I REACHED THE cottage as Father Thomas emerged from it. He greeted me warmly enough and told me I was welcome to stay there or explore the village further: he had “pastoral duties” that afternoon—visiting the sick, I gathered, not hunting “creatures of the night.”
It took me only a few minutes to find a crossbow—he had three, of varying sizes; I took the smallest, which best fit my hand. A cross was easily obtained, too, and as I suspected there might be, there was even a satchel containing nicely sharpened wooden stakes. I found a bag to put the things in and hid it in the churchyard, buried in leaves behind a gravestone near the wall, then set out to see what else I could see of Zarozje.
It didn’t take long, and I got suspicious looks from everyone I met, and downright hostile glares from the guards at the village gates, who stepped into my path with spears crossed when I approached, even though the gates stood wide open in the sunlight. I changed direction, after giving them an utterly fake smile instead of the utterly sincere middle finger I would have liked to have given them, then continued my perambulations.
This evidence that, although I had successfully passed Father Thomas’ tests to see if I were a werewolf or vampire, I was still effectively a prisoner, only strengthened my resolve to carry out my plan to escape that evening. The difficulty might be in slipping away in the middle of the night from wherever I was sleeping. I currently didn’t know where that might be. It seemed unlikely Father Thomas would want a woman in his one-room-and-one-bed quarters overnight. Was there a guest house?
Sort of, it turned out, and when at last I returned to Father Thomas’ cottage after having explored every nook and cranny of Zarozje—roughly twelve nooks and maybe fifteen crannies—and he told me where it was, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.
“The orphanage is currently empty, but for Eric,” he said. (As I’d suspected.) “You may sleep there for now. Starting tomorrow, you must begin earning your keep. Have you any skills?”
“I’m a potter,” I said.
His eyebrows raised. “Indeed? Then we can definitely put you to work. We have not had a potter since old Boddington died a year ago. Tomorrow I will show you to his workshop. You will have more work than you can handle.”
“I look forward to it,” I lied, since I had no intention of still being in Zarozje tomorrow. Although, to touch clay again . . . My hands twitched. Maybe I could stay a couple of days. Throw a few pots, help out the villagers, and then . . .
No. This wasn’t my world, these weren’t my people. Their need for new pottery was unimportant. I needed to find Karl and together we needed to find the Shaper, retrieve his or her hokhmah, and move on to the next world. This world could iron out its own problems. I was just passing through.
“You may sup with me,” Father Thomas said. I sat at the table and watched as he prepared a simple repast of boiled potatoes, stewed tomatoes, and . . . my mouth watered . . . bacon, with a side of coarse brown bread and smelly soft cheese, all washed down with a remarkably not-too-bad, if cloudy, brown ale.
It was my last chance to probe Thomas for more details of the world, so I made the most of it. “So, is every village fortified like this one?” I asked. “Since the Pact failed?”
“Every village that still survives,” he said darkly. “Many were destroyed or abandoned in the early days of the Pact’s collapse. And even now . . .” He shook his head and stabbed a piece of potato with his fork. “It seems every four or five months another is . . . lost.”
“Lost? You mean destroyed?”
“No,” he said shortly, pointing the piece of potato at me. “Not destroyed. Just emptied of people. A trader will journey to a place where, just a week before, he had success, only to find unoccupied buildings, open gates, and no sign of the population—not even corpses, or blood.”
That mental image chilled me. “Werewolves or vampires?”
“We don’t know,” Thomas said. “For here is the mystery: not only has everyone vanished, but the churches within these villages are missing relics and icons and other holy objects no werewolf or vampire would care—or dare—to carry away.” He finally ate the piece of potato and continued. “But whatever the explanation, it doesn’t matter. What matters is keeping ourselves safe. Our walls are high, and secure. Every house is warded.” He swallowed, then reached for a piece of bacon, crisp, just the way I liked it. “And as you saw today, we do not suffer any werewolf or vampire we find in our vicinity to live.” He shoved the bacon into his mouth and chewed with gusto.
I picked at my own food (not the bacon, I’d already eaten that), feeling a little nervous now about my plan. “Does no one travel at night, then?”
“Only the suicidal.”
“The werewolves and vampires can’t be everywhere.”
“Nor are they. But it only takes one to ruin your evening, and they can scent a man . . . or woman,” he looked at me pointedly, “from a great distance. You and your companion were always doomed to be taken. You are fortunate that you were close to Zarozje, doubly fortunate the werewolves attacked the vampires and gave you an opportunity to flee. It did not save your companion, but it saved you.” He picked up another rasher and pointed that at me, too. “Eric saved you. You owe him . . . and us.”
If he was trying to make me feel too guilty to plan to escape, he wasn’t succeeding. Guilty, yes; but not that guilty.
We ate in silence after that, Father Thomas glancing from time to time at the window. As the light dimmed outside, he got to his feet. “Are you finished?” he said, his tone of voice making it clear I’d better be. “The field workers will all be back inside the walls and the gate closed soon.”
I got to my feet. “Finished,” I said, though I’d left a substantial amount on the plate.
“Come with me on my rounds of the defenses,” he said, “and you will understand both why we are secure—and why we must be secure. Then, I will take you to the orphanage to find you quarters for the night.”
I nodded and followed him out into the darkening churchyard.
I had already seen the village walls, but they had been unmanned during the day. Now, as night descended, there were guards patrolling them, men dressed in leather armor (including stout leather collars leaving little of their necks exposed) and simple metal helmets, armed with bows and crossbows, with silver-tipped arrows and quarrels, and wooden spears with fire-hardened tips. Also atop the walls, barrels of oil and (Father Thomas told me) holy water stood ready.
“There have been no attacks on Zarozje since the fortifications were completed,” Father Thomas said as he led me down the doglegged street I had already traveled once, unbeknownst to him, to the orphanage. “We are too strong. The monsters seek each other out, instead.”
“Why do they fight each other?” I looked up at the stars pricking the sky. The full moon continued to hang in exactly the same place it always hung, day and night. It was the weirdest, most unsettling thing about this world, and the surest sign that it had been Shaped.
Well, that and the vampires and werewolves, I supposed.
“There is bad blood between their queens,” Thomas said. “Queen Patricia of the vampires and Queen Stephanie of the werewolves, the heirs to Barnabas and Remus, of whom you read. It is said they were once friends, but they had a falling-out at the same time as the Pact shattered. Perhaps it was their falling-out that shattered it.” He shrugged. “It matters not. The Pact has shattered, they are our enemies, they are each other’s enemies. The valley is a broken place and the world outside this valley is dead.”
“Grim,” I said. “Why do you carry on?”
“What else can we do? We survive, and we try to do the Lord’s will. What more has mankind ever done? ‘Fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.’ So wrote Solomon in Ecclesiastes, and for all that has passed in the world since he did so, that truth has not changed.”
“And God’s commandments include killing any werewolves and vampires you come across.”
“Yes,” he said flatly.
I fell silent. We were almost at the orphanage.
Father Thomas knocked, and the same nun—unless she had an identical twin—who had greeted me earlier swung the door open after a single glance through the peephole. “This is . . .” the priest began.
“Shawna Keys,” the nun interrupted. “Yes, we’ve met.”
Father Thomas glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.
“I came to see Eric,” I said. “To thank him. And because I thought he might be upset about what happened this morning. I know he had to shoot that girl . . . werewolf . . . but I could tell he took it hard.”
Father Thomas sighed. “Yes,” he said. “I tried to comfort him, as well. I hope you had more success.”
“I think so,” I said. “A woman’s touch.”
“Thank you for that,” he said, and I felt another stab of guilt. Then he turned to the nun. “Shawna needs a place to sleep, Sister Benedicta.”
The nun nodded.
“We will speak again on the morrow,” Thomas said to me.
Not if I have anything to do with it, I thought, but, “Of course,” I said out loud.
The room Sister Benedicta showed me to was simple, but clean, twin to Eric’s, although its window overlooked the street rather than facing the wall. I took off my boots and sat in my stockinged feet on the straight-backed wooden chair beside the small, round table, and waited until I heard Sister Benedicta make her way to bed, and then another hour. Then, boots in hand, I crept out of my room and down the stairs, which creaked loud enough to wake the dead, it seemed to me, but apparently not loud enough to wake Sister Benedicta. On the front step of the orphanage, I put my boots back on, then hurried through the dark streets to retrieve my bag of weapons from the graveyard. I had to press myself against the wall for a long moment as a sentry passed overhead; then it was back through the churchyard (grateful Father Thomas didn’t own a dog), back across the square, back to the orphanage, off with my boots, back up the creaking stairs, and thence down the hallway to Eric’s room.
I tapped as gently as if his door were made of eggshell. It opened at once; he’d clearly been waiting.
We didn’t speak.
Eric was wearing his monk’s robe, not his morning werewolf-hunting garb—perhaps he was still feeling particularly penitent. He was barefoot, carrying a pair of sandals, and so, in as near to silence as the wooden floors would allow, we crept down the stairs, back out through the front door through which I had already passed twice that night, sat on the stoop, put on our respective footwear, and at last started down the cobblestones toward the square. “Am I doing the right thing?” Eric whispered.
“That poor girl’s people need to know what happened to her,” I whispered back. “Yes, you’re doing the right thing.”
“Father Thomas . . .”
“Will never know you helped me, unless you confess it.” I winced at my choice of words. Eric might be pious enough that he actually would confess to helping me escape. Well, it will be too late for Father Thomas to stop me by then, and that’s all that matters.
We returned to the village square, quiet and dim in the moonlight. To our left rose the church. Eric led me instead to the right, past two darkened shops, to a narrow alley. “Tailor Street,” he whispered.
He’d told me, during our conversation in his room earlier, how the ground had subsided at the end of that street, allowing the lake to flood through an old, narrow portal that had once led to the boat piers. The door had long rotted away. “Children swim through it on a dare,” he’d said. “Can you swim?”
I’d told him I could.
“Good.”
We started down the street, the buildings on either side utterly dark and silent. The ground sloped, and sure enough, long before we reached the wall, we were splashing through ankle-deep water . . . remarkably cold water.
Atop the wall, I knew sentries were patrolling, but none appeared on the small section of it we could see. Even if they had, their attention was likely turned outward, not inward.
Fat lot of good it did them. Ahead of us, a large pool of water glistened in the moonlight. As we neared it, it exploded in spray, as a giant wolf with glowing red eyes burst into the village.