Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

There's not much more to tell. But if you wish it…?

I wish it.

And: Very well, my son, Faethor sighed. So be it.

As has been told, I was away for three hundred years. Three centuries of blood! The Great Crusade was only the start of it; later I served Genghis Khan, and then his grandson Batu. In 1240 I assisted and delighted in the taking of Kiev, and in burning it to ashes. Eventually it was time for me to 'die'… and return as Fereng the Black, son of the Fereng! Then, under Hulegu in 1258, I helped bring down Baghdad. Ah, such years of bloodshed, pillage and rape!

But the Mongols were on the wane, and by the turn of the century I had forsaken them in order to fight for Islam. Oh, yes, I was an Ottoman! Me, a Turk, a Moslem ghazi! Ah, what it is to be a mercenary, eh? And with the Turks, for one and a half centuries more, I revelled in blood and death and the sheer glut of war! In the end, however, I had lived with them too long and so was obliged to desert their cause. Ah, well, and it was crumbling anyway.

And so finally I returned and put Thibor down (as has also been told), then took me off into the unchanged and unchanging mountains to seek out Janos and see how well he had kept house for me.

In the interim, however, I had kept my ears open. Wamphyri ears are delicate instruments, be sure, and miss very little. Aye, and they had always been alert for news of my sons, Thibor and Janos. Well, of the former we know. And of the latter?

Where Thibor had been greedy for blood, Janos had been simply greedy. In my time abroad he had had many interests, but mainly he'd been a thief, a pirate, a corsair. Does it surprise you? It should not: for the Barbary pirates had their origin in petty princelings who rose up during the Christian-Moslem conflicts of the Crusades. That then had been Janos's chiefest business during the time of my absence: a grand thief on the broad bosom of the Mediterranean, to loot them who had looted others!

And now he's a sailor again, eh? Well, and why not? Oh, he knows the sea well enough, that one, who now for a profession brings up treasure from the ocean and digs for it in the islands around. Hah! And who, pray, would know better where to find it — since he was the one who laid it down, more than five hundred years ago! And what was that all about, you may wonder, that great squirreling for nuts, as if some fearsome winter were about to descend? But it was, it was! Aye, just such a winter: for Janos had worked hard at his art to look well into the future, and had not liked what he saw there.

For one thing, he had doubtless seen my return, and he did not need to look to know how I would deal with him! And so he had made provision for another time, far beyond the hour of my revenge. This present time, of course, when he is up again and about in the world of men.

But (you may ask) my revenge for what? The loss of Marilena was three to four hundred years in my wake, and I could have killed him then for that; so what now? I will tell you:

First, for his desertion from my cause. To go a-pirating he must first vacate my house. Second, for his treatment of my Szgany. For in the early years of my absence he had kicked out the Szgany Ferengi and reinstated the filthy Zirra, whom I had cursed! Third and last, but not least, for the way in which he greeted me, when at last I was returned.

On my way I had gathered faithful Gypsies to me, who had remembered me through all the years of my exile. Not the originals, no, for they were dust, but the sons of their sons. Ah, they remember legends, the Szgany! But when I went up to my castle I went alone, by night, for a task force would be too obvious and could only appear threatening.

Alas, when I was come there I saw the place a ruin. Well, perhaps not quite so bad, but near enough. The battlements were broken; earthworks without were untended; the repair in general was bad. Left to fend for itself through much of my absence, the place had suffered. But Janos, done with pirating now and returned to other pursuits, was to house. And just as I had tried to follow his career, so he had followed mine.

He knew I was coming; guards were out, with clear instructions; I was challenged, and upon identifying myself…

… Was set upon!

They had sharpened hardwood staves. They had crossbows with wooden bolts. They carried the curved long knives of the Turks. Silver they had, too, on their weapons, and garlic in which to steep them! And each party of men, they had casks of oil, and torches with which to fire it!…To burn what? I ask you.

I fled them, up into the crags and for many a mile in the high places. I limped, scurried, cried out in some great pain, kept barely ahead of my pursuers. They knew I was injured and that they would have me. Janos sent out his entire household to hunt me down. But… I merely lured them. What, Faethor Ferenczy, with his tail between his legs, running from Zirra scum?

Aha! For while they were out chasing me, my own small but faithful Szgany army were up and into my house, into all of its stations and down behind its earthworks! And high in the peaks I turned on my trackers, laughed and slew a few, then launched myself into the night and glided down to my castle as of old. And there I discovered Janos trapped, and brought him to his knees.

The Zirras, when they came straggling home, were met by mine who slew them out of hand. Some escaped the slaughter and word went out; in a little while no more came; the survivors had fled into the night and the countryside around, to become travellers once more as of old…

And it was then I discovered Janos's several subsidiary interests, with which he had occupied himself while I had been away. Then, too, I saw how severely I had underestimated him. My castle had been built upon the foundations of another, earlier house, whose basements Janos had uncovered. And he had seen to it that these were extended, outwards into the roots of the crags around, down into the rock of the mountain itself. To what end?

There lay the measure of my underestimation. Janos had told me he desired to be Wamphyri… ah, but how he had desired it!

Now in those days necromancy was an art. Certain common men had discovered the way of it; they practised it much as a vampire might, but without his natural instinct for it. Janos knew I was a crafty necromancer and would emulate me, but I had declined to teach him my techniques. Wherefore he had determined to discover methods of his own. Doubtless he'd consulted with many necromancers, to learn their ways.

The extensive cellars of the castle were mazy and secret, whose stairs and passageways were known only to Janos and a handful of his men, all of whom were now either fled or dead. But I went down with him to see what he had been about, and there discovered tomb-loot from all Wallachia and Transylvania and the lands around. No, not treasure as such, but tomb-loot!

Do you know that in prehistory it was the way of men to burn their dead and bury their ashes in vases? Of course you do, for the habit has survived. Why, there's as much burning as burying even to the present day! But the Thracians, they had entombed a great many of their dead in this fashion, and Janos had been busy digging them up again! And once more you will ask: to what end?

To inquire of them their secrets! To fetch the dead to life and torment them for their histories! To invest their very ashes with flesh which he could torture! For the Thracians were heavy in gold, and as I have said, Janos was greedy. Nothing is new, eh? An hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years later necromancers were still calling up spirits in order to discover their treasures. Your own Edward Kelly and John Dee were two such, but fakers both of them. I consulted with them in my time and know this for a fact.