The Keep

"A woman traveling alone in wartime," Magda said, staring at her father and trying to keep her voice from sounding scornful. He wasn't thinking clearly. "How far do you think I'd get?"

"You must try!" His lips trembled.

"Papa, what's wrong?"

He looked out the window for a long time, and when he finally spoke his voice was barely audible.

"It's all over for us. They're going to wipe us off the face of the Continent."

"Who?"

"Us! Jews! There's no hope left for us in Europe. Perhaps somewhere else."

"Don't be so—"

"It's true! Greece has just surrendered! Do you realize that since they attacked Poland a year and a half ago they haven't lost a battle? No one has been able to stand up to them for more than six weeks! Nothing can stop them! And that madman who leads them intends to eradicate our kind from the face of the earth! You've heard the tales from Poland—it's soon going to be happening here! The end of Romanian Jewry has been delayed only because that traitor Antonescu and the Iron Guard have been at each other's throats. But it seems they've settled their differences during the past few months, so it won't be long now."

"You're wrong, Papa," Magda said quickly. This kind of talk terrified her. "The Romanian people won't allow it."

He turned on her, his eyes blazing. " 'Won't allow it?' Look at us! Look at what has happened so far! Did anyone protest when the government began the 'Romanianization' of all property and industry in the hands of Jews? Did a single one of my colleagues at the university—trusted friends for decades!—so much as question my dismissal? Not one! Not one! And has one of them even stopped by to see how I am?" His voice was beginning to crack. "Not one!"

He turned his face back toward the window and was silent.

Magda wished for something to say to make it easier for him, but no words came. She knew there would have been tears on his cheeks now if his disease had not rendered his eyes incapable of forming them. When he spoke again, he had himself once more under control, but he kept his gaze directed at the flat green farmland rolling by.

"And now we are on this train, under guard of Romanian fascists, on our way to be delivered into the hands of German fascists. We are finished!"

She watched the back of her father's head. How bitter and cynical he had become. But then, why not? He had a disease that was slowly tying his body into knots, distorting his fingers, turning his skin to wax paper, drying his eyes and mouth, making it increasingly hard for him to swallow. As for his career—despite years at the university as an unchallenged authority on Romanian folklore, despite the fact that he was next in line as head of the Department of History, he had been unceremoniously fired. Oh, they said it was because his advancing debility made it necessary, but Papa knew it was because he was a Jew. He had been discarded like so much trash.

And so: His health was failing, he had been removed from the pursuit of Romanian history—the thing he loved most—and now he had been dragged from his home. And above and beyond all that was the knowledge that engines designed for the destruction of his race had been constructed and were already operating with grim efficiency in other countries. Soon it would be Romania's turn.

Of course he's bitter! she thought. He has every right to be!

And so do I. It's my race, my heritage, too, they wish to destroy. And soon, no doubt, my life.

No, not her life. That couldn't happen. She could not accept that. But they had certainly destroyed any hope she had held of being something more than secretary and nursemaid to her father. Her music publisher's sudden about-face was proof enough of that.

Magda felt a heaviness in her chest. She had learned the hard way since her mother's death eleven years ago that it was not easy being a woman in this world. It was hard if you were married, and harder still if you were not, for there was no one to cling to, no one to take your side. It was almost impossible for any woman with an ambition outside the home to be taken seriously. If you were married, you should go back home; if you were not, then there was something doubly wrong with you. And if you were Jewish...

She glanced quickly to the area where the two Iron Guards sat. Why am I not permitted the desire to leave my mark on this world? Not a big mark ... a scratch would do. My book of songs ... it would never be famous or popular, but perhaps someday a hundred years from now someone would come across a copy and play one of the songs. And when the song is over, the player will close the cover and see my name ... and I'll still be alive in a way. The player will know that Magda Cuza passed this way.

She sighed. She wouldn't give up. Not yet. Things were bad and would probably get worse. But it wasn't over. It was never over as long as one could hope.

Hope, she knew, was not enough. There had to be something more; just what that might be she didn't know. But hope was the start.

The train passed an encampment of brightly colored wagons circled around a smoldering central fire. Papa's pursuit of Romanian folklore had led him to befriend the Gypsies, allowing him to tap their mother lode of oral tradition.

"Look!" she said, hoping the sight would lift his spirits. He loved those people so. "Gypsies."

"I see," he said without enthusiasm. "Bid them farewell, for they are as doomed as we are."

"Stop it, Papa!"

"It's true. The Rom are an authoritarian's nightmare, and because of that, they, too, will be eliminated. They are free spirits, drawn to crowds and laughter and idleness. The fascist mentality cannot tolerate their sort; their place of birth was the square of dirt that happened to lie under their parents' wagon on the day of their birth; they have no permanent address, no permanent place of employment. And they don't even use one name with any reliable frequency, for they have three: a public name for the gadjé, another for use among their tribe members, and a secret one whispered in their ear at birth by their mother to confuse the Devil, should he come for them. To the fascist mind they are an abomination."

"Perhaps," Magda said. "But what of us? Why are we an abomination?"

He turned away from the window at last. "I don't know. I don't think anyone really knows. We are good citizens wherever we go. We are industrious, we promote trade, we pay our taxes. Perhaps it is our lot. I just don't know." He shook his head. "I've tried to make sense out of it, but I cannot. Just as I cannot make sense out of this forced trip to the Dinu Pass. The only thing of interest there is the keep, but that is of interest only to the likes of you and me. Not to Germans."

He leaned back and closed his eyes. Before long, he was dozing, snoring gently. He slept all the way past the smoking towers and tanks of Ploiesti, awakened briefly as they passed to the east of Floresti, then dozed again. Magda spent the time worrying about what lay ahead for them, and what the Germans could possibly want with her father in the Dinu Pass.

As the plains drifted by outside the window, Magda drifted into a familiar reverie, one in which she was married to a handsome man, loving and intelligent. They would have great wealth, but it would not go for things like jewelry and fine clothes—they were toys to Magda and she could see no use or meaning in owning them—but for books and curios. They would dwell in a house that would resemble a museum, stuffed with artifacts of value only to them. And that house would lie in a far-off land where no one would know or care that they were Jewish. Her husband would be a brilliant scholar and she would be widely known and respected for her musical arrangements. There would be a place for Papa, too, and money enough to get him the best doctors and nurses, giving her time to herself to work on her music.

A small, bitter smile curved Magda's lips. An elaborate fantasy—and that was all it ever would be. It was too late for her. She was thirty-one, well past the age when any eligible man would consider her suitable for a wife and prospective mother of his children. All she was good for now was somebody's mistress. And that, of course, she could never accept.

Once, a dozen years ago, there had been someone ... Mihail... a student of Papa's. They had both been attracted to each other. Something might have come of that. But then Mother had died and Magda had stayed close to Papa—so close that Mihail had been left out. She had had no choice; Papa had been utterly shattered by Mother's death and it was Magda who had held him together.

Magda fingered the slim gold band on her right ring finger. It had been her mother's. How different things would have been if she hadn't died.

Once in a while Magda thought of Mihail. He had married someone else ... they had three children now. Magda had only Papa.

Everything changed with Mother's death. Magda couldn't explain how it happened, but Papa grew to be the center of her life. Although she had been surrounded by men in those days, she took no notice of them. Their attentions and advances had lain like beads of water on a glass figurine, unappreciated, unabsorbed, leaving not so much as a hazy ring when they evaporated.

She spent the intervening years suspended between a desire to be somehow extraordinary, and a longing for all the very ordinary things that most other women took for granted. And now it was too late. There was really nothing ahead for her—she saw that more clearly every day.

And yet it could have been so different! So much better! If only Mother hadn't died. If only Papa hadn't fallen sick. If only she hadn't been born a Jew. She could never admit the last to Papa. He'd be furious—and crushed—to know she felt that way. But it was true. If they were not Jews, they would not be on this train; Papa would still be at the university and the future would not be a yawning chasm full of darkness and dread with no exit.

The plains gradually turned hilly and the tracks began to slope upward. The sun was sitting atop the Alps as the train climbed the final slope to Campina. As they passed the towers of the smaller Steaua refinery, Magda began to help her father into his sweater. When that was on, she tightened the kerchief over her hair and went to get his wheelchair from an alcove at the rear of the car. The younger of the two Iron Guards followed her back. She had felt his eyes on her all during the trip, probing the folds of her clothes, trying to find the true outline of her body. And the farther the train had moved from Bucharest, the bolder his stares had become.

As Magda bent over the chair to straighten the cushion on the seat, she felt his hands grip her buttocks through the heavy fabric of her skirt. The fingers of his right hand began to try to worm their way between her legs. Her stomach turning with nausea, she straightened up and wheeled toward him, restraining her own hands from clawing at his face.

"I thought you'd like that," he said, and moved closer, sliding his arms around her. "You're not bad-looking for a Jew, and I could tell you were looking for a real man."

Magda looked at him. He was anything but "a real man." He was at most twenty, probably eighteen, his upper lip covered with a fuzzy attempt at a mustache that looked more like dirt than hair. He pressed himself against her, pushing her back toward the door.

"The next car is baggage. Let's go."

Magda kept her face utterly impassive. "No."

He gave her a shove. "Move!"

As she tried to decide what to do, her mind worked furiously against the fear and revulsion that filled her at his touch. She had to say something, but she didn't want to challenge him or make him feel he had to prove himself.

"Can't you find a girl that wants you?" she said, keeping her eyes directly on his.

He blinked. "Of course I can."

"Then why do you feel you must steal from one who doesn't?"

"You'll thank me when it's over," he said, leering.

"Must you?"

He withstood her gaze for a moment, then dropped his eyes. Magda did not know what would come next. She readied herself to put on an unforgettable exhibition of screaming and kicking if he continued to try to force her into the next car.

The train lurched and screeched as the engineer applied the brakes. They were coming into Campina junction.

"There's no time now," he said, stooping to peer out the window as the station ramp slid by. "Too bad."

Saved. Magda said nothing. She wanted to slump with relief but did not.

The young Iron Guardsman straightened and pointed out the window. "I think you would have found me a gentle lover compared to them."

Magda bent and looked through the glass. She saw four men in black military uniforms standing on the station platform and felt weak. She had heard enough about the German SS to recognize its members when she saw them.

TWELVE

Karaburun, Turkey

Tuesday, 29 April

1802 hours

The red-haired man stood on the seawall feeling the dying light of the sun warm against his side as it stretched the shadow of the piling beside him far out over the water. The Black Sea. A silly name. It was blue, and it looked like an ocean. All around him, two-story brick-and-stucco houses crowded up to the water's edge, their red tile roofs almost matching the deepening color of the sun.

It had been easy to find a boat. The fishing around here was good more often than not, but the fishermen remained poor no matter how good the catch. They spent their lives struggling to break even.

No sleek, swift, smuggler's launch this time, but a lumbering, salt-encrusted sardine fisher. Not at all what he needed, but the best he could get.

The smuggler's boat had taken him in near Silivri, west of Constantinople—no, they were calling it Istanbul now, weren't they? He remembered the current regime changing it nearly a decade ago. He'd have to get used to the new name, but old habits were hard to break. He had beached the boat, jumped ashore with his long, flat case under his arm, then pushed the launch back into the Sea of Marmara where it would drift with the corpse of its owner until found by a fisherman or by some ship of whatever government was claiming that particular body of water at that particular time.

From there it had been a twenty-mile trip over the gently undulating moorland of European Turkey. A horse had proved as easy to buy on the south coast as a boat had been to rent here on the north. With governments falling left and right and no one sure whether today's money would be tomorrow's wastepaper, the sight and feel of gold could be counted on to open many doors.

And so now he stood on the rim of the Black Sea, tapping his feet, drumming his fingers on the flat case, waiting for his battered vessel to finish fueling. He resisted the urge to rush over and give the owner a few swift kicks to hurry him up. That would be fruitless. He knew he couldn't rush these people; they lived at their own speed, one much slower than his.

It would be 250 miles due north of here to the Danube Delta, and almost 200 more west from there overland to the Dinu Pass. If not for this idiot war, he could have hired an airplane and been there long before now.

What had happened? Had there been a battle in the pass? The short-wave had said nothing of fighting in Romania. No matter. Something had gone wrong. And he had thought everything permanently settled.

His lips twisted. Permanently? He of all people should have known how rare indeed it was for anything to be permanent.

Still, there remained a chance that events had not progressed beyond the point of no return.

THIRTEEN

The Keep

Tuesday, 29 April

1752 hours

"Can't you see he's exhausted?" Magda shouted, her fear gone now, replaced by her anger and her fierce protective instinct.

"I don't care if he's about to breathe his last gasp," the SS officer said, the one called Major Kaempffer. "I want him to tell me everything he knows about the keep."

The ride from Campina to the keep had been a nightmare. They had been unceremoniously trundled into the back of a lorry and watched over by a surly pair of enlisted men while another pair drove. Papa had recognized them as einsatzkommandos and had quickly explained to Magda what their areas of expertise were. Even without the explanation she would have found them repulsive; they treated her and Papa like so much baggage. They spoke no Romanian, using instead a language of shoves and prods with rifle barrels. But Magda soon sensed something else below their casual brutality—a preoccupation. They seemed to be glad to be out of the Dinu Pass for a while, and reluctant to return.

The trip was especially hard on her father, who found it nearly impossible to sit on the bench that ran along each side of the lorry's payload area. The vehicle tipped and lurched and bounced violently as it raced along a road never intended for its passage. Every jolt was agony for Papa, with Magda watching helplessly as he winced and gritted his teeth as pain shot through him. Finally, when the lorry had to stop at a bridge to wait for a goat cart to move aside, Magda helped him off the bench and back into his wheelchair. She moved quickly, unable to see what was going on outside the vehicle, but knowing that as long as the driver kept banging impatiently on the horn, she could risk moving Papa. After that, it was a matter of holding on to the wheelchair to keep it from rolling out the back while struggling to keep herself from sliding off the bench once the lorry started moving again. Their escort sneered at her plight and made not the slightest effort to help. She was as exhausted as her father by the time they reached the keep.

The keep ... it had changed. It looked as well kept as ever in the dusk when they rolled across the causeway, but as soon as they passed through the gate, she felt it—an aura of menace, a change in the very air that weighed on the spirit and touched off chills along the neck and shoulders.

Papa noticed it, too, for she saw him lift his head and look around, as if trying to classify the sensation.

The Germans seemed to be in a hurry, and there seemed to be two kinds of soldiers, some in gray, some in SS black. Two of the ones in gray opened up the rear of the lorry as soon as it stopped and began motioning them out, saying, "Schnell! Schnell!"

Magda addressed them in German, which she understood and could speak reasonably well. "He cannot walk!" This was true at the moment—Papa was on the verge of physical collapse.

The two in gray did not hesitate to leap into the back of the truck and lift her father down, wheelchair and all, but it was left to her to push him across the courtyard. She felt the shadows crowding against her as she followed the soldiers.

"Something's gone wrong here, Papa!" she whispered in his ear. "Can't you feel it?"

A slow nod was his only reply.

She rolled him into the first level of the watchtower. Two German officers awaited them there, one in gray, one in black, standing by a rickety table under a single shaded light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

The evening had only begun.

"Firstly," Papa said, speaking flawless German in reply to Major Kaempffer's demand for information, "this structure isn't a keep. A keep, or donjon as it was called in these parts, was the final inner fortification of a castle, the ultimate stronghold where the lord of the castle stayed with his family and staff. This building"—he made a small gesture with his hands—"is unique. I don't know what you should call it. It's too elaborate and well built for a simple watchpost, and yet it's too small to have been built by any self-respecting feudal lord. It's always been called 'the keep,' probably for lack of a better name. It will do, I suppose."

"I don't care what you suppose!" the major snapped. "I want what you know! The history of the keep, the legends connected with it—everything!"

"Can't it wait until morning?" Magda said. "My father can't even think straight now. Maybe by then—"

"No! We must know tonight!"

Magda looked from the blond-haired major to the other officer, the darker, heavier captain named Woermann who had yet to speak. She looked into their eyes and saw the same thing she had seen in all the German soldiers they had encountered since leaving the train; the common denominator that had eluded her was now clear. These men were afraid. Officers and enlisted men alike, they were all terrified.

"Specifically in reference to what?" Papa said.

Captain Woermann finally spoke. "Professor Cuza, during the week we have been here, eight men have been murdered." The major was glaring at the captain, but the captain kept on speaking, either oblivious to the other officer's displeasure, or ignoring it. "One death a night, except for last night when two throats were slashed."

A reply seemed to form on Papa's lips. Magda prayed he would not say anything that would set the Germans off. He appeared to think better of it. "I have no political connections, and know of no group active in this area. I cannot help you."

"We no longer think there's a political motive here," the captain said.

"Then what? Who?"

The reply seemed almost physically painful for Captain Woermann. "We're not even sure it's a who."

The words hung in the air for an endless moment, then Magda saw her father's mouth form the tiny, toothy oval that had come to pass for a grin lately. It made his face look like death.

"You believe the supernatural to be at work here, gentlemen? A few of your men are killed, and because you can't find the killer, and because you don't want to think that a Romanian partisan might be getting the better of you, you look to the supernatural. If you really want my—"

"Silence, Jew!" the SS major said, naked rage on his face as he stepped forward. "The only reason you are here and the only reason I do not have you and your daughter shot at once is the fact that you have traveled this region extensively and are an expert on its folklore. How long you remain alive will depend on how useful you prove to be. So far you have said nothing to convince me that I have not wasted my time bringing you here!"

Magda saw Papa's smile evaporate as he glanced at her, then back to the major. The threat to her had struck home.

"I will do what I can," he said gravely, "but first you must tell me everything that has happened here. Perhaps I can come up with a more realistic explanation."

"For your sake, I hope so."

Captain Woermann told the story of the two privates who had penetrated the cellar wall where they had found a cross of gold and silver rather than brass and nickel, of the narrow shaft leading down to what appeared to be a blind cell, of the rupture of the wall into the corridor, of the collapse of part of the floor into the subcellar, of the fate of Private Lutz and of those who followed him. The captain also told of the engulfing darkness he had seen on the rampart two nights ago, and of the two SS men who somehow had walked up to Major Kaempffer's room after their throats had been torn out.

The story chilled Magda. Under different circumstances she might have laughed at it. But the atmosphere in the keep tonight, and the grim faces of these two German officers gave it credence. And as the captain spoke, she realized with a start that her dream of traveling north might have occurred at just about the time the first man had died.

But she couldn't dwell on that now. There was Papa to look after. She had watched his face as he had listened; she had seen his mortal fatigue slip away as each new death and each bizarre event was related. By the time Captain Woermann had finished, Papa had metamorphosed from a sick old man slumped in his wheelchair to Professor Theodor Cuza, an expert being challenged in his chosen field. He paused at length before replying.

Finally: "The obvious assumption here is that something was released from that little room in the wall when the first soldier broke into it. To my knowledge, there has never been a single death in the keep before this. But then, there has never before been a foreign army living in the keep. I would have thought the deaths the work of patriotic"—he emphasized the word—"Romanians but for the events of the last two nights. There is no natural explanation I know for the way the light died on the wall, nor for the animation of ex-sanguinated corpses. So perhaps we must look outside nature for our explanation."

"That's why you're here, Jew," the major said.

"The simplest solution is to leave."

"Out of the question!"

Papa mulled this. "I do not believe in vampires, gentlemen." Magda caught a quick warning glance from him—she knew that was not entirely true. "At least not anymore. Nor werewolves, nor ghosts. But I've always believed there was something special about the keep. It has long been an enigma. It is of unique design, yet there is no record of who built it. It is maintained in perfect condition, yet no one claims ownership. There is no record of ownership anywhere—I know, for I spent years trying to learn who built it and who maintains it."

"We are working on that now," Major Kaempffer said.

"You mean you're contacting the Mediterranean Bank in Zurich? Don't waste your time, I've already been there. The money comes from a trust account set up in the last century when the bank was founded; expenses for maintenance of the keep are paid from interest on the money in the account. And before that, I believe, it was paid through a similar account in a different bank, possibly in a different country ... the innkeepers' records over the generations leave much to be desired. But the fact is there is no link anywhere to the person or persons who opened the account; the money is to be held and the interest is to be paid in perpetuum."

Major Kaempffer slammed his fist down on the table. "Damn! What good are you, old man!"

"I'm all you have, Herr Major. But let me go further with this: Three years ago I went so far as to petition the Romanian government—then under King Carol—to declare the keep a national treasure and take over ownership. It was my hope that such de facto nationalization would bring out the owners, if any still live. But the petition was refused. The Dinu Pass was considered too remote and inaccessible. Also, since there is no Romanian history specifically connected with the keep, it could not be officially considered a national treasure. And finally, and most importantly, nationalization would require use of government funds for maintenance of the keep. Why should that be wasted when private money is doing such an excellent job?

"I had no defense against those arguments. And so, gentlemen, I gave up. My failing health confined me to Bucharest. I had to be satisfied with having exhausted all research resources, with being the greatest living authority on the keep, knowing more about it than anyone else. Which amounts to absolutely nothing."

Magda bristled at her father's constant use of "I." She had done most of the work for him. She knew as much about the keep as he. But she said nothing. It was not her place to contradict her father, not in the presence of others.

"What about these?" Captain Woermann said, pointing to a motley collection of scrolls and leather-bound books in the corner of the room.

"Books?" Papa's eyebrows lifted.

"We've started dismantling the keep," Major Kaempffer said. "This thing we're after will soon have no place left to hide. We'll eventually have every stone in the place exposed to the light of day. Then where will it go?"

Papa shrugged. "A good plan ... as long as you don't release something worse." Magda watched him casually turn his head toward the pile of books, but not before taking note of Kaempffer's startled expression—that possibility had never occurred to the major. "But where did you find the books? There was never a library in the keep, and the villagers can barely read their names."

"In a hollow spot in one of the walls being dismantled," the captain said.

Papa turned to her. "Go see what they are."

Magda stepped over to the corner and knelt beside the books, grateful for an opportunity to be off her feet even for a few minutes. Papa's wheelchair was the only seat in the room, and no one had offered to get a chair for her. She looked at the pile, smelled the familiar musty odor of old paper; she loved books and loved that smell. There were perhaps a dozen or so there, some partially rotten, one in scroll form. Magda pushed her way through them slowly, allowing the muscles of her back as much time as possible to stretch before she had to rise again. She picked up a random volume. Its title was in English: The Book of Eibon. It startled her. It couldn't be ... it was a joke! She looked at the others, translating their titles from the various languages in which they were written, the awe and disquiet mounting within her. These were genuine! She rose and backed away, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste.

"What's wrong?" Papa asked when he saw her face.

"Those books!" she said, unable to hide her shock and revulsion. "They're not even supposed to exist!"

Papa wheeled his chair closer to the table. "Bring them over here!"

Magda stooped and gingerly lifted two of them. One was De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn; the other, Cultes des Goules by Comte d'Erlette. Both were extremely heavy and her skin crawled just to touch them. The curiosity of the two officers had been aroused to such an extent that they, too, bent to the pile and brought the remaining texts to the table.

Trembling with excitement that increased with each article placed on the table, Papa muttered under his breath between calling out the titles as he saw them.

"The Pnakotic Manuscripts, in scroll form! The duNord translation of The Book of Eibon! The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan! And here—Unaussprechlichen Kulten by von Juntz! These books are priceless! They've been universally suppressed and forbidden through the ages, so many copies burned that only whispers of their titles have remained. In some cases, it has been questioned whether they ever existed at all! But here they are, perhaps the last surviving copies!"

"Perhaps they were forbidden for a good reason, Papa," Magda said, not liking the light that had begun to shine in his eyes. Finding those books had shaken her. They were purported to describe foul rites and contacts with forces beyond reason and sanity. To learn that they were real, that they and their authors were more than sinister rumors, was profoundly unsettling. It warped the texture of everything.

"Perhaps they were," Papa said without looking up. He had pulled off his outer leather gloves with his teeth and was slipping a rubber cap onto his right index fingertip, still gloved in cotton. Adjusting his bifocals, he began leafing through the pages. "But that was in another time. This is the twentieth century. I can't imagine there being anything in these books we couldn't deal with now."

"What could possibly be so awful?" Woermann said, pulling the leatherbound, iron-hasped copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten toward him. "Look. This one's in German." He opened the cover and flipped through the pages, finally stopping near the middle and reading.

Magda was tempted to warn him but decided against it. She owed these Germans nothing. She saw the captain's face blanch, saw his throat working in spasms as he slammed the book shut.

"What kind of sick, demented mind is responsible for this sort of thing? It's—it's—" He could not seem to find the words to express what he felt.

"What have you got there?" Papa said, looking up from a book whose title he had not yet announced. "Oh, the von Juntz book. That was first published privately in Düsseldorf in 1839. An extremely small edition, perhaps only a dozen copies..." His voice trailed off.

"Something wrong?" Kaempffer said. He had stood apart from the others, showing little curiosity.

"Yes. The keep was built in the fifteenth century ... that much I know for sure. These books were all written before then, all except that von Juntz book. Which means that as late as the middle of the last century, possibly later, someone visited the keep and deposited this book with the others."

"I don't see how that helps us now," Kaempffer said. "It does nothing to prevent another of our men"—he smiled as an idea struck him—"or perhaps even you or your daughter, from being murdered tonight."

"It does cast a new light on the problem, though," Papa said. "These books you see before you have been condemned through the ages as evil. I deny that. I say they are not evil, but are about evil. The one in my hands right now is especially feared—the Al Azif in the original Arabic."

Magda heard herself gasp. "Oh, no!" That one was the worst of all!

"Yes! I don't know much Arabic, but I know enough to translate the title and the name of the poet responsible for it." He looked from Magda back to Kaempffer. "The answer to your problem may well reside within the pages of these books. I'll start on them tonight. But first I wish to see the corpses."

"Why?" It was Captain Woermann speaking. He had composed himself again after his glance into the von Juntz book.

"I wish to see their wounds. To see if there were any ritual aspects about their deaths."

"We'll take you there immediately." The major called in two of his einsatzkommandos as escort.

Magda didn't want to go—she didn't want to have to look at dead soldiers—but she feared waiting alone for everyone's return, so she took the handles of her father's chair and wheeled him toward the cellar stairs. At the top, she was elbowed aside as the two SS soldiers followed the major's orders and carried her father, chair and all, down the steps. It was cold down there. She wished she hadn't come.

"What about these crosses, Professor?" Captain Woermann asked as they walked along the corridor, Magda again pushing the chair. "What's their significance?"

"I don't know. There's not even a folk tale about them in the region, except in connection with speculation that the keep was built by one of the Popes. But the fifteenth century was a time of crisis for the Holy Roman Empire, and the keep is situated in an area that was under constant threat from the Ottoman Turks. So the papal theory is ridiculous."

"Could the Turks have built it?"

Papa shook his head. "Impossible. It's not their style of architecture, and crosses are certainly not a Turkish motif."

"But what about the type of cross?"

The captain seemed to be profoundly interested in the keep, and so Magda answered him before Papa could; the mystery of the crosses had been a personal quest of hers for years.

"No one knows. My father and I searched through countless volumes of Christian history, Roman history, Slavic history, and nowhere have we found a cross resembling these. If we had found a historical precedent to this type of cross, we could have possibly linked its designer with the keep. But we found nothing. They are as unique as the structure which houses them."

She would have continued—it kept her from thinking about what she might have to see in the subcellar—but the captain did not appear to be paying much attention to her. It could have been because they had reached the breach in the wall, but Magda sensed it was because of the source of the information—she was, after all, only a woman. Magda sighed to herself and remained silent. She had encountered the attitude before and knew the signs well. German men apparently had many things in common with Romanian men. She wondered if all men were the same.

"One more question," the captain said to Papa. "Why, do you think, are there never any birds here at the keep?"

"I never noticed their absence, to tell the truth."

Magda realized she had never seen a bird here in all her trips, and it had never occurred to her that their absence was wrong ... until now.

The rubble outside the broken wall had been neatly stacked. As Magda guided Papa's wheelchair between the orderly piles, she felt a cold draft from the opening in the floor beyond the wall. She reached into the pocket behind the high back of the wheelchair and pulled out Papa's leather gloves.

"Better put these back on," she said, stopping and holding the left one open so he could slip his hand in.

"But he already has gloves on!" Kaempffer said, impatient at the delay.

"His hands are very sensitive to cold," Magda said, now holding the right glove open. "It's part of his condition."

"And just what is the condition?" Woermann asked.

"It's called scleroderma." Magda saw the expected blank look on their faces.

Papa spoke as he adjusted the gloves on his hands. "I'd never heard of it either until I was diagnosed as having it. As a matter of fact, the first two physicians who examined me missed the diagnosis. I won't go into details beyond saying that it affects more than the hands."

"But how does it affect your hands?" Woermann asked.

"Any sudden drop in temperature drastically alters the circulation in my fingers; for all intents and purposes, they temporarily lose their blood supply. I've been told that if I don't take good care of them I could develop gangrene and lose them. So I wear gloves day and night all year round except in the warmest summer months. I even wear a pair to bed." He looked around. "I'm ready when you are."

Magda shivered in the draft from below. "I think it's too cold for you down there, Papa."

"We're certainly not going to bring the bodies up here for his inspection," Kaempffer said. He gestured to the two enlisted SS men who again lifted the chair and carried it and its frail occupant through the hole in the wall. Captain Woermann had picked up a kerosene lamp from the floor and lit it. He led the way. Major Kaempffer brought up the rear with another. Reluctantly, Magda fell in line, staying close behind her father, terrified that one of the soldiers carrying him might slip on the slimy steps and let him fall. Only when the wheels of his chair were safely on the dirt floor of the subcellar did she relax.

One of the enlisted men began pushing Papa's chair behind the two officers as they walked toward eight sheet-covered objects stretched out on the floor thirty feet away. Magda held back, waiting in the pool of the light by the steps. She had no stomach for this.

She noted that Captain Woermann seemed perturbed as he walked around the bodies. He bent and straightened the sheets, adjusting them more evenly around the still forms. A subcellar... she and Papa had been to the keep again and again over the years and had never even guessed the existence of a subcellar. She rubbed her hands up and down over her sweatered arms, trying to generate some warmth. Cold.

She glanced around apprehensively, looking for signs of rats in the dark. The new neighborhood they had been forced to move into back in Bucharest had rats in all the cellars; so different from the cozy home they'd had near the university. Magda knew her reaction to rats was exaggerated, but she could not help it. They filled her with loathing ... the way they moved, their naked tails dragging after them... they made her sick.

But she saw no scuttling forms. She turned back and watched the captain begin to lift the sheets one by one, exposing the head and shoulders of each dead man. She was missing what was being said over there, but that was all right. She was glad she could not see what Papa was seeing.

Finally, the men turned back toward Magda and the stairs. Her father's voice became intelligible as he neared.

"... and I really can't say that there's anything ritualistic about the wounds. Except for the decapitated man, all the deaths seem to have been caused by simple severing of the major vessels in the neck. There's no sign of teeth marks, animal or human, yet those wounds are certainly not the work of any sharp instrument. Those throats were torn open, savaged in some way that I cannot possibly define."

How could Papa sound so clinical about such things?

Major Kaempffer's voice was surly and menacing. "Once again you've managed to say much yet tell us nothing!"

"You've given me little to work with. Haven't you anything else?"

The major stalked ahead without bothering to reply. Captain Woermann, however, snapped his fingers.

"The words on the wall! Written in blood in a language nobody knows."

Papa's eyes lit up. "I must see them!"

Again the chair was lifted, and again Magda traveled behind to the courtyard. Once there she took over the task of propelling him after the Germans as they headed for the rear of the keep. Soon they were all at the end of a blind corridor looking at the ruddy brown letters scrawled on the wall.

The strokes, Magda noticed, varied in thickness, but all were of a width consistent with a human finger. She shuddered at the thought and studied the words. She recognized the language and knew she could make the translation if only her mind would concentrate on the words and not on what their author had used for ink.

"Do you have any idea what it means?" Woermann asked.

Papa nodded. "Yes," he said, and paused, mesmerized by the display before him.

"Well?" Kaempffer said.

Magda could tell that he hated to depend on a Jew for anything, and worse to be kept waiting by one. She wished her father would be more careful about provoking him.

"It says, 'Strangers, leave my home!' It's in the imperative form." His voice had an almost mechanical quality as he spoke. He was disturbed by something about the words.

Kaempffer slapped his hand against his holster. "Ah! So the killings are politically motivated!"

"Perhaps. But this warning, or demand, or whatever you might wish to call it, is perfectly couched in Old Slavonic, a dead language. As dead as Latin. And those letters are formed just the way they were written back then. I should know. I've seen enough of the old manuscripts."

Now that Papa had identified the language, Magda's mind could focus on the words. She thought she knew what was so disturbing.

"Your killer, gentlemen," he went on, "is either a most erudite scholar, or else he has been frozen for half a millennium."

FOURTEEN

"It appears we have wasted our time," Major Kaempffer said, puffing on a cigarette as he strutted about. The four were again in the lowest level of the watchtower.

In the center of the room, Magda leaned exhaustedly against the back of the wheelchair. She sensed there was some sort of tug-of-war going on between Woermann and Kaempffer, but couldn't understand the rules or the motivations of the players. Of one thing she was certain, however: Papa's life and her own hung on the outcome.

"I disagree," Captain Woermann said. He leaned against the wall by the door, his arms folded across his chest. "As I see it, we know more than we did this morning. Not much, but at least it's progress ... we haven't been making any on our own."

"It's not enough!" Kaempffer snapped. "Nowhere near enough!"

"Very well, then. Since we have no other sources of information open to us, I think we should abandon the keep immediately."

Kaempffer made no reply; he merely continued puffing and strutting back and forth across the far end of the room.

Papa cleared his throat for attention.

"Stay out of this, Jew!"

"Let's hear what he has to say. That's why we dragged him here, isn't it?"

It was gradually becoming clear to Magda that there was a deep hostility between the two officers. She knew Papa had recognized it, too, and was surely trying to turn it to their advantage.

"I may be able to help." Papa gestured to the pile of books on the table. "As I mentioned before, the answer to your problem may lie in those books. If they do hold the answer, I am the only person who—with the aid of my daughter—can ferret it out. If you wish, I shall try."

Kaempffer stopped pacing and looked at Woermann.

"It's worth a try," Woermann said. "I for one don't have any better ideas. Do you?"

Kaempffer dropped his cigarette butt to the floor and slowly ground it out with his toe. "Three days, Jew. You have three days to come up with something useful." He strode past them and out the door, leaving it open behind him.

Captain Woermann heaved himself away from the wall and turned toward the door, his hands clasped at his back. "I'll have my sergeant arrange for a pair of bedrolls for you two." He glanced at Papa's frail body. "We have no other bedding."

"I will manage, Captain. Thank you."

"Wood," Magda said. "We'll need some wood for a fire."

"It doesn't get that cold at night," he said, shaking his head.

"My father's hands—if they act up on him, he won't even be able to turn the pages."

Woermann sighed. "I'll ask the sergeant to see what he can do—perhaps some scrap lumber." He turned to go, then turned back to them. "Let me tell you two something. The major will snuff you both out with no more thought than he gave to that cigarette he just finished. He has his own reasons for wanting a quick solution to this problem and I have mine: I don't want any more of my men to die. Find a way to get us through a single night without a death and you will have proven your worth. Find a way to defeat this thing and I may be able to get you back to Bucharest and keep you safe there."

"And then again," Magda said, "you may not." She watched his face carefully. Was he really offering them hope?

Captain Woermann's expression was grim as he echoed her words. "And then again, I may not."

After ordering wood brought to the first-level rooms, Woermann stood and thought for a moment. At first he had considered the pair from Bucharest a pitiful couple—the girl bound to her father, the father bound to his wheelchair. But as he had watched them and heard them speak, he had sensed subtle strengths within the two of them. That was good. For they both would need cores of steel to survive this place. If armed men could not defend themselves here, what hope was there for a defenseless female and a cripple?

He suddenly realized he was being watched. He could not say how he knew, but the feeling was definitely there. It was a sensation he would find unsettling in the most pleasant surroundings; but here, with the knowledge of what had been happening during the past week, it was unnerving.

Woermann peered up the steps curving away to his right. No one there. He went to the arch that opened onto the courtyard. All the lights were on out there, the pairs of sentries intent on their patrols.

Still the feeling of being watched.

He turned toward the steps, trying to shrug it off, hoping that if he moved from this spot the feeling would pass. And it did. As he climbed toward his quarters, the sensation evaporated.

But the underlying fear remained with him, the fear he lived with every night in the keep—the certainty that before morning someone was going to die horribly.

Major Kaempffer stood within the dark doorway to the rear section of the keep. He watched Woermann pause at the tower entry arch, then turn and start up the steps. Kaempffer felt an impulsive urge to follow him—to hurry back across the courtyard, run up to the third level of the tower, rap on Woermann's door.

He did not want to be alone tonight. Behind him was the stairway up to his own quarters, the place where just last night two dead men had walked in and fallen on him. He dreaded the very thought of going back there.

Woermann was the only one who could possibly be of any use to him tonight. As an officer, Kaempffer could not seek out the company of the enlisted men, and he certainly could not go sit with the Jews.

Woermann was the answer. He was a fellow officer and it was only right that they keep each other company. Kaempffer stepped out of the doorway and started briskly for the tower. But after a few paces he came to a faltering halt. Woermann would never let him through the door, let alone sit and share a glass of schnapps with him. Woermann despised the SS, the Party, and everyone associated with either. Why? Kaempffer found the attitude baffling. Woermann was pure Aryan. He had nothing to fear from the SS, Why, then, did he hate it so?

Kaempffer turned and re-entered the rear structure of the keep. There could be no rapprochement with Woermann. The man was simply too pig-headed and narrow-minded to accept the realities of the New Order. He was doomed. And the farther Kaempffer stayed away, the better.

Still ... Kaempffer needed a friend tonight. And there was no one.

Hesitantly, fearfully, he began a slow climb to his quarters, wondering if a new horror awaited him.

The fire added more than heat to the room. It added light, a warm glow that the single light bulb under its conical shade could not hope to match. Magda had spread out one of the bedrolls next to the fireplace for her father, but he was not interested. Never in the past few years had she seen him so fired, so animated. Month after month the disease had sapped his strength, burdening him with heavier and heavier fatigue until his waking hours had grown few and his sleeping hours many.

But now he seemed a new man, feverishly poring over the texts before him. Magda knew it couldn't last. His diseased flesh would soon demand rest. He was running on stolen energy. He had no reserves.

Yet Magda hesitated to insist that he rest. Lately, he had lost interest in everything, spending his days seated by the front window, staring out at the streets and seeing nothing. Doctors, when she could get one in to see him, had told her it was melancholia, common in his condition. Nothing to be done for it. Just give him aspirin for the constant ache, and codeine—when available—for the awful pains in every joint.

He had been a living dead man. Now he was showing signs of life. Magda couldn't bring herself to damp them. As she watched, he paused over De Vermis Mysteriis, removed his glasses, and rubbed a cotton-gloved hand over his eyes. Now perhaps was the time to pry him away from those awful books and persuade him to rest.

"Why didn't you tell them about your theory?" she asked.

"Eh?" He looked up. "Which one?"

"You told them you don't really believe in vampires, but that's not quite true, is it? Unless you finally gave up on that pet theory of yours."

"No, I still believe there might have been one true vampire—just one—from whom all the Romanian lore has originated. There are solid historical clues, but no proof. And without hard proof I could never publish a paper. For the same reason, I chose not to say anything about it to the Germans."

"Why? They're not scholars."

"True. But right now they think of me as a learned old man who might be of use to them. If I told them my theory they might think I was just a crazy old Jew and useless. And I can think of no one with a shorter life expectancy than a useless Jew in the company of Nazis. Can you?"

Magda shook her head quickly. This was not how she wanted the conversation to go. "But what of the theory? Do you think the keep might have housed..."

"A vampire?" Papa made a tiny gesture with his immobile shoulders. "Who can even say what a vampire might really be? There's been so much folklore about them, who can tell where reality leaves off—assuming there was some reality involved—and myth begins? But there's so much vampire lore in Transylvania and Moldavia that something around here must have engendered it. At its core, every tall tale has a kernel of truth."

His eyes were alight in the expressionless mask of his face as he paused thoughtfully. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you that there is something uncanny going on here. These books are proof enough that this structure has been connected with deviltry. And that writing on the wall... whether the work of a human madman or a sign that we are dealing with one of the moroi, the undead, is yet to be seen."

"What do you think?" she asked, pressing for some sort of reassurance. Her flesh crawled at the thought of the undead actually existing. She had never given such tales the slightest bit of credence, and had often wondered if her father had been playing some sort of intellectual game in his talk of them. But now...

"I don't think anything right now. But I feel we may be on the verge of an answer. It's not rational yet ... not something I can explain. But the feeling is there. You feel it, too. I can tell."

Magda nodded silently. She felt it. Oh, yes, she felt it.

Papa was rubbing his eyes again. "I can't read anymore, Magda."

"Come, then," she said, shaking off her disquiet and moving toward him. "I'll help you to bed."

"Not yet. I'm too wound up to sleep. Play something for me."

"Papa—"

"You brought your mandolin. I know you did."

"Papa, you know what it does to you."

"Please?"

She smiled. She could never refuse him anything for long. "All right."

She had catty-cornered the mandolin into the larger suitcase before leaving. It had been reflex, really. The mandolin went wherever Magda went. Music had always been central to her life—and since Papa had lost his position at the university, a major part of their livelihood. She had become a music teacher after moving into their tiny apartment, bringing her young students in for mandolin lessons or going to their homes to teach them piano. She and Papa had been forced to sell their own piano before moving.

She seated herself in the chair that had been brought in with the firewood and the bedrolls and made a quick check of the tuning, adjusting the first set of paired strings, which had gone flat during the trip. When she was satisfied, she began a complicated mixture of strumming and bare-fingered picking she had learned from the Gypsies, providing both rhythm and melody. The tune was also from the Gypsies, a typically tragic melody of unrequited love followed by death of a broken heart. As she finished the second verse and moved into the first bridge, she glanced up at her father.

He was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed, the gnarled fingers of his left hand pressing the strings of an imaginary violin through the fabric of his gloves, the right hand and forearm dragging an imaginary bow across those same strings but in only the minute movements his joints would allow. He had been a good violinist in his day, and the two of them had often done duets together on this song, she picking counterpoint to the soaring, tearful, molto rubato figures he would coax from his violin.

And although his cheeks were dry, he was crying.

"Oh, Papa, I should have known ... that was the wrong song." She was furious with herself for not thinking. She knew so many songs, and yet she had picked one that would most remind him that he could no longer play.

She started to rise to go to him and stopped. The room did not seem as well lit as it had a moment ago.

"It's all right, Magda. At least I can remember all the times I played along with you ... better than never having played at all. I can still hear in my head how my violin used to sound." His eyes were still closed behind his glasses. "Please. Play on."

But Magda did not move. She felt a chill descend upon the room and looked about for a draft. Was it her imagination, or was the light fading?

Papa opened his eyes and saw her expression. "Magda?"

"The fire's going out!"

The flames weren't dying amid smoke and sputter; they were merely wasting away, retreating into the charred wood. And as they waned, so did the bulb strung from the ceiling. The room grew steadily darker, but with a darkness that was more than a mere absence of light. It was almost a physical thing. With the darkness came a penetrating cold, and an odor, a sour acrid aroma of evil that conjured images of corruption and open graves.

"What's happening?"

"He's coming, Magda! Stand over by me!"

Instinctively, she was already moving toward Papa, seeking to shelter him even as she herself sought shelter at his side. Trembling, she wound up in a crouch beside his chair, clutching his gnarled hands in hers.

"What are we going to do?" she said, not knowing why she was whispering.

"I don't know." Papa, too, was trembling.

The shadows grew deeper as the light bulb faded and the fire died to wan glowing embers. The walls were gone, misted in impenetrable darkness. Only the glow from the coals, a dying beacon of warmth and sanity, allowed them to keep their bearings.

They were not alone. Something was moving about in that darkness. Stalking. Something unclean and hungry.

A wind began to blow, rising from a breeze to full gale force in a matter of seconds, howling through the room although the door and the shutters had all been pulled closed.

Magda fought to free herself from the terror that gripped her. She released her father's hands. She could not see the door, but remembered it having been directly opposite the fireplace. With the icy gale whipping at her, she moved around to the front of Papa's wheelchair and began to push it backward to where the door should be. If only she could reach the courtyard, maybe they would be safe. Why, she could not say, but staying in this room seemed like standing in a queue and waiting for death to call their names.

The wheelchair began to roll. Magda pushed it about five feet toward the place where she had last seen the door and then she could push it no farther. Panic rushed over her. Something would not let them pass! Not an invisible wall, hard and unyielding, but almost as if someone or something in the darkness was holding the back of the chair and making a mockery of her best efforts.

And for an instant, in the blackness above and behind the back of the chair, the impression of a pale face looking down at her. Then it was gone.

Magda's heart was thumping and her palms were so wet they were slipping on the chair's oaken armrests. This wasn't really happening! It was all a hallucination! None of it was real... that was what her mind told her. But her body believed! She looked into her father's face so close to hers and knew his terror reflected her own.

"Don't stop here!" he cried.

"I can't get it to move any farther!"

He tried to crane his neck around to see what blocked them but his joints forbade it. He turned back to her.

"Quick! Over by the fire!"

Magda changed the direction of her efforts, leaning backwards and pulling. As the chair began to roll toward her, she felt something clutch her upper arm in a grip of ice.

A scream clogged in her throat. Only a high-pitched, keening wail escaped. The cold in her arm was a pain, shooting up to her shoulder, lancing toward her heart. She looked down and saw a hand gripping her arm just above the elbow. The fingers were long and thick; short, curly hairs ran along the back of the hand and up the length of the fingers to the dark, overlong nails. The wrist seemed to melt into the darkness.

The sensations spreading over her from that touch, even through the fabric of her sweater and the blouse beneath it, were unspeakably vile, filling her with loathing and revulsion. She searched the air over her shoulder for a face. Finding none, she let go of Papa's chair and struggled to free herself, whimpering in naked fear. Her shoes scraped and slid along the floor as she twisted and pulled away, but she could not break free. And she could not bring herself to touch that hand with her own.

Then the darkness began to change, lighten. A pale, oval shape moved toward her, stopping only inches away. It was a face. One from a nightmare.

He had a broad forehead. Long, lank black hair hung in thick strands on either side of his face, strands like dead snakes attached by their teeth to his scalp. Pale skin, sunken cheeks, and a hooked nose. Thin lips were drawn back to reveal yellowed teeth, long and almost canine in quality. But it was the eyes, gripping Magda more fiercely than the icy hand on her arm, killing off her wailing cry and stilling her frantic struggles.

The eyes. Large and round, cold and crystalline, the pupils dark holes into a chaos beyond reason, beyond reality itself, black as a night sky that had never been blued by the sun or marred by the light of moon and stars. The surrounding irises were almost as dark, dilating as she watched, widening the twin doorways, drawing her into the madness beyond...

...madness. The madness was so attractive. It was safe, it was serene, it was isolated. It would be so good to pass through and submerge herself in those dark pools... so good...

No!

Magda fought the feeling, fought to push herself away. But ... why fight? life was nothing but disease and misery, a struggle that everyone eventually lost. What was the use? Nothing you did really mattered in the long run. Why bother?

She felt a swift undertow, almost irresistible, drawing her toward those eyes. There was lust there, for her, but a lust that went beyond the mere sexual, a lust for all that she was. She felt herself turn and lean toward those twin doorways of black. It would be so easy to let go...

... she held on, something within her refusing to surrender, urging her to fight the current. But it was so strong, and she felt so tired, and what did it all matter, anyway?

A sound ... music ... and yet not music at all. A sound in her mind, all that music was not ... non-melodic, disharmonic, a delirious cacophony of discord that rattled and shook and sent tiny cracks through the feeble remainder of her will. The world around her—everything—began to fade, leaving only the eyes ... only the eyes...

... she wavered, teetering on the edge of forever...

... then she heard Papa's voice.

Magda clutched at the sound, clung to it like a rope, pulled herself hand over hand along its length. Papa was not calling to her, was not even speaking in Romanian, but it was his voice, the only familiar thing in the chaos about her.

The eyes turned away. Magda was free. The hand released her.

She stood gasping, perspiring, weak, confused, the gale in the room pulling at her clothes, at the kerchief that bound her hair, stealing her breath. And her terror grew, for the eyes were now turning on her father. He was too weak!

But Papa did not flinch under the gaze. He spoke again as he had before, the words garbled, incomprehensible to her. She saw the awful smile on the white face fade as the lips drew into a thin line. The eyes narrowed to mere slits, as if the mind behind them were considering Papa's words, weighing them.

Magda watched the face, unable to do anything more. She saw the line of the lips curl up infinitesimally at the corners. Then a nod, no more than a jot of movement. A decision.

The wind died as if it had never been. The face receded into the darkness.

All was still.

Motionless, Magda and her father faced each other in the center of the room as the cold and the dark slowly dissipated. A log in the fireplace split lengthwise with a crack like a rifle shot and Magda felt her knees liquefy with the sound. She fell forward and only by luck and desperation was she able to grasp the arm of the wheelchair for support.

"Are you all right?" Papa said, but he wasn't looking at her. He was feeling his fingers through the gloves.

"I will be in a minute." Her mind recoiled at what she had just experienced. "What was it? My God, what was it?"

Papa was not listening. "They're gone. I can't feel anything in them." He began to pull the gloves from his fingers.

His plight galvanized Magda. She straightened and began to push the chair over to the fire, which was springing to life again. She was weak with reaction and fatigue and shock, but that seemed to be of secondary importance. What about me? Why am I always second? Why do I always have to be strong? Once ... just once ... she would like to be able to collapse and have someone tend to her. She forcibly submerged the thoughts. That was no way for a daughter to think when her father needed her.

"Hold them out, Papa! There's no hot water so we'll have to depend on the fire to warm them up!"

In the flickering light of the flames she saw that his hands had gone dead white, as white as those of that... thing. Papa's fingers were stubby with coarse, thick skin and curved, ridged nails. There were small punctate depressions in each fingertip, scars left by tiny areas of healed gangrene. They were the hands of a stranger—Magda could remember when his hands had been graceful, animated, with long, mobile, tapering fingers. A scholar's hands. A musician's. They had been living things. Now they were mummified caricatures of life.

She had to get them warmed up, but not too quickly. At home in Bucharest she had always kept a pot of warm water on the stove during the winter months for these episodes. The doctors called it Raynaud's phenomenon; any sudden drop in temperature caused constrictive spasms in the blood vessels of his hands. Nicotine had a similar effect, and so he had been cut off from his beloved cigars. If his tissues were deprived of oxygen too long or too often, gangrene would take root. So far he had been lucky. When gangrene had set in, the areas had been small and he had been able to overcome it. But that would not always be the case.

She watched as he held his hands out to the fire, rotating them back and forth against the warmth as best as his stiff joints would allow. She knew he could feel nothing in them now—too cold and numb. But once circulation returned he would be in agony as his fingers throbbed and tingled and burned as if on fire.

"Look what they've done to you!" she said angrily as the fingers changed from white to blue.

Papa looked up questioningly. "I've had worse."

"I know. But it shouldn't have happened at all! What are they trying to do to us?"

"They?"

"The Nazis! They're toying with us! Experimenting on us! I don't know what just happened here ... it was very realistic, but it wasn't real! Couldn't have been! They hypnotized us, used drugs, dimmed the lights—"

"It was real, Magda," Papa said, his voice soft with wonder, confirming what she knew in her soul, what she had so wanted him to deny. "Just as those forbidden books are real. I know—"

Breath suddenly hissed through his teeth as blood began to flow into his fingers again, turning them dark red. The starved tissues punished him as they gave up their accumulated toxins. Magda had been through this with him so many times she could almost feel the pain herself. .

When the throbbing subsided to an endurable level, he continued, his words coming in gasps.

"I spoke to him in Old Slavonic ... told him we were not his enemies... told him to leave us alone... and he left."

He grimaced in pain a moment, then looked at Magda with bright, glittering eyes. His voice was low and hoarse.

"It's him, Magda. I know it! It's him!"

Magda said nothing. But she knew it, too.

FIFTEEN

The Keep

Wednesday, 30 April

0622 hours

Captain Woermann had tried to stay awake through the night but had failed. He had seated himself at the window overlooking the courtyard with his Luger unholstered in his lap, though he doubted a 9mm parabellum would help against whatever haunted the keep. Too many sleepless nights and too little fitful napping during the days had caught up with him again.

He awoke with a start, disoriented. For a moment he thought he was back in Rathenow, with Helga down in the kitchen cooking eggs and sausage, and the boys already up and out and milking the cows. But he had been dreaming.

When he saw the sky was light, he leaped from the chair. Night was gone and he was still alive. He had survived another night. His elation was short-lived, for he knew that someone else had not survived. Somewhere in the keep he knew a corpse lay still and bloody, awaiting discovery.

He holstered the Luger as he crossed the room and stepped out on the landing. All was quiet. He trotted down the stairs, rubbing his eyes and massaging his stubbled cheeks to full wakefulness. As he reached the lowest level, the doors to the Jews' quarters opened and the daughter came out.

She didn't see him. She carried a metal pot in her hand and wore a vexed look on her face. Deep in thought, she passed through the open door into the courtyard and turned right toward the cellar stairs, completely oblivious to him. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, and that troubled him until he remembered that she had been in the keep a number of times before. She knew of the cellar cisterns, knew there was fresh water there.

Woermann stepped out into the courtyard and watched her move. There was an ethereal quality about the scene: a woman walking across the cobblestones in the dawn light, surrounded by gray stone walls studded with metallic crosses, streamers of fog on the courtyard floor eddying in her wake. Like a dream. She looked to be a fine woman under all those layers of clothing. There was a natural sway to her hips when she walked, an unpracticed grace that was innately appealing to the male in him. Pretty face, too, especially with those wide brown eyes. If she'd only let her hair out from under that kerchief, she could be a beauty.

At another time, in another place, she would have been in grave danger in similar company—five squads of women-starved soldiers. But these soldiers had other things on their minds; these soldiers feared the dark, and the death that unfailingly accompanied it.

He was about to follow her into the cellar to assure himself that she sought no more than fresh water for the pot in her hand, when he spied Sergeant Oster pounding toward him.

"Captain! Captain!!"

Woermann sighed and braced himself for the news. "Whom did we lose?"

"No one!" He held up a clipboard. "I checked on everyone and they're all alive and well!"

Woermann did not allow himself to rejoice—he had been fooled on this score last week—but he did allow himself to hope.

"You're sure? Absolutely sure?"

"Yes, sir. All except for the Major, that is. And the two Jews."

Woermann glanced toward the rear of the keep, to Kaempffer's window. Could it be...?

"I was saving the officers for last," Oster was saying, almost apologetically.

Woermann nodded, only half-listening. Could it be? Could Erich Kaempffer have been last night's victim? It was too much to hope for. Woermann had never imagined he could hate another human being as much as he had come to hate Kaempffer in the last day and a half.

It was with eager anticipation that he began walking toward the rear of the keep. If Kaempffer were dead, not only would the world be a brighter place, but he would again be senior officer and would have his men out of the keep by noon. The einsatzkommandos could come along or stay behind to die until a new SS officer arrived. He had no doubt they would fall in right behind him as he left.

If, however, Kaempffer still lived, it would be a disappointment, but one with a bright side: For the first time since they had arrived, a night would have passed without the death of a German soldier. And that was good. It would boost morale immeasurably. It would mean there was perhaps a slim hope of overcoming the death curse that blanketed them here like a shroud.

As Woermann crossed the courtyard with the sergeant hurrying behind him, Oster said, "Do you think the Jews are responsible?"

"For what?"

"For nobody dying last night."

Woermann paused and glanced between Oster and Kaempffer's window almost directly overhead. Oster apparently had no doubt that Kaempffer was still alive.

"Why do you say that, Sergeant? What could they have done?"

Oster's brow wrinkled. "I don't know. The men believe it... at least my men—I mean our men—believe it. After all, we lost someone every night except last night. And the Jews arrived last night. Maybe they found something in those books we dug up."

"Perhaps." He led the way into the rear section of the keep and ran up the steps to the second level.

Intriguing, but improbable. The old Jew and his daughter could not have come up with anything so soon. Old Jew ... he was beginning to sound like Kaempffer! Awful.

Woermann was puffing by the time they reached Kaempffer's room. Too much sausage, he told himself again. Too many hours sitting and brooding instead of moving about and burning up that paunch. He was reaching for the latch on Kaempffer's door when it swung open and the major himself appeared.

"Ah! Klaus!" he said bluffly. "I thought I heard someone out here." Kaempffer adjusted the black leather strap of his officer's belt and holster across his chest. Satisfied that it was secure, he stepped out into the hall.

"How nice to see you looking so well," Woermann said.

Kaempffer, struck by the obvious insincerity, glanced at him sharply, then at Oster.

"Well, Sergeant, who was it this time?"

"Sir?"

"Dead! Who died last night? One of mine or one of yours? I want the Jew and his daughter brought over to the corpse, and I want them to—"

"Pardon, sir," Oster said, "but no one died last night."

Kaempffer's eyebrows shot up and he turned to Woermann. "No one? Is this true?"

"If the sergeant says so, that's good enough for me."

"Then we've done it!" he smacked fist into his palm and puffed himself up, gaining an inch of height in the process. "We've done it!"

" 'We?' And pray tell, dear Major—just what did 'we' do?"

"Why, we got through a night without a death! I told you if we held on we could beat this thing!"

"That you did," Woermann said, choosing his words carefully. He was enjoying this. "But just tell me: What had the desired effect? Exactly what was it that protected us last night? I want to make sure I have this straight so I can see to it that we repeat the process tonight."

Kaempffer's self-congratulatory elation faded as quickly as it had bloomed. "Let's go see that Jew." He pushed past Oster and Woermann and started for the steps.

"I thought that would occur to you before too long," Woermann said, following at a slower pace.

As they reached the courtyard, Woermann thought he heard the faint sound of a woman's voice coming from the cellar. He could not understand the words, but her distress was evident. The sounds became louder, shriller. The woman was shouting in anger and fear.

He ran over to the cellar entry. The professor's daughter was there—he remembered now that her name was Magda—and she was wedged into the angle formed by the steps and the wall. Her sweater had been torn open, so had the blouse and other garments beneath it, all pulled down over one shoulder, exposing the white globe of a breast. An einsatzkommando had his face buried against that breast while she kicked and raged and beat her fists ineffectively against him.

Woermann recoiled for an instant at the sight, then he was racing down the steps. So intent was the soldier on Magda's breast that he did not seem to hear Woermann's approach. Clenching his teeth, Woermann kicked the soldier in the right flank with all the force he could muster. It felt good—good to hurt one of these bastards. With difficulty he resisted the urge to go on kicking him.

The SS trooper grunted with pain and reared up, ready to charge at whoever had struck the blow. When he saw that he faced an officer, it was still apparent in his eyes that he was debating whether or not to lash out anyway.

For a few heartbeats, Woermann almost wished the private would do just that. He waited for the slightest sign of a forward rush, his hand ready to draw his Luger. He would never have imagined himself capable of shooting another German soldier, but something inside him hungered to kill this man, to strike out through him at everything that was wrong with the Fatherland, the army, his career.

The soldier backed off. Woermann felt himself relax.

What was happening to him? He had never hated before. He had killed in battle, at long range and face to face, but never with hatred. It was an uncomfortable, disorienting sensation, as if a stranger had taken up residence unbidden in his home and he could not find a way to make him leave.

As the soldier stood and straightened his black uniform, Woermann glanced at Magda. She had her clothes closed and rearranged, and was rising from a crouch on the steps. Without a hint of warning, she spun and slapped the palm of her hand across her tormentor's face with stinging force, rocking his head back and sending him reeling off the bottom step in surprise. Only an outflung hand against the stone wall prevented him from going over onto his back.

She spat something in Romanian, her tone and facial expression conveying whatever meaning her words did not, and walked past Woermann, retrieving her half-spilled waterpot as she moved.

It required all of Woermann's Prussian reserve to keep from applauding her. Instead, he turned back to the soldier who was plainly torn between standing at attention in the presence of an officer, and taking reprisal on the girl.

Girl ... why did he think of her as a girl? She was perhaps a dozen years younger than he, but easily a decade older than his son, Kurt, and he considered Kurt a man. Perhaps it was because of a certain unsullied freshness about her, a certain innocence. Something there that was precious, to be preserved, protected.

"What's your name, soldier?"

"Private Leeb, sir. Einsatzkommandos."

"Is it customary for you to attempt rape while on duty?"

No reply.

"Was what I just saw part of your assigned duties here in the cellar?"

"She's only a Jew, sir."

The man's tone implied that this particular fact was sufficient explanation for anything he might have done to her.

"You did not answer my question, soldier!" His temper was nearing the breaking point. "Was attempted rape part of your duty here?"

"No, sir." The reply was as reluctant as it was defiant.

Woermann stepped down and snatched Private Leeb's Schmeisser from his shoulder. "You are confined to quarters, Private—"

"But sir!"

Woermann noted that the plea was not directed to him but to someone above and behind him. He did not have to turn and look to know who it was, so he continued speaking without missing a beat.

"—for deserting your post. Sergeant Oster will decide on a suitable disciplinary action for you"—he paused and looked up to the head of the stairs, directly into Kaempffer's eyes—"unless, of course, the major has a particular punishment in mind."

It was technically within Kaempffer's rights to interfere at this point, since their commands were separate and they answered to different authority; and Kaempffer was here at the behest of the High Command to which all the uniformed forces must ultimately answer. He was also the senior officer. But Kaempffer could do nothing here. To let Private Leeb off would be to condone desertion of an assigned post. No officer could allow that. Kaempffer was trapped. Woermann knew it and intended to take full advantage.

The major spoke stiffly. "Take him away, Sergeant. I will deal with him later."

Woermann tossed the Schmeisser to Oster, who marched the crestfallen einsatzkommando up the stairs.

"In the future," Kaempffer said acidly when the sergeant and the private were out of earshot, "you will not discipline or give orders to my men. They are not under your command, they are under mine!"

Woermann started up the stairs. When he came abreast of Kaempffer, he wheeled on him. "Then keep them on their leashes!"

The major paled, startled by the unexpected outburst.

"Listen, Herr SS officer," Woermann continued, letting all his anger and disgust rise to the surface, "and listen well. I don't know what I can say to get this through to you. I'd try reason but I think you're immune to it. So I'll try to appeal to your instinct for self-preservation—we both know how well developed that is. Think: Nobody died last night. And the only thing different about last night from all the other nights was the presence of the two Jews from Bucharest. There has to be a connection. Therefore, if for no other reason than the chance that they may be able to come up with an answer to the killings and a way to stop them, you must keep your animals away from them!"

He did not wait for a reply, fearing he might try to throttle Kaempffer if he did not move away immediately. He turned and walked toward the watchtower. After a few steps, he heard Kaempffer begin to follow him. He went to the door of the first-level suite, knocked, but did not wait for a reply before entering. Courtesy was one thing, but he intended to maintain an indisputable position of authority in the eyes of these two civilians.

The professor merely glared at the two Germans as they entered. He was alone in the front room, sipping at water in a tin cup, still seated in his wheelchair before the book-laden table, just as they had left him the night before. Woermann wondered if he had moved at all during the night. His gaze strayed to the books, then darted away. He remembered the excerpt he had seen in one of them last night... about preparing sacrifices for some deity whose name was an unpronounceable string of consonants. He shuddered even now at the memory of what was to be sacrificed, and of how it was prepared. How anyone could sit and read that and not get sick...

He scanned the rest of the room. The girl wasn't there—probably in the back. This room seemed smaller than his own, two stories up ... maybe it was just an impression created by the clutter of the books and the luggage.

"Is this morning an example of what we must face to get drinking water?" the waxy masked old man said through his tiny mouth, his voice dry, scaly. "Is my daughter to be assaulted every time she leaves the room?"

"That has been taken care of," Woermann told him. "The man will be punished." He stared at Kaempffer, who had sauntered to the other side of the room. "I can assure you it will not happen again."

"I hope not," Cuza replied. "It is difficult enough trying to find any useful information in these texts under the best conditions. But to labor under the threat of physical abuse at any moment... the mind rebels."

"It had better not rebel, Jew!" Kaempffer said. "It had better do as it is told!"

"It's just that it's impossible for me to concentrate on these texts when I'm worried about my daughter's safety. That should not be too hard to grasp."

Woermann sensed that the professor was aiming an appeal at him but he was not sure what it was.

"It's unavoidable, I'm afraid," he told the old man. "She is the only woman on what is essentially an army base. I don't like it any more than you. A woman doesn't belong here. Unless..." A thought struck him. He glanced at Kaempffer. "We'll put her up in the inn. She could take a couple of the books with her and study them on her own, and come back to confer with her father."

"Out of the question!" Kaempffer said. "She stays here where we can keep an eye on her." He approached Cuza at the table. "Right now I'm interested in what you learned last night that kept us all alive!"

"I don't understand..."

"No one died last night," Woermann said. He watched for reaction in the old man's face; it was difficult, perhaps impossible, to discern a change of expression in that tight, immobile skin. But he thought he saw the eyes widen almost imperceptibly in surprise.

"Magda!" he called. "Come here!"

The door to the rear room opened and the girl appeared. She looked composed after the incident on the cellar steps, but he saw that her hand trembled as it rested on the doorframe.

"Yes, Papa?"

"There were no deaths last night!" Cuza said. "It must have been one of those incantations I was reading!"

"Last night?" the girl's expression betrayed an instant of confusion, and something else: a fleeting horror at the mention of last night. She locked eyes with her father and a signal seemed to pass between them, perhaps the tiniest nod from the old man, then her face lit up.

"Wonderful! I wonder which incantation?"

Incantation? Woermann thought. He would have laughed at this conversation last Monday.

It smacked of a belief in spells and black magic. But now ...he would accept anything that got them all through the night alive. Anything.

"Let me see this incantation," Kaempffer said, interest lighting his eyes.

"Certainly." Cuza pulled over a weighty tome. "This is De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn. It's in Latin." He glanced up. "Do you read Latin, Major?"

A tightening of the lips was Kaempffer's only reply.

"A shame," the professor said. "Then I shall translate for—"

"You're lying to me, aren't you, Jew?" Kaempffer said softly.

But Cuza was not to be intimidated, and Woermann had to admire him for his courage. "The answer is here!" he cried, pointing to the pile of books before him. "Last night proves it. I still don't know what haunts the keep, but with a little time, a little peace, and fewer interruptions, I'm sure I can find out. Now, good day, gentlemen!"

He adjusted his thick glasses and pulled the book closer. Woermann hid a smile at Kaempffer's impotent rage and spoke before the major could do anything rash.

"I think it would be in our best interests to leave the professor to the task he was brought here for, don't you, Major?"

Kaempffer clasped his hands behind him and strode through the door. Woermann took one last look at the professor and his daughter before following. They were hiding something, those two. Whether about the keep itself or the murderous entity that stalked its corridors at night, he could not say. And right now it really didn't matter. As long as no more of his men died in the night, they were welcome to their secret. He was not sure he ever wanted to know. But should the deaths begin again, he would demand a full accounting.

Professor Cuza pushed the book away from him as soon as the door closed behind the captain. He rubbed the fingers of his hands one at a time, each in turn.

Mornings were the worst. That was when everything hurt, especially the hands. Each knuckle was like a rusted hinge on the door to an abandoned woodshed, protesting with pain and noise at the slightest disturbance, fiercely resisting any change in position. But it wasn't just his hands. All his joints hurt. Awakening, rising, and getting into the wheelchair that circumscribed his life was a chorus of agony from the hips, the knees, the wrists, the elbows, and the shoulders. Only by midmorning, after two separate doses of aspirin and perhaps some codeine when he had it, did the pain in his inflamed connective tissues subside to a tolerable level. He no longer thought of his body as flesh and blood; he saw it as a piece of clockwork that had been left out in the rain and was now irreparably damaged.

Then there was the dry mouth which never let up. The doctors had told him it was "not uncommon for scleroderma patients to experience a marked decrease in the volume of salivary secretions." They said it so matter-of-factly, but there was nothing matter-of-fact about living with a tongue that always tasted like plaster of Paris. He tried to keep some water at hand at all times; if he didn't sip occasionally his voice began to sound like old shoes dragging across a sandy floor.

Swallowing, too, was a chore. Even the water had trouble going down. And food—he had to chew everything until his jaw muscles cramped and then hope it wouldn't get stuck halfway to his stomach.

It was no way to live, and he had more than once considered putting an end to the whole charade. But he had never made the attempt. Possibly because he lacked the courage; possibly because he still possessed enough courage to face life on whatever terms he was offered. He wasn't sure which.

"You all right, Papa?"

He looked up at Magda. She stood near the fireplace with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, shivering. It wasn't from the cold. He knew she had been badly shaken by their visitor last night and had hardly slept. Neither had he. But then to be assaulted not thirty feet from her sleeping quarters...

Savages! What he would give to see them all dead—not just the ones here, but every stinking Nazi who stepped outside his border! And those still inside the German border as well. He wished for a way to exterminate them before they could exterminate him. But what could he do? A crippled scholar who looked half again his real age, who could not even defend his own daughter—what could he do?

Nothing. He wanted to scream, to break something, to bring down the walls as Samson had done. He wanted to cry. He cried too easily of late, despite his lack of tears. That wasn't manly. But then, he wasn't much of a man anymore.

"I'm fine, Magda," he said. "No better, no worse than usual. It's you that worries me. This is no place for you—no place for any woman."

She sighed. "I know. But there's no way to leave here until they let us."

"Always the devoted daughter," he said, feeling a burst of warmth for her. Magda was loving and loyal, strong-willed yet dutiful. He wondered what he had ever done to deserve her. "I wasn't talking about us. I was talking about you. I want you to leave the keep as soon as it's dark."

"I'm not too good at scaling walls, Papa." Her smile was wan. "And I've no intention of trying to seduce the guard at the gate. I wouldn't know how."

"The escape route lies right below our feet. Remember?"

Her eyes widened. "Oh, yes. I'd forgotten about that!"

"How could you forget? You found it."

It had happened on their last trip to the pass. He had still been able to get about on his own then but had needed two canes to bolster the failing strength in his legs. Unable to go himself, he had sent Magda down into the gorge in search of a cornerstone at the base of the keep, or perhaps a stone with an inscription on it... anything to give him a clue as to the builders of the keep. There had been no inscription. But Magda had come across a large, flat stone in the wall at the very base of the watchtower; it had moved when she leaned against it. It was hinged on the left and perfectly balanced. Sunlight pouring through the opening had revealed a set of stairs leading upward.

Over his protests she had insisted on exploring the base of the tower in the hope that some old records might have been left within. All she found was a long, steep, winding set of stairs that ended in a seemingly blind niche in the ceiling of the base. But it was not a blind end—the niche was in the very wall that divided the two rooms they now occupied. Within it, Magda discovered another perfectly balanced stone, scored to look like the smaller rectangular blocks that made up the rest of the wall, which swung open into the larger of the two rooms, permitting secret ingress and egress from the bottom suite of the tower.

Cuza had attached no significance to the stairway then—a castle or keep always had a hidden escape route. Now he saw it as Magda's stairway to freedom.

"I want you to take the stairs down to the bottom as soon as it is dark, let yourself out into the gorge, and start walking east. When you get to the Danube, follow it to the Black Sea, and from there to Turkey or—"

"Without you?"

"Of course without me!"

"Put it out of your mind, Papa! Where you stay, I stay."

"Magda, I'm commanding you as your father to obey me!"

"Don't! I will not desert you. I couldn't live with myself if I did!"

As much as he appreciated the sentiment, it did nothing to lessen his frustration. It was clear that the commanding approach was not going to work this time. He decided to plead. Over the years he had become adept at getting his way with her. By one method or another, by browbeating or twisting her up with guilt, he could usually make her accede to whatever he desired. Sometimes he did not like himself for the way he dominated her life, but she was his daughter, and he, her father. And he had needed her. Yet now that it was time to cut her free so she could save herself, she would not go.

"Please, Magda. As one last favor to a dying old man who would go smiling to his grave if he knew you were safe from the Nazis."

"And me knowing I left you among them? Never!"

"Please listen to me! You can take the Al Azif with you. It's bulky I know, but it's probably the last surviving copy in any language. There isn't a country in the world where you couldn't sell it for enough money to keep you comfortable for life."

"No, Papa," she said with a determination in her voice that he could not recall ever hearing before.

She turned away and walked into the rear room, closing the door behind her.

I've taught her too well, he thought. I've bound her so tightly to me I cannot push her away even for her own good. Is that why she never married? Because of me?

Cuza rubbed his itching eyes with cotton-gloved fingers, thinking back over the years. Ever since puberty Magda had been a constant object of male attention. Something in her appealed to different sorts of men in different ways; she rarely left one untouched. She probably would have been married and a mother a number of times over by now—and he, a grandfather—if her mother had not died so suddenly eleven years ago. Magda, only twenty then, had changed, taking on the roles of his companion, secretary, associate, and now nurse. The men about soon found her remote. Magda gradually built up a shell of self-absorption. Cuza knew every weak spot in that shell—and could pierce it at will. To all others she was immune.

But there were more pressing concerns at the moment. Magda faced a very short future unless she escaped the keep. Beyond that, there was the apparition they had encountered last night. Cuza was sure it would return with the passing of the day, and he did not want Magda here when it did. There had been something in its eyes that had caused fear to grip his heart like an icy fist. Such an unspeakable hunger there ... he wanted Magda far away tonight.

But more than anything else he wanted to stay here by himself and wait for it to return. This was the moment of a lifetime—a dozen lifetimes! To actually come face to face with a myth, with a creature that had been used for centuries to frighten children. Adults, too. To document its existence! He had to speak to this thing again ... induce it to answer. He had to learn which of the myths surrounding it were true and which, false.

The mere thought of the meeting made his heart race with excitement and anticipation. Strangely, he did not feel terribly threatened by the creature. He knew its language and had even communicated with it last night. It had understood and had left them unharmed. He sensed the possibility of a common ground between them, a place for a meeting of minds. He certainly did not wish to stop it or harm it—Theodor Cuza was not an enemy of anything that reduced the ranks of the German Army.

He looked down at the littered table before him. He was sure he would find nothing threatening to it in these despicable old books. He now understood why the books had been suppressed—they were abominations. But they were useful as props in the little play he was acting out for those two bickering German officers. He had to remain in the keep until he had learned all he could from the being that dwelt here. Then the Germans could do what they wished with him.

But Magda ... Magda had to be on her way to safety before he could devote his attention to anything else. She would not leave of her own accord ... what if she were driven out? Captain Woermann might be the key there. He did not seem too happy about having a woman quartered in the keep. Yes, if Woermann could be provoked...

Cuza despised himself for what he was about to do.

"Magda!" he called. "Magda!"

She opened the door and looked out. "I hope this is not about my leaving the keep, because—"

"Not the keep; just the room. I'm hungry and the Germans told us they'd feed us from their kitchen."

"Did they bring us any food?"

"No. And I'm sure they won't. You'll have to go get some."

She stiffened. "Across the courtyard? You want me to go back out there after what happened?"

"I'm sure it won't happen again." He hated lying to her, but it was the only way. "The men have been warned by their officers. And besides, you'll not be on any dark cellar stairway. You'll be out in the open."

"But the way they look at me..."

"We have to eat."

There was a long pause as his daughter stared at him. Then she nodded. "I suppose we do."

Magda buttoned her sweater all the way to the neck as she crossed the room, saying nothing as she left.

Cuza felt his throat constrict as the door closed behind her. She had courage, and trust in him ... a trust he was betraying. And yet keeping. He knew what she faced out there, and yet he had knowingly sent her into it. Supposedly for food.

He wasn't the slightest bit hungry.

SIXTEEN

The Danube Delta, Eastern Romania

Wednesday, April 30

1035 hours

Land was in sight again.

Sixteen unnervingly frustrating hours, each one like an endless day, were finally at an end. The red-haired man stood on the weathered bow and looked shoreward. The sardiner had chugged across the placid expanse of the Black Sea at a steady pace, a good pace, but one made maddeningly slow by the sole passenger's relentless sense of urgency. At least they had not been stopped by either of the two military patrol boats they had passed, one Russian, one Romanian. That could have proved disastrous.

Directly ahead lay the multichanneled delta where the Danube emptied into the Black Sea. The shore was green and swampy, pocked with countless coves. Getting ashore would be easy, but traveling through the bogs to higher, drier land would be time consuming. And there was no time!

He had to find another way.

The red-haired man glanced over his shoulder at the old Turk at the helm, then forward again to the delta. The sardine boat didn't draw much—it could move comfortably in about four feet of water. It was a possibility—take one of these tiny delta tributaries up to the Danube itself, then chug west along the river to a point, say, just east of Galati. They would be traveling against the current but it had to be faster than scrambling on foot through miles of sucking mire.

He dug into his money belt and brought out two Mexican fifty-peso pieces. Together they gave a weight of about two and a half ounces of gold. Turning again, he held them up to the Turk, addressing him in his native tongue.

"Kiamil! Two more coins if you'll take me upstream!"

The fisherman stared at the coins, saying nothing, chewing his lower lip. There was already enough gold in his pocket to make him the richest man in his village. At least for a while. But nothing lasts forever, and soon he would be out on the water again, hauling in his nets. The two extra coins could forestall that. Who knew how many days on the water, how many hand cuts, how many pains in an aging back, how many hauls of fish would have to be unloaded at the cannery to earn an equivalent amount?

The red-haired man watched Kiamil's face as the calculations of risks against profits played across it. And as he watched, he, too, calculated the risks: They would be traveling by day, never far from shore because of the narrowness of the waterway along most of the route, in Romanian waters in a boat of Turkish registry.

It was insane. Even if by some miracle of chance they reached the edge of Galati without being stopped, Kiamil could not expect a similar miracle on the return trip downstream. He would be caught, his boat impounded, and he imprisoned. Conversely, there was little risk to the red-haired man. If they were stopped and brought into port, he was sure he could find a way to escape and continue his trek. But Kiamil at the very least would lose his boat. Possibly his life.

It wasn't worth it. And it wasn't fair. He lowered the coins just as the Turk was about to reach for them.

"Never mind, Kiamil," he said. "I think it might be better if we just keep to our original agreement. Put me ashore anywhere along here."

The old man nodded, relief rather than disappointment showing on his leathery face at the withdrawal of the offer. The sight of the gold coins held out to him had almost turned him into a fool.

As the boat nosed toward shore, the red-haired man slipped the cord that tied the blanket roll with all his possessions over his shoulder and lifted the long, flat case under his arm. Kiamil reversed the engines within a foot or two of the gray mixture of sand and dirt overgrown with rank, wiry grasses that served for a bank here. The red-haired man stepped onto the gunwale and leaped ashore.

He turned to look back at Kiamil. The Turk waved and began to back the boat away from shore.

"Kiamil!" he shouted. "Here!" He tossed the two fifty-peso gold pieces out to the boat one at a time. Each was unerringly snatched from the air by a brown, callused hand.

With loud and profuse thanks in the name of Mohammed and all that was holy in Islam ringing in his ears, the red-haired man turned and began to pick his way across the marsh. Clouds of insects, poisonous snakes, and bottomless holes of quicksand lay directly ahead of him, and beyond that would be units of Iron Guard. They could not stop him, but they could slow him down. As threats to his life they were insignificant compared to what he knew lay half a day's ride due west in the Dinu Pass.

SEVENTEEN

The Keep

Wednesday, 30 April

1647 hours

Woermann stood at his window and watched the men in the courtyard. Yesterday they had been intermingled, the black uniforms interspersed with the gray ones. This afternoon they were separated, an invisible line dividing the einsatzkommandos from the regular army men.

Yesterday they had had a common enemy, one who killed regardless of the color of the uniform. But last night the enemy had not killed, and by this afternoon they were all acting like victors, each side claiming credit for the night of safety. It was a natural rivalry. The einsatzkommandos saw themselves as elite troops, SS specialists in a special kind of warfare. The regular army men saw themselves as the real soldiers; although they feared what the black uniform of the SS represented, they looked on the einsatzkommandos as little more than glorified policemen.

Unity had begun to break down at breakfast. It had been a normal mess period until the girl, Magda, had shown up. There had been some good-natured jostling and elbowing for a place near her as she moved past the food bins, filling a tray for herself and her father. Not an incident really, but her very appearance at morning mess had begun to divide the two groups. The SS contingent automatically assumed that since she was a Jew they had a pre-emptive right to do with her as they wished. The regular army men did not feel anyone had a pre-emptive right to the girl. She was beautiful. Try as she might to cover her hair in that old kerchief and bundle her body in those shapeless clothes, she could not conceal her femininity. It radiated through all her attempts to minimize it. It was there in the softness of her skin, in the smoothness of her throat, the turn of her lips, the tilt of her sparkling brown eyes. She was fair game for anyone as far as the regular army troops were concerned—with the real fighting men getting first chance, of course.

Woermann hadn't noticed it at the time but the first cracks in the previous day's solidarity had appeared.

At the noon mess a shoving match between gray uniforms and black ones began, again while the girl was going through the line. Two men slipped and fell on the floor during the minor fracas, and Woermann sent the sergeant over to break it up before any serious blows could be struck. By that time Magda had taken her food and departed.

Shortly after lunch she had wandered about, looking for him. She had told him that her father needed a cross or a crucifix as part of his research into one of the manuscripts. Could the captain lend her one? He could—a little silver cross removed from one of the dead soldiers.

And now the off-duty men sat apart in the courtyard while the rest worked at dismantling the rear of the keep. Woermann was trying to think of ways to avoid certain trouble at the evening mess. Maybe the best thing to do was to have someone load up a tray at each meal and bring it to the old man and his daughter in the tower. The less seen of the girl, the better.

His eyes were drawn to movement directly below him. It was Magda, hesitant at first, and then with straight-backed, high-chinned decisiveness, marching bucket in hand toward the cellar entry. The men followed her at first with their eyes, then they were on their feet, drifting toward her from all corners of the courtyard, like soap bubbles swirling toward an unstoppered drain.

When she came up from the cellar with her bucket of water, they were waiting for her in a thick semicircle, pushing and shoving toward the front for a good close look at her. They were calling to her, moving before, beside, and behind her as she tentatively made her way back to the tower. One of the einsatzkommandos blocked her way but was pushed aside by a regular army man who grabbed her bucket with exaggerated gallantry and carried it ahead of her, a clown footman. But the SS man who had been pushed out of the way snatched at the bucket; he only succeeded in spilling the contents over the legs and the boots of the one who now held it.

As laughter started from the black uniforms, the face of the regular army man turned a bright red. Woermann could see what was coming but was helpless to stop it from his position on the third level of the tower. He watched the soldier in gray swing the bucket at the SS man who had spilled the water on him, saw the bucket connect full force with the head, then Woermann was away from the window and running down the steps as fast as his legs would carry him.

As he reached the bottom landing, he saw the door to the Jews' suite swing shut behind a flash of skirt fabric, then he was out in the courtyard facing a full-scale brawl. He had to fire his pistol twice to get the men's attention and had to threaten to shoot the next one who threw a punch before the fighting actually stopped.

The girl had to go.

As things quieted down, Woermann left his men with Sergeant Oster and headed directly for the first floor of the tower. While Kaempffer was busy squaring away the einsatzkommandos, Woermann would use the opportunity to start the girl on her way out of the keep. If he could get her across the causeway and into the inn before Kaempffer was aware of what was happening, there was a good chance he could keep her out.

He did not bother to knock this time, but pushed the door open and stepped inside. "Fräulein Cuza!"

The old man was still sitting at the table; the girl was nowhere in sight. "What do you want with her?"

He ignored the father. "Fräulein Cuza!"

"Yes?" she said, stepping out of the rear room, her face anxious.

"I want you packed to leave for the inn immediately. You have two minutes. No more."

"But I can't leave my father!"

"Two minutes and you are leaving, with or without your things!"

He would not be swayed, and he hoped his face showed it. He did not like to separate the girl and her father—the professor obviously needed care and she obviously was devoted to caring for him—but the men under his command came first, and she was a disruptive influence. The father would have to remain in the keep; the daughter would have to stay in the inn. There was no room for argument.

Woermann watched her cast a pleading look at her father, begging him to say something. But the old man remained silent. She took a deep breath and turned toward the back room.

"You now have a minute and a half," Woermann told her.

"A minute and a half for what?" said a voice behind him. It was Kaempffer.

Groaning inwardly and readying himself for a battle of wills, Woermann faced the SS man.

"Your timing is superb as usual, Major," he said. "I was just telling Fräulein Cuza to pack her things and move herself over to the inn."

Kaempffer opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by the professor.

"I forbid it!" he cried in his dry, shrill voice. "I will not permit you to send my daughter away!"

Kaempffer's eyes narrowed as his attention was drawn from Woermann to Cuza. Even Woermann found himself turning in surprise to see what had prompted the outburst.

"Youforbid, old Jew?" Kaempffer said in a hoarse voice as he moved past Woermann to the professor. "You forbid? Let me tell you something: You forbid nothing around here! Nothing!"

The old man bowed his head in resignation.

Satisfied with the result of his vented anger, Kaempffer turned back to Woermann. "See that she's out of here immediately. She's a troublemaker!"

Dazed and bemused, Woermann watched Kaempffer storm out of the room as abruptly as he had arrived. He looked at Cuza whose head was no longer bowed, and who now appeared to be resigned to nothing.

"Why didn't you protest before the major arrived?" Woermann asked him. "I had the impression you wanted her out of the keep."

"Perhaps. But I changed my mind."

"So I noticed—and in a most provocative manner at a most strategic moment. Do you manipulate everyone this way?"

"My dear Captain," Cuza said, his tone serious, "no one pays much attention to a cripple. People look at the body and see that it's wrecked by an accident or wasted by illness, and they automatically carry the infirmity to the mind within that body. 'He can't walk, therefore he can't have anything intelligent or useful or interesting to say.' So a cripple like me soon learns how to make other people come up with an idea he has already thought of, and to have them arrive at that idea in such a way that they believe it originated with them. It's not manipulation—it's a form of persuasion."

As Magda emerged from the rear room, suitcase in hand, Woermann realized with chagrin, and perhaps a touch of admiration, that he, too, had been manipulated—or "persuaded," to give the professor his due. He now knew whose idea it had been for Magda to make those repeated trips to the mess and the cellar. The realization did not bother him too much, though. His own instincts had always been against having a woman in the keep.

"I'm going to leave you at the inn unguarded," he told Magda. "I'm sure you understand that if you run off it will not go well with your father. I'm going to trust in your honor and your devotion to him."

He did not add that it would be courting a riot to decide which soldiers would do guard duty on her—competition for the double benefit of separation from the keep and proximity to an attractive female would further widen the existing rift between the two contingents of soldiers. He had no choice but to trust her.

A look passed between father and daughter.

"Have no fear, Captain," Magda said, glaring at her father. "I have no intention of running off and deserting him."

He watched the professor's hands bunch into two thick, angry fists.

"You'd better take this," Cuza said, pushing one of the books toward her, the one he had called the Al Azif. "Study it tonight so we can discuss it tomorrow."

There was a trace of mischief in her smile. "You know I don't read Arabic, Papa." She picked up another, slimmer volume. "I think I'll take this one instead."

They stared at each other across the table. They were at an impasse of wills, and Woermann thought he had a good idea where the conflict lay.

Without warning, Magda stepped around the table and kissed her father on the cheek. She smoothed his sparse white hairs, then straightened up and looked Woermann directly in the eye.

"Take care of my father, Captain. Please. He's all I have."

Woermann heard himself speaking before he could think: "Don't worry. I'll see to everything."

He cursed himself. He shouldn't have said that! It went against all his officer training, all his Prussian rearing. But there was that look in her eyes that made him want to do as she asked. He had no daughter of his own, but if he had he would want her to care about him the way this girl cared about her father.

No ... he had no need to worry about her running off. But the father—he was a sly one. He would bear watching. Woermann warned himself never to take anything about these two for granted.

The red-haired man sent his mount plunging through the foothills toward the southeast entrance to the Dinu Pass. The greening terrain around him went by unnoticed in his haste. As the sun slipped down the sky ahead of him, the hills on each side grew steeper and rockier, closing on him, narrowing until he was confined to a path a scant dozen feet wide. Once through the bottleneck up ahead he would be on the wide floor of the Dinu Pass. From there on it would be an easy trip, even in the dark. He knew the way.

He was about to congratulate himself on avoiding the many military patrols in the area when he spotted two soldiers up ahead blocking his path with ready rifles and fixed bayonets. Rearing his mount to a halt before the pair, he quickly decided on a course of action—he wanted no trouble, so he would play it meek and mild.

"Where to in such a hurry, goatherd?"

It was the older of the two who spoke. He had a thick mustache and a pitted face. The younger man laughed at the word "goatherd." Apparently it held some derogatory meaning for them.

"Up the pass to my village. My father is sick. Please let me by."

"All in good time. How far up do you intend to go?"

"To the keep."

" 'The keep'? Never heard of it. Where is it?"

That answered one question for the red-haired man. If the keep were involved in a military action in the pass, these men at least would have heard of it.

"Why are you stopping me?" he asked them, trying to look puzzled. "Is something wrong?"

"It is not for the likes of you to question the Iron Guard," Mustache said. "Get down from there so we can have a better look at you."

So they weren't just soldiers; they were members of the Iron Guard. Getting through here was going to be tougher than he had thought. The red-haired man dismounted and stood silent, waiting as they scrutinized him.

"You're not from around here," Mustache said. "Let me see your papers."

That was the question the red-haired man had feared throughout his trip. "I don't have them with me, sir," he said in his most deferential manner. "I left in such a hurry that I forgot them. I'll go back and get them if you wish."

A look passed between the two soldiers. A traveler without papers had no legal rights to speak of—his non-compliance with the law gave them a free hand to deal with him in any way they saw fit.

"No papers?" Mustache had his rifle at the port position across the front of his chest. As he spoke he emphasized his words with sharp outward thrusts of his rifle, slamming the bolt assembly and the side of the stock against the red-haired man's ribs. "How do we know you're not running guns to the peasants in the hills?"

The red-haired man winced and backed away, showing more pain than he felt; to absorb the blows stoically would only incite Mustache to greater violence.

Always the same, he thought. No matter what the time or place, no matter what the ruling power calls itself, its bullyboys remain the same.

Mustache stepped back and pointed his rifle at the red-haired man. "Search him!" he told his younger partner.

The young one slung his rifle over a shoulder and began roughly slapping his hands over the traveler's clothes. He stopped when he came to the money belt. With a few deft moves he opened the shirt and removed the belt from beneath. When they saw the gold coins in the pouches, another look passed between them.

"Where'd you steal that?" Mustache said, once again slamming the side of his rifle against the red-haired man's ribs.

"It's mine," he told them. "It's all I have. But you can keep it if you'll just let me be on my way." He meant that. He didn't need the gold anymore.

"Oh, we'll keep it all right," Mustache said. "But first we'll see what else you've got." He pointed to the long, flat case strapped to the right flank of the horse. "Open that," he told his companion.

The red-haired man decided then that he had let this go as far as he could. He would not let them open the case.

"Don't touch that!" he said.

They must have sensed menace in his voice, for both soldiers stopped and stared at him, Mustache's lips worked in anger. He stepped forward to slam his rifle against the red-haired man once more.

"Why you—"

Although the red-haired man's next moves looked carefully planned, they were all reflex. As Mustache made to thrust with his rifle, the red-haired man deftly ripped it out of his grasp. While Mustache stared dumbly at his empty hands, the red-haired man swung the butt of the rifle up and cracked the man's jaw; from there all that was needed to crush the larynx was a short jab against the exposed throat. Turning, he saw the other soldier unslinging his weapon. The red-haired man took a single step and drove the bayonet on the other end of his borrowed rifle full length into the younger man's chest. With a sigh, the soldier sagged and died.

The red-haired man viewed the scene dispassionately. Mustache was still alive, but barely. His back was arched, his face tinged with blue as his hands tore at his throat, trying in vain to let some air through to his lungs.

As before, when he had killed Carlos the boatman, the red-haired man felt nothing. No triumph, no regret. He could not see how the world would be poorer for the passing of two members of the Iron Guard, and he knew that if he had waited much longer it might have been him on the ground, wounded or dead.

By the time the red-haired man had replaced the money belt around his waist, Mustache lay as still as his companion. He hid the bodies and the rifles in the rocks on the northern slope and resumed his gallop toward the keep.

Magda paced about her tiny candlelit room at the inn, anxiously rubbing her hands together, stopping every so often at the window to glance out at the keep. It was dark tonight, with high clouds moving in from the south, and no moon.

The dark frightened her ... the dark and being alone. She could not remember when she had last been alone like this. It was neither right nor proper for her to be staying unchaperoned at the inn. It helped some to know that Iuliu's wife, Lidia, would be around, but she would be little help if that thing in the keep decided to cross the gorge and come to her.

She had a clear view of the keep from her window—in fact, hers was the only room with a window facing north. She had requested it for that reason. There had been no problem; she was the only guest.

Iuliu had been most gracious, almost obsequious. That puzzled her. He had always been courteous during their previous stays, but in a rather perfunctory way. Now he virtually fawned over her.

From where she stood she could pick out the lit window in the first level of the tower where she knew Papa now sat. There was no sign of movement; that meant he was alone. She had been furious with him earlier when she realized how he had maneuvered her out of the keep. But as the hours passed, her anger gave way to worry. How would he take care of himself?

She turned and leaned back against the sill, looking at the four white stucco walls that confined her. Her room was small: a narrow closet, a single dresser with a beveled mirror above it, a three-legged stool, and a large, too soft bed. Her mandolin lay on the bed, untouched since her arrival. The book too, Cultes des Goules, lay untouched in the bottom drawer of the dresser. She had no intention of studying it; she had taken it only for show.

She had to get out for a while. She blew out two of the candles, but left the third burning. She did not want the room to be totally dark. After last night's encounter, she would fear the dark forever.

A polished wood stairway took her down to the first floor. She found the innkeeper hunched on the front stoop, sitting and whittling dejectedly.

"Something wrong, Iuliu?"

He started at the sound of her voice, looked her once in the eye, then returned to his aimless whittling.

"Your father—he is well?"

"For the moment, yes. Why?"

He put down the knife and covered his eyes with both hands; the words came out in a rush. "You're both here because of me. I'm ashamed ... I'm not a man. But they wanted to know all about the keep and I couldn't tell them what they wanted. And then I thought of your father, who knows all there is to know about the keep. I didn't know how sick he was now, and I never thought they'd bring you, too. But I couldn't help it! They were hurting me!"

Magda experienced a brief flare of anger—Iuliu had no right mentioning Papa to the Germans! And then she admitted that under similar circumstances, she, too, might have told them anything they wanted to know. At least now she knew how they had connected Papa with the keep, and she had an explanation for Iuliu's deferential manner.

His pleading expression touched her as he looked up at her. "Do you hate me?"

Magda leaned over and placed a hand on his round shoulder. "No. You didn't mean us any harm."

He covered her hand with his. "I hope all will go well for you."

"So do I."

She walked slowly along the path to the gorge, the silence broken only by the pebbles crunching underfoot, echoing in the moist air. She stopped and stood in the thick, freshly budded brush to the right of the causeway and hugged her sweater more tightly around her. It was midnight, and cool and damp; but the chill she felt went deeper than any caused by a simple drop in temperature. Behind her the inn was a dim shadow; across the causeway lay the keep, ablaze with light in many of its windows. The fog had risen up from the bottom of the pass, filling the gorge and surrounding the keep. Light from the courtyard filtered up through the fine haze in the air, making a glow like a phosphorescent cloud. The keep looked like an ungainly luxury liner adrift in a phantom sea of fog.

Fear settled over her as she stared at the keep.

Last night ... considering the mortal threats of the day, it had been easy for her to avoid thinking about last night. But here in the dark it all came back—those eyes, that icy grip on her arm. She ran her hand over the spot near her elbow where the thing had touched her. There was still a mark on the skin there, pale gray. The area looked dead, and she hadn't been able to wash it off. She hadn't told Papa. But it was proof: Last night had not been a dream. The nightmare was a reality. A type of creature she had blithely assumed to be fantasy had become real, and it was over there in that stone building. So was Papa. She knew that right now he was waiting for it. He hadn't told her so, but she knew. Papa hoped to be visited tonight, and she would not be there to help him. The thing had spared them last night, but could Papa count on such luck two nights in a row?

And what if it did not visit Papa tonight? What if it crossed the gorge and came to her? She could not bear the thought of another encounter like last night's!

It was all so unreal! The undead were fiction!

And yet last night...

The sound of hoofbeats interrupted her musings. She turned and dimly saw a horse and a rider passing the inn at full gallop. They approached the causeway, apparently with every intention of charging over to the keep, but at the last minute the rider fiercely reined his steed to a halt at its edge. Horse and man stood limned in the glow that filtered across the gorge from the keep. She noted a long, flat box strapped to the horse's right flank. The rider dismounted and took a few tentative steps onto the causeway, then stopped.

Magda crouched in the brush and watched him study the keep. She could not say exactly why she chose to hide herself, but the events of the past few days had made her distrust anyone she did not know.

He was tall, leanly muscular, bare-headed, his hair wind-twisted and reddish, his breathing rapid but unlabored. She could see his head move as his eyes followed the sentries atop the keep walls. He seemed to be counting them. His posture was tense, as if he were forcibly restraining himself from battering his body against the closed gates at the far end of the causeway. He appeared frustrated, angry, and puzzled.

He stood still and quiet for a long time. Magda felt her calves begin to ache from squatting on them for so long, but she dared not move. At last he turned and walked back to his horse. His eyes scanned the edge of the gorge, back and forth, as he moved. He suddenly stopped and stared directly at the spot where Magda crouched. She held her breath as her heart began to pound in alarm.

"You there!" he called. "Come out!" His tone was commanding, his accent hinting at the Meglenitic dialect.

Magda made no move. How could he possibly see her through the dark and the brush?

"Come out or I'll drag you out!"

Magda found a heavy stone near her right hand. Gripping it tightly, she rose quickly and stepped forward. She would take her chances in the open. Neither this man nor anyone else was going to drag her anywhere without a fight. She had been pushed around enough today.

"Why were you hiding in there?"

"Because I don't know who you are." Magda made her voice sound as defiant as she could.

"Fair enough." His head gave a curt nod as he spoke.

Magda could sense the tension coiled within him, yet felt it had nothing to do with her. That eased her mind a little.

He gestured toward the keep. "What's going on in there? Who has the keep lit up like a cheap tourist attraction?"

"German soldiers."

"I thought those helmets looked German. But why here?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure they know, either."

She watched him stare at the keep a moment longer and heard him mutter something under his breath that sounded like "Fools!" But she was not sure. There was a remoteness about him, a feeling that he was not the least bit concerned with her, that the only thing he cared about was the keep. She relaxed her grip on the stone in her hand but did not drop it. Not yet.

"Why are you so interested?" she asked.

He looked at her, his features shadowed. "Just a tourist. I've been this way before and thought I'd stop by the keep on my way through the mountains."

She knew immediately that was a lie. No sightseer rode at night through the Dinu Pass at the speed with which this man had arrived. Not unless he was mad.

Magda took a step backward and started walking toward the inn. She feared to stay in the dark with a man who told patent lies.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to my room. It's chilly out here."

"I'll escort you back."

Uneasy, Magda quickened her pace. "I'll find my own way, thank you."

He did not seem to hear, or if he did he chose to ignore what she had said. He pulled his mount around and came up beside her, matching her stride and leading the horse behind him. Ahead, the inn sat like a large two-story box. She could see dim light in her window from the candle she had left burning.

"You can put that rock down," he said. "You won't need it."

Magda hid her startled reaction. Could this man see in the dark? "I'll be the judge of that."

He had a sour smell, a mixture of man sweat and horse sweat which she found unpleasant. She further quickened her pace to leave him behind.

He did not bother to catch up.

Magda dropped the stone as she reached the front stoop of the inn and went inside. To her right, the tiny dining area was dark and empty. To her left, Iuliu was at the table he used as a front desk, preparing to blow out his candle.

"Better wait," she told him as she hurried past. "I think you have another guest coming."

His face lit up. "Tonight?"

"Immediately."

Beaming, he opened the registration book and unstoppered the inkwell. The inn had been in Iuliu's family for generations. Some said it had been built to house the masons who had constructed the keep. It was nothing more than a small two-story house, and not by any means an income-producing venture—the number of travelers who stopped at the inn during the course of a year was ludicrously low. But the first floor served as a home for the family and there was always someone about in the rare event that a traveler did appear. The major portion of Iuliu's insubstantial income came from the commission he received for acting as bursar to the workers in the keep. The rest came from wool from the flock of sheep his son tended—those that had not been sacrificed to put a little meat on the family table and clothes on their backs.

Two of the inn's three rooms rented at one time—a bonanza.

Magda ran lightly to the top of the stairs but did not enter her room immediately. She paused to listen to what the stranger would tell Iuliu. She wondered at her interest as she stood there. She had found the man unattractive in the extreme; in addition to his odor and grimy appearance, there was a trace of arrogance and condescension that she found equally offensive.

Why, then, was she eavesdropping? It was not like her.

She heard a heavy tread on the front stoop, and then on the floor as the man entered. His voice echoed up the stairwell.

"Ah, innkeeper! Good! You're still up. Arrange for someone to rub down my horse and stall her for a few days. She's my second mount of the day and I've ridden her hard. I want her well dried before she's put away for the night. Hello? Are you listening?"

"Yes ... yes, sir." Iuliu's voice sounded hoarse, strained, frightened.

"Can you do it?"

"Yes. I—I'll have my nephew come over right away."

"And a room for myself."

"We have two left. Please sign."

There was a pause. "You can give me the one directly overhead—the one on the north side."

"Uh, pardon, sir, but you must put your surname. 'Glenn' is not enough." Iuliu's voice trembled as he spoke.

"Do you have anyone else named Glenn staying here?"

"No."

"Is there anyone else in the area named Glenn?"

"No, but—"

"Then Glenn alone will do."

"Very well, sir. But I must tell you that the north room is occupied. You may have the east room."

"Whoever it is, tell him to switch rooms. I'll pay extra."

"It's not a him, sir. It's a her, and I don't think she'll move."

How very true, Iuliu, Magda thought.

"Tell her!" It was a command, in a tone not to be denied.

As Magda heard Iuliu's scurrying feet approach the stairs, she ducked into her room and waited. The stranger's attitude infuriated her. And what had he done to frighten Iuliu so?

She opened her door at the first knock and stared at the portly innkeeper, his hands nervously clutching and twisting the fabric of his shirt front, his face pale and beaded, with so much sweat that his mustache had begun to droop. He was terrified.

"Please, Domnisoara Cuza," he blurted, "there's a man downstairs who wants this room. Will you please let him have it? Please?"

He was whining. Pleading. Magda felt sorry for him, but she was not going to give up this room.

"Absolutely not!" She began to close the door but he put his hand out.

"But you must!"

"I will not, Iuliu. And that's final!"

"Then would you ... would you tell him. Please?"

"Why are you so afraid of him? Who is he?"

"I don't know who he is. And I'm not really..." His voice trailed off. "Won't you please tell him for me?"

Iuliu was actually quivering with fear. Magda's first impulse was to let the innkeeper handle his own affairs, but then it occurred to her that she would derive a certain pleasure from telling the arrogant newcomer that she was keeping her room. For two days now she had been allowed no say in what had happened to her. Standing firm on this small matter would be a welcome change.

"Of course I'll tell him."

She squeezed past Iuliu and hurried down the steps. The man was waiting impassively in the foyer, casually and confidently leaning on the long, flat box she had previously seen strapped to the horse's flank. It was the first time she had seen him in the light and she reconsidered her initial assessment. Yes, he was grimy, and she could smell him from the foot of the stairs, but his features were even, his nose long and straight, his cheekbones high. She noticed how truly red his hair was, like a dark flame; a bit wild and overlong, perhaps, but that, like his odor, could well be the natural result of a long, hard trip. His eyes held her for a moment, startling in their blueness, their clarity. The only jarring note in his appearance was the olive tone of his skin—out of place in the company of his hair and eyes.

"I thought it might be you."

"I'm keeping my room."

"I require it," he said, straightening up.

"It's mine for now. You're welcome to it when I leave."

He took a step toward her. "It's important that I have a northern exposure. I—"

"I have my own reasons for wanting to keep my eye on the keep," Magda said, cutting him off from another lie, "just as I'm sure you have yours. But mine are of great personal importance. I will not leave."

His eyes blazed suddenly, and for an instant Magda was afraid she had overstepped her bounds. Just as suddenly, he cooled and stepped back, a half-smile playing about the corners of his mouth.

"You're obviously not from around here."

"Bucharest."

"I thought as much." Magda caught a hint of something in his eyes, something akin to grudging respect. But that didn't seem right. Why would he look at her that way when she was blocking him from what he wanted? "You won't reconsider?" he said.

"No."

"Ah, well," he sighed, "an eastern exposure it is, then. Innkeeper! Show me to my room!"

Iuliu came rushing down the stairs, nearly tripping in his haste. "Right away, sir. The room to the right at the top of the stairs is all ready for you. I'll take this—" He reached for the case but Glenn snatched it away.

"I can handle that very well by myself. But there's a blanket roll on the back of my horse that I'll be needing." He started up the stairs. "And be sure to see to that horse! She's a good and true beast." With a brief parting glance at Magda, a glance that stirred an unfamiliar but not unpleasant sensation within her, he went up the steps two at a time. "And draw me a bath immediately!"

"Yes, sir!" Iuliu leaned over to Magda and clasped both her hands in his. "Thank you!" he whispered, still frightened, but apparently less so. He then rushed out to the horse.

Magda stood in the middle of the foyer for a moment, wondering at the evening's strange chain of events. There were unanswered questions here at the inn but she couldn't think about them now, not while there were more fearful questions to be answered at the keep—

The keep! She had forgotten about Papa! She hurried up the stairs, passing the closed door to Glenn's room on her way, then pushed into her own room and rushed to the window. There in the watchtower, Papa's light burned the same as before.

She sighed with relief and lay back on the bed. A bed ... a real bed. Maybe everything would turn out all right tonight after all. She smiled to herself. No, that tactic wasn't going to work. Something was going to happen. She closed her eyes against the light of the guttering candle atop the dresser, its glow doubled by the mirror behind it. She was tired. If for just a minute she could rest her eyes, she'd be better ... think about good things, like Papa being allowed to go back to Bucharest with her, fleeing the Germans and that hideous manifestation...

The sound of movement out in the hall drew her thoughts away from the keep. It sounded like that man, Glenn, going down to the back room for a bath. At least he wouldn't always smell the way he did tonight. But why should she care? He did seem concerned about the welfare of his horse, and that could be read as a sign of a compassionate man. Or just a practical one. Had he really said it was his second mount of the day? Could any man ride two horses into such a lather? She could not imagine why Iuliu seemed so terrified of the newcomer. He seemed to know Glenn, and yet had not known his name until he had signed it. It didn't make sense.

Nothing made sense anymore ... her thoughts drifted...

The sound of a door closing startled her awake. It was not her own. It must have been Glenn's. There was a creak on the stair. Magda bolted upright and looked at the candle—it had lost half its length since the last time she looked. She leaped to the window. The light was still on in her father's room.

There was no sound from below, but she could make out the dim shape of a man moving along the path toward the causeway. His movements were catlike. Silent. She was sure it was Glenn. As Magda watched, he stepped into the brush to the right of the causeway and stood there, precisely where she had stood earlier. The mist that filled the gorge overflowed and lapped at his feet. Like a sentinel, he watched the keep.

Magda felt a stab of anger. What was he doing out there? That was her spot. He had no right to take it. She wished she had the courage to go out there and tell him to leave, but she did not. She did not fear him, actually, but he moved too quickly, too decisively. This Glenn was a dangerous man. But not to her, she felt. To others. To those Germans in the keep, perhaps. And didn't that make him an ally of sorts? Still, she could not go unescorted to him in the dark and tell him to leave and allow her to keep her own vigil.

But she could observe him. She could set herself up behind him and see what he was up to while keeping her eye on Papa's window. Maybe she'd learn why he was here. That was the question that nagged her as she padded down the stairs, through the darkened foyer, and out onto the road. She crept toward a large rock not too far behind him. He would never know she was there.

"Come to reclaim your vantage point?"

Magda jumped at the sound of his voice—he had not even looked around!

"How did you know I was here?"

"I've been listening to your approach ever since you left the inn. You're really rather clumsy."

There it was again—that smug self-assurance.

He turned and gestured to her. "Come up here and tell me why you think the Germans have the keep lit up like that in the wee hours. Don't they ever sleep?"

She held back, then decided to accept his invitation. She would stand at the edge there, but not too close to him. As she neared, she noted he smelled worlds better.

"They're afraid of the dark," she said.

"Afraid of the dark." His tone had gone flat. He did not seem surprised by her reply. "And just why is that?"

"A vampire, they think."

In the dim light filtering across the gorge from the keep, Magda saw his eyebrows rise. "Oh? Is that what they've told you? Do you know someone in there?"

"I've been in there myself. And my father's in there right now." She pointed to the keep. "The lowermost window in the watchtower is his—the one that's lit." How she hoped he was all right.

"But why would anyone think there's a vampire about?"

"Eight men dead, all German soldiers, all with their throats torn open."

His mouth tightened into a grim line. "Still ... a vampire?"

"There was also a matter of two corpses supposedly walking about. A vampire seems to be the only thing that could explain all that's happened in there. And after what I saw—"

"You saw him?" Glenn turned and leaned toward her, his eyes boring into hers, intent on her answer.

Magda retreated a step. "Yes."

"What did he look like?"

"Why do you want to know?" He was frightening her now. His words pounded at her as he leaned closer.

"Tell me! Was he dark? Was he pale? Handsome? Ugly? What?"

"I—I'm not even sure I can remember exactly. All I know is that he looked insane and ... and unholy, if that makes any sense to you."

He straightened. "Yes. That says much. And I didn't mean to upset you." He paused briefly. "What about his eyes?"

Magda felt her throat tighten. "How did you know about his eyes?"

"I know nothing about his eyes," he said quickly, "but it's said they are the windows to the soul."

"If that's true," she said, her voice lowering of its own volition to a whisper, "his soul is a bottomless pit."

Neither of them spoke for a while, both watching the keep in silence. Magda wondered what Glenn was thinking. Finally, he spoke.

"One more thing: Do you know how it all began?"

"My father and I weren't here, but we were told that the first man died when he and a friend broke through a cellar wall."

She watched him grimace and close his eyes, as if in pain; and as she had seen hours earlier, his lips again formed the word "Fools" without speaking it aloud.

He opened his eyes and suddenly pointed to the keep. "What's happening in your father's room?"

Magda looked and saw nothing at first. Then terror clutched her. The light was fading. Without thinking, she started toward the causeway. But Glenn grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back.

"Don't be a fool!" he whispered harshly in her ear. "The sentries will shoot you! And if by some chance they held their fire, they'd never let you in! There's nothing you can do!"

Magda barely heard him. Frantically, wordlessly, she struggled against him. She had to get away—she had to get to Papa! But Glenn was strong and refused to release her. His fingers dug into her arms, and the more she struggled, the tighter he held her.

Finally, his words sank in: She could not get to Papa. There was nothing she could do.

In helpless, agonized silence, she watched the light in Papa's room fade slowly, inexorably to black.

EIGHTEEN

The Keep

Thursday, 1 May

0217 hours

Theodor Cuza had waited patiently, eagerly, knowing without knowing how he knew that the thing he had seen last night would return to him. He had spoken to it in the old tongue. It would return. Tonight.

Nothing else was certain tonight. He might unlock secrets sought by scholars for ages, or he might never see the morning. He trembled, as much with anticipation as with fear of the unknown.

Everything was ready. He sat at his table, the old books piled in a neat stack to his left, a small box full of traditional vampire banes within easy reach to his right, the ever-present cup of water directly before him. The only illumination was the cone of light from the hooded bulb directly overhead, the only sound his own breathing.

And suddenly he knew he was not alone.

Before he saw anything, he felt it—a malign presence, beyond his field of vision, beyond his capacity to describe it. It was simply there. Then the darkness began. It was different this time. Last night it had pervaded the very air of the room, growing and spreading from everywhere. Tonight he watched it invade by a different route—slowly, insidiously seeping through the walls, blotting them from his view, closing in on him.

Cuza pressed his gloved palms against the tabletop to keep them from shaking. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, so loud, so hard, he feared one of the chambers would rupture. The moment was here. This was it!

The walls were gone. Darkness surrounded him in an ebon dome that swallowed the glow from the overhead bulb—no light passed beyond the end of the table. It was cold, but not so cold as last night, and there was no wind.

"Where are you?" He spoke in Old Slavonic.

No reply. But in the darkness, beyond the point where light would not go, he sensed that something stood and waited, taking his measure.

"Show yourself—please!"

There was a lengthy pause, then a thickly accented voice spoke from the dark.

"I can speak a more modern form of our language." The words derived from a root version of the Daco-Romanian dialect spoken in this region at the time the keep was built.

The darkness on the far side of the little table began to recede. A shape took form out of the black. Cuza immediately recognized the face and the eyes from last night, and then the rest of the figure became visible. A giant of a man stood before him, at least six and a half feet tall, broad shouldered, standing proudly, defiantly, legs spread, hands on hips. A floor-length cloak, as black as his hair and eyes, was fastened about his neck with a clasp of jeweled gold. Beneath that Cuza could see a loose red blouse, possibly silk, loose black breeches that looked like jodhpurs, and high boots of rough brown leather.

It was all there—power, decadence, ruthlessness.

"How do you come to know the old tongue?" said the voice.

Cuza heard himself stammer. "I—I've studied it for years. Many years." He found his mind had gone numb, frozen. All the things he had wanted to say, the questions he had planned all afternoon to ask, all fled, all gone. Desperately, he verbalized the first thought that came into his head.

"I had almost expected you to be wearing evening clothes."

The thick eyebrows, growing so near to each other, touched as the visitor's brow furrowed. "I do not understand 'evening clothes.' "

Cuza gave himself a mental kick—amazing how a single novel, written half a century ago by an Englishman, could so alter one's perceptions of what was an essentially Romanian myth. He leaned forward in his wheelchair. "Who are you?"

"I am the Viscount Radu Molasar. This region of Wallachia was once mine."

He was saying that he was a feudal lord of his time. "A boyar?"

"Yes. One of the few who stayed with Vlad—the one they called Tepes, the Impaler—until his end outside Bucharest."

Even though he had expected such an answer, Cuza was still aghast. "That was in 1476! Almost five centuries ago! Are you that old?"

"I was there."

"But where have you been since the fifteenth century?"

"Here."

"But why?" Cuza's fear was vaporizing as he spoke, replaced by an intense excitement that sent his mind racing. He wanted to know everything—now!

"I was being pursued."

"By Turks?"

Molasar's eyes narrowed, leaving only the endless black of his pupils showing. "No. By ... others ... madmen who would pursue me across the world to destroy me. I knew I could not outrun them forever"—he smiled here, revealing long, tapered, slightly yellowed teeth, none of them particularly sharp, but all strong-looking—"so I decided to outwait them. I built this keep, arranged for its maintenance, and hid myself away."

"Are you..." There was a question Cuza had been burning to ask from the start but had dared not; now he could contain himself no longer. "Are you of the undead?"

Again the smile, cold, almost mocking. "Undead? Nosferatu? Moroi? Perhaps."

"But how did you—"

Molasar slashed a hand through the air. "Enough! Enough of your bothersome questions! I care not for your idle curiosity. I care not for you but that you are a countryman of mine and there are invaders in the land. Why are you with them? Do you betray Wallachia?"

"No!" Cuza felt the fear that had been washed away in the excitement of contact creep back into him as he saw Molasar's expression grow fierce. "They brought me here against my will!"

"Why?" The word was a jabbing knife.

"They thought I could find out what was killing the soldiers. And I guess I have... haven't I?"

"Yes. You have." Molasar underwent another mercurial shift of mood, smiling again. "I need them to restore my strength after my long repose. I will need them all before I am again at the peak of my powers."

"But you mustn't!" Cuza blurted without thinking.

Molasar flared again. "Never say to me what I must or must not do in my home! And never when invaders have taken it over! I saw to it that no Turk ever set foot in this pass while I was about, and now I am awakened to find my keep overrun with Germans!"

He was in a foaming rage, walking back and forth, swinging his fists wildly about to punctuate his words.

Cuza took the opportunity to lift the top off the box to his right and remove the fragment of broken mirror Magda had given him earlier in the day. As Molasar stormed about, lost in a rage, Cuza held up the mirror and tried to catch Molasar's reflection in it. He could glance to his left and see Molasar by the stack of books on the corner of the table, but when he looked in the mirror he could see only the books.

Molasar cast no reflection!

Suddenly, the mirror was snatched from Cuza's hand.

"Still curious?" He held up the mirror and looked into it. "Yes. The tales are true—I cast no reflection. Long ago I did." His eyes clouded for an instant. "But no more. What else have you in that box?"

"Garlic." Cuza reached under the cover and pulled out a clove. "It is said to ward away the undead."

Molasar held out his palm. There was hair growing at its center. "Give it to me." When Cuza complied, Molasar put the clove up to his mouth and took a bite, then tossed the rest into a corner. "I love garlic."

"And silver?" He pulled out a silver locket that Magda had left him.

Molasar did not hesitate to take it and rub it between his palms. "I could not very well have been a boyar if I had feared silver!" He seemed to be enjoying himself now.

"And this," Cuza said, reaching for the last item in the box, "is supposed to be the most potent of vampire banes." He pulled out the cross Captain Woermann had lent Magda.

With a sound that was part gasp and part growl, Molasar stepped away and averted his eyes. "Put it away!"

"It affects you?" Cuza was stunned. A heaviness grew in his chest as he watched Molasar cringe. "But why should it? How—"

"PUT IT AWAY!"

Cuza did so immediately, bulging the sides of the cardboard box as he pressed the lid down as tightly as he could over the offending object.

Molasar all but leaped upon him, baring his teeth and hissing his words through them. "I thought I might find an ally in you against the outlanders, but I see you are no different!"

"I want to see them gone, too!" Cuza said, terrified, pressing himself back into the meager cushioning of his wheelchair. "More than you!"

"If that were true, you would never have brought that abomination into this room! And you would never have exposed it to me!"

"But I didn't know! It could have been another false folk tale like the garlic and the silver!" He had to convince him!

Molasar paused. "Perhaps." He whirled and stalked toward the darkness, his anger cooled, but minimally. "But I have doubts about you, Crippled One."

"Don't go! Please!"

Molasar stepped into the waiting dark and turned toward Cuza as it enveloped him. He said nothing.

"I'm on your side, Molasar!" Cuza cried. He couldn't leave now—not when there were so many unanswered questions! "Please believe me!"

Only pinpoint glints of light off the surfaces of Molasar's eyes remained. The rest of him had been swallowed up. Suddenly, a hand jabbed out of the blackness, pointing a finger at Cuza.

"I will watch you, Crippled One. And if I see you are to be trusted, I will speak with you another time. But if you betray our people, I shall end your days."

The hand disappeared. Then the eyes. But the words remained, hanging in the air. The darkness gradually receded, seeping back into the walls. Soon all was as it had been. The partially eaten clove of garlic that lay on the floor in the corner was the only evidence of Molasar's visit.

For a long while, Cuza did not move. Then he noticed how thick his tongue was in his mouth, and drier than usual. He picked up the cup of water and sipped from it; a mechanical exercise requiring no conscious thought. He swallowed with the usual difficulty, then reached for the box to his right. His hand rested on the lid awhile before lifting it. His numbed mind balked at facing what was within, but he knew he eventually must. Compressing his strictured mouth into a short, grim line, he lifted the lid, removed the cross, and laid it before him on the tabletop.

Such a little thing. Silver. Some ornate work at the ends of the upright and the crosspiece. No corpse affixed to it. Just a cross. If nothing else, a symbol of man's inhumanity to man.

From the millennia-old traditions and learning of his own faith that was so much a part of his daily life and culture, Cuza had always looked upon the wearing of crosses as a rather barbaric custom, a sure sign of immaturity in a religion. But then, Christianity was a relatively young offshoot of Judaism. It needed time. What had Molasar called the cross? An "abomination." No, it was not that; at least not to Cuza. Grotesque, yes, but never an abomination.

But now it took on new meaning, as did so many other things. The walls seemed to press in on him as he stared at the little cross, allowing it to become the focus of his attention. Crosses were so like the banes used by primitives to ward off evil spirits. Eastern Europeans, especially the Gypsies among them, had countless banes, from garlic to icons. He had lumped the cross in with the rest, seeing no reason why it should deserve more consideration than the rest.

Yet Molasar had been repulsed by the cross ... could not even bear to look at it. Tradition gave it power over demons and vampires because it was supposedly the symbol of the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Cuza had always told himself that if the undead did exist, and the cross did have power over them, it was because of the innate faith of the person holding the object, not the object itself.

Yet he had just proved himself wrong.

Molasar was evil. That was given: Any entity that leaves a trail of corpses in order to continue its own existence is inherently evil. And when Cuza had held up the cross, Molasar had shrunk away. Cuza had no belief in the power of the cross, yet it had power over Molasar.

So it must be the cross itself which had the power, not its bearer.

His hands shook. He felt dizzy and lightheaded as his mind ran over all the implications. They were shattering.

NINETEEN

The Keep

Thursday, 1 May

0640 hours

Two nights in a row without a death. Woermann found his mood edging into a sort of cautious jubilance as he buckled on his belt. He had actually slept last night, soundly and long, and was so much the better for it this morning.

The keep was no brighter or cheerier. There was still that indefinable sense of a malignant presence. No, it was he who had changed. For some reason he now felt there might be a real chance of his getting back to his home in Rathenow alive. For a while he had seriously come to doubt the possibility. But with the hearty breakfast he had eaten in his room perking through his intestines, and the knowledge that the men under his command numbered the same this morning as they had last night, all things seemed possible—perhaps even the departure of Erich Kaempffer and his uniformed hoodlums.

Even the painting failed to bother him this morning. The shadow to the left of the window still looked like a gibbeted corpse, but it no longer disturbed him as it had when Kaempffer had first pointed it out.

He descended the watchtower stairs and reached the first level in time to find Kaempffer approaching the professor's rooms from the courtyard, looking more supremely confident than usual, and with as little reason as ever.

"Good morning, dear Major!" Woermann called heartily, feeling he could forgo any overt venting of spleen this morning, considering the imminence of Kaempffer's departure. But a veiled jab was always in order. "I see we have the same idea: You've come to express your deepest thanks to Professor Cuza for the German lives he has saved again!"

"There's no evidence of his having done a damned thing!" Kaempffer said, his jauntiness disappearing in a snarl. "Even he makes no claim!"

"But the timing of the end of the murders with his arrival is rather suggestive of some cause-effect relationship, don't you think?"

"Coincidence! Nothing more!"

"Then why are you here?"

Kaempffer faltered for an instant. "To interrogate the Jew about what he has learned from the books, of course."

"Of course."

They entered the outer room, Kaempffer first. They found Cuza kneeling on the floor on his spread-out bedroll. He was not praying. He was trying to hoist himself back into the wheelchair. After the briefest glance in their direction as they walked in, he returned his full concentration to the task.

Woermann's initial impulse was to help the man—Cuza's hands appeared useless for gripping and his muscles seemed too weak to pull him up even if he could manage a firm grip. But he had asked for no aid, either with his eyes or with his voice. It was obviously a matter of pride for him to pull himself up into the chair unassisted. Woermann realized that beyond his daughter, the crippled man had little left in which to take any pride. He would not rob him of this small accomplishment.

Cuza seemed to know what he was doing. As Woermann watched from Kaempffer's side—he was sure the major was enjoying the spectacle—he could see that Cuza had braced the back of the wheelchair against the wall beside the fireplace, could see the pain on his face as he strained his weakened muscles to pull himself up, forcing his frozen joints to bend. Finally, with a groan that broke out beads of perspiration on his face, Cuza slid up onto the seat and slumped on his side, hanging over the armrest, panting and sweating. He still had to slide up a little farther and turn over fully onto his buttocks before he was completely in the chair, but the worst part was over.

"What do you want of me?" he said when he had caught his breath. Gone was that staid, overly polite manner that had typified his behavior since his arrival in the keep; gone, too, was the constant referral to them as "gentlemen." At the moment there appeared to be too much pain, too much exhaustion to cope with to allow him the luxury of sarcasm.

"What did you learn last night, Jew?" Kaempffer said.

Cuza heaved himself over onto his buttocks and leaned wearily against the back of the chair. He closed his eyes a moment, then reopened them, squinting at Kaempffer. He appeared to be almost blind without his glasses.

"Not much more. But there is evidence that the keep was built by a fifteenth-century boyar who was a contemporary of Vlad Tepes."

"Is that all? Two days of study and that is all?"

"One day, Major," the professor said, and Woermann sensed some of the old spark edging into the reply. "One day and two nights. That's not a long time when the reference materials are not in one's native tongue."

"I did not ask for excuses, Jew! I want results!"

"And have you got them?" The answer seemed important to Cuza.

Kaempffer straightened his shoulders and pulled himself up to his full height as he replied. "There have been two consecutive nights without a death, but I don't believe you have had anything to do with that." He rotated the upper half of his body and gave Woermann a haughty look. "It seems I have accomplished my mission here. But just for good measure, I'll stay one more night before continuing on my way."

"Ah! Another night of your company!" Woermann said, feeling his spirits soar. "Our cup runneth over!" He could put up with anything for one more night—even Kaempffer.

"I see no need for you to remain here even that long, Herr Major," Cuza said, visibly brightening. "I'm sure other countries have much greater need of your services."

Kaempffer's upper Up curled into a smile. "I shan't be leaving your beloved country, Jew. I go to Ploiesti from here."

"Ploiesti? Why Ploiesti?"

"You'll learn soon enough." He turned to Woermann. "I shall be ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning."

"I shall personally hold the gate open for you."

Kaempffer shot him an angry look, then strode from the room. Woermann watched him go. He sensed that nothing had been solved, that the killings had stopped of their own accord, and that they could begin again tonight, tomorrow night, or the next. It was only a brief hiatus they were enjoying, a moratorium; they had learned nothing, accomplished nothing. But he had not voiced his doubts to Kaempffer. He wanted the major out of the keep as much as the major wanted to be out. He would say nothing that might delay his departure.

"What did he mean about Ploiesti?" Cuza asked from behind him.

"You don't want to know." He looked from Cuza's ravaged, troubled face to the table. The silver cross his daughter had borrowed yesterday lay there next to the professor's spectacles.

"Please tell me, Captain. Why is that man going to Ploiesti?"

Woermann ignored the question. The professor had enough problems. Telling him that the Romanian equivalent of Auschwitz was in the offing would do him no good. "You may visit your daughter today if you wish. But you must go to her. She cannot come in."

He reached over and picked up the cross. "Did you find this useful in any way?"

Cuza glanced at the silver object for only an instant, then looked sharply away. "No. Not at all."

"Shall I take it back?"

"What? No—no! It still might come in handy. Leave it right there."

The sudden intensity in Cuza's voice struck Woermann. The man seemed subtly changed since yesterday, less sure of himself. Woermann could not put his finger on it, but it was there.

He tossed the cross onto the table and turned away. He had too many other things on his mind to worry about what was troubling the professor. If indeed Kaempffer were leaving, Woermann would have to decide what his next move would be. To stay or to go? One thing was certain: He now would have to arrange for shipment of the corpses back to Germany. They had waited long enough. At least with Kaempffer out of his hair he would be able to think straight again.

Preoccupied with his own concerns, he left the professor without saying good-bye. As he closed the door behind him, he noticed that Cuza had rolled his chair up to the table and fixed his spectacles over his eyes. He sat there holding the cross in his hand, staring at it.

At least he was alive.

Magda waited impatiently while one of the gate sentries went to get Papa. They had already kept her waiting a good hour before they opened the gates. She had rushed over at first light but they had ignored her pounding. A sleepless night had left her irritable and exhausted. But at least he was alive.

Her eyes roamed the courtyard. All quiet. There were piles of rubble strewn about the rear from the dismantling work, but no one was working now. All at breakfast, no doubt. What was taking so long? They should have let her go get him herself.

Against her will, her thoughts drifted. She thought of Glenn. He had saved her life last night. If he hadn't held her back when he had, she would have been shot to death by the German sentries. Luckily, he had been strong enough to hold her until she came to her senses. She kept remembering the feel of him as he had pressed her against him. No man had ever done that—had ever been close enough to do that. The memory of it was good. It had stirred something in her that refused to return to its former quiescent state.

She tried to concentrate on the keep and on Papa, forcing her thoughts away from Glenn...

... yet he had been kind to her, soothing her, convincing her to go back to her room and keep her vigil at the window. There was nothing to be done at the edge of the gorge. She had felt so utterly helpless, and he had understood. And when he had left her at her door, there had been a look in his eyes: sad, and something else. Guilt? But why should he feel guilty?

She noticed a movement within the entrance to the tower and stepped across the threshold. All the light and warmth of the morning drained away from her as she did—like stepping out of a warm house into a blustery winter night. She backed up immediately and felt the chill recede as soon as her feet were back on the causeway. There seemed to be a different set of rules at work within the keep. The soldiers didn't appear to notice; but she was an outsider. She could tell.

Papa and his wheelchair appeared, propelled from behind by a reluctant sentry who seemed embarrassed by the task. As soon as she saw her father's face, Magda knew something was wrong. Something dreadful had happened last night. She wanted to run forward but knew they would not let her. The soldier pushed the wheelchair to the threshold and then let go, allowing it to roll to Magda unattended. Without letting it come to a complete halt, she swung around behind and pushed her father onto the causeway. When they were halfway across and he had yet to speak to her, even to say good morning, she felt she had to break the silence.

"What's wrong, Papa?"

"Nothing and everything."

"Did he come last night?"

"Wait until we're over by the inn and I'll tell you everything. We're too close here. Someone might overhear."

Anxious to learn what had disturbed him so, she hurriedly wheeled him around to the back of the inn where the morning sun shone brightly on the awakening grass and reflected off the white stucco of the building's wall.

Setting the chair facing north so the sun would warm him without shining in his eyes, she knelt and gripped both his gloved hands with her own. He didn't look well at all; worse than usual; and that caused her a deep pang of concern. He should be home in Bucharest. The strain here was too much for him.

"What happened, Papa? Tell me everything. He came again, didn't he?"

His voice was cold when he spoke, his eyes on the keep, not on her: "It's warm here. Not just warm for flesh and bone, but warm for the soul. A soul could wither away over there if it stayed too long."

"Papa—"

"His name is Molasar. He claims he was a boyar loyal to Vlad Tepes."

Magda gasped. "That would make him five hundred years old!"

"He's older, I'm sure, but he would not let me ask all my questions. He has his own interests, and primary among them is ridding the keep of all trespassers."

"That includes you."

"Not necessarily. He seems to think of me as a fellow Romanian—a 'Wallachian,' as he would say—and doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by my presence. It's the Germans—the thought of them in his keep has driven him almost insane with rage. You should have seen his face when he talked about them."

"His keep?"

"Yes. He built it to protect himself after Vlad was killed."

Hesitantly, Magda asked the all-important question: "Is he a vampire?"

"Yes, I believe so," Papa said, looking at her and nodding. "At least he is whatever the word 'vampire' is going to mean from now on. I doubt very much that many of the old traditions will hold true. We are going to have to redefine the word—no longer in terms of folklore, but in terms of Molasar." He closed his eyes. "So many things will have to be redefined."

With an effort, Magda pushed aside the primordial revulsion that welled up in her at the thought of vampires and tried to step back and analyze the situation objectively, allowing the long-trained, long-disciplined scholar within her to take over. "A boyar under Vlad Tepes, was he? We should be able to trace that name."

Papa was staring at the keep again. "We may, and we may not. There were hundreds of boyars associated with Vlad throughout his three reigns, some friendly to him, some hostile ... he impaled most of the hostile ones. You know what a chaotic, fragmented mess the records from that period are: If the Turks weren't invading Wallachia, someone else was. And even if we did find evidence of a Molasar who was a contemporary of Vlad's, what would it prove?"

"Nothing, I guess." She began filtering through her vast learning on the history of this region. A boyar, loyal to Vlad Tepes...

Magda had always thought of Vlad as a blood-red blot on Romanian history. As son of Vlad Dracul, the Dragon, Prince Vlad was known as Vlad Dracula—Son of the Dragon. But he earned the name Vlad Tepes, which meant Vlad the Impaler, after his favorite method of disposing of prisoners of war, disloyal subjects, treacherous boyars, and virtually anyone else who displeased him. She remembered drawings she had seen depicting Vlad's St. Bartholomew's Day massacre at Amlas when 30,000 citizens of that unfortunate city were impaled on long wooden poles which were then thrust into the ground; the sufferers were left pierced through and suspended in the air until they died. There was occasionally a strategic purpose for impaling: In 1460 the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses of Turkish prisoners rotting in the sun outside Targoviste so horrified an invading army of Turks that they turned back and left Vlad's kingdom alone for a while.

"Imagine," she mused, "being loyal to Vlad Tepes."

"Don't forget that the world was very different then," Papa said. "Vlad was a product of his times; Molasar is a product of those same times. Vlad is still considered a national hero in these parts—he was Wallachia's scourge, but he was also its champion against the Turks."

"I'm sure this Molasar found nothing offensive in Vlad's behavior." Her stomach turned at the thought of all those men, women, and children impaled and left to die, slowly. "He probably found it entertaining."

"Who is to say? But you can see why one of the undead would gravitate to someone like Vlad: never a shortage of victims. He could slake his thirst on the dying and no one would ever guess that the victims had died from anything other than impalement. With no unexplained deaths around to raise questions, he could feast with no one suspecting his true nature."

"That does not make him any less a monster," she whispered.

"How can you judge him, Magda? One should be judged by one's peers. Who is Molasar's peer? Don't you realize what his existence means? Don't you see how many things it changes? How many cherished concepts assumed to be facts are going to wind up as so much garbage?"

Magda nodded slowly, the enormity of what they had found pressing on her with new weight. "Yes. A form of immortality."

"More than that! Much more! It's like a new form of life, a new mode of existence! No—that's not right. An old mode—but new as far as historical and scientific knowledge is concerned. And beyond the rational, look at the spiritual implications." His voice faltered. "They're... devastating."

"But how can it be true? How?" Her mind still balked.

"I don't know. There's so much to learn and I had so little time with him. He feeds on the blood of the living—that seems self-evident from what I saw of the remains of the soldiers. They had all been exsanguinated through the neck. Last night I learned that he does not reflect in a mirror—that part of traditional vampire lore is true. But the fear of garlic and silver, those parts are false. He appears to be a creature of the night—he has struck only at night, and appeared only at night. However, I doubt very much that he spends the daylight hours asleep in anything so melodramatic as a coffin."

"A vampire," Magda said softly, breathily. "Sitting here with the sun overhead it seems so ludicrous, so—"

"Was it ludicrous two nights ago when he sucked the light from our room? Was his grip on your arm ludicrous?"

Magda rose to her feet, rubbing the spot above her right elbow, wondering if the marks were still there. She turned away from her father and pulled the sleeve up. Yes ... still there ... an oblong patch of gray-white, dead-looking skin. As she began to pull the sleeve back down, she noticed the mark begin to fade—the skin was returning to a pink healthy color under the direct light of the sun. As she watched, the mark disappeared completely.

Feeling suddenly weak, Magda staggered and had to clutch at the back of the wheelchair to steady herself. Struggling to maintain a neutral expression, she turned back to Papa.

She needn't have bothered—he was again staring at the keep, unaware that she had turned away.

"He's somewhere in there now," he was saying, "waiting for tonight. I must speak to him again."

"Is he really a vampire, Papa? Could he really have been a boyar five hundred years ago? How do we know this isn't all a trick? Can he prove anything?"

"Prove?" he said, anger tingeing his voice. "Why should he prove anything? What does he care what you or I believe? He has his own concerns and he thinks I may be of use to him. 'An ally against the oulanders,' he said."

"You mustn't let him use you!"

"And why not? If he has need of an ally against the Germans who have invaded his keep, I just might go along with him—although I can't see what use I'd be. That's why I've told the Germans nothing."

Magda sensed that the Germans might not be the only ones; he was holding back from her as well. And that wasn't like him.

" Papa, you can't be serious!"

"We share a common enemy, Molasar and I, do we not?"

"For now, perhaps. But what about later?"

He ignored her question. "And don't forget that he can be of great use to me in my work. I must learn all about him. I must talk to him again. I must!" His gaze drifted back to the keep. "So much is changed now ... have to rethink so many things..."

Magda tried but could not comprehend his mood.

"What's bothering you, Papa? For years you've said you thought there might be something to the vampire myth. You risked ridicule. Now that you're vindicated, you seem upset. You should be elated."

"Don't you understand anything? That was an intellectual exercise. It pleased me to play with the idea, to use it for self-stimulation and to stir up all those rock-bound minds in the History Department!"

"It was more than that and don't deny it."

"All right ... but I never dreamed such a creature still existed. And I never thought I would actually meet him face to face!" His voice sank to a whisper. "And I in no way considered the possibility that he might really fear..."

Magda waited for him to finish, but he did not. He had turned inward, his right hand absently reaching into the breast pocket of his coat.

"Fear what, Papa? What does he fear?"

But he was rambling. His eyes had strayed again to the keep while his hand fumbled in his pocket. "He is patently evil, Magda. A parasite with supranormal powers feeding on human blood. Evil in the flesh. Evil made tangible. So if that is so, where then does good reside?"

"What are you talking about?" His disjointed thoughts were frightening her. "You're not making sense!"

He pulled his hand from his pocket and thrust something toward her face. "This! This is what I'm talking about!"

It was the silver cross she had borrowed from the captain. What did Papa mean? Why did he look that way, with his eyes so bright? "I don't understand."

"Molasar is terrified of it!"

What was wrong with Papa? "So? By tradition a vampire is supposed to—"

"By tradition! This is no tradition! This is real! And it terrified him! It nearly drove him from the room! A cross!"

Suddenly, Magda knew what had been so sorely troubling Papa all morning.

"Ah! Now you see, don't you," he said, nodding and smiling a small sad smile.

Poor Papa! To have spent all night with all that uncertainty. Magda's mind recoiled, refusing to accept the meaning of what she had been told.

"But you can't really mean—"

"We can't hide from a fact, Magda." He held up the cross, watching the light glint off its worn, shiny surface. "It is part of our belief, our tradition, that Christ was not the Messiah. That the Messiah is yet to come. That Christ was merely a man and that his followers were generally goodhearted people but misguided. If that is true..." He seemed to be hypnotized by the cross. "If that is true ... if Christ were just a man ... why should a cross, the instrument of his death, so terrify a vampire? Why?"

"Papa, you're leaping to conclusions. There has to be more to this!"

"I'm sure there is. But think: It's been with us all along, in all the folk tales, the novels, and the moving pictures derived from those folk tales. Yet who of us has ever given it a second thought? The vampire fears the cross. Why? Because it's the symbol of human salvation. You see what that implies? It never even occurred to me until last night."

Can it be? she asked herself as Papa paused. Can it really be?

Papa spoke again, his voice dull and mechanical. "If a creature such as Molasar finds the symbol of Christianity so repulsive, the logical conclusion is that Christ must have been more than a man. If that is true, then our people, our traditions, our beliefs for two thousand years, have all been misguided. The Messiah did come and we failed to recognize him!"

"You can't say that! I refuse to believe it! There has to be another answer!"

"You weren't there. You didn't see the loathing on his face when I pulled out the cross. You didn't see how he shrank away in terror and cowered until I returned it to the box. It has power over him!"

It had to be true. It went against the most basic tenets of Magda's learning. But if Papa had said it, seen it, then it must be true. She yearned for something to say, something soothing, reassuring. But all that came out was a sad, simple, "Papa."

He smiled ruefully. "Don't worry, child. I'm not about to throw away my Torah and seek out a monastery. My faith goes deep. But this does give one pause, doesn't it? It does raise the question that we could be wrong ... we all could have missed a boat that sailed twenty centuries ago."

He was trying to make light of it for her sake, but Magda knew he was being flayed alive in his mind.

She sank to the grass to think. And as she moved, she caught a flash of motion at the open window above. A glimpse of rust-colored hair. She clenched her fists as she realized that the window opened into Glenn's room. He must have heard everything.

Magda kept watch for the next few minutes, hoping to catch him eavesdropping, but saw nothing. She was about to give up when a voice startled her.

"Good morning!"

It was Glenn, rounding the southern corner of the inn, a small wooden ladderback chair in each hand.

"Who's there?" Papa asked, unable to twist around in his seat to see behind him.

"Someone I met yesterday. His name is Glenn. He has the room across the hall from me."

Glenn nodded cheerily to Magda as he walked around her and stood before Papa, towering over him like a giant. He wore woolen pants, climbing boots, and a loose-fitting shirt open at the neck. He set the two chairs down and thrust his hand toward her father.

"And good morning to you, sir. I've already met your daughter."

"Theodor Cuza," Papa replied hesitantly, with poorly veiled suspicion. He placed his gloved hand, stiff and gnarled, inside Glenn's. There followed a parody of a handshake, then Glenn indicated one of the chairs to Magda.

"Try this. The ground's still too damp to sit on."

Magda rose. "I'll stand, thank you," she said with all the haughtiness she could manage. She resented his eavesdropping, and she resented his intrusion into their company even more. "My father and I were just leaving anyway."

As Magda moved toward the back of the wheelchair, Glenn laid a gentle hand on her arm.

"Please don't go yet. I awoke to the sound of two voices drifting through my window, discussing the keep and something about a vampire. Let's talk about it, shall we?" He smiled.

Magda found herself speechless, furious with the boldness of his intrusion and the casual presumption of his touching her. Yet she did not snatch her arm away. His touch made her tingle. It felt good.

Papa, however, had nothing to hold him back: "You must not mention one word of what you just heard to anyone! It could mean our lives!"

"Don't give yourself a moment's worry over that," Glenn said, his smile fading. "The Germans and I have nothing to say to each other." He looked back to Magda. "Won't you sit? I brought the chair for you."

She looked at her father. "Papa?"

He nodded resignedly. "I don't think we have too much choice."

Glenn's hand slipped away as Magda moved to seat herself, and she felt a small, unaccountable void within her. She watched him swing the other chair around and seat himself on it backwards, straddling the ladderback and resting his elbows on the top rung.

"Magda told me last night about the vampire in the keep," he said, "but I'm not sure I caught the name he gave you."

"Molasar," Papa said.

"Molasar," Glenn said slowly, rolling the name over on his tongue, his expression puzzled. "Mo ... la ... sar." Then he brightened, as if he had solved a puzzle. "Yes—Molasar. An odd name, don't you think?"

"Unfamiliar," Papa said, "but not so odd."

"And that," Glenn, said, gesturing to the cross still clutched in the twisted fingers. "Did I overhear you say that Molasar feared it?"

"Yes."

Magda noted that Papa was volunteering no information.

"You're a Jew, aren't you, Professor?"

A nod.

"Is it customary for Jews to carry crosses around?"

"My daughter borrowed it for me—a tool in an experiment."

Glenn turned to her. "Where did you get it?"

"From one of the officers at the keep." Where was all this leading?

"It was his own?"

"No. He said it came from one of the dead soldiers." She began to grasp the thread of deduction he seemed to be following.

"Strange," Glenn said, returning his attention to Papa, "that this cross did not save the soldier who first possessed it. One would think that a creature who feared the cross would pass up such a victim and search for another, one carrying no protective—what shall we call it?—charm."

"Perhaps the cross was stuffed inside his shirt," Papa said. "Or in his pocket. Or even back in his room."

Glenn smiled. "Perhaps. Perhaps."

"We didn't think of that, Papa," Magda said, eager to reinforce any idea that might bolster his sagging spirits.

"Question everything," Glenn said. "Always question everything. I should not have to remind a scholar of that."

"How do you know I'm a scholar?" Papa snapped, a spark of the old fire in his eyes. "Unless my daughter told you."

"Iuliu told me. But there's something else you've overlooked, and it's so obvious you're both going to feel foolish when I tell you."

"Make us feel foolish, then," Magda told him. Please!

"All right: Why would a vampire so afraid of the cross dwell in a structure whose walls are studded with them? Can you explain that?"

Magda stared at her father and found him staring back at her.

"You know," Papa said, smiling sheepishly. "I've been in the keep so often, and I've puzzled over it for so long, I no longer even see the crosses!"

"That's understandable. I've been through there a few times myself, and after a while they do seem to blend in. But the question remains: Why does a being who finds the cross repulsive surround himself with countless crosses?" He rose and easily swung the chair onto his shoulder. "And now I think I'll go get some breakfast from Lidia and leave you two to figure out an answer. If there is one."

"But what's your interest in this?" Papa asked. "Why are you here?"

"Just a traveler," Glenn said. "I like this area and visit regularly."

"You seem to be more than a little interested in the keep. And quite knowledgeable about it."

Glenn shrugged. "I'm sure you know far more than I do."

"I wish I knew how to keep my father from going back over there tonight," Magda said.

"I must go back, my dear. I must face Molasar again."

Magda rubbed her hands together. They had gone cold at the thought of Papa's returning to the keep. "I just don't want them to find you with your throat torn open like the others."

"There are worse things that can happen to a man," Glenn said.

Struck by the change in his tone, Magda looked up and found all the sunniness and lightness gone from his face. He was staring at Papa. The tableau held for only a few seconds, then he smiled again.

"Breakfast awaits. I'm sure I'll see you again during our respective stays. But one more thing before I go."

He stepped around to the rear of the wheelchair and turned it in a 180-degree arc with his free hand.

"What are you doing?" Papa cried. Magda leaped to her feet.

"Just offering you a change of scenery, Professor. The keep-is, after all, such a gloomy place. This is much too beautiful a day to dwell on it."

He pointed to the floor of the pass. "Look south and east instead of north. For all its severity, this is a most beautiful part of the world. See how the grass is greening up, how the wild flowers are starting to bloom in the crags. Forget the keep for a while."

For a moment he caught and held Magda's eyes with his own, then he was gone, turning the corner, the chair balanced on his shoulder.

"A strange sort, that one," she heard Papa say, a touch of a laugh in his voice.

"Yes. He most certainly is." But though she found Glenn strange, Magda felt she owed him a debt of gratitude. For reasons known only to him, he had intruded on their conversation and made it his own, lifting Papa's spirits from their lowest ebb, taking Papa's most painful doubts and casting doubt in turn upon them. He had handled it deftly and with telling effect. But why? What did he care about the inner torment of a crippled old Jew from Bucharest?

"He does raise some good points, though," Papa went on. "Some excellent points. How could they not have occurred to me?"

"Nor to me?"

"Of course," his tone was softly defensive, "he's not fresh from a personal encounter with a creature considered until now a mere figment of a gruesome imagination. It's easy for him to be more objective. By the way, how did you meet him?"

"Last night, when I was out by the edge of the gorge keeping watch on your window—"

"You shouldn't fret over me so! You forget that I helped raise you, not the other way around."

Magda ignored the interruption. "—he rode up on horseback, looking like he intended to charge right into the keep. But when he saw the lights and the Germans, he stopped."

Papa seemed to consider this briefly, then switched topics. "Speaking of Germans, I'd better be getting back before they come looking for me. I'd prefer to reenter the keep on my own rather than at gunpoint."

"Isn't there a way we could—"

"Escape? Of course! You'll just wheel me down the ledge road, all the way to Campina! Or perhaps you could help me onto the back of a horse—that would certainly shorten the trip!" His tone grew more acid as he spoke. "Or best of all, why don't we go and ask that SS major for a loan of one of his lorries—just for an afternoon drive, we'll tell him! I'm sure he'll agree."

"There's no need to speak to me that way," she said, stung by his sarcasm.

"And there's no need for you to torture yourself with any hope of escape for the two of us! Those Germans aren't fools. They know I can't escape, and they don't think you'll leave without me. Although I want you to. At least one of us would be safe then."

"Even if you could get away, you'd return to the keep! Isn't that right, Papa?" Magda said. She was beginning to understand his attitude. "You want to go back there."

He would not meet her eyes. "We are trapped here, and I feel I must use the opportunity of a lifetime. I would be a traitor to my whole life's work if I let it slip away!"

"Even if a plane landed in the pass right now and the pilot offered to fly us to freedom, you wouldn't go, would you!"

"I must see him again, Magda! I must ask him about all those crosses on the walls! How he came to be what he is! And most of all, I must find out why he fears the cross. If I don't, I—I'll go mad!"

Neither spoke for the next few moments. Long moments. But Magda sensed more than silence between them. A widening gap. She felt Papa drawing away, drawing into himself, shutting her out. That had never happened before. They had always been able to discuss things. Now he seemed to want no discussion. He wanted only to get back to Molasar.

"Take me back," was all he said as the silence went on and on, becoming unbearable.

"Stay a little longer. You've been in the keep too much. I think it's affecting you."

"I'm perfectly fine, Magda. And I'll decide when I've been in the keep too long. Now, are you going to wheel me back or do I have to sit here and wait until the Nazis come and get me?"

Biting her lip in anger and dismay, Magda moved behind the chair and turned it toward the keep.

TWENTY

He seated himself a few feet back from the window where he could hear the rest of the conversation below yet remain out of sight should Magda chance to look up again. He had been careless earlier. In his eagerness to hear, he had leaned on the sill. Magda's unexpected upward glance had caught him. At that point he had decided that a frontal assault was in order and had gone downstairs to join them.

Now all talk seemed to have died. As he heard the creaky wheels of the professor's chair start to turn, he leaned forward and watched the pair move off, Magda pushing from behind, appearing calm despite the turmoil he knew to be raging within her. He poked his head out the window for one last look as she rounded the corner and passed from view.