before midnight he woke up, saw a vertical white band of moonlight, deep and inches wide, like a luminous shaft, streaming into the room where the curtains missed coming together. Remembering what Use Kinkovsi had said, he got up, took a safety pin and firmly pinned the
curtains shut. He half-wished it could be different - more than half- but... it couldn't.
It wasn't that he hated women or was frightened of them, he didn't and wasn't. It was more that he couldn't understand them, and with so many other things to do -so much else to learn and try to understand - he simply had no time to waste on dubious or untried pleasures. Or so he told himself. And anyway, his needs were different to those of other men, his emotions less volatile. Except when he needed them to be. But what he'd lost in common sensuality, he more than made up for in uncommon sensitivity. Though even that would seem a paradox to anyone who knew his work.
As for those other things he had to learn or at least try to understand - they were legion. Borowitz was happy with him the way he was, yes, but Dragosani was not. He felt that at the moment his talent was one-dimensional, that it lacked any real depth. Very well, he would give it the very greatest depth, a depth unplumbed for half a millennium! Out there in the night lay one who had secrets unique, one who in life commanded monstrous magics, and who even now, in death, was undead. And there, for Dragosani, lay the fount of all knowledge. Only when he had drained that well would there be time for the rest of his sorely neglected 'education'.
It was midnight now, the witching hour. Dragosani wondered how far the sleeper's dreams reached out beyond the borders of the dark glade, wondered if they might meet half-way. The moon was up and full, and all the stars were bright; high in the mountains wolves prowled and howled even now, as they had five hundred years ago; all the auspices were right.
He lay back in his bed, lay very still, and pictured the shattered tomb where roots groped like fossil tentacles and the trees leaned inward to hide their secret. He pictured it, and out loud but also in his mind said:
'Old one, I've come back. I bring you hope in return for knowledge. It's the third year, and only four remain. How goes it with you?'
Outside in the night a wind sprang up, blowing down from the mountains. Trees soughed as their branches bowed a little, and Dragosani heard a sighing behind the rafters over his head. But as quickly as it had risen the wind fell, and in its place:
Ahhh! Dragosaaani! Is it you, my son? Are you then returned to me in my solitude, Dragosaaani ... ?
'Who else would it be, old devil? Yes, it is Dragosani. I have grown stronger, I am become a small power in the world. But I want more! You hold the ultimate secrets of power, which is why I have returned and why I will continue to return, until... until...'
Four more years, Dragosani. And then... then you shall sit upon my right hand, and I shall teach you many things. Four years, Dragosani. Four years. Ahhh!
'Long years for me, old dragon, for I must wake each morning and sleep each night and count all the hours between. And time is slow. But for you...? How has it been, old one, this last year?'
It would have been the merest moment, fleeting, speed ing, gone! - had you not disturbed me, Dragosani. But you have given me... yearnings. Here I lay and for fifty years hated, and lusted for revenge on them that put me here. And for fifty more I desired only to be up and about my business, which is to put down my enemies. And then ... then I thought me: but my murderers are no more. They are bones in graves of their own now, or dust blown on the winds. And in another hundred years... what of even the sons of my enemies then? Ah! Well might I ask! What of the legions who came up against these mountains in ages past and met my father's fathers waiting? What of the Lombard and the Bulgar, the Avar... and the Turk? Ah! - a brave fighter in his time, the Turk - he was my enemy, but no more. And