Burning Shadows

Text of a letter from Ragoczy Sanct' Germain Franciscus at Salonae in the Province of Illyricum to Atta Olivia Clemens at Arae Flaviae in Noricum, written in Imperial Latin with fixed ink on vellum, carried by private courier, and delivered ten weeks after being dispatched.

To my much-loved Olivia, the greetings of Ragoczy Sanct' Germain Franciscus, or as I am still currently styled in this part of the Empire, Dom Feranescus Rakoczy Sanctu-Germainios:

The search is over at last. I have finally found her, and it is as you supposed - although I am unfathomably saddened to learn that Nicoris has come to dislike the necessities of her vampire life, and that the Blood Bond is insufficient to compensate for the burden her existence has become. Her death four years ago was not so terrible that it left her shocked and appalled with her changed state; she has said she would have preferred to have my company when she first woke to our life; she succumbed to the same fever that killed Antoninu Neves, a kind of complicated lethargy that was marked by pain in the guts and muscles of the legs. A number of mercenaries died of it at about the same time. Nicoris was hard put to explain her survival to Neves' comrades, and has sought the privacy of setting herself up once again herding goats, gathering herbs, and weaving. In the five nights I spent in her tent, I could not change her mind. She said of Neves that her time with him, more than five years, was better than she had thought they would be, but that generally she disliked the life of a mercenary's woman.

I offered to provide her with a villa and servants, but she said she would not accept either from me, for that would seem to her as if I were paying her for her companionship at Sanctu-Eustachios the Hermit, which would cheapen our passion in her memory. That is also the reason she says that she intends to end her undead life: she has no desire to remain in her current state, dependent on the passion and generosity of spirit from others. She has said she did not mind supplying my needs as she did, but that she does not want to be the one requiring the blood and the intimacy it corroborates.

She has not told me how she plans to achieve the True Death, but assures me that she will be gone before the year is quite out. Were I younger than I am, I would try to persuade her to give this new state some time, but as she says her intimate encounters have become worse, not better, in the last four years, and that the more she fuses her desire with others, the more she feels the loss of herself, a slipping of her own distinguishability that has brought her despair and loneliness, which is agony to her. What am I to do, in the face of her suffering? She and I have touched; her despondency is immediate to me, and undeniable, and I will miss her as I would an arm. I know I cannot compel her to live our life in wretchedness, nor would I want to if it were in my power. But the thought of her loss transfixes me with sorrow as much as the loss of Hadrianus sank you into grief, not quite a century ago: his True Death was not of his choosing, but your mourning was not lessened because he was beheaded by the order of Shapur II rather than through his own volition.

Nicoris has told me that she wishes to return to her native earth, near Serdica, where her father was garrisoned with other Hunnic mercenaries, and where she and her brothers and sisters were born. Her mother and father are dead and she has no knowledge of what became of the rest of her family, yet she feels the pull of her native earth as all of us do who come to this life, and it is her desire to Truly Die there. Rogerian, or if you prefer, Rugierus has offered to escort her home, for there is a great deal of fighting between this city and Serdica, and a woman alone is at great risk. So far, Nicoris has declined his generous tender of service, and has flatly told me that she does not want to have to refuse a similar proposal from me, so prefers that I not make one, sparing us both the mortification of her declination.

In spite of Huns and their relentless forays through Greek, Gothic, Eastern and Western Roman territories, I find that I, too, long for my native earth. Rogerian and I will sell my house in Constantinople and hire an escort to get us across the Danuvius, then we will continue on our own into that part of the mountains beyond the forests, and to the region my father ruled so long ago.

Your invitation to join you and Niklos Aulirios in Arae Flaviae, or any of your other estates, is truly magnanimous of you, and were things otherwise, I would accept with grateful alacrity, but for now, I believe I must withdraw for a time, to reconcile myself to the loss of Nicoris, and to resign myself to the calamitous turn that has blighted the world around us. Whatever good I may gain from my seclusion, know that your compassion will be a large factor in it, and your ongoing undead life will bring me consolation. You may rest assured that wherever I go, you will learn of it as quickly as my couriers can find you. And until that time when we once again see each other, remember that my love continues and deepens.