The Taker-Taker 1

by Alma Katsu

  Adair dropped to his knees on the floor. “And what about you? Are you also like me? Is that where you got your powers? Can you see everything?”

  The old man smiled mysteriously. “Am I the same as you? No, Adair, I have not put myself through the transformation that you have gone through.”

  “Why not? Don’t you wish to live forever?”

  He shook his head as though he was talking to a fool. “It’s not as simple as granting a wish. It might be beyond your comprehension. In any case, I am an old man and suffer the indignities of age. I would not wish to live through eternity in this form.”

  “If that is the case, then how do you propose to keep me now, old man? Now that you’ve made me strong, there will be no more beatings. God knows there will be no more violations. How can you hope to keep me in your company?”

  The old man walked to the staircase, looking archly over his shoulder. “Nothing has changed between us, Adair. Do you think I would have given you the sort of power that would set you free? I am still stronger. I can extinguish your life like the flame of a candle. I am the only vehicle of your undoing. Remember that.” The physic disappeared in the gloom.

  Adair remained on his knees, shaking, not knowing at that moment if he believed what the old man had told him, if he believed the strange power that surged through his limbs. He looked at the spot on his arm where he’d seen the physic at work with needles and ink, thinking he might have dreamed it, but no, there was a curious design there, of two circles dancing around each other. The design had a strange familiarity to it, but he couldn’t recall where he’d seen it.

  Maybe the physic was right: perhaps Adair was too stupid to grasp something this complex. But eternal life—it was the last thing he cared about, at the moment. He didn’t care if he lived or died. All he wanted was to convince the monk to carry out his plan, and it didn’t matter if he perished in the bargain.

  Adair found the monk praying by candlelight in the chapel. Standing in the doorway, he wondered if his seemingly supernatural condition would bar him from entering a sanctified place. If he tried to cross the threshold, would he be thrown back by angels and denied entry? After taking a deep breath, he slipped over the oak threshold with no ill effects. Apparently God had no domain over whatever creature he’d become.

  The monk saw Adair and rushed over, taking his arm and hurrying him to a dark corner. “Come away from the doors, where we might be seen together,” he said. “What’s the matter? You seem agitated.”

  “I am. I’ve learned something even more terrifying than what I have told you already, something about the physic that I didn’t know until last night.” Adair wondered if he was playing with fire. Still, he was convinced that he was clever enough to take down the physic without incriminating himself.

  “Worse than being a worshipper of Satan?”

  “He is—not human. He is now one of Satan’s creatures. He revealed himself to me, in all his evil. You have been trained by the church, you know of things not of this world—wicked creatures unleashed on poor mortals for Satan’s amusement and our torment. What is the worst you can imagine, Friar?”

  To his relief, Adair didn’t see skepticism in the monk’s round face. The cleric had gone pale and held his breath in fear, recalling perhaps the terrible stories he’d heard over the years, the unexplained deaths, the disappeared children.

  “He has made himself a demon, Friar. You cannot think what it is like to have such evil up close, at your throat, the stink of hell on his breath. The strength of Lucifer in his hands.”

  “A demon! I’ve heard of demons who walk among men, that they take many forms. But never, never has anyone confronted one and lived to speak of it.” The monk’s eyes bulged in his pale face and he drew away from Adair. “And yet, here you are, alive. By what miracle?”

  “He said he wasn’t ready to take me. He said he still needed me as a servant, the same as with Marguerite. He warned me not to flee, that there would be severe penalties if I tried to escape, now that I knew …” Adair didn’t have to pretend to flinch.

  “The devil!”

  “Yes. He may be the very devil himself.”

  “We must get you and Marguerite out of that house this instant! Your souls are in jeopardy, to say nothing of your lives.”

  “We can’t risk it, not before a plan is in place. Marguerite is safe enough. I have never seen him raise a hand to her. As for me—there is little more he could do to me that he hasn’t already done.”

  The monk drew in a breath. “My son, he can take your life.”

  “I would be one among many.”

  “You would risk your life to rid this village of such a fiend?” he asked.

  Adair flushed with hatred. “Gladly.”

  Tears welled in the cleric’s eyes. “Very well then, son, we will proceed. I will speak to the villagers—discreetly, I assure you—and see which can be counted on to move against the physic.” He rose to escort Adair to the door. “Keep watch on this building. When we are ready to act, I will tie a white cloth to the lantern post. Be patient until then, and be strong.”

  A week passed, then two. At times Adair wondered if the monk had lost heart and fled the village, too cowardly to stand up to the physic. Adair spent as much time as he could searching the keep for the seal the old man had used to authorize documents back at his estate. After the ceremony at the physic’s castle, it seemed to have vanished, though Adair knew the physic would not risk storing it where he wouldn’t be able to get his hands on it when needed. At night, once Marguerite had gone to sleep and the old man had slipped out on his nightly excursion, Adair went through every box, basket, and trunk, but did not find the heavy gold stamp.

  Just as Adair was afraid he’d not be able to contain his impatience any longer, the night came when the white cloth fluttered from the church’s lantern post.

  The cleric stood in the entrance to the abbey. He’d suffered since Adair had last seen him, and was feckless no more. His cheeks, once full as a squirrel’s, were now hollow. His eyes, guileless and clear the first time he and Adair had met, were clouded and sorrowful because of the knowledge he now possessed.

  “I have spoken to the men in the village and they are with us,” the cleric said, as he took Adair’s arm conspiratorially and drew him into the shadows of the vestibule.

  Adair tried to hide his glee. “What is your plan?”

  “We will gather tomorrow at midnight and march on the keep.”

  “No, no, not midnight,” Adair interrupted, laying a hand on the cleric’s arm. “To surprise the physic, it would be best to come at high noon. As with any fiend, the physic is active at night and sleeps during the day. Approach the keep by daylight for your best chance.”

  The cleric nodded, though the news seemed to trouble him. “Yes, I see. But what of the count’s patrol? Do we not risk being discovered in the light of day?”

  “The patrol never comes out to the keep. Unless an alarm is sounded, you have nothing to fear from the count’s guards.” This wasn’t strictly true. The guards had visited the keep during the day several times but for one reason only: to deliver a wench for the old man. Such deliveries were infrequent, however. The count had not sent a maid for some time, so the chance was greater, but … Adair figured the odds were still against it and the risk was not worth mentioning to the monk, who might use it as an excuse not to proceed.

  “Yes, yes …” The monk nodded, eyes glazed.

  He is slipping away from me, Adair thought. “And what do you propose to do with the old man, when you have captured him?”

  The cleric looked stricken. “It is not up to me to determine the man’s future …”

  “Yes, Father, it should be your duty as God’s representative. Remember what the Lord says about witches: you shall not suffer them to live.” He squeezed the man’s arm firmly as he spoke, as though pushing courage along the man’s veins.

  After a long moment, the cleric cast his eyes down. “The crowd �
�� I cannot vouchsafe that I will be able to control the crowd’s anger. After all, there is much hatred of the old physic …,” he said, his voice stiff with resignation.

  “That is right.” Adair nodded, coaxing. “You cannot be responsible for what happens. It is God’s will.” He had to stifle the wild laughter that bubbled up within him. The hated old man would finally get his due! It might be beyond Adair’s power alone to vanquish a man with the devil on his side, but surely the physic wouldn’t be able to fend off half the village.

  “I’ll need another day to inform the men of the change in plans, that we’ll go to the keep by daylight,” the cleric added.

  Adair nodded.

  “The day after tomorrow then, at noon.” The cleric gulped and crossed himself.

  A day. Adair had a day to find the seal, or risk having it discovered by the villagers. He returned to the keep, fending off panic. Where could the object be? Adair had searched every shelf, every drawer, gone through every item of the physic’s clothing, even going so far as to go through every trunk to be sure the seal hadn’t been hidden among them. Failure only compounded Adair’s despair and he saw all his plans fall apart, one after the other: he would never escape the physic, never live in the distant castle, never see his family or his beloved Katarina. He might as well be dead, he figured. So complete was his frustration that he might have asked the old man to end his existence out of pity, if his hatred for the physic were not so raw.

  The old man was at his desk when Adair returned from his secret appointment, glancing up when his manservant entered the room.

  “I will need to go to the village tomorrow, to get feed for the horses,” Adair said to the old man, and a split second later a thought, a possibility, bloomed in his mind.

  The old man drummed his fingers on the table. “Your errand must wait a day. I will make a poultice that you can take, to trade with the quartermaster for the oats …”

  “My apologies, but due to my inattentiveness, the grain stores are depleted. There has been no feed for several days, and the grass is too sparse to satisfy the horses for much longer. It cannot wait. With your permission, I will purchase only a small amount, enough to get the horses through this week, and meet with the quartermaster next week when you have had time to make your poultice.”

  Adair held his breath, waiting to see what the old man would do, for if he refused him, it would be hard to come up with another way, in a short amount of time, to trick him into revealing where he hid his money and valuables. The old man shook his head at his servant’s incompetence, then rose and went down the staircase. Adair knew better than to follow but listened with the attention of a hound, picking up every sound, every clue. Despite the thick timber floor, he heard digging, then the sound of something heavy being moved. The clink of coin, then the sound of movement again. Finally, the old man climbed back up the steps and threw a small deerskin pouch on the table. “Enough for the week. Make sure you get a fair bargain,” he grunted in warning.

  When the old man left for the night, Adair flew to the cellar. The filthy floor looked undisturbed and it was only after a careful search that Adair found the place where the old man had been working, along the wall, in a dank, mildewed spot littered with rat droppings. Dirt had been scraped away from one of the stones. Adair dropped to his knees and gripped the stone’s edges by his fingertips, pulling it out of the wall. In a small recess, he could just make out a burlap bundle, which he extracted and unrolled. There was a fat money bag and, wrapped in a square of velvet, the seal of the kingdom of his dreams.

  Adair took it all and pushed the stone back into place. Kneeling in the dirt, he was flush with success, happy to have found the seal, happy to have one victory over his oppressor after all the injustices that had befallen him.

  Adair should have killed his father rather than let him beat his mother or siblings.

  He should not have let himself be sold into slavery.

  He should have taken every chance to escape and never given up trying.

  He should kill the wicked count. He deserved death as an enemy of the Magyar people, and a heathen in league with an emissary of Satan.

  He should help Marguerite escape, take her to a kindly family or a convent, find someone to care for her.

  The way Adair viewed the situation, it was not a matter of stealing. The physic owed Adair his kingdom. And the physic would either give it to Adair, or die.

  On the appointed day, Adair watched the sun overhead as closely and covetously as a hawk eyes a field mouse. The cleric and his mob would be at the keep in an hour or two. The question for Adair was whether he should remain in place and bear witness to the physic’s undoing.

  It was tempting. To watch as the villagers dragged the old man from his filthy bed and into the sunlight, his face contorted with fear and surprise. To listen to his screams as they beat him to the ground, pummeled him with clubs, cut him to ribbons with scythes. To urge them on as they ransacked the keep, plundered his trunks, smashed the bottles and jars of precious ingredients to the floor and ground the contents underfoot, and then burned the unholy fortress to the earth.

  Even though he was in possession of the seal, Adair could hardly go riding off to the estate without knowing for sure that the physic wouldn’t come after him. But there was one good reason for disappearing before the mob arrived—what if the old man escaped death somehow? If the mob’s courage failed or the old man had given himself immortal powers as well (a possibility—the physic had never said he hadn’t, not outright), Adair might be implicated in the attack if he remained. There would be no denying it to the physic later if his alliance was discovered. It might be most prudent to preserve that last shadow of a doubt.

  He went up to Marguerite as she stood scrubbing potatoes in a bucket of water, took the potatoes from her hand, and started to lead her to the door. She resisted, earnest soul that she was, but Adair prevailed, and had her wait beside him as he saddled the old man’s aging charger. He would take Marguerite to safety in town. That way, she’d not be present during the melee. That would be best. He’d come back to see the outcome for himself.

  The sun was fading by the time Adair retraced his way to the keep. He took his time, letting the charger meander on a loose rein down unfamiliar paths through the woods: he wasn’t anxious to run into the party of villagers on their return, flush with excitement and bloodlust.

  Adair noticed a plume of black smoke on the horizon, but by the time he drew close to the keep, it had thinned to a miasma. He urged the horse on, through the envelope of wood smoke, until he came to the familiar clearing before the stone keep.

  The door was missing off its bolt and the ground in front was churned frightfully. The corral was knocked down and the second horse was missing. Adair slid off the old charger’s back and cautiously approached the open door, black and ominous as a skull missing an eye from its socket.

  Inside, streaks of soot ran up the walls as though clawing for escape. The ruin was as he’d imagined it: shards of glass and pottery underfoot everywhere; overturned cauldrons and pots and buckets; the desk broken into pieces. And all the recipes were gone, along with the old man’s remains. Unless … Adair’s blood ran cold instantly at the thought that perhaps the mob’s courage had failed. He began to sift through the rubble, lifting furniture, searching through clothing left on the floor and the few items left from the ransacked trunks. But he found nothing of the old man, not even an ear. Surely there’d be some remains—a telltale piece of bone, a charred skull—had the villagers been successful in bringing about his demise.

  Other, more frightening alternatives came to Adair: perhaps the physic had managed to escape to the woods or hide somewhere in the keep itself. After all, if there was a small vault behind a stone in the wall, who was to say there wasn’t a bigger hidden chamber? Or perhaps—more dangerous still—he had delivered himself away by means of a spell, or been spared by the dark master himself, moved to intervene on behalf of a faithful servant
.

  Panic rising in his throat, Adair ran down the stairs into the old man’s chamber. The scene below was even more horrific than upstairs. The air was thick still with black smoke—apparently the main fire had been set down here—and the room was completely empty, except for a smoldering bed of ash where the physic’s mattress and bedstead had been.

  But Adair could smell death hidden deep within the smoke and he went to the black pit of ash, crouched down, and raked his fingers through the remains. He found pieces of bone, slivers and nuggets, still hot to the touch. And finally, most of the skull, with a patch of charred flesh and long, wiry hair still attached in one spot.

  Adair stood and dusted the soot from his hands as best he could. He took his time in leaving the keep, looking one last time on the place of his five years of misery. It was a pity the stone walls could not have burned down, too. He kept nothing except the clothes on his back and, of course, the seal and a pouch of coin in his pocket. At length, he left through the gaping doorway, gathered up the charger’s reins, and headed east, to Romania.

  Adair was able to live on the physic’s estate for a good many years, though ownership did not pass directly to him as he’d hoped. When he arrived at the estate alone, without the physic, Adair presented himself to the caretaker, Lactu, and told him that the old man had died. The wife and son had been fabrications, Adair explained, a story to provide the physic with privacy for the true reason for his bachelorhood: his peculiar leanings. With no heir, the physic had left the estate to his faithful servant and companion, Adair said, and held out the seal for the caretaker to witness.

  The caretaker’s doubts were plain on his face, and he said the claim would have to be presented to the king of Romania. If Adair was not a blood descendant of the physic, the king had the right to decide the disposition of the property. The king’s decision took years but ultimately was not resolved in Adair’s favor. He was allowed to remain on the estate and to keep the family’s title, but the king took ownership of the lands.