This Dark Endeavour (with Bonus Material) (12 page)

“—or just daydream about the latest Paris fashions.”

“Polidori said the tree is extremely high.”

“Rather like the one I rescued you from a few years ago?”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” I lied, fighting hard not to smile.

“Yes you do! The great elm in the east pasture? I can see by your face you remember!”

I remembered it exactly. Like me, Elizabeth was a keen climber of trees, and we had both gone very high. But when I looked down, I was paralyzed with fear. Elizabeth reassured me, and bullied me safely down to the ground.

“Oh, that!” I said with a dismissive wave. “I was only eleven.”

“So was I. You needed me then, and you need me now. You won’t get Henry up the tree anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Henry? Come, Victor, he’s no adventurer.”

“He’s very practical,” I said.

Elizabeth sniffed. “A pair of your trousers should do nicely. Some breeches and a tunic of some sort.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” I said. “I’ll bring some to your room.”

“Thank you.” She looked about the cell. “I am amazed you could concentrate in this place.”

“I was absorbed in my work.”

“Dr. Murnau seems very learned,” she said. “I wonder sometimes—”

“If we are being foolish in our quest?” I said.

She nodded. “His knowledge seems so modern, and ours is ancient and—”

“Do you worry it is sinful?” I asked.

She took a breath. “No,” she said firmly. “God is the Creator, and anything on this earth is here by His permission. I cannot think He minds if we use His creations—only how. For good or ill. What we seek is for good, so I will not worry about it.”

I wondered if she believed herself or merely wanted to.

“I felt the power of that book.” I said. “I cannot deny it.”

“Let us leave this place,” she said, “and get a little rest before tonight.”

Fitful starlight was our only guide as we left the chateau on foot. It was near midnight. Clouds streamed across the sky, driven by
an icy northerly. We skirted the village of Bellerive and climbed up through Alpine meadows toward the Sturmwald, a swath of deep blackness against the horizon.

Resting for a moment, we looked back and saw the lake and the city glimmering below us. Far away a church bell tolled one in the morning. We hurried, and before long reached the forest’s edge and found the place where Elizabeth and Henry had hidden our gear.

“There will be a storm,” Henry said with a shiver. Overhead, branches swayed with the wind.

I lit a lantern. It was most strange to see Elizabeth in my clothes. I was used to her in flowing dresses. My breeches, cinched tight around her waist, made me aware of her hips for the first time. And I was aware too of the tightness of the tunic across her chest. Far from making her seem more boyish, my clothes made her young womanhood all the more obvious. She had knotted her long auburn hair into a single braid.

“I do not enjoy the breeches,” she said to me. “They are tight on my thighs. But it is quite wonderful to feel so light, after so many layers.” She giggled as she gave a graceful pirouette. “No wonder you men manage the affairs of the world. It is far less tiring in lighter clothes!” She poked me in the chest. “I know your secret now.”

“Ha,” I said awkwardly. “Here.” I handed her a furred cloak, and passed another to Henry before putting on my own.

“The stars will soon be gone,” said Henry, peering out at the cloudy sky above the lake.

We each carried a rucksack and shouldered a coil of knotted rope. We lit two more lanterns.

I looked once more at Polidori’s map. “This way,” I said, venturing into the Sturmwald on a narrow path.

Among the tall trees, what little starlight remained was all but blocked. Though we each held a lantern, we could see no more than a few feet before us. We staggered on uphill. Sheathed in my belt was a dagger taken from our armoury. Having it made me feel safer.

The sound of wind was building, and all around us in the undergrowth I heard animal noises. A distant pair of eyes flashed in the glare of our lanterns, and then was gone. They were not small eyes.

“Victor,” Henry said tightly, “there is an animal.”

“I saw it too,” said Elizabeth, and added hopefully, “perhaps a deer.”

“It’s long gone,” I said. “Nothing will come near the light.”

I said no more, but I sensed that the three of us were not alone. Some other presence kept pace with us, travelling on padded feet, its eyes capable of parting the night as easily as a curtain.

The trees grew taller. The wind moaned. The path narrowed, then seemed to disappear altogether. I paused to look again at the map.

“We should have reached a clearing by now,” I muttered.

“We’re lost, then,” said Henry.

“These lanterns are useless,” I said. “I feel trapped in their glare.”

I also felt vulnerable. Everything could see me, and I could see nothing. I envied the animals their dark vision. From my pocket I took the vial I had mixed earlier.

“Is that Polidori’s potion?” said Henry uneasily.

“The vision of the wolf,” I said, setting down my lantern. I pulled out the stopper, tilted my head, and tapped the vial. A thick drop welled out and hit my cheek. I tried again, and this time the liquid hit me squarely in the eye. I fought the urge to blink it away, and moved to my other eye. The next drop hit home.

“Is it working?” Elizabeth asked.

“It stings,” I said, and then suddenly the stinging became a searing pain. Instinctively I clenched my eyes shut. My fists flew up to scrub at them. What if I’d made the potion improperly? What if I were blinded? Fear broke free in me.

“Get me the water flask, Henry!” I cried.

“Here, here!” I heard him shout.

“I cannot see!” I bellowed.

“Give me the flask!” I heard Elizabeth tell him, and I felt her firm hand on my arm. “Stay still, Victor! Tip your head back. I will douse your eyes. Open them wide!”

I opened them wide—and abruptly the stinging stopped.

“Wait!” I said, and roughly pulled away from her. I blinked and stared about me.

The forest seemed eerily illuminated, the trunks painted silver, the earth beneath my feet glowing. Between the trees, amid the undergrowth, I caught sight of tiny animals, shrews and moles, going about their nighttime hunting. Swarms of newly hatched mosquitoes scudded like clouds above the grass. From the base of a tree, a mouse tentatively lifted its head from its nest—and higher up, an owl’s head swivelled, listening, predatory.

“Victor,” Elizabeth was saying, “Victor, are you all right?”

I realized I had not spoken a word for several seconds, had been looking all about me, drinking in the night with my eyes.

“Vision of the wolf,” I murmured. “It works.
It works!”

I turned toward Elizabeth, and her lantern’s light sent a piercing pain through my eyes.

“It is too bright for me,” I said, whirling away.

“Give me some,” said Elizabeth, setting down her lantern.

“It’s very painful at first,” I warned her.

“I want the vision too!”

“Very well. Come close.” I tipped her head back—and her lovely pale throat seemed to flash in the night. I tapped a drop into each of her hazel eyes.

“Ah!” she cried out, her hands flying to her face, just as mine had. “Water! Please, Victor, please!”

“No,” I said, and held her firmly as she struggled against me, whimpering. Then she opened her eyes and grew still. She drew away from me.

“I see you as though it were merely twilight,” she said.

“Yes.”

For a moment we just stared at each other with our wolf eyes. She looked different somehow. Perhaps it was the fur of her collar around her throat, but she was like some lithe animal.

“Henry,” I said, shielding my face from his lantern, “will you take some?”

“I will not,” he replied, and I could almost smell his fear as he beheld us warily, as though we were somehow changed.

“Put out the lanterns, then,” Elizabeth told him. Was her voice lower, almost hoarse, or was I imagining?

“I think it wise to keep mine lit,” Henry said. “It will keep any animals at bay.”

“Very well,” I muttered, though I had no fear of other animals now. “Walk behind, so we are not blinded.”

“There is the clearing,” said Elizabeth, pointing.

Before, we might have walked right past it, but now it was obvious. I hurried through the trees and undergrowth and emerged before a vast heap of bleached bones.

I tilted my head to one side, trying to make sense of it. The hair lifted on the back of my neck. Elizabeth crouched beside me, breathing quietly. A moment later Henry’s lantern light blazed off the bones, and he gave a cry. It was hard to tell what animals the bones came from, since most were so splintered and broken.

“What kind of creature could have done this?” Henry gasped.

My eyes saw some larger bones. Instinctively I sniffed. A rabbit? A wild dog? I could not tell.

“They are mostly very small,” said Elizabeth decisively.

I gave a low growl as one of the bones twitched—and had a terrible image of the entire pile assembling itself into some monstrous spectre that would consume us. But almost at once I could see several small animals moving among the bones, feeding on the last of their meat and marrow.

Elizabeth chuckled softly, looking up into the glowering sky.

“Birds,” she said.
“They
have made this heap. Don’t you remember your father telling us about the Lammergeier? How it drops its prey onto rocks to break the bones so it can more easily get at the marrow?”

“I must have missed that lesson,” said Henry. “What is a Lammergeier?”

“Bearded vulture,” I murmured. “The locals call them tree griffins. They’re quite large.”

“Ah, excellent,” said Henry. “This adventure grows more enjoyable by the second.”

“Which way now?” Elizabeth asked me. A heat came off her that I found strangely distracting.

I pulled out my map. “From here there is a trail that should take us right to the tree.”

She was already walking with a hunched intensity. I followed.

“Wait for me, please,” said Henry. “This doesn’t look like a path!”

“It’s just overgrown,” I said gruffly. With my wolf’s eyes I could see it like a silvery river running deeper into the forest.

I loped behind Elizabeth, scarcely aware of the steep climb.

“You’re going too quickly,” I heard Henry say. “I’ll lose you in the darkness!”

Reluctantly I slowed down. The smells of the forest were keener somehow, and I caught myself swinging my head from side to side, tasting the air, peering among the trees. My earlier feeling of being followed was more intense and—

There.
A distant pair of eyes met my own as we kept pace through the Sturmwald. Perhaps it was a wolf. I was not afraid. Somehow I felt we were kin right now, aprowl in the night.

Elizabeth found the tree. On the immense trunk the X mark was still faintly visible. I looked up. The first branches were very high, maybe over fifty feet. We set down our gear at the base. I took the light rope, which I had weighted at one end as a hurling line.

Standing back from the trunk, I heaved it toward the branches. The line paid out perfectly from its coil, but then
fell back. Again I threw, with all my might. I squinted, trying to follow its ascent, but not even my wolf eyes could penetrate the high gloom of the tree.

My line was still paying out.

“I think you’ve done it!” said Elizabeth.

“There is the weighted end!” Henry cried.

Exactly as I’d hoped, it had looped over a branch and was pulling the rope up even as it fell earthward. It hit the ground at our feet.

We tied the light line to a stouter climbing rope, and fed it up and over the branch and back to earth.

“It’s a good sixty feet,” said Henry as we tied the rope’s end securely around the trunk. I gave it a good tug and then jumped up onto it. It held firm.

“Henry, will you climb?” I asked him.

“I would, normally, yes, if it weren’t for my intense fear of heights.”

“I never knew you had a fear of heights.”

Queasily he looked up into the tree. “Oh, yes.”

“It will inspire you! Think of the poetry you will write!”

“Ah. That is what imagination is for,” he said. “So I do not have to have unpleasant experiences.”

I glanced at Elizabeth. She smiled at me in a most self-satisfied way.

“Henry,” I said. “I am disappointed.”

“Victor, do not force him,” said Elizabeth. “It’s just as well to have someone on the ground in case something happens to us in the tree.”

“I’ll watch over you. From here,” said Henry.

“Excellent plan,” I said. “There may be bone-crunching predators to fend off. I’ll go first.”

I removed my cloak. Despite the wind, I was too hot, as though my own body were clad in fur. I began my climb, the knots in the rope giving good purchase for my hands and feet. I felt an unusual energy in my limbs, and before I knew it, I was at the branch—and a good thick one it was—and hauling myself onto it. I shuffled over toward the trunk to wait for Elizabeth.

Watching her climb, I was filled with admiration. She showed no sign of hesitation or fear and was scarcely out of breath as I helped her up onto the branch. As she panted softly, I felt a most powerful and savage pounding through my veins, and wondered if she too felt the same strange keening. I wanted to grab her by the hand and disappear into the forest. I was a wolf and she was my she-wolf, and the night belonged to us.

I tore my eyes from her and began to climb for the summit. Among the big limbs grew smaller ones that got in our way, and stabbed at my flesh. My hands were soon sticky with sap, my hair matted with needles and insects.

“How much higher?” Elizabeth asked, just below me.

“I feel the breeze,” I said. “We must be close.”

Then I spied, not far above my head, a thick wall of sticks and dried grasses built out from the trunk. I pointed it out to Elizabeth.

“A nest,” she whispered.

It was a marvel of engineering: a huge cone shape, three feet deep, and at least six across at its top. I’d once seen a
grand eagle’s nest on a sheer rock face of the Salève Mountain. This nest was bigger—and it blocked our way to the tree’s summit.