Touch of Darkness (22 page)

As Rurik handed back the filled-out form, Bela smiled hugely and he saw the flash of a gold tooth.

Bela added, "At least—nothing will hurt
you
up there."

Oddly enough, she spoke only to Tasya.

Chapter 22

An hour later Rurik and Tasya found themselves driving up a steep, winding grade. When Kurik glanced back, he could see Capraru appearing and disappearing behind the curves.

The clutch was loose, the five-speed transmission ground every time he shifted gears, and the driver's seat was on the wrong side. But Rurik had driven mountain roads all his life and this one held no surprises for him.

So why did Tasya flinch every time they rounded a corner? Had he scared her crossing Germany to Vienna? He'd been driving like a maniac, yeah, but he'd been driving a Mercedes, the road was the Autobahn, and he hadn't slipped a tire.

He could snap at her—that's what his father did when his mother grabbed at the dashboard—or he
could distract her. So he said, "It looks as though Ruyshvania has recovered from the dictator well."

"Yes." Her teeth snapped when the car hit a pothole.

"Sorry," he said. "Bela was right. The road is lousy. But the town is thriving—you'd think they Could fix it."

"Not if they're afraid to come up here."

They came around a corner, and there was a fork in the road. One way, to the right, was paved. The other way was graded gravel. Both looked rough and ill-used.

He started to take the paved way.

But Tasya said, "Take the fork to the left."

He slowed almost to a crawl. "Bela said—"

"Take the left."

"The other way's paved."

"I'm looking at the map. This way is shorter."

He turned to look at her.

She wanted to be anywhere but here. Because he'd scared her to death last night with his promises of loyalty and demands for trust?

Or did she sense something about this place? A malevolence similar to the coldness she'd sensed at the burial mound?

"Okay, we'll do it your way." He rested his hand On her knee.

She hesitated, then put her hand over his. "Yes. Please. Let's do it my way."

Maybe she was beginning to soften toward him, after all. Putting the car in gear, he took the left.

To his surprise, she was right. They traveled ten miles of bad road before they rounded a corner . . . and drove through the gate to the Convent of St. Maria.

He parked, and they got out. The convent was old and handsome, and should have had his full attention.

But the view! He'd lived his life in the Cascades in Washington. In his travels as a pilot and an archaeologist, he'd been awed by many a breathtaking spectacle.

But the mountains of Ruyshvania felt . . . ancient. The peaks alternated light and shadow. They whis-pered of treachery and devotion. And in the distance, another mountain clawed at the skyline, and another, and another, until the pale blue faded into the horizon.

When he could pull his gaze away from the vista, he saw the same clashes of soft and hard on this mountain. Tempestuous outcroppings of stone punched through the billowing, emerald grass. Here and there, cliffs broke the conifer groves into halves. Dense underbrush covered the rugged mountain with green, and beneath it he could see the stiff branches and long thorns that repelled invaders.

He turned to face the convent.

Stone by stone, the walls had been constructed, and stonecutters had created filigrees and gargoyles. High atop the cloister, crosses probed the clear blue skies. The chapel was old, the oldest, tiniest building on the grounds, with small, stained-glass windows and a beautiful door carved with the figures of saints. Just as the mountain was primal, the convent breathed holiness.

This place held contradictions, and hid secrets. He knew that without a doubt.

A tiny woman dressed in black and white stepped out of the cloister.
                               

Sister Maria Helvig.

A pair of Coke-bottle-thick glasses enlarged her faded blue eyes and pale lashes. Her wimple wrapped around her chin, and crepey, finely wrinkled skin draped over the stiff edge. A smile lit her face, and she hurried toward Tasya, hands outstretched.

Tasya shied from her, a movement so quick, only he recognized it as reluctance. Then she smiled and accepted the nun's welcome.

Sister Maria Helvig held Tasya's hands, kissed them with enthusiasm and, in heavily accented English, said, "I've been waiting for you to come!"

He stood, arms crossed, staring at the nun. She
came toward him, hands outstretched—and he put his hands behind his back, and he bowed from the' waist. "I am honored to meet you, Sister."

Sister Maria Helvig stopped short. She smiled. "Of course. I should have recognized you! He told me, about you."

"Who told you?" Rurik asked sharply.

Sister Maria Helvig pointed toward the skies.
"He
did."

Rurik's face softened. He smiled and, like a kinder-gartner in a Catholic school, looked at his feet. "Did He tell you how this would turn out?"

"He doesn't know. But He hopes that you make the right decisions."

Rurik looked up, and he wasn't smiling. "I hope so, too."

Sister Maria Helvig etched a cross in the air over his head. "I get so lonely here since the other sisters died. I'm so glad you came to visit. ... Do you have the key?"

Tasya stared at the good sister. "Do we have the key? To what?"

"I'm sorry." The sister looked confused. "They said someone could come for the icon." Both Rurik and Tasya stiffened and stared.

"The icon? You know where the icon is?"

"No, but it's here. The legend says it is."

"What legend?"

Sister Maria Helvig tucked her hands into her sleeves. "Almost a thousand years ago, a great king from the west received a tribute from a conquered warlord. The gift gave the bearer power—or so the warlord said. But the warlord hated his conqueror, and it was a cruel trick. For the gift was a holy object, a picture of the Virgin and her son, and if a man possessed the icon and possessed no good in his heart, bad luck would follow him."

Rurik's heart began to pound as he listened. This was the place. He knew it.

Sister Maria Helvig continued. "The warlord withered and died, laughing at the trick he'd played on his liege, and soon the king's might failed him. He was helpless against his enemies—and he had no friends. He sent it here for safekeeping. And so we've held the icon ever since."

"What does it look like?" Rurik asked. "I don't know. I've never seen it." She smiled sweetly.

"Where do you keep it?" Tasya asked.

"I don't know. No one does."

"So you don't know if you have the icon?" Rurik hid his frustration beneath logic.

Sister Maria Helvig laughed, a light, tinkling laugh, and one that didn't fit her plump frame. "Of course we have it. Don't we, Sisters?" She turned to the side and stared fixedly at the door of the church.

Rurik also turned, expecting to see ... someone. More than one someone. Not no one. Not empty air. Sister Maria Helvig nodded as if the invisible sis-ters had agreed with her. "Where else would This is the holiest place in Ruyshvarua, perhaps in the whole empire."
it
be?

"Empire?" Rurik rubbed his forehead.

"I think she means the Holy Roman Empire," Tasya said.

"Of course. Come, let me show you." Sister Maria Helvig might look old, but she walked like a much younger woman, and straight uphill.

Rurik and Tasya hurried to follow her up the nar- row path. It cut through a forest grove, and when they stepped out into the sunshine, they found them- selves facing a cliff that rose above them and plunged below them, cutting the mountain in two—or per- haps uniting two peaks into one.

As if she hadn't a care in the world, Sister Maria Helvig walked out onto the narrow path that sliced across a cliff.

Tasya stopped at the precipice. She peered over the edge. The drop was a thousand feet straight down onto sharp-toothed boulders. She stepped back. "Rurik, I don't mind heights. I like to fly. You know that."

He grinned at her stiff back. "I do know that." "I'd take my ultralight anywhere." She pointed up,

then down. "But one step wrong on that cliff, and I won't fly—I'll plunge."

"You're right."

"But what am I supposed to do when an elderly nun just strolls out there? Tell her I'm afraid?"

"She's very sweet. I'm sure she'd understand." Rurik didn't have to wait to know what Tasya would say—and do.

"Don't be an asshole." Tasya took her first step across the cliff.

Rurik followed. "I can't help it. It's in my nature. My mom says so."

The path looked as if it had been cut by God's finger through the rocks, and once upon a time, it had been smooth and straight. Years of freezing and thawing, heavy rains, and piles of snow had changed the path, fraying it like an aging ribbon. The rock crumbled beneath their feet, and here and there gullies cut the ground away completely, and they had to jump to the next level.

Ahead of them, Sister Maria Helvig leaped like a mountain goat from perch to perch, scrambling ahead and calling back, "Hurry! As slow as you are, we'll be stuck there after dark."

"There where?" Rurik asked.

Tasya didn't answer. She just leaped across the next chasm, and froze when a layer of rocks tumbled down the mountain behind her. Pressing her back
against the cliff, she looked at Rurik. "Can you make it?"

He leaped, and landed pressed against her. "Don't worry about me. If I have to, I
can
fly." He leaned on her, body to body, and kissed her. "Don't be afraid," he whispered. "After all we've been through, I don't think our fate is to plunge to our deaths."

Tasya clutched her hands in his shirt, her blue eyes warm as she held him. "Perhaps God doesn't like a smart-ass."

"If God doesn't like me, it's for a better reason than that." He took her hand. "Come on. I'll lead you." He thought it was a mark of how discomfited she was that she let him. Each time they came to a place where the path had sloughed away, he jumped, then held her hand while she jumped, and he laughed at himself for feeling so strong and protective when he knew very well, if left on her own, she would make it across without harm.

They reached the other side to find Sister Maria Helvig standing, staring at the view.

It was spectacular. This part of the mountain faced a different vista, one that stretched for miles in three directions. It overlooked the juncture of two rivers, the joining of two roads, and a series of hills that diminished until they touched the horizon.

"I had no idea this country was so beautiful," Rurik said.

Sister Maria Helvig smiled. "This spot is the first place in Ruyshvania deemed to be holy. But it was the pagans who worshipped here." She gestured up the hill, and there it was—an altar stone of carved granite, eight feet wide and four feet deep, balanced on squat pillars that held the monument up out of the earth and presented it to the skies.

Rurik recognized the stone. It was related to the menhirs and standing stones that dotted Europe and Great Britain, stones placed four thousand years ago and more in miracles of engineering by primitive man.

"The Church came to Ruyshvania very early," Sister Maria Helvig told them, "at least by the third century, and no effort of theirs could dislodge the stone. So they took the other half of the mountain as their own. There has always been a house sacred to our Lord located on the other half of the mountain, while this place silently worships nature, and together we've lived in harmony."

"No wonder the pagans decided this place was holy," Rurik said.

"That's only half the reason." Sister Maria Helvig took his sleeve—only his sleeve, not his arm—and led him to a rocky outcropping marked by the blasted and burned trunk of a great old tree.

In the middle of the mound of rocks, he saw a hole, black and impenetrable.

Tasya hadn't followed them, and he called to her, "Look. A cave!"