Lycanthropos (45 page)

But when one month had passed, and when the full moon rose again in starry sky of Chorasmia, Isfendir began to understand. As the young priest of Ahura Mazda went out from his people to meditate alone in the hills, seeking somehow to master his shame and guilt, he looked up at the moon and felt a sudden, stabbing pain in his stomach. In an instant the pain spread throughout his body as if it were a fire on the grass of the steppes in the driest and hottest of summers. The pain assaulted his bones and his muscles and his hands and his face, and he fell to the ground and screamed. His vision blurred and everything around him became indistinct, but he seemed to see a creature crawling
towards him, a creature such as guarded the gates of the
House of the Lie, a fiend filled with lust for blood and violence and murder, a beast that had no reason to its rapacious mind and no thoughts but the thoughts of hatred and hunger, anger and cruelty, and when Isfendir realized that
this monster was not
approaching
him but rather was
arising
from within his own being, his human mind fled from its own darkness, and he knew and remembered nothing of what next
transpired on that fateful night of the full moon.

When he awoke on the morning after his first descent into hell, and he saw the torn, mutilated body of the child which lay beside him, and tasted the blood in his mouth and
picked the strands of human flesh from between his teeth, he
realized that the Egyptian priest Menereb had visited his own plague upon him, and after much bitter weeping he
concluded that death was his only release from the monstrous horror which had arisen from his own soul.

But when he attempted to take his own life, when he cast
himself from the highest peak in the hill country of Chorasmia, when he tried to thrust the dagger into his throat, when he drank the poison, when he threw himself before the stampeding cattle, he found that he could not die.

He realized that he had become a slave of Angra Mainyu, a slave of the dark power of the universe, a slave of his
the dark side of his own tortured soul. He realized that his
sin had issued forth, not in only in damnation, not only in a destiny of eternal misery in the House of the Lie, but in a life in death, a life of ceaseless, unending violence, a life of bestial lust and cruelty and bloodshed. And great was the misery of Isfendir the son of Kuriash, who now had his life safely in his keeping, who now needed not fear death, who now wanted nothing else but the ability to die.

And the months faded into years and the years faded into centuries, Isfendir wandered the roads of the earth, seeking help, seeking someone, anyone, who could lift the curse from him, who could help him end his life, who could help him to understand what had happened to him. He travelled through the vast steppes of the north and climbed the great mountains of the roof of the world, he sought out the magicians and the priests and the shamans and the prophets of a hundred nations, and he came at last to Babylon in the land of the Chaldeans to seek out the astrologers who were said to possess all wisdom. But they could give him no aid.

And as two centuries faded into three and three
centuries faded into four, Isfendir began to forget, began to forget who he was and whence he came. His memory of the past grew indistinct and murky, and soon all was confusion and emptiness, and he could no longer remember a time when he was not slave of the moon.

And there he stayed, in the land of the Chaldeans, devoid of hope, until one day he saw some travelers passing
through his village, people whose words sounded familiar and
whose dress touched some long forgotten memory. And he followed after them, followed his distant cousins the Magi of Persia, the Zoroastrian priests who were heeding the
ancient injunction of the prophet and were travelling to the
birthplace of the Christ.

But the man who now called himself simply Chaldaeus, the
Chaldean, did not know that once the prophet had given to him that very same injunction, did not know that he himself was a Magos, a priest of the Great God Ahura Mazda, for his
mind was burdened with a
life
of a thousand years, and the
weight of that thousand years had crushed his memory into the darkness.

And thus it was that when he saw the symbol of Angra Mainyu glowing
upon the forehead of Claudia Procula, the
same symbol which had once been seen glowing upon his own
forehead by the apostate Egyptian priest Menereb, the
werewolf Isfendir, Ianus Chaldaeus, Janus Chaldian, Janos Kaldy, had absolutely no idea what it was.

T
here was silence in the dank cell in the dungeon of the
Ragoczy
Palace
in
Budapest
, and the gray sky of the
approaching sunset added an atmosphere of eerie gloom to the
words which Janos Kaldy had been saying. When he had finished his strange tale, neither Claudia nor Louisa nor Blasko knew quite what to say. Claudia turned away from him
and walked off a few feet to gaze at the far wall in pensive melancholy
.

At last Blasko said. "Janos, I have listened to your words, but I still do not understand."

Kaldy locked over at Claudia and said softly, "But Claudia understands, don't you, Claudia."

"Yes," she replied, "I believe I do. But I do not understand why you were there in
Jerusalem
to see me on that
night."

"I was there for the same reason that I was in the
company of the Turanian traitor a thousand years earlier,"
he said. "Coincidence. Happenstance. Accident."

Louisa shook herself, for she had grown cold and weak as
she listened to Kaldy's newly discovered memories of the past. "I feel the same as Blasko, Herr Kaldy," she said. "I don't really understand the significance of your story. I think that we had all assumed that you had been bitten by a werewolf at some point in the past, but…"

"Claudia?" Kaldy said. "Would you like to clarify the point of my tale?"

"Angra Mainyu," she whispered, her voice distant and contemplative. "The mark of Angra Mainyu, the Spirit of the Lie.
"

"Yes," Kaldy said, his tone urging her to continue.

"The werewolf..." Claudia said softly. "The werewolf...
the apostate Egyptian priest Menereb...he saw the mark upon
your forehead that day in the temple of Zoroaster three thousand years ago, even as you saw the mark upon my forehead at the trial of Christ in Jerusalem, two thousand
years ago."

"Yes," Kaldy said.

She turned to him and sighed. "The mark of Angra Mainyu. The mark of the unfaithful servant, the mark of the priest who abandons his god, the mark of the beloved of the
higher powers who sacrifices righteousness upon the altar of the flesh, who values life more than faith."

"As did I," Kaldy nodded, "and as did you. The prophet
taught that life is a battlefield between good and evil,
between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, between God and the Devil, if you wish. It is the duality of the universe which
rested at the heart of Dzardrusha's revelation. All men must
struggle with the forces of evil, within their own hearts and in the world outside themselves; but to the priest is given a special charge, a heavier burden, a more profound responsibility, for the priest is the mouth of the god and the teacher of the people, and when the priest chooses to
save his
own life rather than
die proclaiming the truth, the
example of his weakness and his cowardice and the
insufficiency
of his faith
leads many others with him into
the House of the Lie."

Louisa looked confused.
"So if you had not betrayed Zoroaster,
you would not
have been marked with the pentagram?"

"I would have been killed by the Karpans, just as Jamnaspa was,"
Kaldy replied. "I would have died defending
the prophet of God."

Louisa
turned to Claudia. "But the crucifixion of Christ
was not something you had the power to stop," she
said. "Even if you had tried to save him by agreeing to Pilate's suggestion, the crucifixion
had
to happen.
The sacrifice of Christ on the cross was pre-ordained."

Claudia
shook her head, not looking at Louisa as she replied. "I
will
not debate theology with you," she said
softly.

"Louisa," Kaldy said, "had I not led the Turanians
down to the fire chamber, would that have meant that they
would not have killed the prophet?"

Louisa thought for a moment. "No, not necessarily," she replied at last. "They could have waited until he came back
up through the passageway."

"Precisely.The murder of Dzardrusha and the crucifixion
of Jesus were not events which we could have prevented. But
the point is that
we did not try!
Virtue does not rest in
the victory over evil. It rests in the struggle against it."

Claudia sat down wearily on the cold stones. "And so
because we turned from selflessness to selfishness, we were cursed with this plague."

"Yes," Kaldy agreed. "When the full moon rises we become
the embodiments of Angra Mainyu, the embodiments of uncontrollable appetite and violence, creatures of murderous, irrational lust. And when we see the sign of Angra Mainyu on the face of another fallen priest..."

"Or priestess," Claudia said softly, sadly.

"...then the curse drives us to create another like
ourselves. And thus the cycle of death spins on through the ages."

Claudia turned and faced Kaldy. "So how can we die, Janos? You said that we could die whenever we want to. Well,
I
want to die.
I
have wanted to die for longer than my mind allows me to remember. So tell me what
I
must to in order to
die."

Janos sidled over to her and took her hands in his. Gazing deeply into her eyes, he said, "All we need do is
that which we should have done in the first place."

She frowned. "Janos, Zoroaster has been dust for thirty
centuries. The crucifixion was two thousand years ago. Are we supposed to try to save them now?"

"This has nothing to do with Dzardrusha or Jesus,
Claudia," he replied. "Remember the words of the formula of faith. We must conquer the evil within and battle the evil without."

She did not speak immediately as she struggled to
understand. Then her eyes widened and she shook her head.
"No, Janos, no. I can't. I wouldn't know how to begin."

"Janos," Blasko asked, "what are you saying?"

Kaldy looked at his old friend, his keeper, his victim, and he smiled. "Blasko, in all the years you have known me, never once have you asked me what it is like when the change
comes upon me."

The old man shook his head. "I did not want to know,
Janos."

"But now you shall. You know that there is pain, great
pain, horrible, unbearable pain as my body is wrenched and torn and twisted by the spirit of the wolf."

"Yes, that I know from your screams, Janos."

"And you know that my human mind is submerged beneath the bestial fury of the monster."

"Yes. You, Janos Kaldy the man, you cease to be."

He shook his head slowly. "No, Blasko, no. I am still
there, my mind is still there, buried in the darkness, fleeing from itself, unable to face the horror of the dark
side of my own being. For me to confront myself when the moon is full would be to invite a madness, a torture, an
agony the depth of which no human tongue can describe." He looked again at Claudia. "But that is what we must do,
Claudia. We must conquer the evil within."

She shook her head again, shuddering at the very idea of her human mind alive in the body of the monster. "I cannot."

"You must, I must." He paused. "And if we can, then we must battle the evil without."

Claudia looked at him, and a cold smile floated upon
her lips. "You mean...?"

"Yes," he said. "We cannot allow the divine judgment which has been visited upon us to become a mad
human judgment upon innocent people. We are not innocent,
Claudia, you and I; but you, my old companion, you have killed without the power of the beast, you have killed consciously,
knowingly, for your own purposes and your own needs. You even more than I must do battle with the dark power, if only because you have served it with such devotion."

No one spoke as Claudia thought long and hard. Then she nodded with sad and sorrowful acceptance.
"So be
it,
Janos. So be it."

Kaldy rose to his feet and addressed them all. "Soon it
will be night, the night of the full moon. The guards will
follow their standing orders, and will come to bind me and tie wolfsbane to my chains. Claudia, you must make the guards give you the key to my cell
,
and after they have
left, you, Louisa, must bind her with the plant as well and
keep the key. When the change comes upon us, we must fight to keep our minds intact and in control; and if we can,
then, Louisa, you must release us both."