The Enemy Within

by Christie Golden

  Tiny whiskers twitched. Rozalia felt the miniature heart thudding against the white-furred chest, beating a rapid tattoo on her palm. With her index finger, she gently smoothed the soft brown fur of its back.

  The mouse was totally under her control, but fully aware of what was happening to it. Almost tenderly, she turned the little rodent over on its back. It toppled in her hand, its tiny clawed feet reached straight up to the ceiling of her vardo. Murmuring a soft incantation, Rozalia arranged the pot on the floor, then transferred the beast to her other hand. Languidly she pierced its throat with the tip of her knife. Hot blood burst forth in a small, spattering stream to fall with a hiss on the herbs, that lay in the bottom of the pot.

  The gypsy girl hummed to herself, continuing the magical chant, occasionally squeezing the dying mouse with her hand to get more blood out if it. When she had finished, she went outside to drop the tiny corpse into a small cauldron of water that sat boiling on her small cook fire. The bones of the creature had their uses, too. Ground into a powder and mixed with the bloody herbs, it made a formidable, pastelike poison that could easily be smeared onto a blade. The one she now constantly wore was so treated.

  This was not the first time she had concocted such a lethal brew. Her father had died mysteriously two days after he had so stupidly let the giorgio roam free. Some had eyed her, remembering her outburst that night, but none had made an accusation. Sometimes, Rozalia thought as she stirred the bubbling brew with a large wooden spoon, her people were almost as stupid as the giorgios.

  She glanced up at the sky and smiled to herself.

  The stars were different now. Rozalia gazed at the new constellations that sparkled against the ebony field. They had changed ten days ago, when she had called the mysterious fog. It was as if the strange haze had played with the stars, rearranging them with its misty fingers. She had noticed the difference right away. Had the other Vistani? She did not know, nor did she care.

  The light from the just-risen moon shone upon her outstretched arm, and Rozalia frowned. She ran one hand over her flesh. Once, she had been almost too plump, even for a race that enjoyed its women round and fleshy. Now, the flesh was melting away. Her blouses, once so pleasingly tight across the breasts, now hung loose on her. She had become almost bony. Rozalia shrugged. It could be that she had become so involved in her newly discovered arcane ability that she had simply forgotten to feed herself properly. Or if, as she suspected, it was a price to pay for this new power, then it was a welcome fee.

  A sudden sound in the darkness beyond the ring of firelight caused Rozalia to look up swiftly, quickly covering the pot with its lid. “Who is there?”

  Hesitantly, a young man stepped into view. She recognized him as Tario, Madame Terza’s grandson. He seemed very uncomfortable, like a wild deer lured into the range of the hunter’s arrows. “My grandmama wishes to see you.”

  “Your grandmama will have to wait,” she replied coolly. If the brew were not completed tonight, the same night it had been begun, it would be worthless.

  “It is her will, Rozalia.”

  The phrase chilled the girl. So, it was truly important. She did not change her expression. Reluctantly, she removed the brew from the fire and set it carefully aside. Tario turned and Rozalia followed.

  She had moved her vardo beyond the major encampment site. More and more, Rozalia desired distance from her own kind. The tribe sensed her desire and seemed all too willing to accommodate her. Now she saw that the entire encampment was gathered outside Madame Terza’s vardo. Her legs trembled in sudden comprehension.

  She was going to be put on trial.

  Rozalia shrieked in fear and anger. She tried to draw her dagger, but young Tario was stronger than he looked. Without hesitation he leapt on top of her. She struggled, her long nails raking the smooth young flesh of his cheek. Even so, Rozalia was hauled to her feet, two large Vistana men on either side of her. She snarled like a wild thing, twisting in their grasp.

  Gianni, the man who had stood as accuser of Sir Tristan, looked down at the girl with pity and anger. “True Vistani accept the wisdom of their leaders. Come willingly, Rozalia, if you have nothing to hide.”

  Rozalia, hissing, sank her teeth into his arm. Gianni cried out but did not loosen his grip. The four men dragged her into the ring formed by torchlight and silent Vistani, tossing her to the earth. Her blouse had been torn in the struggle. Defiantly, Rozalia raised her head and brushed back her tangled black hair. Her eyes swept the assembled Vistani before she reached to pull her blouse closed. Slowly, she stood erect before Madame Terza.

  As before, a fire burned in the center of the circle. The gypsy leader was seated at a small table, flanked by two Vistana males with torches. One of them was Tario. Blood painted his left cheek, but he stared stoically ahead.

  “You have marked my boy as a beast marked me,” Madame Terza said slowly. Her one eye flashed with controlled anger. “Yet you shall be judged fairly within this circle, Rozalia, daughter of Konstantin.”

  Rozalia snorted with mirthless laughter. “There is no fairness within this circle, Terza, as I have good cause to know.” She deliberately did not use Madame Terza’s title. “And I have no father.”

  “Because you poisoned him!” came a young, high voice from the circle. Rozalia wheeled. Trembling but resolute, her younger brother Nikos, only eleven years old, stepped forward. He pointed a finger at her. “I accuse you, Rozalia, of poisoning our father.”

  “You lie. You are the whelp of a cur, born to a tribe of liars and cowards.”

  Angry murmuring began, but Madame Terza hushed them with a gesture. “Choose your witness,” she ordered Rozalia.

  Rozalia scanned the crowd, her lips twitching with what might have been amusement. The firelight in the center of the circle and the ring of torches did little to illuminate the closed, dark faces that gazed coolly back at her. “None here would speak for me,” she said honestly. “I need no defender. Proceed, Terza, to determine my innocence or guilt. This grows tiresome.”

  Terza pursed her lips, but waved the girl forward. Swiftly, efficiently, Rozalia shuffled the old cards in her slender hands. She laid them in front of the leader.

  For a moment, Madame Terza made no move. It was as if she were loath to touch the cards, loath to read what she already knew. At last, moving slowly and looking her age, she turned the first one over.

  Rozalia permitted herself a hard smile as she saw the card that was to represent her in the reading. It was the Conjurer, a beautiful wizardess surrounded by a ring of fire. She did not need for Terza to tell her what it meant, but the gypsy leader did so in a loud voice for the benefit of the other Vistani.

  “The Conjurer,” declared Terza, “the lady of forbidden knowledge. Are you master of your dark powers, Rozalia, or do they master you?”

  Rozalia did not answer. The strange mists had come to her call, and everything had gone the way she wished it since that night. She knew they obeyed her.

  The next card was turned over. “The Transmuter stands for your past; for power gained by knowledge but not tempered by mercy,” intoned the half-blind woman. “You have strayed from your original ideals. You will pay for your wandering, Rozalia.”

  Terza turned her attention to the third card, which represented obstacles in Rozalia’s chosen path. “The Hooded Man. He tells you to be careful of those without tolerance. Beware strangers with smiling faces.”

  Rozalia knew then that the cards would condemn her. When the next card was turned upright, she broke out in a cold sweat. Madame Terza inhaled swiftly, and the eye she turned up to Rozalia was filled with a new horror and contempt.

  “The Torturer,” she breathed. “Your future is laden with vindictive cruelty. I cannot see if you suffer it or if you inflict it. Be that as it may, no good will come of this, Rozalia, no good, not even for you.”

  Arrogance gave Rozalia strength, and she tilted her chin up defiantly to keep it from trembling. “Turn the final card over,” she
demanded.

  Terza did so. Both she and Rozalia frowned at it. Neither woman had ever seen this card before. Where had it come from? It depicted a bestial, twisted creature seated on some sort of throne. In its clawed hands it clutched close a scepter. Its eyes were black and feral, with red gleams at their centers. Its title was “The Darklord.”

  “Whatever, whoever, this creature be,” said Madame Terza, “the card is in the position of a friend or ally. I fear for you, Rozalia, if you partner with such as this strange dark lord.”

  With Tario’s help, Madame Terza rose and gazed keenly out of her good eye at Rozalia. To the gypsy girl’s surprise, there was only pity in that aged, puckered face; no hatred or malice.

  “I brought you into this world, child,” Terza said quietly. “As I did your father. Four days ago, I buried him and sang his soul to rest. That is not as things should be. There was nothing wrong with Konstantin—no illness of the body or mind, only a sickened soul at the loss of his son and daughter. The one death could not be helped; crueler was the abandonment of his best-loved little girl.

  “No one in this encampment wished him ill save that little girl. Nothing natural he had eaten could have killed him, have rotted his stomach away and seared his flesh. And no one save a Vistana could have made a poison that we could not detect.

  “You, Rozalia, stand before me accused by your own brother of murdering your father, whose only crime was to be a fair and just man when his heart cried out for vengeance.”

  She drew herself up to her full height and pointed a shaking finger at the girl. “Be it decreed that there is no Rozalia of the Twin Waters tribe of the Vistani!” Terza cried, her voice rich and sonorous. “We know her not! Should she come begging for food, we shall not share our bread. Should she come thirsting for water, we shall dash the ladle to the earth and let the grass drink her portion. Be thou gone!”

  Swiftly Terza seized the torch nearest her, upended it, and ground its light out into the dirt. With a wordless cry, all the other members of the tribe did likewise. In the span of a heartbeat, the only light that remained was the glow of the fire in the center of the circle. Shadows came from beyond the circle, dark Vistana forms carrying all of Rozalia’s belongings. One by one, they walked slowly to the fire and sacrificed all that was Rozalia onto the greedy flames.

  For the first time that evening, Rozalia knew pain. Her birthing quilt, a small blanket of gorgeous, colorful patches made by her mother, fluttered onto the fire. The colors died as the blanket turned black. Her medicines followed, vial by vial, some bursting with the heat to send colorful sparks into the air. Her blankets, her jewelry, her clothing, her drum, the Tarokka deck she had been working on for seven years but had not yet completed—all were consumed, blackened, made nothing, just as she, Rozalia, had now been made nothing in the eyes of her people. Her beasts would be slaughtered, her vardo reduced to firewood.

  As the torturous procession of gifts to the flame continued, Rozalia cried, “You shall regret this!” Her fury blazed as brightly as the campfire. “You do not understand what I have done, what powers I have at my command!”

  The Vistani ignored her utterly. For them, she no longer existed. There would be no attempt to drive her from the camp. Why drive away someone who was not there? She could, if she wished, continue to live on the outskirts of the encampment, stealing food and clothing, but the thought of such behavior disgusted Rozalia. She would not linger here, a Vistana ghost in all but substance, living off the scraps of her former kin.

  Her hand reached for her dagger. At least they had left her that. Nothing from her person had been taken. She drew the weapon, and took comfort in the feel of its hilt in her palm. Deliberately, she turned her back on the encampment. She wore no shoes, and as she made her way into the dark night of the Nova Vaasan plains, she winced at the pain of the occasional rock.

  As she strode away from the only life she had ever known, Rozalia’s mind raced with plans. Bergovitsa was not that far away. Rozalia thought she could make it in an hour or so. She could—and would—sleep in the street, see if she could earn her living selling fortunes or dancing for the men in a tavern. With a sudden spurt of hope, she remembered that tonight was festival night in the town. Her dancing would be appreciated—if she arrived there in time.

  Suddenly, she stopped. For the first time in ten days, Rozalia tasted fear and doubt. Where was she in relation to Bergovitsa? The waning moon was still full enough that she could clearly see the flat, grassy plateau, dotted here and there with large boulders.

  Her father had taught her how to navigate by the stars in case she had ever gotten separated from her fellows. Contempt swelled in Rozalia’s breast; he could never have foreseen this kind of separation. But his teachings were wasted now. The constellations were alien. Unbidden, thoughts came of another time she had looked at the stars. It was two nights before Amasa’s death, when she and her current lover had strolled away from the encampment and lain on a blanket, sipping wine and gazing at the heavens.

  Then came Amasa’s death and the fog, that strange and beautiful fog. And, thought Rozalia with a confusing mix of excitement and regret, nothing would ever be the same again.

  It was then that she heard the scream.

  Every muscle tensed. She clenched the hilt of her dagger until her fingers ached. The sound was horrible, the wrenching cry of a woman in the grip of a terrible torment. Rozalia listened, her bony frame held taut as a bowstring, and the sound came again, nearer this time. It was joined by another, and sudden realization flooded her. It was not the cry of a woman. The agonized sounds that shattered the stillness of the night came from the throats of beasts—from a pride of plains cats, hungry and on the prowl.

  She thought of her bloodied feet and the scented trail she was leaving behind with every step. Fear lodged in her throat. She broke into a trot, and then a run, ignoring her hurting feet. It no longer mattered what direction she traveled, as long as it was away from the plains cats. As she ran, cold sweat trickled down her back. She suddenly had the feeling that she was not alone and glanced from side to side. Nothing. Nothing, but she knew with a certainty that was in her blood, that there were other … things … out here tonight than a lone Vistana exile and predatory cats.

  Rozalia stopped and brandished her dagger. “Show yourself!” she demanded, breathing heavily from the exertion. “It is I, Rozalia, she who controls the mists that changed the stars, and I command you!” It was a boast filled with more bravado than bravery, and she knew it. Still, it was better than simply waiting.

  Coarse laughter met her ears, laughter somehow unnaturally choked and muffled. She swallowed hard. “She who controls the mists?” laughed one voice.

  “The mists that changed the stars?” cackled another. The voices came from all around, and Rozalia’s eyes darted about nervously.

  A few shapes emerged from behind various stones. They rose, dark forms silhouetted against the night sky. She could not see their faces, but one or two wore Vistana garb. Rozalia was about to scorch them with angry words when the rest of the beings emerged. Anger turned to a numbing horror as she saw a black, man-shaped cloud moving slowly toward her. Two red points of fire glowed where its eyes should have been.

  Attack by plains cats suddenly seemed preferable.

  “Poor little Vistana exile,” groaned one thing as it lurched toward her. Its tongue lolled halfway to its chest, gleaming wet in the moonlight.

  “You won’t make it to Bergovitsa. None of us did, hey?” another laughed. It raised its hands, and Rozalia saw that its fingers had become claws.

  She turned and fled. Her weapon, poison-laced as it was, would be useless against the undead horrors. She now knew what they were—what was left of other Vistana outcasts who died without proper burial rites. And she knew that, barring a miracle, she would join their ghastly number within minutes.

  Evil laughter followed her. The creatures were effortlessly matching her pace. Suddenly, they reappeared not four yards i
n front of her. Rozalia whimpered, terror drowning her confidence. She dashed toward the right—ghouls rose up, pointing their gnarled, grotesque hands and laughing. The Vistana whirled, desperately seeking someplace to run, but they had now formed a circle and were closing in on her. She knew how fast such creatures could be—they were the stuff of tales told around the fire, after all. Now, though, they moved slowly, as if they had all the time in the world. Rozalia’s feet gave out, and she huddled on the earth. Defiantly, uselessly, she clutched her dagger.

  Someone spoke, softly, right next to her ear. “There, there, little renegade,” it said in a voice that was smooth and calming, “I’m here to help you.”

  Terrified, Rozalia stared frantically toward the voice but saw only the slow encroachment of the undead. The voice continued. “Will you serve me, little Vistana girl, if I make the bad things go away?”

  At any other time, such condescension would have infuriated the proud Rozalia. Now, her own dreadful fate was descending upon her with greedy claws, and she would have allied with anyone or anything, “Yes,” she sobbed. “Yes!”

  Outside the ring of the wights and ghouls, Malken smiled beneath his scarf and called off his servants.

  They reached Bergovitsa shortly before midnight. Rozalia learned very little about Malken on that hour-long walk across the plains, but what she did learn shook her. First, he could control the wrathful spirits of renegade Vistana dead. Second, he had no fear of the plains cats. Either ability alone would have been enough to win her admiration.

  “How did you know I was outcast?” she asked.

  Malken shrugged his bulky shoulders. In the deceptive moonlight, his back appeared almost malformed. “I have my ways of knowing what goes on in Nova Vaasa. I also know why you were outcast. And,” he hastened to add, seeing suspicion flicker in her eyes, “I want to make use of that talent in the future. It is a fine night for visiting Bergovitsa,” he said, changing the subject. “Festival night. You should be grateful. It was one of the reasons I was close enough to help you out.”