Thirst No. 2 (47 page)

Landulf shoulders the spear. "You die now, Sita."

The nail trembles. My hand remains firm. My gaze.

Power sweeps over me from way beyond the circle.

"No," I say. "Evil one, you die."

Landulf starts to let the spear fly.

The nail flies out of my palm and is impaled in his forehead.

Between his eyebrows. He stares at me through a red river.

"You," he says, and drops the spear.

I leap to his side and catch the spear before it lands.

The nail has plunged all the way in.

"I take back what I said a moment ago," I say. "You are not so clever."

I stick the spear in his heart, and his blood spurts out, even into the center of the pentagram, where it is mysteriously consumed in midair. He tries to speak one last time, probably to curse my soul for all of time, but he is staggering blindly with a long spear thrust through him and a nail in his brain. He makes the serious mistake of stumbling into the center region of the five-pointed star he has drawn with his wife's blood, and there something truly awful happens. In a sickeningly wet sound, his clothes and flesh are simultaneously ripped from his body. For a moment he is a carved cadaver risen from an autopsy table. Then invisible claws go around his head, and he is pulled down and backward, into a pit of nothingness. He just vanishes and I am so grateful that I fall to my knees and weep for a long time.

The spear and nail remain where they have fallen from his body. They lie in the center of the circle. And I know the power of the circle has been broken.

Eventually I climb down the cliff, and walk toward the ocean. I swim away from the hordes of Moslems, who only stare at me as I step onto the beach covered with blood from their dead benefactor. Perhaps they are afraid to touch me, I don't know. But they must have heard stories about Landulf s castle.

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The place where magic was performed.

I swim through the waves beyond the invading army.

Beyond reason. The water is clean and stretches forever.

Yet I feel as if I will never be clean again.

16

When I reach the clear pool of water that same evening, Dante is not there. His absence hits me like a wall. It was too much to hope, I know. But as I sit exhausted beside the pond and stare at the reflection of the vanishing sunlight and the slow emergence of the stars, I ponder the unfairness of life. Here was Dante, a simple man who would give his life for a just cause, killed out of love for me. And here am I, a monster, who will easily kill, and I am still alive. God had granted me a miracle that very morning, yet I feel I would trade all of his grace just to see my friend for a few minutes.

But the night grows darker and still Dante does not come.

He is dead, I know. Death is all I know.

There is blood on my left hand.

The hand that stole the girl's life.

Funny I hadn't noticed it before. Leaning over the pond, I place my hand in the water and try to wash off the dark red stain.

But it does not come off. I wonder why.

"Good. You have passed the first step of initiation. The second step will come later, and
then the final and third step."

Killing the girl had been the second step.

Or so he said. That Prince of Lies.

He is dead now. He will say no more.

Not to me. There will be no third initiation.

I scrub my hand fiercely. To no avail.

I have never seen a stain like this before.

"But I am sorry for what I did," I tell the starry pond. "You know I had to do it. I had no choice."

If I am explaining to God, he does not answer me.

But once more my memory of the future is clear. Perhaps the pond acts as a catalyst. It is every bit as clear and round as the one Alanda led me to. And as I could at that watery oasis, I imagine that I can see more reflected stars than I can in the sky itself. My sudden grip on reality makes me marvel at how much my memory faltered while I was embarked on my dark adventure. Maybe Landulf had been blocking me. Maybe my deep-seated fears distorted my memory. I could have tricked myself into not knowing the horrors that awaited me. Or perhaps it was all a function of coming back in time.

I feel as if all my powers, the ones I left behind in the twentieth century, have returned to me. Come back just when I no longer need them. I am surprised, now that my mission is complete, that my staring at the stars does not bring me back to Alanda and Gaia and their spaceship. Bat maybe I don't want to leave yet. I promised Dante I would wait for him and I am determined to wait. I don't care how long it takes, long past hope I will sit here. Or,

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) indeed, I even consider the possibility of returning to the castle to see if he has been taken captive once more. I could free him, save him.

But the latter is all bravado.

I will not go back to that castle.

I swore it once before and I swear it again.

The stars, as they are reflected in the pond, move lazily on the faint motion of the water.

They are beautiful and I feel as if I can stare at them forever. Yet my mood is not peaceful.

There is music in my head and it will not go away. I hear a strident refrain from Richard Wagner's
Parsival.
It is almost as if, staring at the heavens, I look upon a vast stage where Wolfram von Eschenbach's
Parsival
is still being played out. I see the knights striving to fulfill their quest for the Grail, and then, Klingsor, in the background, always out of sight, obstructing their every move with his magic wand, the Spear of Longinus. I wonder if I should have left it in Landulf s body. The sacred stabbed through the sinful. But I had feared to approach the center of the pentagram to retrieve it.

Even when he was dead, I was still afraid of him.

It is a truth I have trouble accepting.

I am afraid even now. The stain bothers me.

How was Klingsor stained? What was his mark?

The play explained it all. If only I could remember.

Something about a certain kind of smoothness.

But I cannot remember. No.

Nor can I understand why Dante was so insistent that I understand the meaning of the Medusa story. He was such a simple fellow, full of phobias and goodness, but when he spoke of mythology, he spoke with great authority. Almost as if another personality used his mouth and lips. I keep feeling as if Dante had been trying to warn me of a deeper threat. One that could not be seen because the true power of the wizard was that he was able to control one's will. Capable of turning whomever he wished to stone, so that he or she did not move unless the wizard wished it.

Could that be the real meaning of the Medusa tale?

The Gorgon did not merely kill her enemies.

She placed them under complete mind control.

Doubts continue to assail me. Questions that are more like ancient riddles. What about the snakes in the hair of Medusa? What about her fair face? Dante had emphasized that the latter was crucial. And I had laughed and told him it was time to concentrate on what was real. But I of all people should have known that reality was not always what it seemed.

A profound certainty sweeps over me.

Dante had been trying to warn me of something
unseen.

Then I see him. And it is a miracle.

He is struggling up the path to the pond, limping badly, gasping for breath. In a moment I am by his side, helping him to sit down on a large rock not far from the water. He is in worse shape than when I saw him last and is already babbling about how sorry he is that he is late, and why he is late. I can't get a word in, but I am so happy to see him that I weep. Really, it is one of the most wonderful moments of my life. God has heard all of my prayers.

"The passageway was blocked," he says rapidly, with hardly any air in his lungs. "There

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) was a large stone. I had never seen this stone before. Never! My lady, I didn't know what to do. I tried walking back in your direction, but I couldn't find you, and I kept slipping in the water. My brace kept falling off, and once it almost floated away. I would have been crippled! Then I took another path that I know but no one else knows and I went back into the castle and by all the saints in heaven I knew I was going to be put back in the prison. But everyone ignored me! The knights were running all over the place and the servants were crying and it sounded as if something horrible had befallen Lord Landulf."

He pauses to breathe and his eyes shine with hope. "What befell him, my lady?" he asks.

I have to smile. Yet there is no joy in it and I wonder why. My happiness is tempered with regrets I can hardly explain to myself.

"He died," I say. "I killed him."

Dante bursts out with laughter. But then he catches himself and quickly does the sign of the cross. But his relief is not to be contained and a moment later he is howling in pleasure again. He jumps up from his rock and hugs me and shakes like a child. Yet the news is too good for him. He is having trouble believing it.

"Is he is really dead?" he keeps asking. "Are you sure it was him? Did you see his body?

Are you sure it was his body?"

I strive to calm him. "It was him, I swear it. I put the Spear of Longinus through his evil heart. He died like any other man."

Dante is smiling. "Did you burn his body? Did the smoke stink?"

I shake my head. "No. I didn't burn him. There wasn't time."

His smile falters slightly. "But what did you do with his body, my lady?"

I shrug. "Nothing. I left it. Don't worry, he will not return to haunt us. I am sure of it."

Dante seems reassured. "Then we can go to Messina now and tell everyone that the world is safe?"

I force a laugh. "Yes. We can tell everyone that there is nothing left to worry about." But my laughter soon dies because that is not the way I feel. I add softly, "We will tell the whole world."

Dante is uncertain. "Is something wrong, my lady ?"

I turn away. "No. I am just worried about you. You need to eat, to rest and regain your strength."

He stands and steps to my back. "Something weighs on your heart. Share it with me, my lady. Perhaps I can lighten your burden."

My eyes are suddenly damp. I am ashamed to look at his face.

But I feel I can tell him. He will understand. "When I found Lord Landulf," I say, "he was in the stone circle as you said he would be. But I did not do what you suggested. I did not wait for him to leave the circle to attack him. I was too impatient. He was simply sitting there—I thought I could just kill him and then it would be all over with."

Dante speaks sympathetically. "But you could not penetrate the circle."

My hands clasp each other uneasily. I cannot stop moving them. "Yes. There was an invisible shield around it. Landulf had created it, I believe, by employing a sacrifice that required him to cut out the heart of his own wife."

Dante gasps. "Lady Cia!"

"Yes. She was dead when I arrived. But there was a young woman chained nearby who was very much alive. Landulf told me if I wanted to get to him, I would have to rip out the

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) girl's heart. At first I refused, but then this pounding started in my head, and it wouldn't stop, and I didn't know what to do. In a moment of pain and anger I reached for her ..." I have trouble finishing. "I reached for her and I—I killed her, Dante. I killed her with my own hands, and she had never done anything to me."

Dante is silent for a long time. Finally I feel his good hand touch my shoulder. "You did what you had to do, my lady."

I clasp his hand but shake my head. "I don't know. Sometimes I think I just did what I have always done in the past—kill. That has always been my ultimate solution to every problem." I gesture weakly. "But this girl—she was praying for me to save her."

"But you saved the rest of us."

I am emotional. "Did I? Did I do what I was supposed to do? If I did then can you explain to me why the stain of this girl's blood refuses to wash of f my hand?"

Dante grabs my left hand and stares at it anxiously. "Perhaps we only need to wash it in clean water. Come, my lady, a quick wash in the pond an d everything will be all right."

I take back my hand. "No, Dante. I have tried washing it a dozen times. The stain will not come off."

He is confused. "But why?"

I lower my head. "I think it is because I listened to Landulf, in the end."

"No!"

"Yes. I performed the ritual murder of an innocent. That's all that was needed to be initiated by him." I pause and stare at my left hand. There is only the stars for light, but I see the stain well. It is almost as if I see my whole life expressed in the red of the mark. "I have become one of them," I whisper.

Dante is adamant. "No! You are the opposite of them ! You are an angel! You bring light where there is darkness ! Hope where there is despair! A dozen times you have come to my rescue! A dozen times I would have died without your courage!"