Deadspeak

by Brian Lumley

  Their eyes met, locked, and Janos’s lips drew back from his monstrous teeth in a hideous grin. “And so you are awake, Necroscope,” he said. “Good, for I desired that you should feel the fire which will make you mine forever!” He looked at the torch in his hand, then at the floor. Harry looked, too. At a shallow trough or channel where it had been cut in the rock. It ran from Janos’s feet, across the floor, to the lip of the basin.

  Jesus! Harry lurched for the rim of the shallow pool, and his hands shot out from under him. He wallowed in the liquid, put one hand on the rim and drew himself up, heard Janos’s mad laughter, and saw him slowly lowering the brand to the floor!

  My problem, Harry! Möbius was hysterical in his horror.

  Harry fought back terror to picture the thing, automatically converting Möbius’s circumferences to diameters:

  And his instinctive mathematical talent, returned to him at last, did the rest.

  What am I? Möbius howled as the fire of Janos’s torch descended to the liquid fuse.

  “Light!” Harry cried aloud. “What else can you be? Only light expands at twice the speed of light—from nothing to a diameter of 744,000 miles in two seconds!”

  Fire whooshed, came racing across the floor of the cave in a blue-glaring blaze.

  Which light? Möbius was frantic.

  “You were nothing until you came into existence,” Harry yelled. “Therefore … you are the Primal Light!”

  Yes! Möbius danced in Harry’s mind. And my source was the Möbius Continuum! Welcome back, Harry!

  Computer screens opened in Harry’s mind even as the bowl became an inferno. Searing heat roared up in a tongue of blue fire that belched into the chimney overhead. Liquid fire singed the hair from his head and face and set his clothes blazing. It lasted perhaps one tenth of a second—until Harry conjured a Möbius door and toppled through it!

  He knew where to go, conjured a second door, and fell out of the Möbius Continuum into a deep drift of snow at the roof of the world. He was scorched, yes, but alive. Alive as never before. Elation filled him, and more than elation. His laughter—hysterical as Möbius’s own—quickly died down, went out of him, became a growl that rumbled menacingly in his throat …

  Janos had seen him disappear, and in that moment had known that Harry Keogh was invincible. The Necroscope had gone … where? And he’d be back … when? And what awesome powers would he bring with him? Janos dared not wait to find out.

  He bounded up the stairs through the lower limits of the castle’s labyrinth bowels, eventually emerging in the area of massively vaulted rooms which housed his urns and jars and lekythoi. And discovered Harry there ahead of him! Harry, Bodrogk, and the remaining Thracians.

  Janos fell back to crouch against a wall, hissing, then straightened up to come forward again. “You are dust!” he snarled at Bodrogk, and pointed his finger.

  The huge Thracian chief and two of his captains ducked through an arched door into another room, but the third was caught in the blast of Janos’s devocation:

  “OGTHROD AI’F, GEB’L—EE’H,

  YOG-SOTHOTH, ’NGAH’NG AI’Y,

  ZHRO!”

  The devolved man threw up his arms and sighed his last … and fell in a cloud of grey-green chemicals!

  Janos roared his mad laughter, leaped to take up the fallen warrior’s sword. He advanced on Harry, sword raised high—and the Necroscope knew exactly what to do. For Harry was a mage, a master in his own right; and in his mind right now, crying out from all of their prisoning urns, a thousand deadspeak voices instructed him in the Words of Power!

  He pointed at the jars scattered all about, and turning in a circle uttered the rune of invocation:

  “Y’AI ’NG’NGAH, YOG-SOTHOTH,

  H’EE—L’GEB, F’AI THRODOG,

  UAAAH!”

  The vaulted room filled with stench and purple smoke in a moment, obscuring Harry, Janos, and all. And out of the rush and reek came the cries of the tortured. There had been no time for the mixing of chemicals; these resurrected Thracians, Persians, Scythians, and Greeks would all be imperfect. But their lust for vengeance would be entirely in keeping.

  Janos knew it, too. He careened through their stumbling, groaning ranks as they shattered their jars and grew up like mushrooms out of nothing; but as fast as he could target a group and put them down again, so the Necroscope called them up! There was no way the vampire could win. He couldn’t bellow his words fast enough, and the ranks of resurrected warriors were rapidly closing on him.

  Blasting a path of dust before him, he fled to the steps winding up to ruined regions above and passed from sight. The hideously incomplete army would follow after, but Harry cautioned them: “Stay here. Your part is played. But this time when you go down, you know that you may rest in peace.”

  And they blessed him as he returned them all to their materia. All except the warrior king Bodrogk.

  And taking Bodrogk with him, he stepped through a Möbius door … and out again into the ruins of Castle Ferenczy.

  They waited, and in a little while Janos came, grunting, whining, and panting into the night. He saw them, choked on his terror, gagged and reeled as he stumbled away from them out of the ruins. He was spent; he had no breath; he tottered to the cliff behind the castle and climbed it along a path … and halfway up found Harry and Bodrogk waiting for him. The huge Thracian carried a battle-ax!

  There was nowhere left to run. Janos looked outwards to the night and his crimson eyes gazed on empty space. In all his life there’d been only one Wamphyri art he never mastered or counterfeited, and now he must. He held up his arms and willed the change, and his clothing tore as his body wrenched itself into a great blanket, an airfoil of flesh. And like a bat in the night, he launched himself from the cliffside path.

  He succeeded! He flew—with the tatters of his ripped clothing fluttering about him like strange wings. He flew … until Bodrogk’s hurled battle-ax buried itself in his spine!

  Harry and Bodrogk returned to the ruins and found the monster writhing there where he’d crashed down in the rubble. He choked and coughed up blood, but already he’d worked the ax loose and his vampire flesh was healing him. The Necroscope knelt beside him and looked him in the eye. Man to … man? Face to terrifying, terrified face.

  “Bastard Necroscope!” Janos’s eyes bled where they bulged.

  “You have a man’s body,” Harry answered, without emotion, “but your mind and the vampire within you were raised from ashes in an urn.” He pointed a steady hand and finger. “Ashes to ashes, Janos, and dust to dust! OGTHROD AI’F, GEB’L—EE’H.”

  The vampire gave a shriek, wriggled frantically, choked, gagged, and regained his man-shape.

  And the necroscope continued, “YOG-SOTHOTH, ’NGAH’NG AI’Y.”

  “No!” Janos howled. “N-n-noooooooo!”

  As Harry uttered the final word, “ZHRO!” so Janos’s entire body convulsed in instant, unbearable agony. He writhed frantically, vibrated, then grew still. Finally his head flopped back and his awful mouth flew open, and the lights went out in his eyes. Then—

  His massive chest slowly deflated as he sighed his last, long sigh. No air escaped him but a cloud of red dust, drifting on the air. The rest of his body, even his head, must have been full of the stuff. And as the dust of that devolved vampire leech settled, it reminded the necroscope of nothing so much as the spores of those weird mushrooms at Faethor’s place on the outskirts of Ploiesti.

  Which in turn served to remind him of something else as yet unfinished …

  Bodrogk’s lady Sofia came up out of the ruins, and Sandra came with her.

  She came ghosting in the way of vampire thralls, her yellow eyes alive in the night, but Harry knew that she was less than Sandra now. Or more. Briefly, he remembered his precognitive glimpse back at the start of this whole thing: of an alien creature that came to him in the night and lusted after him, but only for his blood. Sandra was now an alien creature, who would lust after me
n for their blood.

  She flew into his arms and sobbed into his neck, and holding her tightly—as much to steady himself as to steady her—he looked over her sallow shoulder to where Bodrogk gathered up his wife.

  And he heard Sofia say, “She saved me! The vampire girl found me where Janos had hidden me and set me free!”

  And Harry wondered: Her last free-will act, before the monstrous fever in her blood claims her for its own?

  Sandra’s beautiful, near-naked body was cold as clay where it pressed against the Necroscope, and Harry knew there was no way he could ever warm it. A telepath, she “heard” the thought as surely as if it had been spoken, and drew back a little. But not far enough.

  His thin sharp stake, a splinter of old oak, drove up under her breast and into her heart; she took one last breath, one staggering step away from him, and fell.

  Bodrogk, seeing Harry’s anguish, did the rest …

  Epilogue

  ALL NIGHT HARRY SAT ALONE IN THE RUINS, SAT THERE WITH his thoughts, with Faethor trapped within him and the teeming dead held at bay without. He let no one in to witness his sorrow.

  He had thought he would be cold, but strangely was not. He had thought the darkness and the shadows would bother him, but the night had felt like an old friend.

  With the dawn spreading in the east, he sought out Bodrogk and his lady. They had found a sheltered place to light a fire and now reclined in each other’s arms, watching the sun rise. Their faces greeted him with something of sadness, but also with a great resolve.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “The choice is yours.”

  “Our world is two thousand years in the past,” Bodrogk answered. “Since then … we’ve prayed for peace a thousand times. You have the power, Necroscope.”

  Harry nodded, uttered his esoteric farewell, and watched their dust mingle as a breeze came up to blow them away …

  And now he was ready.

  He returned to the ruins and set Faethor free.

  What? that father of vampires raged. And am I your last resort, Harry Keogh? Do you enlist my aid now, when all else has failed you?

  “Nothing has failed,” Harry told him. And then, even by his standards, he did a strange thing. He deliberately lied to a dead man. “Janos is crippled, dying,” he said.

  Faethor’s fury knew no bounds. Without me? You brought him down without me? He doesn’t know I had a hand in it? I want to feel the dog’s pain! He crashed out of Harry’s mind and discovered Janos—dead!

  Astonished, Faethor knew the truth, but of course Harry had known it before him. He triggered Wellesley’s talent to shut Faethor out. “I told you I’d be rid of you,” he said.

  Fool! Faethor raged. I’ll be back in, never fear. Only relax your guard by the smallest fraction, and we’ll be one again, Necroscope.

  “We had a bargain.” Harry was reasonable. “I’ve played my part. Go back to your place in Ploiesti, Faethor.”

  Back to the cold earth, after I’ve known your warmth? Never! Don’t you know what has happened? Janos made no great error when he read the future. He knew that a master vampire—the greatest of them all—would go down from this place when all was done. I am that vampire, Harry, in your body!

  “Men shouldn’t read the future,” said Harry, “for it’s a devious thing. And now I have to be on my way.”

  Where you go, I go!

  Harry shrugged and opened a Möbius door. “Remember Dragosani?” he said. And he stepped through the door.

  Faethor shuddered but went in with him. Dragosani was a fool, he blustered. You don’t shake me off so lightly.

  “There’s still time,” Harry told him. “I can still take you to Ploiesti.”

  To hell with Ploiesti!

  Harry opened a past-time door and launched himself

  through it, and Faethor clung to him like the grim death he was. You won’t shake me loose, Necroscope!

  They gazed on the past of all mankind, their myriad neon life threads dwindling away to a bright blue origin. And now Faethor moaned, Where are you taking me?

  “To see what has been,” Harry told him. “See, see there? That red thread among the blue? Indeed, a scarlet thread … yours, Faethor. And do you see where it stops? That’s where Ladislau Giresci took your head the night your house was bombed. That’s where your life thread stopped, and you’d have been wise to stop with it.”

  Take … take me out of here! Faethor gasped and gurgled, and clung like an incorporeal leech.

  Harry returned to the Möbius Continuum and chose a future-time door, where now the billions of blue life threads wove out and away forever, speeding into a dazzling, ever-expanding future. He drifted out among them and was quickly drawn along the timestream. And: “This thread you see unwinding out of me,” he said. “It’s my future.”

  And mine, said Faethor doggedly, steadier now.

  “But see, it’s tinged with red.” Harry ignored him. “Do you see that, Faethor?”

  I see it, fool. The red is me, proof that I’m part of you always.

  “Wrong,” said Harry. “I can go back because my thread is unbroken. Because I have a past, I can reel myself in. But your past was finished back in Ploiesti. You have no thread, no lifeline, Faethor.”

  What? The other’s nightmare voice was a croak. Then—

  The master of the Möbius Continuum brought himself to an abrupt halt, but the spirit of Faethor Ferenczy shot on into the future. Harry! he cried out in his terror. Don’t do this!

  “But it’s done,” the Necroscope called after him. “You have no flesh, no past, nothing, Faethor. Except the longest, loneliest, emptiest future any creature ever suffered. Good-bye!”

  H-H-Harry! … Haaary! … Haaaarrry! … HAAAAAAAAAA—

  But Harry closed the door and shut him off. Always.

  Except that before the door slammed shut, he looked again at the blue thread unwinding out of him.

  And saw that it was still tinged red.

  Men should never try to read the future. For it’s a devious thing …

  TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY

  THE NECROSCOPE SERIES

  Necroscope

  Necroscope II: Vamphyri!

  Necroscope III: The Source

  Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

  Necroscope V: Deadspawn

  Blood Brothers

  The Last Aerie

  Bloodwars

  Necroscope: The Lost Years

  Necroscope: Resurgence

  Necroscope: Invaders

  Necroscope: Defilers

  Necroscope: Avengers

  THE TITUS CROW SERIES

  Titus Crow Volume One: The Burrowers Beneath & Transition

  Titus Crow Volume Two: The Clock of Dreams &

  Spawn of the Winds

  Titus Crow Volume Three: In the Moons of Borea & Elysia

  THE PSYCHOMECH TRILOGY

  Psychomech

  Psychosphere

  Psychamok

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi

  The Whisperer and Other Voices

  Beneath the Moors and Darker Places

  OTHER BOOKS

  Demogorgon

  The House of Doors

  Maze of Worlds

  The Brian Lumley Companion

  Harry Keogh: The Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes

  “Brian Lumley’s skillful mix of epic fantasy and vampire mythology offers wide-angle horror of a scope too rarely seen in modern fiction. His Wamphyri are vicious, savage, ruthless, and unrepentantly evil—a feast for the horror fan.”

  —F. Paul Wilson

  “An accomplished wordsmith, Lumley wields a pen with the deft skill of a surgeon, drawing just enough blood to titillate without offending his readers.”

  —The Phoenix Gazette

  “Lumley’s love of his pulp-horror subjects is gleefully apparent. He revels in every telling detail, in stories-within-stories and convoluted histories of the self-mutating
vampires.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle on Blood Brothers

  “[A] ripping yam of espionage and occult intrigue. Lumley whips story elements into a fleet supernatural thriller. In a literary landscape overpopulated with sympathetic soul-searching members of the Undead, Lumley’s Necroscope novels are refreshing reminders that sometimes a vampire is just a bloody entertaining monster.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Necroscope: The Lost Years

  “This complex, fast-paced, and challenging novel is a highly successful blend of genres, It’s difficult to write about vampires without falling into cliches, but Lumley has done that and more. His creatures are so horrifyingly real they make the Transylvanian version seem little more than a shadow of the real thing.

  “Lumley deserves a wide audience among those who love both Anne Rice and John Grisham—or maybe both Meredith Pierce and Stephen King.”

  —VOYA on The Last Aerie

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  NECROSCOPE IV: DEADSPEAK

  Copyright © 1990 by Brian Lumley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010