The Keep (Adversary Cycle, #1)

by F. Paul Wilson

scleroderma."

moroi, the undead,

molto rubato

"My dear Captain," Cuza said, his tone serious, "no one pays much attention to a cripple. People look at the body and see that it is wrecked by an accident or wasted by illness, and they automatically carry the infirmity to the mind within that body. 'He can't walk, therefore he can't have anything intelligent or useful or interesting to say.' So a cripple like me soon learns how to make other people come up with an idea he has already thought of, and to have them arrive at it in such a way that they believe it originated with them. It's not manipulation – it's a form of persuasion." As

"You're both here because of me. I am ashamed…I am not a man. But they wanted to know all about the keep and I couldn't tell them what they wanted. And then I thought of your father, who knows all there is to know about the keep. I didn't know how sick he was now, and I never thought they'd bring you, too. But I couldn't help it! They were hurting me!"

Meglenitic

"I am the Viscount Radu Molasar. This region of Wallachia was once mine." He was saying that he was a feudal lord of his time. "A boyar?"

primordial revulsion

Magda had always thought of Vlad as a blood-red blot on Romanian history. As son of Vlad Dracul, the Dragon, Prince Vlad was known as Vlad Dracula – Son of the Dragon. But he earned the name Vlad Tepes, which meant Vlad the Impaler, after his favorite method of disposing of prisoners of war, disloyal subjects, treacherous boyars, and virtually anyone else who displeased him.

"How can you judge him, Magda? One should be judged by one's peers. Who is Molasar's peer? Don't you realize what his existence means? Don't you see how many things it changes? How many cherished concepts assumed to be facts are going to wind up as so much garbage?"

inimical

ersatz

torpor.

popinjay

bandeau

kismet.

einsatzkommandos

chimera,

voevod

abulea

deprecating

“Glaeken!"

indubitably

coup de grâce

Rasalom."