‘You fear the cross, symbol of Christianity.’
I hate the cross! To me it is the symbol of all lies, all treachery. But fear it? No . . .
‘Are you telling me that if a cross were held against you – a holy crucifix – it wouldn’t burn your flesh?’
My flesh might burn with loathing – in the moment before I struck dead the one who held the cross!
Dragosani took a deep breath. ‘You wouldn’t deceive me?’
Your doubts tax my patience, Dragosani.
Cursing under his breath for a moment, finally Dragosani continued: ‘You cast no reflection. Neither in a mirror, nor in water. Similarly, you have no shadow.’
Ah! A simple misconception – but not without its sources. The reflection I cast is not always the same, and my shadow does not always conform to my shape.
Dragosani frowned. (He remembered the leprous tentacle from that time almost twenty years ago.) ‘Do you mean that you are fluid, unsolid? That you can change your shape?’
/ did not say that.
‘Then explain what you did say.’
Now it was the turn of the old one in the ground to sigh. Will you leave nothing of mystery, Dragosani? No, I’m sure you won’t. . .
But now Dragosani was doing some thinking for himself. ‘I believe this may answer two questions in one,’ he said while the other pondered. ‘Your ability to change into a bat or a wolf, for example. That’s part of the legend, too. If it is legend. Are you a shape-changer?’
He sensed the other’s amusement. No, but I might seem to be such a creature. In fact there is no such thing as a shape-changer, not that I ever encountered . . .
Then … it seemed that the old one had come to a decision. Very well, I will tell you: what do you know of the power of hypnotism?
‘Hypnotism?’ Dragosani repeated, continuing to frown. But then his jaw fell open as he saw the truth, or what might be the truth, in a sudden flash of realisation. ‘Hypnotism!’ he gasped. ‘Mass hypnotism! That’s how you did it!’
Of course. But while it fools the mind it cannot fool a mirror. And while I might appear to be a fluttering bat or loping wolf, still my shadow is that of a man. Ah! The mystique falls away, eh, Dragosani?
Dragosani remembered the leprous tentacle again but said nothing. He had long ago decided that dead (or undead) things which talked in men’s minds might also be masters of deception. Anyway, he had other questions to ask:
‘You can’t cross running water. It drowns you.’
Hmmm! I may have an answer to that one, too. In my life I was a mercenary Voevod. And aye, I would not cross running water! It was my strategy. When the invader came I waited and let him cross the water – and slaughtered him on my side. Perhaps this is where this legend arose, on the banks of the Dunarea, the Motrul and the Siretul. And I have seen those rivers run red, Dragosani. . .
While the other offered his explanation, Dragosani had been building up to the big one. Now, without pause, he tossed it in: ‘You drink the blood of the living! It is a lust in you, which drives you on. Without blood you die.
Your utterly evil nature demands that you feed on the lives of others. The blood is the life.’
Ridiculous! As for evil: it is a state of mind. If you accept evil you must accept good. Perhaps I am out of touch with your world, Dragosani, but in mine there was very little of good! And as for drinking blood: do you take meat? And wine? Of course you do! You devour the flesh of beasts and the blood of the grape. And is that evil? Show me a creature which lives, which does not devour lesser lives. This legend springs from my cruelties, which I admit, and from all the blood I spilled in my lifetime. As to why I was so cruel: it seemed to me that if my enemies believed I was a monster, then that they would be reluctant to come against me. And so I was a monster! If my legend has lasted so long and grown so fraught with terror, who may say I was wrong? ‘That doesn’t answer my question. I – ‘ And I … am tired now. Do you know what it takes from me, this sort of inquisition? And do you think I am one of your corpses, Dragosani? A suitable case for necromantic examination?