Necroscope 4: Deadspeak

by Brian Lumley

  “He … he speaks with the dead!”

  “Which dead? Where?” His wolf’s jaws gaped expectantly.

  “In the cemetery in Halmagiu,” she gasped. “And in your castle!”

  “Halmagiu?” The ridges in his convoluted bat’s snout quivered. “The villagers have feared me for centuries, even when I was dust in a jar. No satisfaction for him there. And the dead in my castle? They are mainly Zirras.” He laughed hideously, and perhaps a little nervously. “They gave their lives up to me; they will not hearken to him in death; he wastes his time!”

  Sandra, for all her vampire strength, was still shaken. “He … he talked to a great many, and they were not Gypsies. They were warriors in their day, almost to a man. I sensed the merest murmur of their dead minds, but each and every one, they burned with their hatred for you!”

  “What?” For a moment Janos stood frozen—and in the next bayed a laugh which was more a howl. “My Thracians? My Greeks, Persians, Scythians? They are dust, the veriest salts of men! Only the guards which I raised up from them have form. Oh, I grant you, the Necroscope may call up corpses to walk again—but even he cannot build flesh and bone from a handful of dust. And even if he could, why, I would simply put them down again! I have him; he is desperate and seeks to enlist impossible allies; let him talk to them.”

  He laughed again, briefly, and turning towards the dark, irregular pile of his ruined castle, narrowed his scarlet eyes. “Come,” he grunted then. “There are certain preparations to be made.”

  A handful of Szgany menfolk bundled Harry through the woods and past the outcropping knoll with its cairn of soulstones beneath the cliff. His hands were bound behind him and he stumbled frequently; his head ached miserably, as from some massive hangover; but as the group passed close to the base of the knoll, so he sensed the wispy wraiths of once-men all around.

  Harry let his deadspeak touch them, and knew at once that they were only the echoes of the Zirras he had spoken to in the Place of Many Bones deep in the ruins of the Castle Ferenczy. The knoll’s base was lapped by a clinging ground mist, but its domed crest stood clear where the cairn of carved stones pointed at the rising moon. Men had carved those stones, their own headstones, before climbing to the heights and sacrificing themselves to a monster.

  “Men?” Harry whispered to himself. “Sheep, they were. Like sheep to the slaughter!”

  His deadspeak was heard, as he had intended it should be, and from the castle in the heights was answered:

  Not all of us, Harry Keogh. I for one would have fought him, but he was in my brain and squeezed it like a plum. You may believe me when I say I did not go to the Ferenczy willingly. We were not such cowards as you think. Now tell me, did you ever see a compass point south? Just so easily might a Zirra, chosen by his master, turn away.

  “Who are you?” Harry inquired.

  Dumitru, son of Vasile.

  “Well, at least you argue more persuasively than your father!” said Harry.

  One of the Gypsies prodded him where they bundled him unceremoniously up the first leg of the climb. “What are you mumbling about? Are you saying your prayers? Too late for that, if the Ferenczy has called you.”

  Harry, said Dumitru Zirra, if I could help you I would, in however small a measure. But I may not. Here in the Place of Many Bones, I was gnawed upon by one of the Grey Ones who serve the Boyar Janos. He had my legs off at the knees! I could crawl if you called me up, but I could never fight. What, me, a half-man of bone and leather and bits of gristle? But only say it and III do what I can.

  So, I’ve found a man at last, Harry answered, this time silently, in the unique manner of the Necroscope. But lie still, Dumitru Zirra, for I need more than old bones to go against Janos.

  The way was harder now and the Gypsies sliced through the thongs binding Harry’s wrists. Instead they put two nooses round his neck, one held by a man who stayed well ahead of him, and the other by a man to his rear. “Only fall now, Englishman, and you hang yourself,” their spokesman told him. “Or at very least stretch your neck a bit as we haul you up!” But Harry didn’t intend to fall.

  He called out to Möbius with his deadspeak: August? How’s it coming?

  We’re almost there, Harry! came the excited answer from a Leipzig graveyard. It could be an hour, two, three at the outside.

  Try thirty minutes, said Harry. Imay not have much more than that left.

  Other voices crowded Harry’s Necroscope mind. From the graveyard in Halmagiu:

  Harry Keogh … we are shunned. Who named you a friend of the dead was a great liar!

  Taken off guard, he answered aloud. “I asked for your help. You refused me. It’s not my fault the world’s teeming dead hold you in contempt!”

  The Szgany where they laboured up the mountainside in the streaming moonlight looked at each other. “Is he mad? Always he talks to himself!”

  Harry opened all the channels of his mind—removed all barriers within and without—and at once Faethor was raging at him: Idiot! I am the only one who can help you, and yet you keep me hooded like some vicious bird in a cage. Why do you do this, Harry?

  Because I don’t trust you, he answered silently. Your motives, your methods, you your black-hearted self! I don’t trust a single thing you say or do, Faethor. You’re not only a father of vampires but a father of liars, too. Still, you do have a choice.

  A choice? What choice?

  Get out of my mind and go back to your place in Ploiesti.

  Not until this thing is seen through—to—the—end! And how can I be sure you’ll stick to that? You can’t, Necroscope!

  Then sit in the dark, said Harry, closing him off again. And now the climb was half-way done …

  In Rhodes it was 1:30 A.M.

  Darcy Clarke and his team sat around a table in one of their hotel rooms. They had spent time recovering from their work, had eaten out as a group, had discussed their experiences and how they’d been affected and probably would be affected for a long time to come. But in the back of their minds each and every one of them had known that their own part in the fight was minimal, and that without Harry Keogh’s success everything else was cosmetic and the partial elation they felt now only the lull before the real storm.

  As they’d returned from their late meal, so Zek had come up with an idea. She was a telepath and David Chung a locator. Together, they might be able to reach Harry and see what were his circumstances.

  Darcy had at once protested: “But that’s just what Harry didn’t want! Look, if Janos got his mental hooks into you —”

  “I’ve a feeling he’ll be too much involved with Harry to be thinking about anything else,” Zek had cut in. “Anyway, I want to do it. In the Lady Karen’s stack—her aerie on Starside—I had the job of reading the minds of a great many Wamphyri. Not one of them so much as suspected I was there, or if they did nothing came of it. That’s the way I’ll play it now.”

  Still Darcy wasn’t sure. “I was only thinking about poor Trevor,” he said, “and about Sandra …”

  “Trevor Jordan wasn’t expecting trouble,” Zek had answered, “and Sandra was inexperienced and her talent variable. I’m not putting her down, just stating a fact.”

  “But —”

  “No!” and again she had cut him off. “If David is willing, I want to do it. Harry means a lot to Jazz and me.”

  At which Darcy had appealed to Jazz Simmons.

  Jazz had shaken his head. “If she says she’ll do it, then she’ll do it,” he said. “Hey, don’t take my word for it! I’m only married to her!”

  And with reservations, finally Darcy had submitted. For the fact was that he as much as anyone else was interested to know Harry’s circumstances.

  Now the three who weren’t participants, Darcy, Jazz and Ben Trask, sat around the table and concentrated on what Zek and David were doing: the latter with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, his hands resting lightly on the stock and body of Harry’s crossbow where it sat on the table,
and Zek similarly disposed, her hand on one of his.

  They had been this way for a minute or two, waiting for Chung to locate the Necroscope through the medium of one of his own possessions. But as seconds ticked by in silence and the two participants grew even more still, so the watchers began to relax a little—even to fidget—and their thoughts to drift. And just at the moment that Jazz Simmons chose to scratch his nose, that was when contact was made.

  It was brief:

  David Chung uttered a long drawn-out sigh—and Zek snapped bolt upright in her chair. Her eyes remained closed for several long seconds while all the colour drained from her face. Then … they shot open and she snatched herself away from Chung, straightened to her feet and backed unsteadily away from the table.

  Jazz went to her at once. “Zek?” his voice was anxious. “Are you OK?”

  For a moment she stared right through him, then at him, and accepted his arms. He felt her trembling, but at last she answered: “Yes, I’m all right. But Harry —”

  “You found him?” Darcy too had risen to his feet.

  “Oh, yes,” David Chung nodded. “We found him. What did you read, Zek?”

  She looked at him, looked at all of them, and freed herself from Jazz’s arms. And said nothing.

  Darcy said, “Is he OK?” And he held his breath waiting for her answer.

  Eventually she said, “He’s all right, yes, and he got there safely—to his destination, I mean. Also, I saw enough to know that it will all come to a head soon. But … something isn’t right.”

  Darcy’s heart thudded in his chest. “Not right? You mean he’s already in trouble?”

  She looked at him, and her look was so strange it was as if she gazed on alien things, in a world of ice beyond the times and places we know. “In trouble? Oh, he’s that, all right, but not necessarily the trouble you’re thinking of.”

  “Can you explain?”

  She straightened up and gave herself a shake, and hugged her elbows. “No, I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Not yet. And anyway, I could be mistaken.”

  “But mistaken about what?” Darcy’s frustration was mounting. “Harry is going up against Janos Ferenczy personally, man to … to thingl If he’s in trouble before they even meet, his disadvantage could well be insurmountable!”

  Again she gave him that strange look, and shook her head, and quietly said, “No, not insurmountable. In fact on a one to one basis, I think you’ll find that … that there’s not a great deal to choose between them.”

  Following which, and for quite a long time, she would say no more.

  With the misted valley far below and in the streaming moonlight of the heights, Harry knew the climb would soon be over and he’d be face to face with hell. He had hoped to call up all the local dead into an army on his side, arid march with them on Janos’s place. But even the dead were afraid. Now there was very little time left, and probably less hope. So the fact that he actually found himself anticipating what was to come was a very hard thing to explain. It could be of course that he’d simply “cracked” under the strain, but he didn’t think so. He’d never been the type.

  His mind was still open and Möbius picked up his thoughts:

  A breakdown? You? No, never! And especially not now, when we’re so close. I need to be into your mind, Harry.

  “Enter, of your own free will,” he answered, almost automatically.

  The other was very quickly in and out, and he was excited as never before. It all fits! It all fits! he said. And the next time I come, I’m sure I’ll be able to unlock those doors.

  “But not right now?”

  I’m afraid not.

  “Then there may not be time for a next time.”

  Don’t give in, Harry!

  “I haven’t. I’m just facing facts.”

  I swear we’ll have the answer in minutes! And meanwhile you could try helping yourself.

  “Help myself? How?”

  Give yourself a problem in numbers. Set yourself a mathematical task. Prepare to re-establish your numeracy.

  “I wouldn’t even know what a mathematical problem looked like.”

  Then I’ll set one for you. The great mathematician was silent for a moment, then said: Now listen. Stage one: I am nothing. Stage two: I am born and in the first second of my existence expand uniformly to a circumference of approximately 1,170,000 miles. Stage three: after my second second of uniform expansion my circumference is twice as great! Question: what am I?

  “You’re crazy,” said Harry, “that’s what you are! A minute ago I would have sworn it was me, but now I know that I’m perfectly sane. Compared to you, anyway.”

  Harry?

  Harry laughed out loud, causing the Gypsies who struggled up the final rise with him to jump. “A madman,” they muttered, “yes. The Ferenczy has driven him mad!”

  The Necroscope used his deadspeak again: August, here’s me who can’t count his toes without getting nine, and you ask me to solve the riddles of the universe?

  Pretty close, Harry, Möbius answered, pretty close. Just keep at it and I’ll be back as soon as possible. His deadspeak faded and he was gone.

  Jesus! said Harry to himself, shaking his head in disgust. Jesus!

  But Möbius’s question had stuck in his head. He couldn’t give it his attention right now, but he knew it was in there, lodged firmly in his mind.

  And now the party had reached the top of the cliffs; and somewhere here on this wind-blasted, sparsely-clad plateau, here lay the ruins of the Castle Ferenczy. That was where Janos waited; but right here and now, here at the top of the long climb … here something else waited. Seven somethings in all, or eight if one included the Grey One slinking in the moon-cast shadows. Harry’s “escort” to the lair of the undead vampire.

  The two leading Zirras saw them first, then Harry, finally the three Gypsies who panted where they laboured close behind. All drew back, startled and gasping, except the Necroscope himself. For Harry knew that he stood in the presence of dead men, which was common ground for him. What he and the others with him saw was this:

  Seven great Thracians, dead for more than two thousand years, raised up again from their burial urns to do Janos’s bidding. They had the aspect of life at least, but there was a great deal of death in them, too. They wore helmets and some pieces of armour of their own period, but wherever their grey flesh showed naked it was scarred, disfigured. Their helmets were fearsome things, designed to terrify any beholder: they were domed, of gleaming bronze, with oval eye-holes dark in the flicker of their torches, and curved, downward-sweeping flanges to cover the jaws of the wearers.

  All seven were big men, but their leader stood a good four inches taller than the rest. He stepped forward, massive, but the eyes behind the holes in his mask were red—with sorrow.

  Bodrogk looked at Harry Keogh and the five who cowered behind him. “Free him,” he said. His tongue was ancient but his meaning—the way his bronze sword touched Harry’s ropes—couldn’t be mistaken.

  The Szgany spokesman stepped cautiously to Harry’s side and loosened the nooses a little around his neck. And to Bodrogk the Gypsy said: “You are … the Ferenczy’s creatures?”

  Bodrogk didn’t understand. He looked this way and that, frowning, wondering what the man’s question had been. Harry read his deadspeak confusion and answered: “He wants to know if Janos sent you.” He spoke the words aloud, letting his deadspeak do the translating. And now Bodrogk’s gaze centred on Harry alone.

  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 calloused 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.