the same relation to one another as on the first map. A smaller river appeared, curling through the mountains. Again, no place-names. Rossi had noted across the top of this map: "(Same Qur'anic mottoes, repeated)." Well, he had been just as careful in those days as the Rossi I knew. But these maps, so far, were too simple, too crude an outline, to suggest any specific region I'd ever seen or studied. Frustration rose in me like a fever, and I swallowed it down with difficulty, forcing myself to concentrate.
The third map was more enlightening, although I wasn't sure exactly what it could tell me, at this point. Its general outline was indeed the fierce silhouette I knew from my dragon book and Rossi's, although without Rossi's discovery of the fact, I might not have noticed that at once. This map showed the same kind of triangular mountains. They were very tall now, forming heavy north-south ridges, a river looping through them and opening out into a reservoir of some sort. Why couldn't this be Lake Snagov, in Romania, as the legends of Dracula's burial suggested? But, as Rossi had noted, there was no island in the broadened part of the river, and it didn't look like a lake, anyway. The Xs appeared again, this time labeled in tiny Cyrillic letters. I assumed these were the villages Rossi had mentioned.
Among these scattered village names I saw a square, marked by Rossi: "(Arabic) The Unholy Tomb of One Who Kills Turks." Above this box was a rather nicely drawn little dragon, a castle crowning its head, and under it I read more Greek letters, and Rossi's English translation: "In this spot, he is housed in evil. Reader, unbury him with a word." The lines were unbelievably compelling, like an incantation, and I had opened my mouth to intone them aloud when I stopped and closed my lips tightly. They made a sort of poetry in my head, nevertheless, which danced there infernally for a couple of seconds.
I set the three maps aside. It was terrifying to see them there, exactly as Rossi had described them, and stranger yet to see not the originals but these copies in his own hand. What was to prove to me, ultimately, that he hadn't made the whole thing up, drawing these very maps as a prank? I had no primary sources in this matter, apart from his letters. I drummed my fingers on the desktop. The clock in my study seemed to be ticking unusually loudly tonight, and the urban half darkness seemed too still behind my venetian blinds. I hadn't eaten in hours and my legs ached, but I couldn't stop now. I glanced briefly at the road map of the Balkans, but there was nothing unusual on it, apparently - no handwritten marks, for example. The brochure on Romania also yielded nothing striking, apart from the weird English in which it was printed: "Avail yourselves of our lush and appalling countryside," for example. The only items that remained to be examined were the notes in Rossi's hand and that small sealed envelope I'd noticed on first turning through the papers. I had meant to leave the envelope for last, because it was sealed, but I couldn't wait longer. I found my letter opener among the papers on my desk, carefully broke the seal, and drew out a sheet of notepaper.
It was the third map again, with its dragon shape, curling river, towering caricature mountain peaks. It had been copied in black ink, like Rossi's version, but the hand was slightly different - a good facsimile but somehow cramped, archaic, a little ornate, when you looked at it closely. I should have been prepared by Rossi's letter for the sight of the one difference from the first version of the map, but it still hit me like a physical blow: over the boxlike tomb site and its guardian dragon curved the words BARTOLOMEO ROSSI.
I fought down assumptions, fears, and conclusions, and willed myself to set the paper aside and read the pages of Rossi's notes. The first two he had apparently made in the archives at Oxford and the British Museum Library, and they told me nothing he had not already. There was a brief outline of Vlad Dracula's life and exploits, and a listing of some literary and historical documents in which Dracula had been mentioned over the centuries. Another page followed these, on a different notepaper, and this was marked and dated