A Matter of Taste

Chapter 4

The return of full awareness, the reestablishment of the full presence of the soul within the mangled but mysteriously healing flesh, was a long, gradual, and parlous process. I need not discuss here what trials and journeys my soul, my self, was required to undertake before that process was complete. Nor will I detail here all the twists and turns through which that evolution progressed, before restoring my spirit to my transformed body. Suffice it to say that at length, however tardily, full consciousness returned, was localized in altered flesh.

In drastically altered flesh indeed. More on that subject later.

To begin with I understood little more than that I was alive, though garbed in the cerements of the grave. I was out-of-doors, where bright moonlight—oh, it was undoubtedly only the moon, however fantastically bright it seemed to me—showed me that I was alone, occupying a small glade in a woodland setting. When I came to myself I was crouched on all fours upon the earth, like some beast about to spring. The cold of the winter night meant nothing to me. My limbs were free of any restraint, and by this I knew that I must have somehow escaped my murderers, whose last efforts to torment me filled what were almost my last clear memories.

Almost, I say. For it seemed to me that I could remember listening and watching in some disembodied fashion, even as others prepared my corpse for the grave.

And the newly refrozen snow around me still showed the dirty traces of excavation and burial.

Slowly I stood erect, trying to recognize the sylvan spot in which I found myself. Had it been only a dream of death, that seeming memory of falling to the swords of my treacherous lieutenants, of inhabiting a coffin, of riding in it through the night aboard a jolting wagon?

But now I was not dreaming. I was as certain on this point as the reader is of being wide awake and reading now… and just at this critical juncture of metaphysics I was distracted by a peculiar physical sensation.

Something, besides the obvious damage caused by recent wounds, seemed to be gravely amiss with the muscles of my chest. The truth was that I no longer breathed. But this lack was more than compensated for by the discovery, which followed swiftly, that I no longer felt any need to do so.

Pain I still experienced in plenty; sharp pangs, radiating from my many injuries, shot through my body whenever I moved. But I had known worse torment. I was a soldier, and wounds and suffering were part of my natural state.

For the time being I could ignore the pain. And if I were in any danger of bleeding to death, I thought, I would have done so long ere now. The fact was that I did not even feel weak; indeed, quite the opposite. And a quick inspection of my wounds satisfied me that I was no longer bleeding at all.

Strange. But, even stranger, the mere thought of blood evoked neither fear nor disgust, but instead a rich, red thirst, a craving of such intensity that for the moment I forgot all about my pain and injuries and stood there growling like a hungry beast.

That red thirst could not entirely distract me from an even stronger lust. This was a great and all-encompassing drive for vengeance, without which, perhaps, my will might have failed, and I would never have found the power to come out of my grave. This craving was centered primarily upon the traitor Bogdan, and to a lesser extent on his two chief companions, Ronay and Basarab. As for the common soldiers who had taken part in the attack on me, I scarcely thought of them; they had done me no real harm, and besides they were mere hirelings, only obeying orders.

At the moment none of the three men I wanted were in sight, nor did I have the least idea where I might lay hands upon two of them. But as for the third, Ronay, a part of my recent and most strange dream had concerned him. It seemed to me that I could remember someone's voice, saying that Ronay, wounded, unable to ride far, had sought shelter within the nearby monastery of Snagov.

Walking slowly, I was halfway across the clearing, looking for some landmark by which to orient myself, when I heard a small animal scuttling in dead leaves nearby. Acting upon a new instinct, as strange to me as it was irresistible, I pounced on, caught, and killed a rabbit that had innocently chosen to wander nocturnally near my grave.

Aching in the roots of my canines, indifferent to the sensation of furry skin against my mouth, I drank greedily from the torn veins of the little creature. New energy, supremely welcome, flowed into my tormented body. But an access of mental and physical strength only sharpened my craving for revenge.

Casting aside the small, drained body—I cared not for the flesh, the blood was all—I began to consider with new clarity the all-encompassing strangeness of my new mode of existence. The sharpness of my senses with which I had detected the rabbit's exact location, the speed and precision with which I had been able to seize the creature before it could spring away—these augured well for my ability to accomplish whatever vengeance I might decide upon.

But now, newly fed, I was able to think beyond the needs and cravings of the moment. Where was I? Certainly not upon the field where I had fallen. And how, really, had I come here? I could not doubt the reality of the scene on the battlefield. But to credit my memory, to think that I had somehow witnessed my own death and burial, seemed a great absurdity.

Though I had not yet begun to realize the fact, I had of course awakened standing on my own grave, my transformed body having risen like so much smoke up through my coffin's wooden lid and all the earth that held it down. Stalking to and fro about the little clearing, moving in effortless silence, I knew only that I experienced a strong attraction to one particular spot of bare earth, in the center of the disturbed ground.

Snarling with impatience, I at last broke free—for the moment—of this tender psychic bond between myself and my grave. The Snagov monastery was somewhere nearby, it must be, and Ronay might be in it.

In a moment I had passed beyond the borders of the clearing. The thousand little sounds of the winter countryside at night came to my ears, whose powers seemed preternaturally acute. The subtle moonlight, even in the shadows of the trees, seemed to my eyes as bright as day. Pain wracked me with each stride I took, yet I could continue to ignore it. I scarcely noticed that the snow made little sound or none beneath my feet, or that my skin, so lightly clothed in a mere winding-sheet, was and remained impervious to winter cold.

Certain subliminal clues that I had absorbed during my supposed dream, or derived from the general shape of the landscape around me, eventually combined to give me a firm idea of where I was. I altered my course, striding briskly over dormant winter fields, passing like a shadow through leafless groves. Indeed, it was no trouble to increase my pace to a wolflike if still two-legged lope.

Minutes later, from a treeless hilltop, I had my confirmation. Snagov on its island was clearly visible before me in the moonlight, and in the next moment I was loping toward it.

Snow and rain had entirely ceased to fall. I did not know it then, but almost twenty-four hours had passed since my interment. The sky was quite clear—enough to allow me to get my directions from stars and moon. I realized now that I must have awakened at a considerable distance from the battlefield. Everything in this new and strange reality seemed to confirm the truth of the experience that I still in some sense regarded as a dream.

As I descended from the hill the lake vanished from sight behind trees, only to reappear as I drew near it. There, as plainly visible to me as in the noonday sun, was the island, with the main buildings of the monastery on it. One light only was visible, in the highest window of a low tower. The ice that sheathed the lake was too dull to offer any reflection of this spark.

If what the dream-voices had told me was correct, Ronay was there, somewhere, sheltered in one of those dark buildings. With scarcely a pause for thought, I stepped out upon the ice. It was no colder beneath my soles than the frozen earth and snow had been.

The weather, as I may perhaps have mentioned, had been somewhat unseasonably mild in recent days, and the ice was thin. When there came a sudden crack beneath my feet, I found that a new instinct took over, shaping my reaction. My body changed form almost instantly. Hearing and vision blurred; I sensed, somehow, that a human observer would have seen nothing but a cloud of mist where my form had been. Continuing to advance by the power of my will alone, I drifted wraithlike over the watery gap.

The change to mist-form and back again was accomplished smoothly and almost unconsciously. I had almost ceased to be aware at all of my own condition, with the thought that Ronay, at least, was now nearly within my grasp.

Arriving on the island in solid human shape, I stepped lightly up the snowy slope of its south shore and paused to listen carefully just outside the monastery walls. Inside approximately a hundred human beings were asleep, some fretfully, some peacefully. The wall was twice my height, too high for a man to leap and catch the top of it. But a moment later, obeying the prompting of another instinct, I had done just that.

Then I was crouching atop the monastery's outer wall, surveying the scene within.

There was the tall church, there the cloister, and there a block of monastic cells, with barns and other outbuildings clustered beyond, all as clearly visible to me as if in broad daylight.

I drifted rather than jumped down on the inside of the wall. No one, as far as I could tell, had observed my arrival. Next I tried to decide where my prey, if he was indeed within these walls, was most likely to be found. With increasing impatience I walked among the courtyards and cloisters, having no idea in which of them Ronay might be sheltered.

Observing that a light burned in the church, and that the front door was partly open, I moved in that direction. I experienced no difficulty crossing the threshold onto consecrated ground. The sanctuary lamp burned on the altar, and close before it two hooded figures, their backs to me, knelt in prayer. I took the opportunity to launch a paternoster myself, but made no sound, and neither of the monks turned around. I could hear them breathing and mumbling, and I was sure, on hearing even that much of their voices, that neither was the man I sought.

Outside the church again, I drifted once more, almost at random, in the form of mist. On my right hand were the stables, and some of the animals sensed my presence, but it did not alarm them. On my left hand were the latrines. Since Ronay was wounded, I thought, he would most likely be in the infirmary, wherever that might be.

Again I took my search indoors. At some doorways, leading to the actual cells, I experienced a mystifying inability to enter, as if invisible glass of immense strength were there to hold me back. I growled, and prowled on, perforce exploring only where I was permitted.

Eventually, exhausting the possibilities, I managed to locate the right building. It was not a proper habitation, but only a temporary shelter, and I experienced no barrier to my uninvited presence.

The interior consisted mainly of one large room, containing four simple beds set moderately close together against one wall. Three of the beds were empty. In the fourth lay the man I had come seeking.

In those days of deadly ignorance regarding matters medical, fever after a wound was as common as not, and Ronay's had set in on him already. His face was bathed in sweat, and I observed that in his restless tossing he had kicked back the blanket with which some tender monk had covered him. I could also see that bandages, now bloody and past due to be changed, had been skillfully bound to his right side. Those bandages, along with the clusters of dried herbs and jars of salve upon his bedside table, showed that some considerable amount of time and care had been devoted to the traitor's treatment. Well, it had all been in vain.

No attendant was currently on duty. An empty chair stood close beside Ronay's bed, and another chair, with his clothing, armor, and weapons piled on it, was placed against the wall a few paces distant, under a carven wooden crucifix, about half life-size.

My old associate's eyes were closed at the moment of my entry into the room, but his febrile tossing showed that he was not asleep. Despite my silence as I came in, he promptly opened his eyes, raised his head, and stared at me. The small light of a wall icon and that of a single additional candle on a table near the middle of the room sufficed to show him my figure. I took on solid human shape once more as I came walking toward him—gaunt, horribly scarred with sword cuts, corpse-pale, and doubtless (I really never noticed at the time) carrying traces of grave-soil clinging to my cerements.

My victim gasped—at least he made a most extraordinary sound, for which I can find no better name—and I thought for a moment that he was going to scream. But after that one gasp he was stricken silent, as if from sudden lack of breath. His countenance distorted itself into that indescribable expression that appears only when nightmares come true. In the centuries that have passed since that night, I have grown familiar with the variations of that look.

Then, galvanized, Ronay abruptly moved, displaying more energy than I had thought his fevered, weakened body likely to possess. Trying his best to push himself up out of bed, and finding his strength unequal to the task, he clawed about him with both hands, as if he hoped to find a weapon. His anguished gaze turned toward his sword and dagger, which lay piled on the chair with his other property, and in a moment he had fallen out of bed in a futile effort to extend his reaching arm that far.

The floor was stone. Ronay fell hard and lay still for a moment, but he did not lose consciousness. As a result of the fall and his exertion, the wound in his right side had opened again, and I saw the red come welling swiftly from beneath the bandages. My old associate's face was pale, as pale no doubt as my own, and I experienced some concern that he might even die before I came within reach of him.

Ronay, keeping his face turned toward me as I continued to advance, tried awkwardly to get away, dragging himself backward on his elbows.

His lips were livid, his voice was thin and gasping. "Drakulya—no. You are not here. You are a vision, a vision sent by the Fiend!"

Crying out thus, he failed to realize how far he had moved in his surprisingly rapid backward progress. The chair, top-heavy with his arms and armor, tipped easily when he bumped into it, spilling its burden that crashed with a great noise on the stone floor.

Moaning, scrambling, Ronay turned his back upon me for a moment, clawing for his dagger. Not that he hoped to stab me yet again. No, he understood that matters had gone beyond that in my case. Rather, when he had grasped the weapon, he turned back toward me, holding the hilt up, making a cross of hilt and blade above his hands.

"Get thee back to hell!" my former lieutenant shrieked at me. Or, rather, so he tried to shriek. The sound was more like a sob. His voice was failing now, in his extreme weakness.

I paused, a couple of strides away, considering the fevered wreck before me. Actually, as a result of my own somewhat befuddled state, I had come this far with no firm plan of revenge in mind. Perhaps chief among my mixed feelings at the moment was disappointment. I had naturally wanted to catch Ronay in full possession of his faculties. Now, on the contrary, I was sure that the fool must be totally delirious to imagine that I had come from anywhere but solid earth. I was no evil spirit, but Drakulya, a man. Though slain, a live man still, because I had refused to die.

I, of course, was conscious of no effect upon myself from all of Ronay's terrified onslaught of commands and curses. Certainly it would have been hard to find anyone less qualified than he as a spiritual authority. The dagger he brandished was only a crude cross, a sacred symbol held by an evil man. I could have lunged forward and snatched it away from him. But I did not. Nor did I speak. I only resumed my advance—very slowly.

"Come not to me! You don't want me!" Now the wretch was almost sobbing. He had no energy remaining to drag himself away. "It was Bogdan who planned your death. He who tortured you, not I! Seek Bogdan! I am innocent!"

I spoke at last, quite naturally, as I thought. "Oh, Bogdan's turn is coming, I assure you. And Basarab's. But yours has come already." And at this pleasant thought I smiled.

This coward who had conspired to murder me was gasping continuously now, trying and almost failing to draw breath. And now he threw down his useless dagger and, like a child, tried to hide his eyes. To make the bad dream go away. Standing over him, filled with disgust, I reached down and snatched him up. To me he felt even lighter than a child. I tried what I might do with my grip upon his shoulder and could feel the bones there begin to snap, quite satisfactorily, beneath the pressure of my fingers.

Of course with all the noise of falling arms and armor he had made, we were bound to be interrupted. Having just completed the mangling of one of my victim's shoulders, I was about to begin upon another joint when I heard behind me a shout of mingled rage and horror. Turning, I beheld a robed monk, who gazed back at me with astonishment, fear, and fury mingled in his countenance.

Before anything else could happen, several more monks came running in and, on finding their patient in the grasp of such an apparition, added their voices to the shouts of the first.

If they were going to do no more than shout, I could ignore these intruders for the moment. I turned my attention back to the subject of my justice. Ronay in my grip looked corpselike, his eyes half-open, breath suspended. I was gazing at him closely to determine whether or not he was already dead when to my surprise I felt my arm seized from behind. The monk who had run in first, a small man foolhardy in his bravery, was interfering. I shook him off with irritation, and he flew back to sprawl across an empty bed.

To my great disappointment, close inspection confirmed that Ronay was dead. No doubt about it. Loss of blood and shock combined had done the job, and what good were all my nascent plans for vengeance now? I hurled the corpse away, and was just growling my irritation at this development when a great blow smote me from behind. Such was the savage impact that I imagined for a moment I had been hit with a mace; fortunately the force was mainly distributed across my upper back and left shoulder, falling only slightly on my head.

Recoiling, I spun around to face this new challenge. It came from the courageous little monk, and the weapon he had swung at me, and was preparing to swing again, was the great wooden crucifix that a few moments ago had been hanging on the infirmary wall.

Hissing and growling, I wasted no time in beating a retreat. My object in invading the monastery had been accomplished—insofar as it ever could be—and I judged it would be blasphemous to treat either monk or crucifix as my first impulse had suggested when one struck me with the other.

Even as I passed out of doors, it crossed my mind to wonder what stories, of my monstrously transformed existence, the monks would now begin to tell. But for the moment I felt little concern over what stories might be told. Ronay had now paid for his treachery, as much as he would ever be made to pay for it in this world. It was time for me to seek out his two villainous companions.

But first, new instincts urged me; there was something else that I must do.

What was it?

The answer came to me with an inner certainty, beyond all questioning: Time now for me to go—home.

As I was climbing the outer wall of the monastery, somewhere not far away a rooster crowed. The sky in the east was turning gray as the dark surface of the lake passed softly and swiftly under me again. First the water gurgled and chuckled beneath the softened ice I trod upon. And then the open water drifted beneath my feet as I passed on my way home.

Presently, with the gray eastern sky now brightening almost unbearably, I found myself once more in the glade where I had awakened. Stretching my suddenly weary body out to rest, upon the surface—as I then thought—of that most attractively disturbed patch of earth, I surrendered to dreamless and innocent slumber. Only dimly was I aware, without any particular concern, that I was sinking like so much gentle rain into the earth. I was fast asleep long before the first direct rays of the sun appeared above to touch the barren tops of winter trees.

This time my slumbers were prolonged. My second post-mortem awakening did not take place, as I now believe, until sometime in the early spring of the year of Our Lord 1477. Again I found myself standing, at night, in the clearing above my secret grave. Again I fed, quite ravenously, upon the blood of the firstmammalian creature I encountered—it chanced to be a sheep this time.

I understood, vaguely and without knowing how, that a considerable period of time had passed, and that doubtless my surviving enemies were still beyond my reach. Again I slept. Other periods of lucidity and mobility followed, at seemingly random intervals of a few days, weeks, or months.

Among the many aspects of my episodic new life that puzzled me intensely was the fact that I never saw the sun. Actually I could no longer even imagine myself directly confronting the intensity of that solar fire. Could I have feared anything, it would have been the sun. Also more than I could understand were the recurrent, lengthy periods of deathlike torpor in the comforting darkness under-ground, and the fact that blood—only animal blood, so far—was all the sustenance I craved.

As more time passed the pain of my wounds steadily diminished, until they ceased to hurt at all. Healing progressed, and even the scars, at least the ones that I could see, began to fade.

Even in the face of all these oddities, even with the memory of my own burial to contemplate, the idea never seriously crossed my mind that I had died a true death, that I might now be really dead. Gradually, however, I was forced to admit that neither was I alive, at least according to my old, mundane way of looking at things. This mode of existence, for which I still lacked a name, or was unwilling to assign one, was indeed something new.

There came an awakening different from all that had gone before. Someone, in the middle of a spring night, had discovered my grave. And now the unknown, rhythmic spade, working with benefit of a full-throated nightingale accompaniment, was industriously digging up my coffin.