Touch of Darkness Read online

  As if she hadn't a care in the world, Sister Maria Helvig walked out onto the narrow path that sliced across a cliff.

  Tasya stopped at the precipice. She peered over the edge. The drop was a thousand feet straight down onto sharp-toothed boulders. She stepped back. "Rurik, I don't mind heights. I like to fly. You know that."

  He grinned at her stiff back. "I do know that." "I'd take my ultralight anywhere." She pointed up,

  then down. "But one step wrong on that cliff, and I won't fly—I'll plunge."

  "You're right."

  "But what am I supposed to do when an elderly nun just strolls out there? Tell her I'm afraid?"

  "She's very sweet. I'm sure she'd understand." Rurik didn't have to wait to know what Tasya would say—and do.

  "Don't be an asshole." Tasya took her first step across the cliff.

  Rurik followed. "I can't help it. It's in my nature. My mom says so."

  The path looked as if it had been cut by God's finger through the rocks, and once upon a time, it had been smooth and straight. Years of freezing and thawing, heavy rains, and piles of snow had changed the path, fraying it like an aging ribbon. The rock crumbled beneath their feet, and here and there gullies cut the ground away completely, and they had to jump to the next level.

  Ahead of them, Sister Maria Helvig leaped like a mountain goat from perch to perch, scrambling ahead and calling back, "Hurry! As slow as you are, we'll be stuck there after dark."

  "There where?" Rurik asked.

  Tasya didn't answer. She just leaped across the next chasm, and froze when a layer of rocks tumbled down the mountain behind her. Pressing her back against the cliff, she looked at Rurik. "Can you make it?"

  He leaped, and landed pressed against her. "Don't worry about me. If I have to, I can fly." He leaned on her, body to body, and kissed her. "Don't be afraid," he whispered. "After all we've been through, I don't think our fate is to plunge to our deaths."

  Tasya clutched her hands in his shirt, her blue eyes warm as she held him. "Perhaps God doesn't like a smart-ass."

  "If God doesn't like me, it's for a better reason than that." He took her hand. "Come on. I'll lead you." He thought it was a mark of how discomfited she was that she let him. Each time they came to a place where the path had sloughed away, he jumped, then held her hand while she jumped, and he laughed at himself for feeling so strong and protective when he knew very well, if left on her own, she would make it across without harm.

  They reached the other side to find Sister Maria Helvig standing, staring at the view.

  It was spectacular. This part of the mountain faced a different vista, one that stretched for miles in three directions. It overlooked the juncture of two rivers, the joining of two roads, and a series of hills that diminished until they touched the horizon.

  "I had no idea this country was so beautiful," Rurik said.

  Sister Maria Helvig smiled. "This spot is the first place in Ruyshvania deemed to be holy. But it was the pagans who worshipped here." She gestured up the hill, and there it was—an altar stone of carved granite, eight feet wide and four feet deep, balanced on squat pillars that held the monument up out of the earth and presented it to the skies.

  Rurik recognized the stone. It was related to the menhirs and standing stones that dotted Europe and Great Britain, stones placed four thousand years ago and more in miracles of engineering by primitive man.

  "The Church came to Ruyshvania very early," Sister Maria Helvig told them, "at least by the third century, and no effort of theirs could dislodge the stone. So they took the other half of the mountain as their own. There has always been a house sacred to our Lord located on the other half of the mountain, while this place silently worships nature, and together we've lived in harmony."

  "No wonder the pagans decided this place was holy," Rurik said.

  "That's only half the reason." Sister Maria Helvig took his sleeve—only his sleeve, not his arm—and led him to a rocky outcropping marked by the blasted and burned trunk of a great old tree.

  In the middle of the mound of rocks, he saw a hole, black and impenetrable.

  Tasya hadn't followed them, and he called to her, "Look. A cave!"

  She stood gazing toward the top of the mountain, and she shook her head.

  "An entrance to the underworld. It's said that's the way to hell." As if she'd been pushed, Sister Maria Helvig staggered sideways. "Oh, all right, Sister Teresa! I'll tell them the other story. There's no need to be so snappish." With a martyrish sigh, she added, "It's also said that it's a secret escape route used by the royal family of Ruyshvania in case of emergency. They say it passes under the mountain and comes out on the other side, in Hungary. But the story about the way to hell is certainly more colorful, isn't it?"

  Rurik liked Sister Maria Helvig. He liked her childlike exuberance, her refusal to judge and condemn the pagans who had worshipped here so long ago. "It's very exciting, Sister. Where do the royal family live?"

  "The Dimitrus are all dead now. Or so people say. But they lived right up there." Sister Maria Helvig pointed toward the top of the mountain.

  His instincts stirred. "What happened to them?"

  "They were murdered. Twenty-five years ago, the night was bright with the fire and shrill with the screams."

  He scrutinized Sister Maria Helvig, who spoke softly, remembering.

  He scrutinized Tasya. Still she stared up the mountain, her usually animated face without expression.

  "The sisters say to tell you—this tree was ancient, tall, green, the symbol of the royal family. They burned it, too, and that night, all Ruyshvania mourned." Sister Maria Helvig crossed herself, and her lips moved silently.

  Tasya heard her. She turned her head. "We'd better go."

  But he had to be sure. "Tasya, look at that cave. When we're done, I'd like to map it. Are you in?"

  Tasya glanced at the hole in the ground, then, as if caught, stared without blinking. "That cave does lead to hell, and I won't follow the path no matter what the peril—or the reward." She looked at him, her chin firm and her eyes so blue they looked like chips of the winter sky. "I've been in that cave before. I am a part of the royal family. I escaped through the caves. I'm the last remaining Dimitru on earth, and now you know all my secrets—and you hold my life in your hands."

  Chapter 23

  "The sisters suggest you would like a tour of the abbey." Sister Maria Helvig stood in front of the cloister, as chipper as ever, just as if the three of them hadn't made a trip to old, bad memories and back.

  "Of course. If the icon is here, there has to be some way to figure out where." Rurik sounded absolutely confident, a man who had probably never heard screams or smelled burning flesh, and who thought hell was in the afterlife.

  Sister Maria Helvig held up one hand, and cocked her head as if listening. Then she said, "Time is getting short."

  Tasya glanced at the sun. It had dipped to the west, and she didn't want to be up on this mountain when it got dark.

  "The sisters suggest that you, young man, look around the grounds and in the outbuildings." Sister Maria Helvig took Tasya's hand. "This young lady and I will look in the chapel."

  Rurik got a funny expression on his face, sort of like he was relieved, and also not at all surprised. "Good plan."

  Tasya was glad to see the back of him. Right now, she resented him and his family back in Washington and his clear conscience and his self-assurance so much, she could scarcely look at him.

  They paused in the doorway of the chapel. It was narrow and tall, with stained-glass windows set high on the walls, and broken pews set among the whole ones. Spiderwebs festooned the ceiling and hung on the chandelier, but the altar was spotless; the altar cloth was embroidered with gold thread, clean, white, and so thin, so old.

  Sister Maria Helvig blessed herself with holy water from the font, then dipped her fingers again and etched a cross on Tasya's forehead. "It's better if I do it," she said. "You're too angry at God to do it for y
ourself."

  True—but how did Sister Maria Helvig know? "I always thought the icon should be in here." She led Tasya down the aisle toward the front. "The boys get to have all the fun, and I think it would be nice if one of us girls had some for a change. So you find it."

  "Any idea where to look?"

  "I have lots of ideas!" Sister Maria Helvig clasped her hands together. "I thought—what?"

  She looked at one of the invisible someones beside her. "What?" Tasya asked.

  Sister Maria Helvig sighed heavily. "Sister Catherine insists I can't help you."

  Tasya bit her lip. This was not the time or the place to say, "Bullshit," nor was Sister Maria Helvig the person to whom she could say it. But she wanted to.

  While Sister Maria Helvig watched, Tasya walked to the altar and looked at the floor, the walls, the ceiling. She paced up first one side aisle, then another. The chapel was old stones and crumbling wood, and if there had at one time been an arrow and a sign saying icon here! it was long gone.

  "Perhaps if you sat down and thought about it," the nun suggested.

  Tasya suspected her suggestion was nothing more than an attempt to make her spend time in religious contemplation, but she wasn't getting anywhere on her own. The old training couldn't be denied; Tasya genuflected and slid into the pew close to the altar. "If you need me, call me." Sister Maria Helvig drifted toward the back of the chapel, her habit rustling in the quiet.

  Tasya sighed and looked around. She'd been here before, a child looking up at the lines of nuns. . . . Her eyes slid almost shut.

  She existed in that state between waking and sleeping, when nothing made sense . . . and everything was possible. Her mind floated free of her body. She looked down at herself, poor thing, slumped exhausted in the pew. Her hands rested palms up in her lap. Her chin leaned on her chest. Her eyes were closed.

  She could see a tree, its branching reaching up to the sky, its leaves coolly green and promising. She heard a man's voice. . . . Tasya, little one, as long as you live, that oak will never die.

  But the oak did die. It died a fiery death.

  She lived. She lived for vengeance, and for her vengeance to be complete she needed the icon.

  It was close. So close. .

  The light of her consciousness spread out in all directions, searching for the key, and the lock to put it in.

  Some force tugged the light toward the altar.

  That made sense, but Tasya had looked all over the chapel . . . yet the light sank, and sank, onto the floor and into the cracks between the stones where once-hard mortar had crumbled into dust.

  Someone was buried beneath the altar.

  Of course. Rurik and Tasya's adventure had started in a tomb in Scotland. It would end in a grave in Ruyshvania.

  The light found a treasure chest, a match to the one in Scotland.

  And the light hovered there. Waiting.

  I don't have a key! Tasya floated in the chapel, arms outstretched. I can't use what I don't have!

  And all at once, she was wide-awake and on her feet.

  She did too have the key.

  Sure for the first time in this whole journey, she fumbled for her backpack. She dragged it up off the floor by her feet. Placed it on the pew. Unzipped the main compartment. The key wasn't there. It wasn't in the side compartment. It wasn't in the stupid little compartment for the cell phone, or the one for the business cards, or the Velcro pocket for the pens. It wasn't in the mesh zip for the overnight change of clothes, or the padded computer compartment.

  Frustrated, she pushed her hair off her forehead. Someone had stolen it. "No," she whispered.

  It had to be here. She lost stuff in here all the time.

  She groped the bottom of the backpack. The sides . . . and in the water-bottle pocket, she found the shape she'd been looking for. That of a long, rust-encrusted steel blade.

  But it wasn't a steel blade.

  All the way through Europe, the artifact had been rattling around in that pocket on the outside of her backpack. It had been smacked against doorframes, dropped on the floor, stored in overhead bins at the bottom of piles of luggage. As she opened the pocket, flakes of rust, large and small, made a grinding noise in the zipper, and when she delved inside, her hand came out red with rust—and she held a key.

  The teeth were now clearly visible beneath the crust formed by a thousand years of being hidden in the ground on the Isle of Roi.

  "Did you find it?"

  She whirled to see Sister Maria Helvig sitting in the pew behind her. The old nun was smiling, as always, and nodding.

  "Yes. I had it all along." Tasya showed it to her.

  "Of course you did."

  "And I know where the icon is."

  Sister Maria Helvig's gaze shifted to the stone floor on the altar.

  So the good sister had always known the icon's location.

  "Will you take the icon?" she asked.

  "Of course! That's what I came here to do." Tasya edged out of the pew.

  "For your revenge?"

  Tasya stopped. "How did you know that?" "I see my sisters around me. They wait for me to join them."

  She sounded so convinced, Tasya turned, half-expecting to see a line of nuns dressed in black and white, seated in the pews.

  "But I'm not dotty." Sister Maria Helvig turned to the side and spoke to ... no one. "Am I?"

  Maybe she wasn't crazy or senile. Maybe she saw things that no one else saw, but were there. Maybe she knew things no one else knew. . . . Tasya walked to the sister's pew, grasped the finial tightly. "Will I succeed?"

  Sister Maria Helvig pushed her glasses up her nose, and looked solemnly at Tasya. "You don't understand anything at all. You're involved in a great battle. Good and evil hang in the balance, and the actions of every person, no matter how small, will make all the difference."

  Tasya waited for more. More enlightenment, more specifics, more anything.

  But the nun tucked her hands into her sleeves and bent her head, and Tasya couldn't tell whether she was praying or asleep.

  "All right, then." Tasya went up to the altar. Carefully, she placed the key on the railing, and knelt on i the granite.

  As she'd seen in her vision, the grout was long gone. The stones were loose. Large stones, the length and width of her forearm, squared off by master masons and worn smooth by generations of the faithful. With her fingers, she pried the first one up.

  Dirt . . . and bones. Bones picked clean by time.

  She'd come to the right spot.

  She pried up another stone, and another one. She bent a fingernail back to the quick, and held back a curse.

  Not here. Not with Sister Maria Helvig listening.

  The bones were old, covered with shreds of a wool burial shroud dyed brown by long contact with the earth. The man, when he'd been alive, had been tall and broad. His femur was long and thick; his hip bones were sturdy. Someone had crossed his hands over his chest. Finger bones were scattered among his ribs, one still wearing a hammered gold ring.

  Tasya paused, disappointed and panting. She'd thought he would be holding the treasure chest.

  "Keep looking." Sister Maria Helvig's voice floated faintly from the pews. And then, so faintly Tasya almost didn't hear her, she said, "There's no time left."

  Tasya looked around. "No time for what?"

  The nun didn't reply, but still sat with her head bent.

  The stone over 'the king's head was four inches thick and half the length of Tasya, and probably weighed half a ton. Briefly she considered calling Rurik to help, but she'd seen his reluctance to come into the chapel. So she wouldn't call him, nor would she pray for help from a god in whom she'd lost faith so many years ago. Instead, she did what she always did, and depended on herself. Saying, "Brace yourself, Sister, this is going to be loud," she used the rocks on either side of the grave as a firm foundation for her feet.

  Sliding her hands under the edges of the huge headstone, she labored to lift one end
. The other remained firmly braced on the ground. The muscles in her arms and stomach screamed under the strain, yet slowly, slowly the monument rose. She got it almost to the halfway mark. . . . Almost there . . . almost. . . she was going to drop it. She had to drop it. She had to!

  She glanced down at the body, hoping to see the treasure chest.

  Instead the king's skull grinned up at her, mocking her efforts.

  In a surge of fury, she shoved the massive slab over.

  With a mighty crash, it smacked the smooth, broad surface of the floor, and broke in two.

  She stood panting, staring down at that smirking skull. "Take that," she said.

  Above his crowned head, she saw an eight-inch square glint of gold.

  The chest.

  "It's here," she called. "Sister, the chest is here!"

  Careful not to disturb the bones, she knelt and brushed the dirt away. Yes. The work on the top was a match to that of the chest in Scotland. Impossible, but somehow this chest had traveled across an island, across a sea, across a continent, to end here in a kingly grave in an old and honored convent.

  She looked around for something to dig with, but the altar was still bare, and anyway, she might not have forgiven God for allowing her parents to die, but that didn't mean that she would use just anything in the church as a shovel. "Sister, are you sure the icon's inside?"

  Sister Maria Helvig didn't answer, but that didn't surprise Tasya. The nun was given to cryptic commentary. Why would she give Tasya the answers she sought now?

  With an eagerness that had no time for fear or fastidiousness, Tasya dug around the chest with her fingers.

  Once she glanced longingly at the key waiting on the railing . . . but no. She didn't dare use it in the hard-packed dirt. If the rust had weakened the shaft, and she broke the key ... a thousand years, and Tasya Hunnicutt would blow the whole setup by breaking the key while digging out the chest. The thought made her shudder.