‘I'll never —‘ Thibor began, only to be cut short.
‘Oh, but you will!' the Ferenczy hissed, his awful tongue lashing in the cave of his mouth. ‘Now listen: I have willed my egg. I have brought it on and it is forming even now. Each of the Wamphyri has but one egg, one seed, in a lifetime; one chance to recreate the true fruit; one opportunity to carve his changeling 'nature' into the living being of another. You are the host I have chosen for my egg.'
‘Your egg?' Thibor wrinkled his nose, scowled, drew back as far as his chains would allow. ‘Your seed? You are beyond help, Faethor.'
‘Alas,' said the other, lip curling and great nostrils flaring, ‘but you are the one who is beyond help!' His cloak billowed as he flowed towards the broken body of old Arvos. He hoisted the gypsy's corpse upright in one hand, like a bundle. of rags, perched it, head stiffly lolling, in a niche in the stone wall. ‘We have no sex as such,' he said, glaring across the cell at Thibor. ‘Only the sex of our hosts. Ah! But we multiply their zest an hundred times! We have no lust except theirs, which we double and redouble. We may, and do, drive them to excesses — in all of their passions — but we heal their wounds, too, when the excess is too great for human flesh and blood to endure. And with long, long years, even centuries, so man and vampire grow into one creature. They become inseparable, except under extreme duress. I, who was a man, have now reached just such a maturity. So shall you, in perhaps a thousand years.'
Once more, futilely, Thibor tugged at his chains. Impossible to break or even strain them. He could put a thumb through each link!
‘About the Wamphyri,' Faethor continued. ‘Just as there are in the common world widely differing sorts of the same basic creature — owl and gull and sparrow, fox and hound and wolf — so are there varying Wamphyri states and conditions: For example: we talked about taking cuttings from an apple tree. Yes, it might be easier if you think of it that way.'
He stooped, dragged the unconscious, twitching body of the squat Wallach away from the area of torn up flags, tossed old Arvos' corpse down upon the black soil. Then he tore open the old man's ragged shirt, and glanced up from where he knelt into Thibor's mystified eyes. ‘Is there sufficient light, my son? Can you see?'
‘I see a madman clearly enough,' Thibor gave a brusque nod.
The Ferenczy returned his nod, and again he smiled his hideous smile, the ivory of his teeth gleaming in lantern light. ‘Then see this!' he hissed.
Kneeling beside old Arvos' crumpled form, he extended a forefinger towards the gypsy's naked chest. Thibor watched. Faethor's forearm stuck out free of his robe. Whatever the Ferenczy was up to, there could be no trickery, no sleight of hand here.
Faethor's nails were long and sharply pointed at the end of his even, slender fingers. Thibor saw the quick of the pointing finger turn red and start to drip blood. The pink nail cracked open like the brittle shell of a nut, flapped loosely like a trapdoor on a finger bloating and pulsating. Blue and grey-green veins stood out in that member, writhing under the skin; the raw tip visibly lengthened, extending itself towards the dead gypsy's cold grey flesh.
The pulsating digit was no longer a finger as such: it was a pseudopod of unflesh, a throbbing rod of living matter, a stiff snake shorn of its skin. Now twice, now three times its former length, it vibrated down at an angle to within inches of its target, which appeared to be the dead man's heart. And all of this Thibor watched with bulging eyes, bated breath and gaping mouth.
And until this moment Thibor had not really known fear, but now he did. Thibor the Wallach — warlord of however small and ragged an army, humourless, merciless killer of the Pechenegi — utterly fearless Thibor, until now. Until now he'd not met a creature he feared. In the hunt, wild boar in the forests, which had wounded men so badly as to kill them, were ‘piglets' to him. In the challenge: let any man only dare hurl down the gauntlet, Thibor would fight him any way he chose. All knew it, and none chose! And in battle: he led from the front, stood at the head of the charge, could only ever be found in the thick of the fighting. Fear? It was a word without meaning. Fear of what? When he had ridden out to battle, he'd known each day might be his last. That had not deterred him. So black was his hatred of the invaders, of all enemies, that it simply engulfed fear and put it down. No creature, or man, or threat of any device of men had ever unmanned him since… oh, before he could remember: since he was a child, if ever he'd been one. But Faethor Ferenczy was something other than all of these. Torture could only maim and must kill in the end, and there's no pain after death, but what the Ferenczy threatened seemed an eternity of hell. Mere moments ago it had been a strange fantasy, the dreams of a madman, but now.
Unable to tear his eyes away, Thibor groaned and grew pale at the sight of that which followed.
‘A cutting, aye,' Faethor's voice was low, trembling with dark passions, ‘to be nurtured in flesh already tainted and falling into decay. The lowest form of Wamphyri existence, it will come to nothing so long as it has no living host. But it will live, devour, grow strong — and hide! When there is nothing left of Arvos it will hide in the earth and wait. Like the vine, waiting for a tree. The cut-off leg of a starfish, which does not die but waits to grow a new body — except this thing I make waits to inhabit one! Mindless, unthinking, it will be a thing of the most primitive instincts. But it can nevertheless outlast the ages. Until some unwary man finds it, and it finds him…'
His incredible, bloody, throbbing forefinger touched Arvos' flesh… and leprous white rootlets sprang forth, slid like worms in earth into the gypsy's chest! Small flaps of fretted skin were laid back; the pseudopod developed tiny glistening teeth of its own; it began to gnaw its way inside. Thibor would have looked away but he could not. Faethor's ‘finger' broke off with a soft tearing sound and quickly burrowed its way out of sight within the corpse.
Faethor held up his hand. The severed member was shrinking back into him, pseudoflesh melting into his flesh. The cancerous colours went out of it; it assumed a more normal shape; the old fingernail fell to the floor, and right in front of Thibor's eyes a new, pink shell began to form.
‘Well then, my hero son who came here to kill me,' Faethor slowly stood up and held out his hand toward Thibor's bloodless face. ‘And could you have killed this?'
Thibor drew back his face, head and body, tried to cringe into the very stone to avoid that pointing finger. But Faethor only laughed. ‘What? You think that I would…? But no, no, not you, my son. Oh, I could, be sure! And forever you'd be in thrall to me. But that is the second state of the Wamphyri and unworthy of you.
No, for I hold you in the highest esteem. Why, you shall have my very egg!'
Thibor tried to find words but his throat lacked moisture, was dry as a desert. Faethor laughed again and drew back that threatening hand of his. He turned away and stepped to where the squat Wallach lay humped on the stone flags, gurglingly breathing, face down in a dusty corner. ‘He is in that second state,' Thibor's tormentor explained. ‘I took from him and gave him something back. Flesh of my flesh is in him now, healing him, changing him. His tears and broken bones will mend and he will live — for as long as I will it. But he will always be slave to me, to do my bidding, obey my every command. You see, he is vampire, but without vampire mind. The mind comes only from the egg and he is not grown from seed but is merely… a cutting. When he wakes, which will be soon, then you will understand.'
‘Understand?' Thibor found his voice, however cracked. ‘But how can I understand? Why should I want to understand? You are a monster, I understand that! Arvos is dead, and yet you… you did that to him! Why? Nothing can live in him now but maggots.'
Faethor shook his head. ‘No, his flesh is like fertile soil — or the fertile sea. Think of the starfish.'
‘You will grow another… another you? Inside him?' Thibor was very nearly gibbering now.
‘It will consume him,' Faethor answered. ‘But another me — no. I have mind. It will not have mind. Arvos cannot be a host for his mind is dead, do you see? He is food, nothing more. When it grows it will not be like me. Only like… what you saw.' He held up his pale, newly formed index finger.
‘And the other?' Thibor managed to nod in the direction of the man — that which had been a man — snoring and gasping in the corner. -
‘When I took him he was alive,' said Faethor. ‘His mind was alive. What I gave him is now growing in his body, and in his mind. Oh, he died, but only to make way for the life of the Wamphyri. Which is not life but undeath. He will not return to true life but to undeath.'
‘Madness!' Thibor moaned.
‘As for this one —, The Ferenczy stepped into shadows on the far side of the cell, where the light did not quite reach. The legs and one arm of Thibor's second Wallach comrade protruded from the darkness, until Faethor dragged all of him into view. ‘This one will be food for both of them. Until the mindless one hides himself away, and the other takes up his duties as your servant here.'
