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kettle of fish soup that hung on chains above the range.
    "'Tis long enough that I forget the oath that bound me to thee. The boy casts a long shadow." Maria turned, to see a distraught look cross her husband's face. It gave her pause to wonder. Gloom she saw there often - but sorrow?
    He stood up and reached out to take her hands. "Forgive me," he said roughly, "I should not blame you. But the boy."
    "The boy," she said, "worries me as well. Not the scribin' stuff he had from Father Wolfgang, but the other." She shivered. "Wanderings at night and never there when you call. That fever the other year. And then," she paused in recollection; "when we laid the stone for your father. His face itself might have been rock." She looked up to meet her husband's gaze. "Good sir, I might rather he'd been some other's than mine."
    Klaus hugged her gently. "Be that as it may, there might be others yet. And - what's that?"
    They stood apart. Carried plainly on the wind was the noise of one bell tolling. There was only one bell in the village; and it only tolled for one reason. Danger.
    Helmut fumbled the flint but caught it before it hit the damp floor. A scrape, a spark, and there was a brief flare of light from the tinder that settled down into the thin, yellow glow of a candle. It smoked in the damp air of the crypt. The halo of light caught Helmut's face, casting stark shadows on the walls. He reached up and pulled the altar back into place with a tug; now there was no sign to betray his presence. Gingerly he ducked forwards, then inched down the time-worn steps that led into the bowels of the earth.
    Once there had been terror and evil in this crypt, but now there was only the oppressive weight of time, the press of centuries. Helmut knew about the Liche . Long ago, decades before some mendicant priest had consecrated this altar to Morr, it had seen sacrifice to another, darker deity. Perhaps time had withered the Liche away to dry bones and whispering dust, but in those long-gone days it had struck terror into the hearts of all who passed this isolated headland. Strange fruit rotted among the branches of the oak trees, and when the flesh of living things had perished the naked bones walked the moonlit earth once more. The sacrifices were not of blood, but of something altogether less innocent. And this was the burial crypt of that source of ancient evil.
    Impelled by some sense of urgency he only half-comprehended, Helmut headed for the nether reaches of the dark tunnel. It led downwards, dropping a step every yard or so; narrow enough that men might walk in single file only, low enough that their heads must be bowed. Ten yards inside the musty entrance, Helmut passed a pair of niches in either wall. Within them, pathetic and crumbled by time, lay two skeletons wrapped in cerements that had long ago assumed the texture of mummified skin.
    The tunnel was now far from the graveyard. Passing the guardian niches, he held the candle before him. The stones had resisted the grinding of roots and the infiltration of damp; the air was dry and musty, the floor thick with dust. As if in a trance he paced out the steps of the mausoleum, descending towards a doorway which suddenly loomed in front of him, oppressive and dark. Pillars to either side were carved into the semblance of twisted mummies, their mouths open in an eternal shriek. With a strange thrill Helmut realized that they might well be real, petrified in their dying terror by the ancient monster within.
    This is it , he thought. He'd been here once before, but no further. The closed door with the human jawbone, yellowing with age, that served as a handle. Inviting him in. Is it worth it? He felt a hot flush. Yes! He reached out and grasped the bone, seeing in his mind's eye the battle that rolled chaotically up the beach, already shedding limbs and lives like the skin of some strange and bloody serpent. It was not for him; nothing of the kind. He had a destiny, and it was greater by