‘Doing? Why, I sit me down to my evening meal!' he answered, gleefully. ‘And such a menu! Blood of a strong man — spiced with the blood of the fledgling vampire within him!'
‘You… you'll drink from… from my throat?' I stared up at him aghast, my vision swimming.
He merely smiled — but a smile hideous as any I ever saw him make — and tore my clothes. Then he put his terrible tapering hands on me and felt my flesh all over, frowning a little as he searched for something. He turned me on my side, touched my spine, pressed it again, harder, and said, ‘Ah! The very gobbet, the prize itself!'
I would have cringed away from him but could not. Inside I cringed — perhaps that child of his within me cringed, too — but externally my skin merely shivered. I tried to speak, but that also had grown too difficult. My lips only trembled and I made a moaning sound.
‘Thibor,' the old devil said, his voice level as if in polite conversation, ‘you've much to learn, my son. About me, about yourself, about the Wamphyri. You are not yet aware, you fail to perceive all the mysteries I have bestowed upon you. But what I am, you shall be. And the powers I possess, they too shall be yours. You have seen and learned a little, now see and experience more!'
He continued to balance me on my side, but propped up my head a little so that I could see his face. His magnetic eyes held me, a fish, speared on their pupils. My blurred sight cleared; the picture sharpened; I saw more clearly than ever before. My body and limbs might well be made of lead, but my mind was sharp as a knife, my awareness so keen that I could almost feel the change taking place in the creature who leaned over me. Faethor had somehow, for some reason, heightened my perceptions, increased my sensitivity.
‘Now watch,' he hissed. ‘Observe!'
The skin of Faethor's face, large-pored and grainy at best, underwent a swift metamorphosis. Watching it I thought: I have never known what he looks like. And even now I won't know. He is how he wants me to see him!
The pores of his face opened up more yet, pockmarks cratering his flesh. His jaws, enormous already, elongated with a sound like gradually tearing cloth, and his leathery lips rolled back until his mouth was all bulging, crimson gums and jagged, dripping teeth. I had seen Faethor's teeth before, but never displayed like this. Nor was the metamorphosis complete.
It was all in the jaws, in the teeth, in the nightmarish
Then, for a long time, I knew no more.
For which, as you might suppose, I was not unthankful.
At first, when I regained consciousness, I thought that I was alone. But then I heard Ehrig whimpering in a shadowed corner — heard him and remembered. I remembered the comradeship we'd shared, all the bloody battles we'd been through together. Remembered how he had been my true friend, who would gladly lay down his life for me — and I mine for him.
Perhaps he remembered, too, and that was why be whimpered. I did not know. I only knew that when the Ferenczy had fastened his teeth in my spine, Ehrig was nowhere to be seen.
To say that I beat him would not do his punishment justice, but without Faethor's vampire stuff in him he would certainly have died. It could be that I consciously tried to kill him; I can't say about that, either, for the episode is no longer clear in my mind. I only know that when I was done with him he no longer felt my blows, and that I myself was completely exhausted. But he healed, of course, and so did I. And I conceived a new strategy.
After that…here were times of sleeping, of waking, of eating. Outwardly, life consisted of little more. But for me these were also times of waiting, and of patient, silent scheming. As for the Ferenczy: he tried to train me like a wild dog.
It started like this: he would come silently to the door and listen. Strangely, I knew when he was there. I would feel fear! And when I became afraid, then he would be there. At times I could feel him groping at the edges of my mind, slyly attempting to insinuate himself into my very thoughts. I remembered how he had communicated with old Arvos over a distance and did what I could to close my mind to him. I think I succeeded greatly, for after that I could sense a frustration other than my own.
He used a system of rewards: if I was ‘good' and obeyed him, there would be food. He would call through the door: ‘Thibor, I have a pair of fine piglets here!'
If I answered: ‘Aha! Your parents have come visiting!' he would simply take the food away. But if I said:
‘Faethor, my father, I am starving! Feed me, pray, for if not then I shall be obliged to eat this dog you've locked in with me down here. And who will serve me then, when you are out in the world and I am left in charge of your lands and castle?' Then he would open the door a crack and place the food inside. But only let me stand too close to the door and I would see neither Faethor nor food for three or four days.
And so I ‘weakened'; I grew less and less abusive; I began to plead. For food, for the freedom of the castle, for fresh air and light, and water to bathe myself — but most of all for separation, however brief, from Ehrig whom I now detested as a man detests his own wastes. Moreover, I made out that I was growing physically weaker. I spent more time ‘asleep', and came less readily awake.
Finally came the time when Ehrig could not wake me, and how the dog battered on the door and screamed for his true master then! Faethor came; they carried me up, up to the battlements above the covered hail where it spanned the gorge. There they laid me down in the clean air under the first stars of night, pale spectres in a sky I had not seen for far too long. The sun was a dull blister on the hills, casting its last rays over the spires of rock behind the castle's towers.
‘He is likely starved for air,' said Faethor, ‘and maybe simply starved a little, too! But you are right, Ehrig — he seems weaker than he should be. I desired only to break his will a little, not the man himself. I have powders and salts that sting, which should stir him up. Wait here and I'll fetch them. And watch him!'
He descended through a trapdoor out of sight, leaving Ehrig to hunch down to his vigil. All of this I saw through eyes three-quarters shuttered. But the moment Ehrig allowed his attention to wander I was on him in a trice! Closing off his windpipe with one hand, I snatched from my pocket a leather thong which I'd earlier removed from my boot. I had intended it for the Ferenczy's neck, but no matter. Wrapping my legs round Ehrig to stop him kicking, I looped the thong round his neck and yanked it tight, then made a second loop and tied it off. Choking, he tried to lurch to his feet, but I slammed his head so hard against the stone parapet that I felt his skull shatter. He went limp and I lowered him to the timbered floor.
At that moment my back was to the trapdoor, and of course that was when the Ferenczy chose to return. Hissing his fury, he came leaping up light as a youth — but his hands were iron on me where he took hold of my hair and grasped the flesh between my neck and shoulder. Ah, but strong though he was, old Faethor was out of practice! And my own fighting skills were as fresh in my mind as my last battle with the Pechenegi.
I kneed him in the groin and drove my head up under his great jaw so hard that I heard his teeth crunching. He released me, fell to the planking where I leaped astride him; but as his fury waxed, so waxed his strength. Calling on the vampire within, he tossed me aside as easily as a bale of straw! And in a moment he was on his feet, spitting shattered teeth, blood and curses as he came gliding after me.
I knew then that I couldn't beat him, not unarmed, and I cast all about in the eerie twilight for a weapon. And found several.
Suspended from the high rear battlements, a row of circular bronze mirrors hung at different angles, two or three of them just catching the last faint rays of sunlight and reflecting them away down the valley. The Ferenczy's signalling devices. Arvos the gypsy had said that the old Ferengi didn't have much use for mirrors, or for sunlight. I wasn't exactly sure what he'd meant, but I seemed to remember something of the sort from old campfire legends. In any case I didn't have a lot of choice. If Faethor was vulnerable, then there was only one sure way to find out.