The Keep

  “Cover it now!” The command echoed through the chamber.

  Cuza halted, struck by Molasar’s vehemence. He didn’t think he should be spoken to in such a manner. But then, one had to make allowances for fifteenth-century boyars.

  He sighed. “Very well.” He squatted in the bottom of the pit and folded the coarse cloth packing over the talisman, then covered it all with the tattered wrapper.

  “Good!” said the voice from above and behind him. Cuza looked up and saw that Molasar had moved to the other side of the pit, away from the entrance. “Now hurry. The sooner I know the talisman is safe, the sooner I can depart for Germany.”

  Cuza hurried. He crawled from the pit as swiftly as he could and began to make his way through the tunnel to the steps that would take him upward to a new day, not only for himself and for his people, but for all the world.

  “It’s a long story, Magda…ages long. And I fear there’s no time left to tell it to you.”

  His voice sounded to Magda as if it were coming from the far end of a long, dark tunnel. He had said Rasalom predated Judaism…and then he had said he was as old as Rasalom. But that couldn’t be! The man who had loved her could not be some leftover from a forgotten age! He was real! He was human! Flesh and blood!

  Movement caught her eye and brought her back to the here and now. Glenn was attempting to rise to his feet, using the sword blade for support. He managed to get to his knees but was too weak to rise farther.

  “Who are you?” she said, staring at him, feeling as if she were seeing him for the first time. “And who is Rasalom?”

  “The story starts long ago,” he said, sweating and swaying, leaning on the hiltless blade. “Long before the time of the Pharaohs, before Babylonia, even before Mesopotamia. There was another civilization then, in another age.”

  “‘The First Age,’” Magda said. “You mentioned that before.”

  It was not a new idea to her. She had run across the theory now and then in the historical and archeological journals she had read at various times while helping Papa with his research. The obscure theory contended that all of recorded history represented only the Second Age of Man; that long, long ago there had been a great civilization across Europe and Asia—some of its apologists even went so far as to include the island continents of Atlantis and Mu in this ancient world, a world they claimed had been destroyed in a global cataclysm.

  “It’s a discredited idea,” Magda said, a defensive quaver in her voice. “All historians and archeologists of any repute condemn it as lunacy.”

  “Yes, I know,” Glenn said with a sardonic twist to his lips. “The same type of ‘authorities’ who scoffed at the possibility that Troy might have truly existed—and then Schliemann found it. But I’m not going to debate you. The First Age was real. I was born into it.”

  “But how—?”

  “Let me finish quickly. There isn’t much time and I want you to understand a few things before I go to face Rasalom. Things were different in the First Age. This world was then a battleground between two…” He appeared to be groping for a word. “I don’t want to say ‘gods’ because that would give you the impression that they had discrete identities and personalities. There were two vast, incomprehensible…forces…powers abroad in the land then. One, the Dark Power, which was sometimes called Chaos, sometimes called the Otherness, reveled in anything inimical to mankind. The other Power was…”

  He paused again, and Magda could not help but prompt him. “You mean the White Power…the Power of Good?”

  “It’s not so simple as that. We merely called it Light. What mattered was that it opposed the Otherness. The First Age eventually became divided into two camps: those who sought dominion through the Otherness and those who resisted. Rasalom was a necromancer of his time, a brilliant adept to the Dark Power. He gave himself over to it completely and eventually became the champion of Chaos.”

  “And you chose to be champion of Light—of Good.” She wanted him to say yes.

  “No…I didn’t exactly choose. And I can’t say the Power I serve is all that good, or all that light. I was…conscripted, you might say. Circumstances too involved to explain now—circumstances that have long since lost any shred of meaning for me—led me to become involved with the armies of Light. I soon found it impossible to extricate myself, and before long I was at their forefront, leading them. I was given the sword. Its blade and hilt were forged by a race of small folk now long extinct. It was fashioned for one purpose: to destroy Rasalom. There came a final battle between the opposing forces—Armageddon, Ragnarök, all the doomsday battles rolled into one. The resulting cataclysm—earthquakes, firestorms, tidal waves—wiped out every trace of the First Age of Man. Only a few humans were left to begin all over again.”

  “But what of the Powers?”

  Glenn shrugged. “They still exist, but their interest waned after the cataclysm. There was not much left for them in a ruined world whose inhabitants were reverting to savagery. They turned their attention elsewhere while Rasalom and I fought on across the world and across the ages, neither one gaining the upper hand for long, neither one sickening or aging. And somewhere along the way we lost something…”

  He glanced down at a broken fragment of mirror that had fallen out of the blade case and now lay near his knees.

  “Hold that up to my face,” he told Magda.

  Magda lifted the fragment and positioned it next to his cheek.

  “How do I look in it?” he asked.

  Magda glanced at the glass—and dropped it with a tiny scream. The mirror was empty! Just as Papa had said of Rasalom!

  The man she loved cast no reflection!

  “Our reflections were taken away by the Powers we serve, perhaps as a constant reminder to Rasalom and me that our lives were no longer our own.”

  His mind seemed to drift for a moment. “It’s strange not to see yourself in a mirror or a pool of water. You never get used to it.” He smiled sadly. “I believe I’ve forgotten what I look like.”

  Magda’s heart went out to him. “Glenn…?”

  “But I never stopped pursuing Rasalom,” he said, shaking himself. “Wherever there was news of butchery and death, I would find him and drive him off. But as civilization gradually rebuilt itself, and people began to crowd together again, Rasalom became more ingenious in his methods. He was always spreading death and misery in any way he could, and in the fourteenth century, when he traveled from Constantinople throughout Europe, leaving plague-ridden rats in every city along his way—”

  “The Black Death!”

  “Yes. It would have been a minor epidemic without Rasalom, but as you know, it turned out to be one of the major catastrophes of the Middle Ages. That was when I knew I had to find a way to stop him before he devised something even more hideous. And if I’d done the job right, neither of us would be here right now.”

  “But how can you blame yourself? How can Rasalom’s escape be your fault? The Germans let him loose.”

  “He should be dead! I could have killed him half a millennium ago but I didn’t. I came here looking for Vlad the Impaler. I had heard of his atrocities and they fit Rasalom’s pattern. I expected to find him posing as Vlad. But I was wrong. Vlad was just a madman under Rasalom’s influence, feeding Rasalom’s strength by impaling thousands of innocents. But even at his worst, Vlad could not match by one tenth what is happening every day in today’s death camps.

  “So I built the keep. I tricked Rasalom by luring him inside. I bound him with the power of the hilt and sealed him in the cellar wall where he would stay forever.” He sighed. “At least I thought it would be forever. I could have killed him then—I should have killed him then—but I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Glenn closed his eyes and was quiet for a long time before replying. “This isn’t easy to say…but I was afraid. You see, I’ve lived on as a counterbalance to Rasalom. But what happens if I’m finally victorious and kill him? When his threat is e
xtinguished, what happens to me? I’ve lived for what seems like eons, but I’ve never grown tired of life. It may be hard to believe, but there’s always something new.” He opened his eyes again and looked squarely at Magda. “Always. But I fear Rasalom and I are a pair, the continued existence of one dependent on the other. I am yang to his yin. I’m not yet ready to die.”

  Magda had to know: “Can you die?”

  “Yes. It takes a lot to kill me, but I can die. The injuries I received tonight would have done me in had you not brought the blade to me. I had gone as far as I could…I would have died right here without you.” His eyes rested on her for a moment, then he looked over to the keep. “Rasalom probably thinks I’m dead. That could work to my advantage.”

  Magda wanted to throw her arms around him but could not bring herself to touch him again just yet. At least now she understood the guilt she had seen in his face in unguarded moments.

  “Don’t go over there, Glenn.”

  “Call me Glaeken,” he said softly. “It’s been so long since someone called me by my real name.”

  “All right…Glaeken.” The word felt good on her tongue, as if saying his true name linked her more closely to him. But there were still so many unanswered questions. “What about those awful books? Who hid them there?”

  “I did. They can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but I couldn’t let them be destroyed. Knowledge of any kind—especially of evil—must be preserved.”

  Magda had another question, one she hesitated to ask. She had come to realize as he spoke that it mattered little to her how old he was—it didn’t change him from the man she had come to know. But how did he feel about her?

  “What of me?” she said finally. “You never told me…”

  She wanted to ask him if she was just a stop along the way, another conquest. Was the love she had sensed in him and seen in his eyes just a trick he had learned? Was he even capable of love anymore? She couldn’t voice the thoughts. Even thinking them was painful.

  Glaeken seemed to read her mind. “Would you have believed me if I had told you?”

  “But yesterday—”

  “I love you, Magda,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I’ve been closed off for so long. You reached me. No one has been able to do that for a long time. I may be older than anyone or anything you’ve ever imagined, but I’m still a man. That was never taken away from me.”

  Magda slowly put her arms around his shoulders, holding him gently but firmly. She wanted to hold him to this spot, root him here where he’d be safe outside the keep.

  After a long moment he spoke into her ear. “Help me to my feet, Magda. I’ve got to stop your father.”

  Magda knew she had to help him, even though she feared for him. She gripped his arm and tried to lift him but his knees buckled repeatedly. Finally, he slumped to the ground and pounded it with a closed fist.

  “I need more time!”

  “I’ll go,” Magda said, half wondering where the words came from. “I can meet my father at the gate.”

  “No! It’s too dangerous!”

  “I can talk to him. He’ll listen to me.”

  “He’s beyond all reason now. He’ll listen only to Rasalom.”

  “I have to try. Can you think of anything better?”

  Glaeken was silent.

  “Then I’ll go.” She wished she could have stood there and tossed her head in defiance to show him she wasn’t afraid. But she was terrified.

  “Don’t cross the threshold,” Glaeken warned her. “Whatever you do, don’t step across into the keep. That’s Rasalom’s domain now.”

  I know, Magda thought as she broke into a run toward the causeway. And I can’t allow Papa to step across to this side, either—at least not if he’s holding the hilt to a sword.

  Cuza had hoped to be done with the flashlight after reaching the cellar level, but all the electric lights were dead. He found, however, that the corridor was not completely dark. There were glowing spots in the walls. He looked more closely and saw that the images of the crosslike talisman set in the stones were glowing softly. They brightened as he neared and faded slowly after he had passed, responding to the object he carried.

  Theodor Cuza moved along the central corridor in a state of awe. Never had the supernatural been so real to him. Never would he be able to view the world or existence itself as he had before. He thought about how smug he had been, thinking he had seen it all, yet never realizing the blinders that had limited his vision. Well, now his blinders were off and the whole world was new all around him.

  He hugged the wrapped talisman snugly against his chest, feeling close to the supernatural…and yet far from his God. But then, what had God done for his Chosen People? How many thousands, millions, had died in the past few years calling out his name, and had never been answered?

  Soon there would be an answer, and Theodor Cuza was helping to bring it.

  As he ascended toward the courtyard he felt a twinge of uneasiness and paused halfway up. He watched trailers of fog ooze down the steps like white honey while his thoughts whirled.

  His moment of personal triumph was at hand. He was finally able to do something, to take an active role against the Nazis. Why, then, this feeling that all was not quite right? He had to admit to some nagging doubts about Molasar, but nothing specific. All the pieces fit…

  Or did they?

  Cuza could not help but find the shape of the talisman bothersome: It was too close to the shape of the cross Molasar feared so. But perhaps that was Molasar’s way of protecting it—make it resemble a holy object to throw his pursuers off the track, just as he had done with the keep. But then there was Molasar’s seeming reluctance to handle the talisman himself, his insistence that Cuza take charge of it immediately. If the talisman was so important to Molasar, if it was truly the source of all his power, why didn’t he find a hiding place for it himself?

  Slowly, mechanically, Cuza took the final steps up to the courtyard. At the top he squinted into the unaccustomed gray light of predawn and found the answer to his questions: daylight. Of course! Molasar could not move around in the day and he needed someone who could! What a relief it was to erase those doubts. Daylight explained everything!

  As Cuza’s eyes adjusted to the growing light, he looked across the foggy ruin of the courtyard to the gate and saw a figure standing there, waiting. For a single terrified moment he thought one of the sentries had escaped the slaughter; then he saw that the figure was too small and slim to be a German soldier.

  It was Magda. Filled with joy, he hurried toward her.

  From the threshold of the keep, Magda looked in on the courtyard. It was silent as a tomb, which it had become. It was utterly silent and deserted but showed signs of battle everywhere: bullet holes in the fabric and the metal of the lorries, smashed windshields, pock marks in the stone blocks of the walls, smoke rising from the shattered ruins of the generators. Nothing moved. She wondered what gore lay beneath the fog that floated knee-deep over the courtyard floor.

  She also wondered what she was doing here shivering in the predawn chill, waiting for her father, who might or might not be carrying the future of the world in his hands. Now that she had a quiet moment to think, to calmly consider all that Glenn—Glaeken—had told her, doubt began to insinuate its way into her mind. Words whispered in the dark lost their impact with the approach of day. It had been so easy to believe Glaeken while she was listening to his voice and looking into his eyes. But now that she was away from him, standing here alone, waiting…she felt unsure.

  It was mad—immense, unseen, unknowable forces…Light…Chaos…in opposition for control of humanity! Absurd! The stuff of fantasy, the deranged dream of an opium eater!

  And yet…

  …there was Molasar—or Rasalom or whatever he was truly called.

  He was no dream, yet certainly more than human, certainly beyond anything she had ever experienced or wished to experience again. And certainly evil. She had known that fro
m the first time he had touched her.

  And then there was Glaeken—if that was his true name—who did not seem evil but who might well be mad. He was real, and he had a sword blade that glowed and healed wounds that were enough to kill a score of men. She had seen that with her own eyes. And he cast no reflection…

  Perhaps it was she who was mad.

  But oh, if she was not mad. If the world truly stood on the brink here in this remote mountain pass…who was she to trust?

  Trust Rasalom, who by his own admission and confirmed by Glaeken had been locked away in some sort of limbo for five centuries and, now that he was free, was promising to put an end to Hitler and his atrocities?

  Or trust the red-haired man who had become the love of her life but had lied to her about so many things, even his name? Who her own father accused of being an ally of the Nazis?

  Why is it all coming to rest on me?

  Why did she have to be the one to choose when everything was so confused? Who to believe? The father she had trusted all her life, or the stranger who had unlocked a part of her being she never even knew existed? It wasn’t fair!

  She sighed. But nobody ever said life was fair.

  She had to decide. And soon.

  Glenn’s parting words came back to her: Whatever you do, don’t step across into the keep. That’s Rasalom’s domain now.

  But she knew she had to step across. The malignant aura around the keep had made it an effort merely to walk across the causeway. Now she had to feel what it was like inside. It would help her decide.

  She edged her foot forward, then pulled it back. Perspiration had broken out all over her body. She didn’t want to do this but circumstances left her little choice. Setting her jaw, she closed her eyes and stepped across the threshold.

  The evil exploded against her, snatching her breath away, knotting her stomach, making her weave drunkenly about. It was more powerful, more intense than ever. She wavered in her resolve, wanting desperately to step back outside. But she fought this down, willing herself to weather the storm of malice she felt raging about her. The very air she was breathing confirmed what she had known all along: No good would ever come from within the keep.