of flame. Wolf passed into the cavern and entered a tunnel. Soon the dank gray walls changed to shiny black obsidian, reflecting and enhancing the meager light. Grotesque birchbark masks hung along the walls, grinning evilly. "Kekritar," they whispered as he passed.

The light ahead grew redder, the air warmer. The tunnel ended in an arch whose opening was obscured by a crimson mist. Feeling a warning tingle at the base of his spine, Wolf stopped short of the mist, aware it could kill. After a moment's thought he began to whistle.

Long and long he whistled, coaxing, until at last a wild ocean wind from the chill waters of the Baltic Sea blasted through the tunnel and blew away the toxic mist. Wolf passed under the arch and into a vast chamber. Before he had a chance to notice anything more than a large iron chest with its lid open, two giant archers sprang at him, arrows nocked and ready.

He flung his two remaining stones into the air, one to either side, the archers loosed their missiles, the arrows flew after the stones, piercing them. Laden with the stones, the arrows reversed their flight and buried themselves in the archers' breasts. Arrows, archers and stones dissolved into a red mist that disappeared.

Wolf surveyed the chamber and tensed. He relaxed slightly when he realized what he'd at first taken for scores of men and women were merely statues. He circled the room, studying them. Some were metal--gold, silver, copper, iron. Others were of stone--jade, crystal, turquoise, obsidian. There were wooden statues, too--mahogany, ash, oak, pine. One, a woman's, was a smoky red, of some substance he couldn't identify. Her emerald eyes seemed to follow him as he walked past, making him uneasy. Though she didn't move, menace pulsated from her.

Each statue held an offering in an outstretched hand. One of these offerings, Wolf sensed, was the charm he sought for Jennifer. And he feared he knew which statue held the charm he needed--the malevolent one with the emerald eyes. "You are right." Her words crawled into his ears like garden slugs. "Come and take what you want--if you dare." Wolf approached her warily. Her fingers were curled around the tiny ruby salamander in her left hand in such a way that it was impossible to reach the charm without touching her. To touch her courted death.

"You fear me rightly, Sergei Volek's grandson," she said, "for I am your enemy. Our paths have crossed before--do you not remember?"

Red and green. The venomous snake in the river.

"And before that." Her voice left a slime trail in his head.

Red hair, green eyes....

Her laugh rang through the chamber, echoing from the walls until the entire room shuddered with mocking laughter. "The woman was my daughter," she told him. "Her body took your seed but I was the one you coupled with."

Her daughter Willa, of the honey-colored hair and hazel eyes, had been as much a victim as he, just as Wolf had thought at the time. Who was this hell-spawned woman? Without a doubt she was dead, for no life cord trailed from the statue. If it was a statue.

Liisi had prepared him for every peril she could conceive he might encounter but because he'd never told her about the seance in New York, nothing she'd taught him was of any use in outfacing this evil spirit. He was on his own. Unfortunately, he didn't have the slightest idea what to do. Still, he was damned if he'd made this abominable journey merely to give up when success was within his grasp. This time he was determined not to return to Volek House empty-handed.

"Shall we embrace once more?" she asked lasciviously, suddenly opening her arms wide and reaching for him.

Making up his mind quickly, Wolf drew his lips back to show his teeth and a took a step toward her.

She faltered for a moment, obviously taken aback. Wolf, who'd been hoping to surprise her, snatched the ruby salamander from her hand and whirled to flee only to be held back by her grip on his little finger. As he struggled to free himself, fiery pain shot along his hand and coiled inside him, draining his power When he finally yanked his hand away she gave a shout of triumph. "I have your finger! You're mine forever."

Since it felt as though his little finger had been jerked from its socket, he believed her. His heart sank. A shaman was doomed to stay in the nether world if he left anything of himself there. Wolf glanced at his hand as he fled. Seeing his finger still attached, he belatedly understood the finger she crowed over was the stalker's. His enemy amulet.

Almost immediately she realized she'd been tricked and her heavy tread thudded behind him. A quick look over his shoulder showed her gaining. She'd be on him before he reached the arch and once she caught him he was doomed. The iron chest loomed before him, lid raised, inside nothing but darkness.

Liisi had told him shadow-holes existed in all the worlds, warning that unlike the holes created by a shaman drum, these could be dangerous, leading into the past lives of those who dropped through them. Did the chest contain a shadow-hole? If so, it offered escape. Into what, he had no way of knowing.

Since he had no choice, Wolf leaped into the iron chest. As he dropped into oblivion, he heard the lid clang shut. When he came into awareness he found he'd catapulted into his worst nightmare. He was a child again, his naked body emaciated and chilled as he huddled in the Kamchadal animal pen, a pit dug deep into the earth with wooden bars set close together rising six feet up from ground level. There was no way for him to escape. He had nothing but the ruby salamander clutched tightly in one maimed hand.

"No!" he howled in anguish. The word emerged in a weak, high-pitched whine.

No matter that the knowledge of his forty-eight years lay within his head, his starved child's body had no strength, no powers. He was helpless.

A raven flapped down and perched on a spindly alder sapling, cocked its head to look at him and cawed mockingly. Kekritar, kekritar, the raven seemed to say, making Wolf realize that's exactly what he was--a sacrifice. A sacrifice to the superstitious ways of his people.

And this time there'd be no Grandfather to rescue him. Despairing, he began to cry.

Fool! Liisi's voice echoed in his mind. You are still a shaman, no matter what body you wear.

Wolf's tears ceased as he realized the truth in her words. He closed his eye and sought to find his inner center where no cold or hunger existed. But barks and howls of approaching dogs distracted him. The noise of the dogs meant the men were returning to the village from the hunt.

Men who believed he was a wolf in human form. Men who'd throw stones to torment him, laughing when he tried to dodge. How he wished he really was a wolf.

"I am here." The voice was in his head. Whose?

A vision of a gigantic gray wolf appeared before him. His spirit-brother!

"Help me," he answered in his squeaky child's voice. "Help me, brother wolf."

The vision took on solidity, became a huge gray wolf beside him in the pen.

"Climb on my back, brother," the wolf said.

He scrambled to obey. Placing the salamander between his teeth, he dug his fingers into the wolf's fur as his spirit-brother, with a mighty leap from the pit, cleared the bars of the pen, raced through the village and into a sparse stand of spruce. There they stopped. Spirit-brother looked up so Wolf did, too. High on the trunk of a tree a drum hung on a snag.

A shaman's drum, Wolf knew. Gray Seal's drum, hung there by the Kamchadals when he died to keep his soul from returning to the village as a malevolent ghost. Still on the wolf's back, he removed the salamander from his mouth and held up his arms.

"Blood calls to blood," he chanted. "Gray Seal is not dead, he cannot die while his blood runs in my veins. By blood his drum is mine, by right his drum is mine. Blood claim, drum claim. Mine."

The tree shook violently, tossing the drum off the snag. It fell end over end and landed in Wolf's outstretched arms. The sealskin cover was torn but when he held the drum to his spirit-brother's mouth, one lick of the wolf's tongue and the cover became whole once more.

Sliding to the ground, he placed the drum on the frozen earth and, crouching, began to thrum it with his good hand, intoning the shaman's chant for home-going while his spirit-brother howled an eerie accompaniment.

When the earth opened beneath him, Wolf was no more aware of falling into the hole than he was of the excited cries of men and the warning barks of dogs as they neared the spruce grove.

He was no longer part of their world.

Wolf opened his eye to find Liisi bending over him in the tower room.

"You've been gone two days," she said.

Wordlessly he opened his maimed hand. The ruby salamander gleamed in the lamplight. Liisi plucked it from his hand, closed her eyes and pressed it against her forehead.

He sat up, watching her, his stomach rumbling with hunger.

"Yes," she said finally. "Yes, this fire lizard is what we need."

Until then he hadn't realized he was holding his breath. Liisi brought him a peeled orange, a chunk of cheese, several slices of bread and a glass of pale yellow liquid he knew contained one of her tonics. When he finished the meal, he got to his feet.

"Did Sergei have an enemy, a woman with red hair and green eyes?" he asked.

Liisi frowned. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I had to take the ruby salamander from her and she damn near killed me."

"She's a witch." Liisi spat the words out.

"I agree. She may be dead but she's sure as hell still a witch."

"She had a daughter." Liisi spoke reluctantly. "Sergei's daughter. Not by his choice."

"Oh my God."

Liisi's silver eyes bored into his. "So you've met the daughter. Where?"

Wolf told her, confessing what had happened. "Not by my choice, either,"

he finished.

Liisi sighed. "I wish you'd told me sooner."

He nodded. Keeping it a secret had nearly cost him his life.

"What does she expect to gain by forcing her daughter to bear your child?" Liisi demanded.

Wolf had no answer. Until this moment he hadn't allowed himself to think there might be a baby. Now he was as sure as Liisi that there was one but he had no clue as to why the witch would want such a child to be born.

"I don't doubt we'll find out someday," Liisi said. "A witch makes a resourceful enemy. Keep that in mind, Wolf, because I won't live forever."

He took her hand. "I'm not capable of replacing you." "No one is asking you to," she said tartly. "You're a shaman, that much is true, but you're no noita. When I die, someone will come, either a man or a woman. That person will be a Finn, like me. You must convince the others to accept whoever it is because the Voleks will be his or her family, to look after, as I have."

"You've made such an arrangement?"

"Not in writing, not on the telephone. But you can be sure the chosen one will know when I'm dying and will be here for my funeral." She drew her hand away from his and touched his scarred cheek. "Because you made the journey, Jennifer has the chance to lead a more normal life. Thank God you're a resourceful survivor like your grandfather."

Once Liisi used the salamander to create a lasting control charm for Jennifer, Samara was released from responsibility and Wolf felt he'd done his duty. He'd earned the right to relax and enjoy his baby sons.

In 1915 he took all the children to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco--the city celebration of the opening of the Panama Canal. The Exposition was a fantasia of color and light and exotic sights: the Tower of Jewels; the Court of the Seasons; the Court of Flowers and the statues of the Rising and the Setting Sun.

Hawk, at eighteen, was hardly a child. He soon discovered the Exposition offered aeroplane rides and, after his first flight over the city, he could think and talk of nothing else. He found a pilot willing to teach him to fly and lost no time reminding Wolf of his promise to buy an aeroplane.

By the end of the year, Hawk had made his first solo flight and had overseen the construction of an landing field, complete with hangar and windsock, outside the gates of Wolf House. He flew Ivan to San Francisco in early January of the following year, returning the same afternoon.

Wolf watched the aeroplane swoop over the field and circle to land into the wind, torn between pride in his son and the fear that one of these days that damn contraption of wood and metal was going to come crashing down just as Hawk's childhood flying invention had done. Hawk had survived the fall from the barn roof but, if the aeroplane failed, he sure as hell wouldn't live to walk away.

The aeroplane settled onto the ground and bumped toward the hangar where Wolf waited. It stopped, Hawk climbed out and leaped to the ground. Wolf trotted over to him.

Hawk grinned as he came up. "She flew like a dream," he said. "Ivan was impressed."

Wolf helped him push the machine into the hangar. As they walked toward Wolf house, Hawk said, "In the city everyone's talking about the war in Europe. Before I took off to fly home, I listened to a couple of pilots discussing how the side with the most and the best aeroplanes is going to win. Seems to me they're right."

Wolf listened to him list the reasons why and nodded, thinking that in '98 aeroplanes might have made a difference in Cuba.

"The pilots think the French Nieuports outfly the German Fokkers and are superior in every way to our Curtiss JN-2's," Hawk went on. "The Jennies are the ones the U.S. Army used in Mexico against Pancho Villa." He glanced at his father. "I'd sure like to get in the cockpit of a Nieuport and try her out."

"I promised to buy one aeroplane," Wolf said, "not a squadron."

"You couldn't buy a Nieuport anyway. The French Army gets them all for the Lafayette Escadrille." Hawk's eyes took on a faraway look that unsettled Wolf.

America wasn't involved in the European war and President Wilson had once promised they wouldn't be. But look what had happened since. First there'd been the German U-boat attacking and sinking the British liner Lusitania off the Irish coast, killing over a hundred Americans. Later came the news that German saboteurs were active in the United States itself--that explosion in the Dupont powder plant in Delaware was one example. Most ominous was Wilson's recommendation to Congress to increase the standing army.

All in all, it looked to Wolf as though America would be drawn into the war pretty damn soon. Flying was risky enough as far as he was concerned--he hated to think of Hawk not only aloft in a flimsy aeroplane but being shot at by the enemy besides. He told Hawk so.

"With luck the war will end before we get into it," he added.

Hawk didn't reply.

A month later he left in the night and, the next Wolf heard, had joined the Escadrille Americaine, attached to the Lafayette Escadrille. By May, Hawk was in Verdun, France. Wolf could only hope Nieuports were superior to Fokkers.

In April of the following year, President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Two days after the declaration, Ivan and Arno took Wolf into the study.

"We're going to enlist," Arno said.

Wolf stared at them, aghast. "But you're forty-one years old! The army wants younger men--like the President told Teddy Roosevelt when he asked permission to raise a volunteer company the way he did in '98. Besides, Arno, you're a shifter. Don't you remember your father's warning that battle triggers the blood lust?"

Arno nodded. "I won't risk it because I won't be fighting. I plan to volunteer for the Ambulance Corps." "We've contributed generously to political candidates' campaigns," Ivan put in. "Some of the men are in Congress now. I doubt that I'll have any trouble getting an Army commission, forty-one or not."

"How about McDee Enterprises?" Wolf protested. "I'm no businessman."

"We've hired capable executives." Arno smiled at Wolf. "And you know our mother usually makes most of the major decisions anyway. Is Liisi ever wrong?"