by Brian Lumley
“Riddles?”
“Indulge me, pray.”
Thibor shrugged. “Two ways: by seed and by cutting. Plant an apple, and it will grow into a tree. But for the true, original taste, take cuttings and nurture them. It is obvious: what are cuttings but continuations of the old tree?”
“Obvious?” the Ferenczy raised his eyebrows. “To you, perhaps. But it would seem obvious to me—and to most men who are not farmers—that the seed should give the true taste. For what is the seed but the egg of the tree, eh? Still, you are of course correct, the cutting gives the true taste. As for a tree grown from seed: why, it. is spawned of the pollens of trees other than the original! How then may its fruit be the same? ‘Obvious’—to a tree-grower.”
“Where does all this lead?” Thibor was surer than ever of the Ferenczy’s madness.
“In the Wamphyri.” the castle’s master gazed full upon him, “‘nature’ requires no outside intervention, no foreign pollens. Even the tree requires a mate with which to reproduce, but the Wamphyri do not. All we require is … a host.”
“Host?” Thibor frowned, felt a sudden tremor in his great legs—the dampness of the walls, stiffening more cramps into his limbs.
“Now tell me,” Faethor went on, “what do you know of fishing?”
“Eh? Fishing? I was a farmer’s son, and now I’m a warrior. What would I know of fishing?”
Faethor continued without answering him: “In the Bulgars and in Turkey-land, fishermen fished in the Greek Sea. For years without number they suffered a plague of starfish, in such quantities that they ruined the fishing and their great weight broke the nets. And the policy of the fishermen was this: they would cut up and kill any starfish they hauled in, and hurl it back to the fish. Alas, the true fish does not eat starfish! And worse, from every piece of starfish, a new one grows complete! And ‘naturally,’ every year there were more. Then some wise fisherman divined the truth, and they began to keep their unwanted catches, bringing them ashore, burning them and scattering their ashes in the olive groves. Lo and behold, the plague dwindled away, the fish came back, the olives grew black and juicy.”
A nervous tic jumped in Thibor’s shoulder: the strain of hanging so long in chains, of course. “Now you tell me,” he answered, “what starfish have to do with you and I?”
“With you, nothing, not yet. But with the Wamphyri … why, ‘nature’ has granted us the same boon! How may you cut down an enemy if each lopped portion sprouts a new body, eh?” Faethor grinned through the yellow bone mesh of his teeth. “And how may any mere man kill a vampire? Now see why I liked you so well, my son. For who but a hero would come up here to destroy the indestructible?”
In the eye of Thibor’s memory, he heard again the words of a certain contact in the Kievan Vlad’s court: They put stakes through their hearts and cut off their heads … better still, they break them entirely and burn all the pieces … even a small part of a vampire may grow whole again in the body of an unwary man … like a leech, but on the inside!
“In the bed of the forest,” Faethor broke into his morbid thoughts, “grow many vines. They seek the light, and climb great trees to reach the fresh, free air. Some ‘foolish’ vines, as it were, may even grow so thickly as to kill their trees and bring them crashing down; and so destroy themselves. You’ve seen that, I’m sure. But others simply use the great trunks of their hosts; they share the earth and the air and the light between them; they live out their lives together. Indeed some vines are beneficial to their host trees. Ah! But then comes the drought. The trees wither, blacken, crumble, and the forest is no more. But down in the fertile earth the vines live on, waiting. Aye, and when more trees grow in fifty, an hundred years, back come the vines to climb again towards the light. Who is the stronger: the tree for his girth and sturdy branches, or the slender, insubstantial vine for his patience? If patience is a virtue, Thibor of Wallachia, then the Wamphyri are virtuous as all the ages …”
“Trees, fishes, vines.” Thibor shook his head. “You rave, Faethor Ferenczy!”
“All of these things I’ve told you,” the other was undeterred, “you will understand … eventually. But before you can begin to understand, first you must believe in me. In what I am.”
“I’ll never—” Thibor began, only to be cut short.
“Oh, but you will!” the Ferenczy hissed, his awful tongue lashing in the cave of his mouth. “Now listen: I have willed my egg. I have brought it on and it is forming even now. Each of the Wamphyri has but one egg, one seed, in a lifetime; one chance to recreate the true fruit; one opportunity to carve his changeling ‘nature’ into the living being of another. You are the host I have chosen for my egg.”
“Your egg?” Thibor wrinkled his nose, scowled, drew back as far as his chains would allow. “Your seed? You are beyond help, Faethor.”
“Alas,” said the other, lip curling and great nostrils flaring, “but you are the one who is beyond help!” His cloak belled as he flowed towards the broken body of old Arvos. He hoisted the gypsy’s corpse upright in one hand, like a bundle of rags, perched it, head stiffly lolling, in a niche in the stone wall. “We have no sex as such,” he said, glaring across the cell at Thibor. “Only the sex of our hosts. Ah! But we multiply their zest an hundred times! We have no lust except theirs, which we double and redouble. We may, and do, drive them to excesses—in all of their passions—but we heal their wounds, too, when the excess is too great for human flesh and blood to endure. And with long, long years, even centuries, so man and vampire grow into one creature. They become inseparable, except under extreme duress. I, who was a man, have now reached just such a maturity. So shall you, in perhaps a thousand years.”
Once more, futilely, Thibor tugged at his chains. Impossible to break or even strain them. He could put a thumb through each link!
“About the Wamphyri,” Faethor continued. “Just as there are in the common world widely differing sorts of the same basic creature—owl and gull and sparrow, fox and hound and wolf—so are there varying Wamphyri states and conditions. For example: we talked about taking cuttings from an apple tree. Yes, it might be easier if you think of it that way.”
He stooped, dragged the unconscious, twitching body of the squat Wallach away from the area of torn up flags, tossed old Arvos’ corpse down upon the black soil. Then he tore open the old man’s ragged shirt, and glanced up from where he knelt into Thibor’s mystified eyes. “Is there sufficient light, my son? Can you see?”
“I see a madman clearly enough,” Thibor gave a brusque nod.
The Ferenczy returned his nod, and again he smiled his hideous smile, the ivory of his teeth gleaming in lantern light. “Then see this!” he hissed.
Kneeling beside old Arvos’ crumpled form, he extended a forefinger towards the gypsy’s naked chest. Thibor watched. Faethor’s forearm stuck out free of his robe. Whatever the Ferenczy was up to, there could be no trickery, no sleight of hand here.
Faethor’s nails were long and sharply pointed at the end of his even, slender fingers. Thibor saw the quick of the pointed finger turn red and start to drip blood. The pink nail cracked open like the brittle shell of a nut, flapped loosely like a trapdoor on a finger bloating and pulsating. Blue and grey-green veins stood out in that member, writhing under the skin; the raw tip visibly lengthened, extending itself towards the dead gypsy’s cold grey flesh.
The pulsating digit was no longer a finger as such: it was a pseudopod of unflesh, a throbbing rod of living matter, a stiff snake shorn of its skin. Now twice, now three times its former length, it vibrated down at an angle to within inches of its target, which appeared to be the dead man’s heart. And all of this Thibor watched with bulging eyes, bated breath and gaping mouth.
And until this moment Thibor had not really known fear, but now he did. Thibor the Wallach—warlord of however small and ragged an army, humourless, merciless killer of the Pechenegi—utterly fearless Thibor, until now. Until now he’d not met a creature he feared. In the hunt, wi
ld boar in the forests, which had wounded men so badly as to kill them, were “piglets” to him. In the challenge: let any man only dare hurl down the gauntlet, Thibor would fight him any way he chose. All knew it, and none chose! And in battle: he led from the front, stood at the head of the charge, could only ever be found in the thick of the fighting. Fear? It was a word without meaning. Fear of what? When he had ridden out to battle, he’d known each day might be his last. That had not deterred him. So black was his hatred of the invaders, of all enemies, that it simply engulfed fear and put it down. No creature, or man, or threat of any device of men had ever unmanned him since … oh, before he could remember: since he was a child, if ever he’d been one. But Faethor Ferenczy was something other than all of these. Torture could only maim and must kill in the end, and there’s no pain after death, but what the Ferenczy threatened seemed an eternity of hell. Mere moments ago it had been a strange fantasy, the dreams of a madman, but now … ?
Unable to tear his eyes away, Thibor groaned and grew pale at the sight of that which followed.
“A cutting, aye,” Faethor’s voice was low, trembling with dark passions, “to be nurtured in flesh already tainted and falling into decay. The lowest form of Wamphyri existence, it will come to nothing so long as it has no living host. But it will live, devour, grow strong—and hide! When there is nothing left of Arvos it will hide in the earth and wait. Like the vine, waiting for a tree. The cut-off leg of a starfish, which does not die but waits to grow a new body—except this thing I make waits to inhabit one! Mindless, unthinking, it will be a thing of the most primitive instincts. But it can nevertheless outlast the ages. Until some unwary man finds it, and it finds him …”
His incredible, bloody, throbbing forefinger touched Arvos’ flesh … and leprous white rootlets sprang forth, slid like worms in earth into the gypsy’s chest! Small flaps of fretted skin were laid back; the pseudopod developed tiny glistening teeth of its own; it began to gnaw its way inside. Thibor would have looked away but he could not. Faethor’s “finger” broke off with a soft tearing sound and quickly burrowed its way out of sight within the corpse.
Faethor held up his hand. The severed member was shrinking back into him, pseudoflesh melting into his flesh. The cancerous colours went out of it; it assumed a more normal shape; the old fingernail fell to the floor, and right in front of Thibor’s eyes a new, pink shell began to form.
“Well then, my hero son who came here to kill me,” Faethor slowly stood up and held out his hand toward Thibor’s bloodless face. “And could you have killed this?”
Thibor drew back his face, head and body, tried to cringe into the very stone to avoid that pointing finger. But Faethor only laughed. “What? You think that I would … ? But no, no, not you, my son. Oh, I could, be sure! And forever you’d be in thrall to me. But that is the second state of the Wamphyri and unworthy of you. No, for I hold you in the highest esteem. Why, you shall have my very egg!”
Thibor tried to find words but his throat lacked moisture, was dry as a desert. Faethor laughed again and drew back that threatening hand of his. He turned away and stepped to where the squat Wallach lay humped on the stone flags, gurglingly breathing, face down in a dusty corner. “He is in that second state,” Thibor’s tormentor explained. “I took from him and gave him something back. Flesh of my flesh is in him now, healing him, changing him. His tears and broken bones will mend and he will live—for as long as I will it. But he will always be slave to me, to do my bidding, obey my every command. You see, he is vampire, but without vampire mind. The mind comes only from the egg and he is not grown from a seed but is merely … a cutting. When he wakes, which will be soon, then you will understand.”
“Understand?” Thibor found his voice, however cracked. “But how can I understand? Why should I want to understand? You are a monster, I understand that! Arvos is dead, and yet you … you did that to him! Why? Nothing can live in him now but maggots.”
Feather shook his head. “No, his flesh is like fertile soil—or the fertile sea. Think of the starfish.”
“You will grow another … another you? Inside him?” Thibor was very nearly gibbering now.
“It will consume him,” Faethor answered. “But another me—no. I have mind. It will not have mind. Arvos cannot be a host for his mind is dead, do you see? He is food, nothing more. When it grows it will not be like me. Only like … what you saw.” He held up his pale, newly formed index finger.
“And the other?” Thibor managed to nod in the direction of the man—that which had been a man—snoring and gasping in the corner.
“When I took him he was alive,” said Faethor. “His mind was alive. What I gave him is now growing in his body, and in his mind. Oh, he died, but only to make way for the life of the Wamphyri. Which is not life but undeath. He will not return to true life but to undeath.”
“Madness!” Thibor moaned.
“As for this one—” The Ferenczy stepped into shadows on the far side of the cell, where the light did not quite reach. The legs and one arm of Thibor’s second Wallach comrade protruded from the darkness, until Faethor dragged all of him into view. “This one will be food for both of them. Until the mindless one hides himself away, and the other takes up his duties as your servant here.”
“My servant?” Thibor was bewildered. “Here?”
“Do you hear nothing I say?” Faethor’s turn to scowl. “For more than two hundred years I have cared for myself, protected myself, stayed alone and lonely in a world expanding, changing, full of new wonders. This I have done for my seed, which now is ready to be passed on, passed down, to you. You will stay behind and keep this place, these lands, this ‘legend’ of the Ferenczy alive. But I shall go out amongst men and revel! There are wars to be won, honours to be earned, history is in the making. Aye, and there are women to be spoiled!”
“Honours, you?” Thibor had regained something of his former nerve. “I doubt it. And for a creature ‘alone and lonely,’ you seem to know a great deal of what is passing in the world.”
Faethor smiled his ghastliest smile. “Another secret art of the Wamphyri,” he chuckled obscenely in his throat. “One of several. Beguilement is another—which you saw at work between myself and Arvos, binding his mind to mine so that we could talk to each other over great distances—and then there is the art of the necromancer.”
Necromancy! Thibor had heard of that. The eastern barbarians had their magicians, who could open the bellies of dead men to read their lives’ secrets in their smoking guts.
“Necromancy,” Faethor nodded, seeing the look in Thibor’s eyes, “aye. I shall teach it to you soon. It has allowed me to confirm my choice of yourself as a future vessel of the Wamphyri. For who would know better of you and your deeds, your strengths and weaknesses, your travels and adventures, than a former colleague, eh?” He stopped and effortlessly flopped the body of the thin Wallach over onto its back. And Thibor saw what had been done. No wolf pack had done this, for nothing was eaten.
The thin, hunched Wallach—an aggressive man in life, who had always gone with his chin thrust forward—seemed even thinner now. His trunk had been laid open from groin to gullet, with all of his pipes and organs loose and flopping, and the heart in particular hanging by a thread, literally torn out. Thibor’s sword had gutted men as thoroughly as this, and it had meant nothing. But by the Ferenczy’s own account, this man had already been dead. And his enormous wound was not the work of a sword …
Thibor shuddered, turned his eyes away from the mutilated corpse and inadvertently found Faethor’s hands. The monster’s nails were sharp as knives. Worse (Thibor felt dizzy, even faint), his teeth were like knives.
“Why?” The word left Thibor’s lips as a whisper.
“I’ve told you why.” Faethor was growing impatient. “I wanted to know about you. In life he was your friend. You were in his blood, his lungs, his heart. In death he was loyal, too, for he would not give up his secrets easily. See how loose are his innards. Ah! Ho
w I teased them, to wrest their secrets from him.”
All the strength went out of Thibor’s legs and he fell in his chains like a man crucified. “If I’m to die, kill me now,” he gasped. “Have done with this.”
Faethor flowed close, closer, stood not an arm’s length away. “The first state of being—the prime condition of the Wamphyri—does not require death. You may think that you are dying, when first the seed puts its rootlets into your brain and sends them groping along the marrow of your spine, but you will not die. After that …” he shrugged. “The transition may be laboriously slow or lightning swift, one can never tell. But of one thing be sure, it will happen.”
Thibor’s blood surged one last time in his veins. He could still die a man. “Then if you’ll not give me a clean death, I’ll give myself one!” He gritted his teeth and wrenched on his manacles until the blood flowed freely from his wrists; and still he jerked on the irons, deepening his wounds. Faethor’s long drawn-out hisssss stopped him. He looked up from his grisly work of self-destruction into … into the pit, the abyss itself.
Hideous face working yet more hideously, features literally writhing in a torment of passion, the Ferenczy was so close as to be the merest breath away. His long jaws opened and a scarlet snake flickered in the darkness behind teeth which had turned to daggers in his mouth. “You dare show me your blood? The hot blood of youth, the blood which is the life?” His throat convulsed in a sudden spasm and Thibor thought he was going to be ill, but he was not. Instead he clutched at his throat, gurgled chokingly, staggered a little. When he had regained control, he said: “Ah, Thibor! But now, ready or not, you have brought on that which cannot be reversed. It is my time, and yours. The time of the egg, the seed. See! See!”
