Necroscope 4: Deadspeak (36 page)

Harry was silent a while. He knew that it was tit for tat, this for that, and that he’d get nothing without first giving something. Faethor was eager, indeed insistent, that his rules should apply in any exchange here. And in the end it was plain the vampire would have his way, for Harry’s cause was doomed without him. He thought these things, but yet contrived to hide such thoughts from Faethor.

Ah-ha! And now I see it!
the other finally burst out.

You are afraid of me, Harry Keogh! Of me, a long-dead thing, burned up and melted away in a holocaust! But why now? What is different now? We are not strangers. This is not the first time we’ve come together for a common cause.

“No,” said Harry, “but it’s certainly the first time I’ve bedded down with you! I’ve been here before, yes, but when I was awake. And other than that I’ve only ever spoken to you across great distances, again via deadspeak, when there was no possible danger to me. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about vampires, Faethor, it’s that when they seem at their most vulnerable, that’s when they’re most dangerous.”

We’re arguing at odds, getting nowhere,
said the vampire, almost despairingly. But for all the “fatigue” he displayed, still Harry guessed that Faethor wouldn’t be moved from his stand in this matter. Which meant there remained only one way to break the deadlock.

“Very well,” he said, “and so one of us must give way. Perhaps I’m a fool, but … yes, I came of my own free will.”

Good!
the vampire grunted at once, and Harry could almost sense him smacking his lips.
A most wise and agreeable decision. And why not? For if I’m to observe your manners and customs, why should not you observe mine, eh?
They loved to win, these creatures, even in so small a thing as a contest of words. Perhaps that was all to the good, for now Faethor might find room to give way in other matters. And as if he had read Harry’s thoughts:

And now we may face each other on equal terms. You desired to speak to me face to face? So be it.

Until now the dream had been blank and grey and unyielding, a place without substance except in the exchange of thoughts. But now the grey took on a gently swirling motion and rapidly dissolved down to a thickly misted plain under a slender horned moon. Harry sat on a ruined wall with his feet dangling in the ground mist where it lapped at his ankles; and Faethor, seated upon a heap of rubble, was a dark figure in a shrouding robe, whose hood cast his face in shadows. Only his eyes burned in that hollow darkness, and they were like tiny scarlet lamps.

And is this more to your liking, Harry Keogh?

“I know this place,” said Harry.

Of course you do, for it is the same place but perceived as it shall be some small distance in the future. Oh yes, for that was one of my talents, too: to see a little way into the future. Alas, it was unreliable, else I’d not have been here that night they dropped their bombs.

“I see that the bulldozers have been at work,” Harry looked all around. “This place of yours seems the only place left!”

For the moment, aye,
Faethor answered.
A ruin on a low plain, surrounded by mud and debris, soon to become an industrial complex. And even if there were ears to hear me, who would listen to me then? What, through all of that hubbub and mechanical chaos? How are the mighty fallen, Harry Keogh, that I am reduced to this? And perhaps now you can understand why Thibor was made to suffer, and in the end destroyed; and why Janos must go the same way. They could have had it all, everything, and instead chose to defy me. And should I haunt this place, alone, unloved and unremembered, while one of them is returned to the world, perhaps to become a power? Perhaps The Power? No, I shall not rest, until I know that Janos is as little or even less than I am—which is nothing.

“And I’m to be your instrument?”

Is it not what you want? Do not our objectives coincide?

“Yes,” Harry agreed, “except I want it for the safety of a world, and you want it for your own selfish spite. They were your sons, Thibor and Janos. Whatever it is in them which you hate, they got it from you. It’s a strange father who’ll murder his own sons because they take too well after him!”

Faethor gloomed on him and his voice turned sly and insinuating.
Is it, Harry? Is it? And you’re the expert, are you? Ah, but of course—certainly you would understand such things—for I’ve heard it that you have a son, too …

Harry was silent; he had no answer; perhaps he would destroy his son if he could, or at least change him. But hadn’t he also tried to change the Lady Karen?

Faethor took his silence as something else: a sign that perhaps he went too far. Now he was quick to change his tone.
But there, the circumstances are different. And anyway, you are a man and I am Wamphyri. There can be no meeting point except in our dual purpose. So let’s make an end of criticisms and accusations and such, for there’s work to be done.

Harry was pleased to change the subject. “These are the simple facts,” he said. “We both want Janos put down again, permanently. Neither one of us can do it on his own. For you it is absolutely impossible. Likewise for me, without my gift of deadspeak. You say you can return that talent to me; that since it was taken from me by a vampire, only a vampire can return it. Very well, I believe you. What will it entail?”

Faethor sighed and seemed to slump down a little where he sat. He turned his red-glowing eyes away and looked out over the plain of mist. And:
We are come to that part from which I know you will shy most violently. And yet it is unavoidable.

“Say it,” said Harry.

The trouble lies in your head. A creature other than yourself has visited the labyrinth caves of your mind and wrought certain changes there. Let us say that within your house the furniture has been rearranged. Now another must go in and put the place in order.

“You want me to let you into my mind?”

You must invite me in,
said Faethor,
and I must enter of my own free will.

Harry recalled to mind all he knew about vampires, and said, “When Thibor entered Dragosani’s mind, he tried to steer it his way. He interfered in Dragosani’s affairs. When he touched the living foetus which would become Yulian Bodescu, that was sufficient to alter the child entirely and turn him into a monster. And again Thibor was in Yulian’s mind, able to communicate with him and guide—or direct him—even over great distances. At this very moment a friend of mine on the island of Rhodes has a vampire, your bloodson Janos, in his mind, or at least controlling it. And my friend exists in a hell of terror and torment. And you want me to let
you
into
my
mind?”

I said you would shy from it.

“If I let it happen this once, how may I be sure it won’t happen when I don’t want it?”

I would remind you: distance removed Dragosani from danger. Even if what you suggest were possible, do you intend to stay here in Romania forever? No, for you have your own way to go, which will put you far beyond my reach. I would further remind you: Thibor was an undead thing in the ground — he was real, solid, intact in all his parts—while I am but a wraith, dead and gone forever. A ghost, aye: empty, immaterial, incorporeal, and of no consequence whatsoever.

“Except to a Necroscope.”

Except to you,
Faethor’s shade nodded its agreement,
the man who talks to and befriends the dead. Or used to.

“So how do we go about it?” Harry asked. “I’m no telepath, with a mind like a book to be read.”

But in a way you are,
Faethor told him.
Is it not a form of telepathy, to be able to talk to the dead? Also, when you too were without body, did you not speak to the living?

“That was a strange time,” Harry agreed. “It was my deadspeak. It worked in reverse. Being incorporeal, I had no voice, and so I could talk to the living—to those who had body—in the same way I talked to the dead!”

Again Faethor’s nod.
There’s more to your mind than even you suspect, Harry Keogh. And I say I can be into it even as Thibor was into Dragosani’s!—but without the complications.

Harry sensed Faethor’s eagerness. He was far
too
eager. But there was no way round it. “What do I have to do?”

Nothing. Simply relax. Sleep a dreamless sleep. And I shall visit within your mind.

Harry felt Faethor’s beguilement—his hypnotism—working on him and resisted it. “Wait! Three things I want. And if your mind-tricks work, perhaps a fourth, later.”

Name them.

“First, that you undo the mischief done to my mind and return my deadspeak, as agreed. Second, that you give me some sort of defence against Janos’s telepathy, for I’ve seen what he can do to minds such as mine. Third, that you look and see if there’s any way I can regain access to the Möbius Continuum. It’s the ultimate weapon against Janos and would surely tilt the odds in my favour.”

And the fourth?

“When—if—I have my deadspeak back, I’ll be able to find you again no matter where I am. And then, hopefully for the last time, I may ask for your help again. To free the mind of my friend Trevor Jordan, which Janos holds enthralled.”

As for this last thing,
the vampire answered,
if it can be done, then it shall be done in due course. But alas, access to this device of yours—teleportation?—we shall see what we shall see. However, I doubt it. It was not an art of mine; I know nothing of it; how may I unriddle something in a language I cannot speak? The language of mathematics is a stranger to me. On the other hand, your deadspeak is something I can surely put back to rights, for I understand it. Even when they were dead many hundred years, still my Szgany answered my call and got up from their graves! Lastly, you ask for some sort of defence against Janos’s mindspells. Well, that is no simple thing; it’s not any sort of gift I can will or bestow upon you. But later I shall describe to you how to fight fire with fire. Which may help … if you can stand the heat of it.

“Faethor,” Harry was almost completely resigned to his fate now, “I wonder, will I thank you for this when it’s done? Will there ever be thanks enough? Or will I curse you for all eternity, and will there ever be curses enough? Even now you could be plotting to destroy me, as you’ve destroyed everything else you ever touched. And yet … it seems I’ve no choice.”

These things are not entirely true, Harry,
Faethor answered.
Destroyed things? Aye, I’ve done that—and brought a few into being, too. Nor are you without choice. Indeed it seems to me the very simplest matter. Trust me now as an ally tried and true, or begone from here and wait for Janos to seek you out—and when the time is come go up against him like a child, naked and innocent of all his ways and wiles.

“We’ve talked enough,” said Harry. “And we both know there’s only one course open to me. Let’s waste no more time.”

And:
Sleep,
said Faethor, his mental voice deep and dark as a bottomless pool of blood.
Sleep a dreamless sleep, Harry Keogh, leaving all the doors of your mind standing open to me. Sleep, and let me see inside. Ah, but even though you may will it freely, still I shall find certain doors closed to me—and closed to you! These are the ones which I must unlock. For beyond them lie all your talents, which your son has hidden from you.

Sleep, Harry. We are the betrayed, you and I, by our own flesh and blood. We have this much in common, at least. Nay, more than this, for we’ve both been powers in our time. And you shall be … a power … again … Haaarry Keeooogh!

The mist on the plain swirled as Faethor flowed to his feet and approached Harry where he slumped on the broken wall. The long dead vampire reached out a hand towards Harry’s face … and the hand was white and skeletal, projecting from the fretted sleeve of his robe like a bundle of thin sticks. The bony fingers touched Harry’s pale brow, and melted into his skull.

And as the scarlet fires dimmed in the sockets of Faethor’s eyes, so their light was transferred beneath Harry’s lowered lids, like red candles behind frosted glass. Following which … the vampire was privy to Harry’s most secret things: his thoughts and memories and passions, his very mind.

Until, after what might have been moments or millennia:

Wake up!
said Faethor.

Harry came out of the dream with a sneeze; and a second sneeze even as he realized he was truly awake. He rolled his head a little in the hood of his sleeping-bag, and something made a soft bursting sound close by. In the faint dawn light, he saw a ring of small black mushrooms or puffballs where they’d grown up beside his bed in the night. Already they were rotting, bursting open at the slightest movement, releasing their spores in peppery clouds. Harry sneezed again and sat up.

For a moment his dream was there in his mind, but already fading as most dreams do. He strove to remember it … and it was gone. He knew he’d conversed with the spirit of Faethor Ferenczy, but that was all. If anything had passed between them, Harry couldn’t say what it had been. Certainly he felt no different from when he went to sleep.

Oh?
said Faethor.
And are you sure of that, Harry Keogh?

“Jesus!” Harry jumped a foot. “Who …?” He looked all about, saw no one.

And did you think I would fail you?
said Faethor.

“Deadspeak!” Harry whispered.

It is returned to you. There, see now how Faethor Ferenczy keeps his word.

Harry had unzipped his sleeping-bag and scrambled to his feet in the dispersing morning mist. Now he sat down again, with something of a bump. There was no pain in his head; no one squirted acid in his mind; his talent seemed returned to him in full measure.

All that remained was to try it out. And:

“Faethor?” he said, still wincing inside and expecting to be struck down. “Was it… difficult?”