by Brian Lumley
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 all were 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 rumoured 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, 0 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 immobilise 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 hypnotised 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.
I was not playing games but answering your question, said Faethor. In part, anyway. You are an intelligent man. Can ‘(you work it out for yourself?
That got Harry thinking. About opposite poles. Was that what Faethor meant: that Thibor would make a new home for himself in a composite being? A thing formed of Yulian’s physical shape and Thibor’s vampire spirit? While he worried at the problem, Faethor was not excluded from Harry’s thoughts.
Bravo! said the vampire.
‘Your confidence is misplaced,’ Harry told him. ‘I still don’t have the answer. Or if I do then I don’t understand
it. I can’t see how Thibor’s mentality can govern Yulian’s body. Not while it’s controlled by Yulian’s own mind, anyway.’
Bravo! said Faethor again; but Harry remained in the dark.
‘Explain,’ said the Necroscope, admitting defeat.
If Thibor can lure Yulian Bodescu to the cruciform hills, said Faethor, and there cause his surviving creeper — the protoflesh he shed, perhaps for this very purpose — to join with Bodescu.
‘He can form a hybrid?’
Why not? Bodescu already has something of Thibor in him. He already is influenced by him. The only obstacle, as you point out, will be the youth’s mind. Answer:
Thibor’s vampire tissue, once it is in him, will simply eat Yulian’s mind away, to make room for Thibor’s!
‘Eat it away?’ Harry felt a dizzy nausea. Literally!
‘But… a body without a mind must quickly die.’ A human body, yes, if it is not kept alive artificially. But Bodescu’s body is no longer human. Surely that is the essence of your problem? He is a vampire. And in any case, Thibor’s transition would take the merest moment of time. Yulian Bodescu would go up into the cruciform hills, and he would appear to come down again from them. But in fact —‘It would be Thibor!’
Bravo! said Faethor a third time, however caustically.
‘Thank you,’ said Harry, ignoring the other’s sarcasm, ‘for now I know that I’m on the right track, and that the course of action chosen by certain friends of mine is the right one. Which leaves only one last question unanswered.’
Oh? Black humour had returned to Faethor’s voice, a certain sly note of innuendo. Let me see if I can guess it. You desire to know if I, Faethor Ferenczy — like Thibor the Wallach — have left anything of myself behind to fester in the dark earth. Am I right?
‘You know you are,’ said Harry. ‘For all I know it’s a precaution all the Wamphyri take — against the chance that death will find them out.’
Harry, you have been straightforward with me, and I like you for it. Now I too shall be forthright. No, this thing is of Thibor’s invention. However, I would add that I wish I had thought of it first! As for my ‘vampire remains’: yes, I believe there is such a revenant. if not several. Except ‘revenant’ is perhaps the wrong word, for we both know there will be no return.
‘And it — they, whatever — is in your castle in the Khorvaty, which Thibor razed?’
A simple enough deduction.
‘But have you no desire to use such remains, like Thibor, to raise yourself up again?’
You are naïve, Harry. If! could, I probably would. But how? I died here and may not depart this spot. And anyway. I know that you will destroy whatever Thibor left buried in that castle a thousand years ago — if it has survived. But a thousand years, Harry — think of it! Even I do not know if vampire protoplasm can live that long, in those circumstances.
‘But it might have survived. Doesn’t that… interest you?’
Harry detected something like a sigh. Harry, I will tell you something. Believe me if you like, or disbelieve, but I am at peace. With myself, anyway. I have had my day and I am satisfied. If you had lived for thirteen hundred years then you might understand. Perhaps you will believe me if I say that even
you have been a disturbance. But you must disturb me no longer. My debt to Ladislau Giresci is paid in full. Farewell.
Harry waited a moment, then said, ‘Goodbye, Faethor.’
And tired now, strangely weary, he found a space-time door and returned to the Möbius continuum.
Harry Keogh’s conversation with Faethor Ferenczy had ended none too soon; Harry Jnr was awake and calling his father’s mind home. Snatched from the Möbius continuum into the infant’s increasingly powerful id, Harry was obliged to wait out his son’s period of wakefulness, which continued into Sunday evening. It was 7.30 P.M. In England when finally Harry Jnr went back to sleep, but in Romania it was two hours later and darkness had already fallen.
The vampire-hunters had a suite of rooms in an old world inn on the outskirts of lonesti. There in a comfortable pine-panelled lounge they finalised their plans for Monday and enjoyed drinks before making an early night of it. That at least was their intention. Only Irma Dobresti was absent, having gone into Pitesti to make final arrangements for certain ordnance supplies. She had wanted to be sure the requisition was ready. All of the men were agreed that whatever she lacked in looks and personal charm, Irma certainly made up for in efficiency.
Harry Keogh, when he materialised, found them with drinks in their hands around a log fire. The only warning of his coming was when Carl Quint suddenly sat bolt upright in his easy chair, spilling his slivovitz into his lap.
Visibly paling, staring all about the room with eyes round as saucers, Quint stood up; but even standing it was as if he had shrunk down into himself. ‘Oh-oh!’ he managed to gasp.
Gulharov was plainly puzzled but Krakovitch, too, felt something. He shivered and said, ‘What? What? I think there is some —,
‘You’re right,’ Alec Kyle cut him off, hurrying to the main door of the suite and locking it, then turning off all the lights except one. ‘There is something. Take it easy, all of you. He’s coming.’