‘Your name?' Thibor growled. ‘I don't want your name.
I spit on your name!' He shook his head wildly. ‘As for your device: I've a banner of my own.'
‘Ah?' the creature stood up, flowed closer. ‘And what are your signs?'
‘A bat of the Wallachian plain,' Thibor answered, ‘astride the Christian dragon.'
The Ferenczy's bottom jaw fell open. ‘But that is most propitious. A bat, you say? Excellent! And riding the dragon of the Christians? Better still! And now a third device: let Shaitan himself surmount both.'
‘I don't need your blood-spewing devil.' Thibor shook his head and scowled.
The Ferenczy smiled a slow, sinister smile. ‘Oh, but you will, you will.' Then he laughed out loud. ‘Aye, and I shall avail myself of your symbols. When I go out across the world I shall fly devil, bat, and dragon all three. There, see how I honour you! Henceforth we carry the same banner.'
Thibor narrowed his eyes. ‘Faethor Ferenczy, you play with me as a cat plays with a mouse. Why? You call me your son, offer me your name, your sigils. Yet here I hang in chains, with one friend dead and another dying at my feet. Say it now, you are a madman and I'm your next victim. Isn't it so?'
The other shook his wolfish head. ‘So little faith,' he rumbled, almost sadly. ‘But we shall see, we shall see. Now tell me, what do you know of the Wamphyri?'
‘Nothing. Or very little. A legend, a myth. Freakish men who hide in remote places and spring out on peasants and small children to frighten them. Occasionally dangerous: murderers, vampires, who suck blood in the night and swear it gives them strength. 'Viesczy', to the Russian peasant; 'Obour', to the Bulgar; 'Vrykoulakas' in Greek- land. They are names which demented men attach to themselves. But there is something common to them in all tongues: they are liars and madmen!'
‘You do not believe? You have looked upon me, seen the wolves which I command, the terror I excite in the hearts of the VIad and his priests, but you do not believe.'
‘I've said it before and I'll say it again,' Thibor gave his chains a last, frustrated jerk. ‘The men I've killed have all stayed dead! No, I do not believe.'
The other gazed at his prisoner with burning eyes. ‘That is the difference between us,' he said. ‘For the men I kill, if it pleases me to kill them in a certain way, do not stay dead. They become undead…‘ He stood up, stepped flowingly close. His upper lip curled back at one side, displayed a downward curving fang like a needle-sharp tusk. Thibor looked away, avoided the man's breath, which was like poison. And suddenly the Wallach felt weak, hungry, thirsty. He was sure he could sleep for a week.
‘How long have I been here?' he asked.
‘Four days.' The Ferenczy began to pace to and fro. ‘Four nights gone you climbed the narrow way. Your friends were unfortunate, you remember? I fed you, gave you wine; alas, you found my wine a little strong! Then, while you, er, rested, my familiar creatures took me to the fallen ones where they lay. Faithful old Arvos, he was dead. Likewise your scrawny Wallach comrade, broken by sharp boulders. My children wanted them for themselves, but I had another use for them and so had them dragged here. This one —, he nudged the blocky Wallach with a booted foot ‘— he lived. He had fallen on Arvos! He was a little broken, but alive. I could see he wouldn't last till morning, and I needed him, if only to prove a point. And so, like the 'myth', the 'legend', I fed upon him. I drank from him, and in return gave him something back; I took of his blood, and gave a little of mine. He died. Three days and nights are passed by; that which I gave him worked in him and a certain joining has occurred. Also, a healing. His broken parts are being mended. He will soon rise up as one of the Wamphyri, to be counted in the narrow ranks of The Elite, but ever in thrall to me! He is undead.' The Ferenczy paused.
‘Madman!' Thibor accused again, but with something less of conviction. For the Ferenczy had spoken of these nightmares so easily, with no obvious effort at contrivance. He could not be what he claimed to be — no, of course not — but certainly he might believe that he was.
The Ferenczy, if he heard Thibor's renewed accusation of madness, ignored or refused to acknowledge it. 'Unnatural', you called me,' he said. ‘Which is to claim that you yourself know something of nature. Am I correct? Do you understand life, the 'nature' of living, growing things?'
‘My fathers were farmers, aye,' Thibor grunted. ‘I've seen things grow.'
‘Good! Then you'll know that there are certain principles, and that sometimes they seem illogical. Now let me test you. How say you: if a man has a tree of favourite apples, and he fears the tree might die, how may he reproduce it and retain the flavour of the fruit?'
‘Riddles?'
‘Indulge me, pray.'
Thibor shrugged. ‘Two ways: by seed and by cutting. Plant an apple, and it will grow into a tree.. But for the true, original taste, take cuttings and nurture them. It is obvious: what are cuttings but continuations of the old tree?'
‘Obvious?' the Ferenczy raised his eyebrows. ‘To you, perhaps. But it would seem obvious to me — and to most men who are not farmers — that the seed should give the true taste. For what is the seed but the egg of the tree, eh? Still, you are of course correct, the cutting gives the true taste. As for a tree grown from seed: why, it is spawned of the pollens of trees other than the original! How then may its fruit be the same? 'Obvious' — to a tree-grower.'
‘Where does all this lead?' Thibor was surer than ever of the Ferenczy's madness.
‘In the Wamphyri,' the castle's master gazed full upon him, ‘ 'nature' requires no outside intervention, no foreign pollens. Even the trees require a mate with which to reproduce, but the Wamphyri do not. All we require is a host.'
‘Host?' Thibor frowned, felt a sudden tremor in his great legs — the dampness of the walls, stiffening more cramps into his limbs.
‘Now tell me,' Faethor went on, ‘what do you know of fishing?'
‘Eh? Fishing? I was a farmer's son, and now I'm a warrior. What would I know of fishing?'
Faethor continued without answering him: ‘In the Bulgars and in Turkey-land, fishermen fished in the Greek Sea. For years without number they suffered a plague of starfish, in such quantities that they ruined the fishing and their great weight broke the nets. And the policy of the fishermen was this: they would cut up and kill any starfish they hauled in, and hurl it back to feed the fish. Alas, the true fish does not eat starfish! And worse, from every piece of starfish, a new one grows complete! And 'naturally', every year there were more. Then some wise fisherman divined the truth, and they began to keep their unwanted catches, bringing them ashore, burning them and scattering their ashes in the olive groves. Lo and behold, the plague dwindled away, the fish came back, the olives grew black and juicy.'
A nervous tic jumped in Thibor's shoulder: the strain of hanging so long in chains, of course. ‘Now you tell me,' he answered, ‘what starfish have to do with you and I?'
‘With you, nothing, not yet. But with the Wamphyri why, 'nature' has granted us the same boon! How may you cut down an enemy if each lopped portion sprouts a new body, eh?' Faethor grinned through the yellow bone mesh of his teeth. ‘And how may any mere man kill a vampire? Now see why I like you so well, my son. For who but a hero would come up here to destroy the indestructible?'
In the eye of Thibor's memory, he heard again the words of a certain contact in the Kievan Vlad's court:
They put stakes through their hearts and cut off their heads… better still, they break them up entirely and burn all the pieces…ven a small part of a vampire may grow whole again in the body of an unwary man… like a leech, but on the inside!
‘In the bed of the forest,' Faethor broke into his morbid thoughts, ‘grow many vines. They seek the light, and climb great trees to reach the fresh, free air. Some 'foolish' vines, as it were, may even grow so thickly as to kill their trees and bring them crashing down; and so destroy themselves. You've seen that, I'm sure. But others simply use the great trunks of their hosts; they share the earth and the air and the light between them; they live out their lives together. Indeed some vines are beneficial to their host trees. Ah! But then comes the drought. The trees wither, blacken, crumble, and the forest is no more. But down in the fertile earth the vines live on, waiting. Aye, and when more trees grow in fifty, an hundred years, back come the vines to climb again towards the light. Who is the stronger: the tree for his girth and sturdy branches, or the slender, insubstantial vine for his patience? If patience is a virtue, Thibor of Wallachia, then the Wamphyri are virtuous as all the ages.
‘Trees, fishes, vines.' Thibor shook his head. ‘You rave, Faethor Ferenczy!'
‘All of these things I've told you,' the other was undeterred, ‘you will understand… eventually. But before you can begin to understand, first you must believe in me. In what I am.'
