by Brian Lumley
“What?” said the other as Harry stood up again. “About who?” It was as Harry had expected: Eugen knew nothing about Him.
“Well, I’m going now,” said Harry, “but I’m afraid you’re staying right here. You and Corneliu. Because I know I can’t let you walk, not just yet, anyway. So you’ll remain the honoured guests of my friends until I’m well out of it. But once I’m safely airborne, then I’ll let these people know they can release you—and themselves.”
“You’ll … let them know?” Eugen had started shuddering and couldn’t control it. “How will you let—”
“I’ll shout,” said Harry, with a mirthless grin. “Don’t worry, they’ll hear me.”
But what if he starts shouting first? Ion Zaharia asked as Harry walked out of the graveyard.
Then stop him, Harry answered. And: But try not to kill them. Life’s precious, as you know well enough. So let them live what they have left. And anyway, they’re not worthy to be in here with such as you …
Harry drove very carefully back to Bucharest, parked the car in the airport car park and locked it, and pressed the keys into the soil of a large flowerpot in the booking lounge. Then, just five minutes past his actual reporting time, he handed in his ticket and luggage. It was the same as when he’d come in: no one looked at him twice.
The Olympia Airlines plane took off just eleven minutes late, at 12:56. As it turned its nose south for Bulgaria and the Aegean, Harry was rewarded by the sight of an Aeroflot jet going in for a landing. There would be a bright-eyed couple of lads on board just dying to get their hands on him. Well, so let them die.
Forty minutes later, with the Aegean just swimming up into view through the circular windows, Harry reached out with his deadspeak to the cemetery outside Ploiesti. How are things?
All’s well, Harry. No one’s been in here, and these two haven’t been a problem. The big one did faint, eventually. His small friend came to, took one look, and passed out again!
Harry said, Ion, Alexandru, all of you—I don’t have the words to thank you.
You don’t need any. Can we just leave these two where they are now, and … dig ourselves in again?
Harry’s nod was reflex as he reclined his seat and lay back a little. The dead in the Romanian graveyard picked it up anyway and began to disperse back to their resting place. Thanks again, Harry told them, withdrawing his thoughts and allowing himself some small relaxation for the first time in … well, in a day at least.
Don’t mention it, was their response …
Harry tried to get Faethor. If he could contact the others as easily as that, communication with the long-dead father of vampires should be no problem. After a few seconds of concentration, he got through.
Harry? I see you are safe. Ah, but you’re the resourceful one, Harry Keogh!
You knew I was in trouble?
(Faethor’s mental shrug.) As I’ve told you before: I sometimes overhear things. Did you want something?
It seemed to me we might save ourselves some time, Harry answered. I have nothing to do right now, and in a little while my head will be full of the clutter of friends and the atmosphere of a friendly place—not that I’m complaining! So I thought maybe now would be a good time for you to tell me the rest of Janos’s story.
There’s not much more to tell. But if you wish it … ?
I wish it.
And: Very well, my son, Faethor sighed. So be it …
As has been told, I was away for three hundred years. Three centuries of blood! The Great Crusade was only the start of it; later I served Genghis Khan, and then his grandson Batu. In 1240 I assisted and delighted in the taking of Kiev, and in burning it to ashes. Eventually it was time for me to “die” … and return as Fereng the Black, son of the Fereng! Then, under Hulegu in 1258, I helped bring down Baghdad. Ah, such years of bloodshed, pillage, and rape!
But the Mongols were on the wane, and by the turn of the century I had forsaken them in order to fight for Islam. Oh, yes, I was an Ottoman! Me, a Turk, a Moslem ghazi! Ah, what it is to be a mercenary, eh? And with the Turks, for one and half a centuries more, I revelled in blood and death and the sheer glut of war! In the end, however, I had lived with them too long and so was obliged to desert their cause. Ah, well, and it was crumbling anyway.
And so finally I returned and put Thibor down (as has also been told), then took me off into the unchanged and unchanging mountains to seek out Janos and see how well he had kept house for me.
In the interim, however, I had kept my ears open. Wamphyri ears are delicate instruments, be sure, and miss very little. Aye, and they had always been alert for news of my sons, Thibor and Janos. Well, of the former we know. And of the latter?
Where Thibor had been greedy for blood, Janos had been simply greedy. In my time abroad he had many interests, but mainly he’d been a thief, a pirate, a corsair. Does it surprise you? It should not: for the Barbary pirates had their origin in petty princelings who rose up during the Christian-Moslem conflicts of the Crusades. That then had been Janos’s chief business during the time of my absence: a grand thief on the broad bosom of the Mediterranean, to loot them who had looted others!
And now he’s a sailor again, eh? Well, and why not? Oh, he knows the sea well enough that one, who now for a profession brings up treasure from the ocean and digs for it in the islands around. Hah! And who pray would know better where to find it—since he was the one who laid it down, more than five hundred years ago! And what was that all about, you may wonder, that great squirreling for nuts, as if some fearsome winter were about to embark? But it was, it was! Aye, just such a winter: for Janos had worked hard at his art to look well into the future, and had not liked what he saw there.
For one thing, he had doubtless seen my return, and he did not need to look to know how I would deal with him! And so he had made provision for another time, far beyond the hour of my revenge. This present time, of course, when he is up again and about in the world of men.
But (you may ask) my revenge for what? The loss of Marilena was three to four hundred years in my wake, and I could have killed him then for that; so what now? I will tell you:
First, for his desertion from my cause. To go a-pirating he must first vacate my house. Second, for his treatment of my Szgany. For in the early years of my absence he had kicked out the Szagy Ferengi and reinstated the filthy Zirra, whom I had cursed! Third and last, but not least, for the way in which he greeted me, when at last I was returned.
On my way I had gathered faithful Gypsies to me, who had remembered me through all the years of my exile. Not the originals, no, for they were dust, but the sons of their sons. Ah, they remember legends, the Szgany! But when I went up to my castle, I went alone, by night, for a task force would be too obvious and could only appear threatening.
Alas, when I was come there, I saw the place a ruin! Well, perhaps not quite so bad, but near enough. The battlements were broken; earthworks without were untended; the repair in general was bad. Left to fend for itself through much of my absence, the place had suffered. But Janos, done with pirating now and returned to other pursuits, was to house. And just as I had tried to follow his career, so he had followed mine.
He knew I was coming; guards were out, with clear instructions; I was challenged, and upon identifying myself …
… Was set upon!
They had sharpened hardwood staves. They had crossbows with wooden bolts. They carried the curved long knives of the Turks. Silver they had, too, on their weapons, and garlic in which to steep them! And each party of men, they had casks of oil, and torches with which to fire it! For what to burn, I ask you?
I fled them, up into the crags and for many a mile in the high places. I limped, scurried, cried out in some great pain, kept barely ahead of my pursuers. They knew I was injured and that they would have me. Janos sent out his entire household to hunt me down. But … I merely lured them. What, Faethor Ferenczy, with his tail between his legs, running from Zirra scum?
&
nbsp; Aha! For while they were out chasing me, my own small but faithful Szgany army were up and into my house, into all of its stations and down behind its earthworks! And high in the peaks, I turned on my trackers, laughed and slew a few, then launched myself into the night and glided down to my castle as of old. And there I discovered Janos trapped, and brought him to his knees.
The Zirras, when they came straggling home, were met by mine, who slew them out of hand. Some escaped the slaughter and word went out; in a little while no more came; the survivors had fled into the night and the countryside around, to become Travellers once more as of old …
And it was then I discovered Janos’s several subsidiary interests, with which he had occupied himself while I had been away. Then, too, I saw how severely I had underestimated him. My castle had been built upon the foundations of another, earlier house, whose basements Janos had uncovered. And he had seen to it that these were extended, outwards into the roots of the crags around, down into the rock of the mountain itself. To what end?
There lay the measure of my underestimation. Janos had told me he desired to be Wamphyri … ah, but how he had desired it!
Now in those days necromancy was an art. Certain common men had discovered the way of it; they practised it much as a vampire might, but without his natural instinct for it. Janos knew I was a crafty necromancer and would emulate me, but I had declined to teach him my techniques. Wherefore he had determined to discover methods of his own. Doubtless he’d consulted with many necromancers, to learn their ways.
The extensive cellars of the castle were mazy and secret, whose stairs and passageways were known only to Janos and a handful of his men, all of whom were now either fled or dead. But I went down with him to see what he had been about, and there discovered tomb loot from all Wallachia and Transylvania and the lands around. No, not treasure as such, but tomb loot!
Do you know that in prehistory it was the way of men to burn their dead and bury their ashes in vases? Of course you do, for the habit has survived. Why, there’s as much burning as burying even to the present day! But the Thracians, they had entombed a great many of their dead in this fashion, and Janos had been busy digging them up again! And once more you will ask: to what end?
To enquire of them their secrets! To fetch the dead to life and torment them for their histories! To invest their very ashes with flesh which he could torture! For the Thracians were heavy in gold, and as I have said, Janos was greedy. Nothing is new, eh? An hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years later, necromancers were still calling up spirits in order to discover their treasures. Your own Edward Kelly and John Dee were two such, but fakers both of them. I consulted with them in my time and know this for a fact.
As for Janos’s method, it was simplicity in itself.
First, remove a burial urn to his castle vaults, where, by use of those arts he had mastered, its salts might be reconstituted; chain the poor wretch so obtained and torture him for knowledge of his kith and kin, the locations of their graves, etcetera, and their hoards in turn. And so forth, In the pursuit of which policy, Janos had amassed a veritable graveyard of despoiled pots and urns and lekythoi, such as to fill several large rooms!
Intrigued, I demanded a demonstration of his art. (For you will understand, this was not necromancy as the Wamphyri might use it, but something new—to me, anyway.) And Janos, knowing I had still to deal with him and seeking to please me, proceeded. He tipped out salts upon the floor, and by use of strange words in an Invocation of Power—lo and behold—conjured from these cinders a Thracian woman of exceeding beauty! Her language was archaic in the extreme but not beyond understanding; certainly it was not beyond my understanding, for I was Wamphyri and expert in tongues. Moreover, she knew she was dead and that this was a great blasphemy, and begged of Janos that he not use her again. From which I knew that this bastard son of mine not only called up the dead into former semblance, but had more uses for some of them than simply to question as to the whereabouts of buried treasure!
How grand! My excitement was such that I had her before allowing him to reduce her back to ashes!
“You must teach me this thing,” I told him. “That is the least you can do to atone for your many sins against me.”
He agreed and showed me how to mix certain chemicals and human salts together, then carefully inscribed two sets of words upon a stretched skin. The first set, alongside an ascending arrow, thus, ↑, was the invocation as such, and the second, marked ↓ , was the devolution.
“Bravo!” I cried then, when I had the thing. “I must put it to the test!”
“As you see”—he indicated all his many jars and urns—“you have a wide choice.”
“Indeed I have,” I answered gravely, and stroked my chin. And before he knew what I was about, I drew out a wooden stake from beneath my cloak and pinned him! This did not serve to kill him, no, for he had a vampire in him; it merely immobilised him. Then I called down some trusted men of mine from the castle and burned Janos to ashes even while he frothed and moaned and eventually screamed a little. Aye, and when these ashes of his—these essential salts—were cool, I had them sifted, applied his several chemical powders … and used his own magic to have him up again!
And did he scream then? You may believe he did! The heat of the fire, a mercifully short travail, had been nothing compared to the unendurable agony of the fact that he was now and eternally and utterly in my power! So I thought …
But alas, his screaming was not borne of this knowledge but of a wrenching, a tearing, a division of being—which I shall explain in a moment.
But oh, to see those clouds of smoke puff up from his dry, dusty remains—a great upheaval of smoke and fumes—from which stumbled Janos, naked and screaming. But … a miracle! He was not alone. There with him, but entirely apart, was his vampire: my spittle grown to a live thing, but a creature with little or nothing of its own intelligence!
It was leech, snail, serpent, a great blind slug, and all unused to going on its own. It, too, mewled, though I know not how. But I did know the answer to the riddle: in burning Janos I had burned two creatures, and raising him up again, I had also revitalised two—but in their separate parts!
Then … I had me a thought. I brought forward my cowering men and commanded them that they take Janos and hold him down. “And so you would be Wamphyri, eh?” I said, approaching him with my sword. “And so you shall be. This creature here is a vampire but has very little of a brain. It shall have yours!” He screamed again, once, before I took his head. And splitting his skull, I took out from it his living, dripping brain.
You can guess the rest, I’m sure. Using Janos’s own process and keeping his body apart, I devolved his head and vampire both into one heap of ashes, which I placed in an urn among the others. And then I laughed and laughed till I cried! For if by any fluke he should be brought back now, it would be as … as what? A clever slug? An intelligent leech? Why, it would amuse me to call him up again and see!
But alas, that was not to be, for in the end he’d thwarted me. The skin upon which he’d written his runes had been resurrected skin, flayed from a victim. I had directed my runes of catabolism through the very skin from which I read them, and so when I’d sent Janos down, the skin, too, had crumbled into dust! Well, the Words of Power were tricky and I had not learned them except for the single name of an ancient dark god of the outer spheres. However, I still had my bastard son’s body.
So … I burned that, too—aye, a second time—and sent pinches of it out to the four corners of the earth, and there dispersed them on the winds.
That was the end of it. I had done with Janos. And now I have done with my story …
XII: First and Second Blood
As FAETHOR FINISHED, SO THERE CAME A CABIN ANNOUNCEment: the plane was now descending towards Athens.
Harry said, Faethor, in another ten to fifteen minutes I’ll be on the ground and into the bustle of the airport. I’ve noticed that you’ve been growing weaker—y
our voice—and put it down to distance and the sun full on the ruins of your house. Soon I’ll be on my way to Rhodes, which is more distant yet. So this is probably my last chance to say a few things.
You have something to say? (Harry pictured Faethor raising an eyebrow.)
First … I owe you my thanks, Harry told him, but second, I can’t help but remind myself that without you in the first place, none of this—Thibor, Dragosani, Yulian Bodescu, and now Janos—would ever have happened. Okay, so I’m in your debt, but at the same time I know you for the blackhearted thing you have been, and for the monsters you’ve spawned in my world. And I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you that in my opinion, you’re the biggest monster of them all!
I consider it a compliment, Faethor answered, without hesitation. Is there anything else you require to know?
A few things, yes, said Harry. If you destroyed Janos so utterly, how come he’s back? I mean, what trick did he work—what dark magic did he leave behind him—to bring him back into the world? And why did he await so long? Why now?
Is it not obvious? Faethor sounded genuinely surprised by Harry’s naiveté. He had seen the far future and laid his plans accordingly. He had known I would put him down, that time when I returned to the mountains. Yes, and he knew that if he came back in my time, I would find a way to do it again! And so he must wait until I was gone from the world. Time is but a small thing to the Wamphyri, Harry. As to how he worked this clever trick:
It was those accursed Zirras! Aye, and I know it was them, for I’ve had it from my own faithful few, who mutter in their graves much like other men. I’ll tell you how it was.
Long after me and mine were gone from the castle on the heights, certain of Janos’s own returned and placed his vampire ashes in a secret place which he ’d prepared against just such an eventuality. For he’d learned other magicks in my three hundred years’ absence, of which this was one. He’d had Zirra women in his time, that bastard of mine, and sown his seed far and wide. The three-fingered son of a son of his would one day feel his allure and go up to the old castle in the mountains … but it would be Janos who came down from it! So he planned it, and so it has come to pass …
