The Book of the Temple
Rites of the Dragon: Book Three
The Book of the Temple
Book Three: The Book of the Temple
What a glorious shock it has been to return. To see the land, changed but the same. To see the familiar outlines of my home, now scratched and sculpted by age. To dig forth again the musty pages of my journal and read, with laugh and wince, the thoughts I felt were so profound, my worthy gift for the ages.“To be a man.” Hah!
To be a man is to be false, quivering, cowardly and inconstant. To be a man is to fear death and flee. All the greatness mankind has achieved has been accomplished despite his natural tendencies, not because of them. Humans have within them a soul, celestial spirit unchanging, and when that whelms their Animal impulses they can touch resplendence.
How much greater am I, unalterable by nature? Yet still, my greatness must come from defying what I merely am, in pursuit of what I still might be. My challenge is to grow, change, set aside foolishness and embrace new ideas.
To balance these things—the man, the monster, the angel, the animal—is to become greater than all of them.
Anoushka was relieved to return here, poor pet. Paris taught her too much of herself—the intensity of flesh and abandon overwhelmed her.
It is a pity she retains the goodness to agonize over her actions, but I am not surprised. Reading my old notes shows me that once I was the same, once I wailed and beat my breast, using remorse to justify cowardice and letting a fear of doing evil keep me from finding the very treasures of existence.
Love. Yes, I have found love.
I saw Lisette, a meek scholar’s daughter, peering over the wall of the convent school in Paris, her eyes ignorant but somehow not pure and her hair, ah! A touch of the noontime sun I am forever denied.
How perfect that I first saw her on sanctified ground, trying so desperately to see what lay beyond it.
Now she knows.
Sweet Lisette, taught by her father to always wish to learn. What delights and terrors will we teach each other in the coming years, decades, centuries? A fruit plucked at the peak of ripeness, sixteen, the age at which a woman first spies the shadows cast by moral reality. Before Lisette learned even trepidation for them, she was plunged into the deepest darkness and has made her peace with it.
It took me fifty years!
While my darling was the most comely reward of my trip to great Paris, she was not the most illuminating. Fouchard, my friend, why must you slumber? Hideous, wise and powerful, Fouchard had learned the fullest mysteries of the Lancea Sanctum. At first my enemy, his own wisdom was his undoing. I told him of the Coils—aye, under duress I told him all I knew. A lesser man would have destroyed me, destroyed the truth rather than hang his head at the edifice of lies he had so carefully built and tended.
Fouchard was stronger. He heard my words and saw the ideas behind them. He realized the emptiness of his faith and cast it off, the weight of a century’s belief, but he threw it aside like a paper ribbon when the real path opened before him.
He studied with me, but taught me far more than he learned. Between him and Anoushka, I found myself lagging behind as often as I lunged ahead. Nourished by Fouchard’s knowledge, the Coils grew like spring ivy.
Now, Fouchard has fallen into the slumber of madness—a curious thing, spoken of in Jerusalem but which I had heretofore not seen. Is it a trick of our stagnation, overwhelming even movement until the changefulness of the world can exhaust it? Or is it a dream of unreason, separating us from the most fundamental knowledge of the world around us?
It is most likely a collusion of the two, an entwining that plays to both weaknesses, as I play to both strengths with the Coils. This makes it unlikely to be overcome in that fashion, though who is to say what is possible or not? Before me, Fouchard saw dawn as an insurmountable obstacle.
Fouchard slumbers in the catacombs of his homeland, too proud to take my offer of protection, and I cannot blame him. Even when flight is safer, who can abandon his home and hold his head high? Besides, if he were to leave Paris with me, the suspicions of his enemies—those who would wrest his authority within the Sanctified from him—would be more than confirmed.
Sadly, while they could not move against him, nor against me while he could shield me, his absence necessitates my own. The Sanctified have no patience for apostates, and by demonstrating that the punishment they gladly accept can be mitigated I have certainly been branded as such.
Thus, my journey home becomes a honeymoon for Lisette, though we are closer than any mortal nuptials could bind us. It is a retreat from a crusade by backwards necro-theologians. Most importantly, it is a chance to survey my domain.
Castle Dracula is losing the occult might it once had. I feel the tie waning, and I would know the reason.
Both Lisette and Anoushka find the castle gloomy. Lisette plants bright flowers, which she can only see flickering by lampglow or faded by moonlight. Anoushka flings herself into sorrow unresisting, draped in mourning garb, conversing mainly with animals and feeding only on the lowliest of vermin.
It is dusk, and some troupe of wagons approaches—gypsies if I am fortunate, for they rightly fear my name and domain. But these carriages seem more sober than those of the Romney—more like hearses.
I write these notes and will conceal them before sallying out to spy upon them. Lisette is to stay in the fortress while I prowl them as a bat, and Anoushka asks the animals what they have seen.
If they are coming here, why? Has the Inquisition finally turned its eyes east? Or is it warriors of the Spear, come from Paris to punish me? Surely neither is likely. The church has little care for Wallachian peasants, and the strigoi of Paris see no reason to depart their secure, sedate homes. Yet, if not them, who is it? There is little reason else to travel these obscure and treacherous roads.
It fruits nothing to wonder. Soon, I shall know.
How strange is Fate? The caravan is a clique of five strigoi with their several aides and a herd of two dozen feed-slaves. Most amusingly, their leader is Mara.
After transforming Anoushka and leaving me, she fled north to Germany and beyond, asserting a place as a wampir in Prague. Although they were hesitant to accept her initially, she persuaded them by destroying two rivals—using, I suspect, the rudimentary Coils I had taught her before her departure. Certainly that occult knowledge was essential when it came time to lead her little band of monsters. They came together under her dominion and she attempted to show them the Coils. Succeeding but indifferently in their studies, they set out to my castle, hoping that its occult inclining would reveal what she could not.
In recounting her tale, Mara did not mention any notion that I might be in residence at my keep, nor did she refer to any persecution in Prague. Her journey was not kind, and her once immutable flesh is altered. Her beauty has coarsened somehow, and human expressions sit imperfectly on her visage. Still, I suspect both hope and fear contributed to their decision to travel.
The question, however, is clear. What am I to do with Mara, her followers, Lisette, and Anoushka? A passel of twenty-some humans to bleed is all very well, but the eight of us cannot feed on a thin two-dozen for long. The folk of the villages are now afraid of the monsters in the keep, frightened still and motionless. If our predation becomes worse, they will be frightened into action, most likely flight, which only leaves the hunting poorer and the situation more dire.
Lisette is young enough to feed solely on animals, but I would not inflict that privation on my dearest. For that matter, both Anoushka and I possess the Coil to survive without human blood, but doing so is a fierce stress and strain upon any ghul of our stripe. No, there are too many of us here, and some will have to go.
I doubt I could eject Mara and her companions by force, even if she remains unwilling to harm me. Too, there is the matter of the Coil scraps they have learned.
They are eager for the deeper teaching I can offer, and it would be good to be once more in command.
I shall have to discuss this matter with the three of them. Lisette, my love; Anoushka, my conscience; and Mara, the mirror of my deadly ambitions.
(What follows was recorded by scholarly Anoushka, but the others of us have looked upon it and agreed that it contains the proper substance of our speech.)
VLAD: I must confess to some surprise that you would return here, Mara.
MARA: Where can a child turn, if not to her father?
VLAD: I am only your father in damnation, and I am nothing of any sort to those wretches you have dragged in your wake.
MARA: You could be. You could be everything to them.
ANOUSHKA: Why would he want to?
MARA: Why would he keep you by his side, puling and weak and mewling of good and evil? Why would he bring some honey-haired infant who lacks even the wit to snivel?
LISETTE: Damn you for a…
VLAD: That will do, Mara. You do your arguments no favor by insulting those you ought persuade. Anoushka is a mind of the highest caliber, despite her sex. She has done more with the Coils than you could do if you labored at them from the Fall of Adam through the Judgment Day. As for Lisette, she is beloved to me in a way you cannot know. For that alone, she deserves your respect.
MARA: You do your arguments no favor by belittling me!
VLAD: This is my home, and I shall entertain who pleases me. You, Mara, violated my hospitality when you laid violent hands upon Anoushka, my guest. Why should I shelter you again?
MARA: Perhaps because you lack the strength to enforce my exile. I’ve struck you to the floor once. I don’t want to do it again, but I will if I must.
ANOUSHKA: Bold words for one outnumbered!
MARA: At a word, my followers would sunder that door and slay you all.
VLAD: No, they would begin to sunder that door, and you would not survive to see whether they won victory or slaked our thirst. I will not be threatened, and I will not have my people be threatened.
With that, I seized a brand from the fire and held it before her. She flinched back while the skin of my hand sizzled and spat. That cowed her, the fire, and her fear of it, and my courage. But I knew in my heart that her threat was genuine, and all my bluster hollow.
MARA: What I did, I did because it is my nature, my purpose.
ANOUSHKA: That is no excuse, and barely an explanation! You take as your purpose the harm of others, to bring them low and make them as vile as yourself—an impossible task you can never achieve, you nadir of abomination!
MARA: Mind your…
ANOUSHKA: You blame your nature for what you freely choose, in your spite, in your weakness. Bare no fangs at me, foul Ethiope! What will you do, kill me? Drink down my heart? You have soiled me already, dirtied me to the utmost, and anything else you can offer me is only release from torment!
MARA: Then we are both thirsting for an end to you! Bare your throat and let us be done with it!
LISETTE: Vlad, stop them!
VLAD: Mara, Anoushka, cease this chattering! One more threat, one more taunt, and I shall cry ‘be damned’ to both and cast you out together! Anoushka, you hope for a release from your curse, and I will work with you toward it! Mara, you too desire to exceed your present state? You would learn the deeper Coils that have cleansed my fear of fire? Then by all hell and heaven, you will respect Anoushka for her role in their creation!
LISETTE: Why teach her anything? What has she done to deserve the powers you command?
MARA: Let Anoushka answer that. The follower of virtue. Are the Coils truly a means to step from under God’s curse? To be redeemed, forgiven, purified? If so, what manner of creature would withhold them from any supplicant? You, Anoushka, genius of these liberating magics: Are they not meant for all of us afflicted?
ANOUSHKA: They are meant to make you human once more! To free those who deserve it! I will not stand by and see my work abused to make a monster more monstrous—to erode the few checks that remain on your hostility and vice!
LISETTE: Do we really want to be human?
VLAD: What do you mean, my sweet?
LISETTE: I mean that as one of the strigoi I am exempt from injury, I won’t crumple up into age and feebleness, I won’t die of plague, I’m not at the mercy of any heathen with a saber and a cannon. Should I go back? Suffer childbirth? Marry and be the meek wife of some ham-handed man? I’ve seen wider vistas, deeper truth. I would not retreat from them even if I could.
ANOUSHKA: You speak with neophyte hubris. The urges, the violence…
LISETTE: What are they to me? So I live by the harm of others. Who does not? The prince taxes his subjects, the church takes tithes from believers, the soldier takes bread from the peasant, the pig and the chicken die for all. Every man is a thief, every child and woman too. We just know what we are.
MARA: Well spoken. We admit to ourselves what is at the bottom of our plates, and Anoushka? Tell me true if you have kept to your scruples, have refrained from the harm of those innocent mortals…
VLAD: She is not on trial here…
ANOUSHKA: No, I’ll answer. Have I fed on human blood? Yes. Taken dark delight in it? Yes, indeed. But innocent? Oh, those men were so far from innocence that they could almost see your level, Mara…
MARA: That’s good, it is well, it is begun! Start by judging! Start with the vicious and those who deserve it! You will end, oh mark my words, by seeing desert in all.
VLAD: Enough! I had called you here to discuss the question of Mara’s disciples, but I find a larger question before us. What is the purpose of the Coils? No, stay your lips! Ponder. Contemplate. Do not speak with rash fire, but prepare your arguments well, calculate their merits, present them with peaceable dignity. I find myself needing refreshment. When I return, we will make our separate arguments.
(There followed a pause.)
MARA: If I may? The purpose of the Coils is to free us of your God-imposed limitations. That is all that they do. This raises the question: Why are we to be freed? What purpose does this emancipation serve? Why do we desire liberation?
We are despised by God and if He is all good, ought we not accept our punishment meekly? Yet none of us here would do so. I say that this is not because we are perverse by nature, but because our very situation is unjust. Why should one man who does evil—a slaver, a thief or a tyrant—live in comfort and luxury? At the same time, children and women who do no great wrong nor have the power to do so, they suffer at the hands of these evil men, often their very misery supports or is the entire substance of the oppressor’s delight.
Anoushka, you were made a ghul against your will and you call it injustice, but did I will my slavery? Did Vlad will his captivity? Did any man dead of plague will it so?
The world is unjust and cruel, our curse is unjust and cruel, and to excoriate me as unjust and cruel is merely to complain that a fish in the water is wet, or that a stone flung in mud has let itself be dirtied.
All we are, all we can be, is what we make of ourselves. The Coils are a means to take freedom and power—no more than that, but that is no small thing. Like any power, be it wealth or position or strength of arms, it should be used for the betterment of those who possess it. If this means teaching it to others at cost, so be it. If it means using it upon enemies for advantage, so be that.
ANOUSHKA: These arguments are those of the victim who craves license to torment others. All this logic yields is a world full of torturers, each trying to worsen the lot of others that his own might not be lowest. It is short sighted. It is sad. In the end, conflict of all on all leads only and inexorably to greater suffering all around.
What if, instead of lording the Coils over our fellows, we use their power to improve the lot of each of us? Not only the strigoi, not only those who follow loyally some banner of the Dragon, but all who dare dream of kindness? Would not everyone benefit? By the Coils, the urge to rampage is reduced, which is a blessing both to us and to those around us. By the Coils, our need for blood, be it human or animal, is abridged. Surely that eases our predicament, even as it lessens the strain and abuse of the mortals we need.
The Coils are the art of overcoming not only our weaknesses, but our indwelling evil. To say they are merely power wrested unjustly from an unjust God in an unjust world is to look with the eyes of a child. Their power emerges when we make peace with our punishment, accept it, and acknowledge our responsibility to mitigate it. The Coils should be taught to those who would reduce the strigoi scourge upon the world— not solely because it is good that we do so, but because only such penitent creatures can truly wit their meaning.
VLAD: Lisette?
LISETTE: I think both of you are being foolish.
VLAD: Mara, Anoushka, please remain calm.
LISETTE: Anyone who thinks he knows what God is doing or planning is a fool. Anyone who thinks he can outwit the divine plan, or even comprehend it, is a spitting, screaming child. I was raised by men who were absolutely certain that they knew everything God wanted or had done, and there was no place in their beliefs for creatures such as we are, let alone the Coils that allow us to be otherwise. Let us not, then, enlist God into our plans, either as ally or enemy.
Our goal should be to find what is best for us, and let others take care of themselves. In this, I agree with Mara. Yet at the same time, to do evil as a joyless obligation is absurd. When you harm others for no reason you are, ultimately, permitting some vague notion of God to control your actions as much as if you help and protect others for no reason.
I do not know what we should do with the Coils or with ourselves, but I feel with every fiber that discussions of God are irrelevant to the question.
VLAD: Ha? Who is the witless kitten now, Mara? Who the vapid adornment, Anoushka?
Lisette is right. God is irrelevant to us. I see that now, but not because I have resigned myself to being naught but beast or demon. I am not human, and the Savior of mankind is not mine, nor are the rules and laws of humanity fit for a thing of my type.
Mara is right to say that hating ourselves for preying is contemptible. To pine for different circumstances, impossible ones, is to deny our right and our need to deal with what we are, and what we face. Yet Anoushka is wise to say that hating our prey for what we must do to them is also foolhardy. To fall before us is no virtue, no punishment, no sign of God’s favor or wrath. It is simply the way of things.
Our difference is that we may make of ourselves what we wish, through the freeing power of the Coils. To try and make ourselves angels is doomed to fail, and to make ourselves devils is to waste our better potential. We have emerged from the weakness and strength of human lives to become something entirely else. The challenge now is not to despise what we are or revel in it, but to emerge yet again. We are ageless, timeless, deathless… what wonders might we achieve with further transfiguration?
Individually, you three had nothing but contention and spite for each other, but you have shown me a new path that you yourselves could not perceive. You deserve the light of my reflected illumination, for even in your ignorance you were its sparks.
This, then, is what we shall do. We shall teach the Coils to all who deserve their knowledge, but the way is to be straight and charged with peril. We shall know the worthy thus.
FIRST, that the student has no loyalty above his studies. His sole and ultimate duty is to seek the perfection of himself through the Coils, regardless of what his perfected nature is revealed to be.
SECOND, the student must recognize the mutability of all things. If he does not trust change, he can never use the Coils to overcome the curse of stagnation. The power of change, fortune and even base fickle randomness in this fallen world must be understood, acknowledged and embraced, even as we stand against it by our immobile inclining.
THIRD, the student must take responsibility for the path he walks, the changes he makes, the self he makes anew. We who are beyond Death cannot blame fear for our failings. We who are exempt from Age have no excuse for rash acts or foolish passions. We who possess unbounded Time have the chance to understand more fully, deeply and broadly than any mortal can. To ignore that opportunity is worse than murdering ten thousand souls, for it means murdering your own fullest future.
These are the circumstances under which my wisdom can flourish. What say you? Are they acceptable?
ANOUSHKA: One path cannot hold travelers to Hell and pilgrims on the path of salvation. There is no place for me that holds compromise with her.
MARA: As for me, I can stomach no lies that would whiten our crimson path. Blood leads us down. What truth can arise from self-swallowed and willful lies?
LISETTE: I will follow where my lord and lover leads me, but the grouping that rouses my passions is a pair, and not a multitude. What care I for grand conspiracies? Leave them, Vladislaus. Let them chew and worry upon each other while we delight in the raptures of desire. Leave wars against God, or for Him, to those who cannot merit love.
As the sun came up, I went to my discontented repose. Musing on my newfound appreciation for certain jests I’d heard among the polygamous Turks during my captivity, I fell into slumber.
More, I fell into dream—but a dream that had no sickly patina of nightmare, nor cloudy haze of half hopes. It was not a dream as men dream, nor was it the usual voiceless beast rumblings of ghul rest. Nay, this was clear and valid, a revelation with profound impact, rivaled only by that vision I had when I was made anew as one of the strigoi. This, though, was no vista of crystal illumination. I found myself on a barren plain, with a veritable forest of the impaled surrounding me, stretching out in every direction. I saw my father and brothers, my Turkish captors, my Hungarian allies and Saxon foes. I saw my mortal wife and sons, dead all, and more, the many ghuls I have known, Fouchard and Anoushka and the walking dead of Paris and Jerusalem, even sweet Lisette, all immobilized by the wooden blow.
Surrounding me impaled was every person I had known, in my life or after.
Then a great rumbling shook the desolate soil, and it cracked open in a surge of heat and hungry red light. From below surged a monstrous serpent, the wings of a bat spread like sails from his scaly back, glassy eyes the size of wagon wheels, unblinking. Nostrils smoked like fresh-fired cannon as his mouth gaped wide, ringed with fangs as long as my arm.
It spoke as deafening thunder, each word accompanied by sulfurous smoke.
IMPALER, WHAT BRING YOU TO THE WORLD?
“Bring to the world? All that I owe it, which is nothing. Lest you ask, I take from it all I need, yea, and all else I desire.”
YOU ARE BLIND. YOU BRING THE WORLD A PLAGUE OF MADNESS, A FLOOD OF EVIL VISIBLE IN THE FIRST TWO DROPS OF THREE. YET YOU SEE IT NOT, ENTRANCED BY WHAT YOU WISH AND OVERLOOKING WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW.
“Who are you, who dares insult me?” Its laughter was deafening.
I AM YOU, IMPALER. I AM WHAT YOU COULD BECOME. IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME, YOUR FUTURE SELF COULD BE THIS CREATURE OF FIRE AND HUNGER YOU BEHOLD.
“I don’t believe you.”
NOT EVEN IF I SPEAK THE FEAR YOU HIDE IN YOUR MOST SECRET HEART? THE FEAR THAT MARA IS DEGRADING, NIGHT BY PAINFUL NIGHT, INTO AN ARTLESS MONSTER UNWORTHY OF YOUR LINEAGE? THAT YOU ALREADY SEE, IN ANOUSKHA’S PARIS WRATH, THE SAME DECLINE? THAT LISETTE’S DECAY, THOUGH INEVITABLE, IS INVISIBLE ONLY BY VIRTUE OF HER NEWNESS TO DEATH?
That indeed gave me pause, for it had spoken a truth I had not durst think.
“How come you to speak to me thus?”
IN THE SLUMBER OF THE DEAD, TIME IS AS NOTHING. YOU HAVE A CHOICE TO MAKE, PRINCE OF THE NIGHT. A THREEFOLD PATH FORKS BEFORE YOU, WITH YOUR FOOT POISED TO TREAD IT. BEHOLD, THAT WHICH YOU MAY ONE DAY FIND, IF THIS COMING NIGHT YOU SET YOUR COURSE ARIGHT.
In an instant, I found myself in a strange and glorious fortress. Towering walls surrounded me, and I stood among tall people, garishly dressed. They parted to make way for me, and as I strode forward I saw that I cast six shadows. Each shade was clear and sharp, with no candle flicker. I moved through light, but not wan and silver moon glow. Each object showed its bright, full colors.
The crowd began to chant my name, flinging gems and blossoms before me. I walked forward into the sun and was consumed.
Next, I found myself in more familiar darkness—the dark of a cloudy night, the only illumination red flickers in the distance. I scented smoke on the wind and instinctively fled it. I wore the wolf’s shape by nature and could no longer recall the sensations of discourse and laughter and walking upright.
I scented man-flesh and, hungry, prowled. Three mortals, carrying spears of strange manufacture, sat in a clearing. They had no fire. I lunged forward to strike, and then they turned on me with too-wide grins.
“Far too easy,” said the leanest one as his weapon pierced my breast. “Surely this cannot be Dracula.”
In the third vision, I was in a crowd of strigoi and we were all mad with hunger. We struck each other, biting and clawing, drinking and spending ferociously that we might drink further before we were, ourselves, drained. I was in a red haze of fury punctuated by flashes of love, the intense lie of love that comes from drinking our false seducer blood. I choked back the love, killed through it. It seemed to take hours, days to fight them all, murder them all, consume soul upon soul. When they were dust I saw that I was in a dense maze of narrow streets, walls impossibly tall. I took the shape of a bat and flew up, weaving through the air only to see that everyone as corrupted, everyone was a ghul, we were all entangled at war and no mortals survived to feed us.
In the darkness, I awoke.
What can these visions mean?
Clearly I am in danger. My future is in danger. I am at risk of dying as a beast, at the tips of spears held by the contemptuous living. At the same time, the world is imperiled by a ghul plague, an overwhelming of the mortals by we who have surpassed them.
Less distant is the future I foresee, not with some faculty of the occult, but by dint of reason. Mara, the eldest of my blood, is not as she was. She has a beast’s heart and her body begins to conform to it. I had hoped that Anoushka’s uncharacteristic lapse in Paris was simply the cruelty of all our kind, but by the dragon’s words I fear it a worse viciousness, one unique to mine.
This latter thought is particularly grim in light of the direction suggested by Anoushka’s recent work. Easing those bonds which stay us from making more of our breed is clearly an undertaking fraught with far-reaching consequences. What irony, if the very woman who opens the gates to a multitude of our kind is doomed to breed only monsters!
Yet that first vision—my greatness recognized as I walk, feted, by pure light and into that light… what can that mean, if not the goal I seek? If not further transformation into something as different from ghul as ghul is from man?
The multitude cried out for me. I cannot deny my duty to them.
My father was honored by induction into the Order of the Dragon, and as his son I was a member as well. We were a sworn brotherhood, declared to the Turk’s downfall and the triumph of Christianity, but we were not a military order like the Templars, nor a religious one like the Benedictines. My father’s Ordo Dracul was a political order, subtle and discerning, admitting only men of good birth, high station and great potential. I still treasure the ring and the cup he won at that tournament which marked their inception, but their greatness was not strength of arms. It was their ability to move men and nations.
By the day of my death, the Order of the Dragon was a mockery of what it once had been, its members embattled with each other and more interested in prying power away from their Christian colleagues than from the Ottoman invaders.
Now, in the darkness, the Order is reborn. Is it not meet that the son of the dragon should, in turn, give birth to others?
The laws for the Coils are a start, but it is not enough to enjoy our esoteric advantages and hope that worthy students will, in time, seek us out. I have been shown that if my work does not grow and conquer, it will die out—or worse, be perverted into the tools of disaster.
Mara’s loyalty lies on a knife-edge. She fears and covets my power, and I believe she loves and honors me as well as she is able. But the madness gnaws at her, and her followers threaten me and mine like the sword of Damocles.
Anoushka’s infatuation with me died in Paris, alongside her hopes of what she might still be. What remains is a respect for my goals and abilities, but that is cold indeed next to passion. What heat remains within her is the white fear that madness and evil will overtake her… and perhaps a red glow of envy toward Lisette?
Ah, Lisette, my best hope, my shield and portion against despair. Will you turn in my hand, becoming surrender’s advocate? It is only my due, having betrayed you, all unknowing to the bestial curse that treads first on Mara, holds Anoushka in the shadow of its heel, and sets its path to you?
Upon the fall of night, I came at once to Mara and spoke stern words to her—words I knew would be sweet to her harsh and wicked heart. I told her I would not stand to be dictated to nor threatened, that I would take my knowledge down to Hell before submitting to a woman’s demands.
“You need me,” she said, and her voice was near to a growl. “You have locked yourself in towers of thought while the business of blood and claw has dominated the streets below you. But if you would be more than a hermit in a moldering castle, you need force of arms. I can win force with force and make you amighty lord again, even if your heart is that of a… scholar.”
“I do not deny you your place,” I told her. “You, my firstborn and most perfect of monsters. But while you trumpet your strengths, admit your limits as well. Can you understand the Coils, or merely learn them?”
She lowered her head and I knew then I had her.
“The howls inside,” she whispered. “Your wisdom is the only medicine that can quiet them.” Then she looked up and her animal eyes were all envious hate. “You don’t have them. You don’t know what they’re like! I know. You, you hear only their whispers and squeaks, not the full-throated roar like a lion. You are spared the curse you gave me.”
“Be strong,” I told her. “But temper your strength with submission. Only with your help, can I give you the cure you crave.”
She nodded then, and for the first time since I saw her in the slaver’s market, I saw her bow in defeat. It made me sad, in some part, although it is a great triumph. Breaking her to heel was needed, though I take no joy in this victory.
“What of Anoushka?” she asked. “She will not share her bounty with me but oh my Lord, I will not be her maid nor abase myself before her!”
“If you are content to walk with her, she shall be content to walk with you. Do you believe her way is false?”
“You know that I do.”
“Then content yourself with our pledge to truth. In time, all falsehood will shrivel in the fires of our knowledge.”
Anoushka I found in the forest, where she had called herself an unsuspecting feast—rabbits and squirrels blinked at unaccustomed night before she fell upon them.
I moved away unseen and found her again, when she had cleansed her lips in a stream.
“Anoushka,” I greeted her. “We must speak.”
“There is nothing to discuss.”
“Not even bringing Mara to heel?”
She looked up at that. “You cannot train a serpent to harness,” she said, but her voice betrayed the hope in her heart.
“Mara is no serpent. No, nor is she human. But she possesses Reason, and to that faculty I have made appeal. Do not roll your eyes! It is not Mara’s first or favored tool, but she will make a try of thought when all else has failed.”
“By what deft syllogism have you snared her, oh great philosopher?”
“Simply this: We have what she needs.”
“The Coils.”
“Anoushka, you see how the curse weighs on her, how she is at the edge of being a monster. Some part of her fights that still, and thoughshe has wronged you—wronged you most direly!—you must surely wish to see the strength within her strike down the iniquity.”
“Even if, as you say, her humanity is at war with her evil core I confess it: I would see them both dead, dust and damned.”
“Can you not hope for her as you hoped for me? Have you cast aside all thought of renouncing our curse, of finding again the endless forgiveness of God?”
“It is so hard,” she whispered. “The light within me dims nightly.”
“Then take hope! The Coils have kept that wan fire lit, and in time may breathe it back to brilliance! Anoushka, you are the best hope of our kind! Yes, you have stumbled and have fallen, but when you rise you are still the swiftest mind among us! Married to your faith, there is no limit to what you can accomplish. Or would you give up, let Mara win by default, and confess that you are naught but evil?”
“I believe that she is naught but evil, and I would not give my gifts to her.”
“So? Then deny her.”
That gave her pause.
“What say you, my lord?”
“Deny her your gifts. Find the answer you seek, the solace you crave, transform yourself into a higher being and do it before Mara’s envious eyes. Do not argue your case with her, prove it, live it, yes, live again! Who could ask for a better revenge than to fling off the curse she gave you and leave her writhing within it?”
Slowly, she smiled.
“Your genius, lord Dracula, is your ability to turn the bitterest problems into solutions.”
“I have faith in you, Anoushka, even if you doubt yourself. I think your path of light is the true one, and that at its end you will have the strength to forgive even her. But whether you would have her be the pinnacle of your grace, or crush her beneath your scorn, you will need her close, and you will need to seek. She can protect you, protect us all, as we find the answers all of us want. But in the end, she cannot force your knowledge from you. What say you?”
“It seems that forgiveness and revenge walk the same path. If they can travel in peace, so can Mara and I… at least until the road divides.”
“That is all I ask.”
I spent the remainder of the time until dawn strengthening my position with both the disputants and, when I felt my presence was beginning to wear upon them, planting seeds of thought and support among Lisette and even Mara’s brood.
The next night’s discussion was held with less heat and was therefore far more illuminating.
We all agreed that only a strict and solid hierarchy could contain creatures of our ilk, and to endure this hierarchy, needs must play to the strengths of its leaders. To this end, a three-fold rulership was devised, such that any crisis would be addressed by one with the skills to counter it. This tripartite structure would take the form of a triad of orders, each based upon dire and sober oaths, like a band of chivalrous knights. Together these three elite orders would guide and rule the larger Order of the Dragon, into which admission would be open to all strigoi.
The ultimate authority is, of course, myself.
Directly beneath me, as Boyars to a Prince, are the ranking members of those three oath-bound bands. To each is given a task, a sphere in which their word is supreme, and within that domain they can only be gainsaid by another of the same oath, whose rank is higher by virtue of deeper learning.
For the resolution of conflict between members who are both oath-sworn, but in which neither has a clear right of domain, that member with the greater knowledge of Coils takes precedence.
The oath-sworn shall have authority over all who have not pledged.
When two who are unsworn disagree, the superior place shall go to him who has made greater study of the Coils. Lowest of all are those who have asked membership in the Order, but who have yet to master even a single Coil.
The titles by which our number shall be known are as follows: He who has learned no Coils shall be called Slave; he with one Coil is Supplicant; he with two Coils is Scribe; he with three is Scholar; he with four is Initiate; and he with five is Adept. Any student who masters all six Coils shall be known by the title of Master.
If, in fullness of time, we progress on our great work and discover further Coils, additional titles shall be awarded. He who masters seven Coils is to be deemed Philosopher; he with eight Illuminus; and he with nine Coils at his command shall be called Architect.
Those titles are to be elaborated on formal occasions with descriptions. One who has greatest mastery of the Coils of Blood shall be entitled “of Hunger”; one who has most studied the Banes shall be entitled “of the Curse”; one whose deepest knowledge is of the Beast shall be entitled “of Terror”; one who has studied all Coils equally shall be entitled “of Equilibrium”.
If even finer heraldry is desired, titles may be decorated to indicate secondary areas of study. Those who have partial knowledge of the Blood Coils may lengthen their title with “Sanguine” or “Bloody”; those with partial knowledge of the Bane Coils may append “Burning” or “Fiery” to their title; and those who have partial knowledge of the Beast Coils may elaborate their title with “Wild” or “Untamed”.
The proudest commendations to title, however, are to be claims of honored oaths. The three oaths are as follows.
The first and most honored are to be the Sworn of the Axe, with Mara my honored daughter the first of their number. Their duty is the protection of the Order, the defense of its members, but above all the defense of our secrets. The prostitution of the Coils to those unworthy of them is a vile thought and one deserving of most severe punishment. Any who teach the Coils to the unfit are to be bound by the passion of the blood, twice tasted for each secret divulged. He who wrongfully discloses one Coil is to drink two times from his own teacher, or his teacher’s teacher if he himself learned illicitly. If two Coils are taught, two generations within the Order may bind his heart. If three are taught, he shall know the conflict of triple devotion.
Any who refuse this bondage may volunteer to be impaled and left for the judgment of the sun.
In the tumult of battle and the chaos of peril, the Sworn of the Axe are supreme and their orders are to be obeyed without debate or hesitation. Let any who balk at their word in such circumstances be slain on the spot or bound for judgment.
While those who defy the Axe are to suffer, those who merit admission to it should rejoice. To them, let honor redound. As they shall be first to face peril for the Order, let the Order give them first pick of victims, lands and the rewards of honor.
This lauded task is not to be held lightly. Only those of the utmost martial prowess, who have already risked destruction to defend the Order, its members, its secrets or its properties, shall be eligible for this oath. Further, let none be shunned who is invited and refrains. To defend unto death is a high calling, andit is better to pass the cup of valor untasted than to poison that chalice with unclean lips.
Anoushka, the cross-breed chimera whose mind exceeds that of most men, shall take the first oath as the Sworn of the Dying Light, those who strive to deepen the three Coils we possess and explore further the fourth she has promised. By their arts we within the Order will push at the frontiers of our existence, learning to conquer our fear and wrath, our hunger and humility, our subjugation to the sun. She and hers will determine the course our unending studies should take, choosing those areas deemed fruitful.
Those who delve into the profound mysteries of our kind are to be respected, and their judgment weighted accordingly. In all disputes of authority, the Dying Light shall take precedence. They are to be our judges and councilors, even as the Sworn of the Axe are our soldiers and generals.
The Oath of the Dying Light is to be held out only to those who have gained for us some treasure of the occult previously unheld, be it secret knowledge stolen, arcane secrets discovered, or places of power seized and defended.
If the need should arise, the Sworn of the Dying Light shall judge any studies accused of being anathema to the Order or its goals. Already, I state here and for all time that THE PURSUIT OF ARTS WHICH SUBJUGATE THE STUDENT TO ANGELS, DEMONS, GHOSTS, OR ANY SPIRIT OTHER THAN THAT OF HIS OWN INDWELLING WILL, ARE FORBIDDEN AND DISGRACEFUL. Any follower of the Dragon who is caught in such self-abnegating idolatry is to be punished by that most final of fates: Death by drinking, and that his very soul be fed unto some worthy fellow student, that he might grow by the strength of it.
Shudder not at this punishment. Though the devouring of fellow strigoi is degrading and a sin, it is better that a sold soul be stolen for the Order than be a toy for demons below or an adornment for angels beyond.
Finally, my beloved Lisette is the first to be Sworn of the Mysteries. While the Dying Light is the center of our great work, and the Axe defends our very existence, the Mysteries are to give meaning to the course we take and the decisions we make. Each brother of the Order is to decide for himself who he is and must be, but the Order is greater than any single member. It is the duty of the Sworn of the Mysteries to take the view of centuries, making decisions for the Order as a whole, though not for any member within it. Their duty is to choose our destiny. In matters of collective action and decision, they have the authority to decide, and their writ is our law.
The Oath of the Mysteries is to be offered by acclamation. Only those who are vaunted by twenty of their fellows of the Dragon can be admitted, and only then if no single fellow, even the lowliest, speaks against their oath. Once sworn, the title to the Mysteries is permanent, regardless of action—save one.
Those who are sworn to the Mysteries are forbidden to taste the blood of the strigoi under any circumstances. Should they be fed on false love by force, it is meet that they seek their own destruction in fire or the sun. If they are too weak to escape their shame in that fashion, let them be cast down and shunned for their dishonor.
Worse, should they consume the blood and soul of a fellow ghul, they are to be punished by impalement and burning, at the hands of all who acclaimed them into their position.
Let the upholders of Mystery be pure, both in heart and in judgment.
These three divisions shall uphold the Ordo Dracul, as our three Coils set us apart from the lesser strigoi of the world. By these means, we shall spread our knowledge and will until it shades the world like the wings of the dragon.
So it is sworn. So it shall be.
By my hand, Vladislaus Dracul, Prince
of Wallachia, Master of Equilibrium
Type
Journal, Personal
Signatories (Organizations)