by Brian Lumley
And after that Bubba would have nothing at all to do with him.…
Under Dragosani’s gaze the snow faded from memory and the slopes turned green again. The old scar of the fire-break was there still, but merging into the natural contours of the hill under the weight of almost twenty years of growth. Saplings were grown into trees now, their foliage thickening, and in another twenty years it would be difficult to tell that the fire-break had ever been there in the first place.
Dragosani supposed that somewhere in the land ordinances governing these parts, there must be a clause which still forbade farming or hewing or gaming on the green cross of the hills. Yes, for despite old Kinkovsi’s lack of more typical peasant superstition (which was doubtless a direct spin-off from the recent tourist boom) the old fears still lived. The taboos were still there, even if their origins were forgotten. They still existed, as surely as the thing in the ground existed. Laws which were intended to isolate it now protected it, preserved it.
The thing in the ground. That was how he thought of it. Not as “he” but “it.” The old devil, the dragon, the vampir. The real vampire and not merely a creature of sensational novels and films. Still there, lying in the ground, waiting.
Again Dragosani let his mind slip back through the years.…
When he was nine the local school in Ionesti had closed and his stepfather had boarded him out to a school in Ploiesti. There in a very short time it had been discovered that his intelligence was of a high order, and the State had stepped in and sent him to a college in Bucharest. Always on the lookout for talent in the young of their satellite nations, Soviet officials from the Ministry of Education had eventually found him there and “recommended” that he go on to higher education in Moscow. What they meant by “higher education” was in fact intensive indoctrination, following which he would one day be sent back to Romania as a puppet official in a puppet government.
But before that—when he had first learned that he was to board in Ploiesti, and that he could only come home once or twice a year—then he had gone back to the dark glade under the trees to ask the advice of the thing in the ground. Now he went there again, on the wings of memory, and saw himself as he had been: a boy, sobbing into his hands where he kneeled beside a broken slab and poured his tears over the bas-relief motif of bat-dragon-devil.
What? Knowing I seek iron and strong meat, you offer me salt and gruel? Can this be you, Dragosani, who has the seed of greatness in him? Was I mistaken, then? And am I doomed to lie here forever?
“I’m to go to school in Ploiesti. I’m to live there and only come back now and then.”
And this is the cause of your grief?
“Yes.”
Then you are a girl! How would you hope to learn the ways of the world here in the shadow of the mountains? Why, even the birds that fly see more and farther than you have seen! The world is wide, Dragosani, and to know its ways you must walk them. And Ploiesti? But I know this Ploiesti: it is distant by only a hard day’s riding—two at most! And is this a good reason to weep?”
“But I don’t want to go.…”
I did not want to be put in the ground, but they put me here. Dragosani, I have seen a sister with her head cut off, with a stake through her breast and her eyes hanging on her cheeks, and I did not weep. No, but I pursued her slayers and skinned them and made them eat their skins. And I raped them with hot irons and before they could die soaked them in oil and put them to the torch and hurled them from the cliffs at Brasov! Only then did I cry—tears of sheerest joy! What? And did I call you my son, Dragosani?
“I’m not your son!” Boris snapped, tears angrily flying. “I’m no one’s son. And I have to go to Ploiesti. And it’s not two days away but only three or four hours, in a car! You pretend you know so much, but you’ve never even seen a car, have you?”
No, I never have—until now. Now I see it, in your mind, Dragosani! I’ve seen a great many things in your mind. Some have surprised me, but none have awed me. So, your stepfather’s “car” will make it easier for you to get to Ploiesti, eh? Good! And it will make it easier for you to come back again when the time comes.…
“But…”
Now listen: go to school in Ploiesti—become as clever as your teachers, more clever—and when you return, come back as a scholar. And as a man. I lived for five hundred years and was a great scholar. It was necessary, Dragosani. My learning stood me in good stead then, and will again. One year after I rise, I shall be the greatest power in this world! Oh, yes! Once I would have been satisfied with Wallachia, Transylvania, Rumania, call it what you will—and before that it was enough that the mountains were mine, which no one else wanted—but the world is a smaller place now and I would be greater. When I took part in man’s wars I learned the joy of the conqueror, so that next time I would conquer all. And you, too, shall be great, Dragosani—but all in good time.
Something of the importance of what the voice said got through to Boris. Behind its words, he sensed the raw power of the creature which issued them. “You want me to be … a scholar?”
Yes. When I walk this world again I would speak with learned men, not village idiots! Oh, I shall teach you, Dragosani—and far more than any tutors in Ploiesti. Much knowledge you shall have from me—and in my turn I shall doubtless learn from you. But how shall you teach me if you yourself are ignorant?
“You’ve said as much before,” said Boris. “But what can you teach me? You know so little of things as they are now. How can you know more? You’ve been dead—undead—in the ground, anyway—for five hundred years, you said so yourself!”
There came a throaty chuckle in Boris’s head. No fool you, Dragosani. Well, and perhaps you are right. Ah, but there are other seats of knowledge, and other sorts of knowledge! Very well, I have a gift for you. A gift … and a sign that indeed I can teach you things. Things you cannot possibly imagine.
“A gift?”
Indeed. Go quickly now, and find me a dead thing.
“A dead thing?” Boris shivered. “What sort of dead thing?”
Any sort. A beetle, a bird, a mouse. It makes little difference. Find me a dead thing—or kill me a live thing—and bring the body to me. Give it to me as a gift, and you in turn shall have your gift.
“I saw a dead bird at the foot of the slope. A pigeon chick, I think. It must have fallen from the nest. Will that do?”
Hah! And what dire secret has a pigeon chick, pray tell? But … yes, it will suffice. If only to prove a point. Bring it to me.
In twenty minutes Boris was back, laying the poor limp body on the dark earth near the broken, fallen slabs.
And again the cynical snort heard in his head: Hah! Small tribute indeed. But no matter. Now tell me, Dragosani, would you learn the ways of this small dead thing?
“It has no ways. It’s dead.”
Before it died. Would you know the things it knew?
“It knew nothing. It was a fledgling. What could it know?”
It knew many things! Now listen carefully: spread the wings, pluck out the down and small feathers and feel them, smell them, rub them between your fingers and listen to them. Do it.…
Boris did as instructed, but clumsily, without feeling or expectation. Mites and fleas and a beetle scurried, fleeing the small corpse.
No, no! Not like that. Close your eyes, let me more fully into your mind. Now, like this … there!
Boris was in a high place; he felt a swaying and heard the soughing of high branches. Overhead the beckoning blue vault of the sky opened outward forever. He felt he could fall upward into the sky and never stop. Vertigo overtook him; he fell back to his own mind, dropped the dead bird and clutched at the earth.
Ah-hahhh! said the devil in the ground. And again: Ah-hahhh! What? And was the nest not to your liking, Dragosani? But no, don’t stop, there’s more. Take up the bird, squeeze its body, feel it pliant in your hands. Feel the small bones under the skin, the tiny skull. Lift it to your face. Open your nostrils. Smell it
, breathe it in, let it instruct you! Here, let me help.…
Boris was not alone—he was a twin-thing—and he was not Boris! The sensation was weird, frightening. He clung tightly to the memory of Boris, rejected the other.
No, no! Let yourself go. Enter the thing. Be one with it. Know what it knew. Like this:
There was warmth … a hard firm platform beneath, soft warm down overhead … sky no longer bright and blue but dark … many white pricks of light, which were stars … the night was still … a warm weight pressing down, wings covering … the twin-thing snuggling … something close by, a sound, a hooting!… the warm body above—the parent body—pressing down protectively, wings closing tighter, trembling … a slow, heavy beating of the air, growing louder, passing, fading, growing faint … again the hooting, farther afield … the owl hunted smaller prey tonight … the parent body relaxing a little, her rapidly beating heart slowing … bright points of light filling the sky … soft down … warmth.
Now break the body, Dragosani! Tear it open! Crush the skull between your fingers and listen to the vapours of the brain! Look at it in your hands, the entrails, the guts and feathers and blood and bones! Taste it, Dragosani! Use all your senses: touch, taste, see, hear, smell! Use all five—and you will discover a sixth!
Time to fly!… time to go … the air calling, lifting the small new feathers and beckoning … and the twin-being already gone, flown … the parent beings eager, frustrated, fluttering, gliding, calling, “come, fly, like this, like this!” … The earth a dizzy distance below, and the nest swaying in the wind.
Part of the fledgling, Boris launched himself with it from the shuddering platform of twigs which was the nest. For one brief moment he knew the triumph of flight … and in the next knew failure. A squally, blustery day, the wind caught him unawares, side on. After that: utter confusion rapidly turning to nightmare! Spinning, tumbling—an untried wing catching in the fork of a branch, twisting and breaking—the agony of hanging by a broken wing, and then of falling, fluttering, plummeting—and the final sharp crack of a small skull upon a stone.…
Boris snapped back into himself, snapped out of the spell, saw the mess of a thing he held in his hands.
There! said the old devil in the ground. And do you still think I can teach you nothing, Dragosani? How is this for knowledge, and was there ever a rarer gift? In all my lifetime I knew only a handful with a talent such as this. And you have taken to it as a—why, as a fledgling takes to flight! Welcome to a small, ancient, very select fraternity indeed, Dragosani.
The mess slid from Boris’s hands, stained the earth, left slime on his palms and slim fingers. “What?” he said, his jaw hanging open, clammy sweat suddenly starting from his brow. “What…?”
Boris Dragosani (answered the devil in the ground)—necromancer!
Then, the horror of the thing bursting over him, Boris had screamed long and loud; and once more he’d fled, and fled in such panic that later he could remember very little of it except the pounding of his feet and heart.
But he couldn’t run from his “gift,” which from that moment on had gone with him.
Or perhaps it wasn’t the horror of what he had done (or the suspicion of what he had become) which robbed his mind of the memory of his terror-flight that time, but something else, which came between his screaming and the flight proper. At any rate, vague pictures of that something had remained in his mind ever since, and would spring to its surface on occasion when he least expected them—as now:
The gloomy glade of the tomb, and the shattered corpse spread in a welter of feathers and guts and limbs wrenched from their sockets. And a thin and leprous tentacle thrusting upward through the scummy earth, pushing aside soil, pine needles, clots of lichen and chips of stone. Leprous, yes, and composed of something other than flesh, but with scarlet veins pulsing.
And then … and then … a crimson eye forming in its tip and avidly scanning the ground. The eye dissolving away and a reptilian mouth and jaws taking its place, so that now the tentacle seemed a blind, smooth, mottled snake. A snake whose forked scarlet tongue flickered over the pitiful remains, whose fangs gleamed white and needle sharp, and whose jaws chomped slaveringly until every last morsel was devoured!
Then the swift withdrawal and the spell broken as the pulsing, sickening member was sucked back down out of sight into the naked earth.
A “small tribute,” the thing in the ground had called it.…
* * *
When Dragosani was done with memories and daydreams he drove into the town whose name he bore. Between the railway stockyards and the river on the outskirts of town, he found the trade and barter market which had flourished there on Wednesdays since a time when the town was the merest huddle of shacks; indeed Dragosani might well have sprung up from this marketplace, this meeting place. And more than that, it had been a fording place. Now there were bridges across the river, several, but in olden times the crossing had been by ford.
It was here those long centuries ago that the invading Turk, pillaging and burning as he came from the east, met the river where it flowed down out of the Carpatii Meridionali to meet the Danube. Here, too, the Hunyadi, and after him the Princes of Wallachia, had come down from their castles to call together the fighting men under their banners and set territorial Voevods over them, warlords to defend the lands against the incursion of the marauding Turk. The banner these warlords had fought under was that of the Dragon—immemorial seal and sigil of a defender, especially a Christian defender against the Turks—and now Dragosani found himself wondering if that were perhaps the source of the town’s name. Certainly it was the source of the dragon on the shield in the place of the forgotten tomb.
In the marketplace he bought a live piglet which he took away in a sack with holes for ventilation. He took it back to his car and put it in the boot, then drove back out of town and found a quiet track off the main road. There he opened the sack a little way, broke a chloroform capsule into the boot, slammed the lid shut and left it that way for a count of fifty. Another ten minutes saw the boot flushed out (he used the car vacuum-cleaner, reversed, to disperse the fumes), following which the unfortunate pig went back inside again. Dragosani certainly didn’t want the animal dying on him. Not just yet, anyway.
By early afternoon he had driven back up out of the low-lying river valley and into the foothills, where once again he parked the car within a few hundred yards of the forbidden cruciform hills. In bright sunlight, but keeping low and sticking to a hedgerow, he made his way to the densely wooded slopes and began to climb. There, under the cover of the frowning pines, he felt more at ease as he toiled towards the secret place. The piglet in its sack was slung over his shoulder, completely oblivious to a world from which it would soon depart.
At the site of the tomb, Dragosani laid the doped animal in a hollow between twining roots, tethered it to the bole of a tree and tossed the sack over it for warmth. There were plenty of wild pigs in the hills; if the piglet came to in his absence and made a commotion, anyone hearing it would believe it to be one of the wild variety. Not that that was likely; just as in Dragosani’s boyhood, the fields were deserted and grown wild for a mile and more around.
At any rate that was where he left the piglet, returning to his lodgings in mid-afternoon, booking an early evening meal, and sleeping through the rest of the day. There was still more than an hour’s light when Ilse Kinkovsi woke him with a substantial meal on a tray, leaving him on his own to enjoy it and wash it down with a quart of local beer. She hardly spoke to him at all, seemed surly, glanced at him with a sort of sneer. That was all right; indeed it was very much to his liking—or so he tried to tell himself.
But as she left his room his eyes were drawn to the jiggle of her hips and he was given to reconsider his attitude. For a peasant she was a very attractive woman. And again he wondered why she hadn’t married. Surely she was too young to be a widow? And even then she’d still wear her ring, wouldn’t she? It was curious.…
<
br /> CHAPTER SIX
Twenty minutes before sundown Dragosani was back in the secret place. The piglet had regained consciousness but did not yet have the strength to stand up. Wasting no time and wanting no distractions, Dragosani knocked the struggling animal out again with a single blow of a KGB-issue cosh. Then he settled down and waited, smoked a cigarette, watched the light fading as the sun sank lower and lower. Here where the pines grew straight as spears in a ring about the ancient tomb, the only real light came from directly overhead, and that was filtered down through an interlacing mesh of branches; but as night drew on so the first stars began to come out, visible in advance to Dragosani, much as they would be to a man in a deep well.
And at last, as he ground out his cigarette and the gloom closed that much more tightly around him:
Ahhh! Dragosaaaniiii!
The unseen presences were there as always, springing up from nowhere, invisible wraiths whose fingers brushed Dragosani’s face as if seeking to know him, to be sure of his identity. He shivered and said: “Yes, it’s me. And I’ve brought something for you. A gift—”
Oh? And what is this gift? And what would you have from me in return?
Now Dragosani was eager and made no effort to hide it. “The gift is … a small tribute. You shall have it later, before I go. As for now:
“I’ve talked to you in this place, old dragon, many times—and yet you’ve never really told me anything. Oh, I’m not saying that you’ve deceived or misled me, just that I’ve learned very little from you. Now that may well have been my own fault, I may not have asked the right questions, but in any case it’s something I want to put right. There are things you know which I desire to know. There once was a time when you had … powers! I suspect you’ve retained many of them, which I don’t know about.”
Powers? Oh, yes—many powers. Great powers.…
“I want the secret of those powers. I want the powers themselves. All that you knew and know now, I want to know.”
