A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) by Fred Saberhagen (most read book in the world .TXT) 📗

of discovering one of Radu’s breathing helpers, I found instead first one terrified servant of the royal household and then another, a pair who had been hiding from the mob. When I appeared they were convinced that their last hour had come, and began entreating me in the most disgusting terms for mercy.

      Bah. I shut their whimpering, howling faces and stinking bodies—they had already soiled themselves in fear—back up inside their closet. Whether they ultimately survived or not I have to this day no idea, but I suppose their chances were rather good, as the hunters were more interested in me.

* * *

      Once or twice in my prolonged and convoluted passage through the ruined palace, I had observed signs which it would have been possible to interpret as evidence of Radu’s passage, things to indicate that he had proceeded me along this route, stopping to take his debased pleasures where and when he chose. For example, here and there a body showed evidence of more than ordinarily fiendish torture. But with atrocity on every hand, it would have been difficult even for him to distinguish himself in this company.

* * *

      I had just begun to feel that my stubborn pursuers had given up, when one of them again caught sight of me in the distance, down a long vista of corridor, and raised a cry. I cursed and dodged out of sight, but here they came after me again, pounding on door after door and pausing at a couple of locked ones to break them down. These artistic palatial doors were not stout enough to require a great deal of effort. Five years ago, only madmen had dreamed of a mob that would one day be treading these exquisitely parqueted and tiled floors, seeking the blood of the oppressors of the poor.

      Fortunately for my patience, and for their own lives, none of those now looking for me ever quite managed to catch up. But neither was I successful in picking up the trail of my own quarry.

* * *

      Thus it was that I, Vlad Dracula, spent the waning hours of that memorable afternoon barricaded in one of the highest rooms of the palace. From that sanctuary, up near the roof, I contemplated the beauties of the sky and waited for nightfall. Meanwhile I listened to distant music and laughter, screams and curses.

Ah! ca ira, ca ira,ca ira,

Leg aristocrates a la lanterne…

      Before the last verse of the day’s last performance of the carmagnole had faded into silence—a silence very like that of the grave—I had time to contemplate at some length the strange behavior of the human race.

      At last the sun went down, and my nature underwent its usual diurnal change, which allowed me to make my escape by flying out a window. It was pure joy to put aside for a time the outward form of humanity, and to abandon my small, winged body to the enveloping peace of the upper air.

Chapter Ten

      After my futile attempt in August of 1792 to come to grips with my brother at the palace of the Tuileries, I departed from Paris, called away by matters which have little to do with the subjects of this chronicle. Suffice to say that for a year or more I was traveling, mostly out of France. Of course during this period my closest blood relative was never far from my thoughts, and now and then news reached me, indirectly, of some of his activities. Apparently he had chosen to remain in France, drawn like a moth to the Revolutionary flame. There was a report that Radu had taken to frequenting lunatic asylums, recruiting disciples among some of the inmates.

      Not that the folk outside those walls seemed a great deal saner. Six months after the Tuileries, in February of ’93, all of Europe learned that Louis Capet, formerly king of France, had been guillotined like a common criminal.

      In July of that year, the Revolutionary propagandist Marat was assassinated, made a martyr in the eyes of his fellow enthusiasts; he was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday, whose pretty head was separated from her body by Sanson a few days later. On 16 October, Marie Antoinette followed her once-royal husband to the scaffold.

      By the time of my return to Paris in the spring of 1794, when I was once more free to concentrate upon my problems with Radu, the French Revolution was entering its most acute phase. The infection known as the Terror was building to its most feverish height, before it reached its sudden climax in the Revolutionary month of Thermidor.

* * *

      One of the events which drew me back to France at just that time was the news which had reached me concerning a gathering of vampires, which was soon to be held there.

      Simultaneously with word of this gathering there came to my ears an indirect communication from Radu. His emissary proposed, in his name, that we two brothers should take advantage of the conclave to discuss a truce.

      Treachery on Radu’s part was of course the first idea that sprang to mind when I received this news. Yet at the same time—perhaps I was tired—I allowed myself to toy with the idea that it might after all be possible to come to some agreement with Radu, to reach an armistice if not conclude a peace. Foolishly I allowed myself to be tempted by the notion that my brother and I might be able to coexist, however uneasily, in the world.

      Constantia too had evidently been invited to the gathering, or at least had learned about it, and for old time’s sake she found a way to let me know.

* * *

      A hundred years earlier, the protracted feud between the brothers Dracula had been the subject of much gossip in the small community of European nosferatu now the subject was waxing popular once again. In general our colleagues found it vastly entertaining, if now