Vlad was a man torn by conflicting emotions: a terrible sadness and rage, and yet a deep joy.
He'd lost Rosa. He still had to come to terms with that. She'd said 'no man can own me.' And she was right, now.
He'd lost faith in someone that he'd thought he could trust. In a world of shifting sands, Elizabeth had been someone he'd trusted and relied on. Some of that, he realized, had been because he'd been enchanted. Then there was his sergeant, Emil. He had to lay that, at least in part, at Elizabeth's door
And yet he'd found others to trust. A sister he'd never known. Erik. Manfred. The Primore Peter. The Mongol-Vlad realized now that if Elizabeth said they were his foes, the opposite was almost certainly true. And of course his mother.
She had held him. Held him as if he might be torn from her arms again. It was very lovely… but by afternoon he was beginning to understand why Dana had said that she was a bit 'clingy'.
Above all of that he had enormous desire to go to the southwest. Dana said she too was almost unable to resist walking away from the castle, and heading for a place she knew how to find, without ever having seen it or been there.
And somehow the wolf-'gypsies' were at the heart of much of it. Vlad decided that he'd better finally get to the bottom of the entire matter. So he went to call on them.
They greeted him with wary politeness.
Very wary politeness.
He stood before them, no longer the bewildered, confused, boy-man who had never used a sword in anger, never ridden or even walked in the free air from the time he had been taken hostage, never been with a woman…
Now he was a leader. A Prince. And Princes had rights. "I want answers."
Angelo turned to Radu and the younger Miu. They looked at each other. Even in human form there was something wolfish about them. "Don't know if we can give you any of those, Drac. The whole point is that you should not know anything."
He shook his head and looked them in the eyes, sternly. "The point is that I already do. And in talking with Dana, I have found out a lot more."
The three looked at each other again. Vlad realized that they were talking. Not in the fashion of men, but in the fashion of wolves. There were certain small, subtle signs.
"She is of an age when it is somewhat harder to deceive about these things," conceded Radu. "Older people will see too, but they will not allow themselves to believe what they see. We do not deceive them. They deceive themselves. And that suits us well. There are rules, Drac. Magic is like that. Even seemingly wild magic."
"We have to be innocent and willing," she said.
Vlad had not even noticed that Dana had come to join them.
The gypsies looked startled.
"She told us," said Dana. "The old woman, as you called her. She was not too sure what innocent was. I think she'd forgotten."
The three men grinned. And they were very wolfish.
Vlad sighed. "Suppose you just tell us what you are. I already know that you are sometimes wolves and sometimes men."
"And they are not gypsies," said Dana.
The three grinned again. "We think we can do this. It will be enough for now. We will tell you that. And then, if you are willing, you will come with us to the place of stones."
"Is that," Vlad pointed, "over there?"
The wolves nodded. "It draws him," said Angelo.
"And her," said Miu. "Look."
Vlad did. He could see her staring intently down the line of his pointing finger, nodding.
"So what are you?"
"Wolves."
"Not gypsies."
"They are newcomers to our range. From the south. Very convenient," said Radu. "We prefer people think that that is what we are too. We have been as we are now for seven thousand years."
Vlad shook his head. "Why? People despise the gypsies."
"Better despised than feared and hunted to extinction. People don't like gypsies, but they don't fear them. They fear men who become wolves, and wolves who become men, although we are even less danger to them than the gypsies. There is an ancient fear. Like us, the gypsies are travelers. We migrate across our lands with the seasons," said Angelo.
Radu contined. "Wolves cannot co-exist with men. A wolf is stronger than one man, most of the time. Wolves work together to add to that. But there are far more men, and they are more cunning than wolves, and also work together."
Angelo nodded. "If we fought… men would suffer. We are strong and cunning, and work as a pack. But in the end humans would win."
"But each can live together… if each would just give a little. The world can be better, richer place… for men and for wolves. Men are settlers. We move. We do much of the trade and much of the movement of information in your land. We deal with less desirable creatures which both men and wolves regard as pests. We take our prey from the land-but we take less, and we do not take men. In turn we have become more like men."
"We would not give up being wolves, but we would not give up being men either," said Miu
"We need to hunt and to run," said Radu repeating as if from a litany.
"But fires and plum dumplings are good things." replied Miu.
"Each takes something from the other, each gives," said Radu.
"And tomorrow night… it may end. We may become men or we may become wolves. We cannot stay both without it," said Angelo.
"There must be blood," they said, together.
Vlad took a deep breath. Looked at his sister… the two of them talked wordlessly rather like the wolves did, in tiny movements of the face and eyes. It was a language, Vlad realized, that just the two of them shared, that neither had to learn. The wolves had saved him from Elizabeth's clutches, earlier. Brought him home, to his land, where he had been able to grow strong, to come into his birthright. They had never lied to him. They'd let him deceive himself. He could trust them with his life. He was wary about trusting them with hers.
She told him that they'd saved her and her mother from Emeric, watched over them… there was more. Some of which he almost understood. It involved wings and fire. And a dark lake. They were dangerous. But dangerous did not mean that they could not trust them.
Brother and sister nodded simultaneously. Still… a blood ritual, Elizabeth had said.
"They're wolves," said Dana, answering his unspoken fear. "They like blood. They see everything in those terms."
"I only have one question further," said Vlad, knowing that he could not ask the questions he would like to-was his soul in peril? Was this black magic? It was certainly not Christian, not over 7000 years. Yet… they had been saved by Bortai and the pagan Shaman, who had found Elizabeth as evil as he had. Would they… his mind shied away. His sister was a young virgin. That evil woman had attached some significance to that.
"We will answer, if we can," said Radu.
"Why tomorrow, and why there?"
"Two questions, but we can answer both."
"It is the place where the first bargain was made with the man of the river-people. It must be renewed, and a period was set on that, a time when the magics needed would be strong. Tomorrow night at midnight is the eclipse of the full moon. It happens in a regular pattern. A pattern known from ancient days."