Deadspeak

by Brian Lumley

  The massive Thracian paced forward and the Gypsies fell back. Bodrogk caught the ropes around Harry’s neck and snapped them like threads. He grunted an introduction, then said, “And so you are the Necroscope, beloved of all the world’s dead.”

  “Not all of them”—Harry shook his head—“for there are cowards among the dead even as there are among the living. If I can’t know them—because they are afraid to know me—then I can’t befriend them. And anyway, Bodrogk, I’ve no great desire to be loved by thralls.”

  Bodrogk’s men had come forward, moving closer to the Gypsies on the bluff, herding them there. Now their huge leader took off his helmet and tossed it clanking aside. His neck was a bull’s, his face full-bearded, fierce. But it was grey, that face, and, like the rest of his flesh, gaunt with an unspoken horror. His haggard, harried aspect told far better than any words the way in which Janos had dealt with him and his.

  “I heard you talking to the dead,” said Bodrogk. “You must know that all of Janos’s thralls are not cowards.”

  “I know that the Thracians in the vaults of his castle are dust, and so can’t help me. They told me they would but can’t, because only Janos himself may call them up, for he alone has the words. On the other hand … you and your six are not dust.”

  “Are you calling us cowards?” Bodrogk’s callused hand fell upon Harry’s shoulder close to his neck, and in his other hand a great bronze sword was lifted up a little.

  “I only know that where some suffer Janos to live,” Harry answered, “I came to kill him and remove his taint forever.”

  “And are you a warrior, Harry?”

  Harry lifted his head, gritted his teeth. He had never feared the dead, and would not now. “Yes.”

  Bodrogk smiled a strange, sad smile—which faded at once as he glanced beyond Harry. “And these others with you? They captured you and brought you here, eh? A lamb to the sacrifice.”

  “They belong to the Ferenczy.” Harry nodded.

  The other looked at him and his eyes went into Harry’s soul. “A warrior without a sword, eh? Here, take mine.” He placed it in Harry’s hands—then scowled at the Szgany and nodded to his men. The six Thracian lieutenants fell on the Gypsies with their swords, swept them from the bluff and over the edge of the cliff like chaff. It was so swift and sudden, they didn’t even have time to scream. Their bodies went bumping, bouncing, and clattering into the deep dark gorge.

  “A friend at last.” Harry nodded. “I thought I might find a few, at least.”

  “It was you or them,” Bodrogk answered. “To murder a worthy man, or slaughter a handful of dogs. Thralldom to the Ferenczy, or freedom—for as long as it may last. Not much of a choice. I made the only decision a man could make. But if I had paused a moment to think … then it might have gone the other way. For my wife’s sake.” He explained his meaning.

  “You’ve taken an enormous chance,” Harry told him, giving back his sword.

  “The dead called out to me,” Bodrogk answered. “In their thousands they cried out, all of them begging your life. Aye, and one especially, whose tongue lashed like none other! Why, she might have been my own mother! But instead she was yours.”

  Harry sighed, and thought, Thank God for you, Ma!

  “Your mother, yes,” said the other. “She half swayed me, and Sofia did the rest.”

  “Your wife?”

  “The same.” Bodrogk nodded, leading the way back towards the ruined castle in the heights. “She said to me, ‘Where is your honour now, you who once were mighty? Rather the applause and cold comforts of the teeming dead, and thralldom to Janos forever, than another urn filled with screaming ashes in the monster’s vaults!”

  Harry said, “We have much in common then, your lady and I.”

  And, on impulse: “Bodrogk, I already have my cause but she must be yours. Only fight with Sofia in mind, and you cannot lose.” And deep inside, unseen, unheard, he prayed it was true. Except: “I have no plan,” he admitted.

  Bodrogk laughed, however grimly, and answered, “A warrior without a sword, nor yet a plan of campaign!” But he grasped the Necroscope’s shoulder and added, “I have been dead a long time, Harry Keogh, but in my life I was a king of warriors, a general of armies. I was the great strategist of my race, and all the centuries flown between could not rob me of my cunning.”

  Harry looked at the Thracian, striding gaunt, grim, dead, and resurrected beside him. “But will cunning suffice, when the vampire need only mutter a handful of words to return you to dust? I think you’d better tell me how this magic of his works, and then something of your plan.”

  “The words of devolution may only be spoken by a master, a mage,” said Bodrogk. “Janos is one such. He must direct his words, aim them like an arrow to their target. And to hit the target he must first see it. Wherefore … we go up against him as individuals! You, me, my six, each man of us a unit in his own right. We approach and enter the castle from all sides. He cannot smite us all at once! And with mere words, even Words of Power, he can’t smite you at all! Some of us may fall, aye. What of it? We’ve fallen before; we desire to fall, and to remain fallen! But while Janos deals with some of us, the others—especially you, Harry—may live long enough to deal with him.”

  Harry nodded. “It’s as good a plan as any,” he said. “But … surely he isn’t alone?”

  “He has his vampire thralls,” Bodrogk answered. “Five of them. Three who were Szgany, and two but recently joined him. One of these is a woman with powers—”

  “Sandra.” Harry breathed her name, felt sick in the knowledge of how it must be for her, and how it was yet to be.

  “And the other a man likewise talented,” Bodrogk continued. “Janos broke him to force his obedience. As for the woman: he did to her what he does to women, the dog!”

  “Then we have them to deal with, too.”

  “Indeed—and now!”

  “Now?”

  “They are waiting for us, there beneath the trees, beyond which lie those tumbled, cursed ruins. I am now supposed to give you into their hands, when they in turn will take you to their master.”

  Harry looked, saw twisted, wind-blasted pines leaning towards the cliffs of the ultimate ridge. And in the shadows formed of their canopy, he also saw the yellow flames of vampire eyes, feral in the night. He reverted to true deadspeak, using only his mind to ask, Do you know how to deal with them?

  Do you? Question matched question.

  The stake, the sword, the fire, Harry answered grimly.

  Swords we have, said Bodrogk. Fire too, in the torches which my men carry. And stakes? Aye … we cut a few while we waited for you at the cliff. For you see, there were vampires in my day, too. So let’s be at it!

  Janos’s undead thralls came ghosting out of the trees. Their long arms reached for Harry; they smiled their ghastly smiles; not a one of them dreamed that Bodrogk had reneged. But even as they ringed the Necroscope about, so the Thracians fell on them and cut them down!

  It was butchery, and it was quick. All three vampires were beheaded, thrown to the ground and staked through their hearts. But only three? As Bodrogk’s men took up the bodies of their victims and draped them across low branches, and set fire to the tinder-dry, resin-laden trees, Harry saw a crooked figure standing a little apart. And in the next moment Ken Layard stepped into view. “Harry!” he sighed. “Harry! Thank God!”

  Moonlight turned his sallow flesh golden as he opened his arms wide, closed his eyes, and turned his face up to the night sky. The Thracians looked at Harry; there was nothing he could do; he nodded and turned away—

  And saw a tall, dark figure standing at the edge of the ruins, only a dozen paces away!

  Janos!

  Bodrogk’s men had done with Layard now. They, too, saw the vampire there in the ruins, his scarlet eyes furiously ablaze. The Thracians began to melt quickly back into shadows, but not quickly enough for two of them who stood close together.

  Janos pointed at them
, and his awful baying voice swelled out like a curse on the night air.

  “OGTHROD AI’F—GEB’L EE’H—YOG-SOTHOTH!”

  There was more, but the effects of the rune of dissolution were already apparent. The two Thracians who were Janos’s target had already cried out, fallen against each other, collapsed to insubstantial wraiths which, as he finished his devocation, drifted to the earth as dust!

  Harry glanced all about; Bodrogk and his remaining four were nowhere to be seen; another terror approached.

  The wolf—the Grey One which had also been part of his escort, but who had kept himself well back behind the party of Thracians—was now creeping up on him, shepherding him towards the castle’s master. The Necroscope stooped, took up one of the bronze swords of the dematerialised Thracians, felt its great weight. Smaller than Bodrogk’s sword, still it was no rapier. Harry knew he couldn’t hope to wield this thing, but it was better than nothing.

  He looked for Janos, saw the monster’s fleeting shadow moving back into the darkness of the ruins. A ploy, a feint: Harry’s cue to pursue him. Well, and wasn’t that what he was here for?

  As he followed after Janos, so the Grey One rushed up behind him and snapped at his heels. Harry stiffened his leg into a bar of flesh and bone and lashed out, and felt teeth crunch as his foot concertinaed the beast’s slavering muzzle. He snarled at the creature and took up his sword two-handed … and astonishingly the wolf shrank back, whining!

  Before Harry could wonder at the meaning of this, Bodrogk and one of his remaining four stepped from cover and together fell on the animal. The sounds of their attack were brief and reminded Harry of nothing so much as a butcher’s shop as they first crippled the beast, then cut short its yelping and howling by taking its head.

  Harry’s eyes were more accustomed to the dark now; in fact, his clarity of vision in the night was entirely remarkable and a wonder to him. But that was something else he had no time to consider. Instead he looked into the heart of the tumbled pile and saw Janos standing behind a toppled wall. The monster’s gaze was fixed on a point beyond Harry—the Thracians, of course. But as he pointed his great talon of a hand, so the Necroscope shouted, “Look out!”

  “OGTHROD AI’F …” Janos commenced his crackling rune of devolution, and before he’d finished, another Thracian had cried out, sighed, and crumbled into smoking, drifting dust. One of the two had been saved at least, and Harry found himself hoping it was Bodrogk.

  But now the Necroscope went after Janos with a vengeance. Athletic, surefooted even in the dark, he saw the vampire commence a descent apparently into the earth itself behind a mound of rubble. In the last moment before he disappeared, he turned his freakish head and looked back, and Harry saw the crimson lamps of his eyes. There was a challenge written there which the Necroscope couldn’t resist.

  He found the stone trapdoor raised above hollowed steps leading down, and almost without thought began his own descent—until a voice from behind stopped him. Looking back, he saw Bodrogk and his remaining warriors converging on him. “Harry,” the great Thracian rumbled. “You’ll be first down. Go swiftly! Preserve my Sofia!”

  He nodded, clambered down the spiralling stairwell—a wall of stone on one side and a chasm opening on the other—down to the first landing. But setting foot on the solid stone floor—

  Janos was waiting!

  The vampire came from nowhere, knocked the sword out of Harry’s hand, hurled the Necroscope against the wall with such force that all the wind was hammered out of him. Before he could draw breath Janos towered over him, closed one huge hand over his face, and slammed his head against the wall. Physically there was no match: Harry went out like a light …

  Harry … Haaarry! his mother cried out to him, a hundred mothers like her, an even larger number of friends and acquaintances, and all the dead in their graves across the world. Their voices soughed in the deadspeak aether, filled it, penetrated the threshold of Harry’s subconscious mind, and wrapped him in their warmth. Warmth, yes, for the minds of the dead are different to the common clay of their once-flesh.

  Ma? He answered through his pain and the struggle to rise up, back into the conscious world. Ma … I’m hurt!

  I know, son, she said, her voice brimming over. I feel it … we all of us do. Lie still, Harry, and feel how we feel for you. Behind her, the wash of background deadspeak was building up to a crescendo, a wall of mental moaning.

  Lying still won’t help, Ma, he said. Nor all the gnashing of teeth I hear going on there. I’m going to have to shut you all out. I need to wake up. And when I’ve done that, I’ll need help just to live!

  But the dead can help, Harry! she told him. There’s one trying to contact you even now who has part of the answer.

  Möbius? She had to be talking about Möbius.

  No, not him. Harry sensed the shake of her head. Another, someone who is much closer to you. Except … there’s not much left of him, Harry. You won’t hear him against all of this. Wait, and I’ll see if I can quiet them.

  She retreated, spoke to others, passed on a message that spread outwards like ripples in a calm pond where a stone has been tossed, until it encompassed the world. The mental babble quickly faded away and an extraordinary silence followed. Out of which—

  Harry?

  Whoever it was, his deadspeak was so weak that at first the Necroscope thought he must be imagining it. But:

  Are you looking for me? he answered eventually. Who are you?

  I am nothing. The other sighed. Not even a whimper, not even a ghost. Or at very best a ghost even among ghosts. Why, even the dead have difficulty hearing my voice, Harry! My name was George Vulpe, and five years ago my friends and I discovered the Castle Ferenczy.

  Harry nodded. He killed you, right?

  He did more, worse, than that! the other moaned, his deadspeak thin as the slither of dry, dead leaves. He took my life, my body, and left me without … anything! Not even a place to rest.

  Harry felt that this was very important. Can you explain?

  I’ve spoken to a great many Zirras in the Place of Many Bones, George Vulpe told him. When the Ferenczy lay in his urn, they were the ones who came to feed and refuel him with their blood. But I was different. On my hands there were only three fingers!

  Now Harry gasped. You were the one!

  He has my body, the other said again. And I can’t rest. Ever.

  What was he? Harry wanted to know. I mean, how did he usurp you, drive you from your body?

  The other explained. My blood drew him up from his urn. I was a son of his sons, from the Zirra clan. But I didn’t know that. Only my blood knew.

  He came from his urn? Harry pressed. As essential salts?

  My blood transformed him.

  Harry needed help to understand. He uncovered Faethor.

  Damn you, Harry Keogh! the incorporeal vampire at once raged.

  Be quiet! Harry told him. Explain what this man is saying to me.

  Faethor heard Vulpe’s story, said, Why, isn’t it obvious? Janos had taken precautions. When I reduced his brain and vampire both to ashes, his ever-faithful Zirras hid him away in a secret place until he could perform this … this metempsychosis. But it wasn’t merely a transfer of minds: Janos’s leech was revived from its ashes. The creature itself entered this one’s body! And now—

  But Harry at once closed him down again. And: George, he said, thanks for your help. I don’t see what good it will do me, but thanks anyway.

  The only answer was a sigh, rapidly fading to nothing …

  Harry strove to rise up from unconsciousness, to revive himself, to wake up. And on the verge of succeeding, then Möbius came.

  Harry! Möbius cried. We have it! We believe we have it! He entered the Necroscope’s mind, and in another moment: Yes, yes—this must be right! But … are you ready?

  I’ve never been so ready! Harry answered.

  That’s not what I meant, said Möbius. I mean, are you prepared mentally?

&
nbsp; Prepared mentally? August, what is this?

  The Möbius Continuum, Harry. I can open those doors, but not if you’re not ready for it. There’s a different universe in there, doors opening on places undreamed. Harry, I wouldn’t want you to get sucked into your own mind!

  Sucked into … ? Harry shook his head. I don’t follow.

  Look … did you solve my problem?

  Problem? Suddenly Harry felt rage and frustration boiling up in him. Your fucking problem? What time do you think I’ve had for solving fucking problems?

  Did you even think about it?

  No … Yes! … Yes, I thought about it.

  And … ?

  Nothing.

  Harry, I’m going to open one of those doors … now!

  The Necroscope felt nothing. Did it work?

  It worked, yes, Möbius breathed. And if you have the equations, you should be able to do the rest yourself.

  But … I don’t feel any different.

  Did you ever? Before, I mean?

  No, but—

  I’ll open another door. There!

  But this time Harry did feel it. A sharp white lance of agony, setting off fireworks in his head. It was something like the pain Harry Jr. had arranged for him if ever he should be tempted to use his deadspeak, but since he was already unconscious, its effect was greatly reduced. And it served an entirely different purpose.

  Instead of blacking him out, it jabbed him awake—

  He came awake, into a waking nightmare!

  Cold liquid burned his face, got into his throat, and stung him, caused him to cough. It was—alcohol? Certainly it was volatile. It smoked, shimmering into vapour all around. And Harry was lying in it. He struggled to his hands and knees, tried not to breathe the fumes, which were rising up into some sort of flue directly overhead … A blackened flue … Fire-blackened!

  Harry knelt in a basin or depression cut from solid rock, knelt there in this pool of volatile liquid. Impressions came very quickly. He must be in the very bowels of the castle, down in the bedrock itself … a huge cave … and against the opposite wall where rough-hewn steps led up to the higher levels … there stood Janos watching him! He held a burning brand aloft, his scarlet eyes reflecting its fire.