I could go for long periods, then, without taking myself apart from Ma rilena. But occasionally the craving would overpower me, and then in the n ight I would rise up, change my shape and glide from my castle's walls to find my pleasure. My lady, of course, was no dimwit; she had long since di vined the true nature of her lover; it was in any case common knowledge am ong the Gypsies that the Szgany Ferengi served a vampire master. And she w as jealous of them with whom I visited from time to time.

Waking up as I left our bed, she would cry: 'Faethor! Are you deserting me in the night? Do you fly to some lover? Why do you treat me so badly? I s my body not enough for you? Take it and use it as you will, but do not le ave me here alone and weeping!'

And I would say: 'I seek me a man for his blood! What? And do you say I'm unfaithful? All through the seasons, night upon night I lie with you a bed, and you have what you will of me. And have I ever flagged in my dutie s? But the blood is the life, Marilena ... or would you have me shrivel to a mummy in my sheets, so that when you wake with the morning and reach ou t for me, I crumble into dust beneath your touch?'

And then she would shriek: 'You ... go ... with . . . women! What? You seek a man for his blood? No, you seek a woman for her round backside, poin ty b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hot, steaming core! And am I a simpleton? Shrivel to a mummy , indeed! Why, you've the strength of ten men -and their stamina! Are you s o full of a man's seed, Faethor, that you must spill it or burst? Then give it to me. Come, let me suck it out of you, and all your flightiness evapor ate.'

How does one deal with it? One may not argue with a woman in such a mood . I had only ever struck her the once, and then was so filled with remorse t hat I could never strike her again. I was so ... fond of her!

And so, when she would catch me that way, then I would make love to her - to prove to her that no other had attracted me. Aye, and she'd keep me at it all through the night, just to be sure I'd stay abed. Which only served t o increase my fondness.

But there were times when I must be up and about, and then I would emplo y a certain draught which, taken with wine, would serve to keep her still. O r I might stroke her and hypnotize her into a deep sleep, so that I could be off into the night. And of course Marilena was right; I lied to her; I had only rarely sought out men for their life-force. Oh, blood is blood, be it the blood of bird or beast, or even the nectar of another vampire, when one such may be had. But other than that sweet rarity, man-blood is superior. Or rather, the blood of women.

Once Thibor had said to me: 'You can do more to a girl than just eat her .' Ah, and the Wallach was right! But ... it was not so much that I myself w ould be unfaithful to Marilena, rather that the vampire within me demanded i t. Or so I beg to excuse myself.

I did not go to Szgany women. Even before Marilena I had only ever gone to them for . . . comfort, never because I was hungry. No, for they were my own and I would not break their trust. But I did have a liking for the ladie s of certain foppish Boyars. There were a good many castles and rich houses in those days, and often as not the 'men' of such estates would be away on k ing's business; there were wars in the world, as I have said.

I remember one such lady of mine was a personage with royal connection s, a Bathory called Elspa. Aye, and my evil was made manifest in the Batho rys down all the centuries. There was one born in 1560 called Elisabeth, w ho was married as a child to the Count Nadasdy. As coincidence would have it, his first name was Ferencz!

Oh? Ha-ha! I know what you are thinking! Well, and why not? Incest is al so the way of the vampire: incest of the body, and of the spirit, and of the blood. But if you are right . . . what a delight, eh? To be wedded to my ow n ten-times-great-granddaughter!

Ah, the Bathorys. And Elisabeth, the 'blood countess' herself. At least sh e is a legend, even if I myself am nothing.

And so I am brought back to Janos, by incest. And by the vile incest with which he first betrayed me. Where was I. . . ? Ah, yes: There he was, in her to the hilt, moaning like a bull and dripping swea t and s.e.m.e.n; and the bedroom all a shambles, with clothing and bedclothes t ossed here and there, and other signs that their fornication had not been c onfined to a tabletop; and her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s red from his furious fondling w hile her thighs squeezed him further in. This was what I saw from behind th ose curtains. But more than what I saw, what I heard: my Marilena calling h er own son by my name, Faethor!

In that moment I might have torn down the curtains, started forward and s truck them both dead; oh I wanted to, be sure! But . . . why had she called h im Faethor? Then, as he lifted her up from the table and staggered to and fro with her clinging to him still, and jerking herself up and down upon his pol e, I saw her face: how vacant it was despite the apparently animal l.u.s.t. Her eyes, round as saucers, set in the paleness of flesh which should at least be flushed from her efforts. And I knew at once that she was mazed, hypnotized, deeply!

Then, for the first time, I knew how treacherous he was, and how utte rly he had fooled me. I understood why my Wamphyri powers had not worked on him: because he had powers of his own, which all this time he'd kept h idden from me. I understood too Marilena's reluctance to let me go on tho se nights when I must fuel myself, things she had said to me, which made no sense at the time. How she dreamed bad things when I was apart from he r, and could never remember what they were; and how she bruised herself a lone in her bed, and woke up aching and worn out as from strenuous work.

Aye, strenuous, all right - for he had worked and used her on those occa sions, the while causing her to believe that / was her l.u.s.ty lover! He imita ted me to perpetrate his mother's rape! And the thought that drove me most m ad: how often had he done it?

Bursting into the room, I took the curtains with me in a tangle upon my shoulders. Crossed swords were fixed upon a wall; I tore them down and spr ang upon Janos with one of them raised high. I went to split him down the m iddle, but he saw me and turned his mother into the blow. Her skull was spl it in two, with the brains leaking out even as she slumped in his embrace!

My fury evaporated in a moment, and as Janos grimaced and tossed my Ma rilena from him, I caught her up and cradled her in my arms. He ran gibber ing from the room, leaving me alone with her grotesque corpse . . .

How long I sat there and rocked her who was no more I cannot say. Many mad schemes crossed my mind. I would put something of my vampire into her - enough to grow strong in her and heal her wound. She was dead now but n eed not stay dead . . . she could be undead! Except that then she would be changed, my Marilena no more but a wispy thrall to come ghosting whenever I called - a vampire. No, I could not bear the thought of her like that, when she would have no will but my will. Or I could open her up and perfor m an act of necromancy, and learn all about my b.a.s.t.a.r.d son's infamy. For e ven though she had been mazed to forget his handling of her, her spirit wo uld know of it, her flesh would remember. But I could not, for I knew that even the dead feel the agony of the necromancer's touch, and I would caus e her no more pain. Ah, if only I had been a Necroscope, eh? But at that t ime even the concept was unknown to me.

And so I sat there long and long, until her blood and brains had dried u pon me and she was grown stiff in my arms; and as my despair waned a little so I commenced to think again, and likewise my fury to wax. I would kill Jan os, of course, inch by agonizing inch. But before I could kill him I must fi rst find him.

I composed myself, called in unto me Grigor Zirra and others of my Szga ny chiefs. Some of them slept in the lower quarters of my castle, where in softer times I had let them take up an almost permanent residence. An end of that, however, for harder times were coming - starting now!

I showed Marilena's corpse to Grigor and said, 'Your grandson did this , whose Zirra blood was impure. Henceforward the Szgany Zirra are accursed ! You are no longer welcome in the house of Ferenczy. Take yourself and al l of them who are yours and get you gone from here. And from this time for ward, never let me find you in all the lands around.'

When he had gone I turned to that chief of mine who upon a time had b een forward with me, familiar and loose-tongued. And: 'How could things h ave come so far?' I demanded of him. 'In my absence, did you not keep gua rd over what was mine?'

'But, my lord,' he answered, 'it was your son you ordered to keep watch over your house and estates.' And he shrugged, indifferently I thought. 'I h ave not known your confidence, or favours, for many a year.'

'Are you not Szgany?' I grunted, as Wamphyri teeth sprouted in my skul l and my talons grew into knives. 'And am I not the Ferenczy? Since when m ust I make request of that which is my birthright, or make command of that which was ever your duty?' In my manner of speaking I was very quiet; all of them in the room with me backed off a little, except the one I questio ned, whom I had taken hold of by the shoulder.

Then ... he pulled out a knife, and made as if to stab me! But I only smil ed at him in my grim fashion and held him with my eyes. And trembling, he let the knife fall, saying, 'I ... I have betrayed your trust! Banish me also, lor d, and let me go with the Zirras.'

I showed him my teeth in torn and bleeding gums, and yawned to let him see the gape of my jaws. He knew that I could close those jaws on his face and tear it off! But I merely drew him towards the high window. 'Banish you ?' I repeated him. 'And is there a place of your liking?'

'Anywhere!' he gasped. 'Anywhere at all, lord, out there.'

'Out there?' I said, glancing out the window. 'So be it!' And before he could speak again I gathered him up and hurled him out and down. He scream ed once before his bones were broken on the rocks, and then no more.

By then the lesser chiefs might have flown but I cautioned them against it. 'Only flee and I shall seek you out one by one, and eat your hearts.' An d when they were still: 'Go now, and find my son. Find him and take me to hi m, where I may deal with him. And after that gather to me, for I would speak with you of important things. We shall make a great crusade, you and I toge ther. Faethor Ferenczy will rise up and be a power in the world again, and a ll of you shall earn your fortunes. Aye, but it will be man's work and you s hall earn them . . . !'

11.

Harry's Friends, and Others

A distant clanking momentarily distracted Harry from the extinct vampir e's story. Excusing himself from listening, he scanned across the wasteland of churned, boggy earth and decaying, partly demolished houses to a gaunt horizon. Even the sun, falling warmly on his neck and drawing up vapour wra iths from the stagnant pools, could not dispel the cheerlessness of the sce ne: a handful of metal dinosaurs on the move, strange silhouettes obscuring themselves in clouds of dust and blue exhaust smoke. Unlikely that the bul ldozers would head this way, but the sight of them working brought home to Harry something of the hour. It would be about nine o'clock; he still had t o get back to Bucharest; his return flight to Athens was booked for 12:45.

Harry? said Faethor, his mental voice faint as a sigh. / can feel the sun on the earth and it weakens me. Should I continue, or shall we postpone it unt il another time?

Harry thought about it. He'd already learned quite a lot about Janos, a vampire with enormous mental powers. And yet according to Faethor his son ha d not been a vampire in the fullest sense of the word, not at that time almo st eight hundred years ago. So this wasn't simply an opportunity to learn mo re about him, but also about vampires in general. Harry knew that he was alr eady an authority, but he felt there could never be a surfeit of knowledge a bout creatures such as these. Not when his life, and the lives of others, mi ght very well depend upon it.

Quite right, said Faethor. Very well, let me continue. I shall be brief as pos sible . . .

My Szgany found the dog shivering in a cave high in the crags. I went up to him and called him out. He came to the entrance, which opened onto a led ge in the face of a sheer cliff.

Janos, though young, was big and very strong. As big as Thibor in his you th, even as big as myself. He was afraid but not craven. He had cut himself a branch and sharpened it to a stake. 'Come no closer, father,' he warned, 'or I'll pierce your vampire heart!' 'Ah, my son,' I told him, with nothing of animosity, 'but you have alre ady done that. What? I thought you loved me! Indeed, I knew it. And I knew you loved your mother, too - though not how well you loved her. And yet wha t in fact do I know about you, except that you are my son? Very little, it now appears.' And I moved a single pace forward into the cave.

'At least you know I will kill you,' he gasped, backing off, 'if you should try to punish me!'

'Punish you?' I let my shoulders slump, shook my head in a sad fashion . 'No, I seek only an explanation. You are of my flesh, Janos. What? And s hall I punish my own son, now of all times, when of all creatures I am sur ely the most lonely? Oh, I was angry, be sure, but is that so hard to unde rstand? And what did my rage get me, eh? Your mother is dead now and gone from us, and we are both without her whom we loved so dearly. And now ther e is no more anger left in me.'

'You don't. . . hate me?' he said.

'Hate you? My own son?' Again I shook my head. 'It is simply that I do no t understand. I desire to understand you, Janos. Explain this thing you have done, so that I may know you better.' And I stepped a little deeper inside th e cave.

He backed off more yet, but held his spear steady on me. And now, as if a dam had been broken, the words flooded out of him. 'I have hated you!' he said. 'For you were cruel to me, cold, often indifferent, and always . . . d ifferent. I was like you, and yet unlike you. I wanted so much to be like yo u in my entirety, but could not. Often I've watched you become a blanket of flesh to soar like a curling leaf on the air, but when I tried I always fell . I wanted to inspire your fear in the hearts of men, with a glance, a word, a thought; but I was not a vampire and knew that if I tried they would only kill me like any common enemy. So instead I must befriend them whom I despi sed, get into their minds, make them love me in order to gain their obedienc e. In myself I looked a little like you, but I could never be you, and so I have hated you.'

'You desired to be me?' I repeated him.

'Yes, because you have the power!'

'You have powers enough of your own!' I said. 'Great powers! Fantastic powers! For which you must thank me. And yet you hid them from me all the se years.'

'I did not hide them,' he said, scornfully. 'I demonstrated them! I use d them to keep you out of my mind and will. And even full-blown they remain ed secret. You thought my mind was inferior, incapable of knowing your tale nts and therefore una.s.sailable by them; that I was such a blank - indeed a void - no stylus could ever impress me! So that when you discovered that yo u couldn't force yourself upon my mind, you did not say, "Ho, he is strong!" but, "Hah! He is weak!" That was your ego, father, which is vast but not infallible.'

'Aye,' I nodded thoughtfully when he was done, 'much more to you than I suspected, Janos. You do have certain powers.'

'But not your power!' he said. 'You are ... a changing thing, mysterious, always different. And I am always the same.'

'Well, and there you have it,' I told him, with a shrug. 'I am Wamphyri!'

'And I desired to be,' he said, 'but was only a strange man. A halfling . . .'

'But does this excuse you?' I asked him. 'Is this reason enough that yo u should use your own mother as a wh.o.r.e? To hate me for your own deficienci es was one error, but to compound it by cleaving unto - '

'Yes!' he cut me short. 'It was my reason. I wanted to be like you and could not, and so hated you. Wherefore I would defile or suborn all that yo u most treasured. First the Szgany, whom I would cause to love me if not ab ove you then at least as your equal; and then your woman, who knew you bett er than anyone else in the world - and in ways which only a lover could kno w you!'

Now (quite deliberately) I backed away from him, and he followed after, towards the mouth of the cave. 'In your desire to be like me,' I said, 'you determined to do the things I did, and to know the things I knew. Even to th e extent of knowing your own mother - carnally?'

'I thought she might. . . teach me things.'

'What?' I almost laughed, but not quite. 'The ways of the flesh, Janos? A fa ther's task, that, surely?'

'I wanted nothing of you, except to be you.'

'Could you not try to be more affectionate towards me, and so engender m y affection?'

His turn to laugh, almost. 'What? As well seek sweetness in a lump of salt !'.

'You are hard,' I told him, low-voiced. 'Perhaps we are not so far apart after all. And so you'd be Wamphyri, eh? Ah, but you've much to learn before that day dawns.'

'What?' he said, a look of incredulity crossing his face like a shadow. An d again, in a whisper: 'What? Are you saying that - ?'

'Ah!' I held up a cautionary hand; for now that he was fascinated, I was in a position to cut him off. 'Aye, not so very far apart at all. And I'll tell you something, my oh so stupid jealous, impatient son: what you did was no rare thing. Neither vile nor even strange. Not to my thinking, or the th inking of others like me. What, incest? Why, the Wamphyri have ever f.u.c.ked t heir own, and in more ways than one! I tell you, Janos: only be glad that yo u were born a man and mainly human. For if you were another vampire ... oh, I'd know how best to serve you. Aye, and then you'd know well enow the real meaning of rape!'

My words should have warned him that I was not so forgiving as I seemed , but they did not. I had made him a half-promise, and he wanted the other half - now. 'You said . . . did you mean . . . can you teach me to be Wamph yri?'

'Something like that,' I answered. And his spear was wavering now where he pointed it at me.

'How would you do it?'

'Not so fast!' I said. 'First you must tell me how far you've progressed . You have said you desire to be like me. Exactly like me. Which is to say, Wamphyri. Very well, but meanwhile you have practised, am I right? So, and w hat have you achieved?'

He was sly. 'Ask me instead, the things which I have not achieved. All els e is mine!'

'Very well: what eludes you?'

'I cannot alter my flesh, change my shape, fly.'

'That is a matter of the will over the flesh - but only if it is Wamphyri fle sh. Yours is not. Still. . . there are ways to change that. What else?'

'You are a crafty necromancer. Once, when a lone traveller pa.s.sed this way, you murdered him. Hidden in a secret place, I saw you open his body an d tease the various parts of him for all of his knowledge of the outside wo rld. You inhaled the ga.s.ses of his gut, to learn from them. You sucked his eyes, to see what they had seen. You rubbed the blood of his ruptured ears into your own, to hear what they had heard! Later, when a party of strange Szgany pa.s.sed by, I stole away a girl child from them and used her in the s ame way. As you had done, so did I. But I learned nothing and was very ill.'

'The Wamphyri excel in necromancy,' I told him. 'Aye, and it's a rare art.

But . . . even this may be taught. Had I been allowed into your mind, I could have instructed you. In this you thwarted yourself, Janos. Is there anything else?'

'Your great strength,' he said. 'I saw you chastise a man. You picked h im up and hurled him away like a small log! And I have watched you ... in b ed. When others would have flagged, your energy was boundless. I used to th ink she had some secret, Marilena, some ointment or trick to keep you hard.

Another reason why I went to her. I desired to know all of your secrets.'

And in my turn, there was something I too had to know. 'Did she ever sus pect?' I asked him then.

He shook his head. 'Not once. My eyes held her entirely in thrall. She kn ew only what I wanted her to know, did only as I instructed her to do.'

'And you caused her to think that you were me,' I growled, 'so that she would hold nothing back!' And I went to grab him.

In that same moment the dog had read my mind. Until then I had kept it shielded from him, but as the thought of him and Marilena together returned to plague me all grip was lost. He saw my thoughts, my intentions, avoided my grasp and lunged at me with his spear.

I was on the rim of the cliff; I ducked to one side and his weapon tore my robe and grazed my shoulder; I wrenched it from him and knocked him in the face with it. His mouth was torn and his teeth broken in. Also, he jerk ed away from me and slammed his head against the cave's ceiling. And as he collapsed I caught him up. Dazed, he could do nothing as I carried him to t he sheer rim. His head lolled a little but his eyes were open, watching me as I gave way to the vampire within to let its fury shape and reshape my fa ce and form!

'So,' I grunted then, meshing my teeth where they came bursting through the ripped ridges of my jaws. 'So, and you would be Wamphyri.' I showed hi m my hand, which was changed to the talon of a primal beast. 'You would be as I am. But I would have you know, Janos, that the only reason you are hum an at all is because of your mother. I wanted her to have a child, and gave her a monster. But you called yourself a halfling and you are right. You a re neither one thing nor the other, and no use to man nor beast. You desire flesh you can mould to suit yourself? So be it!' And I gathered up a gob o f phlegm, froth and blood onto my forked tongue and hurled it into his gapi ng mouth, and ma.s.saged his throat until it was down. He gagged and choked u ntil his eyes stood out in his face, but there was nothing he could do.

'There!' I laughed at him, madly. 'Let that grow in you and form the stre tchy flesh you so desire, and make your own flesh like unto itself. Aye, for you'll need something of the vampire in you - if only to mend all your broken bones!'

And without more ado I hurled him from the cliff. . .

Janos was sorely broken. All his bones, as I had guaranteed, and his fl esh all torn on the rocks. A man, he would have died. But there had always been something of me in him, and now there was even more. What I had spat i nto him spread faster than a cancer, except that unlike a cancer it spared, indeed saved, his miserable life. He would mend, and live to serve my purp ose.

Before I went down into Hungary and headed for Zara, I commanded those Szgany I left behind me: 'Tend him well. And when he is mended give him my instructions. He is to stay here and guard my castle and lands, so that whe n I return there will be a welcome for me. Until then he is the master here , and his will be done. So let it be.'

Then I went to join the Great Crusade, the substance and outcome of whic h you already know . . . As Faethor's voice tailed away, Harry looked up and all around and saw t hat the bulldozers were toiling now. Only two hundred yards away an old, rad dled relic of a house went down in dust and shuddering debris, and Harry fan cied he felt the earth shake a little. Faethor felt it too.

Will they get this far today, do you think?

The Necroscope shook his head. 'I shouldn't think so. In any case they s eem to be working at random and don't appear to be in too much of a hurry. W ill it affect you -1 mean, when they level this place? There's not much of i t left to level anyway.'

Affect me? No, nothing can do that, for I'm no more. But it may make it d.a.m.ned hard to eavesdrop upon the dead, with all that rumble going on! And H arry sensed the extinct monster's hideous grin, as the monster in turn sense d the inevitability of a concrete tomb, probably in the heart of a bustling factory complex. A grin, yes, for Faethor would not accept Harry's concern, wouldn't even acknowledge it. Pointless therefore to say: 'Well, I hope you'll be ... OK?' But the Necroscope said it anyway. And quickly, before his (or Faethor's) embarra.s.sment could show through: 'But now I have to get on my way. I've learned a lot from you, I think, and of c ourse I'm grateful for the power of deadspeak, which you've returned to me.

If I may I'll contact you again, however - by night, of course, and probab ly from afar -so that you can finish your story. For I know that after the Fourth Crusade you came back to Wallachia and put an end to Thibor, and the re must have been more between you and Janos, too. Since he is only recentl y risen, I know someone must have put him down. You, Faethor, I would suspe ct.'

He sensed the vampire's grim nod.

'Well, what was done once may be done a second time, with your a.s.sistanc e.'