

THE WINTER BEAST

And Other Tales

### James R. Sanford

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. This e-book has been published without Digital Rights Management software installed, so that it may be read on personal devices.

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Text Copyright © 2012 by James R. Sanford

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Table of Contents

THE WINTER BEAST

THE GOD STONE

BLOOD BOND

A FAMILY TRADITION

THE EXALTED

#

# THE WINTER BEAST

The creature thrived in the cold. I knew this instinctively before I was even fully aware of its presence. Walking the hunting trails below the mist-enshrouded hills on cold winter afternoons, when the clouds seemed to press close to the earth, I always felt a vague uneasiness, a feeling of being watched. The dogs never strayed from me on those days. At times they even followed, clinging to my heels, constantly turning their heads to point back toward the estate, whining to go home. On those days when light patches of fog drifted through the forest, sending a damp chill into my bones, I came to understand, in a way I could never voice to myself, that it was there.

I realize now that my father knew of it. It is possible that his inner sympathy with the creature, his intuitive understanding — something akin to communication, was even stronger than my own. I remember when I was seventeen, in the late spring of the year of the death of Empress Catherine (and it always happened in the springtime), when the overseer, Georgi, came to tell him of the serf who claimed his wife had been taken away in the night by a demon.

My father's brow narrowed, a dark cloud passing behind his eyes. "The peasant must have been drunk," he said. "We all know that a band of marauding Cossacks has been plaguing the neighboring districts. They must have taken the woman."

"But Father," I began, quickly falling silent under his sudden sharp glance.

"Make this known among the serfs," my father continued to Georgi, "Cossacks took the girl. There will be no search for her." Georgi knew as well as I that no word of bandit Cossacks had reached our ears, but he dared not to say this.

And now I know why he never forbade me to hunt near those dark hills, even as summer drew very near. There was an unspoken, no, an unthought of covenant between them, a compact which was never made, yet nonetheless existed. My father never feared that it would take me.

But damn him. Damn him for making me swear a holy oath. For I would condemn myself to hell in this life out of fear of eternal punishment in the next.

I began taking long solitary walks in the eastern woods early in the winter of 1805 (the year of the battle of Austerlitz). My father had stopped rising from his bed by then, consumption slowly draining the life from him. Walking with my head cast down, watching my boots pack down the loose snow on the trails, I first felt its presence as a certainty — undoubtedly a force not natural, a thing of the cold and the dark. As I returned to the house in deep twilight one evening the week before Christmas, the doctor from Orsha met me at the door saying, "Hurry to him, Sergey Andreyevich, he hasn't much time."

The priest had just finished the last rites as I strode into the room still wearing my greatcoat. "Come near," my father whispered weakly, the disease taking his last breaths from him. "Swear to me, my son . . . swear an oath on your soul that you will never abandon this house, never give up our family lands . . . no matter what may befall you, no matter what may befall Holy Russia. Swear this, so I may die in peace."

"I shall do as you ask, father."

"No," he gasped, his eyes desperate, "on your very soul, before God."

I knelt and crossed myself. "Before God, and upon my immortal soul I swear it."

My father closed his eyes and died without another word. I think in his last hour he had a vision of things to come.

The next six years passed slowly and I withdrew deeper into myself. Naturally, the warmth of long summer days never failed to lift my darkness from me, and I often attended gay dances in Borisov, waltzing as if in a dream on those gentle evenings. But with the grey clouds of autumn the black thoughts would descend upon me again, and I could not spend even one night away from home. A feeling of waking in the autumn, yes, waking and weakness and hunger, and I would pace the hunting trails on the cold days.

The occasional runaway serf never caused me much concern. Rash young men often behave irresponsibly, and their family, knowing it was for their own good, usually had knowledge of where such a young man would go. Inevitably the runaway boy would be caught and returned to his place on the land. But each year, in the late spring, the head of a peasant household would come to me with a tale of a missing family member — one who was not the sort to abandon their life — a grandfather or a newlywed girl. The search for them was always in vain. And as I became more sensitive to the presence of the creature, the coming of springtime always filled me with a sense of horrible anticipation.

I awoke late one morning in the June of 1811, my bedchamber a flush with bright warm light. It was the first day of summer. Eyes half open, I began burrowing deeper into the feather bed, then came fully awake with a start. The first day of summer — spring had passed and no word had come to me of a serf gone missing under odd circumstance. It was as if I were reborn. Streams of golden sunlight washed away the dread within my heart, and I arose with vigor, calling for my valet with a musical tone to my voice.

I spent the day wandering the manor. The house, the garden, the stables, everything I possessed seemed new and yet familiar at the same time. The clock in the great hall was an old friend. And even the headstones of my parents graves no longer stood like grey sentinels; they were more like two pages from a beloved and well-read book. And as I stood on the veranda that evening, the scent of freshly-cut grass heavy in the air, the thought came clearly that I was not a young man anymore and I found myself wanting for a wife. I thought of Katina Fedorovna, and the thought made me happy. But this happiness lived only a short time.

Three days later I found the cave. The arrival of heavy winds from the south, hot winds which cut like the scimitar of the Turk, had brought to life a violent summer storm. I rode hard that day in the hills to the east, and the sudden rearing of thunderheads caught me far from the house. I sought shelter on the low ground, but found little protection from the punishing rain. Leading my horse through the steep ravine at the edge of the woods, I came upon a short but rather wide crevasse in its rocky face. Lightning struck close at that moment, and my horse bolted, tearing the reins from my grasp, plunging through rippling sheets of rain, then gone.

I could do nothing to recover the horse until the storm passed. Stooping to enter the crevasse, I saw that it opened into a small cave which grew wider as it sloped downward. As I paused to let my eyes adjust to the dim light, the smell struck me, an odor of old wet animal hides, and I swallowed hard, thinking that I had found the lair of a wolf pack or a solitary black bear. But in all my days of hunting in these environs I had never crossed any sign of wolf or bear.

I went deeper. A few slick steps down and I was able to stand. Time had carved a large cul-de-sac in the cold and stony earth. An odd shape protruded from the far wall, near an enormous pile of rotting leaves. The shape was vaguely familiar, the colors of foam and mud, the texture like that of plaster, and as I stepped closer, able to see through its translucence, I suddenly recognized it. It was the carcass of a great stag. Pinned against the wall of the cave, encased in some kind of strange substance, the animal looked (as well as I could tell, peering through the milky covering) as if it had been killed that very day. I reached out. The encasing material had a waxen smoothness to it, but was hard as dried glue.

I drew my hunting knife and jabbed cautiously at this unnatural cocoon. It was very hard. With stronger thrusts, I found that the substance would chip away in thin slices, rather like flint, and soon I had fashioned an opening the size of my hand just behind the shoulder of the mummified deer. I could smell no decay. Touching it, I felt the hide to be soft and warm. And then, ever so faintly, my fingers detected a single heartbeat. Could this be? Had I imagined it? I held my hand there for a full minute. And then again, I felt another heartbeat, then nothing.

For a time, I pondered how this animal's life had been slowed to such a point without dying, and then I was suddenly aware that the storm had passed. Above the ringing silence of the cavern, I became aware of a rhythmic breathing. Behind me, the mound of rotting leaves seemed to rise and fall ever so slightly, ever so gently, and now I could discern a vague shape within the pile of refuse. It was a huge beast of some sort. I could see thick fur or hair amid the twigs and leaves with which it had covered itself. My first thought was that it must be a bear, sick or wounded in some way, and I made to depart stealthily. But when, with a rustling spasm, a great hand-like claw (far too human in appearance) thrust itself through the debris, I gasped and scrambled for the exit of the cave without regard that my panic-stricken flight might awaken and enrage the creature.

I marched home along rain-slicked paths, and the freshness of that early summer day made it easy to push aside thoughts of what lay in the cave. The earth above was a gentle, orderly place — I had merely succumbed to childish terrors in the underworld. The deeper knowledge within me remained at rest, slumbering throughout the summer.

And so I courted Katina Fedorovna.

Her eyes matched her chestnut hair, but they were too wide for her petite features — eyes which always seemed startled, as if she had suddenly been come upon while standing alone in a quiet place. She did not so much walk as drift on currents of air. Like all beautiful women, she knew the power of her charm, and could bring any young man to her service with nothing more than a smile in his direction. But she was no coquette. And after we had danced the spinning waltz beneath the stars of August and I had quoted lines from Racine to her, we began to speak to each other in Russian instead of French, and I knew that soon I would be able to ask for her hand.

My friends, out of concern, not conceit, reminded me that Katina's family though well-to-do was beneath my station and that my late parents would never have approved.

"Are you sure that her affection is not motivated completely by money," asked one of them.

"Certainly," I replied, "she holds a secret sparkle in her eye, for my countenance only." I was in love with her, and it was for more than how she looked on my arm.

The engagement was rushed, mostly by Katina's father. He was the one, I thought, who took sure interest in transfusing his bloodline to one more ancient and wealthy. We set the wedding for midsummer, and saw each other throughout the winter at small gatherings. I played games with her in townhouse parlors while most of the men my age sat in adjacent rooms talking about Napoleon, speculating about war in the coming summer. And in the spring Bonaparte's ambition forced us to cut short an already brief courtship. I married Katina in early June of 1812.

Our honeymoon was ended a few days later when Leonid Valnikov sent a rider over with the word, over a week old, that the _Grande Armee_ had crossed the River Niemen and into Holy Russia. It was a Friday afternoon. The next morning I had Yakov harness the pair of white mares, and I drove with Katina to the Valnikov estate. Leonid was like an uncle to me. We sipped warm wine, and I wished for him to wash away some of the fear of the coming war with France, to tell me that General Kutuzov would drive those haughty Frenchmen back into Poland with ease. We had, of course, passed the springtime speaking the speech of its growing certainty, but I felt surprising shock when at last it arrived, the demon, war.

Naturally, the young bravos of the town used no such disparaging term for the glorious battle to come. "This time the little emperor has awakened a giant and will get the thrashing he is due," they bragged as they signed their names and were marched away by the recruiting officer. I still get a pang of guilt that I never felt any pity for them or their fate, but I sensed, driving home in twilight, that the pale horseman was not carried headlong by the invaders. Rather, I knew he would be following behind the legions of soldiers, feasting on the lands left silent by their passing.

The hard-eyed cavalryman bearing a major's insignia and Kutuzov's orders arrived with a squadron of dragoons before the first day of summer. I waved to him as he crossed the little bridge and turned his horse toward the garden where I sat reading. "So the war is over already!" I called in a jesting manner, not daring to reveal my secret hope that it was true. For the last three days the sky had been dark to the west, the horizon black, the air hazy with smoke, and I had imagined that the great battle was taking place.

The Major looked down on me with a soot-streaked face. "No. We have not yet engaged Bonaparte's army. The General is giving ground to the French — we must have time to marshal more troops before we can attack. And we must weaken the enemy as they pursue us."

Then he told me his orders, and for a moment I could not speak.

"You cannot!" I finally blurted out. "What gives the General the right — "

"The Tsar gives him the right!" he snapped back at me, but I took no offense. He was tired, and angry with loathing for what duty required of him. He calmed himself before he spoke again.

"I am sorry, sir. But you are subject to martial law, and you must obey. We also have orders to commandeer all horses and livestock, excepting what you need for transportation."

"Transportation?"

"You can't mean to stay. It would be terrible for your family, and you would all starve come winter. The peasants and village folk are already heading east with what they can carry, and you should do the same. You have until noon tomorrow. Good day, sir."

That night I told Katina that I was sending most of the servants away, but would be staying. I told her of the promise to my father and the holy oath I had sworn upon my very soul. And it was then that I came to understand what my father knew but could not say: that if I fled the estate, I would break my ethereal bond with the creature. I and my family and all my descendants not yet born would become its prey. I did not tell my wife this, of course, and Katina said that she would stay by my side though I asked her to go. For that I was grateful.

In the morning, the dragoons came for the animals. They took all the grain and would have taken the flour and salted fish as well if they had had more wagons. I sent the servants along with them, except for old Yakov. Then the Major and his troops returned at noon to enact General Kutuzov's master strategy.

They set fire to the fields. They burned all of them. Every stalk of wheat, every potato field, every patch of onions or cabbage, every storehouse, every haystack, every blade of grass, they burned.

We watched from my balcony. When they lit the first fire, far in the distant, and it rippled across the wide field of waving grass, it was awing, almost sublime. Then the torch-bearing riders came closer. Great clouds of smoke roiled upward from the waves of flame, far more thick and black than I would have thought. Soon a strong wind began blowing from the north and the fires spread quickly, getting into the hedges, jumping roads, leaping into the trees, engulfing the abandoned hovels of the serfs.

We felt the heat from half a mile away, the sound of the flames like the roar of a storm. Blackened horses and riders cantered the lanes between the fields, shouting, turning about, trying to find a way past the walls of fire. It was like the last days of the earth, and we waited for trumpets and broken seals and God's judgment. Before the curtains of smoke fully enclosed us, I saw the dragoons assemble on the highroad. They rode off, the world aflame, riding hard towards battle at Borodino.

"We must go to the cellars now, m'lord," Yakov said, his voice tight with fear. "It is the only place we might be safe."

I saw that he was right. What a fool I had been to stay, for now I would lose it all and perhaps our lives with it.

"Yes," I said, "let us go at once."

We went to the farthest corner of the deepest cellar, and I was comforted when Katina knelt and offered a simple and devout prayer for our deliverance. We waited, listening to the distant growl of the wind-buffeted fire.

At length it seemed to pass, so I climbed the stone steps and pushed open the cellar door. The house was still there. By some miracle the entire estate, though heavily blackened, stood intact. What remained of an ancient moat had held the flames back.

Yakov and Katina joined me, choking and coughing on the acrid stench. The earth all around was black. The edge of the forest had burned, the skeletal remains of the largest trees still standing. A light spring shower began to fall, washing some of the haze from the sky, turning into a filthy rain, and we could soon see miles across what had been fields and forest. It was all the same, a charred, smoldering, ash-covered landscaped — a portrait of hell on a rainy day.

It rained hard all the next day, and I lay on my bed, overcome by lethargy, and the house smelled damp and sooty. But the day after dawned clear and unseasonably cool, like a last gasp of spring before the full heat of summer, and I felt rather chipper in spite of the desolation that surrounded my home.

I was famished. I called Katina to the kitchen and requested a breakfast fit for the Tsar, but it was no use. She was helpless and I was worse.

"I'll get Yakov to make us some kind of a peasant meal," I laughed.

"He's out hunting," she said. "He left early saying that the woods along the eastern hills looked untouched by the fires."

A sudden wave of revulsion broke over me, and I was nearly sick to my stomach. I realized that I wasn't really hungry, and I did not care to think about why I felt so.

"Wait here," I told Katina.

I loaded my musket as quickly as I could with trembling hands. The thought came to me that I would find him in the cave in an unnatural state of paralysis, cocooned in the hardened secretion of the beast, and now I understood those feelings I had always had in the autumn of waking weak and hungry. But when I found the cave again it was empty, save for the rotting nest where the creature had lain. Some of the woodland had indeed survived the fire, so I set out to search it, pausing from time to time to call Yakov's name. At length I crossed his footprints in the mud, and easily tracked him from there.

I cannot speak of the horror I found amid the shredded remains of Yakov's clothing. It was not recognizable as him. And I retched not only at the proof of the creature's feast, but also at the poisonous guilt within me. I felt, in some way, that I had done the deed myself.

I returned to Katina and told her, "He has run away. I tracked him as far as the highroad." Perhaps a shadow of what I had seen then crossed my face, and she saw through the lie.

"Oh, let us go as well," she pleaded. "My heart forebodes that this will become a dark place for us. Let us go now, my husband."

"That cannot be," I said. "And I will hear no more of it."

That night the wind blew gusty and I could not sleep. My ears played tricks on me, or so I thought, for each time I closed my eyes I heard a faint sound outside. Just a garden gate left open and now swinging in the wind, I told myself.

Then came a loud blow at the front doors, and I jerked fully upright while Katina cringed at the violent sound. When I climbed down from our bed she grabbed at me, saying, "Please do not answer it."

"It could be a neighbor, or a traveller in need," I said, trying as much to convince myself as her.

A slow pounding began — a thick, fleshy hand on the solid oak doors.

"Then let them be," she begged, "only stay here with me now. That is all I ask of you."

The pounding stopped and I stayed with my wife. I heard only the wind for the rest of that night, yet I did not sleep.

I found the creature's footprints in the light of day. Wide and clawed, but much like those of a huge man, they ran through the abandoned stables, cow houses, and all the livestock pens. The massive stable doors had been ripped away and thrown a hundred feet.

It had been looking for prey. It needed a last victim before it could settle into its summer of sleep, a victim that would be there warm and alive when it awoke in the autumn, one that would be poisoned or entranced — an easy kill for a beast that was groggy and weak.

The sun shone hotly that afternoon. It was the last day of spring.

That night I slept with a loaded pistol beside the bed, and I reached for it when I awoke after midnight. A few moments later the pounding began at the front doors, and I rose, slipping into breeches and boots.

Katina begged me again not to go, but this time I ignored her. I was angry. I would confront this creature. I had kept my half of the covenant, let the beast keep its own. A candle in one hand and the pistol grasped tightly in the other, I crept down the grand hall.

The pounding stopped when I reached the entryway, and I stood there, unable to move, suddenly fearful. What would I find behind that door, the face of my ancestors' evil, fed by the inhuman side of myself, the part of me that had known what was happening to the serfs yet did nothing?

I threw open the doors. It was not there. Peering into the quiet night, I saw no one.

Then I knew where it had gone. I ran to my bedchamber, cocking the pistol and shouting for Katina. She was lying faint on the bed, the window open and the creature standing over her.

We were the same height, but it must have been triple my weight. It was covered all over with long thick hair and had a large head, topped with curving horns. Despite its dangling arms and broad, thick torso, it looked more like a man than an ape, a feral dwarf of huge proportions, an imp of Satan.

I raised the pistol but the creature knew what I did not. It looked at me for a moment with its piggish eyes then scooped Katina from the bed and turned to the window. I sighted carefully at its head. The beast was only a few steps away — there was no chance I would miss — all I had to do was squeeze the trigger. Yet I could not fire, and it took her away.

I slumped back against the wall, my heart more desolate than the land outside. I cursed myself for a weak-willed coward, but that was not the truth of it. The creature, though I hated it, had been a member of my family longer than Katina.

After that, I think I suffered from madness for a time. For a week I did nothing but drink bottle after bottle of cognac, a poison from the very heartland of the invaders who had brought it all to this. And strangely, though the _Grande Armee_ marched all the way to Moscow before it was done, I never saw a single Frenchman pass near my house. I was alone at the end of the world.

Katina's wide, full eyes looked at me from where her portrait hung on the wall. I could envision those eyes staring out through the translucent shell, as I had seen the eye of the stag in that foul grotto. I wondered if she was conscious, if some form of time passed for her. After that, I no longer desired strong drink. I simply sat on the veranda day after day looking out at the blackened land, wondering if eternal hell could be more terrible than the one I now lived.

High summer came at last, and by the grace of God my madness abated. The beast was deep into its hibernation; its hold upon me was weak as ever it would be. Now was the only chance, for me and for her.

I went to the family cemetery and stood at the foot of my father's grave.

"No more!" I shouted at his headstone. "No longer shall I be complicit in your crimes. The oath I took no longer binds me. You forced it upon me not to preserve the family lands, but to maintain our bond with the creature — an oath so dishonorable and unholy that it could never be sanctified before God."

I slowly spun a full circle, hurling accusations at my grandfather's grave and all his forefathers' in turn. "Why did you all do it? So you would not have to be afraid? When did it start? How many have there been? Did it not matter because they were _only serfs_? There had to be something human within you at one time.

"But now it matters not. We shall go far away from here, even if she cannot be revived."

I went to the cave then, and I did not carry any kind of firearm, only a hammer and chisel. The sun shone overhead, and the day was hot. I stood outside the cave with my eyes closed for a moment, so that the darkness inside should not blind me. I entered, knowing what must be there, but I was still not prepared.

She stood there, affixed to the wall by that unnatural secretion, her eyes open, and I felt that she saw me but could not move in even the smallest way. My breast ached for what she had suffered, but then the creature stirred in its bed of filth, as though troubled dreams crossed its sleep. It was trying to come fully awake, for it knew that I was there and what I planned. I had to work quickly. If it truly woke before I finished, it would devour me. I swung the hammer with a sure hand.

Even as I threw down the tools and pulled Katina from the shattered remnants of her prison shell, the beast rose up before me, but its balance seemed unsure. It took one hesitant step, clawing at me feebly. I dragged Katina from the cave and to the edge of the burnt forest. I looked back then, but saw only the mouth of the cave lying dark and silent.

Katina lay limp in my arms, as if in a trance. I pushed her in a vegetable cart for days. When we reached the marshes I found a small village that had survived the great burning, and then she opened her eyes and asked what had happened.

She had no memory of the creature, but when the rains of autumn came she started suddenly each time a chill wind rose, and I often found her at the window late at night, listening as if she would hear it should it awaken.

It is winter now, and I think the creature must have died. All things that feed can be starved, as now does Napoleon's army as it retreats across the burned and frozen land. Yes, the beast must be dead by now. The memory of my ancestral house is that of a home for darkness, and I will never dwell there again. But I shall still take long walks in the countryside, seeking peace, at last alone with myself.

# THE GOD STONE

"Aztec Indians would sacrifice people here in the olden days," Ryan said, brushing dirt and pine needles from the immense dark stone.

"The Aztecs never lived here," said Courtney, joining in at once. "They were Anasazi and they worshiped the goddess of flowers. They were peaceful and left offerings of sage and piñon nuts." She went to the edge of the clearing and squatted down next to a cactus in bloom, contemplating a way to pick the blossom.

"They did not," Ryan insisted, picking up a long narrow rock, the sharp edge digging into his fingers. "They would feed a victim strange roots that paralyzed him, then they cut out his heart and set it next to him on the altar, still beating." His sister looked up at him, and they both laughed at the same time. It was their favorite game.

Late in the summer after he finished the 4th grade, Ryan's mother had told them that she was going away for a year — a twenty-six nation tour with one of her groups to raise environmental awareness. She closed their house in Potomac, and Ryan and Courtney were sent to live with their Aunt Wanda in southwest Colorado. "Don't forget that I love you," she told them.

Aunt Wanda lived in the middle of nowhere, with wild country all around. She wasn't anything like Mother. She was sloppy and smoked and wore jeans and cowboy boots all the time, and she bought them sneakers and let them play outside. She said that Courtney could wear make-up, since she was entering junior high, and even that Ryan could have a bicycle, but he would have to wait until his birthday. And they didn't have to have the house spotlessly clean when she got home from work, nor did homework have to be done (with flawless handwriting or you had to do it over). "There's plenty of time for school work after dinner," she said. "Afternoon is for playing with friends." They didn't tell Aunt Wanda that they had never been allowed to go outside, not even to a schoolmate's house, because it was "too dangerous" — the same reason why they couldn't have bicycles — and they were never allowed to have a friend over because "it would be too much of a mess." But the best thing was that Aunt Wanda was happy. She never screamed at them when they forgot themselves and giggled out loud, and she told them that they were good kids, smart and nice looking, something their mother had never said to them. The only thing Ryan missed about his mother was her bookcase. It was full of cool books about ancient peoples.

"Wooo, Ryan," said Courtney, "come over here. I can see a face in it. See? It looks like a giant buried up to his chin."

Ryan tilted his head and gazed at the rough-hewn, volcanic boulder. At first it had seemed to be black, but now he saw that it reflected the sharp western light in a dozen shades of grey.

"It's the face of Bula Tama," he said. "He was buried here by all the other gods because he was a trickster."

Courtney nodded. "He's the god of deception."

"No. He never lies — he's just mischievous. Sometimes his tricks are mean, but in the end he's always fair."

"But one of his tricks killed another god," Courtney said, suddenly eager for a dark history. "That's why they buried him."

Ryan turned to his sister in all seriousness. "He likes to smoke. We have to come back tomorrow and sacrifice tobacco to him."

Courtney smiled. It was going to be a fun year.

At first Aunt Wanda had kept asking them if they wanted to have friends over after school, or if they needed her to drive them to a schoolmate's house on the weekends. "I know it can be hard to make new friends when everyone lives so far apart," she said. "If you want to go home with a friend on the school bus, I could pick you up after I get done with work." But it was harder than she thought. Ryan and Courtney felt like foreigners, and the other kids could sense their strangeness. Courtney could carry polite conversation with the more studious types, but Ryan was lost, and when he let his imagination slip aloud they backed away like he had a disease. He became known as "the weird kid."

That night, while Aunt Wanda was in the bathtub, Courtney stole a cigarette from her purse. After school the next day, she and Ryan climbed the tree-studded ridge that had become their back yard. When they reached the clearing, Ryan solemnly accepted the cigarette, holding it above the great dark stone while he ripped away the paper.

"Bula Tama, Bula Tama," he chanted as he scattered shreds of tobacco across the stone. "Hear me now. Don't have a cow."

Courtney echoed him, suppressing a giggle. "Hear me now. Don't have a cow."

Ryan glared at her. "This is serious, Courtney."

"Okay."

Ryan took a deep breath. "Bula Tama played a trick one day. They turned him to stone, and a stone he will stay. No more fun till all is done. The other gods have gone away."

On the last day of the fall semester the sky shone a brilliant blue and the ground lay patchy with snow. Aunt Wanda surprised Ryan and Courtney by meeting them at the bus stop. "Your mother is coming to visit you over the holidays," she said. "She can have my room and I'll stay in town with my friend Sandra. Anyway, she'll be here tomorrow. Isn't that wonderful?"

When Mother stepped through the front door she looked at Aunt Wanda and shrugged. "I must admit, it is cleaner than I imagined. I thought you had a problem with mice."

Then she saw Courtney. "I can't believe that you are letting her wear make-up, Wanda. She's still a child."

"She's a young lady now, Octavia. And look at her, such a beautiful young lady at that."

And Mother looked at her, and Ryan saw that she realized it was true — her daughter was beautiful. And it seemed to make her angry.

After dinner, Mother stayed downstairs to tell Aunt Wanda about the quaintness of the Cinque Terre and the spiritual purity of the shrines she had visited in Japan. She never talked about the work her group did, only the wonderful places she had seen. Later she came up to Ryan's attic room.

"Ugh," she said, "dusty."

When she opened the drawer in his little desk and found the jar with the nine dollars in it she asked, "Where did you get this money?"

"Aunt Wanda gives me a dollar a week for helping her take trash to the dump."

Mother nodded. "I see. Well, I'm going to keep it for you, so you don't spend it foolishly. You can have it to spend on something useful when we go shopping."

Ryan didn't say anything, but he knew: They would never go shopping together. And he would never see his nine dollars again.

Courtney's make-up was confiscated the next morning. The next night after supper she felt sick, and Mother sent her to her room. Courtney still felt bad the next day, and the day after was worse. She turned pale and sweaty and didn't want to get out of bed.

"Shouldn't you call a doctor?" Ryan asked.

"She's just doing this to get back at me," Mother said, her face wrinkling like a prune, "to make me waste my time nursing her. Whatever you do when you grow up, Ryan, never have children." Then she blinked and was suddenly quiet. But on the third day Courtney didn't get better.

Searching the kitchen drawer, Ryan found a pack of Aunt Wanda's cigarettes. He took one and went to the clearing where lay the great stone. He walked around it touching the pocked surface, the stone painfully coarse as he drew his hand over it. Tearing open the cigarette, he began to chant.

"Bula Tama, Bula Tama,

He opens his eyes; he sees all lies.

His mouth stays closed and he doesn't say why.

Bula Tama, hear me now."

On the fourth day Courtney felt worse, and she couldn't keep any food down. Mother had been spending all her time reading the books on herbal healing that she had brought with her, but now she stopped. On the fifth day Courtney became very pale, with almost a greenish tint to her face. On the sixth day she seemed weaker. On the seventh she was no better. And every day Ryan went to Bula Tama with tobacco, his chants becoming more urgent.

"Bula Tama, tricks and sin,

Now we know the fix is in.

Bula Tama, clever god."

On the eighth day Mother went out and returned with a long-haired man in filthy blue jeans and a beaded headband. She said that he was a healer. The man knelt beside Courtney's bed and held his hands over her with his eyes closed. His lips moved but he made no sound. After a few minutes he stood, placed a piece of quartz on Courtney's forehead, and ushered Mother from the room.

"Her aura has been pierced," Ryan overheard the healer say. "Torn wide open by some evil force that I don't understand. Her spirit is leaking away and I cannot stop it."

It began snowing that evening, large wet flakes that by morning left the pines sagging under a thick white burden and made a snowy mound of Mother's rental car. "It seems that I can't take Courtney to the doctor today," she said. "We're snowed in. The regular telephone is out of service, and I can't get a signal on my cell phone. I guess we just have to wait until it melts." She shook her head. "I can't believe that Wanda lives in this god-forsaken place."

The sky spat ice and snow all that day, and Ryan didn't think he could make it up the ridge to Bula Tama. He sat with Courtney after dinner while she tried to sleep. She had given up trying to eat several days ago.

"I'm so tired of hurting," she said, crying softly.

Ryan felt his own eyes well with tears. "Mother is going to take you to the doctor as soon as the road is clear."

Courtney shook her head. "No she won't. She hates me." She looked at Ryan and took his hand in a weak grip. Very softly, she said, "I think Mother did something to me, something to make me sick. I think she wants me to die."

"She says that she loves us," whispered Ryan pleadingly.

"She doesn't."

The snow let up during the night, dawn coming endlessly through heavy fog. Courtney looked very bad that morning. After lunchtime she was even worse, so pale and still and wet that she looked like she had drowned.

Her eyes remained closed, but she whimpered in her half-sleep, "Mmmake it stop. Pleassse. I can't stan' it anymore."

"I'll try," Ryan whispered, wiping hot tears from his cheeks. "I'll try."

He quickly dressed in his warmest clothes then slipped downstairs to the kitchen. As he shook a cigarette loose from the pack he noticed a disposable lighter resting in the bottom of the drawer, and on pure impulse thrust it into the pocket of his coat along with the cigarette.

Picking his way up the side of the ridge, staying close to the trees where the snow looked shallow, he still foundered in some places where he stepped in up to his knees. When he got to the clearing he was panting heavily, his breath coming out in clouds.

The ground around Bula Tama lay wet with freshly-melted snow, as if the great stone radiated heat. Ryan was afraid to touch it. He knelt before his god, placed the cigarette between his lips, and lit it. The smoke seared his throat and took his breath away as he drew it in. He coughed, his eyes watering, and this time, in a rasping voice, he did not chant.

"Please," he begged, "please let her die. It's never going to end. You can't let Courtney keep hurting." He puffed desperately as he spoke, gagging with the taste of the tobacco, but never pausing in his prayer.

"Please make her die," he said, shaking with sobs. "Please make her die. Make her die!"

Time didn't pass for Ryan, but when he looked up dusk had come and it was very cold. Then a low droning sound rose up from below, a pair of lights lancing the freezing mist. Aunt Wanda had made it through in her big pick-up truck. It was slow going down the ridge, and by the time Ryan got to the house, Aunt Wanda was standing on the front porch screaming his name.

"Oh Ryan," she said, her eyes glazed with shock, "something terrible has happened." Then she told him, and he knew his prayer had been answered.

The funeral was held back in Maryland, and the family gathered afterward at Ryan's old house. He overheard Aunt Wanda say to a distant cousin, "Everyone is acting like it was an accident, but I think it was suicide. It seems that some new-age healer told her that Courtney was going to die — and you know, when I found her it sure looked like it had already happened. Anyway, Octavia really believed in all that, and I think she killed herself rather than watch her daughter pass away. Octavia really had a dark streak in her. Nobody knew it, but she did."

"And Courtney is alright now?" interrupted the cousin.

"She's fine. She started getting better the next day."

The cousin lowered her voice. "Do you know what it was that Octavia took?"

"It was a little white powder made from a common flower — there were instructions on how to make it in one of her books on herbs. The book said that it was medicinal in tiny amounts, and I suppose she was using it as a cure for Courtney. But the book also said that a full teaspoon was deadly."

"So you really think Octavia killed herself."

Aunt Wanda sighed with finality. "Yes. I found her in the chair next to Courtney's bed with a tray on the side table. There was a cup of peppermint tea for Courtney, and Octavia's afternoon cup of coffee. The sugar bowl was closed and the jar of herbal stuff was open right next to it. I don't know what happened, but who would mistake poison for sugar?"

Ryan didn't smile. Children weren't supposed to smile at times like this.

# BLOOD BOND

When her chamberlain gave her the jade earring, Kalabai stepped out from behind the purdah screen and addressed the eunuch directly, "You could have taken that from my brother's lifeless body." But when the eunuch placed the letter on her tray and she read it, she knew Sidda was still alive. Written weakly in his own hand, it was the hymn to Tara — his favorite one — with a subtle change or two, as was his caprice.

Entering upon the road, hands and feet reddened

with the blood of slain elephants, I see you.

Upon the road I think of you,

a tiger trampled beneath your feet,

and thus I pass into the dense forest.

Those who do not stop on their path of killing,

O Tara, even they are conquered

and bow down before you.

My poor brother, she thought. The poet within you has suffered much.

She turned to the eunuch. She doubted that even a single hair grew beneath the _pagri_ wrapped around his fat head, for he had no eyebrows at all.

"Tell Lord Narsya that this affront is unendurable. Tell him that if he does not release my brother at once, I shall have my father's kinsmen raise troops enough to destroy your master's stronghold and add his lands to my own. He shall be blinded, his tongue cut out, and he banished as a penniless beggar." Kalabai tried to swallow her queasiness. This kind of diplomacy was risky, but it just might gain Sidda his freedom in one stroke.

The eunuch bowed his head slightly, averting his eyes. Gently, in a tone of apology, he said, "My master knows that your kinsmen will not come. They resent you for ruling here as Maharani, refusing marriage for these many years. Some even think your father's illness to be unnatural, because he planned to adopt a son and heir. The only troops at your command are your bodyguard, and they are Pathan mercenaries."

My life, Kalabai thought bitterly, must be written across the sky for everyone to read.

"Lord Narsya asks a great sum of gold for my brother's ransom."

The eunuch bowed his head again, as if it pained him to speak so bluntly to a great lady. "My master bids me to tell you that because the man is your _half_ brother, the ransom named is only half the gold he would usually ask."

The ransom would by no means break her treasury, but it was more than a Maharaja's bastard warranted. Why did Sidda have to drive such a wedge between himself and the family? She remembered when they were children and lived together here. He would come to her chambers at night and recite poems for his younger sister.

"Tell your master that the ransom will be delivered."

"I am to accompany it," said the eunuch.

Kalabai instructed her chamberlain to arrange it. "And send a heavy guard as escort," she told him.

"My pardon," the eunuch said, "but my master has strictly forbidden that armed men shall come to his palace."

Kalabai frowned. "Doesn't he know that the countryside is thick with robbers and practitioners of _thugee_?"

"He does. He fears them not."

"I do. I will not send a chest of gold unguarded along those forest trails where anyone could be hiding." She walked to her balcony and looked out across the jungle spreading toward the distant mountains, massive peaks rising misty from the clouds. "I will go with the ransom myself," she said, turning back to the eunuch. "Surely your master cannot deny a noble lady her bodyguard."

The eunuch stood speechless, his eyes alight with panic. "Forgive me," he finally said, "but this would be most unwise of the Maharani. My master's instructions were very explicit."

"He simply did not foresee this. And I _will_ go with you." She nodded to her chamberlain. "Prepare my bodyguard for travel."

"Please, my lady, please do not come," begged the eunuch. "An illness haunts Lord Narsya's palace. For those of good heart, there is only suffering in that place."

The forest pressed close to the path, so that Kalabai and the captain of her guard could no longer ride two-abreast. His name, she knew, was Sherkhan, and he drew his _tulwar_ now as he took the lead, letting the blade rest lightly on his shoulder. His mail coat and spiked helmet flashed in the beams of sunlight lancing through the trees. Though he was a foreigner, Kalabai regarded him as _Kshatriya_ — warrior caste, almost equal to her own — and when his shadow touched her person she felt no spiritual defilement. The remainder of the guard, and the porters with the iron-bound chest, followed with the eunuch on foot.

The eunuch had blinked in surprise, his familiarity with her suddenly colored with a quiet awe, when he saw how she dressed for the journey, in a man's silk jacket and the riding breeches that Sidda had brought back from Jodhpur — even more when she mounted a horse instead of a palanquin. That had been Sidda's gift to her, teaching her to ride and to hunt, and teaching her that she didn't have to be quiet and stay in her place. That had been when they still loved each other, before the day they rode past the river pavilion.

Nine summers ago she had been fifteen, he almost twenty. Her horse had shrieked and reared. She was thrown to the ground. Something massive, a white streak and snapping noises in the forest. Then the tiger bounding at her. Sidda jumping in front, swinging his sword, screaming for her to run. His sword arm in the tiger's jaws. The sudden silence after, and her brother's blood on the floor of the jungle.

His wounds healed but somehow he did not. Not that Sidda ever became afraid of the forest. He went there often for solitude. He even developed a sympathy for tigers, crowding his chambers with engravings and sculptures of the great cats. But he no longer sat with Kalabai in the parrot garden, never rode with her. For that matter, he never again rode at all.

It was an argument over the hunting of tigers that began his growing apart from Father and the family. When their father decreed a bounty on tiger pelts, Sidda had said, "There's not very many of them, and they'll not hurt anyone if you just leave them alone, can't you see that?" Several pelts were brought to the palace that month, none belonging to the white that had attacked them. When, following that, three hunters were found mauled to death, Sidda had foamed with anger. He had stormed into Father's durbar room shouting, "This is your fault. This is what happens when you do not leave them alone!"

Soon after that, her brother began going to the city, staying days at a time and returning with foul _sherab_ on his breath, his eyes red and his face dark. Father heard rumors of gambling loses, dalliances with questionable women. Many young men took a turn at that sort of thing, Kalabai knew, but even at home he never did much but sleep and brood, never wanted to help manage the affairs of the family, and when anyone spoke to him he only answered with sarcasm or contempt. When Father announced that he would adopt a son as his heir, it only got worse.

Kalabai and her escort followed the forest path for six days, breaking into the open near a river village. Beyond lay the domain of Lord Narsya. They passed along the dirt streets, stopping at the river where the water ran shallow against a sandy bank. A dozen peasant women squatted there, talking and washing clothes in the late-morning heat. While the horses drank and the guards filled their water jugs, a gang of a hundred sweaty laborers, bare-chested and clad in dhotis, came down from the town.

The workmen chatted good-naturedly as they splashed into the river to wash their feet or drink, or stand on the bank and call jibes to their friends. But none of them went more than a few steps from where he had dropped his pickaxe. Kalabai began to move away from the filthy men. Some of them looked like the worst kind of badmash.

"Hey Bhimsha," one of them said to his fellow, rather loudly, "pass the tobacco!"

Calmly, each man took up his pick or shovel, as if getting ready to return to work. Then, calmly, they set upon the soldiers, five or six to a man, cutting them down with axe blades, driving their picks through the guard's chain mail and deep into their bodies, mostly from behind. Sherkhan pushed Kalabai behind him and stood alone against a handful of the thugs. He felled two of them with his _tulwar_ before a shovel blade caught him in the back of the neck.

Then it was over. The assassins sang praises to Kali as they melted back into the town with the treasure chest. Kalabai and the eunuch stood alone at the water's edge. Her bodyguard and porters were dead, their blood a new vein in the skin of the river.

The eunuch shook his head. "It is sad that the Maharani did not listen to this lowly one."

"Do you mean that this is Lord Narsya's doing?" Kalabai said through angry sobs.

"Yes," whispered the eunuch, "as you were warned."

"What, is your master a beast?" she said hotly. "These men had families. Sherkhan . . . he has five children — one who has never seen his father. And now he never will." Her tears fell upon the dead man's cheek.

The eunuch looked at her gravely, daring to meet her eye. "Dharma is satisfied, my lady." When she cocked her head at that, he explained. "Were these men not sworn to live and die by your command?"

"Yes."

"Then they have done so."

Lord Narsya's palace had long been known as The Golden Fortress, but when Kalabai first saw it, she thought it looked more like an ancient temple, carved with voluptuous beauties in bare stone and no gold to be seen. It had been built at the top of a low cliff, an enormous shelf of rock that allowed no blade of grass to grow within sight of the palace. Another verse of the hymn came to her mind unbidden.

A man wise in daily prayer,

bound captive in prison

by all the lords of this earth,

need but think of Tara

_and instantly bursts his bonds_.

The eunuch had advised her to go no further. He had almost begged her. Now that Lord Narsya had his gold, her brother would be released. But Kalabai knew better.

She wondered if that was how they had taken Sidda unaware — thugs posing as friendly strangers. If they robbed him and still wanted more, he must not have had much silver left. What was it that the eunuch had said? _For those of good heart_. . . . Kalabai wanted to believe that her brother had a good heart.

After Father had made it clear that Sidda was not to be his heir, her brother's gambling became excessive, as did his debt. One day, when he went to the bazaar to find gifts for his women, he insisted that Kalabai go with him and bring a few guards. Even so, he kept looking around, staying in her palanquin most of the time, as if he knew that someone was there searching for him.

He went to the city less often for a time. Then came the killing of a local badmash, something Kalabai would never have heard of, but for the method. The killers had used weapons made of the teeth and claws of a tiger, no doubt to cover their crime. But, foolishly, they had done their murder in the city, in an alley of the prostitutes' quarter — the city walls were much too high for a tiger to have crossed over. Sidda had seemed more relaxed after that, and more agitated as well. Kalabai began to smell _sherab_ on his breath early in the day.

Father eventually learned of the huge debt and paid it. He gave Sidda enough silver so that he could live in modest comfort for the rest of his life and told him that there would be no more allowance. If Sidda squandered this and came to poverty, it would be his own fault. Then Father told him that he could no longer live in the palace. He offered Sidda use of the river pavilion.

Sidda's eyes had turned red with anger, his only answer a low sound in his throat, and Kalabai had been suddenly afraid for her father. But later, when Sidda told her good-bye, he laughed about it. "I suppose that I'm entering my time as a hermit somewhat early in life," he said.

But he lived in the river pavilion less than a month. His manservant had risen one morning to find him gone. The old fellow told Father that Sidda had become a _sannyasi_ , a possessionless wanderer. Father had snorted, saying that Sidda carried enough silver to feed a hundred beggars for a thousand years. But soon Father's health seemed to fail him, and they never spoke of Sidda. Kalabai had not seen her brother since.

The _durwan_ at the gate of the fortress was a pock-marked giant, with a hairy face and the nose of a bull. He opened the great iron-strapped doors when he saw the eunuch, and Kalabai passed within. She waited in a room walled with pierced marble while the eunuch reported to his master. He soon returned, his face pinched with hurt.

"I am to show you to your brother now," he said. "But my master commands you to parley with him as soon as you are refreshed. He is very angry."

Kalabai pursed her lips. She wished that she could have seen Lord Narsya's face when he opened the chest.

The eunuch led her down a narrow corridor that looked like it had once been adorned with precious metals, long since stripped away. Kalabai nodded. _Lord Narsya's treasury is empty. That's why he has turned to abducting royal sons for ransom_.

In a niche behind a beaded curtain the eunuch slid a small panel aside, and through a marble grillwork she saw her brother there in the next room. Surrounded by murals and tapestries, Sidda lay asleep on a divan in the center of a large iron cage.

Kalabai whirled to face the eunuch, who quickly closed the panel. "He has my brother caged! Why? How could he be so cruel?"

The eunuch bowed his head. "Lord Narsya has knowledge of many secrets, my lady."

Kalabai bathed quickly, the perfumed water smelling sickly sweet, then she dressed in the white silk bodice and sari that she had brought for this audience with Lord Narsya. She had never met the man, but clothing that showed her better curves might prove disarming. He was, after all, a man. She placed the jeweled cap on her head and went to the door of her suite. A nod to the eunuch told him she was ready.

The durbar chamber was a deep room, lush with silk curtains, Persian rugs, ivory, ebony, and a carved ceiling set with green crystals. The air stood thick with pungent incense. In dim light at the far end of the room, a figure sat in a golden chair, speaking with courtiers on gilded stools at his side. As she approached he turned to face her. She took in a short, sharp breath.

A vampire, his body brown-haired,

dark as obsidian,

bound by his very sinews to hunger and thirst

and the slaughter of men,

_even he is conquered by the thought of Tara_.

Lord Narsya looked older than anyone she had ever seen, his skin a weathered hide, dry and cracked, his eyes deep within their sockets and his hands shriveled to bony talons. A gold tiara rested on his hairless skull. He wore gold bangles at his wrists. Even his jacket and _paijama_ were interwoven with golden threads.

"So," he snapped, "you've been a clever girl."

"You may address me as Maharani."

He squinted at her. "You dally with your brother's life. Why have you come without the gold I demanded?"

"I only filled the chest with stones as a precaution against robbers. It seems that I was correct to do so."

"Then you intend to pay the ransom?"

"Yes. It is nearby, where I can easily call for it."

Lord Narsya stroked his chin with inch-long fingernails. "Nothing takes place in this domain without my knowledge. If so much gold were on my lands, I would be able to smell it." The courtiers laughed at that, and Kalabai saw that they, too, were ancient, and all of them had had their faces painted gold.

Through brown broken teeth, Lord Narsya flashed a cruel grin at Kalabai. "If you lie to me again," he said, "I will have your brother brought here and slain before your eyes. Now, where is the ransom that is due to me?"

Kalabai looked him in the eye and made her question a challenge. "Do you swear by all the gods that you will free Sidda if I produce it?"

"I swear it," Lord Narsya said, his voice husky with greed.

Kalabai removed the cap and carefully unbound her hair, taking out the tiny bundle of cloth that lay hidden there. She removed the diamond and held it out in the palm of her hand. "This is worth more than you asked," she said.

Lord Narsya threw his head back in anguish. "Foolish girl! It was gold that I wanted, gold that I need. That was the whole point." He glanced again at the diamond, clenching his fists as he cried, "Too bad, too bad. Oh, too bad!"

A lady of the court, a skeletal figure whose head teetered on a skin-and-bone neck, croaked in a shrill voice, "Can you not trade the gem for pure gold, my lord?"

"Yes, yes," said Lord Narsya peevishly. "But it is hard to find someone with that much gold who is willing to spend it on a bauble." He looked at Kalabai, then back to the lady, instantly falling calm. "It will take time, my dear. Too much time for one of us, I'm afraid." He smiled at her.

The lady took a meaning from him that Kalabai didn't understand. She stood, her eyes bright with green flames.

"No," she screeched, "you cannot! I know what this is — you mean to bring _her_ into the circle. I appreciate her beauty, my lord, but I am the eldest. Choose another."

Lord Narsya raised his chin to her. "I choose you."

She saw that there was no moving him. She fell to her knees, sobbing. "Please, my lord, not me. I have been faithful for centuries. Not me."

Lord Narsya motioned to one of his bodyguards, a Mongol with a huge sword in his sash. The guard took hold of the woman's sari and dragged her from the room. She whimpered softly as she went, "I am the eldest . . . the eldest."

"Please," said Lord Narsya, turning back to Kalabai, "sit. Let me offer you refreshment."

He went to a Chinese cabinet and opened it with a key that hung from his wrist bangle, gingerly bringing out a heavy glass decanter. The courtiers leaned forward in their seats, frowning when Lord Narsya called for only two goblets. He honored Kalabai by pouring with his own hands.

"The elixir," he said, handing her a golden cup.

As politeness required, Kalabai took a sip. It was tart, with an aftertaste like blood. She held her cup closer to the light and looked into it, seeing tiny glittering grains suspended in the clear wine.

"What is this?" she asked. "There's a golden powder in it."

" _Killed_ gold, to be precise. Pure gold is hammered into leaf, perforated, bathed in a paste of lemon juice and ash of mercury, then roasted a dozen times. It is the key ingredient for the elixir of life. You should feel an increase in vitality almost at once."

She did feel stronger, and more bold.

Lord Narsya could see it, and he smiled. "The elixir is more effective," he said, "when one wears pure gold against the skin. Now come and sit at my side as a courtier. And tell me, would you like to keep your fragile beauty for a very long time?"

"I think not," Kalabai said.

"No need to commit yourself now," he said. "Spend a little time here as my guest. You should be quite decided in a decade or two."

Kalabai sat in the guest chambers and stared into her silver hand-mirror. The kohl lining her eyes had smeared, making her look desperate, hunted.

Discomposed by Lord Narsya's talk of dark alchemy, she had excused herself from the court. The courtiers had laughed for a moment, then began clamoring for a share of her nearly-full goblet. Lord Narsya had allowed her to go, with the eunuch as escort. Even now he stood guard outside her door. Kalabai was as much a prisoner as Sidda.

She cracked the door. The outer room lay empty but for the eunuch.

"I must speak to my brother," she said.

"Do not worry, my lady, the master will release him soon."

"I know. But Lord Narsya will not tell Sidda that I am here. Take me to him at once."

The eunuch shook his head sadly. "I cannot. It would be my life."

"Not even for your lady?" she said softly.

He took a deep breath. "My lady knows that I worship her, but she must not ask me to do this." Falling to his knees before her, he said, "Please. Let me help you lose your sorrows in pleasure. Let me call for musicians and dancers, wine and delicacies. I am well trained in the art of sensual massage. My fingers can bring you the most exquisite delight. These things I can do."

Kalabai looked down at him. "Do you have a good heart?"

"No," he said. "I did once, but no longer."

She lowered herself to the floor, and reaching out, placed her hand over the eunuch's heart. "I believe it is still good."

The eunuch closed his eyes against swift tears and said, "I am blinded. I cannot see if my lady comes or goes. Very near, beyond the blue room, there is a white door. . . ."

Kalabai went softly. A maid saw her before she found the blue room but didn't take any notice. Then she was through the white door, running to the cage, grasping the cold iron bars, and Sidda opened his eyes and smiled weakly at her.

Slowly, with effort, he said, "To look upon you is lovelier than paradise, my sweet sister, yet I never thought to bring you to this pit of demons."

Then she saw the binding around his chest, and how it leaked blood. "Sidda, you're hurt! They didn't tell me."

He propped himself up on one elbow, wincing with the pain. "Bitten by a tooth of Kali."

Kalabai thought about the river. She remembered those teeth.

"Sidda, I have paid your ransom. Lord Narsya will release you now, but he means to keep me captive. You must go and find help. Father is too ill — one of our uncles perhaps."

He shook his head, looking faint for a moment as his boyish face beaded with sweat. "Even if they would see me, my wound is deep. I'm too hurt to go alone." He looked at the old scars on his arm. "I think even the tiger cannot keep me alive now."

His eyes suddenly cleared. "But if they would have you as one of them, you must not stay one night. Lord Narsya's alchemy is strong." He managed to sit up, leaning against the bars of the cage. "Give me your hand," he said.

She did so, and he took it, saying softly, "I'm so sorry, Kalabai, but this is the only way. I cannot escape, and you must. I am afraid, because I think I will die, and I am afraid for you, because I know what it will do to you."

He smiled at her, a single tear running from his eye. She thought he was going to kiss her hand, but then he suddenly bit into her wrist with savage force, holding it in his jaws, working his teeth deeper into her veins. She cried out in pain and he let go.

"Try not to be too angry," he said. "It takes anger to summon the tiger, but too much and you will lose control. It will be hard, but try. And remember to flee — do not fight — run away as fast as you can and let no one see you. Try to remember."

Then he fell away and lay still.

"Sidda?" She held her hand over his mouth and felt no breath. "No! Please don't die, Sidda. Please don't die."

And then the rage took her. She beat on the bars of the cage with her fists and cried, "You evil man! You and your court of vampires. I hate you. I hate you all!"

The bars bent easily under her blows. She knocked them loose, ripped the cage apart, but Sidda did not rise.

She went to the door, splintering it as she crashed through. One of the Mongol guards came in from a side hall, his eyes going wide as he screamed and reached for his sword. Kalabai knocked him down with one swipe then tore his throat out. Her tail lashed the air noiselessly as she stalked along the passage to Lord Narsya's durbar room.

Kalabai had licked herself clean of blood before the tiger receded, and she found herself sobbing, naked on the bed of one of the slain courtiers. She borrowed a red sari and went barefoot through the now-empty fortress, glancing into the throne room as she passed.

Yes, it was as she remembered it. She felt most sorry for the eunuch — her heart would forever suffer for his death, but he had chosen to defend his master, dutiful in the end, his dharma fulfilled.

Then she saw the overturned Chinese cabinet, one door hanging limply from its broken hinge.

"Sidda!" she cried aloud. Running to the cabinet, whispering a prayer, she found the glass decanter on its side, cracked, but with a swallow of the elixir still left.

Going quickly to the room where Sidda lay, she knelt beside him and trickled the golden potion between his lips. He still didn't move. _Am I too late? Is there nothing left but for me to finally give you the compassion you needed so many years ago?_

He drew a ragged breath, his eyes fluttering open. "Y-you are still here," he said.

Kalabai thought she had no tears left, but her cheeks ran hot and wet as she took Sidda's head in her arms. "I couldn't leave without my brother."

"There's no place I can go" he said, his smile darkening. "And now, because of me, it is the same for you. You will see the tiger again. That I can promise you."

She smoothed back his hair. "There is one place," she said. "We can go home."

#

# A FAMILY TRADITION

Michael watched from the cold concrete bench at the bus stop. The street ran thick with cars, headlight beams crossing in the mist and fumes, and he watched as her shadow passed behind the kitchen window. She was alone. That meant he could kill her tonight.

Idiot. Why are you in such a hurry this time?

But he knew why — this one was too close to home, too close to his son. Michael had been getting ready to go, just starting to shoot up, when Gabe had walked in on him.

"Grandpa told me that that wasn't insulin. Grandpa said that it was a medicine that great-grandpa William invented so that you wouldn't get poisoned when sick people scratched you. And he said that if you took it too many times it was bad."

"This is insulin," Michael had lied. "You know I'm diabetic. And you were only four when your grandpa went away. He never said anything like that."

"Yes he did. I remember."

Gabe was suspicious, and too close to the truth since he pried open the lock box under Michael's bed and found Dad's scrapbook. Michael should have thrown that stuff away long ago. The kid was all too sneaky for a twelve-year-old.

And now Michael had found one of them living in his own town, just a few miles away. Gabe had been with him when he spotted her coming out of a laundromat and saw the way his father had jumped. The sooner he was done with this one, the better.

Michael took out the surgical gloves and worked his hands into them. He had sworn off break-ins years ago, even in ghettos like this one where screams in the night were ignored and even the police didn't come around to check-out gunshots.

He craved the luxury of a nice clean gunshot. Ten years of bludgeoning women to death were beginning to wear on him. Oh, he had a 9mm Beretta under his jacket, but he didn't need a gun to kill one of them. It was there in case he got caught.

Still, if he didn't get caught, and could keep getting one each month, it would be over in his lifetime. His son could simply live, and Gabe wouldn't have to know about _them_ , wouldn't have commando training instead of a childhood, wouldn't have to do this. He remembered how he felt when Dad had been sent to prison, all of it suddenly on his own shoulders. He had prayed every day that somehow there wouldn't be any more of them, that he would not have to kill anymore. Now he silently said that prayer again.

Rolling his head and pretending to rub the back of his neck, so it wouldn't look like he was looking around, he stood and crossed the street, the rush-hour traffic beginning to thin. The apartment buildings, textured with dirty yellow stucco, looked like blocks of cheese on a black slab. The wrought-iron gate had once been automated with a card-key lock, but it was broken now. He unzipped his jacket to the cool moist night but found little relief. He always got hot when he was about to do it.

As he neared her door, Michael slipped the lock-picks out of his pocket, and for a moment he was eleven again and his father was saying, "Do it casual, son. Act like they're just a set of door keys." Dad had liked break-ins. That was how he had been caught.

Michael usually followed the target for a week, got to know her daily routine, and then surprised her as she was getting into her own car. But he had watched this one for a couple of days and she had never left her apartment. When the lady at the Sunshine Laundromat told him where this one lived, she had been so sure, so ominous, like she knew all about them — a woman named Mary who dressed covered-up all the time, nothing but a little bit of her face showing, even in the summer heat.

He stopped at her door. Good. She had a Brink's dead-bolt and knob-lock set — made in China, not a problem. He listened. A television blared next door, and water ran hard in a sink here. That should cover the noise of his entry. Dad had always said to do break-in's early in the evening while everyone was busy and lots of strangers were coming and going.

Inside the deep pockets of his jacket, his midget bolt-cutters felt cold and heavy. Through clenched teeth, the tool seemed to whisper a prayer for the dead. Chain or no chain, Michael would use it tonight.

It took him ten seconds to open the two locks — too slow — he was out of practice. Now lock-picks away, bolt-cutters out, crack the door. No chain. Slide in quick and smooth. Cluttered front room. Not in the kitchen. A sound from the back room. Go that way, swift and silent. The familiar feeling of his nerves surging and his gut loosening.

She was undressing, and started to turn just as he reached her. Grabbing a handful of her thick auburn hair, he bent her head back and raised the bolt-cutters, holding them like a hammer.

Suddenly, nothing was right.

She was scared. She made a tiny sound as she strained for breath, and it was nothing but terror. And she stood still, almost paralyzed.

They never showed any fear.

And there were pictures on the wall, and a stupid little ladybug clock. They never had things like that. _They_ never decorated at all, except for house plants. Their homes were always thick with ivy and ferns.

"If you call out, I'll break your skull," he said, dragging her to the tall brass lamp in the corner of the bedroom. Still holding her by the hair, he tore off the lamp shade and forced her face close to the naked bulb. He twisted her head side to side, his own face close, looking for the nubs where they shaved the little antennae around their mouths and eyes. He pushed her head forward and looked for the big sense-hairs at the back of the neck.

He couldn't find them.

The evidence was falling hard on him now — a shelf with knickknacks, a fox eating grapes — and his certainty caved-in. The pictures on the wall were old movie posters, _The African Queen_ , _Apocalypse Now_. A glance at the bed showed him something worse. Nestled in a pile of fluffy pillows lay an old shaggy teddy-bear. Michael felt sick.

_I almost murdered her_.

She forced herself to speak, struggling to keep her voice steady. "M-money in my purse. On the bed. Please don't hurt me."

My God. She's just a regular person. And she thinks I'm here to rob or rape or kill her. Christ Almighty, how did I let this happen?

"Wait a minute," he said, more to himself than her, "what's your name?"

"Mary," she squeaked.

He tightened his grip on her hair, and she winced. "Your last name," he demanded.

"Allingham. Mary Allingham."

"Not Swanson? Did you sail from Buenos Aires aboard the _Isabella_ in 1956?"

"I'm only twenty-two," she said, holding back tears of fright.

He looked at her and saw a young woman with dark, lined eyes and thick lips, with a hint of baby fat in her neck. She was barely grown up. They aged very slowly, but no, not so slow as this.

He put her on the bed, let go of her hair, and sat opposite on a stool in front of the vanity, still ready with the bolt-cutters.

"I thought you were someone else," he said. "This heavily made-up woman at the laundromat said that you were . . . that you were— "

"An alien?"

"Something like that."

The young woman blinked once in a deliberate way. "I'm familiar with the lady. She has spells of lunacy, you know. She tells people that she gets abducted by a UFO every Saturday night. They force her to cook pancakes for the crew on Sunday morning."

She tried a brief thin smile, but her eyes searched and searched for a way out of this. Michael could see her mind working furiously, could almost read her thoughts. She thought he was a psycho. If she kept him talking, though, he might not do her any harm.

Michael shook his head. He needed to go. Go and leave this poor girl to herself.

"Do you have a car?" he asked. He would drive it the five blocks to where he had left his own, switch and be gone.

Her eyes widened, the terror returning. "Y-yes."

Jeez, she thinks I'm going to take her for a ride to the country so I can do her and dump the body. Which was, in fact, what he had done with most of them.

"Give me the keys."

She bent over her purse. And came up with a .32 automatic clutched in her delicate hand, a little click as the safety came off.

"Now," she said, scooting away from him, still afraid. "Put those clippers on the floor or I swear that I will shoot."

His dad had made Michael start taking tae kwon do when he was eight, daito jujitsu and escrima when he was thirteen. He was still very fast, but not faster than a bullet. He laid the bolt-cutters down.

She stood up and reached for her phone.

"Look," said Michael, "I know I broke-in and . . . I'm sorry. I thought you were this girl who deals smack. I have a son who's only twelve— "

"Quiet," she ordered, leveling the pistol at his head.

The 911 call was brief. Name. Address. Intruder.

After she put the phone down she looked at him sidelong, a hint of amusement at the corner of her mouth. "Alright. You can give me your explanation now. If it's good, I might even let you go. But if you lie I will shoot you and then tell the constables that you attacked me. And I know lies when I hear them. Believe me, _I will know_."

Michael believed her. Something about her told him that she would really know.

Did that mean she would know the truth if he spoke it?

It didn't matter. He just had to distract her enough so that her gun hand wavered and he could make a move. So he decided to tell her.

"They're not aliens. They are of this Earth — that's one thing I'm sure of. They have too much sympathy with human ways and how we think to be from another planet. We don't even know if they are an old or a recent species, synthetic, natural, or preternatural. But one thing they are not, is simply people with a disease. There's a mind within them that is not at all human.

"My grandfather William discovered them while returning from South America on a large passenger ship. One night, this woman who appeared pregnant started having convulsions in the middle of the dining room. Before anyone could do anything, her belly split open with a rush of noxious gas, followed by an eruption of fine black dust — this is how they reproduce — the dust is millions of tiny creatures, encysted in a spore-like form, and only one of them needs to get into you to begin the whole process of parasitic mutation. Anyway, a few hours later everyone on the ship became paralyzed with fever and seemed to be dying, except for my grandfather, who felt fine. He was young and brilliant, and he had had an emergency tooth-extraction that afternoon, the ship's dentist using an anesthetic known as ketamine. He made the half-right guess that the ketamine somehow killed the bug that had made everyone sick, so he gave a small dose to the ship's doctor. It didn't revive him; it sent him into shock and he died. Grandfather William could still see black dust floating in the companionways, so he took all the anesthetic to his stateroom and sealed himself in. Everyone was up and around by morning, but they did not look well, and later that day they brought the doctor's body up on deck and dissected it with his own surgical instruments, all of them watching with intense curiosity. My grandfather began injecting himself with ketamine every day.

"In the end they made it to Miami and William tried to tell someone at customs and quarantine, still wanting to believe that this was some sort of plague, even though he had seen the little feeler-hairs growing around their mouths and eyes. The captain had another story of course, and my grandfather barely avoided arrest for stealing from the ship's pharmacy. In time, he went to a teacher that he respected, a friend of the family, and told him everything. The teacher advised that he check into a hospital for the mentally ill.

"Like I said, William was a genius. He finished his doctoral work in chemistry that year, and another Ph.D. in biology two years later. During that time he invented a revolutionary chemical process, and sold the patent for about half a million dollars. And he obtained a copy of the ship's passenger manifest.

"He hired detectives and searched out many of the passengers. Most of the men were already dead, but the women hadn't aged a day. My grandfather tried to see a few of them, but they refused, and then all of them began dropping out of sight. By this time, he had got married and was doing independent research in his own lab. He found a bounty hunter who was willing to track down one of them and take a blood and tissue sample. Unfortunately, William didn't think it necessary to give the detective any ketamine, didn't know that a light scratch from the subject would infest the poor man.

"But my grandfather got his samples and learned some alarming things over the next several years. He became determined to do further research. In the early 60's, however, ketamine was discontinued because some patients had reported severe hallucinations. Grandfather William used his research to compound a new version of ketamine that was less debilitating yet kept the creatures anesthetized until they reverted to their dormant stage."

Her sharp stare had not softened. If anything, her eyes had grown harder, but she was listening with such grave intensity that it seemed she knew it all for truth. Yet the gun still pointed directly at him.

"So," he said, "you haven't fired. Does that mean you believe me?"

She blinked again, and he noticed that her eyelashes were long and thick. "Go ahead with your story," she said. "I shall tell you when you're done."

The ladybug clock ticked loudly. The police were usually slow to respond in this neighborhood, but he needed to get out of this in the next minute or two. Ready to spring the instant she looked away, Michael continued.

"My grandfather then took a big risk. He kidnapped one and brought her to his lab for an in-depth study. He was able to accelerate her reproductive system, and found that they didn't cycle for nearly eighty-eight years. He also realized that if one of them gave birth in a large city it would infect a couple of million people.

"William made a mistake, though. He told his wife the truth. Then, before he could document the evidence, she discovered the one held prisoner in the lab — to my grandmother she seemed to be an innocent woman who had been kidnapped and tortured by a psychotic man. Grandmother had her own husband arrested and never saw him again. Grandfather's only defense was to tell the truth, and it might have worked, except that the victim and the documentation quickly disappeared.

"Even so, he was committed to a nut house. Grandmother signed the papers.

"My dad had just turned seventeen. Grandfather William had had the foresight to set up a nice trust fund for Dad, one that his mother couldn't get to. When Dad turned eighteen, she had to let him see his father. Together they decided that the only way to prevent a world-wide infestation was to kill them all now. Dad memorized the passenger list and spent his adult life finding and exterminating them. He got caught down in Houston in '01, so now I do it."

She nodded almost imperceptibly. "Any brothers or sisters to help you with this?"

"No, only me."

"What about your mother?"

Michael found that he was the one who looked away.

"She was just some burned-out hippie chick that Dad was able to get pregnant. Then with Grandfather's money he easily got custody of me and rid of her."

"What about your wife."

"I don't have one."

"You have a twelve-year-old son."

"I did the same thing as Dad. He only wanted me as a backup plan in case he got caught or had a bad accident, and he wanted me to have the same. I let him push me into it. But I love my son and I swear that he'll never know."

He looked up at her. She hadn't moved.

"Do you think I'm telling the truth?"

She spoke more calmly this time, with pity for he whose sins could not be undone.

"I think that you believe you are. But you don't see the big picture. You're looking at this through your granddad's psychosis — reinforced by your own father's belief in it. Don't you see? You have all been victims of that drug, keta-whatever-it-was. You said that they banned it because it _caused hallucinations_. The dentist used it on your granddad _before_ anything happened on the ship. Nothing happened, except that he stole more of the drug and used it again and again until he created this whole imaginary experience and obsessively pursued it for the rest of his life. He taught it to his son, then gave him the drug that made it so, only now the drug was refined and improved, probably to heighten the hallucinatory effect.

"Your grandmother was right. She must have seen that it all came from a psychopathic distrust of women. Those psychiatrists knew what they were doing. If they put your granddad in an asylum, have no doubt that he was insane."

"He was not!" Michael nearly shouted. "He was brilliant, a genius."

"And some geniuses are mad. Don't you know how easy it is for your parents to put their beliefs and fears into you without even trying? What do think happens when they set out to do it? A child is almost defenseless against that kind of thing."

"But I've seen them myself, up close," Michael said. "I've seen the feeler antennae on their faces and the sporidial nodes under their fingernails. Hell, I've killed dozens of them — they don't die like human beings."

"It is so obvious," she said, blinking back her disgust. "Your father said that a scratch from one of them would infect you. So you take this drug before you go in for the kill. Is it any wonder that you see them as you were brain-washed to see them? You are on this drug right now, I would bet, and I'm truly surprised that you do not see me as one of these beings. You likely did not take enough tonight, or it is only by some quirk of your brain chemistry that I am alive."

Yes. He remembered that he had almost killed her.

"The names," he said feebly. "The names matched the passenger list."

"Your insane grandfather just made them up or got them out of a telephone book."

The illogic of his own reality suddenly struck him. Which version made more sense?

"If you are ever going to be a whole person," she said softly, looking deeply into him with her black eyes, "you must admit to yourself that you have murdered the innocent." The corner of her mouth twitched, a single fine strand of blonde hair standing out. "You must have fancied yourself as some kind of holy avenger, and now you finally know that you are really a serial killer. More the pity."

It was true and he suddenly knew it. The power of her words seized him, forcing him to see what his inner self had already known. The way he was always praying that it was not so, the way he protected Gabe from ever knowing about them, it was because part of him knew. God help him, he had not only wasted his life, he had done horrible evil.

Through the bedroom doorway, red and blue lights strobed harshly against the curtains of the front room. He heard the scratchy squawk of a police radio.

The woman nodded toward the front door. "It is a shame, but no one will understand the truth. I feel sorry for you."

She glanced at the pistol. "Perhaps it would be a kindness if I left this with you." She tossed it onto the bed. "I'll speak to the police for a moment, to give you time."

Her hair shimmered blackly as she walked away. Hadn't it been reddish a moment before? Then he noticed that the movie posters had changed. Now they were photographs of a deep, lush jungle, and the ladybug clock had turned into a cockroach.

He was starting to hallucinate again, and the world began to feel more familiar. The familiar lie that had been his sacred truth, that he had sacrificed his childhood for, thinking it to be a noble quest.

No. No one would understand.

He went to the bed and picked up the gun. The chrome plating made it an ugly thing. Michael wasn't going to suffer Dad's fate — sit in a prison cell for years, waiting for them to strap you to a table.

He raised the pistol. The best way not to miss was to put it in your mouth, but he just couldn't do it that way. He pressed the muzzle to his temple.

Something rapped hard against the mirror on the back wall. Michael looked into it, but only saw himself, speaking in the high-pitched voice of a child.

The mirror exploded, and behind it, at a shattered window with a brick in his hand, stood his son. Gabe vaulted the window sill and ripped the gun from Michael's grasp. It was his own Beretta. The chrome .32 had never existed.

"Dad," he screamed, "what's wrong with you? What did she do to you? Dad, please, I'm scared."

Michael looked around. There were no pictures — the walls crawled with ivy, and dozens of tropicals hung from the ceiling.

She came back into the room, the sense-hairs on her arms fully erect and the antennae at her mouth and eyes twitching wildly. She reached for Gabe with sharp fingernails.

Gabe fired two rapid shots and she went down, her wounds leaking the black gel, her pores excreting the foul-smelling foam that Michael had seen so many times. The deafening report left a ringing silence.

Michael tried to focus. "Son, what are you . . . how did you get here?"

Gabe answered without looking away from the body. "Traffic slowed you down so much, I could follow you on my bike. I've done it before."

"But the cops out in the parking lot . . . "

Gabe looked at him. "There's nobody out there. I was careful to check."

A nice clean gunshot. _Twelve. The kid is only twelve_.

Gabe leaned over the body to get a look at her face.

"Don't touch her, son. You haven't been inoculated against it. Now wipe your prints off the gun and leave it — it can't be traced to anyone. We need to get out of here in case someone really does call the police."

Gabe moved to do it. "Grandpa really said those things I remember, didn't he."

Michael nodded. Dad had been right about the neo-ketamine. If you took too much in a short amount of time, it did cause hallucinations. And once you did it, the damage was done; there was no reversing it. He could never take it again.

Later, as Michael turned down the trim residential lane where they lived, all the porch lights glowing warmly, Gabe said to him, "Hey Dad, I saw from my hiding place the way you opened those locks in no-time, just like you had the keys. It was so great. Can you teach me how to do that?"

Michael made sure to speak evenly. He couldn't let his boy hear the deep, hopeless grief.

"Yes, son. I can teach you that."

#

# THE EXALTED

Viktir stood on the deck of the coaster and mopped his brow uselessly with a dripping handkerchief, the air heavy and moist, the heat relentless even in the soft light of sunset. They rounded a small island and the city came into view.

Long shadows crossed the face of Gorat Dule, the city of his birth, the land of his mother's bloodline. Viktir wanted this voyage to be a rebirth, this city a place where he would not be the strange one, shunned because of his foreign looks. He had not been old enough to remember when his sea-captain father had taken them halfway round the world to his own home in the West.

The Khaziri boatman steered for the banks where a sluggish green river met the ocean, tenements and slums crowding the low ground, lorded over by ornate temples and palaces, dark and opulent, each rising greater than the last on the terraced hills above the river. Beyond the city lay nothing but a vast jungle. The Khaziri put him ashore without even lowering the sail then had his boys shove-off at once, their heads down, not looking at the demonic faces that stared at them from atop huge statues.

The fey scent of poisonous flowers clung to the banks of the river, but the streets ran with the odor of rancid humanity, a breath of exotic spice at times winning through. Even in the falling twilight an unending flow of people jostled elbow to elbow in the ancient narrow streets. The alleys were impassable, each one choked with desperate folk living under makeshift awnings. Viktir pushed along, looking at faces, calm at first, then more and more urgent as the surprised expressions gazing back at him confirmed his fear, the way they stepped aside and would not let him close. He stopped and laughed aloud, a short, bitter bark of derision.

He was the outsider here as well. He didn't look like them. Viktir could see it clearly around their eyes — they were of another people. He had cut all his ties and spent all his savings because of an idiotic dream of being among his own kind. Mostly because Father had always told him that he looked like his mother.

He turned in sudden anger and ran headlong into a broad-shouldered man, a peasant wearing nothing but a loincloth and a dirty headwrap. The peasant spat at him out of reflex, then he noticed Viktir's clothing — no doubt he had never seen Western dress — and when their eyes locked his mouth spasmed in terror and he fell to his knees.

"Please," he stammered, "please forgive me, Exalted One."

Puzzled, Viktir could only look at him.

The street around them cleared at once, a burly man in red robes pushing through the crowd, drawing a thick quirt from his belt. A handful of men dressed for medieval combat, bearing swords and shields, followed him closely. Without a word the man in red raised the quirt and threw himself into a vicious stroke, catching the kneeling man from behind. The peasant cried out, falling forward onto all fours, the stripe across his back raw and welling with blood. Grunting with the effort, the robed man lashed him again, and again.

Viktir spoke without thinking. "Stop hitting that man!"

The red robed man instantly stood at attention. "Yes, my Lord. What punishment do you decree for him?"

Viktir felt as if he were in a play — one of those comedies of mistaken identity that were so popular in the West — but this one played as in a bad dream.

He couldn't help but say, "What was his crime?"

"Why, why," said the enforcer (Viktir now titled him) flustered, incredulous, "the Exalted One saw himself the high contempt, did he not? This swine tried to spit upon your Exalted self, my Lord. He should be sent to the Palace of Torments."

"He didn't know," Viktir said. "He's had enough. Send him home."

The enforcer nudged the peasant with his foot, the signal to begone. The man scrambled away, blood running down his back.

"I see that the Exalted One is unaccompanied. May I offer any or all of my men as an escort?"

"No. Go about your, ah, duties."

Viktir obviously bore a resemblance to an important noble of this land. He thought it best to keep his face in the shadows and hope this sort of thing didn't happen too often.

He wandered deeper into the city — down a cobbled way where prostitutes with young children sold themselves on the spot for a cup of milk, where many of the older kids sat begging and had no hands, and beyond, past an abandoned shrine where a god with an inhuman eye stared out from under a cloak of vines and creepers. Beneath patinas of mold and stain, most of the houses were faced with colorful tiles, flaunting pointed archways and abutted by crumbling courtyards where fountains once flowed. This had been a prosperous place at one time.

Becoming lost as darkness fell upon the unlit streets, he found a homeless boy who would take him to the only place in Gorat Dule that resembled a hotel, the resthouse for travelling merchants.

He woke suddenly in the dark, many hands grasping at him from both sides of the bed, a wide leather strap tightening across his mouth. More straps binding arms and legs held him stiff. A blanket was thrown over him.

"Let us do it now," whispered one of them urgently. "Then it would not matter if we were caught."

"No," answered another firmly. "It is our duty to share him with the others."

They carried him outside, dropped him into something hard. Movement — he was in a cart, then almost immediately the clopping and snorting of horses, coming close.

"Hold there tradesmen." A woman's voice. "What goods do you transport so late at night and hidden under blankets?"

Everything seemed to stop, and the silence grew heavy.

"If the Exalted One must know," muttered one of them, "it is my grandmother's corpse that we carry. We take her to her home village to prepare the body for the pyre."

"Remove the blanket," commanded the woman.

"The Exalted must know that it would defile us all."

"Now," she said sternly. "Let me see."

At the same time the blanket was thrown back Viktir heard a metallic scrape. A grimacing face beaded with sweat leaned over him and put a curved dagger to his throat.

"Now my lady and lords, you will lay down your weapons and ride away or I will open him and exalt myself right here in front of you!"

Viktir could see the woman (dressed in black leather much like a Western cavalier) and the two men behind her, all astride large, powerful horses. They sat absolutely motionless. Quick as thought, before anyone could react, the woman raised a pistol and shot the dagger man in the forehead without pausing to aim. The report shattered the night. Viktir heard the whistle of the ball as the man jerked and fell backward.

Half a dozen men stood near the cart — more kidnappers than Viktir had thought. One of them drew a machete, but the woman slipped off her horse and closed with him in an instant, reaching for her sabre in a blur and cutting through his neck on the draw. With preternatural grace she changed this into another flowing movement and killed the next man with a curving stroke.

The others ran. The two men spurred their horses and caught them in the darkness at the end of the street. They came back at a slow trot, wiping their blades.

She came to the cart and cut his bonds. She had skin of tarnished copper and hair of polished bronze, a curious smile and a bearing that said she had never lost control of a situation. Her eyes, large and green and deep, danced with an unearthly light, glinted crimson at the corners, cut and shaped her face just so, much as Viktir had seen in the looking glass.

She helped him up, saying, "I am Lady Sindla. You can ride double with me. We would likely be safe if we went back for your baggage, but I will have a servant fetch it later. Best to get off this street."

Faces began appearing at windows and doors, staring aghast at what lay before their homes. Viktir didn't know that a body could hold so much blood.

"You killed them all," he said hoarsely.

"It is my right to do so. I know that you would have liked to torture them, but it simply isn't the time to take prisoners."

As they rode away she said, "What lunacy came over you that you would stay at the human resthouse? You're lucky we have informants there."

One of the men said to him, "Probably the same ones who told the human cabal about you. Forgive my rudeness. I am Lord Zorne."

For their looks, they all could have been his cousins. Viktir introduced himself.

Sindla asked him, "Are you from the provinces, Lord Viktir? You speak with a strange dialect."

"I'm not a lord." He told them of his foreign upbringing.

Zorne looked sidelong at Sindla. "Half-blood?"

"Not possible. He is clearly Exalted." She turned to Viktir. "And your mother never told you about us?"

"Only the language. Perhaps she meant to tell me when I was older, but she died when I was still young."

Sindla shook her head in wonder. "So you know nothing about your own people — what a strange homecoming this must be. But don't worry. You are with us now, Lord Viktir."

"And what did you do in the West?" asked Lord Durun, the Governor of Gorat Dule.

Sindla had explained that she served the Governor as a commissioner of public safety and resided in his manse. She had brought Viktir to an exquisite palace of white marble, with delicate, airy towers and a hundred windows screened by fine filigree. He had spent the night in a silken chamber fit for a prince, unable to sleep, for even after midnight the black winds still pulsed hot and moist, and he lay beneath the mosquito net wondering at the strange and violent manner of this land.

"I was a shipping clerk," said Viktir.

"I see. Of course, that won't do at all — not at all. But we will find you something. Let's see." He turned to Sindla. "Don't we have a new plantation in Nahor Province?"

She nodded. "That was to be given to Lord Kamli's son."

"Have my secretary mark it for Lord Viktir. Kamli's boy is still young. He can wait another year."

"Yes, my lord."

The Governor smiled. "There. It's all settled now.

Oh, and draw an advance for Lord Viktir. Enough coin to outfit him well — can't have him looking like some foreigner can we?"

After they had been ushered away, Viktir told her, "I think I'll go walking in the city today, see it in clear daylight."

"Until you know the ways," said Sindla, "I must act as your guide, and we will both need escorts. But we who are Exalted do not walk in the same street as humans. Today we will ride in palanquins."

They toured the heights above the river, where dozens of palanquins sliced their way between porters, messengers, elephant drivers, and the ubiquitous red-robed enforcers. They saw and were seen by other Exalted at the market fair, the theatre, the bathhouse, and the gardens. At last she took them down a quiet alley ending at a temple on the edge of a steep drop. Made of pointed brass domes and walls crafted so fine they looked like beadwork, it enclosed a shrine mounted by the bejeweled figure of a malformed winged reptile. The incense burning there had a faint coppery odor, like the scent of blood.

"There are many gods in Gorat Dule. This is Ata, first among the Exalted and our creator."

Viktir led her outside. "I want to go down there," he said, looking out over the tumbling cluster of roof-tops that jammed the low ground.

"Why? That portion of the city is for them. There's nothing to see in the human quarter."

"I . . . I'm not sure if I am more like them than you."

Sindla opened her mouth in a silent snarl. "That is ridiculous. If a look in the mirror hasn't convinced you, then let me ask you if this rings familiar: You played with them as a child, but you didn't like their silly, simple games and didn't understand why they did. As you got older it became harder and harder to talk to them — it just didn't feel right to be with them. Then they became afraid of you. Some of them tried to bully you or engage in sporting contests in hope of humiliating you, but none could match your strength, speed, or natural grace. And none could challenge you intellectually.

"Have you ever wondered why you never take ill? Why you've never cried? Why the force of your will never falters? These are human ways, and not for us to suffer."

Viktir was silent. Half of what she had said was true. "I still want to go down there," he said at last.

So she took him to the river, armed men clearing a path through the overflowing streets. Hundreds of peasants stood in the river bathing or washing clothes, chatting loudly, tending babies, bored, grim, mirthful, and large with life.

Sindla thrust her chin outward. "Look at them. Without any sense of dignity. Do you still wish to claim them as your people?"

"What's happening over there?" Viktir said. In the street near the docks a man was on his knees before an enforcer and another man, this one in blue robes.

"The one in blue is a tax collector."

"Let's go over there." And before she could answer he climbed out of his litter and walked toward them.

"No," she hissed, "the Exalted do not. . . . " Leaping out of her own palanquin, she caught up with him just as he reached the men.

"Please," the peasant was saying, "if you take little Bishi you take my livelihood." He motioned towards the pygmy elephant that stood behind him. These were the only pack animals Viktir had seen in Gorat Dule. "Surely it is wiser that I work so that I can pay more taxes."

The man spoke reasonably, but Viktir saw the desperation in his eyes, the pain when he looked back at Bishi. He loves his little elephant, Viktir realized.

"You have had two warnings, Ajani," said the tax collector. He turned to the enforcer. "Take the animal."

Viktir stepped forward. "How much does he owe?"

The robed men stiffened, facing him without meeting his eye.

"He owes fifteen _pyas_ , Exalted One."

Viktir found the purse of silver coins that Sindla had given him and spilled some into his hand. "Two of these?" he asked her.

She nodded, a knife's edge to her silence.

Viktir tossed the two coins to the tax man while the enforcer stared in disbelief. "Mark this man as paid."

He dined at the Governor's table that night with Sindla, Zorne, and a dozen more Exalted who resided in the palace. Sindla was the only woman who dressed like a man.

Lord Durun lectured him over the dessert wine about how the Exalted behaved in public. Not stern, he was all smiles in fact — a kind father gently explaining manners to a confused child.

"And Lady Sindla was quite right in saying nothing at the time," he told Viktir. "We absolutely never contradict one another in front of humans."

Then he dismissed Viktir and all the others except for Sindla.

Viktir had been in his bedroom for an hour when she slipped in without a sound. She no longer wore her leather riding suit, only a sheer silk nightgown that fell to her knees, open above the breasts, the thinnest of straps running over her bare shoulders. She went and sat next to him on the bed with her legs tucked beneath her.

"Lord Durun didn't ask," she said, "but I must know, for we never do anything without reason. Why did you pay the elephant driver's tax?"

"It was as he said, better he should work and pay tax in years to come."

"That is a lie. I think you have a kind of morbid curiosity about them. But I don't understand it, especially after they tried to kill you."

"What do you mean? They could have killed me in the resthouse. I'm sure they were kidnapping me for some kind of ransom."

Sindla's jaw dropped open and she almost laughed. "You really don't know, do you? It can be passed directly through the blood. Humans can be made Exalted. It is rarely done — most of us were born Exalted — but it is the basis of our power over them. All these humans who serve us with complete loyalty: the watchmen, the tax collectors, they do not enjoy their work — they wish to be Exalted. Those humans at the resthouse were taking you to where a group of their friends waited. They planned to open your veins, drinking your blood until there was none left. And the worst part is that you would have liked it."

Viktir looked at her for a long minute. "I've decided not to stay here. Tomorrow I'll find a coaster that's headed west. And you can have your money back. I've got a gold ounce hidden in my boot, enough to get me halfway home."

This time she did laugh. "Believe me, Lord Viktir, you are home. In any case, they'll not allow you to leave."

"What, am I a prisoner?"

"Of course not. We may not force or coerce one another in any way. You are free to go. But word has been spread that no boat accommodate you, and none of the Exalted will aid you. Most of the land around the city is untamed jungle. Considering what happened when you went among humans alone, you have little choice but to stay with us."

She leaned in close then. Viktir caught the scent of her and suddenly a lust he had never felt began to stalk him. She touched his shoulder and let her fingers slide down the length of his arm. Part of him wanted her badly, but he knew that it was his exalted half.

"Did you come here to seduce me? An incentive to play along, to bring me into line?"

"No," she said, her eyes nonetheless going soft, promising sensual abandon. "I came to show you something about yourself. Something that lies deep."

She pressed her thumb into a place on his wrist and pain shot up his arm. A sharpened agony running the length of screaming nerves, a pain so dear he had never felt. An exquisite, beautiful pain. He cried out in his suffering and did not want her to stop, for ecstasy rode on that pain.

Then she did stop, and he gasped for breath. And unfocused desire coursed wildly in his veins.

"That is just a fighting trick I know, something I might do in a casual encounter. If I want to get closer I . . . " She pressed in against him, and he felt her breasts lightly brushing his chest. Then he felt her teeth along the cord of muscle above his shoulder. Then, slowly, the bite, the deep and rending bite. And it was so lovely he pushed her away in shock.

She smiled her curious smile. "If we want to get truly intimate, we take a little blood with the bite."

Then he knew what he lusted for: release from the pressure of his hot blood. The pain had made his blood rise to an intolerable point. Yes, he wanted it. He wanted his blood to spurt from an artery and her to drink.

"Would you like me to do that for you?" she whispered.

He tore away from her, going to the basin and splashing water on his face. "No. I want you to go. Leave at once."

"Very well," she said, no sound of footfalls as she walked away. She turned back to him at the door. "Fight it if you wish. But you will succumb in the end. It is time for the pilgrimage to Karathu, and you are to partake in the great communion."

"Where?" he said between breaths.

"The holy city of the Exalted. The birthplace of our people. Karathu."

They spent days on the river, going upstream in a small galley. It was only one of dozens and dozens of river boats, and Viktir figured that all the Exalted of Gorat Dule had joined the pilgrimage. The river was wide and slow, and long oars swept them along a green haze of murky water and fog-enshrouded rainforest.

Karathu lay at the bottom of a sheer cliff where three streams fed by waterfalls came together, the swollen jungle walling it in. It was a small city of palaces, ancient and gilded, clustered thickly around a large clearing, all connected by streets cobbled in white marble.

When the galley landed, porters came from the city to take the baggage from the boat. They were monsters — hairless men with low, sloping foreheads ringed by a surgical scar, their eyes milky. Their bodies had been deformed into the shape and bulk of an ape, yet their hands were small and delicate, like those of a child. Viktir thought of the child beggars in Gorat Dule and had to look away.

"No humans are allowed in Karathu," Sindla told him. "These are the servitors, made from human stock by our sorcerers and alchemists."

A guide marched them to a palace with a roof of golden domes, a residence for those who had come to take the great communion. "The rites are deeply rooted in the origins of the Exalted," Sindla said, "for we did not always exist — our creation is a mystery. Communion can only take place once a year, on the three nights of the full moon of spring." She went to the window, looking up at the cliff face where hundreds of small flying creatures darted between caves and crevasses. "That will be soon. Already the little holy ones are gathered above the city. They will bring you home to us."

"Why do you call it a communion?"

"When the little holy ones take, they also give."

Viktir watched them for days. They flew on bat-like wings, their lizard bodies covered not with scales but with rubbery skin mottled green and brown, looking much like the god Ata. And they were certainly carnivores, gliding into the jungle at twilight and returning with live rodents in their jaws. Then came the first night of the full moon.

Sindla led him through a maze of streets to the clearing in the center of the city. Hundreds of the Exalted stood encircling a huge tree. Black and gnarled and ancient, it stood bowed over with the weight of countless twisted branches, each heavy with a purple tuberous fruit. Sindla went and picked one from the tree.

As the moon rose high the Exalted began to chant, the night sky suddenly thick with thousands of the flying creatures. The chant now came faster, rising in pitch. The moonlight flashed crimson in Sindla's eyes as she prepared to meet her god in the flesh. She broke open the tuber, and from deep within oozed a pulpy paste. It smelled like rotting meat. Taking Viktir by the arm, she smeared some onto his exposed wrist then did the same for herself. All around them the Exalted did this as well, some placing an extra dab on their other arm or even opening their robes to make a spot on their chests. When the little holy ones dived on them, it was shockingly quick.

A confusion of wings descending, then the strong sharp grip of reptilian talons on his forearm, fanged jaws piercing his flesh, baited by the stinking pulp. The creature began to drink and Viktir shuddered in ecstasy.

Suddenly it broke away, instantly replaced by another. Then another, again and again, and Viktir shuddered and shuddered, and did not know who he was.

He awoke the next morning knowing they almost had him.

It took all his will, but he refused to go with Sindla on the second night. Instead, he wandered the empty city, the arches and domes shining dimly gold in the moonlight. A light behind a curtained window drew him near, for he knew that the servitors had no need of light. He saw inside, through a tiny part, a few of the Exalted who had stood near him at the communion. They seemed to be in hiding, and he wondered why. Then one walked past the window and he knew.

On the third day, in the afternoon, when the heat drove the Exalted to retire for a few hours, Viktir went to Sindla's chamber. He wore only the bottoms of his silk pajamas.

He found her sitting up in bed, waiting for him, as if she had heard his coming through the walls and doors. She slipped out of her gown in one motion and looked at him. "Now you understand."

He went to her, taking her roughly and biting her hard on the shoulder and neck. She cut open his chest with her fingernails and drank of him.

He watched her sleep while the sun set, and even though she never opened her eyes, he could see what it had done to her. Yes, he could see it clearly. When twilight came he stole away to the communion ground without waking her.

The Exalted waited while the rising moon cast its glow across the night sky. Viktir wished for it to rise quickly, lest he lose his nerve. No matter what happened, he doubted that he would survive this act of defiance. Better to die here than live in this nightmare, he thought. How many? How many can I touch? And will it make any difference?

Then the chant sounded, calling the swirling mass of flying creatures, and Viktir shrugged out of his robes, exposing his upper torso. He broke open a tuber and smeared the paste over his arms and chest and back. The Exalted standing nearby recoiled from him, seeing what he meant to do. And the little holy ones fell upon him as one.

Blinding pain. Spiritual ecstasy. His self, turning upon his self. Agony calling him back.

The concentrated scent of the fruit drew all of them, far too many to get at him at once. They hovered and snapped and lunged, and Viktir cried out as dozens of fangs sank into his flesh, then dozens more, then dozens more. At last they turned to the assembled Exalted, who, though shocked, had no choice but to continue the communion. They could not quell their lust.

Viktir drifted among the galaxies, slowly becoming aware of the figures standing over him. He lay on the grass where he had fallen, blood leaking from a hundred wounds.

"He has lost a lot of blood," one of them said. "Do you think he will die?"

"I don't know," said another. "He seems to have the strength of the Exalted."

A wailing scream came from behind them. "He is not! He was never one of us!"

They made way for Sindla, and she threw herself down beside Viktir. "What did you do to me?" she sobbed, crying harder and harder.

"I've made you human." He tried to take her hand. "It can be passed through the blood," he said weakly, "as you told me."

"No!" she shrieked, turning to the others. "He has tainted my blood. I am Lady Sindla. Exalt me at once." She reached for a bleeding wrist, but the man pulled back.

"You do not understand, Sindla," the man said. It was Durun, who had been governor in Gorat Dule. "We no longer have that power. We all took communion with him."

They took no vengeance upon him. They carried him gently, as one who is honored, and took him to a place where he could heal. He slept easy that night. He was among his own kind.

THE END

