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Day Three: Night

 

Yusef lay on his little bed at the back of the rectory, staring unseeingly into the darkness above him. As small as the room was--scarcely twice his height in either direction--he could not see its walls. The darkness seemed almost palpable, as if a bit of the night had leaked in through the tiny window set in the thick outside wall and filled the place like water in a tub.

But he could hear rain falling on the tiled roof; he could hear its hiss as it hit the muddy street. And somewhere, he felt, he could hear the ticking of Rezać's great clock.

For the first time he could remember, he couldn't sleep.

It was probably something he'd eaten. His stomach did feel queer and tight. Almost as he'd felt waiting on the evening he'd had his first woman. Not that anything was the matter that way.

Somewhere in the rectory's depths, the great clock boomed out a single stroke.

Half-past twelve? One? One-thirty?

With a sudden vicious curse Yusef leaped out of his bed and pulled on some clothes.

Rain or no rain, he had to get out of the chilly, stifling cell.

He threw a cloak about himself and went out. Even blind he could have walked directly to the back door, which he did, and left the building.

The village was dark, silent. Only in the occasional angled shadow against the zodiacal light could buildings be seen. Even in mud he knew every rut and rock in the street, knew them through the hobnailed soles of his boots. He reached the square and turned along a wall, avoiding the han.

He passed over the edge of the small gully that skirted the village and out of habit leaned forward, letting his huge legs propel him effortlessly up its other side, and at the top he stopped.

It occurred to him that he was heading for the old Orthodox burial-ground.

The hell with it, he thought, and walked the hundred or so yards to the tree-line, to the small field where for five hundred years the village Christians had been laid to rest.

He came to a halt and turned to overface the village, and on an impulse tore off his cloak and shirt.

The rain felt good on his bare torso, splattering on his broad shoulders and trickling down the stone-hard muscles of his chest and back. He shook his head on its bull-like neck and crossed his arms, looking out across the village like some Herculean sentinel, the very image of life-force, his feet in the dirt of the cemetery. He was the strongest man in the area since the old gospodar forty years before. He couldn't crush a silver coin in his fist the way they said he had done, but then that was just one of the stories.

He lifted his arms to the sky, looking up; and then he heard a noise behind him.

Yusef whirled, unafraid, alert.

There was nothing.

He smiled to himself. Father Ante and the gospodja would hardly be here, and anything else he could simply break the neck of. Or the gospodar, Kosta Savić . . . he wondered why he had thought of that. Then the idea of fighting him took shape. Up until now he had never measured him up for a fight. True, he was tall, but sinewy and narrow-chested. Quick rather than strong; his knife-hand was legendary, and he had much experience. But without the weapon, let him give up a grip and he would be crushed.

He picked up his wet shirt and cloak from the tombstone where they lay; and he ran his fingers along the carven limestone, wondering whose grave he stood upon.

And his arm seemed to jolt him as the Cyrillic characters spelt out the name: Andrija Savić.

Yusef stepped quickly to one side before donning his rain-sodden garments. He tucked the shirt-tails in, flung on his cloak, and descended the hillside in some haste.

The rain began to fall more heavily, pelting the earth and rattling on the roof-tiles, but he did not yet want to return to his cell-like room in the back of the rectory.

Dimly through the blurring rainfall he saw the vague shape of the deserted han, and took shelter in its low stone doorway. Inside he could hear dripping as rainwater found its way through the holes in the wrecked roof; all was black as the pit and smelt of mildew and damp cracking stone.

"Merhaba," said a voice. "Good evening."

Yusef looked around, startled, and drew inside the door.

The voice laughed, a low, clear, musical laugh, slightly mocking. "Very good, Yusef beg. Be at ease--wet as you are, that fluttering heart will give you a nasty chill."

"Who are you?" said Yusef, trying to pierce the Stygian dark.

"At the moment, I have the honour to be your host," came the voice, nearer; in the sullen luminescence from the doorway, Yusef thought he made out a dim whitish blur in the room, as of pale skin catching a ray of starlight.

"You have a name?" he asked.

"I think you know me," was the reply. The blur vanished; perhaps the head had been turned. "I'm afraid I haven't much to offer you in the way of hospitality. No black bread, no sheep's cheese, not even a sip of rahi."

His hand had closed around a box of wax vestas in his pocket, and with a sudden move he struck one on the stone wall.

The burst of light revealed a woman's face, smooth and pale like marble, with high slanting cheekbones, eyes flashing green in the glare--and a shock of white hair.

A lazy smile crossed the dark full lips and Yusef dropped the match with an exclamation.

"You do know me," drawled the voice, "you think."

"Gospodja?"

"Call me what you please. It at least puts the conversation on some footing."

"What do you want with me, gospodja?"

"I think the question is rather what you want with me. And I think I know."

"What?"

"Which, of all the women in the village, has been your heart's most secret desire, the one sought after over all, the shape and compass of your fantasies? Which is the rarest, the most inaccessible, the reward beyond dream itself? Tell me."

"And if I did?"

"She should be yours."

"And the price?"

"A hope."

"What--a hope? What do you mean?"

"The giving up of a single tiny hope. Surely so hopeful a young man as you could afford to relinquish one hope--most of which must come to nothing anyway."

"Gospodja, you are wily, and your ways are beyond my reckoning. What is gold to me is brass to you, and so the other way. I am no miser, but we deal in a currency I don't understand. Why should you want a hope from me?"

"Why should you desire a woman?" countered the voice.

"Which hope should you want, gospodja?"

"Any hope which you should choose to place in me."

"And how will you know?"

"I will know. Choose."

"My hope of life itself."

"You are bold, Yusef."

"My trust in you is implicit, gospodja."

"And the woman?"

"It is you."

"Are you afraid, Yusef?"

"A little."

He felt hot, rank breath on his cheek and ear. "It could not be otherwise," whispered the voice, very close.

The ivory-like face appeared near his own, the eyes like pools of shadow; the white hair touched and mingled with his own.

He mastered himself and took control of the jade-smooth lips, ever so gently seeking, and feeling, and responding. He wrapped his arms around the cool firm torso and felt her hands upon his neck; leaning back, he felt her go with him and in a single movement they were on the floor.

Yusef half-rolled away, teasing her a little, and a swishing told him her cloak had come off. He reached out and drew her down to him, her forearms between them, still resisting, still reserved. Their lips met again and then he moved, searching out her nose, then her cheek, and the side of her neck, as fine and hard as marble statuary. How could she be so hard?

But she was coming alive--her hair brushed his chin as she began undoing his shirt and her lips and tongue coursed slowly, so slowly, down his chest; he felt himself aroused, full of energy and desire.

He decided to make his move, and as he prepared to roll on top of her he felt her tongue press into one of his armpits. He wondered, for a split second, and suddenly his body stiffened, and the world was no more.

Kosta Savić opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, or rather up into the darkness where the ceiling was.

He had no way of knowing how long it had been since he and Stana had looked in on Slavica and then he had said a gruff good-night. Stana had remained in the main room for a bit, damping down the fire for the night and sitting up to nurse the baby, and he had listened with reverence to every small sound she made, as if their life together were to end tomorrow.

Perhaps it would.

After a time she had come in, very quietly so as not to wake him, and tucked in little Anton. There was a soft sigh, and the little swishings and rustlings as she changed her clothes.

Last of all, she had stood looking down at him for a minute, thinking him asleep, perhaps, thinking God knew what. And softly, tenderly, she had given him a secret kiss.

Something in him wanted to utter a cry of love. But he had stayed still, continuing the charade, as she climbed into the bed, and listened as she turned over once or twice and her breathing gradually deepened into the rhythm of sleep.

That had been some time ago.

Now he looked over at her from under the quilt, only her dishevelled hair to be seen on the pillow; he wanted to caress it, to toy with each wanton strand, but he knew that a touch was enough to wake her, and she needed sleep badly.

So he got very quietly out of bed, careful of his bandages. He slipped on a pair of trousers, mechanically took up his knife, and went out into the main room. His side still hurt, but whatever was keeping him awake that wasn't it.

He lit a kerosene lamp, turned it very low, and by the faint light made himself a cup of tea from the great copper kettle that Stana always kept filled on the stove, settling himself on the floor with his back against the stove's warm brickwork. It felt good with the cool air on his chest and the hot tea going down his throat.

The dressing seemed to be working a little loose but its wrappings were still firm around his middle. Stana would probably change it tomorrow.

She was taking it all very well, he thought again, much more so than he had any right to expect.

How she did it he couldn't say; it seemed to him that life with Andrija would have driven most women over the edge rather than inspiring quiet fortitude. But that was Stana. Never before this, he told himself, had he really known what a prize she was.

He'd only met her first about a month before he left Jovan Ilić's, and at the time--while wishing them all the luck in the world, of course--he'd have bet his head against the marriage lasting out the year, if it took place at all. He remembered the fifty gold dinars that the old man had set as a dowry.

Well, despite all the to-do, she'd come up with a hundred, just to show him. Either Andrija had secured a private loan against the farm, despite the old kum's vigilance, or else they'd waylaid somebody. It was then he'd left, with nothing but the clothes on his back, never dreaming to see any of them again.

He smiled. Joj, but she'd been chilly when they met again--they must have seemed like icebergs passing in the night. Poor Father Bogdan or someone would make some innocent remark and Kosta would turn an eye like a fish's on him, and a long five seconds later Stana would cut him dead with a few words, not even bothering to look at him.

Their own marriage seemed even less likely. Perhaps the fact that people were counting on it had influenced matters, but in retrospect he believed that with her gift for seeing into people, she had seen something in him that appealed to her. As for him, well, just as he was the best match for her, so was she for him. He had told himself.

It was to be expected that Demjan and Slavica should be bitter at first, and they were; but the boy was already fourteen, a very mature fourteen, and soon the mercurial temper of adolescence had refined Kosta Savić's resented intrusion into a sort of satanic glamour. Certainly for Demjan, Kosta's stern reputation had stirred the dread and envy of the other boys.

Certainly, too, Slavica had proven recalcitrant, so much that he wondered, periodically, whether Andrija had not secretly mistreated her in some way. He had never let that suspicion show, and had never said anything one way or the other--belike he never would--not that he wanted to. But still, he wondered.

Only lately, during Stana’s pregnancy, had the girl warmed to him, and to such a degree that that, too, made him wonder. Altogether it had been a relief to him when Anton had come up a boy. His experience with Slavica had disinclined him toward raising daughters.

While Stana had been carrying Anton, Kosta had been proud, proud and happy despite the unaccustomed circumstance. But when--

Knocking sounded on the door, low but urgent. "Gospodar? Kosta Savić, are you there?" came a voice.

"Yes, wait," he said, afraid all at once both to wake Stana with his voice or not to be heard and have the knocking resume. He got up as best he could, by throwing himself onto his hands and knees and then pulling himself up by the table.

But he had been heard; the knocking had stopped. He unbarred and opened the door and saw the anxious face of Ivo.

"Ivo, what--?"

"Gospodar--"

He shushed the freedman, turned to grab his overcoat and shrug it on, and stepped outside, closing the door.

"Let's not wake the children," he said.

"Yes, of course, gospodar, I'm sorry. But I saw the lamplight--knew someone was up. I had to warn you."

"About what?"

"Schwabes," said Ivo. "It is already near moonset. They came to my house, at least a score of them. My sons warned me and I got out the back way--they are looking for me. Me--what have I ever done?"

Kosta Savić cursed and began to stump down the steps, Ivo hovering next to him. "It's your big mouth," he said, softly, savagely. "Someone has remembered all your bragging about how we would pay out the Schwabes like we did the Turks. I wouldn't put it past Marko Vuletić."

Ivo clenched his fists, near tears. "The swine! I don't doubt it. He hasn't forgotten how my grandfather Milovan got the best of Juraj Vuletić."

Kosta Savić kept going, around the house and toward the stable door on the lower side. "Is that what you wanted to talk to me about the other day?"

"What?" asked Ivo, distracted.

Kosta Savić stopped short and wheeled, looking the peasant straight in the eye. "Stana said you visited, looking for me. What did you want?"

"Nothing," said Ivo hastily. "I've forgotten."

"Go to blazes," said Kosta Savić, turned about, and limped onward.

"Most assuredly, gospodar, I know I'm just a dirty cur," Ivo chattered, "and you've got every right to turn me in. But it's the wife and children--"

"Listen," ejected Kosta Savić. "Ivo, listen to me. Have you actually done anything?"

"No," cried the peasant unhappily. "I'm only a farmer, not a hajduk. Why would I do anything to the Schwabes? They'd burn my farm like they did to Knez Dabisav."

"Knez Dab--"

"Surely you know, gospodar. I saw the smoke, and it could only be from his place. At least he talked to you?"

"Yes, Ivo, I do know . . . Knez Dabisav is dead, and all his household too."

"That only proves it! They're worse than Turks, they're very devils to do such a thing! What are you going to do?"

"Leave that to me," said the nobleman firmly. "But you know nothing?"

"Nothing! I'm a peaceable farmer, that's all. You know that very well, gospodar. But if you need my help for whatever you're planning to pay back the Schwabe fiends--"

Kosta Savić grabbed Ivo's shoulders and shook him. "I'm not planning a damned thing, and if I even think you've said so to anybody, anybody at all, even to Jelena, you're a dead man. You understand me?"

Ivo stopped blubbering, and Kosta knew that the man was now really afraid. "Yes, gospodar," he whispered. "Sorry, sorry."

Kosta Savić looked at him searchingly for a minute, then swung open a stall door. "Save your 'sorry' for the Schwabes," he said, taking hold of a halter. The animal came out, stamping and whinnying, and he threw a blanket over its back. "When they catch up with you, as they will, it'll look bad that you ran away. You should have stayed put and kept quiet, just told them to see me."

"How was I to know?" said Ivo wretchedly. "I'm only a farmer--"

"--Not a lawyer, I know," muttered Kosta Savić.

"I told Jelena to tell them I'd gone early to town."

"Then," said Kosta Savić, "that is where they had better find you," and walked the big bay out into the lower field. "You'll take Ratko here."

"And if they come here?"

"I'll worry about that. Up you get," he said, giving Ivo a boost. "You know the trail toward the mountain?"

"Yes, but does the horse?" asked Ivo nervously.

"Yes. I'll lead you part way," replied the nobleman, taking the halter and walking downhill. "Cut up the valley toward Bicanić's place and then cut in past the rockfall. That way you shouldn't run into the Schwabes if they come here or go to Alija's. And remember, just hang on to Ratko's neck and don't fall off. When you want him to turn, just prod him with your foot a little on the opposite side you want to turn to. You understand?"

"Yes. Opposite side to the turn."

"When and if you run into Schwabes, tell them you borrowed the horse from me last evening when you visited Stana."

"Thank you, gospodar. I won't forget this."

"If you do and I don't get her back, I'll cut your balls off, understand?"

"Yes, gospodar.” Kosta Savić smacked the animal's rump, and off it went.

He turned to go back to the house and caught his foot in a root, landing with a crash on the ground.

And, as he mouthed silent curses in anguish, he heard the sound of many hoofbeats in the distance.

Imperious knocking on the door brought Stana bolt upright in bed.

"Husband?"

No answer.

Letting the sudden fearful thoughts fly, she threw a cloak about herself and did not neglect to secrete a slim knife under it.

The knocking continued, rattling the door on its iron hinges and setting the old grey dog to barking.

"Heel, Myshka. Quiet, there's a good dog," she said, glancing round the room, and going up to the door she noticed it was unbarred.

He'd gone out, then.

She opened it and stood back, one hand inside the cloak.

In the doorway stood a tall Austrian, an officer of hussars; other Austrians were behind him, and Hungarian honveds.

"Guten abend, gnädige Frau," said the officer with a small bow, then a word or two to a soldier next to him. He resumed: "Captain Janos Vathely, Imperial Hussars, at your service. May I come in? Thank you."

She stood aside as the officer brushed past her, and watched as the honved he had spoken to, and some other Austrians, followed him in.

"And what may I do for you?" asked Stana carefully in Serbian, reflexively glancing down at the dirt they must be bringing in, and closing the door.

"I beg you, good woman, leave the door open. My men outside have orders to break it down if it is closed," Vathely replied through the translator.

As urgent knocking resumed, she said, "And should I let the night air in to freeze my sick daughter?"

"Just a little open, please. A crack, good woman, if you will," said Vathely, then calling in Magyar to the soldiers outside.

Stana opened the door a bit and turned to face the hussar and the translator. "And to what, sir, do I owe the honour of this visit?"

"This is the house of the gospodar Kosta Savić, is it not?"

"It is."

"And is he present, please?"

"No."

One of the soldiers opened a dark lantern that threw fingers of light across the officer, and Vathely inclined his head, one eyebrow rising. "And might I enquire where he is?"

"Heel, Myshka," repeated Stana to the growling dog; an Austrian silenced the animal with a kick. Then she turned back to the hussar. "He is out," she said, drawing herself very erect.

"Is he, now. And you are the gospodja Stana Malević?"

"I am. I can speak for him in any matter."

"The rumours said you were beautiful, gospodja. They were not true. Not true enough by half. My compliments indeed to the gospodar Kosta Savić, but it is with him that I must speak."

"Then I am afraid you must wait."

"We have time. But where--if I may make so bold--is the gospodar Kosta Savić? He is not the first man he have found to be . . . out."

"Since you set such store by his own word, sir, you may ask him yourself when he arrives."

"I see," said the hussar. "Jaaaa." He turned and barked an order to one of the soldiers in Magyar.

Kerosene lamps were lit, and a search of the house was begun immediately, the honveds and Austrian regulars doing a quick but thorough job as Stana stood very still and watched them. A muffled shriek told of Slavica's awakening, at which Stana dashed to the cradle; an Austrian was lifting the covers.

She picked up Anton and held him close in her arms, trying to still his cries, as Vathely looked on impassively.

“Don't forget the stable downstairs,” he reminded them, and a lancer went out the door.

An Austrian came out of the back room, following Slavica. She was white-faced and bewildered, and clutched a blanket fast around herself. Stana held out her hand and the girl took it. Then she looked at Vathely.

"Sir, I insist on some explanation. What is the meaning of this outrage?"

The officer approached her and took off his plumed shako, holding it by the sweatband in either hand. "Yesterday, gospodja, two Austrian soldiers were on guard-duty at the farm of the late knez, pending funeral arrangements. They were assaulted--one killed, the other taken alive. We thought your husband the gospodar or your son Demjan Savić might be able to help us in the matter. It is unfortunate that neither are here."

"I see. And so you are holding us hostage."

"Please, gospodja, I beg you not to take such a view of things. We are simply awaiting the gospodar's return from his midnight business. He will be returning soon, hein?"

"I don't know," said Stana. "But I hope he will, for my daughter is catching her death."

"She may return to bed. We will not disturb that room again."

"I'll stay here," said the girl.

"Put something on your feet," Stana told her. The girl went in to the back room and a honved called to Vathely.

He was holding up the Mauser rifle. “We found this, sir, just cleaned, and twenty rounds.”

“Indeed?” said Vathely, looking at Stana.

“And stalls for two horses, but one gone.”

Slavica came out of the room, a pair of thick woollen socks on, and then amid voices outside the door opened, letting in a flare of torchlight.

Kosta Savić limped in, escorted by two Austrians.

Vathely looked the man up and down. The woman had the bearing of a lady, certainly, even of nobility; but this fellow appeared to be some consumptive tramp from the gutter of Vienna or Budapest. His dirty dark hair streamed wildly, nearly to his shoulders, and his tight-skinned unshaven face bore the tracks of a suffering that gentlemen only read of in newspapers.

But he, too, stood up very straight, and when his blue eyes met Vathely's the hussar saw something crystalline, frosty and diamond-hard. And it was startling to hear him address his escort in clipped German, "Thank you. That will be all." Vathely nodded to them slightly, and they fell back.

"Good evening, gospodar," said Vathely. "I trust--"

"Ja, ich heiß Kosta Savić," interrupted the man, walking up to him. "And who the devil are you?"

"Captain Janos Vathely, Imperial Hussars, at your service."

"He says two Austrians were attacked yesterday," said Stana in Serbian. They exchanged a glance.

"Well, what of it?" demanded Kosta Savić testily. "Why bother us? Why not have them tell you about it?"

"Because one was killed and the other is not to be found," replied Vathely smoothly. "We don't wish to cause any trouble, gospodar. I have a long patrol ahead, and as you are the area's leading citizen I should naturally begin with you. I merely need a couple of questions answered, and we shall be on our way."

"Ask," said Kosta Savić, leaning on the table with one arm.

"Very well, sir. Do you have any idea as to whom, before daybreak yesterday, may have attacked the guard at the farm of Knez Dabisav Juglesitch?"

"No."

"Do you know what motive might exist for such an attack?"

"I can't imagine," said the nobleman dryly. "Perhaps someone didn't like them."

"Can you account, sir, for your whereabouts last night?"

"I could, if it were any of your business."

"I am afraid, sir, that as Colonel Slavin's second-in-command it is my business."

"I see no reason to talk business, then, with a second-in-command. I have already spoken to your superior. I shall do so again in the morning."

"As you wish, gospodar, although he may take it amiss that you did not answer my questions."

The man snorted. "That is my problem, Herr Rittmeister. And if you have no more questions, I bid you good-morning."

"There is . . . one more question. That is your rifle?"

"It is."

"Then I must confiscate it in His Majesty's name."

Kosta Savić pushed himself upright, shaking with rage, and advanced a step on Vathely. "Do you dare? And how are we to protect ourselves against wolves and bandits?"

"The bandits we will take care of. As for wolves, I understand they have not yet learnt to unbar doors. I'd advise you to keep yours secured."

"You're going to hear of this," said Kosta Savić. "I will see you again somewhere. Now leave my house, sir. At once."

"I think we have nothing to detain us," observed Vathely to the room at large.

Kosta Savić limped over and held the door for them as the Austrians filed out; and, the last to go, Vathely told him: "Be careful. Do not trust anyone too much; not Colonel Slavin--or even yourself. Good day, gospodar."

Kosta Savić looked searchingly at the hussar for a second, and then closed the door. Stana went to one of the small windows, and together they watched the Austrians and honveds mount up, wheel about, and ride up the trail.

They were brought back into the room by the girl's sudden words: "I will never forget this. Never. They will pay, I swear it."

"Hush, Slavica," cautioned Stana, going about and extinguishing the lamps. "Don't say such things. They aren't really such bad men. You see we are all right."

The girl looked up at Kosta Savić. He could feel the awful intensity of her emotion; "Quiet, dear one," he said. "It will all be over soon. I am going to the Colonel and I will see that this doesn't happen to anyone any more."

"But where will it end?" cried the girl. "How can anyone stop it, even you or the colonel? I'm afraid, papa."

Kosta Savić went toward her and took her hands as he sat down, with her head on his shoulder. "I am, too," he whispered. "I am, too."

Slavin came awake, aware that reveille had not yet sounded. It was still deep night.

He was alone.

Getting up from his cot, he went to the door of the orderly room, where a lantern was burning low.

"'Morning, sir," said the runner on duty.

"'Morning, Kessler. What time is it?"

The soldier consulted his pocket watch. "Just gone three, sir."

"Why aren't you awakening Vathely and the patrol?"

"Sir, they're gone."

"What?"

"Over an hour ago, sir."

"Are you sure? Sure your watch is right?"

"Yes, sir. Captain Vathely got the men up himself, one-thirty. They didn't like it, I can tell you, sir."

"Thank you, Kessler."

Slavin sat down at his desk and considered.

His head was still slightly muzzy from his short, deep sleep, and he wished he had a cup of coffee. Several sets of thoughts were turning over in his mind with disconcerting rapidity. He thought of stinking dismembered corpses in the dusty afternoon heat; Vonhof, sweating and groaning in a peasant house, mumbling snatches of nonsense in his delirium; of Hird, gone to a beastly, bloody death; of a cool beautiful woman on horseback, her black hair catching rich ophidian tints in the dappled sunlight; and her wounded, soft-spoken but inhumanly proud husband. And he thought also of Vathely.

"Corporal Kessler."

"Sir?"

"Which way did Captain Vathely ride out of the village?"

"East, sir. Up the mountain."

"Not west? You're sure?"

"Quite sure, sir."

Slavin opened up his field-desk and withdrew a sheet of paper. His direct orders had said West.

It was time to do something about Vathely.

It was very quiet in the house. The baby was finally sleeping again, the dog was curled up in a corner, and Stana was sitting up with Slavica. The stove-fire crackled softly, gleaming in five angry red sparks through the vents in the draft regulator, and a single lamp burned low on the long table, casting the room's walls into deep shadow. Kosta Savić sat on his chair, resting his head, and stared into the tiny flame as if hypnotized, his face yellowish-pink in the flickering lamplight.

He felt like getting drunk again.

But he knew with an aching sureness that his problems would no longer dissolve in a gay, congenial mist of slivovica fumes the way they used to. The inane thought crossed his mind that if only he could get everyone drunk, all at once . . . no, of course not.

He was perfectly willing to admit to the world that he had killed Dabisav Uglesić. But he did not feel like a murderer; and that upset him more than whatever penalty Dragan Vuković would see fit to exact under the law of tradition. He felt much as he had in his days as a soldier of fortune, a bashi-bazouk who had unhesitatingly killed for whatever commander paid him.

Had he, then, killed the conscience out of himself?

No, for he still had a sense of right and wrong. He could still distinguish between men like Slavin and men like Vathely, and he still loved Stana and the children as he always had. Perhaps more.

But the matter of Dabisav Uglesić seemed in some way to transcend all considerations of good and evil. For himself, alone, he was ready to die, though he supposed his deed had been worse that Judas'; for Judas had at least argued himself to a compromise with his conscience, represented by the thirty pieces of silver.

So why? Could he compare himself, in truth, to Andrija, then, who had wantonly killed Petar Bicanić?

No. Andrija did not matter, not to him.

No one would ever know Andrija's reasons, or even whether he had any at all. But in anyone's eyes Andrija had paid justly for his crime, with his life, and so the affair could be spoken of as terrible, yes, a tragedy--but in all events closed. Why should he, Kosta, now escape the reckoning for his own deed?

Kosta Savić now, more than ever, felt he must place himself in the hands of destiny, or whatever power accounted for the doings of men. If such there were, he would come to terms with the ultimate meaning of what he had done; all would at last be revealed. And if there were none--he was free. Dragan Vuković's bullet would liberate him once and for all.

Henceforth the time of questions, the time of doubt and agony, would be over. There would by only certainty, his duty to the people around him, and a final affirmation.

Stana closed the door to the back room and walked over to the table, coming up behind her husband. She laid her hands on his shoulders and began to slowly massage them.

"Slavica dozed off," she said.

Kosta Savić said nothing but took one of her hands in his.

"I feel sorry for her, a little."

"I know," he said. He squeezed her hand and she leaned down to his side and gave him a gentle kiss or two on the ear.

"I'm tired," he said, almost inaudibly. "God, but I'm tired."

"I can feel it," she said. "Why can't you ever rest? Don't go to market tomorrow. Let Slavica and me go, while you relax a bit. Just for the day."

At length, Kosta Savić said: "Maybe we should go somewhere else. Escape."

"Go? But this is your land, your people. After a history such as yours you can't just go."

No, the thought came to him. It's too risky.

There was silence and a shadow of doubt crossed his mind.

"No," said Kosta Savić. "Of course you're right."

"All you need is a nice quiet day doing what you like," she said. "You'll see."

He pushed the chair back and she helped him turn and come up by the hand she held; and they went over to the sheepskin rug by the stove.

There he dropped to his knees with a wince and gingerly lay down. Stana knelt beside him and cradled his head in her hands; he brought an arm around her and pulled her down and their lips met more deeply, more passionately, her ebony hair spilling onto his chest.

She covered him with a knitted afghan just where he lay on the rug, his breath falling into the regular rhythm of sleep. His kiss had awakened emotions in her that she had feared were now only memories, and for the first time in what seemed months she dared to hope that the man she loved was returning home at last.

Slavica slipped back between the sheets, uneasy in her mind.

She had always held her stepfather in the high jealous reverence of lonely children, guarding his words and beliefs with constant vigilance. True, her feelings had often come out cryptically, sometimes deprecatingly, to her few playmates; some odd streak in her found open expression of her feelings, on that subject, inadmissible--unutterable, perhaps.

But the sight or sound of Stana making love with him aroused a disgust in her that amounted to physical sickness. Why her feelings would fix on her mother rather than Kosta she did not know; but it was certain that nothing she should think ought to touch him. Such a thing seemed the blackest defilement; but again, what power he should have to be capable of such a claim upon her she could not bring herself to admit.

But the balance of uncertainty ever wavered on Stana's side. Her respect for her mother, and her very real affection, fought with the fact that Stana stood guilty of a crime of alienation, not only against her children, but against Andrija.

And that was the telling point. The girl's earliest memories were of terrors: her father's bouts of psychotic drinking, his wordless disappearances, Stana's hostile and bitter moods, and the vicious recriminations and guilt that always shrouded the aftermaths. Whatever true bond had held between them had been invisible, silent, not angry and loud like the fights. And then, on that one night, he had come crawling, scratching at the door like a dog, dirty and covered with blood, knowing that he was mortally wounded and therefore free to vent a lifetime of inner rage.

Stana, tight-lipped, had used the knife and boiling water mercilessly. At one point she extracted a bullet from his back that literally turned him white with agony and spattered his blood on her breast. She had carried him bodily into that room, this room, slammed the door to and blocked it.

For hours one voice and another had muttered behind the door, punctuated with groans, shrieked oaths, and animal-like cries of pain. But when he shouted in a great tearing voice a curse upon his father and kindred by name, calling to God to witness that they were no less blood-guilty than he, Slavica could stand no more and fled, weeping.

Yet the worst was not over. It happened again and again in her dreams. There was a harsh, unearthly grating sound, the death-rattle, followed by silence. And then Stana's voice speaking a strange language, low but incredibly deep and powerful and urgent. And then a moan, long and hollow, from a man who should have just died--but had not.

And on the long March and October and November nights when the wind blew up from the west it made a moan, long and hollow, that jolted her upright in bed, shivering, and like icy fingers it touched her soul that maybe he had never really died at all.

Whenever he closed his eyes, even for a moment, he saw her; the memory of her voice lingered like a favourite song. He fancied he had even caught her scent, hot and rank and a little sour.

Vathely wondered what she ate.

Yes, he decided, meeting Stana Malević was well worth while. True, work had hardened her muscles beyond what was ladylike, but in his expectation of some great gaunt splay-footed creature reeking of horses and potatoes he had been tantalizingly disappointed.

Clearly she had been around. She had poise, style.

And Captain Vathely, late of Budapest, Metzengerstein, and Imhof, was a man who appreciated style.

Something black had to lay in her past for her to be living in this godforsaken place, in that stinking rat-hole. And that could turn to his advantage, making his wiles more effective on her; but she still preserved a keen sense of honour, that two-edged weapon. Too, he suspected that her marriage to that shaggy short-tempered gospodar had not been a match of choice. And Kosta Savić also was of interest to him, as husbands always were.

Unlike her, he was a product of these barren limestone mountains and the pre-Socratic spirit of its peoples; and the fact that he bore the title of gospodar made him the heir of an ancient house indeed, so old as to have probably lost all memory of its origins. Saving the title there was very little to distinguish him from the peasants. Only the snap of his head, the sudden spark in his gaze when Vathely had been rude to him, hinted at a man accustomed to obedience.

No, the line was not decayed beyond all recognition; but it was fallen far, Vathely reflected. He wondered what the oldest son was like.

Something would have to be done with Kosta Savić in order to get things through to his wife. That much was clear.

Vathely felt the mission to be challenging but by no means impossible. He would have her.

One way or another.

"Sir," the voice repeated, breaking in on his thoughts.

"What is it?"

"Sir, are you sure that this is the right trail? Shouldn't we be crossing a saddle and descending into a draw by now?"

"What does the map say?"

"The map isn't too clear, sir, even if you want to risk a light to look at it. But we should be at a farm by now."

"We took the right fork, didn't we?"

"Hard to tell, sir. Apparently the trail fades away at one or two points."

Ahead of them, a sudden neigh and snorting told Vathely a couple of horses had been reined in very short. He passed the word to stop and emerged beside the guidon-bearer and scout on the edge of a sheer defile dropping off to a stream-bed.

They were lost.

Father Ante Rezać, sunk in contemplation of the black-letter volume before him, did not really notice the first knock at his door. At this hour anyone wanting him would normally issue a more peremptory summons.

The second knock, however, broke his concentration. He sat back, confounded. "What is it?"

Only another knock replied.

Now positively vexed, the priest rose from his chair marched over to the door, and pulled it open, prepared to rebuke Yusef in quite definite terms.

But there was no mistaking the two-metre height, the thick eyebrows and deep-set, curiously opaque eyes, and the hard mirthless smile forever twisted into a slight sneer by a long scar from ear to lip.

His caller was Andrija Savić.

The priest took a step or two backward and crossed himself.

"'Evening, Reverend Father," said Andrija Savić in his voice that the priest remembered like distant thunder. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"Come in, please," said Rezać. "Sit down."

"Thank you." Andrija Savić walked in and looked around, standing easy, light despite his size, a fistfighter's stance. "How are you keeping yourself these days, Father? Well as ever?"

"Tolerably well, gospodar." Rezać opened a cabinet and brought out a decanter and a tray. "Please, sit down. A drop of schnapps?"

"I'll have some of your German concoction, thank you," said Andrija Savić, seating himself in one of the English armchairs. "In the absence of a fire here, it'll take the chill off my bones."

Father Ante set out the tray, pouring himself a one-finger portion and Andrija a generous dose.

The nobleman knocked it back in one. "Aah, that's the stuff," he observed. "There's none of that where I come from."

"What have you been doing with yourself lately?" enquired Rezać in what he trusted was a casual tone.

"Trying to keep warm. Whoever said that Hell was a place of fiery torments was full of shit," said Andrija Savić sagely. "But he's doubtless been straightened out on the point."

Father Ante refilled his visitor's glass. The dry, punning reference to the practice of impalement, carried out in Bosnia within living memory, had not escaped him.

"How have things been around here?" asked Andrija. "The cause of the true faith been advancing any?"

"For one, your widow has approached me."

Andrija Savić laughed sardonically. "I knew it. Watch yourself or she'll be an abbess shortly."

"I see little danger of that as long as she's married to Kosta."

"Ah, yes, my dear little brother. I'd heard something about that. I expect he's taking good care of her and the kids."

"Demjan is a promising young man. As for Slavica--"

"Not so 'promising,' is she, my dark little flower? No, I see not. By God, she'll grow up into something. She'll be a mankiller."

Ante Rezać felt a very peculiar tightening in his throat, as if his larynx were trying to fold itself up and crawl down his gullet to hide. "She is a prepossessing girl. I suspect she is a secret grief to Kosta."

"Tell me more about my little brother."

"What do you want to hear?" cried Rezać, stung. "You aren't fit to clean his boots. We're not the best of friends, it's true, but he's a far better husband and father than you were."

"Takes care of Stana, does he? That matter to you?"

"As her spiritual advisor--"

"Don't hand me that. You may think you know her, but you don't. You're trying to use her, like I did, but believe me she'll turn the tables on you when she's ready. I know."

"That's none of my business, I'm sure," said the priest coldly.

"I think it is most particularly your business, begging your pardon. You forget that the other world is not without its channels of communication."

"Hell has always been the home of rumours," said Rezać. "But to what do I owe the honour of this call?"

"I've come to take you there."

"And if, begging your pardon, I refuse to go?"

Andrija Savić finished his drink, rose, and went to the door, turning with one hand on the knob, his smile broadening.

"You're already there," he said, and flung the door open.

A bitter wind-blast swept the room and Father Ante went to the doorway and looked out.

He appeared to be situated on the top of a vast ridge that fell away beneath him in a great drop, sloping for thousands of feet, broken by rifts in the black rock and strewn with heaps of boulders and gravel-falls.

Then there before him stretched a plain, incalculable in its immensity, so far beneath him that it defied his attempt to pick out any features. Such might have been the earth's surface on the eve of creation; it simply was--primordial, illimitable, inconceivable. And then, toward that misty limit of vision which was not a horizon, there seemed to be some cluster of vague outlines, unnaturally smooth and angled--not regular, for their weird triangles and quadrilaterals conformed to no architectural figures he had ever seen.

If they were buildings, no human hands had reared them; yet they could be nothing else, for their damnable outlines were becoming clearer in the haze as the westering sun brightened the region where they lay with orange and silver streaks.

He looked up, and another sun winked down at him, flaring pale blue in the violet sky.

He turned around to step back into the room.

It was gone. Only a short stony space separated him from a shadow-filled canyon. On either side of him the ridge wound into the distance, and the wind blew up more harshly, tearing at his flapping cassock and freezing him to the vitals.

He screamed; only the howling wind made mock of the sound, carrying it away into the gulf.

He wondered whether he were dead; and then it struck him that it didn't really make any difference.

How he traversed that distance is, perhaps, the stuff of other nightmares--if he travelled at all. Suffice it to say that he found himself before the gates of a city.

Proud and mighty that city had been, builded of grey marble and basalt and jasper and orichalc, suspending immense domes and sending slim writhing spires against the sky that burned with sunfire even as shadows flowed in its swarming streets. Wide as a cathedral's nave its gates yawned between the sheer walls; hundreds of feet above, a dizzying portal arch had been flung across the gulf by some demonic architect. Delicate as a spider-web it floated above the gateway, yet it had endured for countless ages.

For the city had fallen, with a fall that surpassed Babylon or Tarshish or fabled Poseidonis. No earthquake had wracked its massive foundations; no flood had swept away the noontide of its grandeur; no conqueror, surely, had broken and burned it with fire. Yet it lay dead, sere and nameless under the cold brilliant light of twin suns.

He walked onward through the great gate, the eternal wind snapping his garments, shifting the fine black sand that lay underfoot and blasting on through the deserted streets. Then, turning, he observed the gateway; set in the wind-worn stone were enormous wrought-adamantine hinge plates, each the size of a barge, that showed no sign of use.

Either the gates had proven mightier even than the power of the Cyclopean builders to execute, or the arrogance of the city had been such that they needed only to suggest what they were capable of.

Thoroughly unnerved, he went on; for such as had erected this forgotten metropolis might even yet not be utterly annihilated; an awareness, a remembrance, might still linger in some inconceivably attenuated way.

How, indeed, could their creation stand if no trace of their seed existed? for else how could they create? Or yet having mastered the possibilities of this world could they have passed on, grown, as the child leaves his cradle?

But might not a man, on occasion, revisit his cradle, entertaining memories of his childhood?

His overheated fancy now enflamed by such spectres, his walk burst into a run; and he dashed down the dead city's avenue in a frenzy, uttering unheard cries in fear of whatever wayward idea seized him. For the city had proven to him beyond all doubt that all possibilities are equal, and reality the plaything of vision.

And thus at last he came to the Temple. That it was the Temple was a matter of simple observation, for the basalt and granite and onyx mass that reared above him could be nothing else. The sheer face of two double towers confronted him, their tops lost to view beyond the ascent of their sides, while far overhead their flying buttresses leaped out into the surrounding buildings. Behind those towers, further yet, loomed a dome so vast that he did not need to see; he could feel its gigantic presence, as if by gravitational attraction.

Whatever gods the godlike builders had acknowledged had here received their due in sacrifice.

He raised his head looking at the massive steps that rose before him like the cataract of a mighty river, and was acutely conscious of a choice. He could, truly, turn his back upon the edifice and walk away from the challenge it implied. But where to? And what for?

If the meaning of his exile were to be found at all, it would be within the Temple. As a priest he could not but accept that. Slowly, as if drawn on the tide, he began to ascend. Each step was knee-high and as he rose and drew nearer to the beetling architrave that overhung the great double doorway he began to perspire despite the biting cold.

He had to pause for breath once or twice, but when at last he reached the top he turned. Even from the main level, with the central portals looming behind him in shadow, he was above some of the neighbouring rooftops, and the higher towers of the perimeter could be seen, the great stairs falling away before him like a landslide.

Again he turned about and approached the twofold archway, passing in by one side whose very supporting columns stood on the pedestal higher than his head, fully as wide as a village street where they joined with the mountainous stonework of the walls.

Once having passed beneath the soaring entry arches, the floor beyond began to break upon his view as he went through a dim narthex; and, the interior colonnade behind him, he emerged into the central area.

Fully one square mile it stretched before him, filled with dusty light streaming in from the manifold windows on which the vast dome vaulted above, seemingly floating upon a haze of cold radiance. How high the apex rested he could not guess if he wanted to, for dust and shadow and a network of light rays from the dome's drumwork obscured the uppermost reaches. Around him the square space receded to plain colonnades on either side; and at the far end lay a wide dais set before a shallow niche. In the centre of the niche was something too small for him to distinguish at that distance.

But even though he could not distinguish the thing, he did not feel free to approach; his mind seemed entangled by some numinous force that emanated all around him. To move any closer, he sensed, would drain away all his vitality, endangering the very seat of his will. Yet whatever eidolon squatted on the dais must symbolize the laws which made and ordained this place, and which had in some terrifyingly obscure manner sucked him into their workings. Consequently a true and complete understanding, an assimilation, was required of him to pass beyond.

Whether to God or to whichever nameless destiny had brought him so far, an unquestioning, unhesitating commitment was clearly required; the choice, he realized, had been made long ago, and he had made it.

Relentlessly, almost mechanically, he began to cross that immense floor. And by the time he recognized the high seat, he was not really surprised to recognize its occupant.

The figure wore a simple black robe with a twelve-pointed star on a chain about its collar, and under the shock of white hair the inhumanly handsome face wore the arch almost-smile on its dark lips that he knew from his nightmares.

Though his mind screamed protest, he knelt.

"Good evening, bold dreamer," said the figure gravely. "I see that you have brought your mind this time. See that you don't lose it. You may rise."

He rose, rage and a hundred questions tearing at him, and stood with his own face impassive as he had been trained. The figure continued to search him out with the gaze of its colourless eyes. At last, he said: "Leave to speak."

"Granted."

"Why have I been summoned here?"

"You were not summoned."

"No?"

"You came of your own volition, and, I may say, displayed great courage and ingenuity in making your way."

"But . . ." He vaguely remembered some visitor to his room, and a monstrous revelation; but his memory refused to admit of details. "What place is this?"

"This is Carcosa which God smote, the city of forgotten dreams."

"How did it fall?"

"As I said."

"You are not of this city?"

"I ruled in it, once."

"Who then are you?"

"That would, of course, depend upon who you are."

He pondered.

"I dreamed once, that I was a man, living in a distant and troubled age, a priest of a god who had died but yet was not dead. What sort of a man I was I do not clearly remember; but I was lonely and obsessed with a woman, who divided the commitment which I owed wholly to the god by virtue of certain vows."

"The question of one's δάιμον, animae separatae, is an exceedingly difficult matter, compounded by the nature of words at the medium of communication; for such reason Agrippa, Trismegistus, and the rest used signs and symbols. I wish that you had left your mind behind, but naturally without it you should not have been able to pose the question in the first place. Mind and language are so much each other's props that for discussion we may say that they are interchangeable. Perhaps if your mind were more primitive, relying less on a highly analytical structure of semantics, and more upon inflexion and modulation, you would actually be better equipped for such a consideration."

"You mean that being Croatian presupposes a certain relationship between my ego and my soul?"

"Prescribes certain limits, I would say. There is much room for individual variation in development; no one is ever perfectly true to the norms. But the norms do exist, as a corollary of the limits. Nevertheless, some development along constructive lines is possible."

"Along the idea of linguistic analysis?"

"Nothing so crude, my dear holy man. But if you have half the intelligence for which I grant you credit, you will recognize that the circumstances under which your mind develops will also determine your perspectives on your soul, and therefore also on the world your soul inhabits."

"Does my soul inhabit a world?"

"Does it? My little holy man, it ranges from world to world in a universe you hardly suspect. From certain books you may think you know it, but the men who wrote them were after all only men like yourself."

"And you, what defines your limits?"

"I see no reason in attempting to explain my limits to you who do not know your own."

"I would know who or what you are, and why you haunt me," he cried in a voice that sent echoes a-stirring in that enormous space. "You have passed in my thoughts by day and my dreams by night. You are slowly killing people I know, and your influence is causing others to murder each other. Why?"

"It is, as is all else, the quest for life."

"You have no right to live at such an expense."

"How strangely ignorant you are for a priest! Does not your Cardanus put the point: 'elementa sunt plantis elementum, animalibus plantae, hominibus animalia, erunt et homines aliis, non autem diis; nimis enim remota est eorum natura a nostra; qua propter daemonibus'?"

"For men to feed upon animals and plants is not the same thing at all. God commanded that men should do so. For you to usurp that mandate, to take the soul from men, the bene esse, is monstrous."

"Then revive if you can your dead god so he can put a stop to it. Does not even Saint Bernard say: 'modico adhus tempore sinitur malignari'? He allows it--not because He is forbearing, nor because He is merciful--but because He is dead."

"You lie, your mouth spews filth, blasphemy--for He has arisen. He lives! Did you never hear the angelic shout proclaiming His resurrection, the Exultate, domine?"

"Show me your angels too, then, that I may spit on them. Their voice has never been heard in this abhorrèd place. You yourself labour alone in a land almost as lost as this, exiled from advancement in your Church. Are the people not outcasts, heretics; Patarenes, Cathars, unregenerate Mussulmen cut off from the body of the Faithful? No, they need no mercy from your dead god, nor hosannas from your angels. The chief priests of your dead god have warred against them since the dawn of history, but have never conquered them in their soul. They have nothing, nothing but their pride; but with it they have built a glorious past, and face their destiny unafraid."

"You lie again, for their past has been anything but glorious. Their history is of fear and misery and degradation under dahis and pashas. It is hope that they have never known, not fear. Ignorance and superstition crush them now; but when they gain hope through knowledge, their Easter will come at last. God will arise with them as surely as He did from Joseph's tomb. They need God, though they know Him not. It is you they do not need."

"Fine, brave words, priest. But forty generations of war dead cry out against your god's kindly missionaries. A few of their wretched descendants file into your church and drop an obol into the poor box--while who is poorer than they? You, even, you, I own, body and soul. Do you deny it?"

"What?"

"Think back, years ago, to when Stana Malević needed a dowry to marry the gospodar. Who supplied her dowry money, and in exchange for what, and whence he obtained it? And later, when she became estranged from him . . . is your memory so short?"

"How could I forget?" he said bitterly. "I loved her. Or I thought I did. But in her way she stood by me."

"Let us not delve too deeply into past mistakes, little holy man. But I will use it to have a wager on."

"Speak."

"Very well. If you can save a soul for your dead god--yes, even one out of all your mission area--I will return yours to you. Your dreams will henceforth be your own, and the grave will bring you final peace. Do we have the bet?"

"How could my conscience ever be free? The past is not yours to change. And yet what human ever got a bargain from you? All matters are up to God. If He sees fit to grant me forgiveness, in His infinite mercy, then I am beyond your power. And if He does not, then I am yours by His will, no matter what you promise. No, I believe I will decline the wager, thank you."

"Do as you like. However, once my hand is extended, I do not withdraw it. My wager stands, if you should change your mind."

"Thank you." He gazed into the terrible face for a few moments; the colourless eyes returned the scrutiny, and the half-smile returned to the hard lips.

At last, he said, "You are evil, a creature of corruption, lies and death; but let none say that you are ungracious."

"A compliment from the heart, truly! Go your ways in health, holy man; I cannot wish you happiness. We shall meet again."

He took a last long look and knelt; and when he raised his head he was alone.

As a rule, Stana was not subject to attacks of conscience; but as she reclined on the floor next to Kosta's sleeping form she suddenly felt troubled in her soul. Why the thought of the priest Rezać should come to her mind she did not know, but the memory of her relationship with him stung her accusingly. She felt no guilt at betraying Andrija--she never had felt any--but she felt that Ante had been deeply hurt.

Very well. If he wanted to feel hurt, that was his privilege; but he would not drag her down. She could not afford it when Kosta needed her.

Slowly and very silently she arose, went over and listened at the inner door. Then she went in, reaching up under one of the rafter joints, and removed a twelve-pointed star on a fine silver chain.

Still silent, she left the room, donned the talisman, and wrapped a big cloak about herself.

Dawn was not far away.

Ante Rezać did not know how long he had walked on the shore of that nighted sea; nor did it seem to matter.

How often had he cried out with his soul against the nameless crimes he seemed fated to commit? That the law of God was immutable and eternal he knew; but why did it have to be secret, beyond human understanding? How could a God be called just who only indicted, never warned?

It was true that his relations with Andrija Savić, if not openly hostile, had been poisoned ever since his engagement to Stana. True, if Andrija had ever known the terms under which he had provided Stana's dowry, he would have killed them both. But nothing could ever have aroused Andrija's suspicions; Stana had known well enough what she was doing. Wrong as it had been, it had made their marriage possible. But Andrija could never have known, about that, or about the other time after he had left.

True, his conscience had led him to pay attention to Stana spiritually, and that Andrija had known about, and resented; out of jealousy, surely, for he was not an exemplary man in religious matters. And after Andrija had made his mind known on the subject, Rezać had cut himself off from the very sight of her; only during Andrija's estrangement from her and his disappearance abroad had they met, and that only once and by chance.

Whenever a high pitch of emotional intensity was demanded, Rezać knew himself to be a concerned and reliable judge--but not infallible, as experience had proven. It made him a good priest, even as it might have made him a good poet or artist.

He would be the first to admit that he had made mistakes--sinned, if one put it that way--but did not Christ promise forgiveness for sins? That was supposed to be the purpose, the very meaning of His death and resurrection.

And words he had heard not long ago ran through his mind: When I examine my conscience, on the one hand I feel irredeemable and on the other I can't find anything wrong at all. What does that mean? And he now realized what she had been talking about.

For a person whose soul passed through the first stage, God was indeed dead. And to transcend it, to include the second in it, meant that He had died in vain.

His head reeled under the logic of the blasphemy; simple, complete, perfect--yet unthinkable, as far from the heart as Polaris or Aldebaran from the sun.

As he thus waged war with his conscience, he happened to stumble; and looking about him he noticed that the beach had led him around into a stream bed where some small Acheron had cut into the formless bluff to form a broad gully.

Not wanting to enter whatever waters drained off the unknown district beyond, he resigned himself to ascending the stream's bed until he found some rocks to cross upon; and so he entered the defile and began to ascend its rocky slope, keeping as near to the running water as he could without touching it.

"All right, let's keep calm," said Vathely, looking from the honved to the guidon-bearer. "We're off the track, but we can cut back and find the road again."

The scout, only half-listening, was looking down the bank toward the bottom of the gulch. "What's that?" he asked.

"You--" Vathely flipped a glance to follow the man's look and stopped, riveted.

By the side of the stream-bed, small but clearly visible in the moonlight, was a robed figure making its way between the rocks.

It was the priest Rezać.

"He'll catch his death," exclaimed Vathely.

"Who will, sir?" asked the guidon-bearer.

"Him--there," said the hussar, pointing with his riding-crop.

"I don't see anyone, sir," said the guidon-bearer, peering. "Do you, Kevar?"

"For a moment I thought I did," said the scout. It must have been a trick of the shadows. I don't see anyone now."

"You're both blind," cursed Vathely. "Father Ante, Father Ante! Up here!"

The honved and the guidon-bearer exchanged a look and with a swishing a crackle of branches another dark figure joined them. "What the devil's going on?" it asked.

"Look down there, Sergeant von Essen, tell us who you see."

"Yes," said Vathely, suddenly turning. "Tell us."

Somewhat bewildered, the NCO threw a long, searching look into the ravine. "I don't see anyone. Should I?"

"Nonsense," said Vathely, pointing. "Look, Herr Unteroffizier. There is someone right there."

"With all due respect--no, there isn't, sir."

Vathely looked again.

Rezać's tiny form, so plain a moment before, had vanished.

He faced the three men. "It is possible," he said stiffly, "that I was deceived by the moonlight."

"Whatever you say, sir," said the scout at last.

Vathely looked from one to the other of them; then said, "Move out."

The girl's eyes popped open.

Not moving, not changing her breath, not even thinking, she listened.

She heard the hiss of the stove's air intake and Kosta Savić's slow, rasping breath. She heard--felt, almost--a night breeze sough around the house; and she heard a short nasal whine as the old dog stirred in his sleep. For a brief moment she had an image of blood and water oozing on a roof tile, with a raindrop hitting it, making it spatter pink in the dark.

This was all, for a long minute.

The wind died down. A cloud passed and through a corner of the windowpane a faint star appeared.

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked briefly, and then another gust of wind passed around the house, stirring the pine trees.

And then, very gently, came a tiny scrape, wood on wood; a swelling of the night wind's sounds; and another scrape.

Silence.

Someone--her mother--had gone out.

The girl counted ten slowly, then quickly and noiselessly folded the coverlet back, rolled off the bedstead, and ran a halting tiptoe through to the single wood-side window.

Nothing.

She returned to the back-room window and in the dim moonlight saw a shadow vanish into the stunted pines below the lower clearing.

Stana was making for the edge of the valley.

Slavica's hand flew to the chink under the rafter, to find it empty. Without thinking twice she ran out into the main room, snatched a garment off the coat-rack, and let herself out into the night.

As the column picked its way back through the woods, Vathely tried to put his head together.

He knew he had seen the priest as surely as the others had not. No trick of the shadows could appear so clearly to one experienced in night warfare and sentry duty.

This could only be a sign.

His was not an abnormally morbid or sensitive nature, but in what even then thinking men regarded as the last days of the Empire, the signs of the times boded little good. First had come the scandalous murder-suicide of the Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress, and then the assassination of the Empress Elizabeth by Lucchieni, leaving the old Emperor to his throne in impenetrable solitude. Even the heir-apparent, the half-mad Archduke Franz Ferdinand, could not legally continue the Habsburg line through his morganatic marriage; and divorce, in Catholic Austria, was an inadmissible expedient. Meanwhile, decadent intellectuals such as Wedekind and Schnitzler were exalting sexual inversion and suicide, seemingly buttressed by the shattering theories of Freud; and beneath, in the capital's slums and gutters, the counsels of despair set the most wilful men to plan the destruction of society itself, and to dream of a new order, rooted in the bloody gospel of revolution.

All this underlay the glittering splendour of Vienna's grand balls and masques, lent a feverish touch to the gaiety of the waltz. Vathely had always moved in this society; as a dashing hussar officer was a bright light in its firmament, and therefore half-conscious of its malaise. To be hurled from this into a wilderness region whose degraded peoples still remembered lost empires as great as Austria-Hungary was unsettling enough; but even in Vienna murder, madness, and death were much more mooted than actually embraced. Here they seemed an integral part of life, with nothing to expect in the way of justice or payment; only retribution and hate.

If the Vienna savants could see what their titillating theories led to! For here they were practiced, nor were any others known; and greater depths of cruelty and bestial fear he had never seen, not in the city's vilest dens.

And now, it was evident, he was fated to become one of them, or at least to descend into the hell of shades and blood that they lived. For them, centuries of time were as yesterday, death and life were all one; nothing was ever what it appeared, and a man lived by his luck and the edge of his knife. The priest Rezać, he knew, had once been a polished ultramontane, Jesuit material, and by what means he had become a denizen of these Bosnian hills he did not want to imagine, for such a fate lay too close to his own future, and he wondered if Slavin were not more advanced in it than he. Certainly the colonel had paid a high price for his knowledge of the country.

Vathely was dog-tired, cold, thoroughly shaken, and a little afraid. And they were still lost, in an actively hostile neighbourhood.

And now he was seeing things.

He wondered if he were losing his mind.

The chilly night air stung Slavica's face and tore stifled shudders from her; but despite that and the encumbering folds of Demjan's greatcoat the girl's passage through the brush was sure and quiet. She did not want to risk catching Stana up, rather lose her--but no matter the cost, she decided, she needed to find out what Stana's purpose was.

Greater things than she knew, she felt, hung here in the balance. For in default of Kosta Savić's guiding genius, it fell upon the gospodja to ordain matters; and having been relied upon, whatever she in turn chose to rely upon might prove decisive to their dependents, which in a sense all the peasantry of the Celebiči-Vikoč area were.

Softly, sensing the nearness of the tree-line and the valley's edge, she pressed forward, far from reckless in her determination; though even she, perhaps, was not fully aware of the extent to which Kosta Savić figured in it.

Thus Vathely rode, rapt in thoughts of many things, often only half-aware, and bony fingers dug into his throat.

Too taken aback to yell, he flailed at what was scratching his face. His horse rolled from under him.

He fought, blindly, furiously, never landing a blow; his attacker seemed to have a hundred claws and feelers.

Sick with loathing and fear, he felt something grab him from behind.

He knew no more.

Suddenly the girl stopped, crouched behind the trunk of a fallen pine, and waited.

The night sky was now very clear. The wind, too, had died, and night's vespers, the hour which attends the dawn, was near at hand. An amethystine radiance bathed the valley's rim, seemingly emanating from the earth rather than from the star-litten firmament. By it the girl could easily make out the scene, so familiar but now invested anew with some subtle property that imparted a common essence to all its elements.

Stana stood with her back to the girl, facing eastward out over the valley, immobile, her arms folded; and such was her serene stillness that she seemed to have grown there like the grass.

A tiny gleam suddenly played in her ebony hair--her head had moved. And then she turned and looked directly at Slavica and the girl understood why the world had seemed so different.

Her smooth cold features were like pale marble in moonlight, the deep shadows of her eyes flowing down among the immutable contours of her face.

There was something familiar about that look.

The hard, sensuous lips wore an arch half-smile.

"There's no need for you to hide," came the dry, clear voice. "Rise, come forth, and begin to know yourself."

She trembled, not fearful but gripped by an incalculably powerful emotion she did not fully understand. Nevertheless she arose and stepped over the pine trunk, still wrapped in the great overcoat like the stiff ceremonial raiment of a Byzantine princess; and her eyes kept flickering to the twelve-tongued symbol which flared dully on Stana's breast.

"I thought I knew you," she said.

"You did. You cannot know anything which does not potentially exist within you already."

"Somehow I find little comfort in that."

"It may be unsettling, but that fact is the beginning of all power."

"What has that to do with me?"

"Everything. You are my daughter, Slavica. It has been the destiny of our kind to wield power; I have had my turn. Soon it may be yours."

"What sort of power?"

For an answer, one strong, slender-boned hand emerged from the cloak and touched the twelve-pointed emblem. "It is a wise power, not to be circumscribed with many words; it is of the blood, and of the will, and of the nerves, and its seat is in the spirit."

"It is of the blood? . . . Does not such fateful power carry a fateful price?"

"It does. I know it from personal experience, which is why I gave it up. I had hoped that you might never need to know; but you show signs of bearing it within yourself, and it will destroy you unless you learn to master it."

"What about Demjan?"

"He is different. He has gifts of his own, gentle ones which he instinctively understands. You and I, again, are in some ways very different. You may even hate me. But you are my child, whatever else, and I owe you my love, my respect, and my guidance."

"I don't hate you. But there is too much about you that I fear. I fear the strength that enabled you to cultivate this power so mightily, and the risk of what would happen should it ever fail you. I fear lest that power should rather begin to cultivate you, strangling whatever of your humanity that it cannot fortify to its use. I fear that were it not for my stepfather, the last of his family, that there would be very little human to you left at all; and, indeed, I fear for him as I never feared for my real father."

"And if I told you that I see developing in you a greater potential than even I possess?"

"I should be proud."

There was silence for a moment. The girl felt Stana's gaze searching her out, probing the resolve that could prompt such an affirmation.

Then came the voice at last: "Be proud, then. But forget not the lessons of humility; remember much; speak little."

"I am ready."

Vathely was still yelling as they pulled him down from the tree branches. The scout got him in a half-nelson and the sergeant very carefully punched him in the solar plexus, knocking his wind out. As he folded over, gasping, the guidon-bearer poured a canteen of cold water on his head.

They let him go, and he remained with his head between his knees for a few moments. At last he did straighten up, shaking and deathly pale.

"Are you all right, sir?" asked von Essen.

The hussar rubbed his forehead. "Yes. I--I . . ."

"You got caught in a tree-branch, sir. Shall I take over the formation?"

Vathely gestured. The sergeant looked from the guidon-bearer to the scout and then turned around. "We'll halt here, break until we get full daylight. Go ahead and get the horses tethered, and keep a four-man watch. We'll move again at eight o'clock. Put the word out."

A few at a time, the tired soldiers downed their packs, while others loosed their saddle-girths, pulled off their bedrolls, and stretched out on the ground, their weapons placed out of the way but still near to hand.

"The key," said Stana, "is blood, or rather it is in the blood. Now the law of blood is that is imparts the life, while it carries a debt in interest of death."

"How do you mean?"

"All creatures that live by blood age and die. Blood brings nourishment and strength, but it also carries the weaknesses which lead to deterioration, sickness, and death. Observe that blood-eating animals live short lives, while men and the greater plant-eaters live longer; plants and trees--which have not blood but sap--can live for centuries; earth and sea, inanimate but by no means dead things, are nearly immortal."

"Does this mean that I am under sentence of death?"

"Not exactly. It means that by the virtue of the blood that flows in you, you owe a debt to the life-forces that created you, and death is one way of repaying that debt."

"One way? There are other ways?"

"None that are right. You did not ask to be born, but born you were, in a bloody upheaval, and so became an integral part of nature's workings; and nature's workings go to sustain and develop you. If you should somehow participate in those workings, existing on this earth, and yet never die, you would by that fact have transcended nature, and then living at its cost means depriving it of ever more of its very limited resources. You would end, conceivably, at one point removed from eternity, by consuming all nature into yourself; and when there was no more to feed you, you should wither into a spirit chained forever to a few grains of dust that you once inhabited."

"But the spirit--that can transcend nature?"

"There is a potential--some call it the daimon. It represents the personality, the unique being that you are, or can become. Properly cultivated and followed, it may guide you to a destiny that will preserve it for great lengths, far longer than your physical lifespan; perhaps for as long as man and his works endure."

"But the body must die?"

"Yes, but there is no reason why it may not last far longer than is thought to be given. Consider the vampire, who holds death at bay indefinitely through the use of blood; but he is bound to death by that blood, and it overtakes him sooner or later. Such creatures are like poor degraded opium-slaves, who at the ultimate extremity need the toxin to prolong a sort of half-life which is nothing but a doomed battle against death--they would be better off to die at once and have done with it.

"Yet the body rebuilds itself completely every seven years, by means of the blood. If it did not rebuild the weaknesses and flaws along with the strengths the body would last, practically, forever. Whether these weaknesses can be prevented from duplication, without changing the nature of the blood, is a thing that none may know."

"You spoke of the daimon. How is it perpetuated?"

"Though the seat of its being is in you, it is not subject to space or time. Rather, it becomes, or has the power to become, part of the common experience of the world, which is eternal in the strictest sense; always the same, because its existence is through manifestation to people, no matter where they are or when they live.

"Consider the daimon of Knez Lazar, the hero of Kosovo; it led him--better yet, he accompanied it--to a destiny which is one with Serbia. It springs to life whenever and wherever Kosovo is recalled, and is active in supporting and sustaining Serbian struggle at any place and at any time. In this sense Knez Lazar has achieved immortality, though his body was put to death on the battlefield."

"And how is one to recognize and follow one's daimon?"

"That . . . is the most difficult question of all. It depends entirely upon the sort of person you are and your relationship to it. The most answer there is, is to cultivate self-knowledge--sober, clear, direct--and not to believe any lies about yourself."

"What is the symbolism of the amulet?"

The pale fingers touched the metal, turning it over gently. "An excellent question, and one I cannot answer for you so readily. When it came into my possession I had no idea what it was. Now I do, but the price of that knowledge was high.

"I am not young anymore, Slavica. I did not age for a long time, but it is coming upon me now. With these eyes I have seen things which would shatter your mind, such abysses of chaos and horror as hell itself could not conceive, seen realms of bizarre splendour and poisonous luxuriance, gorged on sensual excesses beyond the wildest ravings of hashish-addicts or lovers' ecstasies. I have seen wars in heaven and the death of worlds, suffered the wrath of star-spawned demons and the vengeance of mankind's sullen gods. And I have survived. Your father Andrija did not, but then he never realized the truth about himself, not until it was too late. Perhaps it was that which whipped him on to his doom. The law of his blood reclaimed him at last. It may yet reclaim even me. For it was I who evoked what he was, disregarding that law. By the time you had been born I could not undo what I had done; but I could cease to do it. Kosta, I believe, suspects it, and is trying to deal with it in his own way; for in ways of the spirit he is stronger than Andrija was. But you know, too, and your fears, I fear, are not groundless. Maybe I went too far."

"How could you do such a thing?" cried the girl. "How could you marry him, knowing it would come to that?"

"He knew what he was doing, and took my hopes on trust, because he loved me. And if I am guilty, I pay the most terrible of penalties. Because I love him."

Slavica looked at her mother in the roseate light of the dawn. The songs of the birds filled her ears like a shout of triumph, and a breath of the sweet morning air seemed to clear her head of the night's perfervid phantasies. She wanted to laugh, to leap with the sheer joy of life.

Stana, too, smiled radiantly, her fine handsome face vibrant with sudden delight.

"I had a funny dream," exclaimed Slavica.

"Race you back?" challenged Stana.

And together the two women raced off across the field, leaving swaths in the dewy grass.

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