Thorn

by Fred Saberhagen

  After I had spent another day in fruitless prowling about Rome I visited the precincts of the Vatican. There I located my former traveling companions, the Hungarian delegation come to ask for a Crusade; while waiting to see His Holiness they had taken lodgings near the old St. Peter’s. In Florence, where I had dropped out, they had been joined by my old acquaintance Morsino. Now Morsino greeted me in friendly style; he looked grave, though, when I told him of my recent brawl, and he counseled me to make no further requests or demands for official help in any Italian city. King Matthias, Morsino thought, was no longer fully committed to the search. As long as Helen continued to remain out of sight, committing no more public scandals, that seemed to be enough for the king; and Morsino thought perhaps it ought to be enough for me as well. The idea seemed to be to let sleeping Helens lie where and with whom they would.

  My own views, I promptly explained, were different. The king had sent me here with orders to search for Helen, and search for her I would, for my own honor as well as that of royalty. If he, Morsino, thought that he could organize the hunt in Rome more discretely and effectively than I, well, he was welcome to take a hand. And this invitation the worried envoy at last reluctantly accepted.

  I hung around St. Peter’s environs for another two weeks, undergoing fits of restlessness that alternated with periods of almost immobile depression. Then Morsino’s efforts at last bore fruit. An agent hired by him brought me a witness, a poor woman who swore she had once lodged near an artist and a Hungarian woman who had been living together in the neighborhood of the church where Perugino had done his painting. Shortly before their disappearance some months past my witness had heard the couple talking about moving on to Venice.

  * * *

  I am not going to write much in these pages about the next twenty months of my life. It was a period in which I did things that I am not proud of, and which there is now very little purpose in remembering. My leg was fully healed by this time, and I could ride and fight effectively. Good fighting men, and, even more, capable military leaders, were at this tune very much in demand in Italy because of the ceaseless squabbling of the city-states and petty principalities, not yet forged into a nation. I had not been many days in Venice before I signed a soldier’s contract with the eminent mercenary Bartolomeo Colleoni. My funds were running low; and I expected to retain enough time to myself, and freedom of movement, to allow me to continue the search for Helen.

  Colleoni had then been for ten years the General in Chief of all the Venetian armed forces. But, like most of the other successful condottieri of the tune, he had as his ultimate goal the carving out of his own personal domain. Some of his colleagues, like the founder of the Sforza dynasty in Milan, succeeded admirably in this enterprise. Many others failed miserably; but, like Sforza and Colleoni, most had had but little to lose when they began.

  My new employer was famed for his vigor, both marital and martial, at an advanced age; for his ferocity (which was somewhat remarkable even for the time); his collection of rare books (when all books were rare); and for his pioneering efforts in the development of what would now be called field artillery. Whereas if he is remembered at all today outside of a few history books, I suppose it is only because of Verrocchio’s titanic equestrian statue of him, still standing in a square in Venice … but I digress.

  When Colleoni heard from me that I had lived in Florence recently, he took it for granted that I had served there as condottiere also. What else would he expect a foreign soldier to be doing? He promptly began to pump me for all the information I could give about the state of Florentine military preparedness: How many in the militia? How well were the fortified walls maintained? I told him what I could, which was not much, and he evidently took my reticence as evidence of praiseworthy loyalty to a former employer. I did not trouble to disabuse him of this idea.

  So it was that in the winter of 1466-67 I found myself serving as a company commander in Colleoni’s nominally Venetian forces. I had under me about a hundred men—or, as the reckoning was usually kept then, thirty lances. In very early 1467 my troops and I were engaged in the investigation of the assassination of a Colleoni agent, the mayor of a village whose name I must admit I have forgotten but which could hardly mean anything to you now in any case.

  The investigation was soon proceeding according to the standards of the time, which is to say that my men had taken a score of hostages, and we were on the point of beginning to hang some of them unless someone who knew something about the assassination should come forward. In fairness to myself I ought perhaps to be allowed to interject that the mayor had evidently been a good man, for his time; a good politician for any time, perhaps; and that I still think the assassins would fairly have deserved hanging if we had ever caught them.

  Snow was in the village air, and misery was rife as usual among the populace. I found myself seated one morning at a writing table that might have belonged to some scholar, to judge by all the papers on it, in a house that was mine so long as I and my armed men chose to occupy it. I had sat down at the table to write out a report for Colleoni on the affair, and I suppose that those of my men who from time to time looked in at door or window assumed that the black frown upon my brow was due to the difficulty of wielding a pen in such a wise as to leave an intelligible message upon paper. Alas, no. I was even then something of a writer—I could at least set down my letters large and clear. What was troubling me were things more fundamental. I was grappling with matters of Conscience and the Law.

  Contemplating the last year’s work of my own hands, I found that it was not good. Oh, my activities had been legal, of course, or could be argued such, according to the contracts, the agreements, that I had with Colleoni, and he in turn with Venice. And there were the customs, traditions, treaties, oaths, and whatnot that established Venetian dominance over these poor sheep-like villagers I was oppressing.

  All legal. Everything I did. And yet in the end it came down to my setting the edge of a blade, or the loop of a rope, against the throat of some poor wretch. Then whatever I said was law; and whatever he said meant nothing, if it were not agreement.

  As if I—I, Drakulya!—were no better than a highwayman.

  At home in Wallachia I had been Prince, and there too my word had been law. But there I myself had been the anointed ruler, which justified much—did it not?

  The front door of my borrowed house creaked open, and there came in white light from the snowy day outside, and then a blurred human shadow thrown across my papers. Glad of any interruption, I looked up.

  To behold Helen.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eighteen-year-old Judy Southerland didn’t know where she was going tonight. She knew only that the man who had been her lover appeared to be in desperate need, and that she had to try to give him what help she could.

  Dressed in casual hiking clothes, which would fit in just about anywhere that she had to go in the Santa Fe area, she stood looking at herself in the mirror of the pine dresser in her one-room private cabin—Astoria was a very expensive school. She was wondering if the clamor of her lover’s need, so strong in her mind, showed in her face; she decided that she couldn’t tell if it did or not. Nor could she tell if she was thinking straight in her effort to do something about that need.

  She wasn’t even sure if the man she felt so bound to help was still her lover.

  Judy had encountered him for the first time in Chicago, last December. The affair between them had begun then, and another episode had been added to it when she had visited Europe with her family in January. And then, after making love with a vampire, she had come home to live with her unsuspecting parents in a Chicago suburb, where somewhat to her own surprise she had resumed a life at least outwardly quite normal for a girl her age. Dating young men who never would have dreamed of drinking blood from her neck, and who, if she had ever tried to tell them the truth about it, would have thought that Judy was utterly—

  And there had been some doubting mome
nts, earlier this spring, when Judy had wondered that herself. Was it after all possible that she had imagined the whole affair? Or dreamed it, somehow, to go along with the bizarre problems that the whole family had been having then? But when she began to doubt, a word to Kate or Joe was enough to assure her that it had all been real. Judy could understand, now, why people who had had experience with vampires were never heard from on the subject.

  The contact-at-a-distance with her vampire lover had been established at the beginning of the affair. At first it had been quite strong; anytime she felt like tuning in on him, and on several occasions when she didn’t, there would come through a strong sense of his environment, and of whatever he happened to be feeling at the moment. With the contact she had had no trouble at all in locating him in Europe, nor he in finding her. But after the European episode, as the days of separation grew painlessly into weeks, Judy had begun to suspect that the goodbye he had murmured so lightly there had after all been meant as permanent. Come to think of it, no arrangements for another meeting had been definitely established, and a fading of the subconscious contact had set in. The fading had been imperceptible at first, and then there had been whole days, and then whole strings of days, in which the contact was not only absent but forgotten. It would come back, with a dream’s vague aura of unreality about it. And then it would go again—

  —and then the savage explosion, many miles away, had sent shockwaves of reality through a midnight dream to wake her. She knew at once that he had been hurt. Not so badly hurt this time as once before, when she had come to him and saved his life. But again he was alone and injured. He was beset by injuries, half-mad with wanting revenge for them, and driven wild by the theft of some object that he craved so much there had to be more to it than mere wealth, however great.

  He apparently had no idea where this object had been taken. But Judy, who had a special kind of sensitivity of location, a sensitivity much heightened by her experiences, could see it a little when she tried. It was a painting, an old painting, and Judy thought its subject was a woman. The painting had been wrapped in rough cloth now, and it was leaning against a rough wall, somewhere in darkness … somewhere … she thought it was not far from Santa Fe.

  If she went to it herself, then the contact that he must still have with her would show him where the painting was. Words never came through the contact, nor did conscious thoughts, and try as she might she could think of no other way to help him, and to ease the pain that his need had inflicted upon her.

  Her image in the mirror looked perfectly solid. The pale surface of her sturdy throat was no longer marked by even the faintest remnant of the puncture-scars. Those scars had always been tiny and inconspicuous, and she was surprised to realize that she did not know herself on what day they had completely disappeared.

  There had been times, last winter, when Judy had felt sure that the affair must go on to the conclusion that he had once or twice spoken of in warning. Becoming a vampire was not as quick or as simple as the foolish motion picture stories had it; but let them exchange blood enough, and Judy would be changed, and permanently. But he had never gone into detail about the change, and Judy had been left free to fill in the particulars with her own imagination. Would her mirror-image give warning days in advance, as it slowly went transparent? Or flick out like a switched-off light? And afterwards, would her shadow still be visible in reflection, adding one more complication to the mockery of science? Judy was unable to remember ever seeing his shadow in a mirror … she did remember his saying once that there could be photographs, at least those made with cameras that did not employ interior reflective surfaces to position image upon film. There could be photographs of him, but he didn’t like the idea and so as a practical matter there were none.

  Judy’s eyes dropped to the note that she was leaving on her dresser, propped up against the mirror. If all went well she would be back here in a few hours, safely, before anyone else had come into the cabin and read it. But she had to admit to herself there was a pretty good chance that things were not going to go that well.

  To Whom It May Concern:

  Something very important to me personally has come up, and I am going to have to be away from school for a short time. It may be for only a few hours, or for a couple of days. I am leaving this note here on Tuesday evening.

  I intend to call in to the school office within about 48 hours if I’m not back by then, and say that I’m all right. Please do not start any wide search for me before then, as I should be perfectly all right. If I should fail to call in within about two days, then you can search. But I don’t think there’ll be any problem.

  Sorry, but I don’t see any better way to do this. If it is felt absolutely necessary to call someone about my being gone, please call my sister, Ms. Kate Keogh and not my parents. Her number is on file in the office.

  This is nothing terrible but it’s necessary.

  Judy Southerland

  The salutation at the start, now that Judy read it over, looked somewhat grim to her, like the opening of a suicide note or something. But she wasn’t about to take the time now to do it over. The sense of urgency, of need, grew ever more pressing, and she couldn’t afford to let it go untended until she had to run around and scream or something.

  She thought the message looked okay otherwise. If she wasn’t back before the staff started looking for her they would come into her cabin and find it, and then it would probably be read over the phone almost immediately to Kate and/or Joe. That was all right; they would be able to guess something of what was going on, and when the police were called in, Joe could … well, it was too bad, but right now Judy had to leave.

  She had money, a couple of hundred bucks, in her pockets, and credit cards. What else did she need? It was hard to say, since she didn’t really know where she was going. But money in some form was all you really needed, as a rule.

  Judy slipped into her windbreaker, turned out the lights, and went out into the spring night. After a moment’s internal debate she left her cabin door unlocked; somehow that seemed to make her departure less serious, more temporary.

  The next step, of course, was to arrange a ride of some kind into town. Once she got there … well, she would just have to see then where she was called to go.

  Walking toward the cabin that served Bill Bird as combination studio and living quarters, Judy saw with a mixture of guilt and relief that the lights were on inside. Bill looked first pleased and then somewhat wary when he saw who was tapping so discreetly at his door.

  “Judy. What can I do for you?”

  “Something’s come up, Bill. I absolutely need to get into town right away, and I wonder if you could give me a lift.”

  A hesitation. “Oh. Did you check at the office?” There was a prescribed system of signing out, and also one of pooling rides.

  “Can I come in a minute?” And once inside the one-room cabin, much like her own, Judy pulled shut the door behind her. A crude female nude, about half life-size, stood under lights. The clay looked wet, and Bill was wiping his hands on a rag. It seemed he must have been working from memory; anyway there was no model in sight. “I’m going to level with you, Bill. There are reasons why I didn’t want to do that.”

  “Oh? Something private?”

  “Yes. And the truth is I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back. I want to—meet someone, in town or near town.”

  “Oh.”

  She wished he would stop saying oh. “No, it isn’t anything like that. Just someone who desperately needs help. And there’s nothing illegal or wrong about it, but at the same tune it’s very private.”

  Bill opened his mouth, but failed to utter the anticipated word. Now Judy could almost see the wheels turning over in his head. Abortion appointment? Drug rendezvous? Or a friend of Judy’s on a bad trip with some drug, or in some trouble with the law? Or simply running away from home? Bill asked: “Where are you supposed to meet this person?”

  “It’s not easy to
explain. I’m sorry. Look, can you just give me a ride into town? If you don’t want to, I’ll understand and I’ll figure out some other way of getting there. I appreciate that there’s some chance of your getting into trouble here if you break the rules.” Is this really me, Judy wondered, willing to use someone in this way? She thought that for the first time she could begin to understand how alcoholics, addicts, could be as ruthless as they sometimes were. The craving— dominated.

  Bill was looking at her carefully. “It’s all right, Judy. I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Thanks, Bill. I mean it. I really do appreciate it, I can’t tell you how much.”

  Waiting for Bill to take care of a few things and grab his coat, getting ready to go out, Judy leaned against the doorframe, groping mentally.

  He, the man she sought, had been very recently in a great desert basin which contained a large city and a mass of warm air, almost hot air, fairly heavily polluted air. Names of course never came through the contact, but Judy had no trouble recognizing Phoenix. But Thorn, she perceived now, was there no longer.

  …he was coming closer, moving almost straight toward her from the southwest. His feet were running, racing at a terrible pace … four feet running, and all of them were his … this was a mode that she had never experienced before.

  “What’s wrong, Jude?”

  She opened her eyes and pushed away from the doorframe, making herself stand up straight and smile. “Nothing … maybe a little headache.”

  Bill looked doubtful. But he was holding the door open for Judy now, and she went on out. Her own feet trod again the springy needle carpet of the forest path. Two human feet, hers were, in shoes, not like … the landscape around him had been momentarily clear to Judy. It had seemed to be bright moonlight there, though from here her merely human eyes could see that tonight’s moon was only a dim crescent.