Necroscope - Deadspeak Part 36

He moved at a lope through the trees to a hedgerow. Harry followed him and was aware of the other Gypsies scattered here and there throughout th e encampment. Each of them to a man was silent but tense in the dappled green shade of the trees. Their belongings were all packed away. They were r eady to move.

'There,' said Harry's guide. He stood aside to let the Necroscope peer thr ough the bushes.

On the other side of the road a man sat at the wheel of an old beetle Volkswagen, looking at the entrance to the encampment. Harry didn't know h im, but ... he knew him. Now that his attention had been focussed on him, he remembered. He'd been on the plane, this man. And . . . in Mezobereny?

Possibly. That cigarette holder was a dead giveaway. Likewise his generall y snaky, effeminate style. And now Harry remembered, too, that earlier bru sh with the Securitatea in Romania. Had this man been their contact in Rho des? An agent, perhaps, for the USSR's E-Branch?

He glanced at the Gypsy beside him and said, 'An enemy - possibly.' But then he saw the knife ready in the other's hand, and raised an eyebrow. 'Oh?

The other smiled, without humour. The Szgany don't much care for silent watchers.'

But Harry wondered: had the knife been for him, if he'd tried to make a ru n for it? A threat, to bring him to heel? 'What now?' he said.

'Watch,' said the other.

A Gypsy girl in a bright dress and a shawl crossed the road to the car, and Nikolai Zharov sat up straighter at the wheel. She showed him a basket filled with trinkets, knick-knacks, and spoke to him. But he shook his hea d. Then he showed her some paper money and in turn spoke to her, questionin gly. She took the money, nodded eagerly, pointed through the forest. Zharov frowned, questioned her again. She became more insistent, stamped her foot , pointed again in the direction of Gyula, along the forest road.

Finally Zharov scowled, nodded, started up his car. He drove off in a cl oud of dust. Harry turned to the Gypsy and said: 'He was an enemy, then. And the girl has sent him off on a wild goose chase?'

'Yes. Now we'll be on our way.'

'We?' Harry continued to stare at him.

The man sheathed his knife. 'We Travellers,' he answered. 'Who else? If you had been awake you could have eaten with us. But - ' he shrugged,' - we saved you a little soup.'

Another man approached with a bowl and wooden spoon, which he offere d to Harry.

Harry looked at it.

Don't! said a deadspeak voice in his head, that of the dead Gypsy king.

Poison? Harry answered. Your people are trying to kill me?

No, they desire you to be still for an hour or two. Only drink this, and you will be still! And sick?

No. Perhaps a mild soreness in the head - which a drink of clean water wi ll drive away. But if you drink the soup . . . then all is lost. Across the b order you'll go, and up into the ageless hills and craggy mountains - which, as you know, belong to the Old Ferenczy!

But Harry only smiled and grunted his satisfaction. So be it, he said, and d rank the soup . . .

Nikolai Zharov drove as far as Gyula and midway into the town, then fina lly paid attention to a small niggling voice in the back of his mind: the on e that was telling him, more insistently with each pa.s.sing moment, that he w as a fool! Finally he turned his car around and drove furiously back the way he'd come. If Keogh had gone to Gyula he could check it later. But meanwhil e, if the Gypsy girl had been lying . . .

The Traveller camp was empty - as though the Gypsies had never been the re. Zharov cursed, turned left onto the main road and gunned his engine. An d up ahead he saw the first of the caravans pa.s.sing leisurely through the b order checkpoint.

He arrived in a skidding of tyres, jumped from the car and ran headlong into the one-room, chalet-style building. The border policeman behind his elevated desk picked up his peaked, flat-topped hat and rammed it on his he ad. He glared at Zharov and the Russian glared back. Beyond the dusty, fly- specked windows, the last caravan was just pa.s.sing under the raised pole.

'What?' the Russian yelled. 'Are you some kind of madman? What are y ou, Hungarian or Romanian?'

The other was young, big-bellied, red-faced. A Transylvanian village pea sant, he had joined the Securitatea because it had seemed easier than farmin g. Not much money in it, but at least he could do a bit of bullying now and then. He quite liked bullying, but he wasn't keen on being bullied.

'Who are you?' he scowled, his piggy eyes startled.

'Clown!' Zharov raged. 'Those Gypsies - do they simply come and go? Isn 't this supposed to be a checkpoint? Does President Ceausescu know that the se riff-raff pa.s.s across his borders without so much as a by your leave? Ge t off your fat backside; follow me; a spy is hiding in those caravans!'

The border policeman's expression had changed. For all he knew (and desp ite the other's harsh foreign accent), Zharov might well be some high-rankin g Securitatea official; certainly he acted like one. But what was all this a bout spies? Flushing an even brighter red, he hurried out from behind his de sk, did up a loose b.u.t.ton on his sweat-stained blue uniform shirt, nervously fingered the two-day-old stubble on his chin. Zharov led him out of the sha ck, got back into his car and hurled the pa.s.senger-side door open. 'In!' he snapped.

Cramming himself into the small seat, the confused man bl.u.s.teringly protested: 'But the Travellers aren't a problem. No one ever troubles them. Why, they've been coming this way for years! They are taking one of their own to bury him. And it can't be right to interfere with a funeral.'

'Lunatic!' Zharov put his foot down hard, skidded dangerously close to the rearmost caravan and began to overtake the column. 'Did you even look t o see if they might be up to something? No, of course not! I tell you they have a British spy with them called Harry Keogh. He's a wanted man in both the USSR and Romania. Well, and now he's in your country and therefore unde r your jurisdiction. This could well be a feather in your cap - but only if you follow my instructions to the letter.'

'Yes, I see that,' the other mumbled, though in fact he saw very little.

'Do you have a weapon?'

'What? Up here? What would I shoot, squirrels?'

Zharov growled and stamped on his brakes, skidding the car sideways in front of the first horse-drawn caravan. The column at once slowed and began to concertina, and as the dust settled Zharov and the bl.u.s.tering border po liceman got out of the car.

The KGB man pointed at the covered caravans, where scowling Gypsies were even now climbing down onto the road. 'Search them,' he ordered.

'But what's to search?' said the other, still mystified. 'They're caravans.

A seat at the front, a door at the back, one room in between. A glance will suff ice.'

'Any s.p.a.ce which would conceal a man, that's what you search!' Zharov snapped.

'But . . . what does he look like?' the other threw up his hands.

'Fool!' Zharov shouted. 'Ask what he doesn't look like! He doesn't look l ike a f.u.c.king Gypsy!'

The mood of the Travellers was ugly and getting worse as the Russian and his Securitatea aide moved down the line of caravans, yanking open their do ors and looking inside. As they approached the last in line, the funeral veh icle, so a group of the Szgany put themselves in their way.

Zharov s.n.a.t.c.hed out his automatic and waved it at them. 'Out of the way.

If you interfere I won't hesitate to use this. This is a matter of security, and grave consequences may ensue. Now open this door.'

The Gypsy who had spoken to Harry Keogh stepped forward. 'This was ou r king. We go to bury him. You may not go into this caravan.'

Zharov stuck the gun up under his jaw. 'Open up now,' he snarled, 'or they 'll be burying two of you!'

The door was opened; Zharov saw two coffins lying side by side on low t restles where they had been secured to the floor; he climbed the steps and went in. The border policeman and Gypsy spokesman went with him. He pointed to the left-hand coffin, said: 'That one . . . open it.' 'You are cursed!' said the Gypsy. 'For all your days, which won't be many, you are cursed.'

The coffins were of flimsy construction, little more than thin boards, b uilt by the Travellers themselves. Zharov gave his gun to the mortified bord er policeman, who fully expected the next curse to be directed at him, and t ook out his bone-handled knife. At the press of a switch eight inches of ste el rod with a needle point slid into view. Without pause Zharov raised his a rm and drove the tool down and through the timber lid, so that it disappeare d to the hilt into the s.p.a.ce which would be occupied by the face of whoever lay within.

Inside the coffin, m.u.f.fled, someone gasped: 'Huh - huh - huh!' And there came a b.u.mping and a scrabbling at the lid.

The Gypsy's dark eyes bugged; he crossed himself, stepped back on wobbl y legs; likewise the border policeman. But Zharov hadn't noticed. Nor had h e noticed the high smell, which wasn't merely garlic. Grinning savagely, he yanked his weapon free and jammed its point under the edge of the lid, wre nching here and there until it was loose. Then he put the bone handle betwe en his teeth, took the lid in both hands and yanked it half-open.

And from within, someone pushed it the rest of the way . . . but it wasn'

t Harry Keogh!

Then- - Even as the Russian's eyes stood out in his pallid face, so Vasile Zirr a coughed and grunted in his coffin, and reached up a leathery arm to grasp Z harov and lever himself upright!

'G.o.d!' the KGB man choked then. 'G - G G.o.d!' His knife fell from his sl ack jaws into the coffin. The old dead Gypsy king took it up at once and drov e it into Zharov's bulging left eye - all the way in, until it sc.r.a.ped the in side of his skull at the back. That was enough, more than enough.

Zharov blew froth from his jaws and stepped woodenly back until he met th e side of the caravan, then toppled over sideways. Falling, he made a rattlin g sound in his throat, and, striking the floor, twitched a little. And then h e was still.

But nothing else was still.

At the front of the column a Gypsy drove Zharov's car into the ditch at the side of the road. The Securitatea lout was reeling back in the direction of his border post, shouting: 'It had nothing to do with me - nothing -noth ing!' The Szgany spokesman stepped over Zharov's body, looked fearfully at h is old king lying stiff and dead again in his coffin, crossed himself a seco nd time and manhandled the cover back into place. Then someone shouted, 'Gid dup!' and the column was off again at the trot.

Half a mile down the road, where the roadside ditch was deep and grown with brambles and nettles, Nikolai Zharov's corpse was disposed of. It bounced from caravan to road to ditch, and flopped from view into the greenery . . .

Even as Harry had drained the soup in the bowl to its last drop, drug an d all, so he'd brought Wellesley's talent into play and closed his mind off from outside interference. The Gypsy potion had been quick-acting; he hadn't even remembered being bundled into the funeral caravan and 'lain to rest' i n the second coffin.

But his mental isolation had disadvantages, too. For one, the dead coul d no longer communicate with him. He had of course taken this into account, weighing it against what Vasile Zirra had told him about the short-term ef fect of the Gypsy drug. And he'd been sure he could spare an hour or two at least. What the old king hadn't told him was that only a spoonful or two o f drugged soup would suffice. In draining the bowl dry, the Necroscope had dosed himself far too liberally.

Now, slowly coming awake - half-way between the subconscious and consc ious worlds - he collapsed Wellesley's mind-shield and allowed himself to drift amidst murmuring deadspeak background static. Vasile Zirra, lying on ly inches away from him, was the first to recognize Harry's resurgence.

Harry Keogh? the dead old man's voice was tinged with sadness and not a little frustration. You are a brash young man. The spider sits waiting t o entrap you, and you have to throw yourself into his web! Because you wer e kind to me - and because the dead love you - I jeopardized my own positi on to warn you off, and you ignored me. So now you pay the penalty.

At the mention of penalties, Harry began to come faster awake. Even thou gh he hadn't yet opened his eyes, still he could feel the jolting of the car avan and so knew that he was en route. But how far into his journey?

You drank all of the soup, Vasile reminded him. Halmagiu is . . . very c lose! I know this land well; I sense it; the hour approaches midnight, and t he mountains loom even now.

Harry panicked a little then and woke up with something of a shock - a nd panicked even more when he discovered himself inside a box which by its shape could only be a coffin! Vasile Zirra calmed him at once: That must be how they brought you across the border. No, it isn't your grave but merely your refuge - for now. Then he told Harry about Zharov.

Harry answered aloud, whispering in the confines of the fragile box: 'Yo u protected me?'

You have the power, Harry, the other shrugged. So it was partly that, for y ou, and it was . . . partly for him.

'For him?' But Harry knew well enough who he meant. 'For Janos Ferencz y?'

When you allowed yourself to be drugged, you placed yourself in his powe r, in the hands of his people. The Zirras are his people, my son. Harry's answer was bitter, delivered in a tone he rarely if ever used w ith the dead: 'Then the Zirras are cowards! In the beginning, long before y our time - indeed more than seven long centuries ago - Janos fooled the Zir ras. He beguiled them, fascinated them, won them over by use of hypnosis an d other powers come down to him from his evil father. He made them love him , but only so that he could use them. Before Janos, the true Wamphyri were always loyal to their Gypsy retainers, and in their turn earned the respect of the Szgany forever. There was a bond between them. But what has Janos g iven you? Nothing but terror and death. And even dead, still you are afraid of him.'

Especially dead! came the answer. Don't you know what he could do to m e? He is the phoenix, risen from h.e.l.l's flames. Aye, and he could raise me up, too, if he wished it, even from my salts! These old bones, this old f lesh, has suffered enough. Many brave sons of the Zirras have gone up into those mountains to appease the Great Boyar; even my own son, Dumitru, gon e from us these long years. Cowards? What could we do, who are merely men, against the might of the Wamphyri?

Harry snorted. 'He isn't Wamphyri! Oh, he desires to be, but there's tha t of the true vampire essence which escapes him still. What could you do aga inst him? If you had had the heart, you and a band of your men could have go ne up to his castle in the mountains, sought him out in his place and ended it there and then. You could have done it ten, twenty, even hundreds of year s ago! Even as I must do it now.'

Not Wamphyri? the other was astonished. But . . . he is!

'Wrong! He has his own form of necromancy, true -and certainly it's as c ruel a thing as anything the Wamphyri ever used - but it is not the true art . He is a shape-changer, within limits. But can he form himself into an aero foil and fly? No, he uses an aeroplane. He is a deceiver, a powerful, danger ous, clever vampire - but he is not Wamphyri.'

He is what he is, said Vasile, but more thoughtfully now. And whatever h e is, he was too strong for me and mine.

Harry snorted again. 'Then leave me be. I'll need to find help elsewhere.'

Smarting from Harry's scorn, the old Gypsy king said: Anyway, what do you know of the Wamphyri? What does anyone know of them?

But Harry ignored him, shut him out, and sent forward his deadspeak thoug hts into Halmagiu, to the graveyard there. And from there, even up to the rui ned old castle in the heights . . .

Black Romanian bats in their dozens flitted overhead, occasionally comi ng into the gleam of swaying, jolting lamplight where they escorted the jin gling column of caravans through the rising, misted Transylvanian countrysi de. And the same bats flew over the crumbling walls and ruins of Castle Fer enczy. Janos was there, a dark silhouette on a bluff overlooking the valley. Li ke a great bat himself, he sniffed the night and observed with some satisfac tion the mist lying like milk in the valleys. The mist was his, as were the bats, as were the Szgany Zirra. And in his way, Janos had communicated with all three. 'My people have him,' he said, as if to remind himself. It was a phrase he'd repeated often enough through the afternoon and into the night.

He turned to his vampire thralls, Sandra and Ken Layard, and said it yet aga in: 'They have the Necroscope and will bring him to me. He is asleep, drugge d, which is doubtless why you can't know his whereabouts or read his mind. F or your powers are puny things with severe limitations.'

But even as Janos spoke so his locator gave a sudden start. 'Ah!' Layard ga sped. And: There . . . there he is!'

Janos grasped his arm, said: 'Where is he?'

Layard's eyes were closed; he was concentrating; his head turned slowly through an angle directed out over the valley to one which encompa.s.sed the m ountain's flank, and finally the mist-concealed village. 'Close,' he said. '

Down there. Close to Halmagiu.'

Janos's eyes lit like lamps with their wicks suddenly turned high. He look ed at Sandra. 'Well?'

She locked on to Layard's extrasensory current, followed his scan. And: 'Y es,' she said, slowly nodding. 'He is there.'

'And his thoughts?' Janos was eager. 'What is the Necroscope thinking? I s it as I suspected? Is he afraid? Ah, he is talented, this one, but what us e esoteric talents against muscle which is utterly ruthless? He speaks to th e dead, yes, but my Szgany are very much alive!' And to himself he thought: Aye, he speaks to the dead. Even to my father, who from time to time lodges in his mind! Which means that just as I know the Necroscope, likewise the do g knows me! I cannot relax. This will not be over . . . until it is over. Pe rhaps I should have them kill him now, and resurrect him at my leisure. But where would be the glory, the satisfaction, in that? That is not the way, no t if I would be Wamphyri! I must be the one to kill him, and then have him u p to acknowledge me as his master!

Sandra clung to Layard's arm and locked on to Harry's deadspeak signals . . . and in the next moment s.n.a.t.c.hed herself back from the locator so as to collide with Janos himself. He grabbed her, steadied her. 'Well?'

'He ... he speaks with the dead!'

'Which dead? Where?' His wolf's jaws gaped expectantly.

'In the cemetery in Halmagiu,' she gasped. 'And in your castle!'

'Halmagiu?' The ridges in his convoluted bat's snout quivered. 'The villa gers have feared me for centuries, even when I was dust in a jar. No satisfac tion for him there. And the dead in my castle? They are mainly Zirras.' He la ughed hideously, and perhaps a little nervously. 'They gave their lives up to me; they will not hearken to him in death; he wastes his time!'

Sandra, for all her vampire strength, was still shaken. 'He ... he talked to a great many, and they were not Gypsies. They were warriors in their day, almost to a man. I sensed the merest murmur of their dead minds, but each an d every one, they burned with their hatred for you!'

'What?' For a moment Janos stood frozen - and in the next bayed a laugh which was more a howl. 'My Thracians? My Greeks, Persians, Scythians? They are dust, the veriest salts of men! Only the guards which I raised up from them have form. Oh, I grant you, the Necroscope may call up corpses to wal k again - but even he cannot build flesh and bone from a handful of dust. A nd even if he could, why, I would simply put them down again! I have him; h e is desperate and seeks to enlist impossible allies; let him talk to them.

He laughed again, briefly, and turning towards the dark, irregular pile of his ruined castle, narrowed his scarlet eyes. 'Come,' he grunted then. 'There are certain preparations to be made.'

A handful of Szgany menfolk bundled Harry through the woods and past t he outcropping knoll with its cairn of soulstones beneath the cliff. His h ands were bound behind him and he stumbled frequently; his head ached mise rably, as from some ma.s.sive hangover; but as the group pa.s.sed close to the base of the knoll, so he sensed the wispy wraiths of once-men all around.

Harry let his deadspeak touch them, and knew at once that they were onl y the echoes of the Zirras he had spoken to in the Place of Many Bones deep in the ruins of the Castle Ferenczy. The knoll's base was lapped by a clin ging ground mist, but its domed crest stood clear where the cairn of carved stones pointed at the rising moon. Men had carved those stones, their own headstones, before climbing to the heights and sacrificing themselves to a monster.

'Men?' Harry whispered to himself. 'Sheep, they were. Like sheep to the sl aughter!'

His deadspeak was heard, as he had intended it should be, and from the c astle in the heights was answered: Not all of us, Harry Keogh. I for one would have fought him, but he was in my brain and squeezed it like a plum. You may believe me when I say I d id not go to the Ferenczy willingly. We were not such cowards as you think.

Now tell me, did you ever see a compa.s.s point south? Just so easily might a Zirra, chosen by his master, turn away.