Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

As for Janos's method, it was simplicity in itself:

First remove a burial urn to his castle vaults, where by use of those arts he had mastered its salts might be reconstituted; chain the poor wretch so obtained and torture him for knowledge of his kith and kin, the locations of their graves, etcetera, and their hoards in turn. And so forth. In the pursuit of which policy, Janos had amassed a veritable graveyard of despoiled pots and urns and lekythoi, such as to fill several large rooms!

Intrigued, I demanded a demonstration of his art. (For you will understand, this was not necromancy as the Wamphyri might use it but something new — to me, anyway.) And Janos, knowing I had still to deal with him and seeking to please me, proceeded. He tipped out salts upon the floor, and by use of strange words in an Invocation of Power — lo and behold — conjured from these cinders a Thracian woman of exceeding beauty! Her language was archaic in the extreme but not beyond understanding; certainly it was not beyond my understanding, for I was Wamphyri and expert in tongues. Moreover, she knew she was dead and that this was a great blasphemy, and begged of Janos that he not use her again. From which I knew that this bastard son of mine not only called up the dead into former semblance, but had more uses for some of them than simply to question them as to the whereabouts of buried treasure.

How grand! My excitement was such that I had her before allowing him to reduce her back to ashes!

'You must teach me this thing,' I told him. 'That is the least you can do to atone for your many sins against me.' He agreed and showed me how to mix certain chemicals and human salts together, then carefully inscribed two sets of words upon a stretched skin. The first set, alongside an ascending arrow, thus, ,was the invocation as such, and the second, marked ¯, was the devolution.

'Bravo!' I cried then, when I had the thing. 'I must put it to the test.'

'As you see,' he indicated all his many jars and urns, 'you have a wide choice.'

'Indeed I have,' I answered, gravely, and stroked my chin. And before he knew what I was about, I drew out a wooden stake from beneath my cloak and pinned him! This did not serve to kill him, no, for he had a vampire in him; it merely immobilized him. Then I called down some trusted men of mine from the castle and burned Janos to ashes even while he frothed and moaned and eventually screamed a little. Aye, and when these ashes of his — these essential salts — were cool I had them sifted, applied his several chemical powders… and used his own magic to have him up again!

And did he scream then? You may believe he did! The heat of the fire, a mercifully short travail, had been nothing compared to the unendurable agony of the fact that he was now and eternally and utterly in my power! So I thought…

But alas, his screaming was not borne of this knowledge but of a wrenching, a tearing, a division of being — which I shall explain in a moment.

But oh, to see those clouds of smoke puff up from his dry, dusty remains — a great upheaval of smoke and fumes — from which stumbled Janos, naked and screaming. But… a miracle! He was not alone. There with him, but entirely apart, was his vampire: my spittle grown to a live thing, but a creature with little or nothing of its own intelligence.

It was leech, snail, serpent, a great blind slug, and all unused to going on its own. It, too, mewled, though I know not how. But I did know the answer to the riddle: in burning Janos I had burned two creatures, and raising him up again I had also revitalized two — but in their separate parts!

Then… I had me a thought. I brought forward my cowering men and commanded them that they take Janos and hold him down. 'And so you would be Wamphyri, eh?' I said, approaching him with my sword. 'And so you shall be. This creature here is a vampire but has very little of a brain. It shall have yours!' He screamed again, once, before I took his head. And splitting his skull, I took out from it his living, dripping brain.

You can guess the rest, I'm sure. Using Janos's own process and keeping his body apart, I devolved his head and vampire both into one heap of ashes, which I placed in an urn among the others. And then I laughed and laughed till I cried! For if by any fluke he should be brought back now, it would be as… as what? A clever slug? An intelligent leech? Why, it would amuse me to call him up again and see!

But alas, that was not to be, for in the end he'd thwarted me. The skin upon which he'd written his runes had been resurrected skin, flayed from a victim. I had directed my runes of catabolism through the very skin from which I read them, and so when I'd sent Janos down the skin, too, had crumbled into dust! Well, the Words of Power were tricky and I had not learned them except the single name of an ancient dark god of the outer spheres. However, I still had my bastard son's body.

So I burned that, too — aye, a second time — and sent pinches of it out to the four corners of the earth, and there dispersed them on the winds. That was the end of it. I had done with Janos. And now I have done with my story…

As Faethor finished, so there came a cabin announcement: the plane was now descending towards Athens. Harry said:

Faethor, in another ten to fifteen minutes I'll be on the ground and into the bustle of the airport. I've noticed that you've been growing weaker — your voice — and put it down to distance and the sun full on the ruins of your house. Soon I'll be on my way to Rhodes which is more distant yet. So this is probably my last chance to say a few things.

You have something to say? (Harry pictured Faethor raising an eyebrow.)

First… I owe you my thanks, Harry told him, but second, I can't help but remind myself that without you in the first place none of this — Thibor, Dragosani, Yulian Bodescu, and now Janos — would ever have happened. OK, so I'm in your debt, but at the same time I know you for the black-hearted thing you have been, and for the monsters you've spawned in my world. And I'd be a liar if I didn't tell you that in my opinion you're the biggest monster of them all!

I consider it a compliment, Faethor answered, without hesitation. Is there anything else you require to know?

A few things, yes, said Harry. If you destroyed Janos so utterly, how come he's back? I mean, what trick did he work — what dark magic did he leave behind him — to bring him back into the world? And why did he wait so long? Why now?

Is it not obvious? Faethor sounded genuinely surprised by Harry's nai'vet6. He had seen the far future and laid his plans accordingly. He had known / would put him down, that time when I returned to the mountains. Yes, and he knew that if he came back in my time I would find a way to do it again! And so he must wait until I was gone from the world. Time is but a small thing to the Wamphyri, Harry. As to how he worked this clever trick:

It was those accursed Zirras! Aye, and I know it was them, for I've had it from my own faithful few, who mutter in their graves much like other men. I'll tell you how it was:

Long after me and mine were gone from the castle on the heights, certain of Janos's own returned and placed his vampire ashes in a secret place which he'd prepared against just such an eventuality. For he'd learned other magicks in my three hundred years' absence, of which this was one. He'd had Zirra women in his time, that bastard of mine, and sown his seed far and wide. The three-fingered son of a son of his would one day feel his allure and go up to the old castle in the mountains… but it would be Janos who came down from it! So he planned it, and so it has come to pass…