Carpathian Mountains, Transylvania,
December 1819
The wind tore off the snowy
peaks behind him as he guided his sturdy mountain horse
down the torturous path toward the tiny village in the
valley. It was not that he did not feel the cold, but
that his soul welcomed it. Outside should reflect inside
should it not? Warmth was denied him. Love was denied.
And rightly so. Had he not challenged the Rules laid down
by his kind? And was not the fruit of his labor evil,
an evil that those he had known forever had been forced
to fight, down to the bloody last? They had barely stopped
the evil from spreading until it wiped out everything.
The balance between human kind and vampires was precarious.
His actions had nearly tipped the balance. And all because
he disobeyed the Elders' Rules.
His soul was dead. He had no
more will to go on living in the world, shouldering the
burden of his crimes. Any life left to him was at the
place where he began so many years ago.
He wound his way through the
tiny village of Tirgu Korva that served the stone pile
on the mountain beyond. He had no attention to spare for
the rough tavern, the thatched huts, the horses standing
head to tail in their pens. Several bearded men came out
of the tavern as though to accost him. They might look
dangerous to some. Light spilled across the snowy yard,
and raucous singing drifted into the night. But they felt
his vibrations. Their fathers, a hundred generations back,
might have recognized his face, but these would not. Still
they touched their forelocks in the age-old salute and
melted back into the tavern, to light and life.
Stephan raised his gaze again
to his goal rising out of the mountain ahead and touched
his horse with his heels. The moon came out from behind
the clouds and lit the stone spires. They seemed to glow
from within. The translucent onyx that formed the battlements
and towers of the monastery was dotted with occasional
squares of light. The night was Mirso's time. Others would
call the sight other-worldly, evil, frightening. To Stephan
it was home.
The horse crunched across the
snowfield to the track that wound up the mountain. He
had grown up at Mirso Monastery. It was amazing really.
Mirso was a last refuge to those of his kind who had grown
too stale, too bored, too mad to live in the world anymore.
Yet he had started here, abandoned by his mother, taken
in by Rubius and the Elders as a miracle, one of the last
born to his kind.
The monastery disappeared above
him as he started up the trail. He was not a miracle.
A spectacular failure of judgment, a cause of pain and
suffering, unworthy of the love of the only one he had
ever cared for in all those years…he was those things.
Rubius should never have sent
him away. The Eldest said he must experience the world
before he could renounce it. It would have been better
if he had been locked away at Mirso to begin with. He
hadn't wanted to leave. A thousand years of experience,
or closer to two thousand, and all he wanted was to be
allowed back through its gates for good. The world was
not for him. It never had been.
Would Rubius take him back?
Would he be allowed to take the Vow? Once he took the
Vow, he could never leave Mirso. A life of ritual, chanting,
a path to peace, even if it was a slow and torturous one;
this is what he craved. He craved…forgetfulness. He wanted
to forget what his mistakes had cost the world.
Stephan shuddered, but not with
cold. Pray to whatever gods you believe in that you're
was allowed to stay, he thought. It was the only refuge
left him.
It was nearly an hour before
he came to the great doors, heavy beams studded with iron
straps in a defensive plaid. He got off his sturdy horse
as the snow began to swirl around him. The huge round
iron ball held by iron strapping waited for him to knock.
It would take more than human strength to lift it, but
that was the point was it not? Still, he could not move
to beg for entrance. The moment when it might be refused
was too terrible to contemplate.
He did not need to knock. Inside
the gates the rasp of the huge bar he remembered sounded.
Stephan held himself still, resisting the urge to run
from this place before he could be denied the last refuge.
There was no where to run.
The gates swung open in remarkable
silence for being so heavy. A monk stood there in black
robe and rough rope belt, his hands tucked in the opposite
wide sleeve, face hidden in the shadow of his cowl. Snow
dusted the wool of his habit. Stephan set his lips. "Stephan
Sincai to see Rubius," he bit out in the old language.
The words were taken by the wind.
"I know who you are," the figure
said. Stephan did not recognize the voice. "Rubius does
not receive visitors."
"He receives Aspirants. I wish
to take the Vow."
There was a long moment of silence.
Then the figure inclined his head and turned on his heel.
Stephan followed. It didn't mean Rubius would allow him
to stay. Stephan strode behind the monk, who seemed to
float across the great empty courtyard, covered in several
inches of snow. It was all as he had remembered it, the
towering stone walls, the fountain burbling in the center
a mere pile of rocks in a simple stone circle. That fountain
was the beginning of it all, though. Mirso had been built
around it. The Old One had contaminated it with the infection
in his blood, and that infected humans so many eons ago
that only Rubius remembered it. Only a few lived through
drinking that water. From that simple Source, had come
that which made them what they were. He had played around
it as a child. Now his heart turned to stones like the
ones in the fountain. Their kind had been cursed by that
fountain and the parasite it contained. The monks at Mirso
might revere it, but to him it was a symbol of his pain.
Sooner or later the weight of years or their own sins
always got the better of them, and they needed refuge.
In his case, it was his sins that brought him here. He
didn't believe in forgiveness. He just hoped he had a
chance to get beyond the guilt and the torment to something
like peace with his past.
He followed the monk in through
the doors at the far end of the courtyard, up the circular
stone steps that wound around the inside of the main tower
and into the small receiving room, where the monk left
him. The room held only a straight chair with a carved
back. Supplicants for an audience with Rubius did not
deserve comfort. He tried to still his thoughts as he
waited, but it was no good. If only he had not wanted
to challenge the Elders' Rules about killing made vampires.
How naďve to think that they could be valuable citizens
of their society! They were not the same as born vampires
and they never would be. It had been pure pride to challenge
the wisdom of millennia. And if he had not fallen in love
with Beatrixtrix, Asharti might not have gone so mad as
to nearly bring down the world of vampires and men. If
he had killed Asharti when he had the chance in Paris,
all the evil and the killing that followed could have
been avoided. Had she not displayed even then all the
ruthless evil that followed in the desert? Naďve. And
soft. He had always been too soft. So much death. So much
suffering.
All his fault.
He had sinned at every turn.
He had let Langley live too, even though he was a made
vampire, just because Beatrix loved him. Weak. Best he
get out of the world before he did more damage. All that
was left was Mirso Monastery.
"Rubius will see you."
Stephan jerked his head up.
He had not heard the monk enter. He was slipping. He rose
and ducked through the low door at the far end of the
bare room, which closed behind him.
Rubius's quarters were a stark
contrast to the Spartan feel of the rest of the monastery.
Tapestries hung on the walls, Turkey carpets covered the
stone floor. A fire snapped in the grate and joined candles
set about the room in casting a warm glow over padded
leather chairs, a sideboard laid with brandy and sweetmeats
and Rubius's collection of art work. That collection astounded
Stephan more now than it had ever done as a child. He
glanced around to the familiar pieces: an Etruscan stone
fertility goddess, Roman glass from the first century
(Stephan remembered him acquiring that one), Greek vases
in black and red, a Chinese jade horse. His collection
had grown in the centuries Stephan had been gone. He recognized
a Da Vinci, a fine Byzantine triptych, a Mayan calendar
from the New World. That brought back painful memories.
Stephan let his gaze wander over the room for a moment
before it rested on the old man in the center.
"Hello, Rubius."
The old man nodded. He was an
incongruous head of vampire society, a fact lost on Stephan
in his youth. Overweight, white haired, with a full Beatrixrd
and a ruddy complexion, he looked more like a jolly St.
Nicholas than the chief representative of what humans
thought was evil incarnate.
"Sincai." He motioned to the
brandy and raised his brows.
Stephan nodded, his breathing
uneven. Rubius poured out a glass and handed it to him.
Stephan downed it, hoping it would steady him.
Rubius poured his own glass
and motioned to a chair. "Why are you here, boy?"
"You know that," Stephan managed
to croak. He did not sit.
"But I want to hear you say
it," Rubius said softly, studying him.
Stephan took a breath. This
was it. Push down pride. There was no pride to be had
after what he had done. "I beg to be allowed to take the
Vow."
"Well, I find that most interesting,"
Rubius said, almost in a whisper. It was as if after all
these years of only speaking to his own kind, with their
acute hearing, he had lost any desire to do more than
murmur. He put down his glass and laid a finger aside
his ruddy nose. "One who broke our Rules, nay tried even
to demonstrate, so foolishly, that they were wrong, now
wants to avail himself of our most precious Rule of all."
This was it. Rubius wouldn't
let him in. He had known despair for much of his life.
But the emptiness that sat in his belly threatened him
with insanity. "I was wrong," he said. No pride. "Made
and born vampires are not equal."
"Your little experiment with
the Arab girl nearly destroyed our world, boy!" The whisper
was outraged. "Wrong doesn't begin to cover the situation."
"No." Stephan's voice was bleak
in his own ears. He acquiesced, knowing acquiescence would
not be enough. Rubius was not going to let him in to Mirso.
"What were you going to do?
Challenge the Elders for authority when you proved our
Rules were wrong?"
"I… I don't know. I thought
made vampires could be valuable citizens…"
Rubius waived that naiveté away
with one hand. "Pride. Rebellious pride and nothing more.
We raised you, boy, taught you, considered you precious.
So few were born even then. And you repay us with treachery."
He had begun to pace, his bulk moving with surprising
grace back and forth in front of the fire. "And even when
your experiment went wrong and the bitch tried to kill
Beatrixtrix, who was born, and rule the Continent through
that human general, what was his name?"
"Bonaparte, Eldest." He kept
his voice flat. It wasn't hard. It matched his soul.
"Even then, you let her go."
"I thought exile…."
"Don't excuse yourself!" Rubius
rounded on him. "Were you soft" Or hadn't you given up
your little conceit in spite of all the evidence of disaster?"
He clasped his hands behind his back and paced. "Look
where it led. She found an Old One, took his blood. She
was almost so strong none of us could stop her. Made vampires
everywhere," he muttered. "Khalenberg and Davinoff, Urbano
and the others have had a time of it trying to find them
all."
"I volunteered…"
"How could we trust you to go?"
Rubius almost spit the words across the carpet.
"You couldn't. I understand."
That was the worst pain of all. He hadn't been allowed
to help his kind survive the consequences of his crime.
Rubius paused in his pacing
and turned his back to the fire. He chewed his lip. Stephan
held himself still and dropped his eyes to the floor.
He was penitent. Rubius must see that. He was throwing
himself on the Eldest's mercy; he had no choice but to
be humble.
There was a long silence. Rubius
rocked back and forward on his heels. "Well. Now you want
the refuge of the Vow."
"I beg you to allow me to remain
at Mirso, Eldest. You will find me a humble and eager
Aspirant." Stephan kept his gaze riveted on the carpet
at Rubius's feet.
"Will I?" Rubius mused.
"I swear it," Stephan said,
unable to keep the emotion from the edge of his voice.
"There is a price," Rubius whispered.
