Thirst No. 2 (43 page)

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) have to wonder if it is older than I imagined. The surrounding stones appear ancient. I remember Dante's remark, that this spot used to shelter the Oracle of Venus.

Eventually I detect a red glow ahead. At the same time the temperature increases sharply.

Putting out my torch, I stop Marie and question her.

"Lord Landulf performs sacrifices down there?" I ask.

"Yes."

"What kind?"

"All kinds."

I shake her. "Does he kill humans? Torture them?"

"Yes. Yes."

"Why?"

She weeps. "I don't know why."

"Then why do you stay here? Are you not a Christian?"

She trembles beneath my gaze. "If I do not serve, I will be sacrificed."

"Is that the law?"

"Yes. Please let me go."

"Not until I am finished with you. Is there a place from where we can watch these sacrifices? And not be detected?"

She glances in the direction of the red glow. It is as if the light of hell beckons us. I smell burnt flesh again, and it has the odor of fresh meat. Marie is having trouble breathing.

"There is a passageway off to the side and above," she whispers. "But it is not all stone."

"What do you mean?"

"It is a metal grill, set in the ceiling. If they look up, they will see us."

"Why should they look up?"

"The eyes of my lord are everywhere!"

"Shh. Don't call him your lord. He is a perverted human." I turn toward the red glow. "He will die this very night." I grab her by the neck again. "Come, you will see."

The passageway Marie speaks of comes well before we reach the cavern. I feel and hear the hot tension in the cavern, the sound of many people whispering among themselves, the moans of a few unfortunates, the faint clash of metal. Even before I see, I know Landulf has brought his devotees as well as his soldiers to this accursed hole. I have to wonder if they're not all Satan worshippers.

Marie leads me into a tunnel where we have to get down on our hands and knees and crawl. The way is hot and soon I am drenched with sweat. But below our hands and knees the stone finally turns to wire mesh. We have reached the grills from which we can peer down at what is to be.

The ceremony is about to begin.

We are directly above the altar. It is circular, surrounded on all sides by rows of pews that lead up and back one hundred feet. There are approximately six hundred people present. Each person wears a red robe, except for a few soldiers at the doors, who have on metal breast plates and helmets. The altar is black and polished; it appears to be made of marble. Inlaid is a silver pentagram. The five tips of the stars dissect the room into five sections. Landulf sits on the floor with his wife. He is the only one wearing a black robe, and I can't help but notice the small silver knife resting in his lap.

Candles surround the altar. They are black and very tall, but what is most remarkable is

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) that they burn with purple flames. The sober light spills over the marble and the silent participants like a glow from an unearthed volcano. The tension in the air is palpable and it is not something I would wish to touch. I sense that Landulf strives for tension in his rites.

Landulf stands and walks to the center of the pentagram.

He raises his hand with the knife.

The group begins to sing, and for a moment I am bewildered. For it sounds to me as if they are singing the Catholic Mass in Latin. But then I realize they have started at the end, and are working their way toward the beginning, moving verse by verse through the litany.

And the knife Landulf holds—the handle is shaped like a crucifix, yet he grasps it by the blade, upside down.

Everything they are doing is backward.

Landulf’s grip is tight on his blade. Blood runs down his arm as his worshippers sing, but he doesn't seem to mind. In all of this, the most amazing thing is that their voices are quite beautiful. They remind me of Dante, who never went to sleep without reciting the Mass.

Yet their motives are clearly the opposite of Dante's. He implored God for forgiveness for sins he had never committed. These creatures implore another power to accept their sins and reward them for them.

After forty minutes the twisted mass ends. A wooden cross is brought out by soldiers and laid in the center of the pentagram. Clad in a white robe, a bound female is carried out next. Her mouth is tied, she cannot cry out. But I see it is one of the girls I thought I had saved. That must mean the other two did not escape either. The girl is spread out on the cross but her white robe is left on. Finally the material stuffed in her mouth is removed and she cries out weakly. Landulf stands over her like the Grim Reaper, or worse. He has exchanged his knife for a small hammer and a bunch of nails. His intention is painfully obvious.

He is going to crucify the young woman.

I cannot watch this. I cannot let it happen.

But I have to watch. And I know I can do nothing.

Landulf holds nails and hammer up for all to see. So far the group has been fairly sedate, but now they leap to their feet and start screaming and jeering. I cannot tell if they are experiencing pain or pleasure. It seems a perverse mixture of both. Landulf kneels beside the girl and the soldiers who hold her down as the noise of the group reaches a frenzy. The very air is now vibrating. I find myself panting hard, on the verge of vomiting. I am a vampire who has killed thousands, yet I cannot bear that they should do this
thing
to such innocence, and enjoy it, and still remain human. It doesn't seem as if God should allow it.

I have to remind myself that God allowed it long ago.

Landulf begins to hammer in the nails.

The blood flows over the silver pentagram.

The girl's screams rend my soul.

Then I cry out, and the group falls instantly silent.

Plump, frightened Marie has stabbed a knife in my lower back. Put it in deep, cut a few arteries and important nerves. My blood seeps over the wire mesh and spills onto the altar below. Directly on to Landulf s face. He stares up and hungrily licks it as it drops—rain from hell. There is poison on the tip of Marie's blade; it mingles with the drugs already racking my system and causes havoc with my reflexes. Straining to pull it out, I feel my

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wound being licked by this docile servant girl. She has been told something about my blood, and thinks it will grant her immortality and great powers. She is like a giant insect sticking a needle in my vital organs. But apparently she takes the feeding ritual too far.

Landulf suddenly shouts at her.

"It is for me!" he yells.

I am in such agony. Without wishing it, my weight and Marie's weight sag onto the wire mesh. It breaks. We fall like creatures cast down from heaven. Marie lands on her head and her skull explodes in a gray mass. I land on my back and the knife rams so deeply into me that it pokes through my liver and out my front. I have crashed beside the half-crucified woman, and Landulf steps over her to get to me. His face is smeared with blood, yet incredibly he appears sad, as if he wished it could have ended another way. I feel I have reached the end. My strength ebbs rapidly; I cannot get the knife out of my back, so that I may heal. The tortured girl screams at me as if I were a demon. Her mind is shattered. On the cold black altar our blood mingles and flows over the silver star as the crowd cheers. All this had been entertainment to them. Landulf puts a foot on my bloody hair and stares down at me.

"How do you feel, Sita?" he asks with feeling.

I cough blood. "Wonderful."

"You have come to where I always wanted you to be."

I try to roll on to my side, still trying for the blade.

He steps on my free arm with his other foot.

"I am happy for you," I gasp.

He grins slowly. "You are very beautiful, your body, your spirit. This agony is unnecessary. Join me, I will remove the knife and you will be better."

The pain is unbearable. "What do I have to do to join you?"

He presses hard on my arm, grinding the bone into the floor.

"A small thing," he replies. "Just finish nailing these stakes in this young woman you foolishly tried to save."

I think about it for a moment.

A long moment considering my situation.

"My lord," I say. "Go to hell."

He laughs and raises his foot and puts it over my face.

Darkness comes. It is especially dark.

13

When I come to, I feel as if I am being crucified. There is pain in my arms and chest, and I can hardly breathe. Opening my eyes, I find myself chained in a cell, deep in a black dungeon. My arms are strung above me, spread out like the wings of a bird, pinned to a dripping stone wall with locks similar to the ones I saw on the cage. This metal is a special alloy that I am unable to break, at least in my present condition. I struggle with the binds and only end up exhausting myself further.

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) Naturally, I can still see in the dark. From head to foot, I am covered with blood, but I see that it is not my blood, but that of the girl they were sacrificing.

The knife has been removed from my spine and that wound has healed. But there is no relief for me.

Crucifixion brings death by slow suffocation, and the position of my arms and legs mimics that of the Roman style of execution. My feet are also bound to the wall, but they are slightly above the floor so that all the pressure of the metal anklets is on my calf bones.

Remnants of Landulf s poisons continue to percolate in my system. I have to wonder if he siphoned off large amounts of my blood while I was unconscious.

Yet I do not think so.

How long I have been hanging there, I do not know. But steadily my pain grows so great that I begin to cry quietly to myself. Yes, even I, ancient Sita, who has faced the trials of four thousand years of life and survived, feel as if I have at last been defeated. Each breath is an exercise in cruel labor; the air burns my chest as it is forced in, and each time I exhale, I wonder if I will have the strength to squeeze in another lungful. My cries turn to feeble screams, then moans that reverberate deep in my soul, like the solemn laminations of the dammed already sealed in hell. I feel I have been forced beneath the earth, into a place of unceasing punishment. Landulf s face swims in my mind and I wonder if I see a vision of Satan.

Yet in my suffering, on the verge of final unconsciousness, something remarkable happens. My mind begins to clear, and I remember Alanda and Suzama, Seymour and the child. I see the stars and recall how I floated high above the Earth, and swore to do everything I could to protect my mother world. I am five thousand years old, not four thousand. I am from the future and I have returned in time to defeat Landulf. And I will defeat him, I tell myself. He will come for me, I remember he did before. I just have to hang on a little while longer.

I remember other things as well.

The Spear of Longinus.

I remember it from twentieth century Europe.

In Austria, in the year 1927, in the capital city of Vienna, I saw Richard Wagner's opera
Parsival,
which portrayed the adventures of King Arthur's knights in search of the Holy Grail, in a mythological setting. Historians claimed at that time that there was no historical basis for the events in the opera. Still, Richard Wagner's masterpiece was very moving, the powerful music, the tragic plot of how the knights struggled against the evil Klingsor, who obstructed them at every step from behind the scenes. Most of all, I was intrigued by Wagner's use of the Spear of Longinus—which I had seen in
my
past—as a magic wand in the hands of the evil Klingsor.

It made me realize,
then,
that Klingsor might have been Landulf.

There could be historical accuracy in the opera, after all.

After leaving the theater, I researched Wagner's source material and read Wolfram von Eschenbach's
Parsival,
upon which the opera was based. I was intrigued to see that the spear played an even more central role in the actual tale, and was stunned to team that Eschenbach had lived eleven generations after the time of Arthur and Parsival, and yet had managed to write a thrilling story even though he was supposedly an illiterate imbecile.

From what could be gleaned from the old texts, it seemed that Eschenbach had simply

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) cognized—out of the thin air—the mystical tale.

Even then, in the twentieth century in Austria, that fact had made me wonder if perhaps Eschenbach's story was symbolic of deeper truths. Because by the twentieth century, history had all but forgotten Landulf. Yet even Eschenbach, a wandering Homer of little reputation, a
minnesinger,
had named him the most evil man who had ever lived. Who knew better than I why Eschenbach should condemn the duke so? Chilled by my own memories, I became convinced that Klingsor was indeed Landulf.