'And plenty of this building timber,' Jazz added.
'And after that those other limpet mines,' said Darcy, 'so we can be sure we've blocked those wells up forever. It's time things were put back to rights here.'
As they reached the open air, Zek clutched Jazz's arm and said, 'But if this is a measure of what Janos can do here, even in the limited time he's had, just think what he might have done up in those Transylvanian mountains.'
Darcy looked at his friends and his face was still gaunt and ashen. His throat was dry as he voiced his own thoughts: 'God, I wouldn't be in Harry Keogh's shoes for... for anything!'
Harry woke up to the sure knowledge that something had happened, something far away and terrible. Inhuman screams rang in his ears, and a roaring fire blazed before his eyes. But then, starting upright in his bed, he realized that the screams were only the morning cries of cockerels, and that the fire was the blaze of the sun striking through his east-facing windows.
Now that he was awake there were other sounds and sensations: breakfast sounds from downstairs, and food smells rising from the kitchen.
He got up, washed, shaved and quickly dressed. But as he was about to go downstairs he heard a strangely familiar jingling, a creaking, and the easy clatter of hooves from out in the road. He went to look down, and was surprised to feel the heat of the sun on his arms where he leaned out of the window. He frowned. The hot yellow sunlight irritated him, made him itchy.
Down there in the road, horse-drawn caravans rolled single file, four or five of them all in a line. Gypsies, Travellers, they were heading for the distant mountains; and Harry felt a sudden kinship, for that was his destination, too. Would they cross the border, he wondered? Would they even be allowed to? Strange if they were, for Ceausescu didn't have a lot of time for Gypsies.
Harry watched them pass by, and saw that the last in line was decked in wreaths and oddly-shaped funeral garlands woven from vines and garlic flowers. The caravan's tiny windows were tightly curtained; women walked beside it, all in black, heads bowed, silently grieving. The caravan was a hearse, and its occupant only recently dead.
Harry felt sympathy, reached out with his deadspeak. 'Are you OK?'
The unknown other's thoughts were calm, uncluttered, but still he started a little at Harry's intrusion. And: Don't you think that's rude of you? he said. Breaking in on me like that?
Harry was at once apologetic. 'I'm sorry,' he answered, 'but I was concerned for you. It's obviously recent and... not all of the dead are so stoical about it.'
About death? Ah, but I've been expecting it for a long time. You must be the Necroscope?
'You've heard about me? In that case you'll know I didn't mean to be rude. But I hadn't realized that my name had reached the travelling folk. I've always thought of you as a race apart. I mean, you have your ways, which don't always fit in too well with...no, that's not what I meant, either! Perhaps you're right and I am rude.'
The other chuckled. / know what you mean well enough. But the dead are the dead, Harry, and now that they've learned how to talk to each other, they talk! Mainly they reminisce, with no real contact with the living - except for you, of course. Which makes you yourself a talking point. Oh, yes, I've heard about you.
'You're a learned man,' said Harry, 'and very wise, I can tell. So you won't find death so hard. How you were in life, that's how you'll be in death. All the things you wondered about when you were living, but which you could never quite resolve, you'll work them all out now that you're dead.'
You're trying to make me feel better about it, and I appreciate that, the other answered, but there's really no need. I was getting old and my bones were weary; I was ready for it, I suppose. By now I'll be on my way to my place under the mountains, where my Traveller forebears will welcome me. They, too, were Gypsy kings in their time, as am I... or as I was. I look forward to hearing the history of our race at first hand. I suppose I have you to thank for that, for without you they'd all be lying there like ancient, desiccated seeds in a desert, full of potential, shape and colour but unable to give them form. To the dead, you have been rain in the desert.
Harry leaned far out of his window to watch the caravan hearse out of sight around a bend in the dusty road. 'It was nice meeting you,' he said. 'And if I'd known you were a king, be sure my approach would have been more respectful.'
Harry - the other's deadspeak thoughts drifted back to the Necroscope, and he sensed that they were a little troubled now, - you seem to me to be a very rare person: good, compassionate and wise in your own right, for all that you are young. And you say that you have recognized an older wisdom in me. Very well, so now I would ask you to accept some sensible advice from a wise old Traveller king. Go anywhere else but where you are going. Do anything else but that which you have set out to do!
Harry was puzzled, and not a little worried. Gypsies have strange talents, and the dead - even the recently dead - are not without theirs. How then a dead Gypsy king? 'Are you telling my fortune? It's a long time since I crossed a Traveller's palm with silver.'
The other vseized upon that: With silver, aye! My palms shall never know its feel again — but be sure my eyes are weighted with it! No, cross yourself with silver, Harry, cross yourself!
Now Harry wasn't merely puzzled but suspicious, too. What did this dead old man know? What could he possibly know, and what was he trying to say? Harry's thoughts weren't shielded; the Gypsy king picked them up and answered:
/ have said too much already. Some would consider me a traitor. Well, let them think it. For you are right: I'm old and I'm dead, and so can afford one last indulgence. But you have been kind, and death has put me beyond forfeiture.
'Your warning is an ominous thing,' said Harry. But there was no answer. Only a small cloud of dust, settling, showed where the caravans had passed from sight.
'My route is set!' Harry called after. 'That is the way I must go!'
A sigh drifted back. Only a sigh.
'Thanks anyway,' Harry answered sigh for sigh, and felt his shoulders sag a little. 'And goodbye.'
And he sensed the slow, sad shake of the other's head ...
At 11:00 a.m. Harry booked out of the Hotel Sarkad in Mezobereny and waited by the side of the road for his taxi. He carried only his holdall, which in fact held very little: his sleeping-bag, a small-scale map of the district in a side-pocket, and a packet of sandwiches made up for him by the hotel proprietor's daughter.
The sun was very hot and seemed intensified by the old boneshaker's dusty windows; it burned Harry's wrists where it fell on them, causing a sensation which he could only liken to prickly heat. At his first opportunity, in a village named Bekes, he called a brief halt to purchase a straw summer hat with a wide brim.
From Mezobereny to his drop-off point close to the Romanian border was about twenty kilometres. Before letting his driver go he checked with him that in fact his map was accurate, and that the border crossing point lay only two or three kilometres ahead at a place called Gyula.
'Gyula, yes,' said the taxi driver, pointing vaguely down the road. And again: 'Gyula. You will see them both, from the hill - the border, and Gyula.' Harry watched him turn his cab around and drive off, then hoisted his holdall to one shoulder and set off on foot. He could have taken the taxi closer to the border, but hadn't wanted to be seen arriving in that fashion. A man on foot is less noticeable on a country road.
And 'country' was what it was. Forests, green fields, crops, hedgerows, grazing animals: it seemed good land. But up ahead, across the border: there lay Transylvania's central massif. Not so darkly foreboding as the Meridional!, perhaps, but mountains awesome and threatening enough in their own right. Where the road crossed the crest of low, undulating hills, Harry could see the grey-blue peaks and domes maybe twenty-five miles away. They clung to the horizon, a sprawl of hazy crags obscured by distance and low-lying cloud. His destination.