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leaves nearby. Acting upon a new instinct, as strange to me as it was
irresistible, I
pounced on, caught, and killed a rabbit that had innocently chosen to wander
nocturnally near my grave.
Aching in the roots of my canines, indifferent to the sensation of furry skin
against my mouth, I drank greedily from the torn veins of the little creature.
New energy, supremely welcome, flowed into my tormented body. But an access of
mental and physical strength only sharpened my craving for revenge.
Casting aside the small, drained body I cared not for the flesh, the blood was
all
I began to consider with new clarity the all-encompassing strangeness of my
new mode of existence. The sharpness of my senses with which I had detected
the rabbit's exact location, the speed and precision with which I had been
able to seize the creature before it could spring away these augured well for
my ability to accomplish whatever vengeance I might decide upon.
But now, newly fed, I was able to think beyond the needs and cravings of the
moment. Where was I? Certainly not upon the field where I had fallen. And how,
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really, had I come here? I could not doubt the reality of the scene on the
battlefield. But to credit my memory, to think that I had somehow witnessed my
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own death and burial, seemed a great absurdity.
Though I had not yet begun to realize the fact, I had of course awakened
standing on my own grave, my transformed body having risen like so much smoke
up through my coffin's wooden lid and all the earth that held it down.
Stalking to and fro about the little clearing, moving in effortless silence, I
knew only that I experienced a strong attraction to one particular spot of
bare earth, in the center of the disturbed ground.
Snarling with impatience, I at last broke free for the moment of this tender
psychic bond between myself and my grave. The Snagov monastery was somewhere
nearby, it must be, and Ronay might be in it.
In a moment I had passed beyond the borders of the clearing. The thousand
little sounds of the winter countryside at night came to my ears, whose powers
seemed preternaturally acute. The subtle moonlight, even in the shadows of the
trees, seemed to my eyes as bright as day. Pain wracked me with each stride I
took, yet I could continue to ignore it. I scarcely noticed that the snow made
little sound or none beneath my feet, or that my skin, so lightly clothed in a
mere winding-sheet, was and remained impervious to winter cold.
Certain subliminal clues that I had absorbed during my supposed dream, or
derived from the general shape of the landscape around me, eventually combined
to give me a firm idea of where I was. I altered my course, striding briskly
over dormant winter fields, passing like a shadow through leafless groves.
Indeed, it was no trouble to increase my pace to a wolflike if still
two-legged lope.
Minutes later, from a treeless hilltop, I had my confirmation. Snagov on its
island was clearly visible before me in the moonlight, and in the next moment
I
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was loping toward it.
Snow and rain had entirely ceased to fall I did not know it then, but almost
twenty-four hours had passed since my interment. The sky was quite clear
enough to allow me to get my directions from stars and moon. I realized now
that I must have awakened at a considerable distance from the battlefield.
Everything in this new and strange reality seemed to confirm the truth of the
experience that I still in some sense regarded as a dream.
As I descended from the hill the lake vanished from sight behind trees, only
to reappear as I drew near it. There, as plainly visible to me as in the
noonday sun, was the island, with the main buildings of the monastery on it.
One light only was visible, in the highest window of a low tower. The ice that
sheathed the lake was too dull to offer any reflection of this spark.
If what the dream-voices had told me was correct, Ronay was there, somewhere,
sheltered in one of those dark buildings. With scarcely a pause for thought, I
stepped out upon the ice. It was no colder beneath my soles than the frozen
earth and snow had been.
The weather, as I may perhaps have mentioned, had been somewhat unseasonably
mild in recent days, and the ice was thin. When there came a sudden crack
beneath my feet, I found that a new instinct took over, shaping my reaction.
My body changed form almost instantly. Hearing and vision blurred; I
sensed, somehow, that a human observer would have seen nothing but a cloud of
mist where my form had been. Continuing to advance by the power of my will
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alone, I drifted wraithlike over the watery gap.
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The change to mist-form and back again was accomplished smoothly and almost
unconsciously. I had almost ceased to be aware at all of my own condition,
with the thought that Ronay, at least, was now nearly within my grasp.
Arriving on the island in solid human shape, I stepped lightly up the snowy
slope of its south shore and paused to listen carefully just outside the
monastery walls.
Inside approximately a hundred human beings were asleep, some fretfully, some
peacefully. The wall was twice my height, too high for a man to leap and catch
the top of it. But a moment later, obeying the prompting of another instinct,
I had done just that.
Then I was crouching atop the monastery's outer wall, surveying the scene
within.
There was the tall church, there the cloister, and there a block of monastic
cells, with barns and other outbuildings clustered beyond, all as clearly
visible to me as if in broad daylight.
I drifted rather than jumped down on the inside of the wall. No one, as far as
I
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