The Law of Three

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

An Old Friend

 -- Syrmia, Croatia : Winter, 1241 AD --

Why?

Drusus had been asking the question for hundreds of years. Chasing whispers and legends had taken him on a journey across Europe, Africa and into the far reaches of Asia. As he waited for the hunt to begin he ruminated on the centuries of disappointment, the bitter harvest his quest had reaped.

How many have I drained to find the answer?

He could not count the souls he’d taken. Hundreds? Thousands? The numbers who’d fallen during his quest were legion. Shamans, mystics, clerics, witches, priests, anyone who pretended to have knowledge of the cure to the symptoms of his condition had been tracked and hunted without mercy.

Eventually the search had taken him to Constantinople in 336 AD. There he sought Arius the Berber, a priest who had written the book of Thalia. He’d heard the rumor that the sacred text contained the truth of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I had the answer within my grasp.

Unfortunately he had discovered Arius dead, poisoned by those in the church who feared the secret of the Thalia would damn them and strip them of their power. The Holy Synod had ordered the book burned and its author excommunicated during the Council of Nicaea. Drusus had not taken long to uncover Arius’ murderer, a bishop with immense power in the church. In a rage he tore after the holy man and confronted him on a dusty road not far from Damascus.

How foolish I was.

When he came face to face with the bishop he had the same intuition he experienced when he met one of his own kind.

But that was impossible because the bishop could walk in the light of day.

The sensation stunned Drusus. The bishop took that split second to strike him across the face with a silver cross. The sudden agony knocked Drusus to his knees. The bishop’s retinue fell upon him and for the first time in his existence as human or immortal he fled battle.

My rage almost became my undoing but I learned.

Drusus failed to find the bishop again but his relentless pursuit for the answer continued for the next nine hundred years. It eventually brought him to the walled city of Zaragosa where he had encountered one unlike any he’d ever met.

Maybe one day you will forgive me.

He sensed her now, standing watch in the tree, her dark hair moving in the breeze unchanged from the night of her turning two hundred years in the past. She had given him hope. That sin had condemned her to a life of eternal night.

You were just a child when I first saw you.

He’d watched the girl for years, watched as she’d grown from infancy to childhood, watched as the village rabbis embraced her and her incredible thirst for knowledge. Most of all Drusus watched as they marveled at her gift of vision and second sight. Then, she reached her 12th year and he saw her life change.

With the onset of her first bleeding she’d begun to suffer seizures. Her visions became the stuff of nightmares and the village shunned her. When she refused marriage in her 15th year, her parents cast her out.

How ignorant they were.

Drusus knew why she’d refused marriage, even if she couldn’t yet understand. She loved woman more than man.