Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

twenty-one — before they're back again. Spring, summer, winter: only the Szgany themselves know the season, the month, the time. But when they hear the calling, when the moon is right, when a lone wolf howls high up in the mountains, then they return. Yes, and when they go they always leave their offering.'

'What sort of offering?' the younger woman was more curious than ever. 'Don't ask,' said the other, hurriedly shaking her head.

'Don't ask.' But it was only her way; the younger woman knew she was dying to tell her; she bided her time and resolved to ask no more. But in a little while, fancying that they'd strayed too far from the most direct route back to the village, she felt obliged to inquire:

'But isn't this a long way round we're taking?'

'Be quiet now!' hushed the older woman. 'Look!'

They had arrived at a clearing in the forest at the foot of a gaunt outcrop of grey volcanic rock. Bald and domed, with several humps, this irregular mound stood perhaps fifty feet high, with more forest beyond, then sheer cliffs rising to a fir-clad plateau like a first gigantic step to the misted, grimly forbidding heights of the Zarundului massif. The trees around the base of the outcrop had been felled, all shrubs and undergrowth cleared away; at its summit, a cairn of heavy stones stood like a small tower or chimney, pointing to the mountains.

And up there, seated on the bare rock at the foot of the cairn, working with a knife at a shard of stone which he held in his lap — a young man: Szgany! He was intent upon his work, seeing nothing but the stone in his hands. He gazed down across a distance of little more than one hundred feet — gazed seemingly head on, so that the women of the village must surely be central to his circle of vision — but if he saw them he gave no sign. And indeed it was plain that he did not see them, only the stone which he worked. And even at that distance, clearly there was something… not quite right with him.

'But what's he doing up there?' the younger of the two inquired in a hoarse whisper. 'He's very handsome, and yet… strange. And anyway, isn't this a forbidden place? My Hzak tells me that the great stone of the cairn is a very special stone, and that — '

Shhhr the other once again cautioned her, a finger to her lips. 'Don't disturb him. They don't take kindly to being spied upon, the Szgany. Not that this one will hear us anyway. Still… best to be careful.'

'He won't hear us, you say? Then why are we talking in whispers? No, I know why we're whispering: because this is a private place, like a shrine. Almost holy.'

'Un holy!' the other corrected her. 'As to why he won't notice us — why, just look at him up there! His skin's not so much dark as slate-grey, sickly, dying. Eyes deep-sunken, burning. Obsessed with that stone he's carving. He's been called, can't you see? He's mazed, hypnotized — doomed!'

Even as the last word left her lips, so the man on the rock stood up, took up his stone and ground it firmly into position on the rim of the cairn. It sat there side by side with many dozens of others, like a brick in the topmost tier of a wall, and anyone having seen the ritual of the carving would know that each single stone of that cairn was marked in some weird, meaningful way. The younger woman opened her mouth to say something, but her friend at once anticipated her question:

'His name,' she said. 'He carved his name and his dates, if he knows them. Like all the other names and dates carved up there. Like all the others gone before him. That rude stone is his headstone, which makes the cairn itself a graveyard!'

Now the young Gypsy was craning his neck, looking up, up at the mountains. He stood frozen in that position for long moments, as if waiting for something. And high in the grey-blue sky a small dark blot of cloud drifted across the face of the sun. At that the eldest of the two women gave a start; she herself had become almost hypnotized, stalled there and without the will to move on. But as the sun was eclipsed and shadows fell everywhere, she grabbed the other's elbow and turned her face away. 'Come,' she gasped, suddenly breathless, 'let's be gone from here. Our men will be worried. Especially if they know there are Gypsies about.'

They hurried through the shadows of the trees, found the track, soon began to see the first wooden houses on Halmagiu's outskirts, where the forest thinned down to nothing. But even as they stepped out from the trees into a dusty lane and their heartbeats slowed a little, so they heard a sound from behind and above and far, far beyond.

Not quite midday in Halmagiu; the sun coming out from behind a small, stray cloud; the first days of true winter still some seven or eight weeks away — but every soul who heard that sound took it as a wintry omen anyway. Aye, and some took it for more than that.

It was the mournful voice of a wolf echoing down from the mountains, calling as wolves have called for a thousand, thousand years and more. The two women paused, clutched their baskets, held their breath and listened. But:

'There's no answering cry,' said the younger, eventually. 'He's alone, that old wolf.'

'For now,' the other nodded. 'Aye, alone — but he's been heard all right, take my word for it. And he will be answered, soon enough. Following which…' She shook her head and hurried on.

The other caught up with her. 'Yes, following which?' she pressed.

The older woman peered at her, scowled a little, finally barked: 'But you must learn to listen, Anna! There are some things we don't much talk about up here — so if you want to learn, then when they are talked about you must listen!'

'I was listening,' the other answered. 'It's just that I didn't understand, that's all. You said the old wolf would be answered, soon enough. And… and then?'

'Aye, and then,' said the older one, turning towards her doorway, where bunches of garlic dangled from the lintel, drying in the sun. And over her shoulder: 'And then — the very next morning — why, the Szgany will be gone! No trace of them at all except maybe the ashes in their camp, the ruts in the tracks where their caravans have rolled, moving on. But their numbers will have been shortened by one. One who answered an ancient call and stayed behind.'

The younger woman's mouth formed a silent 'O'.

'That's right,' said the first, nodding. 'You just saw him — adding his soul to those other poor souls inscribed in the cairn on the rock…'

That night, in the Szgany camp:

The girls danced, whirling to the skirl of frenzied violins and the primal thump and jingle of tambourines. A long table stood heavy with food: joints of rabbit and whole hedgehogs, still steaming from the heat of the trenches where they'd baked; wild boar sausages, sliced thin; cheeses purchased or bartered in Halmagiu village; fruit and nuts; onions simmering in gravy poured from the meats; Gypsy wines and sharp, throat-clutching wild plum brandy.

There was a festival atmosphere. The flames of a central fire, inspired by the music, leaped high and the dancers were sinuous, sensuous. Alcohol was consumed in large measure; some of the younger Gypsies drank from a sense of relief, others from fear of an uncertain future. For those who had been spared this time around, there would always be other times.

But they were Szgany and this was the way of things; they were His to the ends of the earth, His to command, His to take. Their pact with the Old One had been signed and sealed more than four hundred years ago. Through Him they had prospered down the centuries, they prospered now, they would prosper in all the years to come. He made the hard times easier — aye, and the easy times hard — but always He achieved a balance. His blood was in them, and theirs in Him. And the blood is the life.

Only two amongst them were alone and private. Even with the girls dancing, the drinking, the feasting, still they were alone. For all of this noise and movement around them was an assumed gaiety, wherein they could scarcely participate.

One of them, the young man from the cairn, sat on the steps of an ornately carved and painted wagon, with a whetstone and his long-bladed knife, bringing the cutting edge to a scintillant shimmer of silver in the flicker of near-distant firelight. While in the yellow lamplight behind him where the door stood open, his mother sat sobbing, wringing her hands, praying for all she was worth to One who was not a god — indeed, to One who was the very opposite — that He spare her son this night. But praying in vain.

And as one tune ended and bright skirts whispered to a halt, falling about gleaming brown limbs, and