Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

Difficult enough, aye, the dead vampire's voice sounded tired. What had been done to you was the work of an expert! All night I laboured to rid your house of his infestation, Harry. You may now gauge for yourself the measure of my success.

Harry stood up again. With his heart in his mouth, he attempted to conjure a Mobius door… to no avail. The equations evolving, mutating and multiplying with awesome acceleration on the computer screens of his mind were completely alien to him; he couldn't fathom them individually, let alone as a total concept or entity. He sighed and said: 'Well, I'm grateful to you — indeed, you'll never know just how grateful I am — but you weren't entirely successful.'

Faethor's answer, with his bodiless shrug sensed superimposed upon it, was half-apologetic: / warned you it might be so. Oh, I found the region of the trouble, be sure, and even managed to unlock several of its doors. But beyond them -

'Yes?'

— There was nothing! No time, no space, nothing at all. Very frightening places, Harry, and strange to think that they exist right there in your mind — in your entirely human mind! I felt that to take one single step over those thresholds would mean being sucked in and lost forever beyond the boundaries of the universe. Needless to say, I took no such step. And in any case, no sooner had I opened these doors than they slammed themselves shut in my face. For which I was not ungrateful.

Harry nodded. 'You looked in on the Mobius Continuum,' he said. And: 'When I've finished here, I must try to find him. Mobius, I mean. For just as you're the expert in your field, so he's the one true authority in his. Useless to seek him out until now, for without deadspeak I couldn't talk to him.'

Will you do it now, at once? Faethor was fascinated. / am interested in genius. There is a kinship in all true geniuses, Harry. For however far removed their various talents, into whichever spheres, still the obsession remains the same. They seek to eliminate all imperfections. Where this Mobius has approached the very limits of pure numbers, I myself have searched for purest pure evil. We stand on the opposite sides of a great gulf, but still we are brothers of a sort. Yes, and it would be fascinating to meet such a one.

'No,' Harry automatically shook his head, and knew that Faethor would sense it, 'I won't look for him now.

Eventually, but not now. After I've practised a while and when I've convinced myself that my deadspeak is as good as it used to be, maybe then.'

As you wish. And for the moment? Do you go now to seek out Janos?

Harry rolled up his sleeping-bag and stuffed it into his holdall. 'That too, eventually,' he answered. 'But first I'll return to my friends in Rhodes and see how they're faring. And before any of that there are still things you must tell me. I still want to know all about Janos; the better a man knows his enemy, the easier it is to defeat him. Also, I need to know how to defend myself against him.'

Of course! said Faethor. Indeed! I had forgotten there was work still to be done. But only see how eager I am that you should be on your way. Ah, but I go too fast! And certainly you are right: you must have every possible weapon at your disposal, if you're to defeat him. As to how you may best defend yourself, that's not easy. This sort of thing is inherent in the Wamphyri, but difficult to teach. Even the keenest instinct would not suffice, for this is something borne in the blood. If we had an entire week together…

'No,' again Harry shook his head, 'out of the question. Can't you break it down into its simplest terms for me? If I'm not too stupid I might just catch on.'

/ can but try, said Faethor.

Harry lit a cigarette, sat down on his stuffed holdall and said, 'Go ahead.'

Again Faethor's shrug, and he at once commenced: Janos is without doubt the finest telepath — which is to say beguiler, enchanter, fascinator — I have ever known. Wherefore he will first attempt an invasion of your mind. Now as I've hinted, and as is surely self-evident, your mind is extraordinary, Harry. Well, of course it is: for you are the Necroscope! But where you have practised only good, Janos, like myself in my time, has practised only evil. And because you know he is evil, so you fear him and what he may do to you. Do you understand?

'Of course. None of this is new to me.'

To anyone less well versed in the ways of the Wamphyri, such is the awe — the sheer terror — Janos would inspire, that his victim would be paralysed. But you are not ignorant of our ways; indeed you are an expert in your own right. Do you know the saying, that the best form of defence is attack?

'I've heard it, yes.'

/ suspect that in this instance it would be true.

'I should attack him? With my mind?'

Instead of shrinking back from him when you sense him near, seek him out! He would enter your mind? Enter his! He will expect you to be afraid; be bold! He will threaten; brush all such threats aside and strike! But above all else, do not let his evil weaken you. When he yawns his great jaws at you, go in through them, for he's softer on the inside!

'Is that all?'

'If em> say more, I fear it would only confuse you. And who knows? You may learn more about Janos from his story than from any measures of mine to forearm you. Moreover, I'm weary from a long night's work. Ask me what has been, by all means, but not what is yet to be. True, I have been an observer of times, but as my current situation is surely witness, I was far too often in error.

Harry thought about what he'd learned: Faethor's 'advice' about how to deal with a mind-attack from Janos. Some might consider it suicidal to act in accordance with such instructions; the Necroscope wasn't so sure. In any case, it seemed very little to go on. But patently it was all he was going to get. Dawning daylight had apparently dampened the vampire's enthusiasm.

Harry stood up, stretched and looked all around.

The mist had thinned to nothing; a handful of gaunt houses stood beyond a hedge half a mile away; in the other direction, the silhouettes of diggers and bulldozers were like dinosaurs frozen on a grey horizon. Another hour and they'd roar into destructive mechanical life, as if the sun had warmed their joints to clanking motion.

Harry looked at the ground where he stood, the spot where Faethor had died on the night Ladislau Giresci cut off his head in the ruins of a bomb-blasted, burning house. He saw the now liquescent mushrooms there, their spores like red stains on the grass and soil; and in the eye of his mind he saw Faethor, too, the skeletal, shrouded thing he'd been in his dream. 'Are you up to telling me Janos's story?' he asked, apparently of no one.

That will be no effort at all but a pleasure, the other answered at once. It was my pleasure to spawn him, and it gave me the most exquisite pleasure to put him down again!

But first… do you remember the story of Thibor in his early days? How he robbed me of my castle in the Khorvaty? And how I, most sorely injured, fled westwards? Let me remind you, then.

This was how it was…

10. Bloodson

Thibor the Wallach, that cursed ingrate — to whom I had given my egg, name and banner, and into whose hands I had bequeathed my castle, lands and Wamphyri powers — had injured me sorely.

Thrown down burning from the walls of my castle, I experienced the ultimate agonies. A myriad minion bats fluttered to me as I fell, were scorched and died for their troubles, but dampened my flames not at all. I crashed through trees and shrubs, and pinwheeled aflame down the sides of the gorge to the very bottom. But my fall had been broken in part by the foliage, and I came to rest in a shallow pool which alone saved my melting Wamphyri flesh.