The Keep. Part 29

Magda followed his gaze down the road to a knot of people outside one of the village huts.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Nothing that would interest an outsider," Iuliu replied in a surly tone. Then he seemed to change his mind. "But perhaps you should should know." There was a malicious slant to his smile. "Alexandra's boys have been fighting with each other. One is dead and the other badly hurt." know." There was a malicious slant to his smile. "Alexandra's boys have been fighting with each other. One is dead and the other badly hurt."

"How awful!" Magda said. She had met Alexandru and his sons, questioned them about the keep a number of times. They had all seemed so close. She was as shocked by the news of the death as she was by the pleasure Iuliu seemed to have taken in telling her.

"Not awful, Domnisoara Domnisoara Cuza. Alexandru and his family have long thought themselves better than the rest of us. Serves them right!" His eyes narrowed. "And it serves as a lesson to outsiders who come here thinking themselves better than the people who live here." Cuza. Alexandru and his family have long thought themselves better than the rest of us. Serves them right!" His eyes narrowed. "And it serves as a lesson to outsiders who come here thinking themselves better than the people who live here."

Magda backed away from the threat in Iuliu's voice. He had always been such a placid fellow. What had gotten into him?

She turned and walked around the inn. Now more than ever she needed to be with Glenn. But he was nowhere in sight. Nor was he at his usual spot in the brush where he watched the keep.

Glenn was gone.

Worried and despondent, Magda walked back to the inn. As she stepped up to the door she saw a hunched figure limping up from the village. It was a woman and she appeared to be hurt.

"Help me!"

Magda started toward her but Iuliu appeared at the doorway and pulled her back.

"You stay here!" he told Magda gruffly, then turned toward the injured woman. "Go away, Ioan!"

"I'm hurt!" she cried. "Matei stabbed me!"

Magda saw that the woman's left arm hung limp at her side and her clothing-it looked like a nightgown-was soaked with blood on the left side from shoulder to knee.

"Don't bring your troubles here," Iuliu told her. "We have our own."

The woman continued forward. "Help me, please!"

Iuliu stepped away from the door and picked up an apple-sized rock.

"No!" Magda cried and reached to stay his arm. Magda cried and reached to stay his arm.

Iuliu elbowed her aside and threw the rock, grunting with the force he put behind it. Fortunately for the woman his aim was poor and the missile whizzed harmlessly past her head. But its message was not lost on her. With a sob, she turned and began hobbling away.

Magda started after her. "Wait! I'll help you!"

But Iuliu grabbed her roughly by the arm and shoved her through the doorway into the inn. Magda stumbled and fell to the floor.

"You'll mind your business!" he shouted. "I don't need anyone bringing trouble to my house! Now get upstairs and stay there!"

"You can't-" Magda began, but then saw Iuliu step forward with bared teeth and a raised arm. Frightened, she leaped to her feet and retreated to the stairs.

What had come over Iuliu? He was a different person! The whole village seemed to have fallen under a vicious spell-stabbings, killings, and no one willing to give the slightest aid to a neighbor in need. What was happening here?

Once upstairs, Magda went directly to Glenn's room. It was unlikely he could have returned without her spotting him, but she had to check.

Still empty.

Where was was he? he?

She wandered about the tiny room. She checked the closet and found everything as it had been yesterday-the clothes, the case with the hiltless sword blade in it, the mirror. The mirror bothered her. She looked over to the s.p.a.ce above the bureau. The nail was still in the wall there. She reached behind the mirror and found the wire still intact. Which meant it hadn't fallen from the wall; someone had taken taken it down. Glenn? Why would he do that? it down. Glenn? Why would he do that?

Uneasy, she closed the closet door and left the room. Papa's cruel words of the morning and Glenn's unexplained disappearance were combining, she decided, to make her suspicious of everything. She had to hold herself together. She had to believe that Papa would be all right, that Glenn would come back to her soon, and that the people in the village would return to their former gentle selves.

Glenn ... where could he have gone? And why? Yesterday had been a time of complete togetherness for the two of them, and today she couldn't even find him. Had he used her? Had he taken his pleasure with her and now abandoned her? No, she couldn't believe that.

He had seemed greatly disturbed by what Papa had told him this morning. Glenn's absence might have something to do with that. Still, she felt he had deserted her.

As the sun sank closer to the mountaintops, Magda became almost frantic. She checked his room again-no change. Disconsolately, she wandered back to her own room and to the window facing the keep. Avoiding the silent nest, her eyes ranged the brush along the edge of the gorge, looking for something, anything that might lead her to Glenn.

And then she saw movement within the brush to the right of the causeway. Without waiting for a second look to be sure, Magda ran for the stairs. It had to be Glenn! It had had to be! to be!

Iuliu was nowhere about and she left the inn without any trouble. As she approached the brush, she spied his red hair among the leaves. Her heart leaped. Joy and relief flooded through her-along with a hint of resentment for the torment she had been through all day.

She found him perched on a rock, watching the keep from the cover of the branches. She wanted to throw her arms around him and laugh because he was safe, and she wanted to scream at him for disappearing without a word.

"Where have you been all day?" Magda asked as she came up behind him, trying her best to keep her voice calm.

He answered without turning around. "Walking. I had some thinking to do, so I took a walk along the floor of the pa.s.s. A long walk."

"I missed you."

"And I you." He turned and held out his arm. "There's room enough here for two." His smile was not as wide or as rea.s.suring as it could have been. He seemed strangely subdued, preoccupied.

Magda ducked under his arm and hugged against him. Good ... it felt good within the carapace of that arm. "What's worrying you?"

"A number of things. These leaves for instance." He grabbed a handful from the branches nearest him and crumbled them in his fist. "They're drying out. Dying. And it's only April. And the villagers..."

"It's the keep, isn't it?" Magda said.

"It seems that way, doesn't it? The longer the Germans stay in there, the more they chip away at the interior of the structure, the further the evil within spreads. Or so it seems."

"Or so it seems," Magda echoed him.

"And then there's your father..."

"He worries me, too. I don't want Molasar to turn on him and leave him"-she could not say it; her mind refused to picture it-"like the others."

"Worse things can happen to a man than having his blood drained."

The solemnity of Glenn's tone struck her. "You said that once before, on the first morning you met Papa. But what could be worse?"

"He could lose his self."

"Himself?"

"No. Self. Self. His own self. What he is, what he has struggled all his life to be. That can be lost." His own self. What he is, what he has struggled all his life to be. That can be lost."

"Glenn, I don't understand." And she didn't. Or perhaps didn't want to. There was a faraway look in Glenn's eyes that disturbed her.

"Let's suppose something," he said. "Let's suppose that the vampire, or moroi, moroi, or undead, as he exists in legend-a spirit confined to the grave by day, rising at night to feed on the blood of the living-is nothing more than the legend you always thought it to be. Suppose instead that the vampire myth is the result of ancient taletellers' attempts to conceptualize something beyond their understanding; that the real basis for the legend is a being who thirsts for nothing so simple as blood, but who feeds instead on human weakness, who thrives on madness and pain, who steadily gains strength and power from human misery, fear, and degradation." or undead, as he exists in legend-a spirit confined to the grave by day, rising at night to feed on the blood of the living-is nothing more than the legend you always thought it to be. Suppose instead that the vampire myth is the result of ancient taletellers' attempts to conceptualize something beyond their understanding; that the real basis for the legend is a being who thirsts for nothing so simple as blood, but who feeds instead on human weakness, who thrives on madness and pain, who steadily gains strength and power from human misery, fear, and degradation."

His voice, his tone, made her uncomfortable. "Glenn, don't talk like that. That's awful. How could anything feed on pain and misery? You're not saying that Molasar-"

"I'm just supposing."

"Well, you're wrong," she said with true conviction. "I know Molasar is evil, and perhaps insane. That's because of what he is. But he's not evil in the way you describe. He can't be! Before we arrived he saved the villagers the major had taken prisoner. And remember what he did for me when those two soldiers attacked me." Magda closed her eyes at the memory. "He saved me. And what could be more degrading than rape at the hands of two n.a.z.is? Something that feeds on degradation could have had a small feast at my expense. But Molasar pulled them off me and killed them."

"Yes. Rather brutally, I believe, from what you told me."

Queasily, Magda remembered the soldiers' gurgling death rattles, the grinding of the bones in their necks as Molasar shook them. "So?"

"So he did not go completely unappeased."

"But he could have killed me, too, if that would have given him pleasure. But he didn't. He returned me to my father."

Glenn's eyes pierced her. "Exactly!"

Puzzled by Glenn's response, Magda faltered, then hurried on.

"And as for my father, he's spent the last few years in almost continual agony. Completely miserable. And now he's cured of his scleroderma. It's as if he never had it! If human misery nourishes Molasar, why has he not let my father remain ill and in pain and feed on that? Why cut off a source of 'nourishment' by healing my father?"

"Why indeed?"

"Oh, Glenn!" she said, clutching herself to him. "Don't frighten me any more than I already am! I don't want to argue with you-I've already had such an awful time with my father. I couldn't bear to be at odds with you, too!"

Glenn's arm tightened around her. "All right, then. But think on this: Your father is healthier now in body than he has been for many years. But what of the man within? Is he the same man you came here with four days ago?"

That was a question that had plagued Magda all day-one she didn't know how to answer.

"Yes ... No ... I don't know! I think he's just as confused as I am right now. But I'm sure he'll be all right. He's just had a shock, that's all. Being suddenly cured of a supposedly incurable, steadily crippling disease would make anyone behave strangely for a while. But he'll get over it. You wait and see."

Glenn said nothing, and Magda was glad of that. It meant that he, too, wanted peace between them. She watched the fog form along the floor of the pa.s.s and start to rise as the sun ducked behind the peaks. Night was coming.

Night. Papa had said that Molasar would rid the keep of Germans tonight. That should have given her hope, but somehow it seemed terrible and ominous to her. Even the feel of Glenn's arm around her could not entirely allay her fear.

"Let's go back to the inn," she said at last.

Glenn shook his head. "No. I want to see what happens over there."

"It could be a long night."

"It might be the longest night ever," he said without looking at her. "Endless."

Magda glanced up and caught a look of terrible guilt pa.s.sing over his face. What was tearing him up inside? Why wouldn't he share it with her?

TWENTY-SIX.

"Are you ready?"

The words did not startle Cuza. After seeing the last dying rays of the sun fade from the sky, he had been antic.i.p.ating Molasar's arrival. At the sound of the hollow voice, he rose from the wheelchair, proud and grateful to be able to do so. He had waited all day for the sun to go down, cursing it at times for being so slow in its course across the sky.

And now the moment was finally here. Tonight would be his his night and no one else's. Cuza had waited for this. It was his. No one could take it from him. night and no one else's. Cuza had waited for this. It was his. No one could take it from him.

"Ready!" he said, turning to find Molasar standing close behind him, barely visible in the glow of a single candle on the table. Cuza had unscrewed the electric bulb overhead. He found himself more comfortable in the wan flicker of the candle. More at ease. More at home. More at one with Molasar. "Thanks to you, I'm able to help."

Molasar's expression was neutral. "It took little to heal the wounds caused by your illness. Had I been stronger, I could have healed you in an instant; in my relatively weakened condition, however, it took all night."

"No doctor could have done it in a lifetime-two lifetimes!" lifetimes!"

"Nothing!" Molasar said with a quick, deprecating gesture of his right hand. "I have great powers for bringing death, but also great powers for healing. There is always a balance. Always."

He thought Molasar's mood uncharacteristically philosophical. But Cuza had no time for philosophy tonight. "What do we do now?"

"We wait," Molasar said. "All is not yet ready."

"And after-what?" Cuza could barely contain his impatience. "What then?"

Molasar strolled to the window and looked out at the darkening mountains. After a long pause, he spoke in a low tone.

"Tonight I am going to entrust you with the source of my power. You must take it, remove it from the keep, and find a safe hiding place for it somewhere up in those crags. You must not let anyone stop you. You must not not allow anyone to take it from you." allow anyone to take it from you."

Cuza was baffled. "The source of your power?" He racked his memory. "I never heard of the undead having such a thing."

"That is because we never wished it to be known," Molasar said, turning and facing him. "My powers flow from it, but it is also the most vulnerable point in my defenses. It allows me to exist as I do, but in the wrong hands it can be used to end my existence. That is why I always keep it near me where I can protect it."

"What wit? Where-"

"A talisman, hidden now in the depths of the sub-cellar. If I am to depart the keep, I cannot leave it behind unprotected. Nor can I risk taking it with me to Germany. So I must give it over for safekeeping to someone I can trust." He moved closer.

Cuza felt a chill steal over his skin as the depthless black of Molasar's pupils fixed on him, but he forced himself to stand his ground.

"You can trust me. I'll hide it so well that even a mountain goat will be hard pressed to find it. I swear!"

"Do you?" Molasar moved even closer. Candlelight flickered off his waxy face. "It will be the most important task you have ever undertaken."

"I can do it-now," Cuza said, balling his fists and feeling strength rather than pain in the movement. "No one will take it away from me."