Vamphyri!

by Brian Lumley

  They came at night, which was their mistake. I am—or was—Wamphyri; night was my element. Some vampire premonition had warned me that all was not well. I was awake and on the prowl when the attack came. I roused up my men and they set to. But it was no good; we were heavily outnumbered and, taken by surprise, my men were still half-asleep. When the place began to burn I saw that I couldn’t win. Even if I beat off all of these Crusaders, they formed only a fraction of the total body. They had probably diced with ten other equal parties for the privilege of killing and robbing me. Also, if they had guessed what I was—and the fire suggested that they had—quite obviously my situation was untenable.

  I took gold and a great many gemstones and fled into the darkness. On my way I carried off one of my attackers with me. He was a Frenchman, only a lad, and I made a quick end of it, for I had not time to tarry. Before he died, though, he told me what it was all about. From that day to this I have loathed the cross and all who wear it, or live in its shadow or under its influence.

  Of my Szgany, not a man of them survived to follow me out of that place; but I later learned that two captives had been taken for questioning. As it was I stood off and watched the blaze from afar. And since the inferno was ringed about by Crusaders, I could only suppose that they assumed I had died in the flames. So be it—I would not disillusion them.

  And now I was alone and a long way from home. Well, hadn’t I desired to see the world?

  Now, I have said I was a long way from home. In miles on the ground this statement is seen to be far from accurate. But where indeed was my home? I could hardly return to Hungary, not for some little time. Wallachia was no place for me, and my old castle in the Khorvaty, looking down on Russia, was in ruins. What, then, was I to do? Where to go? Ah, but the world is a wide place!

  To detail my adventures from that time forward would take too long. I shall merely outline my deeds and travels, and you must forgive or fill in for yourself any great gaps or leaps in time.

  North was out of the question; likewise west; I headed east. It was 1204. Need I remind you of a singular emergence in Mongolia just two years later? Of course not, his name was Temujin—later Genghis Khan! With a party of Uighurs I joined him and helped subdue and unite the last of the rowdy Mongol tribes, until all Mongolia was finally united. I proved myself a capable warlord and he showed me some respect. With some small effort I was able to change my features until I looked the part; that is to say I willed my vampire flesh into a new mould. The Khan knew that I was not a Mongol, of course, but at least I was acceptable. And later he would have many mercenaries in his command, so that my participation was in no way a rare thing.

  I was with him against the Chin, when we penetrated that Great Wall, and after his death I was there to see the total obliteration of the Chin Empire. I passed my “loyalty” down to Genghis’s grandson, Batu. I could have offered my services to other Mongol Khans, but Batu’s objective was Europe! It was one thing to return a man alone, but another to go back as a general in a Mongol army!

  In the winter of 1237-8, in a lightning campaign, we smashed the Russian principalities. In 1240 we took Kiev by storm and burned it to ashes. From there we struck at Poland and Hungary. Only the death of the Great Khan Ogedei in 1241 saved Europe in its entirety; there were disputes about the succession and the westward campaigns were stalled.

  Later, it was time for The Fereng, as I was known, to “die” again. I obtained permission to journey to an ambiguous homeland far in the West; my “son” would join Húlegú in his push against the Assassins and the Caliphate. As Fereng the Black, Son of The Fereng, under Húlegú, I assisted in the extermination of the Assassins and was there at the fall of Baghdad in 1258. Ah, but a little more than two years later, at Ain Jalut in the so-called Holy Land, we were delivered a crushing defeat by the Mamelukes; the turning point for the Mongols had come.

  In Russia Mongol rule would continue to the end of the fourteenth century, but “rule’ implies peace and my taste for war had grown insatiable. I stuck it out forty years more, then parted company with the Mongols and sought action elsewhere …

  I fought for Islam! I was now an Ottoman, a Turk! Aha! What it is to be a mercenary, eh? Yes, I become a ghazi, a Moslem Warrior, fighting against the polytheists, and for nearly two centuries my life was one great unending river of blood and death! Under Bayezid, Wallachia became a vassal state which the Turks called Eflak. I could have returned then and sought out Thibor, who had moved with his Szekely into the mountains of Transylvania, but I was busy campaigning elsewhere. By the middle of the fifteenth century my chance had passed me by; the boundaries of the Ottoman state at the accession of Mehemmed II were shrinking. In 1431 Sigismund the Holy Roman Emperor had invested Vlad II of Wallachia with the Order of the Dragon—licence to destroy the infidel Turk. And who was Vlad’s instrument in his “holy” work? Who was his war-weapon? Thibor, of course!

  Of Thibor’s deeds, strangely, I heard with no small measure of pride. He butchered not only the infidel Turk but Hungarians, Germans, and other Christians in their thousands. Ah, he was a true son of his father! If only he had not been disobedient. Alas (for him) but disobedience to me was not his only failing; like myself at the end of my Crusader adventure, he had not practised the caution of the Wamphyri. He was adored by the Szekely but set himself on a level with his superiors, the Wallachian princes, and his excesses had made him notorious. He was feared throughout the land. In short, he had in every way brought himself into prominence. A vampire may not be prominent, not if he values his longevity.

  But Thibor was wild, demented in his cruelties! Vlad the (so called) Impaler, Radu the Handsome, and Mircea the Monk (whose reign was so short) had all tasked him with the protection of Wallachia and the chastisement of its enemies; tasks in which he delighted, at which he excelled. Indeed, the Impaler, one of history’s favourite villains, suffers undeservedly: he was cruel, aye, but in fact he has been named for Thibor’s deeds! Like my name, Thibor’s has been struck, but the stark terror of his deeds will live forever.

  Now let me get on. When I had lived too long with the Turks, finally I deserted their cause—which was crumbling, as all causes must in the end—and returned to Wallachia. The time was well chosen. Thibor had gone too far; Mircea had recently acceded to the throne and he feared his demon Voevod mightily. This was the moment I had so long awaited.

  Crossing the Danube, I put out Wamphyri thoughts ahead of me. Where were my gypsies now? Did they still remember me? Three hundred years is a long time. But it was night, and I was night’s master. My thoughts were carried on the dark winds all across Wallachia and into the shadowed mountains. Romany dreamers where they lay about their campfires heard me and started awake, gazing at each other in wonder. For they had heard a legend from their grandfathers, who had heard it from their grandfathers, that one day I would return.

  In 1206 two of my mercenary Szgany had come home—the same two taken for questioning on the night of Crusader cowardice and treachery, whose lives had been spared—and they had returned to foster an awesome myth. But now I was here, a myth no longer. “Father, what shall we do?” they whispered into the night. “Shall we come to meet you, master?”

  “No,” I told them across all the rivers and forests and miles. “I have work to finish, and I alone must see to it. Go into the Carpatii Meridionali and put my house in order, so that I may have my own place when my work is done.” And I knew that they would do it.

  Then … I went to Mircea in Targoviste. Thibor was campaigning on the Hungarian border, a good safe way away. I showed the Prince living vampire flesh taken from my own body, telling him that it was flesh of Thibor. Then, because he was close to fainting, I burned it. This showed him one way in which a vampire may be killed. I told him the other way, too: the stake and decapitation. Then I questioned him about his Voevod’s longevity: did he not deem it strange that Thibor must be at least three hundred years old? No, he answered, for it was not one man but several. They
were all part of the same legend, they all took the same name, Thibor. All of them, down through the years, had fought under the devil-bat-dragon banner.

  I laughed at him. What? But I had studied Russian records and knew for a fact that this selfsame man—this one man—had been a Boyar in Kiev three hundred years ago! At that time it had been rumored that he was Wamphyri. The fact that he still lived gave the rumour ample foundation. He was a lustful vampire—and now it seemed he lusted after the throne of Wallachia!

  Did I have any proof at all in support of my accusations, the Prince asked me.

  I told him: you have seen his vampire flesh.

  It could have been the loathsome flesh of any vampire, he said.

  But I had dedicated myself to seek out vampires and destroy them wherever I found them, I told him. In pursuit of such creatures I had been in China, Mongolia, Turkey-land, Russia—and I spoke many languages to prove it. When Thibor had been wounded in battle, I had been there to take and keep a piece of his flesh, which had grown into what the Prince had seen. What more proof did he need?

  None. He too had heard rumours, had his suspicions, his doubts …

  The Prince already feared Thibor, but what I had told him—mostly the truth, except perhaps concerning Thibor’s ambition—had utterly terrified him. How could he deal with this monster?

  I told him how. He must send for Thibor on some pretext or other—to bestow upon him a great honour! Yes, that would do it. Vampires are often prideful; flattery, carefully applied, can win them over. Mircea must tell Thibor that he desired to make him Voevod in Chief over all Wallachia, with powers second only to Mircea himself.

  “Power? He has that already!”

  “Then tell him that eventually succession to the throne will not be out of the question.”

  “What?” The Prince pondered. “I must take advice.”

  “Ridiculous!” I was forceful. “He may have allies among your advisors. Don’t you know his strength?”

  “Say on …”

  “When he comes, I shall be here. He must be told to come alone, his army staying on the Hungarian border to continue the skirmishing. Orders can be sent to them later, dispersing them to lesser, more trusted generals. You shall receive him alone—at night.”

  “Alone? At night?” Mircea the Monk was sore afraid.

  “You must drink with him. I shall give you wine with which to drug him. He is strong, however, and no amount of wine will kill him. It may not even render him unconscious. But it will rob him of his senses, make him clumsy, stupid, like a man drunk.

  “I shall be close at hand with four or five of the most trusted members of your guard. We’ll confine him, naked, in a place you shall nominate. A special place, somewhere in the grounds of the palace. Then, when the sun rises, you will know you have trapped a vampire. The sun’s rays on his flesh will be a torture to him! But that in itself will not be sufficient proof. No, for above all else we must be just. Bound, his jaws will be forced open. You shall see his tongue, O Prince—forked like a snake’s, and red with blood!

  “At once a stake of hard wood shall be driven through his heart. This, for the greater part, will immobilize him. Then into a coffin with him, and off to a secret place. He shall be buried where no one should ever find him, a place forbidden to men from this time forward.”

  “Will it work?”

  I gave the Prince my guarantee that it would work. And it did! Exactly as I have stated.

  From Targoviste to the cruciform hills is perhaps one hundred miles. Thibor was carried there at all speed. Holy men came with us all the way, with exorcisms ringing until I thought I would be sick. I was dressed in the plain black habit of a monk, with the hood thrown up. None had seen my face except Mircea and a handful of officials at the palace, all of whom I had beguiled, or hypnotized as you now have it, to a degree.

  There in the hills a rude mausoleum was hastily constructed of local stone; it bore no name or title, no special marks; standing low to the ground and ominous in a gloomy glade, as you have seen it, it would in itself suffice to keep away the merely curious. Years later someone cut Thibor’s emblem into the stone—as an additional warning, perhaps. Or it could be that some Szgany or Szekely follower found him and marked the place, but feared to bring him up or lacked the wit.

  I have gone ahead of myself.

  We took him there, to the foothills of the Carpatii, and there he was lowered into his hole four or five feet deep in the dark earth. Wrapped in massy chains of silver and iron, he was, and the stake still in him and nailing him secure in his box. He lay pale as death, his eyes closed, for all the world a corpse. But I knew that he was not.

  Night was falling. I told the soldiers and priests that I would climb down and behead Thibor, and set a fire of branches in his grave to burn him, and when the fire was dead fill in the hole. It was dangerous, witchcrafty work, I said, which could only be done by the light of the moon. They should now retreat, if they valued their souls. They went, stood off, and waited for me on the plain.

  The moon, thin-horned, rose up. I looked down on Thibor and spoke to him in the manner of the Wamphyri. “Ah, my son, and so it is come to this. Sad, sad day for a fond father, who bestowed upon an ingrate son mighty powers to be wasted. A son who would not honour his father’s ordinances, and is therefore fallen in the world. Wake up, Thibor, and let that also which is in you waken, for I know that you are not dead.”

  His eyes opened a crack as my words sank in, then gaped wide in sudden understanding. I threw back my cowl so that he might see me, and smiled in a manner he must surely remember. He marked me and gave a great start. Then he marked his whereabouts—and screamed! Ah, how he screamed!

  I threw earth down upon him.

  “Mercy!” he cried out loud.

  “Mercy? But are you not Thibor the Wallach, given the name Ferenczy and commanded to tend in his absence the lands of Faethor of the Wamphyri? And if you are, what do you here, so far from your place of duty?”

  “Mercy! Mercy! Leave me my head, Faethor.”

  “I intend to!” I tossed in more dirt.

  He saw my meaning, my intention, and went mad, shaking and vibrating and generally threatening to tear himself loose from his stake. I put down a long, stout pole into the grave and tapped home the stake more firmly, driving it through the bottom of the coffin itself. As for the coffin’s lid, I merely let it stand there on its side in the bottom of the hole. What? Cover him up and lose sight of that frantic, fear-filled face? “But I am Wamphyri!” he screamed.

  “You could have been,” I told him. “Ah, you could have been! Now you are nothing.”

  “Old bastard! How I hate you!” he raved, blood in his eyes, his nostrils, the writhing gape of his mouth.

  “Mutual, my son.”

  “You are afraid. You fear me. That is the reason!”

  “Reason? You desire to know the reason? How fares my castle in the Khorvaty? What of my mountains, my dark forests, my lands? I will tell you: the Khans have held them for more than a century. And where were you, Thibor?”

  “It’s true!” he screamed, through the earth I threw in his face. “You do fear me!”

  “If that were true, then I should most certainly behead you,” I smiled. “No, I merely hate you above all others. Do you remember how you burned me? I cursed you for a hundred years, Thibor. Now it is your turn to curse me—for the rest of time. Or until you stiffen into a stone in the dark earth.”

  And without further ado I filled in his grave.

  When he could no longer scream with his mouth he screamed with his mind. I relished each and every yelp. Then I built a small fire to fool the soldiers and the priests, and warmed myself before it for an hour, for the night was chill. And eventually I went down to the plain.

  “Farewell, my son,” I told Thibor. And then I shut him out of my mind, as I had shut him out of the world, forever …

  “And so you took your revenge on Thibor,” said Harry when Faethor paused. “You
buried him alive—or undead—forever. Well, that might have suited your cruel purpose, Faethor Ferenczy, but you certainly weren’t doing the world at large any favours by letting him keep his head. He corrupted Dragosani and planted his vampire seed in him, and between times infected the unborn Yulian Bodescu, who is now a vampire in his own right. Did you know these things?

  Harry, said Faethor, in my life I was a master of telepathy, and in death …? Oh, the dead won’t talk to me, and I can’t blame them—but there is nothing to keep me from listening in on their conversations. In a way, it could even be argued that I’m a Necroscope, like you. Oh, I’ve read the thoughts of many. And there have been certain thoughts which interested me greatly—especially those of that dog Thibor. Yes, since my death, I have renewed my interest in his affairs. I know about Boris Dragosani and Yulian Bodescu.

  “Dragosani is dead,” Harry told him, albeit unnecessarily, “but I’ve spoken to him and he tells me Thibor will try to come back, through Bodescu. Now, how can this be? I mean, Thibor is dead—no longer merely undead but utterly dead, dissolved, finished.”

  Something of him remains even now.

  “Vampire matter, you mean? Mindless protoplasm hiding in the earth, shunning the light, devoid of conscious will? How may Thibor use that when he no longer commands it?”

  An interesting question, Faethor answered. Thibor’s root—his creeper of flesh, a stray pseudopod detached and left behind—would seem to be the exact opposite of you and me. We are incorporeal: living minds without material bodies. And it is … what? A living body without a mind?

  “I’ve no time for riddles and word games, Faethor,” Harry reminded him.