Adversary Cycle 01 - The Keep

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Are you . . ." A question arose that Cuza had been burning to ask from the start but had dared not; now he could contain himself no longer. "Are you of the undead?"

  Again the smile, cold, almost mocking. "Undead? Nosferatu? Moroi? Perhaps."

  "But how did you—?"

  Molasar slashed a hand through the air. "Enough! Enough of your bothersome questions! I care not for your idle curiosity. I care not for you but that you are a countryman of mine and there are invaders in the land. Why are you with them? Do you betray Wallachia?"

  "No!" Cuza felt the fear that had been washed away in the excitement of contact creep back into him as he saw Molasar's expression grow fierce. "They brought me here against my will!"

  "Why?" The word was a jabbing knife.

  "They thought I could find out what was killing the soldiers. And I guess I have . . . haven't I?"

  "Yes. You have." Molasar underwent another mercurial shift of mood, smiling again. "I need them to restore my strength after my long repose. I will need them all before I am again at the peak of my powers."

  "But you mustn't!" Cuza blurted without thinking.

  Molasar flared again. "Never say to me what I must or must not do in my home! And never when invaders have taken it over! I saw to it that no Turk ever set foot in this pass while I was about, and now I am awakened to find my keep overrun with Germans!"

  He was in a foaming rage, walking back and forth, swinging his fists wildly about to punctuate his words.

  Cuza took the opportunity to lift the top off the box to his right and remove the fragment of broken mirror Magda had given him earlier in the day. As Molasar stormed about, lost in a rage, Cuza held up the mirror and tried to catch Molasar's reflection in it. He could glance to his left and see Molasar by the stack of books on the corner of the table, but when he looked in the mirror he could see only the books.

  Molasar cast no reflection!

  Suddenly, the mirror was snatched from Cuza's hand.

  "Still curious?" He held up the mirror and looked into it. "Yes. The tales are true—I cast no reflection. Long ago I did." His eyes clouded for an instant. "But no more. What else have you in that box?"

  "Garlic." Cuza reached under the cover and pulled out a clove. "It is said to ward away the undead."

  Molasar held out his palm. Black curly hair grew at its center.

  "Give it to me." When Cuza complied, Molasar put the clove up to his mouth and took a bite, then tossed the rest into a corner. "I love garlic."

  "And silver?" He pulled out a silver locket that Magda had left him.

  Molasar did not hesitate to take it and rub it between his palms. "I could not very well have been a boyar if I had feared silver!" He seemed to be enjoying himself now.

  “And this," Cuza said, reaching for the last item in the box, "is supposed to be the most potent of vampire banes." He pulled out the cross Captain Woermann had lent Magda.

  With a sound that was part gasp and part growl, Molasar stepped away and averted his eyes. "Put it away!"

  "It affects you?" Cuza was stunned. A heaviness grew in his chest as he watched Molasar cringe. "But why should it? How—?"

  "PUT IT AWAY!"

  Cuza did so immediately, bulging the sides of the cardboard box as he pressed the lid down as tightly as he could over the offending object.

  Molasar all but leaped upon him, baring his teeth and hissing his words through them. "I thought I might find an ally in you against the outlanders, but I see you are no different!"

  "I want to see them gone, too!" Cuza said, terrified, pressing himself back into the meager cushioning of his wheelchair. "More than you!"

  "If that were true, you would never have brought that abomination into this room! And you would never have exposed it to me!"

  "But I didn't know! It could have been another false folk tale like the garlic and the silver!" He had to convince him!

  Molasar paused. "Perhaps." He whirled and stalked toward the darkness, his anger cooled, but minimally. "But I have doubts about you, Crippled One."

  "Don't go! Please!"

  Molasar stepped into the waiting dark and turned toward Cuza as it enveloped him. He said nothing.

  "I'm on your side, Molasar!" Cuza cried. He couldn't leave now—not when there were so many unanswered questions! "Please believe me!"

  Only pinpoint glints of light off the surfaces of Molasar's eyes remained. The rest of him had been swallowed up. Suddenly, a hand jabbed out of the blackness, pointing a finger at Cuza.

  "I will watch you, Crippled One. And if I see you are to be trusted, I will speak with you another time. But if you betray our people, I shall end your days."

  The hand disappeared. Then the eyes. But the words remained, hanging in the air. The darkness gradually receded, seeping back into the walls. Soon all was as it had been. The partially eaten clove of garlic on the floor in the corner was the only evidence of Molasar's visit.

  For a long while, Cuza did not move. Then he noticed how thick his tongue was in his mouth, and drier than usual. He picked up the cup of water and sipped; a mechanical exercise requiring no conscious thought. He swallowed with the usual difficulty, then reached for the box to his right. His hand rested on the lid awhile before lifting it. His numbed mind balked at facing what was within, but he knew he eventually must. Compressing his strictured mouth into a short, grim line, he lifted the lid, removed the cross, and laid it before him on the tabletop.

  Such a little thing. Silver. Some ornate work at the ends of the upright and the crosspiece. No corpse affixed to it. Just a cross. If nothing else, a symbol of man's inhumanity to man.

  From the millennia-old traditions and learning of his own faith that was so much a part of his daily life and culture, Cuza had always looked upon the wearing of crosses as a rather barbaric custom, a sure sign of immaturity in a religion. But then, Christianity was a relatively young offshoot of Judaism. It needed time. What had Molasar called the cross? An "abomination." No, it was not that; at least not to Cuza. Grotesque, yes, but never an abomination.

  But now it took on new meaning, as did so many other things. The walls seemed to press in on him as he stared at the little cross, allowing it to become the focus of his attention. Crosses were so like the banes used by primitives to ward off evil spirits. Eastern Europeans, especially the Gypsies, had countless banes, from garlic to icons. He had lumped the cross in with the rest, seeing no reason why it should deserve more consideration.

  Yet Molasar had been repulsed by the cross . . . could not even bear to look at it. Tradition gave it power over demons and vampires because it was supposedly the symbol of the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Cuza had always told himself that if the undead did exist and the cross did have power over them, it was because of the innate faith of the person holding the object, not the object itself.

  Yet he had just proved himself wrong.

  Molasar was evil. That was given: Any entity that leaves a trail of corpses in order to continue its own existence is inherently evil. And when Cuza had held up the cross, Molasar had shrunk away. Cuza had no belief in the power of the cross, yet it had power over Molasar.

  So it must be the cross itself which had the power, not its bearer.

  His hands shook. He felt dizzy and lightheaded as his mind ran over all the implications. They were shattering.

  NINETEEN

  The Keep

  Thursday, 1 May

  0640 hours

  Two nights in a row without a death. Woermann found his mood edging into a sort of cautious jubilance as he buckled on his belt. He had actually slept last night, soundly and long, and was so much the better for it this morning.

  The keep was no brighter or cheerier. That indefinable sense of malignant presence still lurked in the shadows. No, it was he who had changed. For some reason he now felt there might be a real chance of his getting back to his home in Rathenow alive. For a while he had seriously come to doubt the possibility. But with the hearty breakfas
t he had eaten in his room perking through his intestines, and the knowledge that the men under his command numbered the same this morning as they had last night, all things seemed possible—perhaps even the departure of Erich Kaempffer and his uniformed hoodlums.

  Even the painting failed to bother him this morning. The shadow to the left of the window still looked like a gibbeted corpse, but it no longer disturbed him as it had when Kaempffer had first pointed it out.

  He descended the watchtower stairs and reached the first level in time to find Kaempffer approaching the professor's rooms from the courtyard, looking more supremely confident than usual, and with as little reason as ever.

  "Good morning, dear Major!" Woermann called heartily, feeling he could forgo any overt venting of spleen this morning, considering the imminence of Kaempffer's departure. But a veiled jab was always in order. "I see we have the same idea: You've come to express your deepest thanks to Professor Cuza for the German lives he has saved again!"

  "There's no evidence of his having done a damned thing!" Kaempffer said, his jauntiness disappearing in a snarl. "Even he makes no claim!"

  "But the timing of the end of the murders with his arrival is rather suggestive of some cause-effect relationship, don't you think?"

  "Coincidence! Nothing more!"

  "Then why are you here?"

  Kaempffer faltered for an instant. "To interrogate the Jew about what he has learned from the books, of course. "

  "Of course."

  They entered the outer room, Kaempffer first. They found Cuza kneeling on the floor on his spread-out bedroll. He was not praying. He was trying to hoist himself back into the wheelchair. After the briefest glance in their direction as they walked in, he returned his full concentration to the task.

  Woermann's initial impulse was to help the man. Cuza's hands appeared useless for gripping and his muscles seemed too weak to pull him up even if the hands had been normal. But he had asked for no aid, either with his eyes or with his voice. It was obviously a matter of pride for him to pull himself up into the chair unassisted. Woermann realized that beyond his daughter, the crippled man had little left in which to take any pride. He would not rob him of this small accomplishment.

  Cuza seemed to know what he was doing. As Woermann watched from Kaempffer's side—he was sure the major was enjoying the spectacle—he could see that Cuza had braced the back of the wheelchair against the wall beside the fireplace, could see the pain on his face as he strained his weakened muscles to pull himself up, forcing his frozen joints to bend. Finally, with a groan that broke out beads of perspiration on his face, Cuza slid up onto the seat and slumped on his side, hanging over the armrest, panting and sweating. He still had to slide up a little farther and turn over fully onto his buttocks before he was completely in the chair, but the worst part was over.

  "What do you want of me?" he said when he had caught his breath.

  Gone was that staid, overly polite manner that had typified his behavior since his arrival in the keep; gone, too, was the constant referral to them as "gentlemen." At the moment there appeared to be too much pain, too much exhaustion to cope with to allow him the luxury of sarcasm.

  "What did you learn last night, Jew?" Kaempffer said.

  Cuza heaved himself over onto his buttocks and leaned wearily against the back of the chair. He closed his eyes a moment, then reopened them, squinting at Kaempffer. He appeared to be almost blind without his glasses.

  "Not much more. But there is evidence that the keep was built by a fifteenth-century boyar who was a contemporary of Vlad Tepes."

  "Is that all? Two days of study and that is all?"

  "One day, Major," the professor said, and Woermann sensed some of the old spark edging into the reply. "One day and two nights. That's not a long time when the reference materials are not in one's native tongue. "

  "I did not ask for excuses, Jew! I want results!"

  "And have you got them?" The answer seemed important to Cuza.

  Kaempffer straightened his shoulders and pulled himself up to his full height as he replied. "There have been two consecutive nights without a death, but I don't believe you have had anything to do with that." He rotated the upper half of his body and gave Woermann a haughty look. "It seems I have accomplished my mission here. But just for good measure, I'll stay one more night before continuing on my way."

  "Ah! Another night of your company!" Woermann said, feeling his spirits soar. "Our cup runneth over!" He could put up with anything for one more night—even Kaempffer.

  "I see no need for you to remain here even that long, Herr Major," Cuza said, visibly brightening. "I'm sure other countries have much greater need of your services. "

  Kaempffer's upper lip curled into a smile. "I shan't be leaving your beloved country, Jew. I go to Ploiesti from here."

  "Ploiesti? Why Ploiesti?"

  "You'll learn soon enough." He turned to Woermann. "I shall be ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning. "

  "I shall personally hold the gate open for you."

  Kaempffer shot him an angry look, then strode from the room. Woermann watched him go. He sensed that nothing had been solved, that the killings had stopped of their own accord, and that they could begin again tonight, tomorrow night, or the next. It was only a brief hiatus they were enjoying, a moratorium; they had learned nothing, accomplished nothing. But he had not voiced his doubts to Kaempffer. He wanted the major out of the keep as much as the major wanted to be out.

  "What did he mean about Ploiesti?" Cuza asked from behind him.

  "You don't want to know." He looked from Cuza's ravaged, troubled face to the table. The silver cross his daughter had borrowed yesterday lay there next to the professor's spectacles.

  "Please tell me, Captain. Why is that man going to Ploiesti?"

  Woermann ignored the question. The professor had enough problems. Telling him that the Romanian equivalent of Auschwitz was in the offing would do him no good.

  "You may visit your daughter today if you wish. But you must go to her. She cannot come in."

  He reached over and picked up the cross. "Did you find this useful in any way?"

  Cuza glanced at the silver object for only an instant, then looked sharply away. "No. Not at all."

  "Shall I take it back?"

  "What? No-no! It still might come in handy. Leave it right there."

  The sudden intensity in Cuza's voice struck Woermann. The man seemed subtly changed since yesterday, less sure of himself. Woermann could not put his finger on it, but it was there.

  He tossed the cross onto the table and turned away. He had too many other things on his mind to worry about what was troubling the professor. If indeed Kaempffer were leaving, Woermann would have to decide what his next move would be. To stay or to go? One thing was certain: He now would have to arrange for shipment of the corpses back to Germany. They had waited long enough. At least with Kaempffer out of his hair he would be able to think straight again.

  Preoccupied with his own concerns, he left the professor without saying good-bye. As he closed the door behind him, he noticed that Cuza had rolled his chair up to the table and fixed his spectacles over his eyes. He sat there holding the cross in his hand, staring at it.

  At least he was alive.

  Magda waited impatiently while one of the gate sentries went to get Papa. They had already kept her waiting a good hour before they opened the gates. She had rushed over at first light but they had ignored her pounding. A sleepless night had left her irritable and exhausted. But at least he was alive.

  Her eyes roamed the courtyard. All quiet. Piles of rubble from the dismantling work cluttered the rear, but no one was working now. All at breakfast, no doubt. What was taking so long? They should have let her go get him herself.

  Against her will, her thoughts drifted. She thought of Glenn. He had saved her life last night. If he hadn't held her back when he had, she would have been shot to death by the German sentries. Lucky that he had been strong eno
ugh to hold her until she came to her senses. She kept remembering the feel of him as he had pressed her against him. No man had ever done that—had ever been close enough to do that. The memory of it was good. It had stirred something in her that refused to return to its former quiescent state.

  She tried to concentrate on the keep and on Papa, forcing her thoughts away from Glenn . . .

  . . . yet he had been kind to her, soothing her, convincing her to go back to her room and keep her vigil at the window. She could do nothing at the edge of the gorge. She had felt so utterly helpless, and he had understood. And when he had left her at her door, there had been a look in his eyes: sad, and something else. Guilt? But why should he feel guilty?

  She noticed a movement within the entrance to the tower and stepped across the threshold. All the light and warmth of the morning drained away from her as she did—like stepping out of a warm house into a blustery winter night. She backed up immediately and felt the chill recede as soon as her feet were back on the causeway. There seemed to be a different set of rules at work within the keep. The soldiers didn't appear to notice; but she’d spent the night outside. She could tell.

  Papa and his wheelchair appeared, propelled from behind by a reluctant sentry who seemed embarrassed by the task. As soon as she saw her father's face, Magda knew something was wrong. Something dreadful had happened last night. She wanted to run forward but knew they would not let her. The soldier pushed the wheelchair to the threshold and then let go, allowing it to roll to Magda unattended. Without letting it come to a complete halt, she swung around behind and pushed her father onto the causeway. When they were halfway across and he had yet to speak to her, even to say good morning, she felt she had to break the silence.

  "What's wrong, Papa?"

  "Nothing and everything."

  "Did he come last night?"

  "Wait until we're over by the inn and I'll tell you everything. We're too close here. Someone might overhear. "

  Anxious to learn what had disturbed him so, she hurriedly wheeled him around to the back of the inn where the morning sun shone brightly on the awakening grass and reflected off the white stucco of the building's wall.