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.
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.