A Coldness in the Blood

by Fred Saberhagen

  “I haven’t really been worrying about that. Maybe I’d better get back to the—”

  When Andy made a halfhearted effort to pull away, Connie caught his sleeve with her little hand and effortlessly pulled him back. “But another time we will talk of what is in our hearts. What I must show you is something else altogether. Come here. Come here!”

  She tugged him a few yards farther, so that they stood together, looking down over tiers of treetops, surveying a long, irregular slope in fading daylight. She put one arm round Andy’s waist, and pointed with the other. “There. Behold what I must show you, a little house.”

  Andy looked. Perhaps a quarter of a mile away stood a log cabin, with a shingled roof, almost entirely swallowed up in trees.

  “It is owned by the man you know as Dickon.” Connie sighed. “I believe he uses it to keep things in, to hide things he does not wish to have discovered. I have never been invited into that cabin, and I never will be. So, it is impossible for me to enter. Dear Vlad would also be kept out, if he were here. However much dear Uncle Matthew huffed and puffed, and threatened to blow down the walls, against him they would stand. But of course you and your lovely Dolly can go in, my dear.”

  “Why should we do that?”

  “I think it very likely that the answer we are all looking for is to be found inside that little house. I have known Dickon for more centuries than you would believe, and I know his voice. When I talked to him he was hiding something, something he desperately wanted to keep secret.”

  ~ 21 ~

  Andy and Dolly had left the SUV, dark and locked, behind them. They were walking together now, looking for the faint descending footpath Connie had told him would lead down to the lane, and eventually to the cabin she had said was Dickon’s. Dolly was carrying her shotgun, but all Andy had in hand was the little flashlight, and he was trying out its beam. Around them the shades of dusk were thickening by the moment.

  Connie had disappeared, after offering some last words of advice, cautioning them both that there was no time to lose if they wanted to get their hands on the Philosopher’s Stone.

  Naturally Andy had put in a radio call to his father and uncle. Joe and John were still waiting in their vehicle where Maule had posted them, about a mile away. Joe had been able to offer his son only some tentative advice. He was not ready to accept anything Connie said as gospel, but he thought Andy and Dolly might as well investigate the cabin if they wanted to. Meanwhile the two men were staying where they were for the time being.

  Both parties had attempted to reach Maule by cell phone, but got no response.

  “Uncle Matt said he might turn his phone off,” Dolly reminded her companion.

  “Yeah. And Connie told me she was going to try to find him. Maybe she will. We don’t know where he is, and I don’t want to just go yelling in the woods.”

  “That would probably not be wise.”

  By the time Dolly and Andy had advanced a hundred yards, moving tentatively along what might or might not be a trail, the flashlight’s help was welcome in the thickening gloom. The woods were quiet, except for the steady murmur of the stream at the foot of the long slope, growing louder as they gradually approached it.

  Presently Dolly asked, in a near-whisper: “Did Connie say if there was anyone in this cabin?”

  “She didn’t actually say, and I kind of assumed there wasn’t. She just said she’s pretty sure the Stone is there, and it’s impossible for her to get at it. Look, she may be flaky, even for a nosferatu, but she’s not going to betray Uncle Matt. He told us that himself. I don’t think she’ll do anything that would get herself into real trouble with him.”

  “I can understand that. I wouldn’t either.”

  Sobek, at the beginning of his long trek north from New Mexico, had given no thought at all to the temperature of the water through which he moved. But gradually he realized that the farther north he went upon this continent, the colder the streams flowed. If this continued, it might eventually bring on an uncomfortable slowing of his mental and physical activity. If that happened, he would want to change his mode of travel.

  The last stream that Sobek ascended was comparatively narrow, and so shallow in most places that he no longer could remain completely submerged. It was also colder than any other stream he had encountered on his way north, and grew still more frigid as he ascended it. Also its flow was very swift, so he had to exert some effort to make headway. These were only minor inconveniences for the Crocodile, and he still preferred to follow the watercourse rather than make his way overland, or employ the energy-draining magic that would bring him much closer to his goal without the need to traverse the space between.

  How inconveniently the world had been designed, that it was not provided with a really adequate number of false doors! He meant to raise the point when he met some of his fellow deities … .

  It was a bothersome point, to which he frequently returned in his private speculations … it was very strange, yes, truly extraordinary when he thought about it, that over a span of thousands of years, he had never met any other gods or goddesses at all.

  On the other hand, he sometimes had trouble believing that thousands of years had really passed, since the epoch of his earliest memories. They were of a time in the ancient Temple of Sobek, the scene of the dream that never ceased. That was where and when his thronging worshipers had first gathered round him to offer him their prayers, their sacrifice … .

  Certain rooms in the great house of memory were pleasant to return to. But most of that sprawling mansion was not an agreeable place in which to dwell, and Sobek generally found the present and future more congenial.

  Right now his thoughts had taken a turn toward the nosferatu known as Dickon. He could tell that at the moment the cowardly and comparatively old one was not far away. That very soon he should actually be in sight, and that he was somewhere near the prize.

  Muttering bubbles under water, Sobek said to himself: “The flesh of the nosferatu has in it a special tang of predation, that I find quite enjoyable. But even more than Dickon, I expect I shall enjoy the one who has been known as Tepes. It seems to me that he is not far distant, either.”

  Sobek had already decided that Tepes would prove hopelessly unreliable as a servant. It was as well that he had not wasted any time trying to carry out that plan.

  The Crocodile was well aware, when he bothered to think about it, that a number of his enemies were closing in on him. But the fact did not perturb him in the least. He was almost wholly absorbed in the fact that he had nearly reached his goal.

  Meanwhile, Sobek’s days-old spear-wound itched and burned, despite the constant laving in cold rushing water. But right now he had little time to spare for the contemplation of revenge. A glorious certainty was developing in his mind. His magic, informed by his divine wisdom, was succeeding, as he had never doubted that it would. He now knew the location of the one remaining statue, and the precious treasure it must contain. It was possible that some of his enemies and rivals might know the secret too. But what those inferior beings might think or do could hardly make any difference in the inevitable outcome.

  The Crocodile moved upstream a few more yards, then brought the front half of his body up out of the surging waters of Rock Creek, the better to look around.

  Daylight was fading swiftly, the sun already hidden behind the wooded flanks of a nearby hill. There was a kind of building, constructed out of logs, only a few yards upslope from the stream.

  There. Almost certainly in there.

  By now Maule had left the young people and the SUV a couple of hundred yards behind, well out of his sight atop a wooded slope. He could sense that he was within an approximately equal distance of his foe, somewhere ahead. But Sobek had not yet begun his final move to seize the Stone, and Maule still did not know just where it was. So he would wait a little longer. In more than five hundred years he had learned something about how to be patient.

  This near his enemy, after d
ays of striving for close mental contact with the Crocodile, Maule no longer needed Dolly or any other medium to maintain the linkage. What he sensed of the monster now told him he still had nothing to do but wait.

  Nervelessly he settled himself for his last pre-combat meditation. He would conserve his energy while preparing for what would doubtless be his greatest fight. Setting his back against a tree, he slowly lowered himself into a sitting position. His eyes were closed, mind and muscles almost totally relaxed, his spear balanced in his lap. He told himself that as soon as the Crocodile moved, he would awaken instantly.

  Maule’s mind retreated from full consciousness, entering a state that was not like normal daytime sleep. Nor did it even bear much resemblance to common hypnotic trance. Yet it was a withdrawal deep enough to accommodate one more version of the Dream—a dream that this time was very interestingly prolonged … .

  … this time Maule’s mind melded with that of the running jewel thief just as the latter once more began to run, leaving behind him the room where molded plaster statues dried. Now, still gasping with the exertion of his flight, the frantic youth darted into another part of the darkened temple complex. In this next chamber a bad smell hung in the air, a faint stink reminiscent of the pestilential atmosphere in the House of the Dead, where human corpses were made ready for the long journey into eternity.

  But here in Sobek’s temple the preparation tables were much too small for human bodies. Quickly Maule realized that only baby crocodiles were being mummified within these rooms. In fact a number of small reptiles, already slain and gutted, were lying about in various stages of preparation.

  With sounds of pursuit once more fresh behind him, the thief ran on again, reeling with weariness. Abruptly reemerging into brilliant sun, he stumbled to a halt, body near exhaustion with the heat and strain. He had come out of dimness into a long, broad, unshaded courtyard, bounded on three sides by doorless walls. A central pool of water, also long and broad, flanked on both sides by reeds and water lilies, shimmered in dazzling sunglare. Suddenly the runner’s foot slipped on the flat polished stone of the poolside pavement, and he teetered for an instant on the brink of falling in.

  Along the sides of the courtyard, tall palms offered scanty spots of shade, but no concealment. The far end of the pool was carved from native rock, the near end bounded by an artificial, sloping beach of tile.

  The angry shouts behind him were closing in, sounding a new note of triumph, as if the hunters knew they had him trapped. There was no possible hiding place in sight—except the pool itself, should it prove deep enough. Near the far end, lily pads and blossoming stalks of tall papyrus might offer concealment enough for a man’s head, or at least his nose, projecting above the water.

  Advancing hastily, the thief lowered himself as quietly as he could into the sacred pool, trying not to raise waves that would betray him when his pursuers burst into the courtyard, as surely they must at any moment.

  The water proved just deep enough for him to stand in, up to his neck. Half wading, half swimming with motions of his submerged arms, he was two thirds of the way to the possible shelter of the lily pads when something stirred in the depths ahead of him.

  Stirred and then rose, erupting majestically through the mirrorlike calm.

  A grinning crocodile head, rimmed with a picket fence of teeth, confronted the intruder, reminding him with great force just whose temple it was in which he trespassed.

  The eyes atop the head were huge, all black and yellow. They hypnotized with terror, swiftly growing bigger as the huge beast lunged … .

  … the dreaming Maule could feel it all, though dimly and at second hand. Every detail of the last moments of the young thief human life. The muscles of his thin body still worn and aching from the long flight, the great jaws clamped upon his leg. The burning cold and heaviness still inside his mouth, as he tried to cry out and began to drown … .

  The burning cold. Inside his mouth.

  … still inside his mouth.

  One small detail that changed the world.

  As Maule’s latest dream experience shattered into fragments, shards that faded quickly to grim memories, he sat up straight with his back against the tree. Other pieces, those of a puzzle, were falling into place. Eyes wide open, he said aloud into the fading twilight of the woods: “I know now where the Stone is hidden.”

  By the time he had finished speaking, he was on his feet, spear gripped in one hand, fingering his cell phone with the other. But he did not turn on the instrument. It would be a waste of time, he thought, to try to explain about the Stone to his allies at a distance.

  Much better to talk the matter over with Sobek himself. He rather looked forward to being able to do that.

  Minutes later, walking briskly toward the place where he expected to discover his enemy, he found himself approaching a small cabin. The cabin had the look and feel of being long unoccupied, and he knew that this was not the place he wanted, that the monster was still hundreds of yards ahead. But a notice had been posted on the door of this dwelling, and Maule detoured a couple of steps to read the jovial warning:

  THIS HOUSE PROTECTED BY

  SKINNER TAXIDERMY

  Smiling lightly with appreciation, Maule found himself for some reason thinking again of Dickon. He wondered just how the elder vampire might look stuffed and mounted. Not the old fool’s whole wretched body, of course. Probably only his head, fixed on a plaque of some dark wood, and displayed high on a wall, like the head of the moose that he had noticed in a tavern on the main street in Red Lodge. There was a certain satisfaction in the image.

  But tonight he must devote himself to grim and earnest business. Tonight Vlad Drakulya was very likely going to die the true death, to fall before the Crocodile’s power—but he was not dead yet. And now he knew something that could make all the difference. Switching on his cell phone, he gave orders to Joe and John to drive back in his direction. Explanations could wait till later.

  For a while after establishing his secret hideout, Dickon had been able to tell himself that here in this private sanctuary, far from cities and crowds, he could feel secure—that no breather or nosferatu in the entire world had the least suspicion of where he was. His nearest neighbor’s cabin was hundreds of yards distant, and that neighbor seemed never to be in residence at the same time Dickon was. Rarely had any of his neighbors seen him, and his mundane, day-to-day appearance was so ordinary that they would have paid him little attention if they did. He was certainly not the only recluse dwelling on the fringe of the Montana wilderness.

  Whatever sense of security he had managed to achieve was utterly destroyed when Connie showed up on his doorstep.

  Still pondering her recent visit, Dickon had now abandoned himself to a habit he had when he believed himself to be quite alone: that of talking to himself aloud.

  After nervously making sure, for the thousandth or ten-thousandth time, that all of the cabin’s doors and windows were securely closed, and every portal locked, he finally hurled himself, with an air of desperation, at the shipping container and with vampirish strength tore its outer packaging into shreds.

  Soon his unsteady hands had freed the small white statue from its inner wrappings. His fingers trembled as he stroked the smooth and white and ancient surface, now beginning to be somewhat discolored by reason of sheer age.

  A faint whining and squeaking sound, compounded of terror and desperation, emerged from deep in Dickon’s unbreathing throat. Now, do it now, he urged himself. Put an end to the centuries of sniveling, suffering, hiding from your own shadow.

  But all his urging accomplished nothing. He could force himself to the brink of action, but could not make the final effort. What if the miracle truly happened, he broke the statue and the Stone fell into his hands? What if the highest dreams of all the hunters, the adepts and inepts down through the centuries, were realized in him?

  He could not escape the craven certainty that Sobek, the god, would instantly be aware
of what had happened. And quite soon fearless Maule would also know, and presently all the others who were true adepts. From that moment, he, Dickon, would be marked as a being of great, transcendent power, the envy and target of every inhuman power and genuine wizard in the world.

  Then all of them, no doubt including powerful beings of whom Dickon had never heard—all would come after him to take the Stone away, and to punish him, annihilate him, for his presumption in trying to make himself the first and greatest of them all.

  Of course if he had the Stone, it ought to grant him overwhelming power—if only he, the lucky one, knew how to use it. Aye, that could be the rub, right there.

  Dickon’s lurid imagination was now running at full speed, and not to be denied. Probably the first to arrive here to corner him in his pitiful, useless refuge would be Sobek, and the Crocodile would not be coming to offer his congratulations.

  Other powers would probably be close behind the Crocodile in the race for power. Who would emerge victorious from the melee? Not Vlad Drakulya, who was, after all, only a man. Who but Sobek, Sobek the god.

  “And—and supposing, on the other hand, Maule should find me before Sobek does? What will he do to me? Ah, gods and saints and demons, help me! Maule understands by now that it was I who guided his chosen nephew nearly to his death—ah, Vlad Tepes, why was I not content to remain loyal to you?”

  Dickon’s imagination presented the sound of Drakulya’s voice, of the footstep of Mr. Matthew Maule just outside the cabin door. Almost gibbering in terror, Dickon started, jumped at nothing.