He was still serenely confident, though not absolutely certain, that none of his enemies had yet located the all-important treasure. Had they managed to do that, they might even feel themselves strong enough to attack him.
He cared little whether they attacked him or not, but he doubted that they would. Except for the nosferatu called Vlad Tepes, they would be too much in awe of him to try to use it against him. Tepes worked on a different level than the others—but probably, after the little skirmish they had fought in Illinois, even he would be overawed.
The thought of Tepes made the Crocodile once more aware of a persistent sore spot on his shoulder, where several days ago the vampire’s spearpoint had torn away one of his lovely scales. At the time, Sobek had hardly noticed the small wound, but it was slow to heal, and sometimes itched and burned.
The longer the small wound bothered him, the greater a punishment he decided to impose upon the one who had inflicted it.
He, Sobek, was, after all, a god, and all the rest of them were only human. He could almost find it in his divine heart to pity them.
The morning’s second report from Dolly, still flat on her back in the hotel, snug but exhausted, gave convincing evidence that the monster’s destination was not in Billings, but somewhere farther west. Sobek had continued to follow the Yellowstone upstream right through the city. The monster’s course took him within half a mile of where his enemies were staying, but either he did not realize that they were there, or did not care.
Maule grunted. “If he passed through the city without being noticed, the water must be deep enough to hide his ugly shape. Or else he has used some cloaking magic.”
Maule and Joe Keogh agreed there was no point in rushing the pursuit. Sobek was still moving, and might continue to do so for days. At this hour breakfast, for those who ordinarily ate breakfast, seemed in order.
About an hour later, Dolly offered another mesmeric report: “ … wait a minute, here’s a change. Now he’s out of the water again … his magic carries him … but never mind, he’s not coming this way … .”
“Out of the water and going where?”
Dolly’s short frame tensed, and then relaxed. “He’s in another stream.”
Examining the latest map that Maule had spread on the bed beneath her groping fingers, he read the tiny print beside the fine blue line on which her pointing fingernail came down.
“Rock Creek,” he muttered. “Unmemorable and unoriginal as a name.”
“Maybe,” said Dolly, opening her eyes, “whoever named it was feeling tired.” She let her lids sag closed again.
Sensations of tiredness were of no interest to Uncle Matt. “Now, should he continue to ascend Rock Creek—where will that lead him?”
Andy said, looking at the map: “The Beartooth Mountains, it looks like, if he goes on another fifty miles or so. But before he gets that far …” The map showed a small dot, and a small name, close against the foothills of the Beartooth Range. “A town called Red Lodge.”
From its location, and the thread of winding highway that passed through, Red Lodge looked like it might do as a kind of rear summer entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Just west of Red Lodge, said the fine print on the map, the highway was closed during the winter months.
Maule now decided that he should take advantage of a hotel room’s availability to get some sleep.
“It is well to be rested when going into battle. I shall be up again well before sunset.” He took his spear into his room before he closed the door.
An alarm was sounding stridently in the darkened caverns of his mind. The vividness of the dream he had just experienced set what had just happened apart from natural vampire-sleep. But this time no hypnotic compulsion had been imposed upon him by anyone—or anything.
Someone was shaking him. “Uncle Matt? Wake up, Uncle Matt. You’re dreaming.”
Maule groaned and stirred. He was lying on his back in a bed in an early twenty-first-century hotel, and he recognized the face of Andy Keogh looming over him. It had been the Egyptian dream again, and as usual very vivid.
“You let out a yell that time, Uncle Matt. We thought there was something wrong.”
Again he had inhabited the body of the skilled and daring thief, had passively shared the rascal’s desperate and scrambling flight, running through strange streets, inhaling strange smells, under a sun and sky of glaring heat.
Again the blackly shadowed doorway loomed before the hounded fugitive. Maule had no doubt where he was—he had entered the local Temple of the Crocodile, a sprawling and rambling house raised to the glory of the great god Sobek. But this time, Maule noticed something new and different as he went running into the temple—there was an inscription over the doorway, and, in the way of dreams, he had no trouble reading the hieroglyphics. It was one of the traditional verses, in which many of that time and place found comfort:
You live again, you revive always, you have become young again, you are young again, and forever.
So it had seemed to Vlad Drakulya, as he remembered now, more than five centuries ago, on his own first coming forth from his own tomb.
Large statue-images, crocodile heads carved of pale limestone and pink granite looked down on the intruder with what seemed glaring disapproval.
Inside the Temple of the Crocodile it was very dark, by contrast with the sunbaked street. The fugitive had to pause, to give his sun-dazzled eyes a moment to start adapting to the gloom.
When his vision cleared, he saw that he had entered a part of the sprawling complex in which small images were made, to be sold later in the temple and on the street to Sobek’s devotees. As in every earlier version of the dream, he saw that six newly molded plaster images were present in this broad passage, three on one side, two on the other, on waist-high tables of stone.
But this time a new detail had been added. Maule got a fleeting look at the treasure he was carrying, when the thief took his loot briefly from his mouth, examined it momentarily, then put it back again. The stolen object had the appearance of a giant ruby, and this was obviously no ordinary gem. The weight of it was almost as startling as its beauty.
The small Stone lay so heavy in his dream hands that it pulled them down. While it lay in his palm, it sent forth one coruscating flash of light. A startling, knife-sharp flash of red that brightened the dark passage, a sudden sunrise within the little rock.
… and Maule recalled that he had seen that flash before, or something very like it, in recent waking life. And again there came that wavering in its appearance, a momentary reversal of light and dark. A glassy flash within the little rock, as if it were a tiny window to some new universe, and in that universe there rose a sun that had never before been seen by mortal eyes.
For the merest instant the burden in the dreamer’s palm took on the aspect of a red scarab, and for that instant gave him the sensation that it was scrambling in his hand, trying to get away. Tiny claws, like a child’s fingernails, were scraping at his palm … .
“ … and at that point the vision faded.” Maule had slept fully dressed, a soldier on the battlefield. Now he was sitting up in his hotel bed, recounting his latest dream to a ring of anxious faces. “And the Stone he carried in his mouth felt as cold as ice. What significance ought we to read in that? Ice, simple water ice, was one form of mineral that was never to be seen in ancient Egypt. Therefore it would have been much more rare in pharaoh’s court than diamonds.
“But this ice did not melt. By now, the thief’s tongue, the roof of his mouth, were numb with cold.
“He might have thought of trying to hide his loot by swallowing it, but it was simply too big to allow that. He might have tucked it into the simple loincloth that was his only garment, but he did not—maybe that had proved an unreliable pocket in the past.”
“What happened then?”
“The dream broke off at that point.”
Andy’s young face looked worn and tired, but at the moment its expression was of relief.
/>
“You were kind of yelling, Uncle Matt. It scared me. I didn’t know …”
Swinging his legs out of the hotel bed, Maule stood up. Even for one immune to fear, nightmares could be—unpleasant. “The monster may not yet realize I am immune to fear. I wonder if he is? Probably not.” The thought gave Uncle Matthew something to smile about.
Andy, watching, felt a shiver go down his spine.
An hour or so after noon, Dolly reported that the monster had stopped moving, though he was still submerged in Rock Creek.
“What is he doing?” Maule sounded as patiently implacable as ever.
“Just waiting … I think. I don’t know, he’s never acted like this since I’ve been following him. Is he hungry? Is he tired, angry? I don’t know, I can never tell.”
To land at the small airport nearest to Red Lodge would be sure to draw unwelcome attention. After a brief discussion it was decided that it would be better to leave the plane in Billings, with the pilot standing by to bring it on if and when Joe called for it. The drive from Billings to Red Lodge was a short one, with good highways all the way, and it seemed that it should only take about an hour.
With Maule’s approval, Joe Keogh also rented an additional vehicle, a smaller four-wheel-drive, to complement the SUV, and give the party greater maneuverability.
It was John Southerland, starting to gather his few belongings, preparing to resume the chase, who asked wearily: “How long can this go on?”
Maule’s response was quick, and flinty. “Until Sobek is dead—or I am.”
It was midafternoon, and the five of them were checking out of the hotel. Dolly’s latest report, obtained just before she left her room, told them that Sobek had still not moved.
“You know,” she said at last, “I still don’t understand a thing about this alchemy. I never heard of it until Gramp started on this craziness.”
Maule sighed. “I admit I have some knowledge of its theories and its jargon. One of the fruits of a misspent youth.”
“Then just what is this Philosopher’s Stone?”
Joe Keogh put in: “I second the question. Trying to turn lead into gold—isn’t that the game?”
“Indeed it is. Though the devotees of alchemy will tell you that such materialistic achievements are beside the point, mere details in their search for spiritual enlightenment.”
“Learning to make gold out of lead sounds like just the kind of enlightenment that would appeal to most people.”
“Indeed it is, Joseph. Wealth is an addictive drug, and gold can bring on the obsession in its most virulent form.”
Maule was grimly silent for a moment. “I can personally vouch for one thing—our great enemy believes very strongly in the treasure, its power and reality. Sobek is utterly determined to have the Stone.”
Joe sounded weary. “So, he believes in it. Trouble is, we know he’s crazy. But—all right, maybe he knows more about the subject than we do—it’d be hard to know any less. And that’s another problem: almost everything we think we know comes from this collective dream that some of us keep having.”
“Our knowledge of the statues,” Maule pointed out, “came also from the dream, and they have turned out to be real.”
“Yeah. Well, anything or anybody that survived from ancient Egypt …” Joe’s voice trailed off as a thought struck him. “Were there nosferatu back in those days?”
Uncle Matt mulled the question over for a moment before answering. “I shall tell you a true and verifiable story, and when you have heard it, you may judge that matter for yourself.
“In 1952, archaeologists digging beneath an unfinished pyramid at Saqqara uncovered the tomb of the Third Dynasty king, Horus Sekhemkhet.
“Like the tombs of many other pharaohs, the burial chamber had been doubly and triply sealed. But unlike almost all the others, the seals were still unbroken after three thousand years. So it was with the sarcophagus itself. The investigators glowed with anticipation—for once the less academic looters had not been before them. But when the sarcophagus was opened, it proved to be empty—as empty as my own tomb is at the moment.”
~ 20 ~
Dickon might be good at hiding, but there were certain things that Connie was very good at too. And one of them was finding what had been hidden.
When Connie knocked on Dickon’s door, there was at first no answer. But she persisted. Kept knocking, right hand, left hand, using both sets of little knuckles. She walked back and forth on the little wooden porch, tried without success to peer in through the little window, where she tapped briskly on the glass.
Well over two hundred years had passed since she had taken part in anything like an actual battle, and she had done the best she could to dress herself for the occasion, borrowing clothes in a way that would have upset the righteous Mr. Maule if he had known about it. Even so, the best Connie had been able to come up with was a set of almost-military camouflage fatigues, complete with a soft, matching hat. She thought the boots were truly ugly, but what else could one do? Anyway, the state of women’s fashion in 2001 was deplorable, and probably no one would think her appearance especially odd.
The small cabin was solidly built of logs, and looked to be some decades old. The slanted roof looked solid too, but the place had a generally uninhabited appearance. No real road came near its door, only a kind of double track whose rank growth of weeds showed how little traffic passed this way. Not many people would ever set eyes on this little, abandoned-looking house, and none who did would have any reason to believe that it contained anything worth stealing.
Even on the brightest days, the sun would have little to do with Dickon’s house. It nestled in a mixed grove of evergreens and aspens, trees pressing close on every side, so that you might walk by within a hundred feet of the little building and never see it.
Now she was listening, her ear pressed against the door. The nearby creek kept up its steady, tumbling roar, but the inside of the cabin was quiet as the grave. Indeed, Connie had known some graves that were practically pandemonium compared to this.
In another moment, giving way to restless impatience, she had started walking completely around the cabin. There could be no more than two rooms inside at the most, she thought. In the rear wall was a back door, tightly closed, narrow and solid, no more inviting than the door in front. Twenty yards or so behind the cabin, almost lost among trees, stood a tiny building that must be, or have been, the outhouse. Connie shuddered delicately—eat and eliminate, eat and eliminate, the lives of breathers were so messy!
But Maule had entrusted her with important business, and she would not allow herself to be distracted. The cabin windows were all small, and each was solidly covered, inside its dusty but intact glass, with a plain interior curtain. It was practically impossible for anyone outside to see in. None of the windows were open in the summery warmth—not that Connie, lacking an invitation, would have been able to sneak in anyway.
For some time now, for longer than she could clearly remember, she had been hearing rumors, in certain circles where she moved and the elegant Mr. Maule did not, that Dickon owned some kind of retreat, perhaps better called a hideout, somewhere in the northern Rockies. She hadn’t wanted to admit to Maule that she knew that much—he would be very angry to learn that she had been withholding any information.
But when she checked out the rumor, it proved to be correct.
For Dickon, the sight and sound of Connie in broad daylight, dancing about on nervous feet outside his door, trilling her usual cheery nonsense at him, came as a devastating shock.
Less than half an hour to go to sunset, and he had just awakened from a troubled daylight sleep.
Connie was obviously not in the least troubled by any doubts that he might not be here. After walking completely around his house she started calling to him, in an old and melodious language, saying she knew very well he was inside. “You might as well come to the door, dear Dickie, and speak to me as if you were civilized.”
&nb
sp; Muttering obscenities in several languages, realizing it was hopeless to pretend he was not home, Dickon gave up and called an answer to her through the door.
Before he would talk of anything else, he extracted a promise that she would not tell Maule or Sobek where he was.
She gave the pledge so lightly and cheerfully that he could have no hope at all that she might mean it. “You could invite me in, you know. I could bring in one or two of these rabbits or squirrels that seem to be everywhere out here, and we could have a drink. You have nothing to worry about, dear Dickon. Why should I want to harm you?”
“I don’t know! Why does anyone want to harm anyone? Please go away.”
“If you won’t let me in, then I must continue to talk to you through the door.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Why?”
“Because I have an important question for you.”
Dickon got his in first. “Does Vlad Tepes know where I am?”
“No, I’m sure he doesn’t. He was asking me if I knew.”
“Please, Constanzia, please! You must not tell him!” Dickon raved on, assuring Connie that he was willing to do anything, anything, to square himself with Dracula. “Though of course, after what has happened, that cannot be possible.”
“Oh, I don’t know. He said that when I found you, I should tell you that all he wanted from you was information. Whatever harm you may have done has been forgiven.”
Dickon could not believe that for a moment. “Whatever has befallen his young—young nephew—it is not my fault!” Dickon proclaimed his innocence with righteous fervor—by now he had talked himself into believing he was innocent.
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