Edward Lee - Brides of the Impaler (Leisure Fiction)

Romania, Thirty years ago

Fredrick flinched like a sudden chill, and behind his closed eyes he saw a nude woman impaled upside-down through the mouth on a twenty-foot pike

Sweet Jesus When he opened his eyes, there was nothing but drab stone walls.

Are you all right, Professor?

Fredrick shook out of the vertigo. Just the power of suggestion, he knew. In truth, he had no interest in Romanias archeological history after 100 or so A.D. Yes, yes. Just an odd chill

Janice Line, his post grad teaching assistant, beamed at the ancient churchs rock walls. This entire place is so mythic. I cant believe Im finally here. It was with awe that she looked at the great altar. Janice was twentysome-thing, with shining, dark-copper hair and overly enthusiastic eyes. She stood shorter than average and would be described as plush rather than overweight. Cutoff demin shorts, work boots, and a T-shirt that read CARTER FOR PRESIDENT; she possessed all the idealism of any proverbial archeology student. Fredrick knew he was over-the-hill now; his assistants burgeoning breasts scarcely gave him cause to glance.

So this is the legendary Nave of Snagov, he said, looking down with her. A deep, jagged hole had been dug directly at the foot of the ornate stone altar.

And the even more legendary Table of the Lord, added Janice. An excited hush seeped into her voice. The supposed grave of Vlad Tepes, aka Dracula. But when they originally dug this hole, they didnt find Draculas body, they found

Everyone knows the story, Janice, Fredrick complained. They found the skeleton of a dog instead.

A headless dog. Just as Dracula himself was said to have been buried headless, after his assassination in 1476.

Headless

The word echoed in the airy chancel.

He was so reviled by the Turks that they bartered for his head and took it to Istanbul. They displayed it in the public squareon the end of a pike.

Come on, Fredrick said almost testily. He took her back outside. Kids

In spite of the summer heat, a breeze seemed to slice cool air off the water beyond, the treacherously deep Lake Snagov. It was in the middle of this immense lake that the wooded island sat, and in the middle of that loomed the monastery itself, one of the oldest in Romania. The buildings stood curiouslya complex, actuallychapels, rectories, serfs quarters, etc., part fortress, part house of God, and, yes, the coincidental final refuge of a fifteenth-century prince named Vladislav Dracula. Fredrick was tired of the morbid legend and even of the truth intermingled with it. His request for permission to excavate had nothing to do with that drivel.

But he could see the gleam in his young assistants eyes

The chapel theyd just exited had been refurbished off and on over centuries and appeared nearly pristine, along with selected other edifices, while others stood in varying degrees of ruin. I cant believe the government let me make this survey, Fredrick voiced his thoughts.

Janice bounced along beside him, passing an old iron forge. I hope they grant the restthat would be wonderful. No ones excavated here to any significance since the earthquake in 1940. Janice subconsciously touched her elders shoulder and squeezed. With your egghead savvy? Im sure youll be able to talk the commission into authorizing another full dig.

Fredrick had to laugh. Egghead savvy? Yes, that or the simple fact that the university has offered to pay the government twenty thousand dollars for the privilege.

Ill bet thats worth a million here, she giggled.

Now they traced an inner fortress wall. Could the faint dark stains on it really be blood spilled almost six centuries ago? There were more stains, too, on the bricks beneath their feet.

These are newer bricks, probably put here in the 1600s, Janice corrected. The old ones were considered cursed, so they were dumped in the lake.

What on earth for?

This is the inner fortress, Professor. In Draculas time this entire quadrangle was filled with impaling pikes, probably hundreds of them

I really dont want to hear any more about that, Janice, he interrupted.

on which the condemned were staked alive. Criminals, Turkish prisoners, and ethnic Germans mostly. Dracula was never content unless every single pike in the square was occupied.

Enough, Fredrick insisted.

Every morning when he woke up, the first thing hed do is look down here and revel at all the corpses held aloft by the pikes and she turned quickly, pointing upward to a second-story window in one of the old rectories. From there, Professor. That window right there.

Fredrick frownedWhat a sucker I amwhen he looked up at the glassless window. Had the defender of Wallachia and the infamous impaler of thousands really done as Janice claimed?

Am I looking at his ghost right now?

Janices tone descended to a studied seriousness. Were walking on history, Professor.

Yes, he snapped, and the history you should be most concerned with is that of the Daco-Roman variety. I shouldnt have to remind youwere here solely to investigate why brooches, jupon clips, and coins from 400 B.C. have been found on these grounds. Were not here to investigate Vlad Dracula. Thats already been investigated, quite exhaustively.

Oh, I know, she said, but still Her beaming eyes scanned the half ruins once more. Its just socool.

Cool. My God

Janice wandered up stone steps to a rampart; Fredrick, along with his frown, followed her. What are you coming up here for?

I just have to see it.

See what? The lake? You already have. Its just a lake.

No, no, Professor. I want to see the other side of the lake.

Exasperated, he nearly trotted after her. Janice was gazing between two stone merlons, at the dense forest across the water.

Its a forest, Janice. Just a forest.

Not just any forest, she intoned. Its the Vlasian forest. One of Draculas many Forests of the Dead. He impaled ten thousand prisoners, boyars, and Transylvanian Saxons in those woods, just to scare the Turks away. In fact, over the course of his guerrilla campaigns, Dracula impaled over ten times that many, all over southern Romania.

Had it really been that many? Of his own citizens?

When she turned, she stood starkly silhouetted by the sun, a curvaceous, pitch-black cutout. And down there. Do you know what that is?

Fredrick looked back down into the quadrangle. She was pointing to the stream that coursed across the yard. The monasterys water supply? He wanted to yell now. Its a stream, Janice. Just a