by Brian Lumley
Radu’s dreams returned, to “plague” him, but now they were more than mere dreams. In them he saw a great rock rising from a canopy of trees; but the climate was cold, “northern” in the true sense of the word. He dreamed of a den in that high place, and of a massive stone coffin within the den which he knew was his …
And meanwhile news was finding its way ashore from “clean” ships. The Ottoman Turk was dying in his thousands. The Mediterranean Islands, and even Marseilles on the northern mainland, were pestholes. The plague was spreading into Bulgaria, Serbia, Wallachia and Hungary. It advanced day by day and ate up entire towns and villages. It raged out of control, like a monstrous brush-fire blown by a relentless wind out of the east. Suddenly Hungary was out of the question, and the sooner Radu sailed—for whichever destination—the better. At least there’d be no plague aboard his ship!
The plague came from the east; Radu sailed west, for Barcelona in Aragon. At the entrance to the harbour, plague inspectors came aboard. The dog-Lord paid a heavy bribe, was cleared for landing, and sold his vessel at a great loss. He purchased horses, carts, caravans—everything at a premium, for plague-fear was at its height—and set out north-west for the Bay of Biscay and English Bordeaux. But his arrival in Aragon had not gone unnoticed; nor had he failed to observe a ship out of Sicily, whose veiled, secretive, closely-escorted master was given an especially difficult time by the “dedicated” port officials, and doubtless paid a crippling bribe for the privilege of being allowed ashore. Indeed just seeing that ship—sensing a definite aura about it that had nothing to do with any plague, or at least, not the Black Death—Radu was keenly interested.
So much so that he sent a lieutenant to follow this Sicilian party, with instructions to join up with him later and report on his findings. Except his man never did join up with him later, nor ever returned …
The journey between ports was three hundred miles; it took thirteen days and exhausted Radu’s animals. Also, enroute, the dog-Lord was given a rude reminder that he wasn’t the only one determined to prolong the centuried blood-feud with other Wamphyri factions. He had half-expected it, ever since seeing that ominous-seeming ship in Barcelona; but still, under the circumstances, it came as a surprise.
It was January 1348, and in Toulouse they were beginning to bring out their dead. Carts loaded with the bodies of plague victims came trundling out of the central district to block the approach roads, which determined Radu to skirt the town. But in the confusion as he turned his small caravan off the main highway into a forested region—
—Suddenly he was under attack!
What they were was obvious: vampires. As for their leader: Wamphyri! How it happened:
Radu was seated in the one small box-coach he’d been able to purchase. The sky was grey, overcast; a drizzly rain fell; a ground mist swirled up from the forest floor. And there was … this feeling. The forest way was narrow and Radu’s coach was at the head of his column. A plague-cart had sunk to its axles in the mud. And as Radu’s driver manoeuvred his vehicle around it:
Ho, great dog! These words, totally unexpected, seemed to burst in Radu’s brain. We almost met in Ain Jalut some ninety years ago. You were fortunate that time, for I had suffered a trivial hurt. Alas, this time you are unfortunate, for I’m fit and well. But your injury will not be so small!
The identity of the sender rang clear as a bell in Radu’s mind: that Ferenczy last seen lizarding up the sheer wall of a gorge in the so-called Holy Land! But so close at hand.
“Closer than you think!” Someone was right outside Radu’s coach. He heard the neighing of a horse, yanked open the curtains and tried to get his sword from its scabbard. But trapped in the close confines of his box, he knew that his life was in jeopardy; he was the perfect target! To the right, the plague cart blocked his exit. And to the left …
… A great black horse pranced in the trees! Its rider—cowled, tall in the saddle, and dressed in black head to toe—leaned forward, drove his slender sword through the dog-Lord’s driver. And kicking the howling thrall out of his way, he clambered from his horse up onto the driver’s platform. Radu’s door was half-open, but the bole of a tree blocked the way. He yelped for his men!
The Ferenczy looked inside through the view slit and saw him—and laughed from a mouth like a mantrap! And: “What use to cut you?” he shouted. “You would only heal. Why, I might as well stab dead men, eh?” With which he leaned down and speared the bloated belly of a corpse in the plague cart, and drew out his sword all slimed. Then Radu shrank down as he saw what was in the other’s mind. And:
“Oh, ha ha ha!” cried that one, his eyes ablaze … as he drove his wet blade through the view slit at an awkward angle, yet still managed to stab Radu in his side. The dog-Lord stifled his pain, drew a knife, thrust it again and again through the view slit. But the Ferenczy was gone; only his sword thrummed there where he’d left it, jammed in the slit.
Radu’s men came swarming—too late! The Ferenczy was up onto his horse; others joined him out of the mist; they wheeled about and were gone. And only Faethor’s mocking mind-voice came back to taunt: May you rot slowly and your death cause you awesome agonies, Radu Lykan. Then at the last, when even your Wamphyri flesh crumbles, remember who did this to you—the ghazi warrior, Faethor! My Ferenczy forebears are finally appeased!
Radu commanded his leech: “Heal me!” … and immediately collapsed shuddering to the floor of his coach, which served to drag the sword from his side. But his shudders weren’t from the pain, which he had already stilled. Rather they sprang from the sure knowledge that indeed the plague lived in him now, and the torment of knowing who had put it there, without his being able to return that favour. But mostly it was the uncertainty of his vampire parasite’s ability to drive it out. Nevertheless:
Ferenczy, he sent a snarl, but no hint of hurt, from his telepathic mind. If it were at all possible—even if it meant trying a little harder—you should have made sure I was dead this time around. Too late for that now, though. So run as far and as fast as you can, and hide where you will, it will make no difference. The next time you lay eyes on this “great dog,” he’ll sink his teeth in your throat and rip it out, be sure!
Then he let go, and lolled and shuddered the rest of the way to Bordeaux …
The rest of Radu’s journey—to a dreamed of but as yet unrecognized destination, the great rock rising from the trees—was a nightmare of several anxieties. The wound in his side healed less readily than the norm, and he began to experience an unaccustomed malaise, a weariness springing from deep within, as if a hidden part of him fought an unequal battle. And he believed he knew which part.
Several of his men took ill in Bordeaux; he gave them some money, sent them on their way, then hired a ship and again fled the plague—for England. Other men fell sick aboard; Radu had them put out of their misery, disposed of them in the sea.
London in March seemed a quagmire of mud, mist and stench. If ever a place was ripe for the plague, London was it. But it certainly wasn’t the high northern territory of the dog-Lord’s prophetic dreams. He made arrangements for a brief stay in the best possible accommodations, made known his location telepathically so that those parties he’d dispatched from north Africa in search of Greek resin would know where to find him, studied maps of the times until at last he found what he believed to be the refuge he sought. Then:
Disguised as the retinue of a rich political refugee from France, his party headed north and in Newcastle boarded another ship bound for Gascony—which of course, wasn’t Radu’s destination. No sooner out of port, he took command of the vessel, sailed north, and eventually wrecked on the wild coast north of Edinburgh. The healthy crew members became part of Radu’s pack, strengthening it, and the party in its entirety became ostensibly the retinue of a rich Boyar out of Hungary.
At last, however briefly, Radu seemed to have outdistanced the Black Death. But his strength was fast failing, and he knew he must soon retire to a lair, go down i
nto the resin, and give his leech a chance to combat the disease within him without the complications and additional effort of keeping up with his external, physical activities.
His Mediterranean pups found him; they wrecked their ships in the Moray Firth, joined Radu where he camped and recuperated in the wild, wooded country under the Cairngorm Mountains. And this was it: these mountains were the great stone of his dreams rising from the woodlands of the misty Spey valley.
Radu’s people became “gypsies” now; all their rich robes were put aside for rags, their golden rings came off their fingers and out of their ears; and through the spring, summer and autumn of 1348, and all through ‘49 they guarded the foothills and found routes up into the high places, to the massive labyrinth of caves which they had discovered there.
Their labours were enormous on the dog-Lord’s behalf, but there was game in the land, local clans not too far afield, and loners or people fleeing the cities, who were wont to come this way; so that provisions were never scarce. And by the autumn of’49 Radu’s lair was ready. Oh, it was a rude place, be sure, but secret and high, and his moon-children—and their children—would always be here to tend him through his long sleep.
A long, long sleep, aye. Of more than six slow centuries.
Eventually it was the summer of 1350, and as the creeping evil of the Black Death tightened its grip even in the sparsely populated Highlands, the dog-Lord could no longer deny that his parasite was losing its—and his—fight for survival. And so he went down into the resin …
But that was then and this was now. And as the conscious world called to him, so Radu’s dreams of other times receded. Stirring, though it was mainly his mind that quickened, he knew his confinement and felt the oppression of dense, glutinous, ever-thickening resin weighing on him.
Thud … !
Now what was that? The sound had not been threatening, at any rate. His own heartbeat, perhaps? Maybe that of some other? Not Bonnie Jean’s, for it wasn’t her time. He hadn’t called for her. Whose, then … or what’s?
He drifted a while, his thoughts gradually clearing.
Thud … !
Radu was “awake” now, or awake as he had ever been in six hundred years. At least his mind stirred—consciously, under his control—if not his physical body. And he knew that from now on he must stay awake, and that because he was out of practice it would have to be a question of mind over matter: self-hypnosis, to achieve resurgent, reliable and continuous mobility, activity, in a body wasted and atrophied by centuries of slothlike torpor, suspended animation.
But awake, really awake, Radu longed to breathe! He gagged and fought down the near irresistible urge. He couldn’t breathe, not yet, and didn’t need to … for he was Wamphyri! But in any case, his metamorphic body put out hair-fine filaments into his resin matrix and the pale sac of softer fluids surrounding him, to siphon off minute traces of oxygen directly into his sluggish bloodstream.
It gave the dog-Lord ease, and he thought: Air! It will be so good to feel it on my body again! And blood … I could lie in it, and soak it up, and bloat to bursting in it! Could—and would! The blood was the life, and it would renew Radu’s life. But first he must stay awake, concentrate, instruct his leech, regain his strength. If only he didn’t feel so weak …
… At which he remembered.
Remembered his dreams—which were nothing less than his previous life—which was in fact the problem. Radu was Wamphyri; he was undead, but had never been truly dead. Even now his mind was alive and well. But what of his body? He had put himself down into the resin sure (he had had to be sure) that his leech would heal him. But he’d been so long “disconnected,” as it were, that even now he didn’t know.
Or perhaps he did. He felt so weak.
Thud … !
The dull reverberation in the rocks, the resin, the otherwise emptiness, came from a distance. Always the same distance; it neither approached nor retreated. A heartbeat, yes—and the beat of a great heart, at that—but static in space and uneven in time. A fumbling heartbeat, not yet ready to burst into life full-fledged. But burgeoning, definitely. With which Radu knew what it was.
His creature! His warrior, created here, of his own piss, sperm, plasma, and metamorphic flesh—and part of the brain, but a very small part, of one of his lieutenants—before the dog-Lord had gone down into the resin. His creature lived! Why, of course it did! Hadn’t the treacherous Bonnie Jean Mirlu, and later that cretin of a thrall Auld John, told him as much? And hadn’t they nurtured it, even as they’d nurtured him? He knew they had, and recalled now how he’d heard that great heartbeat before during Bonnie Jean’s and Auld John’s visits. But if his warrior lived—and since it was made of his flesh and fluids—surely Radu himself must be clean. Surely his parasite had won its centuried fight with the Black Death that Faethor Ferenczy had stabbed into his system.
Thud-d-d! But dully this time, shuddering, uncertain. And as quickly as that, Radu’s mood changed and he, too, was uncertain. His warrior was not … not perfect after all. And since it was built from his flesh and fluids … ? His earlier conclusion must stand reversed.
But nothing was proven as yet, nor would it be until he was up or ready to be up. And if he couldn’t be up in his current body, well … those arrangements were covered, too.
His thoughts flowed faster and faster, also his blood, as he strove to connect up the two, mind and body. He was hungry and thought to call on Bonnie Jean, a mental howl that all of his moon-children near and far would hear. But it wasn’t time and he wasn’t ready. And in any case she was a traitor, or at least she contemplated treachery. What, with Harry Keogh? But it was ridiculous! He was only a man, and she was Radu’s. She belonged to Radu.
Ah, but he wasn’t only a man, he was the man! Radu’s Man-With-Two-Faces, his Mysterious One—his new body, if need be! But patience, patience. Time was narrowing down, and after so much time what was a week or two, or three … or even seven? Seven weeks. It was down to that now, and Radu had work to do.
His blood ran faster still; his limbs felt the cold, life-sustaining liquids around him; his heart gave a single, solid-sounding thud deep in his chest, as he sent telepathic probes out into a world that was entirely strange to him, apart from what little Bonnie Jean and Auld John had managed to convey.
His mental probes went out, while the demands of his body, his parasite, sent physical probes—in the form of tubeworms of metamorphic flesh—up through the resin to find cracks in its crust. Air! It was drawn into his body with or without the involvement of his conscious will, its oxygen filtered out and pumped directly into his quickening bloodstream. And:
Thud! His heart gave another lurch, and after several long seconds a third Thud!
Two hearts beating now, his and his creature’s, but both of them unsteady as yet. Radu laughed deep inside, bayed like the great hound he was—for a moment …
… And paused abruptly as his mind-probes came into sudden collision with others of a like nature. Vampires, if not Wamphyri! Thralls then, or lieutenants, but Drakul or Ferenczy Radu couldn’t say; the contact had been that brief before he’d snatched back his probes and clamped shut his mind. But just touching upon them had been an electric experience, so much so that his metamorphic siphons had automatically drawn back down into him through the resin, leaving a trail of tiny bubbles to rise to the canopy of crusty resin, get trapped there and form into yellow froth.
But vampires! They were there—they were here, right here in Scotland—and they were listening! For him, obviously. And when finally he called for Bonnie Jean, they’d hear that, too. Except by then it would be too late for he’d be ready. And she too would know that they were there, which should make her put aside any … plans she may have made in her own right. And oh yes, Radu was sure she would have made plans—for Bonnie Jean was Wamphyri! And no matter how often she had dwelled upon the fact and he had denied it, by now she would be sure.
Wamphyri, aye, but inexperienced and no match
for the Masters who were out there searching for the dog-Lord’s lair even now. Bonnie Jean would have come to that conclusion, too: that if she would survive to live out her span, she needed the instinct, the expertise, even the merciless guile and savagery of someone who had already lived ten times her fragile lifespan! And so she must remain “faithful” to her dog-Lord even to the end. Which she would, Radu knew, for survival was everything to the Wamphyri.
Everything to him, anyway. As for Bonnie Jean: she wasn’t worthy.
She was expendable.
She was blood.
She was meat …
PART 3
The Darkness Gathers
I
VISIONS AND VISITATION
THIS TIME IT WAS A FORTNIGHT SINCE HARRY HAD SEEN B.J. HE HAD MISSED t her—and he hadn’t. The last time he had been with her was when he’d woken up in a sweat, thinking he was lying with a hairy dog-bitch, whose multiple teats had felt like pulpy dugs in his hands.
Perhaps the nightmare was why he hadn’t missed Bonnie Jean as much as he might: because he did not want to dream anything like that ever again, not about B.J., but was aware that recurrent nightmares were part and parcel of him now. He had wanted to get it out of his system, that was all. And maybe he’d succeeded at that, for it hadn’t come back. Not in the last fortnight, anyway. Not while he’d been sleeping alone.
In that same period she’d contacted him only three times, sounding nervous and jumpy on the phone as if she were taking care not to say too much. Harry had likewise called B.J. three times, asking her when he would be seeing her again and hoping—because of the nightmare—that she wouldn’t say tonight.