Necroscope

willing to share a few more secrets with Dragosani in exchange for an extension on his undead life.

Because it had been getting late in the day when he drove through Bucharest, Dragosani had stopped at a village market to purchase a pair of live chickens in a wicker basket. These had gone under a light blanket on the floor in the back of his Volga. He had found lodgings in a farm standing on the banks of the Oltul, and having tossed his things into his room had come out immediately into the twilight and driven to the wooded cruciform ridge.

Now, at last light, he stood once more on the perimeter of the circle of unhallowed ground beneath the gloomy pines and surveyed again the tumbled tomb cut into the hillside, and the dark earth where grotesquely twisted roots stood up like a writhing of petrified serpents.

Past Bucharest he had tried to contact Thibor, to no

avail; for all that he'd concentrated on raising the old devil's mind from the slumber of centuries, there had been no answer. Perhaps, after all, he was too late. How long might a vampire lie, undead in the earth, without attention? For all Dragosani's many conversations with the creature, and for all that he had learned from Ladislau Giresci, still he knew so little about the Wamphyri. That was restricted knowledge, Thibor had told him, and must await the coming of Dragosani into the fraternity. Oh? The necromancer would see about that!

'Thibor, are you there?' he now whispered in the gloom, his eyes attuned to the shadows and penetrating the dusty miasma of the place. 'Thibor, I've come back — and I bring gifts!' At his feet the chickens huddled in their basket, their feet trussed; but no unseen presence moved in the darkness now, no cobweb fingers brushed his hair, no eager invisible muzzles sniffed at his essence. The place was dry, desiccated, dead. Dangling twigs snapped loudly at a touch and dust swirled where Dragosani placed his feet on the accumulated vegetable debris of centuries.

'Thibor,' he tried again. 'You told me a year. The year is past and I've returned. Am I too late? I've brought you blood, old dragon, to warm your old veins and give you strength again…'

Nothing.

Dragosani grew alarmed. This was wrong. The old Thing in the ground was always here. He was genius loci. Without him the place was nothing, the cruciform hills were empty. And what of Dragosani's dreams? Was that knowledge he had hoped to glean from the vampire gone forever?

For a moment he knew despair, anger, frustration, but then -

The trussed chickens in their basket stirred a little and

one of them made a low, worried clucking sound, A breeze whirred eerily in the higher branches over Dragosani's head. The sun dipped down behind distant hills. And something watched the necromancer from behind the gloom and the dust and the old, brittle branches. Nothing was there, but he felt eyes upon him. Nothing was different, but it seemed now that the place breathed!

It breathed, yes — but a tainted breath, which Dragosani liked not at all. He felt threatened, felt more in danger here than ever before. He picked up the basket and took two paces back from the unhallowed circle until he brought up against the rough bark of a great tree almost as old as the glade. He felt safer there, more solidly based, with that tough old tree behind him. The sudden dryness went out of his throat and he swallowed hard before enquiring again:

'Thibor, I know you're there. It's your loss, old devil, if you choose to ignore me.'

Again the wind soughed in the high branches, and with it a whisper crept into the necromancer's mind:

Dragosaaaniiii? Is it you? Ahhhh!

'It's me, yes', he eagerly answered. 'I've come to bring you life, old devil — or rather, to renew your undeath.'

Too late, Dragosani, too late. My time is come and I must answer the call of the dark earth. Even I, Thibor Ferenczy of the Wamphyri. My privations have been many and my spark has been allowed to burn too low. Now it merely flickers. What can you do for me now, my son? Nothing, I fear. It is finished…

'No, I can't believe that! I've brought life for you, fresh blood. Tomorrow there'll be more. In a few days you'll be strong again. Why didn't you tell me things were at such a pass? I was sure you cried wolf! How could you expect me to believe when all you've ever done is lie to me?'

… Perhaps in that I was mistaken after all, the Thing in the ground answered in a little while. But when even my own father and brother hated me… why should I trust a son? And a son by proxy, at that. There is no real flesh between us, Dragosani. Oh, we made promises, you and I, but too much to believe that anything could come of them. Still, you have prospered a little — through your knowledge of necromancy — and at least I tasted blood again, however vile. So let it be peace between us. 1 am too weak now to care…

Dragosani took a step forward. 'No!' he said again. 'There are still things you can teach me, show me. Wamphyri secrets…' (Did the ground tremble just a little beneath his feet? Did the unseen presence's creep closer?) He moved back against the tree.

The voice in his mind sighed. It was the sigh of one who wearies of all earthly things, of one impatient for oblivion. And Dragosani forgot that it was the lying sigh of a vampire. Ah, Dragosani! Dragosani! — you've learned nothing. Did I not tell you that the lore of the Wamphyri is forbidden to mortals? Did I not say that to become is to know and that there is no other way? Begone, my son, and leave me to my fate. What? And should I give you the power to rule a world, while I lie here and turn to dust? What is that for justice? Where is the fairness in that?

Dragosani was desperate. 'Then accept the blood I've brought you, the sweet meat. Grow strong again. I will accept your terms. If I must become one of the Wamphyri to learn all of their secrets — then so be it!' he lied. 'But without you I cannot!'

The Thing in the ground was silent for long moments while Dragosani breathlessly waited. He fancied that the earth trembled again, however minutely, beneath his feet, but that could only be his imagination — the knowledge that something ancient and evil, rotten and undead lay buried here. Behind his back the tree stood seemingly solid as a rock, so that Dragosani hardly suspected it was eaten away at its heart. But indeed it was hollow; and now something gradually eased its way up through the earth and into the dry, worm-eaten wood.

Perhaps in another moment Dragosani might have sensed movement, but in that precise instant of time Thibor spoke to him again and his attention was distracted:

Did you say you had … a gift for me?

There was interest in the vampire's mental voice now, and Dragosani saw a ray of hope. 'Yes, yes! Here at my feet. Fresh meat, blood.' He snatched up one of the birds and squeezed its throat so that its squawking ceased at once. And in another moment he had taken a sickle of bright steel from his pocket and sliced the chicken's gizzard. Red blood spurted and the carcass flopped a little where he tossed it, while feathers fluttered silently to the black earth.

The leaf-mould soaked up the bird's blood as a sponge soaks water — but behind Dragosani's back a pseudopod of putrefaction slid swiftly up inside the hollow tree, its leprous white tip finding a knot-hole where a branch had decayed and poking through into view not eighteen inches above his head. The tip throbbed, glistening with a strange life of its own, filled with an alien foetal urgency.

Dragosani took up the second bird by its neck, stepped two paces forward to the very rim of the 'safe' area. 'And there's more, Thibor, right here in my hand. Only show a little trust, a little faith, and tell me something of the powers I'll command when I become as you.'

I… I feel the red blood soaking into the ground, my son, and it is good. But still I think you came too late. Well, I will not blame you. We were at odds with one another — I was as much to blame as you — and so let the

past be forgotten. Aye, and 1 would not have it end without showing you at least a small measure of what I've come to feel for you, without sharing at least one small secret.

' I'm waiting,' Dragosani eagerly answered. 'Go on…'

In the beginning, said the Thing in the ground, all things were equal. The primal vampire was a thing of Nature no less than the primal man, and just as man lived on the lesser creatures about him, so too lived the vampire. We both, you see, were parasites in our way. All living things are. But whereas man killed the creatures he fed upon, there the vampire was kinder: he simply took them for his host. They did not die — indeed they became undead! In this fashion a vampire is no less natural a creature than the lamprey or the leech, or even the humble flea; except his host lives, becomes near immortal, and is not consumed