Son of the Dragon

by Victor T Foia

  “I must. The roof is leaking and—”

  “Hush,” Vlad said, panic rising in his breast. “Rest now. We’ll talk about the roof in the morning.” He pushed Dracul onto his back and covered him with the wolf fur. The bloody side of the hide, exposed to the frigid air and still warm with the residual heat of the carcass, began to steam.

  “Water,” Dracul moaned.

  Vlad washed his hands in the snow. Then he melted a snowball in his hands, letting water drops fall into his father’s mouth. A vicious wind had whipped up, sending icy needles flying in all directions. Mindful not to touch his father’s injured leg, Vlad snuggled close to him and pulled the wolf skin over both their heads.

  “Sorry I failed you, Father. I could’ve shot her but didn’t.”

  Dracul squeezed Vlad’s hand in silence.

  Dracul’s delirium continued late into the night. As the fever advanced, his ramblings became increasingly unintelligible. Vlad, desperate, softly recited a string of Paternosters, hoping to lull the king to sleep. Instead, he ended up slumbering himself. When the morning came, he found himself damp with sweat on his father’s side, and numb with cold on the other. The wolf skin had frozen in the shape of a tortoise shell over them.

  Low, menacing clouds flew overhead as he climbed the rocky wall. By the time he reached the top, his hands were stiff with cold. When he peeked over the top of the ledge, half expecting another wolf attack, he discovered the two horses standing nearby.

  “Timur! Gold Dust!” Vlad shouted, overtaken with joy. He scrambled onto the plateau and dashed to them. Both animals raised their heads and gave him reproachful stares. “I’ll feed you immediately, don’t you worry,” he said, rubbing their muzzles to get his hands warm. He hung the feedbags on the horses’ necks, and then began to rummage through the saddlebags for rope and twine.

  He spent the next half hour fashioning a rope harness and a handful of splints. When he threw the materials down the talus, the noise awoke Dracul, who peered at Vlad with bleary eyes from under the wolf’s fur.

  “I’m taking you to Satan’s Wrath,” Vlad said when he climbed back down to his father. “I think someone lives there in a hut, he’ll shelter you while I go for help.”

  “I told you, no one’s lived there for decades,” Dracul said, exasperated. “We’ll have to go down the river to Argesh Court.”

  Vlad knew the old capital town was too far for his father’s condition. The flesh around the broken bone might become corrupt and his father could lose his leg. Or worse. “I’ll have Timur hoist you out of here in no time. But first, I need to bind your leg—”

  “I’ve got no plan to see that place ever again. I’ll wait here until you bring help.”

  Pain made Dracul cantankerous. But he wasn’t doing the planning just now. “If we get going, we might miss the rain,” Vlad said. He placed the splints on the outside of Dracul’s right boot and secured them with twine. Then Vlad helped him rise and walk to the rock wall, where he strapped him into the harness. He took the free end of the rope and climbed to the ledge again, then called down, “Lean against the rock until Timur starts to pull and takes out the slack.”

  “Satan’s Wrath is cursed,” Dracul said.

  “Cursed or not, I can’t think of another place around here to keep you warm and safe,” Vlad said, annoyed with his father’s obstinacy. He didn’t himself relish another encounter with the Old Man of the Forest, but it was preferable to the alternatives.

  It was late afternoon by the time they reached the glade at Satan’s Wrath. As soon as they stopped in front of the church ruins, Dracul slipped to the ground with a moan and lay still on his back, looking dazed. Vlad had a hard time dragging his inert body to the door of the hut. When he knocked, no answer came from the inside. He shoved the door open with his shoulder, and discovered the room dark and empty. He stepped inside and put his hand on the hearth. Cold.

  Doubt crept in. Had his encounter with the blind monk been a dream? He looked around and recognized the cot, the tree-stump, the clay pitcher. No, he’d definitely been here; Vlad did see the Old Man of the Forest. And Vlad did hear his voice, he did!

  With the excitement of the hunt and his father’s injury, Vlad had pushed the memory out of his mind. Now that he was back here, that memory could no longer be repressed. He glanced at the door and saw the knothole through which the blind man had spoken to him. What could he call the things he’d heard? Pronouncements of a holy man? Ramblings of a deranged mind? Well, it didn’t matter one way or another. But somewhere deep in his consciousness, the thought that it mattered, somehow, persisted.

  He rolled his father onto the cot, where Dracul remained silent, glassy eyes staring at the ceiling. Vlad covered him with a horse blanket and left the room to search for firewood. The moment he stepped onto the path behind the hut, he noticed footprints in the mud. Two people had walked about the place not long ago, perhaps that very morning. From the length of the steps he could tell they were men, probably young.

  He followed the footprints into the forest. The steps disappeared when a soft groundcover of dead leaves replaced the mud. Undaunted, he pushed on, listening.

  His eyes fell on a fresh mound of dirt rising in a clearing at his left. He approached the place uneasy, guessing it was a grave. Indeed, a cross fashioned from two old boards had been planted at one end of the mound. Someone had carved on it crude letters in Church Slavonic, and left fresh wood chips scattered on the ground:

  May the soul of God’s humble slave Theodore find the peace he long sought

  6849 – 6949

  His blind eyes have seen the glory of the Lord

  There went their would-be host. Theodore must’ve been buried by Orthodox monks, the only people in the countryside who knew Slavonic. It was also they who favored the ancient Byzantine calendar over the Latin one. The monks were likely passing through on their way to one of the monastic cells in the forest, and found Theodore dead. So the Old Man of the Forest did live to be a hundred, after all. On this point, Father was wrong. Vlad calculated the Latin calendar equivalent of the dates: 1341 to 1441. Born twelve years before Opa.

  Back at the hut with an armful of dry branches, Vlad found Dracul alert, moaning in pain. “I’ll try to rustle up some vegetables and make you a soup,” Vlad said, placing a cold compress on Dracul’s forehead. “You were right. There’s no one here to give us hospitality.” More he couldn’t share with his father, who’d be indignant to know Vlad had visited this place two nights before.

  Dracul tried to say something but his parched lips produced only a hiss. The room warmed up quickly and he fell asleep. Vlad began searching the place for cooking utensils. He located a large iron pot in one corner that would do for boiling water, though it was rusty, dented, and laced with cobwebs.

  Something packed in a gunnysack lay inside it. The bundle turned out to contain a large Bible, bound in leather and bark. The book’s covers were reinforced at the corners with copper elbows, turned green with age. Vlad upended the pot to sit on, and a cloth pouch fell out of it. He sat on the makeshift stool, Bible on his knees, and extracted from the pouch a round medallion that dangled from a crude leather thong.

  The object appeared to be an ornament of no value, a disk of polished black stone with carvings on both sides. Yet someone, perhaps Theodore, thought it needed to be hidden. Vlad enjoyed the heft of the stone and its satiny feel as he examined the carvings.

  The front side showed in bas-relief a dragon standing on its hind legs over a prostrate lion. On the reverse, carved numbers formed a circle along the edge of the disk: 9, 1, 9, 1, 9, 1, in an endless succession. Vlad’s realization was instant, and it brought back Theodore’s sepulchral voice: “Ninety-one years I’ve been waiting for you, Son of the Dragon.”

  He felt a shiver pass through him. “Come take the amulet, your promised token of the fallen star,” the old man had said. Could this medallion be what Theodore meant?

  On impulse, he hung the ornament around
his neck and concealed it under his shirt. Then he threw more wood into the fire, and sat down to examine the Bible, all thought of making soup forgotten.

  He flipped to the front page, where people usually recorded major events in their lives, and as expected found notes scribbled there. The surprise was that two different hands had made them.

  The top left corner of the page had writing in a masculine hand. The sprawling letters showed determination, while a splatter of black ink droplets betrayed impatience. The Latin the man used was as deficient as one would expect from a soldier or a nobleman, yet Vlad had no trouble reading it.

  This Bible is my gift to the woman of emerald eyes who has filled my heart with fire.

  Saint George’s Feast of Reburial, Year of Our Lord 1394

  King Justus Basarab

  King Justus? Opa? With a thrill, Vlad realized this was the first time he’d seen his grandfather’s writing.

  The lines that followed were in green ink and the letters were dainty, with no splatter marks.

  Eternal thanks be to God, the Creator of the world, and the blessings of our Savior upon My King Justus. His progeny, a man-child, was born today in good health.

  Easter Sunday, Year of Our Lord 1398

  Marissa

  Father’s birthday, recorded by Oma in her Bible. The same Bible his father mentioned only two days ago. Vlad’s wonderment grew as he remembered this Bible had disappeared at his own birth. How did it fall into Theodore’s hands?

  With the old man dead now, that was an answer he might never discover. He closed the book and was about to put it back into the gunnysack when he noticed some damage to the back cover and spine. The copper elbows were staved in, and the spine’s bark was cracked. The Bible had split in a fall, with the pieces barely held together by the waxed thread of the binding. He opened the book at the place it had broken. Above the lettering introducing Psalm 91, he discovered another note, also in his oma’s handwriting. When he read it, his heart leaped, and he almost let the Bible slip out of his hand.

  The blessings of our Savior upon the memory of King Justus, may his soul rest in peace. The Seed of his Seed, the Son of the Dragon, was born two months ago on the 1st day, the 9th month of the year of our Lord, 1428.

  How could Oma, dead thirty-three years before according to Father, write these words in her Bible after Vlad’s birth? Yet there was no doubt; the writing next to Psalm 91 was by the same hand as the one on the front page. Vlad glanced over his shoulder, troubled, as if expecting to see a ghost. What about “the Son of the Dragon”? The same words used by Theodore. What was the meaning of that?

  The original signature had been blotted out with a heavy smudge of green ink and replaced with “Ilaria.” Did Oma assume a new name, and then hid away from everyone? Vlad recalled his father’s discomfort when he asked him about Oma’s death. Father likely knew she hadn’t died thirty-three years ago. Why did he lie about it?

  Thinking perhaps he ought to keep some things to himself, Vlad wrapped the book in its sack and hid it inside Timur’s feedbag. Then he placed the wolf skin on the ground next to the cot and stretched out on it, his mind roiling with questions. Prophecy? Destiny? Would Oma know what it all had to do with Vlad?

  It was only when the morning light began to show through the knotholes in the door that he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 6: Call of the Prophecy

  February 1442

  Leaning on his oldest son’s shoulder with one hand and on a walking stick with the other, Dracul shuffled into the armory and sat with a groan next to Michael. As soon as Marcus was free of his burden, he bounded for the door. Michael read on his face a look that said, “I’m glad it isn’t I who’s in trouble.”

  The banging of weapons clashing echoed off the vaulted ceiling, as the two combatants at the far end of the hall rained blows on each other.

  “I’m worried about Vlad, Michael,” Dracul said. “Nobody’s seen him for a couple of weeks, so when Marcus told me he’s down here engaged in swordplay, I came straightaway.”

  Michael stared at Dracul and was taken aback to see how aged and bedraggled he looked. “It’s been four months since you broke your leg, and it’s still bothering you, Ulfer?” He always used Dracul’s teenage nickname when they were alone. In such moments Dracul wasn’t the king, and Michael wasn’t his chancellor. They were simply two friends who’d spent the better part of their lives in each other’s company.

  “In this cold weather it hurts all the time I walk.” Dracul puckered his lips, and rubbed his leg below the knee. “But if I don’t do it every day, the damned thing gets stiffer than Beelzebub’s dick at a nuns’ procession.”

  “Climbing down forty steps and then sitting in this frigid hall won’t do you any good, Ulfer.”

  “Neither will wondering what Vlad’s been up to and not being able to confront him. Since he’s decided to make the monastery practically his home, I can never get hold of him.”

  “Why, I’d think that makes it easier to find him. Vlad’s forever in Father Gunther’s cell.” The moment Michael said that, he knew he’d just handed Dracul a victim at which to direct his anger.

  “Oh, don’t remind me of that old fool,” Dracul said, shaking his fist. “Sometimes I wish Gunther had stayed the hell a slave in Anatolia, or wherever he escaped from. Instead he had to come here and fill Vlad’s head with all sorts of strange notions. I didn’t object when I heard he taught Vlad Arabic and Turkish. Those might actually come in handy one day. But now I hear he’s making Vlad skip Lorenzo’s Latin lessons so he can teach him Persian. What the fuck for?”

  Hearing this amused Michael. Dracul was clearly late on catching up with his son’s interests. Michael knew Vlad could read Persian soon after Gunther arrived in Targoviste, five years before. But telling Dracul such a thing would be throwing grease on the fire. “Ah, so it’s Vlad’s skipping classes that’s got you worried now,” Michael said, and nodded with mock understanding. Dracul believed two years of schooling was all a prince of Basarab needed. So, after eight years as Abbot Lorenzo’s pupil, Vlad’s truancy couldn’t be the reason for his worries.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Michael,” Dracul growled. “I’m in too much pain to put up with your sarcasm.”

  “All right, all right, Ulfer.” Michael suppressed a smile that might infuriate Dracul. “Like you, I also know Vlad’s been roaming the countryside lately. But is that a reason for concern? He’s probably chasing girls, carousing... that’s what boys do at his age.”

  Dracul shook his head, vehement. “I’d be happy with that. But I’m told Vlad and his squire, that grandson of yours... He pointed with his chin at the dueling couple. “What’s his name?”

  “Gruya.”

  “Yes, my Vlad and your Gruya are scouring the villages around Targoviste, looking for old folks and priests to ask them all kinds of questions.”

  This was news to Michael. “About?”

  Dracul bent over his leg again and started to rub it. “About that stupid old prophecy,” he finally said, reluctant. “Also about Mother.”

  Michael knew this day would come, yet to see it here unsettled him.

  “Did he ask you about those things?” Dracul said.

  “No. He’s been rather cold with me since last fall.” Michael was being truthful. But what he didn’t tell Dracul was that since the bison hunt the past October, Vlad hadn’t spoken to him at all. He met all attempts at conversation on Michael’s part with a stony silence. Now Michael began to understand why. “Did something happen when the two of you were away on the hunt? Did you... tell him something?”

  Dracul fell quiet, and began to crack his knuckles. “He stumbled upon those damn ruins,” he finally said. “You know, Satan’s Wrath.”

  “You didn’t tell me that happened.” Michael couldn’t hide his surprise at the mention of that place and put more reproach into his reply than he intended.

  Dracul looked flustered and threw Michael a near hostile look. Then
he made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “There was nothing to tell. Vlad just got lost in the woods and came upon that church.”

  “And you think that was an accident?”

  “What else?” Dracul shouted. “You know I don’t believe in fate, destiny, or any other stupid thing like that.” As he spoke, he avoided Michael’s eyes.

  Michael knew Dracul was lying, that he didn’t want to believe in such things, but, like everyone else, he did. “What did you tell him about Satan’s Wrath, Ulfer?”

  Dracul watched Vlad and Gruya, pensive, as the youths fought with explosive energy, hammering each other with practice weapons. Now and then, to surprise one another, they’d change weapons by snatching a fresh one from the hands of an attendant. They switched with quick moves from sword, to ax, to spear, never slowing their attacks and parries.

  “I told him about the incident. I had to,” Dracul said at last. “He was apt to ask people what that burned-out church was all about. Eventually he’d come upon someone who’d tell him.”

  “So Vlad knows I, too, kept knowledge of the incident from him,” Michael said, relieved at not having this omission dangle over him any longer. But with relief came resentment against Dracul, for keeping him in the dark all this time. “I wish you’d told me about this four months ago. Instead you let me wonder why Vlad has cut me out of his life.”

  “I didn’t know he’d done that,” Dracul said, morose.

  “What about the prophecy? Did you mention that?”

  “It’s the last thing I’d bring up with Vlad.”

  “You must’ve said something, Ulfer, if he’s that worked up about it.”

  Dracul scratched his head. “I might’ve let a word slip... I don’t remember.”

  “Whether you did or not, the prophecy will come across his path one day, just like Satan’s Wrath did. I think it’s better—”

  “That’s why I must stop him from poking about, so he won’t uncover something.”