Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  Claudia laughed bitterly and looked away. "You are an idealist, Madam."

  "No, I am a Christian," she shot back. "But Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu or...or...or anything else, the basic moral teaching is always the same. One must accept one’s own death rather than allow the innocent to perish!"

  "I suggest you reserve your sermons for your husband," she said wearily. "I have no need of them."

  "My husband?! That weak, hopeless creature?" Louisa grunted with disgust.

  "It is good that you have no affection for him," Claudia said. "Schlacht plans to kill him."

  Louisa was silent for a few moments, and then said, "Then it is justice, is it not? A minister of God who puts his own survival above his duty to righteousness deserves to be consumed by the evil thing he serves!"

  Claudia and Louisa were too busy arguing with each other to notice Janos Kaldy frown and stop the drawing movement of his fingers as he heard Louisa’s words. Blasko saw, however, and watched his friend closely. Something, the old Gypsy realized, was amiss.

  "My goodness!" Claudia observed, her voice laced with sarcasm. "Aren’t you the little saint!"

  "All I am is an honest woman." Louisa shouted back. "If the choice were mine to make, I would choose death before I would choose murder!"

  "Well," Claudia said casually, "you will probably have the opportunity to make that choice. Helmuth has decided to send you off to one of the camps." Louisa blanched, and her lips began to tremble, but the angry fire in her eyes did not fade. "You could probably talk him out of it, of course, by representing yourself to him as a loyal German who has finally seen the error of her ways." She smiled. "You would probably make a very convincing Nazi, Louisa."

  "Never!" she screamed. "The Lord Jesus Christ died for me! Am I now to cling to my life by denying the truth which gives meaning to my life?!"

  Kaldy’s head snapped up and he stared off into the distance, his face suffused with astonishment and shock and pain. Blasko leaned over and placed his hand on Kaldy’s shoulder. "Janos? Is something wrong?" Kaldy did not reply. His already pale and wan face lost what color it had, and his body began to tremble.

  "And how do you know what Helmuth intends to do with Gottfried and me?" Louisa asked angrily. "Are you a psychic as well as a murderess?"

  "Not at all," Claudia replied calmly. "He and I have, shall we say, become intimate."

  This took a few moments to register. "What?!"

  "Yes, just before I came down here earlier, just before he left for the concentration camp at Hunyad. He is enough of a gentleman..."

  "A gentleman! Helmuth?!"

  "...to engage in conversation with a woman after the completion of the act. It was then that he detailed his plans. You, my dear, will be given to the gas chamber, and your husband will serve as food for Helmuth’s werewolves."

  "I don’t believe you!"

  She shrugged. "As you wish."

  "And why in God’s name would you submit to Helmuth’s advances? I have seen the way you look at him. You hate him!"

  "I need him," she replied. "All he is really concerned with is creating more werewolves. I must learn how to kill werewolves, how to kill myself, and for that I need research facilities, and for this I need him."

  "So you are a whore as well!"

  Claudia laughed humorlessly. "Am I to be offended by your insults, Louisa? I have spent two thousand years in a permanent living hell, and now I am to be upset by your insults?!"

  "A living hell! If you ever die, God will damn you to hell!" she screamed.

  Claudia shook her head. "There is no God, you poor, foolish woman. You heard what Janos said. I was a priestess of the mysteries of Ahura Mazda, a follower of Zoroaster. Did Ahura Mazda save me from this fate? Did your God save your precious Jesus from His death at the hands of my husband? Right now the Germans are murdering Jews by the millions. Where is their God now?"

  "Perhaps God is testing the Jews, perhaps he will bring some good out of all this madness, perhaps their suffering will...I don’t know!" she shouted. "I can’t see into the mind of God! And the Scripture tells us that the crucifixion was part of God’s plan for the salvation of mankind!"

  "Is that so!" Claudia said. "A plan which apparently I could have aborted, if I had allowed my husband to sacrifice my life to his own ambitions instead of sacrificing Jesus to the mob."

  "The death on the cross was necessary," Louisa insisted. "You could not have prevented it."

  "Perhaps not," Claudia replied. "But I could have sought to save his life by surrendering my own."

  Janos Kaldy shrieked.

  Louisa and Claudia jumped back, startled by the sudden scream, and Blasko grabbed Kaldy in his arms and cried, "Janos! What is it? What is wrong?"

  Kaldy pushed the old Gypsy away and fell onto the floor, screaming, "No... no...stop...too fast...too fast...!" He grabbed his head between his hands and began to beat it on the hard stones of the floor of the cell, his action wiping away the dozens of small five-pointed stars which he had traced in the dust.

  Louisa put her hand to her mouth and asked Blasko, "Is it...it is the change?"

  Blasko looked up at the sunlight which streamed through the window. "It cannot be. It cannot be. The change will not happen until tonight." He looked back at Kaldy. "Janos, please tell me what is wrong!"

  "STOP..." Kaldy shrieked as he pounded his head against the stones. "STOP! STOP! TOO FAST!"

  "I’ll get the guard," Louisa said. "I think he needs a physician..." She turned to go to the door of the cell.

  "Don’t be a fool," Claudia snapped, grabbing Louisa by the arm and throwing her roughing backwards, and then turning to Kaldy. "Janos, what is happening to you? Janos, answer me!"

  "TOO FAST!" he screamed again, leaping to his feet and throwing himself head-first at the stone wall. "TOO FAST! STOP!!!"

  "Janos, answer me!" Claudia repeated. "What is wrong with you?"

  Kaldy’s eyes opened and he stared madly at Claudia, shaking violently, frothy saliva dripping from his shuddering mouth. He seemed frozen in the midst of a spasm of pain, his body tensed and shaking so fast that it seemed almost to shimmer; and then he fell onto his back and released a long, deep breath. He lay still and silent, his staring eyes now fixed on the ceiling of the cell. Blasko, Louisa and Claudia stood around him, watching and waiting, the Gypsy and the German frightened and concerned, and the other werewolf staring down at him, cold, intense, irrationally hopeful.

  A few long, tense minutes passed.

  And then, Janos Kaldy smiled.

  Louisa and Blasko looked at each other in confused incomprehension. Claudia continued to stare down at Kaldy, and her eyebrows rose as he began very softly to laugh. His laughter grew louder and grew frenzied, and then he jumped to his feet and began to dance around the cell, screaming, "YES!!! YES!!! YES!!!"

  "Janos!" Claudia shouted over his own joyous screams, "What is happening to you?! Tell me, Janos, talk to me!" He grabbed her by the shoulders and began to spin her around with him, forcing her to join him in his mad dance. She threw his hands from her angrily and shouted, "Damnation, Janos, what is happening to you?!"

  He spoke through his uncontrollable laughter. "Poor Doctor Weyrauch! One more layer to strip away and he would have known everything! One more layer!" And his laughter echoed madly from the stone walls.

  "He would have known everything...?!" Claudia began, and then stopped, her eyes widening. She grabbed his hands, stopping his dervish-like whirling, and screamed at him, "Do you remember?! Janos, do you remember?!"

  "Everything, everything, everything!" he laughed. "I remember everything, everything, everything! Weyrauch took me back millennia into my own forgotten memories, and it was there, right there, the answer, the final memory was right there, right below the surface of my consciousness, just waiting to be exposed to the light of living thought, and the two of you, you, Louisa, you, Claudia, tore away the veil, you tore away the veil!" And his laughter again overwhelmed him and he began t
o dance once more around the cell.

  Louisa kept her distance from him, recoiled from his mad gyrations, fearing that he had lost his mind. "What are you talking about, Herr Kaldy? I don’t understand..."

  "Of course you don’t understand!" he laughed. "When it happened to Claudia, she didn’t understand. When it happened to me, I didn’t understand! But now I remember, now I know, now I see, and I understand, I understand!"

  "Janos, stop it!" Claudia screamed. "Just tell me if we can die! Janos, tell me if we can die!"

  "Yes, yes, we can die!" he laughed. "We could have died whenever we wished, but we didn’t understand, we just didn’t understand. But now I understand, Claudia, now I know why I shared my plague with you, now I know why I carried this plague in the first place. It has taken three thousand years and sixty thousand full moons and a hundred thousand murders, but at last I understand!"

  "Whenever we wished!" Claudia exclaimed. "Whenever we wished! Janos, I have wanted to die ever since that first night in Jerusalem..."

  "Yes, yes," he shouted, "but you didn’t understand, Claudia, you didn’t understand!" He stopped his whirling and took her hands in his, pulling her down with him as he fell sitting to the floor. "Now listen carefully, Claudia, for this is your salvation." He looked up at Blasko and Louisa. "And this may be the key to your freedom, old friend, and for you, Madam, a chance to give substance to your words!"

  Louisa sat down beside Claudia and Blasko sat down beside Kaldy. He looked at each of them and smiled. Then he took a deep breath and said, "Three thousand years ago, in Persia, there lived a man named Dzardrusha, a man whom the Greeks called Zoroaster..."

  Kaldy’s voice was quiet and melodious as he began to relate his newly recovered memories. Louisa, Blasko and Claudia listened raptly as the ancient werewolf told them a tale of devotion and apostasy, of trust and betrayal, of courage and cowardice, a tale of the bridge between earth and heaven, a tale of a descent into hell.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  For those who have no system for marking the succession of years, the past is limited to the memory of the eldest available mind; and when that mind dies and takes its memories with it into the dark mystery of the grave, then the past fades into legend and from legend it fades into myth and from myth it fades into nothingness. The people of Chorasmia, in the sweeping uplands of what would one day be called northeastern Iran, had no method of designating the years save the generally understood references to this particular famine or that particular drought, this invasion or that plague, this winter of bitter snow or that spring of destructive floods. If anyone were to have asked them what the year was, they might have said that it was the thirtieth year of the reign of their good King Vishtaspa, or that it had been twenty years since Vishtaspa first heard the words of the Prophet Dzardrusha, twenty years since their king had bowed his head and bent his knee and proclaimed that Ahura Mazda, the God of the Prophet Dzardrusha, was the only God, the master, creator, sustainer, and emperor of the universe.

  The people of Chorasmia had no event in the past upon which to fix the title of "Year One," no birth of Christ, no founding of their capital city, no flight to Medina. They did not know, and had they known would not have understood, that two hundred and fifty years had yet to pass before the beginning of the first Olympiad of the Greeks, or that two hundred and seventy-three years remained before the founding of the little shepherd village which would one day be called the City of Rome. They did not know that only a century was to pass before the Israelite king Solomon was to erect a temple to the God of his fathers, or that over a thousand years would pass before that temple was to suffer its third and final destruction. They did not know that one thousand and twenty-six years separated them from the cosmic wonder which burned bright over Bethlehem, or that over sixteen centuries separated them from the midnight escape from Mecca.

  The people of Chorasmia knew none of these things, for they could not part the veil of mystery which divides the present from the future. They knew not the names of any gods but their own, and as for history and prophecy, they knew nothing at all.

  But Dzardrusha knew all. He knew that only One Being ruled over the universe, and he knew that this One Being revealed himself to man in many ways, in many lands at many times, by many names. He knew that Ahura, El Shaddai, Allah, Yahweh, Aton and a hundred other names which were spoken and would be spoken by human lips all referred to the same incomprehensible, omnipotent, eternal, omniscient Being Who had called to him forty years before, the same Being Who had made Itself known to him as Ahura Mazda, "the Wise Lord," the same Being Who had sent him out to proclaim the truth to the people of the Aryanavayu, the land of the Aryans, Arania, Iran.

  Dzardrusha knew all because the Great God Ahura Mazda had revealed all to him. And as he neared now his seventieth year, he knew that soon he would pass from this world and stand at last before the angels of the Great God upon the Bridge of the Separator, from whence he would pass into the Abode of Truth, where he would dwell for all eternity. The prophet knew that his remaining days would be few, but he had no fear that his words would be lost or that the pure worship he had instituted would cease. He had been teaching for forty years, building fire temples, training priests and initiating the very best of them into the deeper mysteries which Ahura Mazda had made known to him.

  As Dzardrusha looked into the faces of the three bright, clear, eager young priests who stood before him, he reflected that these three young men might well be the last priests he would ever initiate. He was old and feeble and ill, and the priests of the old religion, the daeva-worshipping Karpans, were eager for his death, so eager that he suspected they might be conspiring with the barbaric nomads on the northern border. He did not fear death at the hands of these Turanian bandits, nor did he fear the threats and the hatred of the Karpans, for Dzardrusha did not fear death. He who placed his soul into the hands of the Great God Ahura Mazda needed fear nothing.

  "You three are the hope of the people," he said to the young men in his soft, aged voice. "You are the sons of the noblest clan of the Aryanavayu, you are sons of the Magaya, and when I have left this world and gone to my rest in the bosom of Ahura, you will keep alive the sacred fire of truth." The three young men bowed their heads to signify their unworthiness to accept so profound a charge. "I have known each one of you since the day of your birth, and your fathers before you." Dzardrusha went on. "To you I shall reveal all mysteries and all knowledge, and these sacred words you shall keep hidden in your hearts all your lives, entrusting them to none but those whom you in your turn appoint to succeed you."

  The old prophet rose from his large, throne-like chair, took two burning torches from the wall, and gestured for the three young men to follow him. They had been standing before him in his audience room, the largest room in the inner recesses of the marble fire temple in the ancient city of Balkh, and they now walked slowly behind the old prophet as he made his way through the secret passageway in the wall behind his throne, the passageway which led down far beneath the surface of the earth to the secret inner temple where burned the purest of sacred fires upon the holiest of altars. None of the three young men had ever seen this most sacred spot, though they had of course heard of it; and by taking them with him unto the holy of holies, to the Altar of Burning Truth, Dzardrusha was demonstrating his trust in them, for it was in the fire room far beneath the earth that Dzardrusha kept the written record of the revelation of Ahura Mazda, a written record which he guarded with his life.

  Downward they walked through the dark corridors, the only light being the flickering torches which the prophet held aloft before them, until at last they entered a large subterranean chamber. They heard a soft, low, whistling sound as the hidden conduits which reached from the chamber upward to the surface sucked in the air from above, the air necessary for the life of the sacred flame.

  At one end of the chamber stood a high marble altar, and in the center of the altar burned the sacred flame itself. The three young priests
prostrated themselves, and the prophet said. "Arise, sons of the Magaya, and face me, for now will the mysteries of Ahura be revealed unto you."

  The young men returned to their feet, and each looked about the room in respectful awe. Carved deep upon the walls were a series of symbols that were unknown to them, a series of circles containing dots and lines. They turned to the prophet and stood in silence, waiting for him to speak.

  When he spoke, he began with a catechism, a series of questions and answers well known to all priests of the Great God. He turned to the first young man and said, "Jamnaspa, son of Ardishir, answer me in truth."

  "I answer in truth, O Beloved of Ahura," the young man replied.

  "What is the duty of man, Jamnaspa?"

  "The duty of man, O Destroyer of the Daevas, is to serve the Great God Ahura Mazda and to battle Angra Mainyu, the Spirit of the Lie."

  "And how does a man serve the Great God Ahura Mazda, Jamnaspa, son of Ardishir?"

  "By living righteousness and drinking righteousness and breathing righteousness and being righteousness, O Father of Our Hope."

  Dzardrusha turned to the second young man. "Hystaspes, son of Frashaostra, answer me in truth."

  "I answer in truth, O Keeper of the Sacred Flame."

  "What is the reward of righteousness, Hystaspes?"

  "The reward of righteousness, O Teacher of Mysteries, is eternity in the Abode of Truth, where the angels of Ahura and the souls of the saved rejoice and sing praises to the Wise Lord."

  "And what is the reward for evil?"

  "The reward for evil, O Guardian of Those Who Struggle, is to be cast on the last day from the bridge that connects this world to the Abode of Truth, the Bridge of the Separator, to fall into the pit of despair, and to suffer endless agony throughout all eternity in the House of the Lie."

  The prophet looked at the third young man. "Isfendir, son of Kuriash, answer me in truth."