by A. L. Sirois
The strigoi urged their horses to movement. The band took to the trail, heading slowly southward down the mountain slope into the Kingdom of Spain. In the starless, cloudy night Guilhem, for all his squinting, saw little of the trail and nothing of his surroundings. The darkness seemed not to inhibit the strigoi, however.
Vano, who walked the lead, continued his story as they walked.
“We have wandered far, and have encountered many folk in our travels. We do not seek to have communication with most people, apart from when we seek nourishment, but even a striga has needs beyond simple sustenance.”
The striga’s offhand remarks about food made Guilhem’s skin crawl, and he shuddered in the saddle but said nothing. He tested the bonds on his wrists but they were secure. Still, he thought, given time he might be able to loosen them. He dared not make protracted attempts to do so, for fear of being observed by Maloney or the women, who walked behind and to either side.
“We commonly take up what jobs we can find,” said Vano, “often helming games of chance and the like as we pass through various regions. But we are not proud and will chop wood for a fair day’s wage.”
“A day’s—? I thought you... that is, that strigoi are forced to limit their activities to nighttime hours,” Guilhem said.
“Superstitious nonsense,” said Vano with a sneer. “It is true that we prefer the night and tend toward lethargy when the sun is up, but we can move freely enough when the day is overcast or stormy and the sun is hidden. For example, we are proud of our divinatory capabilities and do well at fairs and festivals, where we tell many a fortune in a day.”
“Or dispense love potions and charms,” Kizzy put in.
Not unlike Oriabel, Guilhem thought. It would seem they do indeed share kinship, at least as far as the way they pass among humans. This led him to wonder whether Oriabel herself was a striga; but he discarded this suspicion almost at once. He had traveled in very close quarters with her for many days now and had seen no hint of bloodthirsty behavior.
Vano nodded. “Indeed. We often go from festival to festival, because we find it advantageous to be in places where there are many strangers.”
“I daresay it’s easier to avoid suspicion if you can lose yourselves in a crowd,” said Guilhem.
“There is no need to be so cynical, my young friend,” said Vano. His eyes took on a hard glitter.
“Don’t antagonize them,” Oriabel murmured. “We’re in enough trouble as things stand.”
Vano’s eyes lost their iciness. “You’re in no trouble at all,” he said. “Let me make a proposal that will be of mutual benefit. As it happens, our most talented astrologer was recently killed. We—”
“Hold,” said Guilhem, stirring in his seat and using that motion to test his bonds once more. Yes, he was sure he could get out of them, given sufficient time. “You are the, the undead, are you not? How is it, then, that you can be killed?”
“Easily enough,” Oriabel said. “Cutting off a striga’s head will release the trapped spirit. Am I not right, Vano? Alternatively, a stake driven through the heart while the striga sleeps will also put the animating spirit to rest.”
“Indeed,” said Vano. “Many of the ignorant, though, believe that a clove of garlic placed under the tongue will work.” He chuckled. “They invariably learn better. We don’t like garlic, but it isn’t much of a deterrent. However, let me proceed with my offer.
“Now, as I explained, we do some business as fortune tellers. But, ah, unseemly events forced us to abandon our most recent settlement on the outskirts of a village not far from here, over the mountains in France. We decided to try our luck amongst the Spaniards, but we were pursued by determined villagers who ambushed us and managed to dispatch our astrologer, my cousin Nadya. The man who killed her was a stinkard named Von Elsing, or some such.” He scowled. “We’ll have our revenge on him in good time. Well. Nadya had been working with Lela, here, but Lela is rather tongue-tied and although she has a gift for the second sight, she does not speak well or fast enough to be of use to us in a public setting.”
Guilhem glanced at the black-eyed girl, but she would not meet his eye. It was just as well, he thought. If Lela had occult abilities, she might easily cast a hex on him. For the first time since he had met her, he felt comforted by Oriabel’s presence. Surely the witch’s powers far outstripped those of this naïve girl, be she striga or not.
“And so, we need to replace Nadya,” Vano went on. “It is not easy to find those skilled with the divinatory cards. I observed closely your use of them, mistress,” he said to Oriabel. “You are easily the equal of poor Nadya, if not her superior. Therefore, I propose to install you in her place.” As the witch opened her mouth to reply, he added, “Consider what we offer. Eternal life! It is no mean path to tread.”
“But eternal life with every man’s hand raised against me,” Oriabel said. “Forced to subsist on the blood of the living.”
“Pah, you would need such a repast only two or three times a month,” Vano said.
“This is why you were following us on the trail,” said Guilhem, nodding. “You want Oriabel to throw in with you.”
“To be perfectly honest,” Vano said, “we originally were interested in one of the smugglers who left the inn shortly before you did. He has rudimentary psychic abilities that we thought might gain strength through proper training. We pass this way seasonally, on our peregrinations, you see, but the fellow had previously escaped our notice. We had no need to seek out a talented person of his kind, Nadya being alive. This time, however, we have been alert for sensitive people of a larcenous turn of mind.”
“Smugglers,” said Guilhem, and snorted. “In this case.”
“Precisely,” said Vano. “Following Nadya’s demise, we have been looking for a replacement; one with a lack of conscience and an ability to deal well with others. Plus, a certain amount of ambition.” He shrugged. “We had been in the village observing this person, but then you two showed up. Our original choice was a crude, unlettered type, whereas you, Lady Oriabel, are much more suitable for our requirements. A ready-made witch of the blood, if I may put it that way.”
Guilhem said, “I don’t see what value I am of to you,” and immediately regretted it. He’d be valuable as food, if nothing else!
Vano laughed easily. “My dear Guilhem, do not underestimate yourself. It would serve us well to have a confederate amongst the nobility. With your help, we could move about the Aquitaine with relative ease.” His companions murmured their assent. “We will be careful not to draw attention to ourselves. And you have in addition the ability to call upon the Fay.”
“I already have problems with unwanted supernatural visitors,” said Guilhem. “There’s a bloody...” He coughed. Why reveal more than he had to? “...werewolf terrorizing the land and causing no end of tribulation for my people.”
Vano shrugged. “This is no concern of ours. But I can assure you that association with us will confer upon you advantages in your dispute with the beast that you do not now possess. There is also the fact that we can sense that you yourself have recently enjoyed a meal of blood, duke. This renders you more susceptible to our methods of... recruitment.”
The woman named Kizzy spoke up, whining, “Vano, I am weary. And clouds or no, the sun saps my strength.”
“I understand, dear one. But the cave is not far.”
The trail had descended below the tree line now, and there was significantly less snowfall here. Presently Vano led them off the trail and along a frozen stream for a few hundred feet into the scrubby forest, to where the waterway tumbled into a ravine. In one side of the steep rock wall Guilhem saw the mouth of a cave.
Here he and Oriabel were helped down from their horses and guided into the cave. Inside the place was more pleasant than Guilhem had expected, with a clean dirt floor and no sign of animal habitation. A large pile of reeds lay to one side.
“We often use this as a hiding place,” Vano said. “Enough of our
scent remains during our absence to dissuade wild things from denning here.”
Guilhem and Oriabel were made to sit on the reeds.
“Our apologies for the accommodations,” said Vano with a grin. The women lay down on the floor, apparently without discomfort, and promptly went to sleep.
Vano and Maloney approached the captives while Tobar, who had not said a single word in Guilhem’s hearing, walked out of the cave and some distance back along the stream.
“My brother will stand guard while we sleep,” Vano said. “He suffers less from exposure to daylight than we do. But before we rest, your transformation must begin.”
Guilhem stared at him in dismay. “But what of my quest to save my land from the werewolf?”
“You must abandon it for the time being,” replied Vano. He smiled broadly, and Guilhem shivered to see the striga’s strong white teeth. The canines seemed uncommonly pronounced and very sharp. Vano knelt by his side while Maloney went to Oriabel. Vano tore Guilhem’s tunic away from his neck and without pause sank his fangs into Guilhem’s flesh.
The horror of the experience swamped Guilhem’s senses as he felt his blood being sucked from his veins. He fell into a swoon, from which he did not rouse until the striga released him some time later. With an effort, he managed to turn his head toward Oriabel, who sat to his left. Maloney had finished his business with her, as well, and she now sat with her head bowed so that her lank hair hid her face. Guilhem, disoriented and dizzy, barely marked what Vano said.
“The change will take a day or two. Until that time, I regret that you must remain tied up. We will... tend to you from time to time until you are ready to join us. Soon you will find yourselves extremely sensitive to daylight and will prefer to sleep until nightfall, as we do.” He yawned. “Excuse me—it has been a long, eventful day and I, too, need my rest.”
Before long the strigoi, except for Tobar standing watch outside, were sleeping soundly. Guilhem sat for some time listening to their deep, even breathing. Beside him, Oriabel made no movements but occasionally snuffled miserably under the curtain of her hair.
Glancing at the strigoi to make sure they still slept, Guilhem leaned toward her. “Oriabel,” he whispered. She made no reply.
“Oriabel. Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said dully. “What is it?”
He looked at their slumbering captors again and licked his lips. “You transformed me into a leech. Can you change us both into birds, or squirrels or some other small creature so that we can escape our bonds?”
“I could, but for two problems.”
“What are they?”
But she could not answer, for Tobar came into the cave at that point. He saw Guilhem and Oriabel on their beds of reeds, nodded, and knelt by them in turn to slake his thirst.
Following the striga’s ministrations, Guilhem swooned again and did not regain his senses until later. The light outside the cave had grown dim. Vano and the others would soon wake.
“What are the problems you mentioned?” he whispered to Oriabel.
“For one thing, we have been infected with their lust for blood. Even in a transformed state, that would remain, albeit somewhat weakened.”
Dismayed, Guilhem pondered her words. “Can we never be rid of this curse? Must we become strigoi ourselves?” He thought: I dare not return to Poictiers like this... I myself would be a menace to my countrymen!
“I do not know,” the witch said. “To learn more I must be free to look into the matter.”
He blew out his breath. “Very well, I understand that. What is the other difficulty?”
“In order to return us to our human forms I need to be able to speak a spell. That I would not be able to do, so long as I wear the body of a voiceless insect or a bird that can merely sing its own song. We would be trapped forever in those bodies. You would not want to be changed into an insect, anyway. It is too cold for insects to survive hereabouts at this season.”
Guilhem sighed. She was correct. Eyeing their captors again, he asked, “Could Rámon be of assistance?”
She shrugged. “He might, if we could manage to win free of these creatures. But as things stand I am not sure where our campsite is in relation to this cave. Rámon will not stray far from it, however, and until our return he will watch over what we have left behind.”
Which is precious little, thought Guilhem, shifting his position. Well, that explains why the fowl did not trail along after us.
He cudgeled his brains for an answer to their predicament but could think of no workable plan.
Soon the strigoi awoke from their unholy slumber. After examining their captives, Vano said, “We must seek additional nourishment. Your blood is not enough to sustain all of us; we have no wish to kill you by draining it. Therefore, we will follow along after the smugglers.” He grinned. “Even if we don’t find them, we are close enough to Spanish towns now to be able to waylay a victim or two. You will be safe enough here until we return. Remember, Tobar will be outside on watch. Do not attempt anything foolish.”
The duke gave him a sour look. “Why not? Just now you said you don’t want to kill us.”
“I would prefer not to, but I wouldn’t hesitate were you to escape, for fear of you giving away our hiding place that we have used for so many years. Tobar is under orders to do what he must to ensure its safety, which takes priority over your lives, I regret to say. Now, farewell for the time being.”
And so saying, Vano’s shape and those of the others wavered, and where human beings had stood a moment before, wolves now pawed the ground. As one they turned and dashed out of the cave. Their soft footsteps faded almost at once.
A howl suffused with hunger drifted back to Guilhem’s ears. He shuddered to hear it. With his eyes fixed on the opening of the cave and his thoughts centered, despite the hopelessness of his situation, revolving around scenarios of escape, he didn’t hear the furtive sounds behind him until Oriabel drew his attention to them.
“We have company,” she said in a quiet voice, tilting her head to one side.
He looked past her as best he could and saw, two small human-like creatures no more than four or five inches tall, with scaly green-white skin, long feet and hands with webbed toes and fingers, greenish hair and dark, wide-set eyes. The creatures were barefoot, wearing short green tunics with scalloped hems. They had wide frog-like mouths that hung slightly open, revealing toothless ridges of serrated bone in place of teeth.
With the strigoi all gone, save for Tobar lurking somewhere outside, he felt emboldened to reply to the witch in a louder voice. “Nixies.”
The little creatures cringed at the sound of his voice, but only for a moment. Then they drew closer to the captives. Both were male, as far as Guilhem could tell. “Fairy friend,” Guilhem heard one say to the other.
Oriabel sat up, eyeing the nixies with excited interest. “Water sprites or not, they will be familiar with these woods,” she said to Guilhem. “And the chances are good that they’ll know where we were camped. This is a stroke of luck!”
“Yes, but what shall we—?” His words were cut short by an extreme spell of dizziness in which he felt his body both shrinking and twisting out of shape. Their bonds fell off their hands, which were no longer hands at all, but segmented legs. For an instant Guilhem feared that she had turned him into a cockroach again, but no—she had altered herself as well, he saw, judging by the bizarre half-human, half-insect he saw writhing beside him. Within moments it had become fully insect: a mosquito.
She made a series of modulated whining noises with her wings that he found he could understand. “I am now a creature already equipped by nature to dine on blood,” she said. “I am sorry to have to tell you, however, that as a male mosquito, blood is not a part of your menu... the male of the species drinks only sap or juices from fruit.”
“What?! Why couldn’t you have changed me into a—” He halted, realizing what he had been about to say.
Her whining reply carrie
d an undertone of humor. “Why couldn’t I have changed you into a female as well? I didn’t think that you would have appreciated me doing so, for one thing; but the more salient reason is that I cannot tamper with a living being on that basic level. Fear not; I trust this change will not be necessary for a protracted length of time. I could not have transformed you into some other insect, for then we would not be able to communicate.”
The nixies, however, had been startled by the conversion of the two humans. They ran off, outside away from the cave. Oriabel cursed. “We must follow, cold or no. Hurry!” And she sped out into the night with Guilhem trailing her and wondering how, if she was not now capable of human speech, she meant to return them to their original bodies.
The nixies, being limited to ground travel, hadn’t managed to get far through the snow, and Oriabel and Guilhem caught up with them in a short time. Oriabel, somewhat in the lead, engaged the nixies at once.
She and Guilhem were about as big as hawks, relative to the nixies. Oriabel’s bite would be fatal to them and they knew it, because they did their best to drive her off. She dove angrily at them, again and again, while they waved twigs (as big as clubs, given their small size) and shouted in alarm. Wasting no time, Guilhem zoomed in to assist, knowing that the nixies would not realize that he was male and therefore not a blood-sucker.
The nixies cried out in dismay as Guilhem joined the battle, and redoubled their efforts to drive their attackers off. Suddenly one of the little creatures flung away his club. Guilhem dove for him, but the nixie pulled out a long pearl stickpin from a makeshift scabbard hanging at his side and thrust it out like a sword.
Ho ho! Guilhem thought. I may have my blade attached to my face now, but I am twice the warrior you are. And he promptly whipped himself to one side to parry the nixie’s thrust. The nixie tried again, but Guilhem put his stinger in the way of it, deflecting the sprite’s blade. The nixie feinted, but Guilhem, by far the more experienced swordsman, was ready for such a trick and struck the sword away once again.
