'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. W hatever it is in them which you hate, they got it from you. It's a strange fa ther 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, Ha rry? 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 Lad y 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 circ.u.mstances are different. And anyway, you are a man and I am Wamphyri. There can be n o meeting point except in our dual purpose. So let's make an end of critici sms and accusations and such, for there's work to be done.

Harry was pleased to change the subject. 'These are the simple facts,' h e said. 'We both want Janos put down again, permanently. Neither one of us c an do it on his own. For you it is absolutely impossible. Likewise for me, w ithout 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 turne d 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 ye t it is unavoidable.

'Say it,' said Harry.

The trouble lies in your head. A creature other than yourself has visite d 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 m ust 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 Thib or 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 hi m into a monster. And again Thibor was in Yulian's mind, able to communicat e with him and guide - or direct him - even over great distances. At this v ery moment a friend of mine on the island of Rhodes has a vampire, your blo odson Janos, in his mind, or at least controlling it. And my friend exists in a h.e.l.l of terror and torment. And you want me to let you into my mind?'

/ 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?'

/ would remind you: distance removed Dragosani from danger. Even if wh at you suggest were possible, do you intend to stay here in Romania foreve r? No, for you have your own way to go, which will put you far beyond my r each. 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 o f no consequence whatsoever.

'Except to a Necroscope.'

Except to you, Faethor's shade nodded its agreement, the man who talks t o and befriends the dead. Or used to.

'So how do we go about it?' Harry asked. 'I'm no telepath, with a mind lik e 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 n ot 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 liv ing - 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, H arry 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 resi sted 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 deadspe ak, 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 Mobius Contin uum. It's the ultimate weapon against Janos and would surely tilt the odds i n 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 you r 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 - telep ortation? - we shall see what we shall see. However, I doubt it. It was not a n art of mine; I know nothing of it; how may I unriddle something in a langua ge I cannot speak? The language of mathematics is a stranger to me. On the ot her 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 a nswered my call and got up from their graves! Lastly, you ask for some sort o f 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 t o 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 wonde r, 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 t hings? 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 y ou 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 co urse 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 m e - and closed to you! These are the ones which I must unlock. For beyond th em 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 . . . Haa arry Keeooogh!

The mist on the plain swirled as Faethor flowed to his feet and approach ed 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, p rojecting 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 thei r light was transferred beneath Harry's lowered lids, like red candles behind frosted gla.s.s. Following which . . . the vampire was privy to Harry's most s ecret things: his thoughts and memories and pa.s.sions, 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 h e realized he was truly awake. He rolled his head a little in the hood of hi s sleeping-bag, and something made a soft bursting sound close by. In the fa int dawn light, he saw a ring of small black mushrooms or puffb.a.l.l.s where th ey'd grown up beside his bed in the night. Already they were rotting, bursti ng 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 mos t dreams do. He strove to remember it ... and it was gone. He knew he'd con versed with the spirit of Faethor Ferenczy, but that was all. If anything h ad pa.s.sed between them, Harry couldn't say what it had been. Certainly he f elt 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 wor d.

Harry had unzipped his sleeping-bag and scrambled to his feet in the di spersing morning mist. Now he sat down again, with something of a b.u.mp. The re was no pain in his head; no one squirted acid in his mind; his talent se emed 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. 'Wa s it... difficult?'

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 yo ur house of his infestation, Harry. You may now gauge for yourself the meas ure of my success.

Harry stood up again. With his heart in his mouth, he attempted to conju re a Mobius door ... to no avail. The equations evolving, mutating and multi plying with awesome acceleration on the computer screens of his mind were co mpletely alien to him; he couldn't fathom them individually, let alone as a total concept or ent.i.ty. He sighed and said: 'Well, I'm grateful to you - in deed, you'll never know just how grateful I am - but you weren't entirely su ccessful.'

Faethor's answer, with his bodiless shrug sensed superimposed upon it, w as half-apologetic: / warned you it might be so. Oh, I found the region of t he trouble, be sure, and even managed to unlock several of its doors. But be yond them - 'Yes?'

- There was nothing! No time, no s.p.a.ce, nothing at all. Very frightening places, Harry, and strange to think that they exist right there in your min d - in your entirely human mind! I felt that to take one single step over th ose thresholds would mean being sucked in and lost forever beyond the bounda ries 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: 'Whe n 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 g enius. There is a kinship in all true geniuses, Harry. For however far remove d their various talents, into whichever spheres, still the obsession remains the same. They seek to eliminate all imperfections. Where this Mobius has app roached the very limits of pure numbers, I myself have searched for purest pu re evil. We stand on the opposite sides of a great gulf, but still we are bro thers 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 sen se it, 'I won't look for him now.

Eventually, but not now. After I've practised a while and when I've conv inced 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 to o, eventually,' he answered. 'But first I'll return to my friends in Rhodes an d see how they're faring. And before any of that there are still things you mu st 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 mysel f 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 weap on at your disposal, if you're to defeat him. As to how you may best defend y ourself, 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 o n.'

/ 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 extraordina ry, 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 onl y 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 b old! He will threaten; brush all such threats aside and strike! But above al l 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 / say more, I fear it would only confuse you. And who knows? You ma y learn more about Janos from his story than from any measures of mine to f orearm you. Moreover, I'm weary from a long night's work. Ask me what has b een, 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 oft en in error. Harry thought about what he'd learned: Faethor's 'advice' about how to d eal 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 ca se, 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 a nd they'd roar into destructive mechanical life, as if the sun had warmed th eir joints to clanking motion.

Harry looked at the ground where he stood, the spot where Faethor had di ed on the night Ladislau Giresci cut off his head in the ruins of a bomb-bla sted, burning house. He saw the now liquescent mushrooms there, their spores like red stains on the gra.s.s and soil; and in the eye of his mind he saw Fa ethor, 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 sp.a.w.n 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? H ow he robbed me of my castle in the Khorvaty? And how I, most sorely injure d, 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 ulti mate 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, an d I came to rest in a shallow pool which alone saved my melting Wamphyri fl esh.

As close to true death as a vampire might come and remain undead, I put out a desperate call to my faithful Gypsies where they camped in the valley.

They came, lifted my body from the still, salving water and cared for it, a nd carried me west over the mountains into Hungary. Protecting me from jars and jolts, hiding me from potential enemies, keeping me safe from the sun's searing rays, at last they brought me to a place of rest. Aye, and it was a long rest: a time of enforced retirement, for recuperation, for the reshapin g of my broken body; a long, long rest indeed!

For how Thibor had hurt me! All bones broken, back and neck, skull and limbs; chest caved in, heart and lungs amangle; skin flayed by boulders and sharp branches, and seared with fire . . . even the vampire in me was burn ed, bruised and battered. A month in the healing? A year? Nay, an hundred y ears!

My long convalescence was spent in an inaccessible mountain retreat, a nd all the while my Szgany tended me, and their sons, and their sons. Aye, and their sweet, firm-breasted daughters, too. Slowly the vampire in me h ealed itself, and then healed me. Wamphyri, I walked again, practised my a rts, made myself wiser, stronger, more awesome than ever before. And event ually I went abroad from my aerie and made plans for my life's adventure.

Ah, but it was a terrible world in which I emerged, with wars everywhere, great suffering, famines, pestilence! Terrible, aye, but the stuff of life t o me - for I was Wamphyri!

I found myself the ruins of a keep in the border with Wallachia and us ed the tumbled stones to build a small castle there. Almost impregnable wi thin its walls, I set myself up as a Boyar of some means. I led a mixed bo dy of Szgany, Hungarians and local Wallachs, housed them and paid them goo d wages, was soon accepted as a landowner and leader. And so I became a sm all power in the land.

As for Wallachia: I avoided venturing there, mainly. For there was one in Wallachia whose strength and cruelties were already renowned: a mercen ary Voevod named Thibor, who fought for the Wallach princelings. I did not wish to meet this one (who should by rights be keeping guard over my land s and properties in the Khorvaty even now!), not yet; for in the event of my seeing him I might not be able to contain myself. Which could well prove fatal, for he was now grown to a far greater power than I myself. No, my revenge must wait. . . what is time to the Wamphyri, eh?

Time in the tumult of its pa.s.sing, where an entire day is like the singl e tick of a great clock - it is nothing. But when each vastly extended tick is precisely the same as the one gone before, and when they begin to fall li ke thunderclaps upon the ear . . .ah, but then one discovers time's restrict ions, from which only boredom and uttermost ennui may ensue. And that is eve rything! I was restless, confined, pent up. There was I, l.u.s.ty, strong, some thing of a power, and nowhere to channel my energies. The time was coming wh en I must go further abroad in the roiling world.

But then, in the year 1178, a diversion.

Over a period of some few years I'd been hearing tales of a Szgany wom an who was a true observer of times; which is to say, she had the power of precognition. Eventually my curiosity was piqued and I determined to see her. She was not of my own band of Gypsies, and so I must wait for her to venture into those mountainous regions within my control.

Meanwhile, I sent out messengers to direct her wanderings aright, descr ibing how when she and her band came within my spheres they would be offere d every hospitality, treated with utmost respect, and paid in gold for whic hever services they might render unto me. And in the interim, while I waite d on the advent of this alleged oracle, I determined to practise what small talent I possessed in casting a few weirds of my own.