Adversary Cycle 01 - The Keep

by F. Paul Wilson

  Magda nodded slowly. What Glenn said paralleled her own feelings—she had never given up hope.

  "But Rasalom—"

  "Rasalom, as I told you, feeds on human debasement. And never in the history of humankind has there been such a glut of it as there is today in Eastern Europe. As long as the hilt remains within the keep walls, Rasalom is not only trapped, but is insulated from what goes on outside. Remove the hilt and it will all rush in on him at once—all the death, misery, and butchery of Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz, and all the other death camps, all the monstrousness of modern war. He'll absorb it like a sponge, feast on it and grow incalculably strong. His power will balloon beyond all comprehension.

  "But he'll not be satisfied. He'll want more. He'll move swiftly around the world, slaying heads of state, throwing governments into confusion, reducing nations to terrified mobs. What army could stand against the legions of the dead he is capable of raising against it? Soon all will be in chaos. And then the real horror will begin. Nothing worse than Hitler, you say? Think of the entire world as a death camp!"

  Magda's mind rebelled at the vista Glenn was describing. "It couldn't happen!"

  "Why not? Do you think there will be a shortage of volunteers to run Rasalom's death camps? The Nazis have shown that there are plenty of men more than willing to slaughter their fellows. But it will go far beyond that. You've seen what has happened to the villagers today, haven't you? All the worst in their natures has been drawn to the surface. Their responses to the world have been reduced to anger, hate, and violence. "

  "But how?"

  "Rasalom's influence. He has grown steadily stronger within the keep, feeding on the death and fear there, and on the slow disintegration of your father's character. And as he has gained strength, the walls of the keep have been weakened by the soldiers. Every day they tear down a little more of the internal structure, compromising its integrity. And every day the influence of Rasalom's presence extends farther beyond those walls.

  "The keep was built to an ancient design, the images of the hilt placed in a specific pattern in the walls to cut Rasalom off from the world, to contain his power, to seal him in. Now that pattern has been tampered with and the villagers are paying the price. If Rasalom escapes and feeds on the death camps, the whole world will pay a similar price. For Rasalom will not be as selective as Hitler when it comes to victims: Everyone will be targeted. Race, religion, none of that will matter. Rasalom will be truly egalitarian. The rich will not be able to buy their way out, the pious will not be able to pray their way out, the crafty will not be able to sneak or lie their way out. Everyone will suffer. Women and children the most. People will be born into misery; they will spend their days in despair; they will die in agony. Generation after generation, all suffering to feed Rasalom."

  He paused for breath, then: "And the worst of it all, Magda, is that there will be no hope. And no end to it! Rasalom will be untouchable . . . invincible . . . deathless. If he is freed now, there will be no stopping him. Always in the past the sword has held him back. But now . . . with the world as it is . . . he will grow too strong for even this blade reunited with its hilt to stop him. He must never leave the keep!"

  Magda saw that Glenn meant to go into the keep.

  "No!" she cried, her arms reaching to hold him back. She couldn't let him go. "He'll destroy you in your condition! Isn't there anybody else?"

  "Only me. No one else can do this. Like your father, I have to face this alone. After all, it's really my fault that Rasalom still exists at all."

  "How can that be?"

  Glenn didn't answer. Magda tried another approach. "Where did Rasalom come from?"

  "He was a man . . . once. But he gave himself over to a dark power and was forever changed by it."

  Magda felt a catch in her throat. "But if Rasalom serves a 'dark power,' who do you serve?"

  "Another power."

  She sensed his resistance, but she pressed on.

  "A power for good?"

  "Not quite."

  "For how long?"

  "All my life."

  "How can it be . . .?" She was afraid of the answer. "How can it be your fault, Glenn?"

  He looked away. "My name isn't Glenn—it's Glaeken. I'm as old as Rasalom. I built the keep."

  Cuza had not seen Molasar since descending into the pit to uncover the talisman. He had said something about making the Germans pay for invading his keep, then his voice had trailed off and he was gone. The corpses had begun to move then, filing out behind the miraculous being who controlled them.

  Cuza was left alone with the cold, the rats, and the talisman. He wished he could have gone along. But he supposed what really mattered was that soon they would all be dead, officers and enlisted men alike. Yet he would have enjoyed seeing Major Kaempffer die, seeing him suffer some of the agonies he had inflicted on countless innocent and helpless people.

  But Molasar had said to wait here. And now, with the faint echoes of gunfire seeping down from above, Cuza knew why: Molasar had not wanted the man to whom he had entrusted his source of power to be endangered by any stray bullets. After a while the shooting stopped. Leaving the talisman behind, Cuza took his flashlight and climbed to the top of the pit where he stood among the clustered rats. They no longer bothered him; he was too intent on listening for Molasar's return.

  Soon he heard it. Footsteps approaching. More than one pair. He flashed his light toward the entrance to the chamber and saw Major Kaempffer round the corner and approach him. A cry escaped Cuza and he almost fell over into the pit, but then he saw the glazed eyes, the slack expression, and realized that the SS major was dead. Woermann came filing in behind him, equally dead, a length of rope trailing from his neck. .

  "I thought you might like to see these two," Molasar said, following the dead officers into the chamber. “Especially the one who proposed to build the so-called death camp for our fellow Wallachians. Now I shall seek out this Hitler and dispose of him and his minions." He paused. "But first, my talisman. You must see to it that it is securely hidden. Only then can I devote my energies to ridding the world of our common foe."

  "Yes!" Cuza said, feeling his pulse begin to race. "It's right here!"

  He scrambled down into the pit and grabbed the talisman. As he tucked it under his arm and began to climb up again, he saw Molasar step back.

  "Wrap it up," he said. "Its precious metals will attract unwanted attention should someone see them."

  "Of course." Cuza reached for the wadded wrapper and packing. "I'll tie it up securely when I get into the better light upstairs. Don't worry. I'll see to it that it's all— "

  "Cover it now!" The command echoed through the chamber.

  Cuza halted, struck by Molasar's vehemence. He didn't think he should be spoken to in such a manner. But then, one had to make allowances for fifteenth century boyars.

  He sighed. "Very well." He squatted in the bottom of the pit and folded the coarse cloth packing over the talisman, then covered it all with the tattered wrapper.

  "Good!" said the voice from above and behind him. Cuza looked up and saw that Molasar had moved to the other side of the pit, away from the entrance. "Now hurry. The sooner I know the talisman is safe, the sooner I can depart for Germany."

  Cuza hurried. He crawled from the pit as swiftly as he could and began to make his way through the tunnel to the steps that would take him upward to a new day, not only for himself and for his people, but for all the world.

  "It's a long story, Magda . . . ages long. And I fear there's no time left to tell it to you."

  His voice sounded to Magda as if it were coming from the far end of a long, dark tunnel. He had said Rasalom predated Judaism . . . and then he had said he was as old as Rasalom. But that couldn't be! The man who had loved her could not be some leftover from a forgotten age! He was real! He was human! Flesh and blood!

  Movement caught her eye and brought her back to the here and now. Glenn was attempting to rise to his feet, usin
g the sword blade for support. He managed to get to his knees but was too weak to rise farther.

  "Who are you?" she said, staring at him, feeling as if she were seeing him for the first time. "And who is Rasalom?"

  "The story starts long ago," he said, sweating and swaying, leaning on the hiltless blade. "Long before the time of the Pharaohs, before Babylonia, even before Mesopotamia. There was another civilization then, in another age."

  " 'The First Age,' " Magda said. "You mentioned that before."

  It was not a new idea to her. She had run across the theory now and then in the historical and archeological journals she had read at various times while helping Papa with his research. The obscure theory contended that all of recorded history represented only the Second Age of Man; that long, long ago there had been a great civilization across Europe and Asia—some of its apologists even went so far as to include the island continents of Atlantis and Mu in this ancient world, a world they claimed had been destroyed in a global cataclysm.

  "It's a discredited idea," Magda said, a defensive quaver in her voice. "All historians and archeologists of any repute condemn it as lunacy."

  "Yes, I know," Glenn said with a sardonic twist to his lips. "The same type of 'authorities' who scoffed at the possibility that Troy might have truly existed—and then Schliemann found it. But I'm not going to debate you. The First Age was real. I was born into it."

  "But how—?"

  "Let me finish quickly. There isn't much time and I want you to understand a few things before I go to face Rasalom. Things were different in the First Age. This world was then a battleground between two . . ." He appeared to be groping for a word. "I don't want to say 'gods' because that would give you the impression that they had discrete identities and personalities. There were two vast, incomprehensible . . . forces . . . Powers abroad in the land then. One, the Dark Power, which was sometimes called Chaos, sometimes called the Otherness, reveled in anything inimical to mankind. The other Power was . . ."

  He paused again, and Magda could not help but prompt him. "You mean the White Power . . . the power of Good?"

  "It's not so simple as that. We merely called it Light. What mattered was that it opposed the Otherness. The First Age eventually became divided into two camps: those who sought dominion through the Otherness and those who resisted. Rasalom was a necromancer of his time, a brilliant adept to the Dark Power. He gave himself over to it completely and eventually became the champion of Chaos. "

  "And you chose to be champion of Light—of Good." She wanted him to say yes.

  "No . . . I didn't exactly choose. And I can't say the Power I serve is all that good, or all that light. I was . . . conscripted, you might say. Circumstances too involved to explain now—circumstances that have long since lost any shred of meaning for me—led me to become involved with the armies of Light. I soon found it impossible to extricate myself, and before long I was at their forefront, leading them. I was given the sword. Its blade and hilt were forged by a race of small folk now long extinct. It was fashioned for one purpose; to destroy Rasalom. There came a final battle between the opposing forces—Armageddon, Ragnarök, all the doomsday battles rolled into one. The resulting cataclysm—earthquakes, firestorms, tidal waves—wiped out every trace of the First Age of Man. Only a few humans were left to begin all over again."

  "But what of the Powers?"

  Glenn shrugged. "They still exist, but their interest waned after the cataclysm. There was not much left for them in a ruined world whose inhabitants were reverting to savagery. They turned their attention elsewhere while Rasalom and I fought on across the world and across the ages, neither one gaining the upper hand for long, neither one sickening or aging. And somewhere along the way we lost something . . ."

  He glanced down at a broken fragment of mirror that had fallen out of the blade case and now lay near his knees.

  "Hold that up to my face," he told Magda.

  Magda lifted the fragment and positioned it next to his cheek.

  "How do I look in it?" he asked.

  Magda glanced at the glass—and dropped it with a tiny scream. The mirror was empty! Just as Papa had said of Rasalom!

  The man she loved cast no reflection!

  "Our reflections were taken away by the Powers we serve, perhaps as a constant reminder to Rasalom and me that our lives were no longer our own."

  His mind seemed to drift for a moment "It's strange not to see yourself in a mirror or a pool of water. You never get used to it." He smiled sadly. "I believe I've forgotten what I look like."

  Magda's heart went out to him. "Glenn . . .?"

  "But I never stopped pursuing Rasalom," he said, shaking himself. "Wherever there was news of butchery and death, I would find him and drive him off. But as civilization gradually rebuilt itself, and people began to crowd together again, Rasalom became more ingenious in his methods. He was always spreading death and misery in any way he could, and in the fourteenth century, when he traveled from Constantinople throughout Europe, leaving plague-ridden rats in every city along his way—"

  "The Black Death!"

  “Yes. It would have been a minor epidemic without Rasalom, but as you know, it turned out to be one of the major catastrophes of the Middle Ages. That was when I knew I had to find a way to stop him before he devised something even more hideous. And if I'd done the job right, neither of us would be here right now."

  "But how can you blame yourself? How can Rasalom's escape be your fault? The Germans let him loose."

  "He should be dead! I could have killed him half a millennium ago but I didn't. I came here looking for Vlad the Impaler. I had heard of his atrocities and they fit Rasalom's pattern. I expected to find him posing as Vlad. But I was wrong. Vlad was just a madman under Rasalom's influence, feeding Rasalom's strength by impaling thousands of innocents. But even at his worst, Vlad could not match by one tenth what is happening every day in today's death camps.

  "So I built the keep. I tricked Rasalom by luring him inside. I bound him with the power of the hilt and sealed him in the cellar wall where he would stay forever." He sighed. "At least I thought it would be forever. I could have killed him then—I should have killed him then—but I didn't."

  "Why not?"

  Glenn closed his eyes and was quiet for a long time before replying. "This isn't easy to say . . . but I was afraid. You see, I've lived on as a counterbalance to Rasalom. But what happens if I'm finally victorious and kill him? When his threat is extinguished, what happens to me? I've lived for what seems like eons, but I've never grown tired of life. It may be hard to believe, but there's always something new." He opened his eyes again and looked squarely at Magda. "Always. But I fear Rasalom and I are a pair, the continued existence of one dependent on the other. I am Yang to his Yin. I'm not yet ready to die."

  Magda had to know: "Can you die?"

  "Yes. It takes a lot to kill me, but I can die. The injuries I received tonight would have done me in had you not brought the blade to me. I had gone as far as I could . . . I would have died right here without you." His eyes rested on her for a moment, then he looked over to the keep. "Rasalom probably thinks I'm dead. That could work to my advantage."

  Magda wanted to throw her arms around him but could not bring herself to touch him again just yet. At least now she understood the guilt she had seen in his face in unguarded moments.

  "Don't go over there, Glenn."

  "Call me Glaeken," he said softly. "It's been so long since someone called me by my real name."

  "All right . . . Glaeken." The word felt good on her tongue, as if saying his true name linked her more closely to him. But there were still so many unanswered questions. "What about those awful books? Who hid them there?"

  "I did. They can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but I couldn't let them be destroyed. Knowledge of any kind—especially of evil—must be preserved."

  Magda had another question, one she hesitated to ask. She had come to realize as he spoke that it matt
ered little to her how old he was—it didn't change him from the man she had come to know. But how did he feel about her?

  "What of me?" she said finally. "You never told me . . ."

  She wanted to ask him if she were just a stop along the way, another conquest. Was the love she had sensed in him and seen in his eyes just a trick he had learned? Was he even capable of love anymore? She couldn't voice the thoughts. Even thinking them was painful.

  Glaeken seemed to read her mind. "Would you have believed me if I had told you?"

  "But yesterday—"

  "I love you, Magda," he said, reaching for her hand. "I've been closed off for so long. You reached me. No one has been able to do that for a long time. I may be older than anyone or anything you've ever imagined, but I'm still a man. That was never taken away from me."

  Magda slowly put her arms around his shoulders, holding him gently but firmly. She wanted to hold him to this spot, root him here where he'd be safe outside the keep.

  After a long moment he spoke into her ear. "Help me to my feet, Magda. I've got to stop your father."

  Magda knew she had to help him, even though she feared for him. She gripped his arm and tried to lift him but his knees buckled repeatedly. Finally, he slumped to the ground and pounded it with a closed fist.

  "I need more time!"

  "I'll go," Magda said, half wondering where the words came from. "I can meet my father at the gate."

  "No! It's too dangerous!"

  "I can talk to him. He'll listen to me."

  "He's beyond all reason now. He'll listen only to Rasalom. "

  "I have to try. Can you think of anything better?"