by Brian Lumley
Again he nodded. “You—Wamphyri!”
I began to shake my head in denial, then stopped. His eyes were boring into mine. He knew. And so did I, for certain now. “Yes,” I said. “Wamphyri.”
He drew breath sharply, let it out slow. Then: “Where will you go, Thibor the Wallach, son of Old One?”
“Tomorrow I go to Kiev,” I answered grimly. “I’ve business there. After that, home.”
“Business?” He laughed a cackling laugh. “Ah, business!”
He released my arm, grew serious. “I too go Wallachia. Many Szgany there. You need Szgany. I find you there.”
“Good!” I said.
He backed away, turned and went back into his hut …
We came out of the forest into Kiev in the evening, and I found a place on the outskirts to rest and buy a skin of wine. I sent four of my five into the city. Soon they began to return, bringing with them prominent members of my peasant army—what was left of it. Half had been lured away by Vladimir and were off campaigning against the Pechenegi, the rest remained faithful; they had gone into hiding and waited for me.
There were only a handful of the Vlad’s soldiers in the city; even the palace guard were away fighting. The prince had only a score of men, his personal bodyguard, at court. That was part of the news, and this was the rest: that tonight there was to be a small banquet at the palace in honour of some boot-licking Boyar. I invited myself along.
I arrived at the palace alone, or that is the way it must have appeared. I strode through the gardens to the sound of laughter and merrymaking from the great hall. Men at arms barred my way, and I paused and looked at them. “Who goes there?” a Guardsmaster challenged me.
I showed myself. “Thibor of Wallachia, the Prince’s Voevod. He sent me on a mission, and now I am returned.” Along the way I had walked in mire, deliberately. The last time I was here, the Vlad had commanded that I come in my finery, unweaponed, all bathed and shining. Now I was weighed down with arms; I was unshaven, dirty, and my forelocks all awry. I stank worse than a peasant, and was glad of it.
“You’d go in there like that?” The Guardsmaster was astonished. He wrinkled his nose. “Man, wash yourself, put on fresh robes, cast off your weapons!”
I glowered at him. “Your name?”
“What?” He stepped a pace to the rear.
“For the Prince. He’ll have the balls of any man who impedes me this night. And if you’ve none of those, he’ll have your head instead! Don’t you remember me? Last time I came it was to a church, and I brought a sack of thumbs.” I showed him my leather sack.
He went pale. “I remember now. I … I’ll announce you. Wait here.”
I grabbed his arm, dragged him close. I showed him my teeth in a wolfs grin and hissed through them. “No, you wait here!”
A dozen of my men stepped out of the trees, held cautionary fingers to their lips, and bundled the Guardsmaster and his men away.
I went on, entering the palace and the great hall unimpeded. Oh, true, a pair of royal bully-boy bodyguards closed on me at the door, but I thrust them aside so hard they almost fell, and by the time they were organized I was among the revellers. I strode to the centre of the floor. I stood stock still, then slowly turned and gazed all about from under lowered brows. The noise subsided. There came an uneasy silence. Somewhere a lady laughed, a titter which was quickly stilled.
Then the crowd fell away from me. Several ladies looked fit to faint. I smelled of ordure, which to my nostrils was fresh and clean compared to the scents of this court.
The crowd parted, and there sat the Prince at a table laden with food and drink. His face wore a frozen smile, which fell from it like a leaden mask when he saw me. And at last he recognized me. He straightened to his feet. “You!”
“None other, my Prince.” I bowed, then stood straight.
He couldn’t speak. Slowly his face went purple. Finally he said, “Is this your idea of a joke? Get out—out!” He pointed a trembling finger at the door. Men were closing on me, hands on their sword hilts. I rushed the Vlad’s table, sprang up onto it, drew my sword and held it on his breast.
“Tell them to come no closer!” I snarled.
He held up his hands and his bodyguard fell back. I kicked aside platters and goblets and made a space before him, throwing down my sack. “Are your Greek Christian priests here?”
He nodded, beckoned. In their priestly robes, they came, hands fluttering, jabbering in their foreign tongue. Four of them.
At last it got through to the prince that he was in danger of his life. He glanced at my sword’s point lying lightly on his breast, looked at me, gritted his teeth and sat down. My sword followed him. Pale now, he controlled himself, gulped, and said, “Thibor, what is all of this? Would you stand accused of treason? Now put up your sword and we’ll talk.”
“My sword stays where it is, and we’ve time only for what I have to say!” I told him.
“But—”
“Now listen, Prince of Kiev. You sent me on a hopeless quest and you know it. What? Me and my seven against Faethor Ferenczy and his Szgany? What a joke! But while I was away you could steal my good men, and if I were so lucky as to succeed … that would be even better. If I failed—and you believed I would—it would be no great loss.” I glared at him. “It was treachery!”
“But—” he said again, his lips trembling.
“But here I am, alive and well, and if I leaned a little on my sword and killed you it would be my right. Not according to your laws but according to mine. Ah, don’t panic, I won’t kill you. Let it suffice that all gathered here know your treachery. As for my ‘mission’: do you remember what you commanded me to do? You said, ‘Fetch me the Ferenczy’s head, his heart, and his standard.’ Well, at this very moment his standard flies atop the palace wall. His and mine, for I’ve taken it for my own. As for his head and heart: I’ve done better. I’ve brought you the very essence of the Ferenczy!”
Prince Vladimir’s eyes went to the sack before him and his mouth twitched at one corner.
“Open it,” I told him. “Tip it out. And you priests, come closer. See what I’ve brought you.”
Among the thronging courtiers and guests, I spied grim-faced men edging closer. This couldn’t last much longer. Close by, a high-arched window looked out on a balcony and the gardens beyond. Vladimir’s hands trembled towards the sack.
“Open it!” I snapped, prodding him. He took up the sack, tugged at its thong, tipped the contents onto the table. All stared, aghast.
“The very essence of the Ferenczy!” I hissed.
The part was big as a puppy, but it had the colour of disease and the shape of nightmare. Which is no shape at all but a morbid suggestion. It could be a slug, a foetus, some strange worm. It writhed in the light, put out fumbling fingers and formed an eye. A mouth came next, with curving dagger teeth. The eye was soft and mucous damp. It stared about while the mouth chomped vacuously.
The Vlad sat there white as death, his face twisting grotesquely. I laughed as the vampire stuff wriggled closer to him, and he gave a cry and toppled himself over backwards in his chair. The thing had intended no harm; it had no intent. Larger and hungry it might be dangerous, or if it were alone with a sleeping man in a dark room, but not here in the light. I knew this, but Vladimir and the court didn’t.
“Vrykoulakas, vrykoulakas!” the Greek priests began to scream. And at that, though few could have known what the word meant, the great hall became the scene of furious chaos. Ladies cried out and fainted; everyone drew back from the huge table; guests crushed together at the door. To give the Greeks their due, they were the only ones who had any idea what to do. One of them took a dagger and pinned the thing to the table. It at once split open, slipped free of the blade like water. The priest pinned it again, cried, “Bring fire, burn it!”
In the pandemonium now reigning, I jumped down from the table, up into the window embrasure, and so on to the low balcony. As I vaulted the balcony wall i
nto the garden, a pair of angry faces appeared at the window behind me. The Vlad’s bodyguard, all brave and bristling now that the danger was past. Except that for them it wasn’t yet past. I glanced back. The two were now out onto the balcony.
they shouted and waved swords, and I ducked low. Bolts whistled overhead out of the dark garden; one pursuer was taken in the throat, the other in the forehead. The noise from the hall was an uproar, but there were no more pursuers. I grinned, made away …
We camped that night in the woods on the outskirts. All of my men slept, for I posted no guards. No one came near.
In the morning light we sauntered our horses through the city, then turned and headed west for Wallachia. My new standard still fluttered from its pole over the palace wall. Apparently no one had dared remove it while we were near. I left it there as a reminder: the dragon, and riding its back the bat, and surmounting them both the livid red devil’s head of the Ferenczy. For the next five hundred years those arms would be mine …
My tale’s at an end, said Thibor. Your turn, Harry Keogh.
Harry had got something of what he wanted, but not everything. “You left Ehrig and the women to burn,” he voiced his disgust. “The women—vampire women—I think I can understand that. But would it have been so hard to give them a decent death? I mean, did they have to burn … like that? You could have made it easier for them. You could have—”
Beheaded them? Thibor seemed unconcerned, gave a mental shrug.
“And as for Ehrig: he had been your friend!”
Had been, yes. But it was a hard world a thousand years ago, Harry. And anyway, you are mistaken—I didn’t leave them to burn. They were deep down under the tower. The broken furniture I piled around the central pillar was to shatter it, bring the stone steps down into the stairwell and block it forever. Burn them, no—I simply buried them!
Harry recoiled from Thibor’s morbid, darkly sinister tone. “That’s even worse,” he said.
You mean better, the monster contradicted him, chuckling. But better far than even I guessed. For I didn’t know then that they’d live down there forever. Ha, ha! And how’s that for horror, Harry? They’re down there even now. Mummied, aye—but still “alive” in their way., Dry and desiccated as old bones, bits of leather and gristle and—
Thibor came to an abrupt halt. He had sensed Harry’s keen interest, the intense, calculating way in which he seized on all of this and analysed it. Harry tried to back off a little, tried to close his mind to the other. Thibor sensed that, too.
I Suddenly have this feeling, he very slowly said, that I may have said too much. It comes as something of a shock to learn that even a dead creature must guard its thoughts. Your interest in all of these matters is more than merely casual. Harry. I wonder whey?
Dragosani, for so long silent, broke in with a burst of laughter. Isn’t it obvious, old devil? he said. He’s outsmarted you! Why is he so interested? Because there are vampires in the world—in his world—right now! It’s the only answer. And Harry Keogh came here to find out about them, from you. He needs to find out about them for the sake of his intelligence organization, and for the sake of the world. Now tell me: does he really need to tell you the present circumstances. of that innocent you corrupted while he was still in his mother’s womb? He has already told you! The boy lives—and yes, he is a vampire! Dragosani’s voice died away …
There was silence in the motionless glade, where only Harry’s neon nimbus lit the darkness to give any indication of the drama enacted there. And finally Thibor spoke again. Is it true? Does he live? Is he—?
“Yes,” Harry told him. “He lives—as a vampire—for now.”
Thibor ignored the implications of that last. But how do you know he is … Wamphyri?
“Because already he works his evil. That’s why we have to put him down—myself and others who work for the same cause. And certainly we must destroy him before he ‘remembers’ you and comes to seek you out. Dragosani has said that you would rise up again, Thibor. Now how would you set about that?”
Dragosani is a brash fool who knows nothing. I fooled him, you fooled him—so well, indeed, that you helped him destroy himself—why, any child could make a fool of Dragosani! Take no notice of him.
Hah! cried Dragosani. A fool, am I? Listen to me, Harry Keogh, and I’ ll tell you exactly how this devious old devil will use what he has made. First—
BE SILENT! Thibor was outraged.
I will not! Dragosani cried. Because of you, I am here, a ghost, nothing! Should I lie still while you prepare to be up and about? Listen to me, Harry. When that youth—
But that was as much as Thibor was willing to let him say. A hideous mental babble started up—such a blast of telepathic howling that Harry could unscramble no single word of it—and not only from Thibor but also Max Batu. Understandably, the dead Mongol sided with Thibor against his murderer.
“I can hear nothing,” Harry tried to break into the din and through it to Dragosani. “Absolutely nothing!”
The telepathic cacophony went on unabated, louder if anything, more insistent than ever. In life Max Batu had been able to concentrate hatred into a glare that could kill; in death his concentration hadn’t failed him; if anything the mental din he created was greater than Thibor’s. And since there was no physical effort involved, they could probably keep it up indefinitely. Quite literally, Dragosani was being shouted down.
Harry attempted to lift his voice above all three: “If I leave you now, be sure I won’t be back!” But even as he issued his threat he realized that it no longer carried any weight. Thibor was shouting for his life, the sort of life he had not known since the day they buried him here five hundred years ago. Even if the others did quieten down, he would go right on bellowing.
Stalemate. And too late, anyway.
Harry felt the first tug of a force he couldn’t resist, a force that drew him as a compass is drawn northwards. Harry Jr. was stirring again, coming awake for his scheduled feed. For the next hour or so the father must merge again with the id of his infant son.
The tugging strengthened, an undertow that began to draw Harry along with it. He searched for a Möbius door, found one and started towards it.
In that same instant of time, as he made to enter the Möbius continuum, something other than Harry Jr. stirred, something in the earth where the rubble of Thibor’s tomb lay scattered. Perhaps the concentrated mental uproar had disturbed it. Maybe it had sensed events of moment. Anyway, it moved, and Harry Keogh saw it.
Great stone slabs were shoved aside; tree roots snapped loudly where something massive heaved its bulk beneath them; the earth erupted in a black spray as a pseudopod thick as a barrel uncoiled itself and lashed upwards almost as high as the trees. It swayed there among the treetops, then was drawn down again.
Harry saw this—and then he was through the door and into the Möbius continuum. And incorporeal as he was, still he shuddered as he sped across hitherto hypothetical spaces towards the mind of his infant son. And uppermost in his own mind this single thought: “Ground to clear,” indeed!
Sunday, 10:00 A.M. Bucharest. The Office of Cultural and Scientific Exchanges (USSR), housed in a converted museum of many domes, standing conveniently close to the Russian University. The wrought-iron gates being opened by a yawning, uniformed attendant and a black Volkswagen Variant accelerating out into the quiet streets and heading for the motorway to Pitesti.
Inside the car Sergei Gulharov was driving, with Felix Krakovitch as front-seat passenger, and Alec Kyle, Carl Quint and an extremely thin, hawk-faced, bespectacled, middle-aged Romanian woman in the back. She was Irma Dobresti, a high-ranking official with the Ministry of Lands and Properties and a true disciple of Mother Russia.
Because Dobresti spoke English, Kyle and Quint were a little more careful than usual how they spoke to each other and what they said. It was not that they feared they’d let something slip about their mission, for she would see more than enough of that, but simpl
y that they might err and make some comment about the woman herself. Not that they were especially rude or churlish men, but Irma Dobresti was a very different sort of woman.
She wore her black hair in a bun; her clothes were almost a uniform: dark grey shoes, skirt, blouse and coat. She wore no make-up or jewellery at all and her features were sharp and mannish. Where womanly curves and other feminine charms were concerned, Nature seemed to have forgotten Irma Dobresti entirely. Her smile, showing yellow teeth, was something she switched on and off like a dim light, and on those few occasions when she spoke her voice was deep as any man’s, her words blunt and always to the point.
“If I were not thinly,” she said, making a common enough mistake in her attempt at casual conversation, “this long ride is most uncomfortable.” She sat on the extreme left, Quint in the middle and then Kyle.
The two Englishmen glanced at each other. Then Quint smiled obligingly. “Er, true,” he said. “Your thinlyness is most accommodating.”
“Good.” She gave a curt nod.
The car sped on out of the city, picked up the motorway …
Kyle and Quint had spent the night at the Dunarea Hotel in the city centre, while Krakovitch had spent most of it up and about making connections and arrangements. This morning, looking haggard and hollow-eyed, he’d joined them for breakfast. Gulharov had picked them up and they’d driven to the Office of Cultural and Scientific Exchanges where Dobresti had been getting her instructions from a Soviet liaison officer. She had met Krakovitch the night before. Now they were on their way into the Romanian countryside, following a route Krakovitch knew fairly well.
“Actually,” he said, stifling a yawn, “this not too surprising. Coming here, I mean.” He turned to look at his guests. “I know this place. After that business at Chateau Bronnitsy, when Party Leader Brezhnev give me my appointment, he ordered me to find out everything I could about … about what happened. I suspected Dragosani was at root of it. So I came here.”
