Lycanthropos (41 page)

"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."

J
anos 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 to dance once more around the cel
l.

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.

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.