Babette took a deep breath and raised the chalice to her lips. The water tasted cool and slightly bitter, but it was not unpleasant. Babette drained the chalice in a single long drink. A tingle like electricity coursed through her body, from her fingertips to her toes. She tried to gasp in pain but no sound escaped her.
She looked at Iosef in confusion and saw him vaguely, as if through a haze. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time. He was so beautiful, so graceful. The chalice dropped from her fingers and struck the stone with a clatter.
Babette reached out slowly and caressed Iosef’s face with her fingertips.
So very, very beautiful.
She leaned forward, mouth parted slightly. Their lips brushed and suddenly everything vanished into darkness.
* * * *
“Come, liebchen,” Babette heard Korbinian say, “it is time to wake up.”
Babette slowly opened her eyes and looked up at Korbinian. He smiled at her and kissed her tenderly.
“I have missed you,” he said.
“Where am I?” Babette asked, slowly sitting up.
She lay on an elegantly upholstered sofa, propped up by a mountain of soft pillows. Her clothes were gone. In their place she found herself clothed in a dressing gown of crimson silk.
Where have my clothes gone? Babette wondered as she swept back her auburn tresses.
“Don’t you know where you are?” Korbinian asked.
He spread his hands and indicated the room, which was dimly lit and furnished in dark wood and wallpaper. Babette looked around uncertainly. The place looked so familiar. Indeed, it smelled so familiar. Warm, rich, comforting. Like leather and aging paper.
Grandfather’s library!
Babette looked back at Korbinian and noticed for the first time that he was naked. Had he always been naked? Surely she would have noticed that!
“Why am I here?” Babette asked, slowly rising from the sofa.
Korbinian caught her by the arms and helped her up. As Babette stood, he pulled her against his chest and held her.
“Why would you not be here?” he asked. “This is your home. Where else would you be, liebchen?”
“I…” Babette said. Something was wrong. She was not supposed to be there, but she could not think of where else she would have been. “Georgia,” she finally said. “Why am I not in Georgia?”
Korbinian kissed her and laughed.
“Why would you be in Georgia?” he asked. “Surely you would rather be here with me.”
Babette rested her head against his chest and closed her eyes. He was so warm.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Only, I feel that I ought to be somewhere else. Somewhere…cold.”
“Somewhere cold?” Korbinian asked. “No, liebchen, that will not do. You are too beautiful to suffer in the cold.”
“I suppose,” Babette said.
She shook her head. The nagging thought would not leave her. Something was amiss.
“Stay, liebchen,” Korbinian said as he kissed her hair. “Stay here with me. Do not think of other places without me.”
“Yes,” Babette whispered.
But the thought was still there, lurking in her mind even as Korbinian held her in his arms. Finally, it became too much to bear, and she pulled away from him. Clutching the dressing gown about her, she turned in circles, looking in every direction for something that would make sense of all this.
“I am not supposed to be here!” she cried, turning back toward Korbinian.
Korbinian was gone. The room was empty, and she was alone.
“Korbinian!” Babette cried. “My love, come back to me!”
“Come back?” she heard him say from behind her. “But liebchen, I have never left you.”
Babette turned to face him. He stood in the doorway, holding a bundle of cloth in his arms. Babette felt dizzy as she recognized what he held.
The body of their child.
“No!” she cried. “No! Take it away!”
“Away?” Korbinian asked. “But, liebchen, this is our child—”
“Our child is dead!” Babette shouted. “Dead! I let him die!”
She fell to her knees and covered her face with her hands. She willed herself not to cry, but the tears came against her orders, stinging her cheeks and staining the silken gown.
“I let you both die!” she cried. “You’re both gone, and it is my fault!”
She did not see Korbinian approach, but suddenly he stood above her, still holding Alistair’s body in the mass of linen. He knelt before her and smiled as he always did when he looked at her.
“No, liebchen,” he said. “I will never leave you. And look!” He gently pulled back the edge of the blanket to reveal Alistair, alive and smiling. “Our son lives.”
The sight of Alistar made Babette sob all the more as years of loss and guilt flowed from her in a violent rush.
“How can this be?” she asked, even as she smiled and cried at the sight of her living child. “I saw him—”
“Did you see him die?” Korbinian asked.
“No,” Babette said. “But—”
“Did you see him buried?” came the next question.
“No,” Babette said again. “But surely—”
Korbinian shook his head, still smiling at her.
“You are wrong, liebchen,” he said. “Our child lives. It must be so.”
Babette clenched her eyes shut and gasped in a mixture of confusion and relief. Alistair alive? Was it possible? But there he was, right in front of her, just as she remembered him.
“Let me hold him,” she said, reaching out to take Alistair.
To her surprise, Korbinian turned away, keeping Alistair out of her grasp.
“No, liebchen,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” Babette demanded. “He is my son! He is alive! Let me hold him!”
Korbinian looked into her eyes and smiled.
“Soon,” he said. “But first you must wake up.”
“What?” Babette asked.
“Wake up.”
* * * *
Babette opened her eyes with a gasp and sat up in a single startled motion. Her lungs felt tired and empty, and for a moment she seemed to be choking on the very air she tried to breathe. The first few breaths were painful beyond measure. Her head swam, and she could make no sense of the shapes and sounds around her.
After what seemed ages, her senses returned to her. She was sitting in her bedroom in the castle of the Shashavani, clothed in a robe of thick brocade silk. She felt cold, yet warm. There was a pounding in her head that she could not explain.
Was she ill? She looked at her hands. Why did they appear so pale?
“Doctor Varanus?”
Babette looked toward the voice. It was Ekaterine. The woman sat in a chair by the bedside, a leather-bound book in her lap. Babette looked toward it. Through the haze of her vision, she could see the worn lettering on the cover perfectly. She looked at Ekaterine and saw the joy in the woman’s eyes, the pulsing of blood at her throat, the quickness of breath in her bosom.
Babette clutched her head and asked, “What has happened?”
Ekaterine rose and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“You are well,” she said. “You live.”
“How long have I been asleep?” Babette asked.
“Seven days,” Ekaterine said. “I am so very proud of you.”
“Proud?”
Ekaterine touched her cheek and looked into her eyes.
“You are Shashavani now,” she said. “Fully Shashavani, free from the shadow of death forever.”
Immortal? Babette’s heart leapt with excitement, though the sensation was unlike any she had felt before. Stronger yet softer. Suddenly she realized that she could no longer feel her own heart beating.
“Where is Lord Iosef?” Babette asked. She looked around the room but did not see him. For some reason, she had expected him to be there.
“He was here an hour ag
o,” Ekaterine said. “He has visited your bedside each day of your slumber to be sure that you are well. But I would not let him stay.”
“Why not?” Babette asked.
“This is no place for one such as he,” Ekaterine said. “Only those Shashavani who still walk in the shadow of death may hold this vigil. It is the law, pronounced by Shashava himself.”
Babette nodded in understanding and winced as her head and neck began to throb from the movement.
“I feel so weak,” she said, leaning against Ekaterine for support.
“Hush,” Ekaterine said. “You are tired and hungry.”
She drew a knife from inside her sleeve and made a small cut just below her wrist. It was a shallow wound, but it bled freely. The scent of blood assailed Babette’s nose, making her head spin all the more. All other perceptions faded into the haze that clouded her head until she smelled and saw only Ekaterine and the blood.
“Drink,” Ekaterine said, placing the wound against Babette’s lips.
The taste of blood was more delicious than anything Babette could remember. She drank desperately and felt her strength slowly return, drop-by-drop.
After a short while, Ekaterine pulled her arm away. Babette gasped for air and licked her lips, savoring the taste of the blood that had spilled on them. Ekaterine quickly bound her wrist in a strip of fabric, though Babette scarcely noticed. She felt more fatigued than ever, though at the same time a strange vigor coursed through her body.
“You must rest now,” Ekaterine said.
“But I have been resting,” Babette said, her voice weak. “For seven days.”
Ekaterine placed her hands on Babette’s shoulders and pushed her, gently but forcefully, back against the bed. She kissed Babette’s forehead and said:
“You were not resting. You were changing. Your body is exhausted. You must sleep now so that it can recover.”
Babette wanted to protest, but she found she could not. Indeed, she could scarcely move her lips to mumble anything, let alone a coherent complaint.
“Rest,” Ekaterine said. “I will watch over you.”
Babette tried to say something. She did not know what, only that she made the attempt. A moment later, the darkness took her again.
Alistair is alive, she thought, the last coherent thing she could remember before she slipped back into unconsciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After the initial shock, Varanus found it strangely easy to adapt to her new life. Varanus, not Babette, she decided soon after waking. She had never liked her Christian name, and now it seemed unnecessary to keep it. She was a new person, remade by the strange water in that luminescent grotto. She was Doctor Varanus. Varanus Shashavani. Varanus or nothing.
In one sense, little had changed. Most of her waking time was devoted to study, whether reading in the library, discourse with Iosef and the other scholars, or preparing a laboratory in the crypts for her experiments. She slept little. Indeed, as Iosef explained, sleep was now unnecessary: the Shashavani required but a few hours of rest and meditation to stave off the madness of fatigue. Her new nocturnal schedule was not at all unusual. Even before her transformation, she was used to staying awake at her desk through the night and into the sunrise.
But in other, very significant ways, life had changed completely. Sunlight was the most glaring. Her eyes, now incredibly sensitive, found the sun blinding. At even the barest touch of sunlight, her skin became red and angry. Within moments it began to boil. The burns healed quickly after escaping the light, but the experience was nothing less than dreadful. And for Varanus, used to taking regular rides in the afternoon, the transition to nighttime rides proved difficult.
The sharpness of her senses and her ever-increasing fitness were more subtle changes, but they still troubled her. It was months before she became used to hearing conversations a dozen feet away with perfect clarity. The slightest movement across a room caught her eye, and she found herself reading books at a distance when she ought to be reading the ones open before her. She was disturbed from her work by the slightest of sounds and smells. For weeks, even a change in the breeze was enough to distract her.
But the greatest change was blood. From that first night when she drank from Ekaterine, Varanus consumed little else. Other food was edible, indeed pleasant, for with her new senses she could discern each and every note of flavor in whatever she ate. But blood was so much easier than solid food. It was more convenient to consume, and her body absorbed it almost immediately. The mess of digestion was gone forever.
Though her first meal had come from Ekaterine, it was not to be a regular occurrence. The Shashavani did not feed from one another, whether “living”—as she and Iosef were—or “in the shadow”—like Ekaterine and Luka. There were servants in the castle whose primary purpose was to provide food, a task for which, Iosef told her, they were held in high regard. Their diet was carefully regulated to ensure both the heartiness and the flavor of their blood.
Meals were taken at one’s convenience, which for Varanus meant infrequently. But once a month, on the night of the full moon, the entire assembly of Shashavani gathered in the great hall to dine at Sophio’s table. It was a mandatory practice and though she tried, Varanus could not convince Iosef to let her avoid the obligation.
The place of honor was left empty to signify the missing Shashava, but Sophio as the custodian of the house sat at its right hand. Iosef sat beside her and Varanus beside him. The honor of the position was not lost on Varanus, but she still preferred the quiet of a solitary meal. From that vantage point, however, she was able to witness Sophio’s dining habits, which proved anything but civil and sometimes scarcely dignified.
The first such occurrence came about three months after Varanus’s induction. By then Varanus had fully weaned herself from solid foods and had become comfortable with the extraction of blood—carried out by the use of curious syringe-like devices of great antiquity that drew the blood from the donors in measured quantities and deposited it, still warm, in the goblets of the Shashavani. It was a process that fascinated Varanus, and indeed on that particular occasion, she felt inclined to ask about it.
“My lord,” she said to Iosef, in between drinks, “this contraption is incredible. It reminds me of Blundell’s device for the transfusing of blood, but these all seem too old to be copies.”
“Indeed,” Iosef said, “these were constructed almost a hundred years ago, and the design dates back centuries more. Konstantine is said to have created them before the Eleventh Century.”
“Remarkable,” Varanus said. “I can scarcely imagine how—”
She was interrupted by Sophio, who let out a loud sigh of displeasure and threw her freshly filled goblet over her shoulder, spilling blood across the floor. The chamber, which had been noisy with conversation, was suddenly silent. All eyes turned toward Sophio as the Shashavani watched her apprehensively.
“The flavor of this does not please me,” Sophio announced. She flicked her hand at the donor. “Take it away and bring me another.”
The donor’s face fell in embarrassment and shame. Such a public rejection was, Varanus surmised, both rare and greatly offensive. The steward quickly approached and ushered the poor man away with a few whispered reassurances that Varanus could only just make out.
“My lady,” the steward said, “what would please you?”
“Bring me the wine and rosemary,” Sophio said. “And a fresh goblet.”
The steward hesitated awkwardly for a few moments before clearing his throat and replying, “My lady, the only wine and rosemary at the moment is Giorgi. And you have already partaken of him for three days.”
Sophio looked at the steward impatiently.
“Meaning?” she demanded.
The steward hesitated again, this time unable to find any words.
“Meaning, my love,” Iosef said, leaning toward Sophio and placing his hand upon hers, “that he must rest before we may drink of him again.”
/> “What nonsense,” Sophio said.
“If you drink of him again, he will die,” Iosef said.
“And what of that?” Sophio asked.
Varanus saw Iosef’s jaw clench tightly in anger, but when he spoke, it was with a calm voice.
“And it will ruin the flavor,” he added.
These words seemed to make all the difference. Sophio laughed and waved the steward away.
“You are right, of course, my husband,” she said. “What a terrible waste that would be. How glad I am that you are here to remind me of these details.”
“Details?” Babette thought. A man’s life?
“Of course, my love,” Iosef said. He gently placed his goblet in Sophio’s hand. “Come, have some of mine.”
“You are too kind,” Sophio said, looking deeply into Iosef’s eyes. The adoring stare lingered on for nearly a minute, and it made Varanus feel extremely uncomfortable merely from the proximity. Finally, Sophio looked at the Shashavani, who all stared back at her in silence. “Come,” she said, “as you were.”
In an instant, the feasting and conversation resumed, like water released through an opened tap.
“What is this madness?” Varanus whispered to Iosef.
In reply, Iosef looked at her and slowly shook his head.
“What was that?” Sophio asked, halfheartedly glancing at Varanus.
Varanus froze and her breath caught. Of course, Sophio would hear her question. Varanus herself could have heard Sophio whisper thanks to her newly heightened hearing.
“Nothing, my love,” Iosef said. “My apprentice was just asking me about Konstantine.”
“Oh good,” Sophio said. She looked Varanus in the eyes and said, “Continue,” before turning away and engaging one of the scholars across the table in conversation.
Varanus fell silent and looked into her cup. It was as clear as day that Sophio was mad. How could Iosef not see it?
* * * *
There were more examples of Sophio’s madness that followed: forgetfulness, distraction, the changing of languages in mid-sentence seemingly without reason, and above all long hours spent staring off into nothing even when others were present. While Varanus had few direct interactions with Sophio at first, it seemed she could not look upon the great Queen of the Shashavani without at least some minor incident of such unusual behavior. Varanus often overheard Sophio speaking to Iosef of the great crusades she would soon send forth against their enemies—“enemies” meaning anyone from the Russians to the Persians to the Turks.
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