Strigoi

by Tony-Paul de Vissage

  Andrei looked at him in surprise.

  “I’ll have the next chamber prepared for him, and these shutters caulked so there’ll be no cracks for the sun to get in.” He looked back at Andrei. “Will that work, do you suppose?”

  “I-I think it will.” Andrei smiled in relief.

  “You realize you have to apologize to your brother. Go out to the training field, say you’re sorry, and then soar a few turns to relax.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course, you can.” Marek clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, affecting a heartiness he barely felt, wishing to get that woebegone look off the child’s face. “You know Vlad never holds a grudge.”

  “You don’t understand.” Andrei stood up.

  In surprise Marek realized the top of the boy’s head was on a level with his chest. Was he that tall before their abduction?

  “A little afraid of flying?” Marek guessed. “Give it time, Andri.” He smiled, confiding, “I remember when I first tried my wings. I wouldn’t get three feet off the ground. Papa thought I'd never learn to soar.”

  “It isn’t that.” With a sigh, Andrei looked at his brother. “I don’t have any wings.”

  “No wi—” Seizing the boy’s arm, Marek spun him around, brushing a hand across his upper back.

  He felt nothing but hard triangles of shoulder blade. The thickened bands of tissue on each side of his little brother’s spine, where wings were housed in internal pouches, were completely absent.

  “Come on.” His hand tightened on the boy’s shoulder as he propelled Andrei out the door.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To see Dr. Lavelle.”

  Marek completed his fifteenth circuit of the room as he waited for the doctor to reappear.

  His grandfather had converted the entire fourth floor of Castel Strigoi into a surgery for Dr. Lavelle, with examination rooms, an operating theatre, office, and a six-bed ward. The last time he’d been in this specific room was the day the twins were born. He was home on holiday, and kept his father company as they waited for news of the birth, the last one for which Marek was present in his father’s house.

  Hearing the door open, he paused in his next turn.

  “Is it true?” Marek didn’t wait for the doctor to speak. “Andrei has no wings?”

  “I’ve examined the boy, lord. He’s healthy—”

  “You said that before. Sabine, how could you have overlooked this?”

  “I beg your pardon, my lord.” Sabine bowed his head penitently. “I made the mistake of assuming because one twin had his wings, the other did also, without verifying it by examination. Let me clarify…in spite of his premature entrance into aberatie, he’s perfectly healthy.”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s as he says, however. He has no wings. The wing-roots are there, as well as the wing-buds, but they’re underdeveloped.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I should’ve thought of this… Possibly the same trauma forcing the twins into an early aberatie is also preventing Andrei’ wings from forming. Trying to balance what’s happening in his body, I suppose.”

  “That makes no sense. If his body’s growing, his wings should be also.”

  “Andrei is only eight. Normally, his wings wouldn’t develop until four years from now.”

  “Then in four years, they’ll mature? And he’ll be normal?”

  “In four years, he’ll be well into aberatie. Wings are supposed to be fully formed at the beginning. If they aren’t by that time, they’ll probably atrophy and disappear completely.”

  “If that happens, it’s something we won’t be able to keep hidden, and he’ll be ridiculed and despised.”

  “It might also make him a candidate to be the next ghidaj,” the physician answered. “And possibly a prospective domnitor.”

  Marek sent him a sharp look. “Hardly a comfort, Sabine.”

  “One must be positive, master.” Sabine shrugged an apology.”

  “I can’t let my brother be shamed.” Marek said. “Can’t anything be done?”

  “If the wings need to be released and exposed to air, that might stimulate them to grow.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I wouldn’t dare try, and there’s none here I’d trust to do it, either. Carpathius may be birthhome of all aventurieri, but as sorry as I am to say it, not even the prince has very good surgeons in his retinue.” Sabine shook his head. “The boy should be taken to one of the more enlightened countries. Austria, perhaps. I understand the Sectiuna of Vienna owns several very skilled surgeons.” He paused, then added, “It should be done as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll make preparations for us to leave tomorrow night.” Marek didn’t have to think about it. He nodded to the exam room door where his little brother waited. “Let’s tell Andrei.”

  “Andrei, I’ve spoken to your brother…” Sabine stopped in the doorway, looking in confusion around the empty exam room. “That’s strange. I told him to stay here. Perhaps he got bored and went into my office.”

  He started across to a second door.

  “Doctor?” Marek looked at something lying atop a cabinet. “Do you generally leave your instrument bag open like this?”

  “Never. How could…?” Sabine peered into the case, counting its contents. “One of the scalpels is missing.”

  He gave Marek a fearful look.

  “He must have taken it—of course he did. I shouldn’t have told him anything before I spoke to you. Where would he go?”

  “The training field.”

  I told Andrei to apologize to his brother. Will he seek out Vlad and ask his twin to share this further misery? Why take a scalpel?

  Marek started out the door, not waiting for the physician. “Hurry, Sabine.”

  He took the stairs three-at-a-time, nearly leaping down them. By the time Sabine caught up to him he was standing at the Great Room door leading to the outer courtyard.

  “Perhaps you should go on alone.” The doctor puffed. “You can get there much faster by flying, and I’ll follow on foot.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Sandor pulled open the door.

  Marek divested himself of robe and shirt and thrust them into the doctor’s hands. Releasing his wings, he caught Sabine about the waist, and before the astonished thrall could protest, threw himself through the door and into the air.

  A few moments later, they landed at the edge of the training field.

  “Gods,” gasped the doctor, clutching his chest and staggering. “I don’t ever want to do that again.”

  Collapsing his wings, Marek released him. Taking back his clothing, he pulled it on as he looked around. He didn’t see Andrei anywhere, only Vlad, standing in the center of the fiel, looking down at something in the thick frost-touched grass. In his right hand he held a small knife, its blade shining dully through the bloody film covering it.

  “Name of the gods, Vlad. What have you done?”

  Chapter 6

  Andrei lay facedown in the grass, his bare back slashed from shoulder blades to waist. As Marek pulled the scalpel from Vlad’s unresisting hand, the younger twin raised his head.

  “He’s releasing my wings, Brother. I don’t want to go to Vienna, and I’m not having some strange doctor cutting on me.” With a grunt of pain, he pushed himself into a sitting position.

  “Don’t get up.” With a hand to his shoulder, Sabine knelt beside Andrei.

  The boy lay back down.

  Leaning over him, Sabine examined the scalpel cuts. They were irregular and shallow, done by an inexpert and shaking hand. He looked up at Marek, forcing himself to sound optimistic.

  “More or less what a surgeon would do, if a trifle less sanitarily. Andrei, you should’ve waited for us.”

  He ran his hand along the wound’s edge. Andrei winced and bit his lip.

  “It’s done now, so we have to get his wings out.” He studied the cut, muttering, “Hm…going to have t
o make the incision deeper. Master? Help me, please.”

  Still holding the scalpel, Marek dropped to his knees.

  “Andrei, this is going to hurt.”

  Sabine took the scalpel from his master. As it sank into one cut and then the other, Andrei pressed his face into the frozen grass, biting at the thick blades to keep from crying out. Dropping the little knife, Sabine pulled the flesh apart, thrusting his hand inside and probing through layers of tissue.

  “Put your hand into the other incision and pull out the wing.”

  He looked over at Marek to be sure he’d seen how deep to reach. Giving the physician a doubtfilled look, Marek slid his fingers into the slashed flesh. He hesitated as they encountering a hard round coil like a piece of twisted rope. He glanced at the doctor.

  Sabine pulled out something long and thin as a gnarled tree branch, its natural color hidden under a thick coating of blood. Copying his action, Marek extracted an identical twisted thing from the other wing pouch.

  Andrei moaned, the sound muffled against the turf. His body trembled. Behind them, Vlad took a deep breath and shivered in sympathy.

  “Handle it gently. We don’t know how fragile they are.”

  The wing was now free, stretching across Andrei’ back. Its tip trailed into the grass, as grotesque and feeble as its mate. With a bloodied hand, Marek touched the narrow mast-bone. It was covered with delicate, downy hair slicked with blood. He could feel a sluggish, thready pulse flowing through it.

  “The bones need more blood,” the doctor stated. Thrusting his hand inside the wound again, he brought it out gore-coated and dripping. Andrei had fallen silent, as if now that his wings were free, the pain had stopped, also.

  Sabine rubbed the blood into the narrow mast.

  Marek copied his action, placing one hand under the wing while massaging it with the other blood-filled one.

  It jerked out of his hand as if escaping his touch, spattering blood on the front of his robe. Flapping feebly, the wing shuddered and spasmed, then drooped into the grass, lay still, and began to change. The mast-bone thickened, became heavier, its weight sinking it deeper into the grass. Two long spindly ribs projected from the main bone, growing to half its length, while thin, fleshy membranes stretched between them, connecting the ribs in a web.

  In a few moments two perfect wings, each equal in length to Andrei’ height, protruded from the bleeding incisions on the boy’s back.

  “Can I get up now?” Raising his head, he pushed himself onto one elbow.

  Without waiting for an answer, he got almost to his feet, then toppled forward, catching himself on hands and knees before he hit the ground. One wing tip drove into the grass, bowing dangerously.

  As the doctor reached out to catch his arm, Marek stopped him.

  “No,” he said, remembering his own Releasing. “He has to learn to do it alone. He won’t always have someone to help him.”

  Nodding, Sabine stepped back and the three waited as Andrei attempted to regain his feet while balancing the heavy weight on his back. It took three tries before he was upright.

  Swaying, arms thrust in front of him, he staggered triumphantly, then was almost knocked off his feet as a brisk breeze swooped under his left wing, causing it to lift.

  “Damn, Vlad!” Andrei managed a rueful laugh. “How did you learn to do this so easily? You didn’t have a bit of trouble when your wings released.”

  Marek shot Vlad an admonishing glance, but for once the other twin didn’t need to be warned.

  “Perhaps it’s because I’m older. Everyone knows younger brothers are slow learners.”

  “We’ll see about that!” Laughing again, Andrei straightened, even managing a couple of tentative flaps. “Care to race?”

  “Not just yet.” Dr. Sabine held up a hand. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel fine.” Andrei managed to look surprised at that declaration. “Shouldn’t I?”

  “That’s a good sign,” Sabine told Marek, then said to the boy, “Your wings need to be exercised, but not that strenuously. They have to recover from being released so roughly.”

  “I think he can handle an easy soar,” Vlad argued. He offered a hand to Andrei while pushing his shirt to his waist. “With his big brother helping a little.”

  “With both big brothers helping.” Wiping his hands on the grass, Marek pulled off his robe and shirt. He dropped them and flexed his shoulders.

  There was a momentary stinging as the tissue split and his wings released. He took a deep breath, enjoying the cold air’s splash against his bare body as Vlad copied his action. In a moment Andrei also shed his own shirt. As Marek held out his hand, Andrei caught both his and Vlad’s, holding tightly.

  “We’ll do two laps around the field, just high enough off the ground for you to get the feel of it.” Marek glanced at the doctor. “Will that be permissible, Sabine?”

  “It should do very well, my lord.”

  While the doctor watched, bracing himself against the heavy gusts of air created by Marek’s adult wings and Vlad’s younger ones, they rose off the ground with Andrei between them.

  It was nearing dawn when they returned to the castel.

  Reveling in the pleasure of being free of the earth, Andrei would’ve stayed there until the last moment. He soared briefly by himself, pulling his hands from theirs and gliding for several yards before his wings weakened and Marek and Vlad seized him again.

  As they circled the field together, Marek found comfort in the brief comradeship between his younger brothers and himself. Sailing above the ground in the frigid air with their hands in his had been revitalizing, momentarily helping him forget his responsibilities.

  He insisted they walk back to the castel. Like a worried nursemaid, the doctor trailed behind them, telling Andrei what to expect in the next day or two.

  “You’ve just had surgery, so you’re going to need bed-rest no matter how well you feel. That incision isn’t some little scratch. Vlad, will you donate the blood to rub on it and help it heal?”

  The boy nodded.

  “You’ll probably be very tired tomorrow night, may have a good many sore muscles. I’ll prescribe a lotion. Lamb’s fat, wintergreen, and olive butter, perhaps. One of the maids can massage it in. You’ll have to be naked for her to do it, but don’t take any liberties,” he ordered sternly.

  The twins exchanged glances and snickers.

  “Don’t worry, doctor,” Marek spoke up. “You won’t have to be concerned about that.”

  No, his thoughts contradicted his words. I’ll be the one to worry. It’s my responsibility to make certain, with everything else my little brothers have to go through, they’re not concerned with sexual urges as well. Premature aberatie or not.

  As he had promised, Marek gave orders for two of the vanjosi to re-seal the shutters of Andrei’ bedchamber. When that was done, he explained to Vlad he was being given his own room.

  To his surprise, the boy looked very pleased.

  “Brother, that’s wonderful.” Smoothing the bandage on his wrist where Sabine had taken his blood, he shot a sly glance toward Andrei. “Now, when I toss a female, her moans won’t keep Baby Brother awake.”

  “I must say that’s thoughtful of you, Vlad.” Andrei met that remark with an aloof air and a disdainful raising of brows that would’ve put the most proud ghidaj to shame. “In return, I’ll make certain my woman won’t be so loud she’ll keep you awake. After all, the inner walls of the castel are very thin.”

  As if sharing a secret, they both laughed, leaning against each other like the children they still were.

  “Let me warn you two.” Marek decided he’d better speak up. “If I hear the least suspicious sound coming from either room, I’ll investigate.”

  He tried to look stern, but the mischief on their young faces made it difficult.

  Are they teasing? Do I dare believe what they’re saying or is it just wishful thinking?

  “Neither of you is too old to be thra
shed, you know.”

  Vlad managed to look properly cowed though his mouth quirked slightly. Andrei simply remained silent. By the time Vlad, with two of the servants’ help, moved his clothing and books to the other chamber, they were both laughing again.

  Left alone with Andrei, Marek asked, “Will it shame you if I tuck you in?”

  His little brother shook his head. “I’m not too adult yet.”

  As Andrei pulled off his shirt and slid out of his trousers, kicking off his shoes and stockings, Marek was startled by how muscular the child’s body appeared.

  He didn’t look like this a few hours ago. The twins’ physical development was progressing at an alarming pace. At this rate, they’d have the bodies of adolescent males in a few months. How fast will it take their minds and emotions to follow their physical maturity?

  Lying on his side so the wounds on his back wouldn’t be irritated, Andrei settled himself.

  “Are you still young enough for me to kiss good morning, also?” Marek lifted the quilts, tucking them around the boy.

  There was a sleepy murmur, Andrei already in the enfolding embrace of slumber. Marek leaned forward and brushed back his hair, pressing a gentle kiss on his brother’s pale forehead. Blowing out the candles, he tiptoed out.

  Though the sun was now fully risen, it would be many hours before Marek slept.

  Andrei’s Releasing brought back memories of his own experience when he was a bare fourteen.

  Home on holiday, he’d been in the midst of his warrior’s training, sparring with his father’s weaponsmaster, when a violent slash of pain ripped through his shoulders. Stripping off his doublet, he’d wavered on his feet as his wings tore through the flesh of his back and then his shirt.

  Much more dramatic but just as painful as what Vlad had done for his brother, Marek thought.

  Everyone in the castel, from the lowest scullery maid to Dr. Lavelle, was joyous at the revelation. The only one unhappy over the master’s son approaching adulthood was his mother. Marek never understood Anastacza’s reaction, but it further strengthened his belief she didn’t love him, perhaps hadn’t wanted him. As if to counteract his wife’s attitude, János lavished affection on his eldest. In spite of his father’s attempts, however, Marek continued to feel an interloper in his own family, and his physical differences made it even worse.