A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

      By now I had regained the power of movement. But for the time being I chose to remain still and silent.

      Unexpectedly she spoke. “And there you are, my handsome moroi! As I thought, a power of magic here. More than a year beneath the sod, and your flesh still uncorrupted.” The right hand of the gypsy, who was hardly more than a girl, prodded an exposed bicep with a sharp fingernail and then moved on. “And here is a nice dagger. Well, that will be of some use.” But the reaching hand made no move to extract the weapon from my coffin yet.

      Still I did not move. My eyes were open, but I held them still and dull as those of a corpse; it is a thing that we can do.

      The young woman crouched with clasped hands beside my coffin, speaking to me at greater length, almost but not quite as if she thought I could hear her. The tenor of her speech was rejoicing that her surmise had proven correct and that she found my body still uncorrupted.

      Next she untied a small cloth bundle she had brought with her and began to go through various magical rituals, blowing foul powder in my face and chanting stupid spells. All totally useless, as most such efforts are. As I surmised at the time and later was able to confirm, they constituted an effort to keep me quiet while she hacked off various parts of my anatomy. I waited, joyfully anticipating what was going to happen when I finally moved, and waiting to see if my visitor had any more preliminaries in mind before she began to use her knife.

      But there were no more. When the despoiler of my grave raised my right arm, took firm hold of the forefinger, and drew her own small dagger, I judged that the time had come to act.

      I had long since left behind me many of the common susceptibilities of breathing flesh, and my assailant would have faced a most difficult task in trying to hack me to pieces with any implement of metal. But I did not allow her to make the attempt. As she held up my arm, tugging hard against a certain inherent stiffness—more appropriate to a day-old than a year-old corpse—I suddenly returned her handclasp. My own grasp was gentle, but still sufficiently firm to insure that the digit she was attempting to isolate should not be left undefended.

      The young woman’s first reaction was disappointingly restrained; she only gasped, and would have pulled away, but my grip was vastly too strong to allow that. Courageous as she was, I think that in the next moment she might have fainted. But now I had shifted the direction of my gaze, and with my eyes locked on hers I willed her to retain consciousness.

      Her next move was a wise one, to throw down the knife she had been holding in her free hand. Then she began to mutter, and presently declaimed aloud, first prayers and then more abominations of witchcraft.

      I spoke to her for the first time. “I command you, girl, cease this shameful, wicked way of speaking. If you are going to pray, pray properly!”

      Her response surprised me: “And who are you, moroi, to call me wicked? Or to give me instructions in prayer?” And she tossed her head in a gesture of defiance.

      She had again used the term for undead, and for some reason that gave me pause. Despite all my recent experience I had never yet thought of myself in such a way. “Well,” I said at last. “I am undead indeed. But when you come right down to it, what does that mean, except that I am, thanks to the good God, still alive?”

      My captive uttered a little yelp of shock and astonishment, an almost endearing sound. “You dare to speak the good Lord’s name? Hell strike you down!”

      Again it was my turn to be surprised. “Indeed? And why should He do that?”

      She was shivering, though the night was not that cold, and seemed unable to answer. “I am Vlad Drakulya,” I told her after a pause. “Once Prince of Wallachia. But I suppose you knew that, woman. If not, whose grave did you think you were violating? And what is your name?”

      “I am called Constantia.” She was shivering more and more with fear by this time, though somehow managing to keep her voice almost under control. Courage has always fascinated and impressed me.

      I squeezed her hand—still almost gently. “And on what task, good Constantia, were you about to employ your dagger? Did you think my fingernails might be in need of trimming, after so long in the grave? Is that what brought you here tonight?”

      She stared at me, and then produced a tremulous little smile. If my grip was causing her pain she gave no sign. Her spoken answers remained evasive. But of course I understood perfectly well that what must have brought her to my grave was the practice of witchcraft—doubtless she had meant to excise more than one portion of my anatomy to aid her in her spells. Dead men’s eyes, fingers, testicles— the witch’s shopping list is long—were and are considered of great value. Most in demand are the parts of executed criminals, followed by those of men of spiritual power. Looking back, I can believe that I was considered as belonging to both categories.

      How, by what means of bribery or divination, this little apprentice witch had learned the location of my grave I was never to discover. She must have assumed that the body of Prince Drakulya would possess some special efficacy to aid her in her work. But as the situation actually worked out, she was, I believe, content to leave my bones intact, forgetting her original purpose in the dazzling light of her discovery that I was not dead after all. Yes, I know she had expected to find an undead, or thought she had;