Son of the Dragon

by Victor T Foia

  Marissa glided toward him. As she approached, the candlelight shone on her face, revealing the white wimple she wore under her cowl.

  “Do you mind I call you that?” Vlad’s timidity made his voice sound tinny, and he cringed at the thought it might break. “The abbot said you’re no one’s grandmother, but I thought...

  Marissa laughed softly and brushed his cheek with her hand. “Father Joseph isn’t the ogre he’d like everyone to think he is.”

  Her touch sent a reassuring wave through Vlad’s body and his breathing eased. Yet, in the stillness of the vestibule, he feared she could hear the beating of his heart. He wanted so much to come across as a self-possessed, seasoned soldier: a man simply searching for clues to his next encounter with danger. “Did the abbot send word to you about me?”

  “I felt your presence before he said anything.” Her voice trembled. “Theodore promised I would.”

  Sensing Oma’s weakness had a further calming effect on him. She touched his other cheek and he kissed her hand. “Our time’s limited, child, so we need to talk quickly.” A forced note of self-confidence rang in her tone. Vlad knew she was struggling to rein in her feelings as well. “Come, stand so I can see you.”

  He did, and found himself a few inches taller than she. Oma appeared younger than he’d imagined. Although creased around her mouth and eyes, her skin was smooth over her cheekbones and had a satiny sheen. When he looked in her eyes, Opa’s words came to him: “woman of emerald eyes.”

  “Did I say child? Why, you’re a grown man.” Oma sounded pleased. “There is a chair hidden somewhere in the corner.” She pointed to the back of the vestibule. “I’m afraid if I kneel on these cold stones, I won’t get up again.”

  Vlad brought the chair and helped her sit. He knelt beside her.

  “I was told you inherited your mother’s looks. She gave you the Hohenstaufen bones: strong jaw, straight nose, high forehead. Their haughtiness too, I can see. But you have my eyes, and your grandfather’s hair.” She passed her fingers though Vlad’s locks. “Wavy, black, silky... you’ll laugh to know the only keepsake I wish I had all these years was a lock of your grandfather’s hair.”

  “Wouldn’t that be considered a sin for a nun?”

  She smiled, mischievous. “People underestimate God’s power of forgiveness.”

  “Then He’ll forgive you for keeping this,” Vlad said. He took out his dagger, cut a ringlet of his hair, and held it out to her. “Maybe it’ll remind you of Opa.”

  Marissa’s face showed unexpected delight. After gazing at the tuft of hair for a few moments, she extracted a red string from inside her sleeve and tied it around the lock. “To ward off the evil eye,” she said in answer to Vlad’s inquiring look.

  “Evil in the monastery?” he said, skeptical.

  Her face became somber. “You’ll find evil wherever a human heart beats, Vlad. Inside me, inside you, inside the abbot... no one can destroy evil. It’s as eternal as God Who created it. The most one can hope is to keep it at bay. Some do it with steel and fire, others with prayer and fasting. Even with a red string.”

  “And amulets?” Vlad said. He held the medallion high by its leather thong, and it spun back and forth. “What can this do against evil?”

  Marissa watched the black disk in silence until it stopped spinning. When she spoke she sounded reluctant, as if she felt her words were best left unspoken. “It’ll ward off the evil of forgetfulness. Forgetting your past, your roots, your intended future...

  His intended future. To which she, alone, held the key. “If you meant the amulet to do that, why pray I’d never find it?”

  Marissa sighed and her lips quivered. “One can obey God’s command to carve an amulet and still pray that it be lost. Unlike your Opa, who cursed Him, I just begged God to abandon His plans for you.”

  Vlad felt an onrush of defiance. “And still, here I am: the Son of the Dragon, token of the fallen star in my hand. Following Theodore’s command. Nothing will prevent me from achieving... Vlad didn’t have a name for that which he imagined his destiny would bring. Glory? Distinction? “Greatness,” he blurted under the pressure of the moment. Too late, he realized what a poor choice that vain and empty word was.

  “Greatness,” Marisa said, and nodded, dejected. She raised Vlad’s chin and stared at him. “Yes, that’s what men like you crave. But think of those who’ve done great things before you: kings, generals, prophets. Loneliness... betrayal... rejection... violent death. That’s the price of greatness.”

  Vlad’s thoughts turned to some of the men he admired: Leonidas, Alcibiades, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Rostam. True, many suffered rejection, betrayal, and cruel deaths. So what of it? Would any one of them have traded his life for an ordinary one? He placed the medallion into Oma’s hand. “Will you deny me your knowledge just to protect me?”

  Marissa didn’t hesitate. “I would, if I thought I had a chance to turn you away from your foolish dream. What grandmother wouldn’t?” She traced the numbers on the reverse of the medallion with her finger while she held Vlad’s gaze. “But I can see it in your eyes it would do no good. Theodore’s words ring true, now that I’ve met you: ‘Men ruled by these numbers can’t be stopped once they set upon their course.’”

  Vlad didn’t want Oma to see just how eager he was for her answers. “I’ve made a connection between those numbers and some obvious events,” he said with studied indifference. “But where are they coming from?”

  Marissa pursed her lips, as if making one final effort to hold back what she knew. Then she sighed. “They’re your numbers from the Book of Life.”

  Yes. Finally a breakthrough in this mystery. “But why two of them?”

  “It’s unusual for someone to be given two numbers, indeed. Theodore said that each one of yours alone would’ve been enough to distinguish you from the multitude. Nine is given out rarely, and it designates great leaders. One, equally rare, is given to those who save their people from calamities. Together, nine and one mark you for a destiny beyond ordinary.”

  Vlad felt a warm glow envelop him. He took the medallion from her and turned it to the front side. “My destiny has something to do with this image, doesn’t it?” he said, and pointed at the dragon that towered over the prostrate lion. “Did Theodore tell you what?”

  Marissa’s face betrayed fatigue, and resignation. Poor Oma had hoped to talk Vlad out of his quest. He wanted to caress her hand, but unsure of his own emotional state, let his hand fall to the side.

  “He said... Theodore said all you need to know for now is written in Psalm 91.”

  “A psalm?” Vlad said, disbelieving, and felt needles of uncertainty stabbing at his newfound confidence. “That can’t possibly be all there is to it. I expected something related to events taking place in my time, not two thousand years ago.”

  “You have my Bible, don’t you?” Marissa held out her hand.

  Vlad reached behind him and brought out the book. Recognition passed over her face as she took the Bible in hand. She placed it on her knees, and opened it facing Vlad at the place it had split in the fall, near fourteen years before. “You haven’t read the psalm yet,” she said, reproachful. “Too eager to rush headlong in search of greatness.” Then she closed her eyes and began to recite.

  Vlad followed her by tracing the lines of the psalm with his index finger. At first, her words sounded meaningless to him: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High”... “He is my refuge and my fortress”... “He will cover you with his feathers.” Vlad’s heart ached from the banality of the ancient text. He’d come for knowledge and was leaving with a sermon.

  He was about to rise, driven by smoldering anger, when Oma said, “You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day.”

  The words hit him in the pit of his stomach, like the unexpected jab of a careless elbow in a crowd. Terror, night, arrow... the image of Akinci raiders in pursuit took shape in his mind and his heart began to race. Baffle
s seemed to fall off his ears and the voice to which he listened had changed in tone, pitch and timbre. He looked up at Oma, and though he could see her lips move, the voice he heard wasn’t hers, rather that of a being neither male nor female, neither young nor old; it rang authoritative, yet compassionate.

  “A thousand may fall at your left hand, ten thousand at your right hand, but death will not come near you.”

  A hammering started in his head, like that of a war drum.

  “You will observe with your eyes the punishment of the wicked.”

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “No harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.” The hammering intensified. “For He will command His angels to guard you in all your ways.”

  The voice paused, just as the crescendo of the drumbeat inside him reached a climax. Then it commanded, slow and deliberate, “You will tread upon the lion!”

  “Stop,” Vlad shouted, and his voice bounced off the vaulted ceiling, hurting his ears on the rebound. He found himself panting. Embarrassed at his outburst, he covered his face with his hands. Marissa took him in her arms.

  As minutes passed and the drumming in his head subsided, the words of the psalm drained from his mind, until only the last word he’d heard remained: “lion.” That moment, he had his answer. No, he didn’t know the lion’s identity, or when and where he’d find it. But he knew now he was born to tread upon the “lion” that menaced the world he lived in.

  “We both need rest now,” Marissa whispered, and stood, leaning on Vlad’s shoulder.

  He rose and offered her his arm. She took it, but instead of going for the door she turned to the nave.

  “I’ll go the way I came,” she said, in a tired voice.

  On his arm Oma felt heavy, despite her diminutive figure. Vlad wanted to thank her for what she’d done for him, but if she did it against her will, thanks wouldn’t be appropriate.

  Inside the nave she took a candlestick from the altar, and then shuffled to a side chapel. She felt along the wall and Vlad heard the click of a lever releasing a latch. “Your grandfather had this tunnel built for me before I took the veil. After the incident he became haunted by fear for my safety, and insisted I have an escape route, should the church be attacked by the Turks.” A narrow section of the wall swiveled and the chapel filled with a musty smell. “I started to use it after he died, to come pray at night by his tomb. Only the abbot knows of its existence.”

  She was already past the threshold to the tunnel when it occurred to Vlad he’d likely never see her again. He felt selfish for the way he’d used her, so indifferent to the frailty of an old and ill woman.

  She turned to close the opening behind her and gave a last, knowing look. “Don’t feel bad for me, Vlad. I was repaid in full for my troubles and worries on your behalf by the first word I heard you say. I only wish you’d called me that again and again.” She tugged at the moving wall, and it shut with a thud.

  That was the way he could have thanked her, Vlad realized. “Oma,” he called through the wall, putting all the warmth that welled in his breast into that one word. But in the dark, empty chapel, with no one else to hear it, the word wilted and died.

  Even before he was fully awake, Vlad became aware of a sense of deep loss. While his eyes remained closed, the loss seemed to be illusory, stemming from a sad dream he’d just had. He tried to hang on to the memory of the dream, fearing the reality of wakefulness. But it dissolved and vanished, even as he clung to it, tenacious. He opened his eyes to see Michael kneeling in front of an icon hanging on the wall. Then he knew the loss was real.

  “It’s Oma,” he said, bereft. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  Michael nodded, but didn’t turn to face Vlad.

  Vlad crossed himself and made a silent prayer for his grandmother’s soul. “It’s my fault,” he said, wondering how the death of someone he’d only met once, for a brief while, could bring so much pain. “I tired Oma with my questions last night.”

  “You only freed her up, Vlad,” Michael said. He rose and wiped his eyes with a kerchief. “Marissa has waited many years to do what had been ordained for her.”

  “She’d still be alive if I hadn’t come.”

  “Mother Superior said your oma died happy. When they found her this morning she was already cold, but had a smile on, as if she’d just received pleasant news.”

  Yes. The news that her grandson was a self-centered, unfeeling glory seeker.

  Glory... he wished he’d been more adept at explaining what he was after, not throw that vacuous word at her. But even now he couldn’t put into simple words what drove him so relentlessly toward his unknown destiny.

  “Marissa had a lock of your grandfather’s hair in hand,” Michael said, with a pained smile. “Perhaps seeing you brought back soothing memories to her last moments on earth.”

  It wasn’t Opa’s, Vlad wanted to shout. It was mine. As insignificant as Oma’s gesture might have appeared to anyone else, to Vlad it said she’d forgiven his selfish intrusion. This notion raised his spirits and he jumped to his feet, realizing Oma held something of him close to her heart as she crossed the threshold into the other world.

  Michael watched Vlad, inquiring, but silent.

  A child’s excited squeal came from the courtyard below, unexpected in a place like this. Vlad scraped the ice flowers on the windowpane with his thumbnail to see Gruya frolicking in the snow with Katharina.

  Michael joined Vlad at the window and said, “Once they washed and fed them, the nuns managed to get their story. It’s a hopeless one.” His face darkened. “Their suffering at the hands of the Albas was but a link in a horrific chain of miseries.”

  “It only makes the Albas more despicable for treating them like dogs,” Vlad said.

  “Elsa is the mother’s name,” Michael said. “Her husband, Thomas Siegel, was the alderman of the weaver’s guild in Kronstadt.”

  “Dead?”

  “Taken prisoner in a Turkish raid four years ago. She sold all they had to ransom him,” Michael said. “Poor, misguided creature, to think a woman could just walk from Transylvania to Edirne and search for her husband. That was her plan.”

  “Never even got to Nicopolis, I imagine,” Vlad said. “She was probably waylaid here, in Wallachia.” He felt ashamed for the state of lawlessness in his land that made such an outcome predictable.

  “Robed, raped, and left for dead, somewhere in Devil’s Belt.”

  “Then rescued by the Albas,” Vlad said, now grasping the overwhelming tragedy of these poor creatures. He felt anger choking him.

  “In truth, she’d have ended up worse had she managed to cross the Danube to the Turks’ side. There never was a chance of success for Elsa and Katharina.”

  “Can’t Father do something about Siegel’s release?” Vlad said. “He knows Sultan Murad.”

  “There were thousands of slaves taken by the Ottomans in that raid. You can’t expect your father to—”

  “But if Elsa and Katharina were sent onto our path, don’t you think their destiny is to be helped by us?”

  “There is nothing anyone can do, Vlad,” Michael said, distraught. “Once a person is swallowed up by the Empire, only a miracle would bring him out again.”

  “Gunther lived as a slave for forty years, and escaped on his own,” Vlad said, annoyed with Michael’s pessimism. “And that was no miracle.”

  “You can’t be sure about that.”

  “Well, then we should perhaps pray for a miracle.” Vlad left the room in a huff.

  Michael followed him into the courtyard.

  When Katharina saw Vlad she ran to him, eyes full of excitement. “Mutti says you are a real prince,” she said, breathless. “Is that true?”

  “That’s no way to greet someone, Katharina,” Elsa Siegel said in a tender tone. She was seated on the kitchen steps, wrapped in a blanket. “You say, ‘Good morning, Your Grace.’”

  “And what’s a real prince like, Katharina?” Vl
ad said, nearly intimidated by the girl’s piercing blue eyes.

  “Father used to tell me stories about princes before he... Katharina glanced at her mother as if seeking help with the sentence.

  Elsa stood and curtsied to Vlad. “I scold my Schmetterling, but it is I who’s forgotten her manners.”

  “I was only four when Papa got lost,” Katharina said, uninhibited by her mother’s scolding, “but I still remember his stories. Princes are strong and handsome. And they rescue people from danger.”

  So Papa “got lost.” Vlad was moved by the girl’s innocence. He exchanged a look with Michael and gathered his tutor had the same reaction. How long before her mother would have the courage to tell her the truth?

  “Katharina will be eight in a few weeks,” Elsa said, blinking back tears.

  “If you are a real prince, will you find Papa and bring him to me, please?” Katharina said, not releasing Vlad from her stare.

  The direct question took Vlad by surprise and he felt trapped. Michael shook his head, determined, and mouthed, “Don’t do it!” Yet Vlad saw on his face that saying that cost his mentor a great deal of pain.

  He looked down at Katharina and remarked how the hunger and cold had robbed her of the prettiness she once must’ve had. Her cheeks were hollow and covered with sores; the color of her lips was so pale they almost matched that of her sallow skin; and there was no luster to her blonde hair. Only the child’s eyes, oversized and bright, still held the promise that one day she’d again become the pretty butterfly her mother saw in her even now, the lively Schmetterling her father surely remembered, if he was still alive.

  “I’ll find your papa one day, Katharina, and send him to you and your Mutti,” Vlad said, and immediately regretted it. But how could he have answered otherwise? “Never make a promise you don’t intend to keep,” had been one of the earliest lessons Michael taught him. But Michael didn’t tell him what to do when a promise impossible to keep was equally impossible to eschew.