So, I've found a man at last, Harry answered, this time silently, in the unique manner of the Necroscope. But lie still, Dumitru Zirra, for I need more than old bones to go against Janos.
The way was harder now and the Gypsies sliced through the thongs binding Harry's wrists. Instead they put two nooses round his neck, one held by a man who stayed well ahead of him, and the other by a man to his rear. 'Only fall now, Englishman, and you hang yourself,' their spokesman told him. 'Or at very least stretch your neck a bit as we haul you up!' But Harry didn't intend to fall.
He called out to Möbius with his deadspeak: August? How's it coming?
We're almost there, Harry! came the excited answer from a Leipzig graveyard. It could be an hour, two, three at the outside.
Try thirty minutes, said Harry. / may not have much more than that left.
Other voices crowded Harry's Necroscope mind. From the graveyard in Halmagiu:
Harry Keogh ... we are shunned. Who named you a friend of the dead was a great liar!
Taken off guard, he answered aloud. 'I asked for your help. You refused me. It's not my fault the world's teeming dead hold you in contempt!'
The Szgany where they laboured up the mountainside in the streaming moonlight looked at each other. 'Is he mad? Always he talks to himself!'
Harry opened all the channels of his mind - removed all barriers within and without - and at once Faethor was raging at him: Idiot! I am the only one who can help you, and yet you keep me hooded like some vicious bird in a cage. Why do you do this, Harry?
Because I don't trust you, he answered silently. Your motives, your methods, you your black-hearted self! I don't trust a single thing you say or do, Faethor. You're not only a father of vampires but a father of liars, too. Still, you do have a choice.
A choice? What choice?
Get out of my mind and go back to your place in Ploiesti.
Not until this thing is seen through -to- the - end! And how can I be sure you'll stick to that? You can't, Necroscope!
Then sit in the dark, said Harry, closing him off again. And now the climb was half-way done...
In Rhodes it was 1:30 a.m.
Darcy Clarke and his team sat around a table in one of their hotel rooms. They had spent time recovering from their work, had eaten out as a group, had discussed their experiences and how they'd been affected and probably would be affected for a long time to come. But in the back of their minds each and every one of them had known that their own part in the fight was minimal, and that without Harry Keogh's success everything else was cosmetic and the partial elation they felt now only the lull before the real storm.
As they'd returned from their late meal, so Zek had come up with an idea. She was a telepath and David Chung a locator. Together, they might be able to reach Harry and see what were his circumstances.
Darcy had at once protested: 'But that's just what Harry didn't want! Look, if Janos got his mental hooks into you -'
'I've a feeling he'll be too much involved with Harry to be thinking about anything else,' Zek had cut in. 'Anyway, I want to do it. In the Lady Karen's stack - her aerie on Starside -1 had the job of reading the minds of a great many Wamphyri. Not one of them so much as suspected I was there, or if they did nothing came of it. That's the way I'll play it now.'
Still Darcy wasn't sure. 'I was only thinking about poor Trevor,' he said, 'and about Sandra...'
'Trevor Jordan wasn't expecting trouble,' Zek had answered, 'and Sandra was inexperienced and her talent variable. I'm not putting her down, just stating a fact.'
'But -'
'No!' and again she had cut him off. 'If David is willing, I want to do it. Harry means a lot to Jazz and me.'
At which Darcy had appealed to Jazz Simmons.
Jazz had shaken his head. 'If she says she'll do it, then she'll do it,' he said. 'Hey, don't take my word for it! I'm only married to her!'
And with reservations, finally Darcy had submitted. For the fact was that he as much as anyone else was interested to know Harry's circumstances.
Now the three who weren't participants, Darcy, Jazz and Ben Trask, sat around the table and concentrated on what Zek and David were doing: the latter with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, his hands resting lightly on the stock and body of Harry's crossbow where it sat on the table, and Zek similarly disposed, her hand on one of his.
They had been this way for a minute or two, waiting for Chung to locate the Necroscope through the medium of one of his own possessions. But as seconds ticked by in silence and the two participants grew even more still, so the watchers began to relax a little - even to fidget - and their thoughts to drift. And just at the moment that Jazz Simmons chose to scratch his nose, that was when contact was made.
It was brief:
David Chung uttered a long drawn-out sigh - and Zek snapped bolt upright in her chair. Her eyes remained closed for several long seconds while all the colour drained from her face. Then... they shot open and she snatched herself away from Chung, straightened to her feet and backed unsteadily away from the table.
Jazz went to her at once. 'Zek?' his voice was anxious. 'Are you OK?'
For a moment she stared right through him, then at him, and accepted his arms. He felt her trembling, but at last she answered: 'Yes, I'm all right. But Harry -'
'You found him?' Darcy too had risen to his feet.
'Oh, yes,' David Chung nodded. 'We found him. What did you read, Zek?'
She looked at him, looked at all of them, and freed herself from Jazz's arms. And said nothing.
Darcy said, 'Is he OK?' And he held his breath waiting for her answer.
Eventually she said, 'He's all right, yes, and he got there safely - to his destination, I mean. Also, I saw enough to know that it will all come to a head soon. But... something isn't right.'
Darcy's heart thudded in his chest. 'Not right? You mean he's already in trouble?'
She looked at him, and her look was so strange it was as if she gazed on alien things, in a world of ice beyond the times and places we know. 'In trouble? Oh, he's that, all right, but not necessarily the trouble you're thinking of.'
'Can you explain?'
She straightened up and gave herself a shake, and hugged her elbows. 'No, I can't,' she said, shaking her head. 'Not yet. And anyway, I could be mistaken.'
'But mistaken about what?' Darcy's frustration was mounting. 'Harry is going up against Janos Ferenczy personally, man to ... to thingl If he's in trouble before they even meet, his disadvantage could well be insurmountable!'
Again she gave him that strange look, and shook her head, and quietly said, 'No, not insurmountable. In fact on a one to one basis, I think you'll find that... that there's not a great deal to choose between them.'
Following which, and for quite a long time, she would say no more.
With the misted valley far below and in the streaming moonlight of the heights, Harry knew the climb would soon be over and he'd be face to face with hell. He had hoped to call up all the local dead into an army on his side, arid march with them on Janos's place. But even the dead were afraid. Now there was very little time left, and probably less hope. So the fact that he actually found himself anticipating what was to come was a very hard thing to explain. It could be of course that he'd simply 'cracked' under the strain, but he didn't think so. He'd never been the type.