A Cautionary Tale for Young Vampires

by G. D. Falksen

  It was all rather absurd, especially the part about Varanus’s children. Granted, it would please her for Alistair—that was to say Friedrich—to take the Varanus name, but she very much doubted that he would agree to it. And though at first glance such a marriage might seem advantageous—both in terms of status and in the blossoming of goodwill with their English relations—Varanus had much higher hopes for her son’s eventual wife than the likes of the Blackmoor daughters. Elizabeth was a viper, just like her mother. Varanus had no doubt about that. And as for Mary.… Well, Varanus had not yet made up her mind about Cousin Mary. She was either a frivolous bauble or a cunning deceiver, and neither much pleased Varanus.

  Of course, the thought of such unsuitable matches always led Varanus to wonder when her son would finally get around to actually marrying someone. After all, he was already twenty-five, nearly ten years older than she had been when she had him. Time was gradually running out, and if Friedrich thought that he could get away with not giving her grandchildren in due course, he was much mistaken.

  * * * *

  As the end of September neared, Varanus and Ekaterine took it upon themselves to explore the full length and breadth of Blackmoor—or as near to it as they could reckon—from house to town, high places to low, from dry hills to frigid marshes. In Varanus’s estimation, there proved to be an unexpected number of caves for such a place, but they were there all the same. Every other hill, it seemed, was a stony tor, and many of these had their little hollows, holes, or grottoes. Some ended quickly, but others dropped away into deep pits that vanished almost straight down into the earth.

  It soon became apparent that Ekaterine had fixated upon the story she had been told about tunnels hidden beneath the moor, though Varanus could not understand why she would give such tales credence or indeed care about such things one way or the other. Perhaps being denied exploration of the priory crypts had roused her curiosity, or perhaps it was merely a manifestation of sheer boredom. But whatever the reason, she insisted upon bringing a lantern with her whenever the two of them went for a walk. Though Varanus thought it odd, she did admit that it was of great use in inspecting the caves and in getting about in the dark when their wandering kept them about after sundown—which happened regularly, much to Cousin Maud’s displeasure at dinner.

  One day they took the long trek to the standing stones beyond the priory. Varanus had always meant to visit the place, ever since Korbinian had pointed it out almost two weeks earlier, but each time she considered a walk in that direction, something else on the moor always managed to draw her attention from it. In truth, she was astounded by the number of things she found to be of interest in that dull expanse. There was more to the moorland than she had granted upon her first witness.

  The hill that held the standing stones was, Varanus gauged, the tallest point in Blackmoor. It was something of a climb, and though Varanus felt little exhaustion thanks to her condition, her short stature conspired with the height of the hill to require some significant exertion. But, reaching the top, she caught sight of a view that made the march all worthwhile. From that vantage point, she took a minute to gaze upon the surrounding moor.

  “What a sight,” Ekaterine said. “Truly marvelous. And from so small a hill as well.”

  Varanus looked at her, eyebrow raised.

  “We cannot all have a homeland rich with mountains,” she said. “The rest of us must make do as we can.”

  “It’s a very nice hill,” Ekaterine said. Then something caught her eye and she pointed. “Oh look! I can see the manor from here!”

  “Indeed,” Varanus said. “And the priory ruins, the town, most of the churches, and all the other menhirs we’ve seen scattered about the land.” She turned in place to regard the view in all directions. “Absolutely all of them, in fact. Remarkable.”

  Remarkable indeed, she thought. There had been other incidents of standing stones across the moor—similar in character to the Breton menhirs she had seen as a child—but they had all been on their own, or sometimes in pairs or triplets. But here, there were no less than five great stones and many smaller ones, all arranged in a circle surrounding a barrow mound at the top of the hill.

  But what was more curious, she realized, was that from her vantage point beside the largest stone, she could see most of the other significant points upon the moor laid out in a series of lines. Stone lined with stone, but it was more than just that. As Varanus saw clearly, the priory, the country church, and Blackmoor Manor all sat in line with one another, leading to the hilltop. Even the town had its place, sitting, it seemed, about equal distance from both priory and manor house.

  “I do believe that Blackmoor is having a bit of fun at our expense,” Varanus said.

  She pointed out her observation to Ekaterine, who laughed to see it.

  “I think you are right,” Ekaterine said. “Some ancient person has laid down a plan for some greater purpose, and the English have followed it exactly.”

  “And it all comes to here,” Varanus said. She turned and looked at the barrow behind her. “Here, to this…burial place it seems. Very interesting.”

  She saw Korbinian standing beside the entrance to the barrow. His face was lit up in a mischievous grin, as it often was when he was about to remind her of something she had already noted and ignored.

  “That is the interesting thing,” he said. “It is of no surprise to see standing stones in such a place. I have seen others like them before, some even in Fuchsburg. There are a great many here for a single place, this is true, but.…” His grin became a smirk. “What we both wonder, liebchen, is why the work of later men—the house, the cloister, the town—were built in accordance with this ancient plan. And a most curious problem it is.”

  Varanus smiled. He was right: it was precisely the thought on her mind. Why would the men who settled Blackmoor, the Christian monks who built the priory, why would they build in accordance with pagan design? No, rather they should shun the place or at least defy it. But here stood the proof. Everything in Blackmoor built by Christian men was made to conform to the design that came before them.

  “Ekaterine,” Varanus said, “bring your lantern. Let us investigate this burial place. I rather suspect it is of greater significance than we believe.”

  Ekaterine grinned and held the lantern high as she led the way into the barrow. The doorway led first into a tunnel constructed of tall slabs of rock placed side-by-side and topped by pieces of a similar construction. The size of the tunnel surprised Varanus—indeed, so had the size of the door before it—for she and Ekaterine could easily walk two abreast, and the ceiling was at least six feet high. Anything in that area of height was, of course, rather foreign to Varanus, but she was quite certain that few people living when the barrow had been constructed would have stood anywhere near that tall. The barrow builders had evidently assembled a structure larger than they required for their purposes, unless the ancient Blackmoorites had been of exceptional size and width.… The notion was so absurd that Varanus almost laughed aloud.

  It was slow going, for the walls were covered in strange carvings that both fascinated and bewildered the two of them. Most of the scrawl was indecipherable, no matter how hard Varanus tried. There were intricate patterns formed of lines and spirals, interwoven knots, and emblems signifying men, wolves, horses, and various other beasts. It seemed likely that the images told a story, but what it was Varanus did not know. The only people who could answer that question had died long before her ancestors had even set foot in England.

  After a distance of some dozen feet, the tunnel ended in a broad circular chamber. The stone slabs that composed the walls were covered in the strange pre-Saxon markings, just like those in the corridor.

  “Where are the bodies?” Ekaterine asked, after a moment’s reflection. She turned from left to right, shining the lantern around in case she had missed sight of them. “I will be honest with you, Doctor; I had expected to see more dead people.”

  Var
anus laughed a little, but stopped quickly when she heard how her voice echoed in the chamber. It was a strange and unnerving thing, for the sound should not have reverberated so. The room was of decent size, but it was hardly large enough to warrant echoes.

  “I believe the dead are interred behind the walls,” she said, placing her hand against one of the slabs. “It seems the most logical place for them.”

  “To be sure, it does,” Ekaterine agreed. “Silly of me; I should have thought of that.”

  Ekaterine took a few steps forward, looking around in an effort to see in the dim light. For Varanus it was much easier, for where the lamplight touched, she could see nearly as clear as day. She began circling the room along the side, studying the inscriptions in detail. Here and there she made out the figures of men and women, warriors, perhaps, for they were all proud and upright. Some were shown hunting animals like deer. And there were also a great many images of wolves, many depicted living alongside the men—dogs perhaps, Varanus mused—and others shown hunting both man and beast alike.

  Behind her, Ekaterine continued her search into the center of the room, speaking with great excitement about how “marvelous a thing” their little expedition was proving to be. It rather amused Varanus to hear Ekaterine talk so, speaking of England as if it were some strange and exotic land of the Orient.

  Suddenly, Ekaterine fell silent. Varanus immediately turned in place to see what was the matter.

  “And that,” Ekaterine said, “is a hole in the ground.”

  Ekaterine had stopped at the edge of a large, circular pit. She slowly drew back a step and knelt for a better look. It seemed she had been just on the verge of falling in when she had thankfully spotted it.

  Varanus approached and knelt beside her, gazing down into the darkness as Ekaterine held the lantern over the pit.

  “That is indeed a hole,” Varanus said. “And what is more, it is also most definitely in the ground.”

  “I wonder where it goes,” Ekaterine said.

  She lowered the lantern as far down into the hole as she could reach. The light shone against the broad walls, revealing a pit lined with small stones in the manner of a well. There was no visible bottom. The light faded to shadow before any could be seen.

  “Into darkness, it would seem,” Varanus said. “A pit in the heart of a burial chamber? What ever could its purpose be?”

  “It could be for human sacrifices,” she heard Korbinian reply.

  Looking up, she saw him crouched on the opposite side of the pit. She gave him a disapproving look.

  Human sacrifices, she thought. The idea.

  “Nonsense,” Korbinian said. “You know better than that, liebchen. The ancient Celts had such practices. The Romans have told us so. Could it not be that here, in this place meant to house the great and mighty in death, slaves or servants were cast into this pit to appease the gods, so that their masters might be eased along their way into the afterlife? It sounds ghoulishly plausible to me.”

  He did have a point there, thought Varanus, who was a little unnerved to think on it. Not terribly unnerved, but a little and enough. The thought of human sacrifice brought back memories of that night in France when her son had nearly been offered up in sacrifice to—

  “I wonder how deep it is,” Ekaterine said, startling Varanus from the dark thoughts that had come to claim her.

  “Oh, um.…” Varanus began.

  She took a deep breath, as much from habit as from its necessity for speaking. Though she no longer had need of it, breathing always calmed her and cleared her thoughts.

  “Rather deep, I should think,” she said to Ekaterine. “A pity we have no stone to throw in. I suppose we ought to go outside and find one.”

  Ekaterine suddenly gasped as an idea took her.

  “We could drop the lantern down there!” she exclaimed.

  “What?” Varanus asked.

  “If we drop the lantern, we shall see it as it falls,” Ekaterine explained. “We may gauge by sight how deep the pit is, rather than by sound alone, and also we shall see what is at the bottom.”

  Across the pit, Korbinian said, “A well-reasoned idea.”

  And indeed it was, Varanus acknowledged. However.…

  “A very good idea, Ekaterine,” Varanus said, “with one slight problem. If we drop the lantern, we will have no more light.”

  “That is a very small problem,” Ekaterine replied. “We simply drop the lantern, watch it fall, and then leave. There is still daylight outside, so we can easily find our way back.”

  Varanus almost laughed.

  “It is a model plan,” she said.

  “I know,” Ekaterine replied smugly. “Are you ready?”

  “I maintain that this is a dreadful idea,” Varanus said. After an appropriate pause, she added, “Well, carry on with it.”

  Ekaterine grinned. She lifted the lantern again and released it. It dropped into the pit like a burning ember tumbling away into the darkness. The light painted the walls in a bright ring that slipped down and down, fifty feet or more, until the lantern finally struck stone. It shattered, spilling its oil, which then ignited and began to burn furiously.

  In the light of the flame, Varanus saw a pile of bones at the bottom of the pit. It seemed that Korbinian was right.

  “I see bones,” Ekaterine said.

  “Yes,” Varanus agreed. “A room full of bones, to my eyes. There is more down there than the bottom of a well. A tunnel at least, if not a chamber.”

  “A place of sacrifice, do you think?” Ekaterine asked. “Or…do you suppose they interred people down there?”

  “It seems rather disrespectful to drop one’s dead into a pit of other corpses,” Varanus said. “I suspect that people were sacrificed here on the occasion of another’s burial. Servants perhaps, or a chieftain’s concubines.”

  “How dreadful,” Ekaterine said. She looked down into the pit again and sighed. “Such a waste of precious life…and now we’ve set their remains on fire.”

  “I daresay they will forgive us for it,” Varanus said. “There shall be no vengeful spirits to haunt us for our accidental transgression. After all, had we not dropped the lantern, those bones would still be lost in the darkness. We have brought them into the light. I am certain their ghosts would be most pleased for that.”

  Ekaterine considered this for a little while before she nodded and said, “You know, I keep being promised ghosts, and yet they never materialize. I’m beginning to feel a little disappointed.”

  “Still waiting to be excited by your dead abbot?” Varanus asked.

  “Well, Lord knows Cousin Maud is not doing it,” Ekaterine replied.

  Together they laughed at this. Then Varanus stood, careful to keep her balance on the edge of the pit as she offered Ekaterine a hand up.

  “Come along,” she said, “we must be on our way back. It will be nightfall soon.”

  “What of it?” Ekaterine asked. “You don’t wish to be on the moor at night?”

  They began walking back toward the entrance of the barrow.

  “Normally I wouldn’t mind,” Varanus said, “but someone seems to have dropped our lantern down a well.”

  “That was silly of her,” Ekaterine said.

  * * * *

  They walked back along the priory route, talking and laughing in the fading sunlight. It would be dark by the time they reached the manor, but only just. And they might be late for dinner, though that concerned Varanus but little. She would enjoy the peace and quiet of a private meal with Ekaterine far more than the pretense of a formal dinner.

  As they passed the priory, Varanus smelled the scent of a stranger approaching from the other side of the ruins. She put a hand on Ekaterine’s arm and nodded to indicate what she had detected. Ekaterine nodded back, and they continued along.

  Just past the priory, Varanus spotted the source of the smell. She saw an aging man in worn clothes walking along in their general direction, leading a dog behind him. At the si
ght of them, the man raised his hand in greeting and hurried along to meet them.

  “Mister Granger!” Ekaterine exclaimed, smiling in delight as the man reached them. “Why hello there.”

  The man quickly doffed his cap and, bowing his head, replied, “Evenin’ to ya, Miss. I’ve no mean to trouble ya, only thought I’d offer my regards. Don’t let me keep ya.”

  “Nonsense, Mister Granger,” Ekaterine said. “Nonsense. May I introduce my sister-in-law, the Lady Shashavani?”

  “An ’onor, Yer Ladyship,” the man said, bowing his head to Varanus.

  Varanus noted the use of a lesser honorific, but she didn’t mind. Let the country fellow think her a countess or something. It was far better than being called “Your Highness” by mistake, or trying to explain that in Russia a princess was much the same as a duchess in England.

  “And this is Mister Silas Granger,” Ekaterine said. “A local gentleman.”

  “’Ardly a gentleman,” Silas protested, his cheeks turning a little red. “No, I’m only a man o’ the moor.”

  “This is the man who told me that wonderful ghost story about the priory,” Ekaterine said.

  “Ah, yes, of course,” Varanus said. “A pleasure, Mister Granger. Where are you bound? Or were you merely examining the ruins?”

  “No,” Silas replied. “I were bound for town. I mean to ’ave supper there. I do on occasion, when the moor becomes too lonesome a place.”

  “That is splendid,” Ekaterine said. “You must walk with us, at least as far as the road.”

  “Or all the way to the manor,” Varanus said. “I could introduce you to my cousin, Lord Blackmoor. I think he would be delighted to meet you. Perhaps you could join us all for dinner.”