Wamphyri

None. He too had heard rumours, had his suspicions, his doubts. .

The Prince already feared Thibor, but what I had told him — mostly the truth, except perhaps concerning Thibor's ambition — had utterly terrified him. How could he deal with this monster?

I told him how. He must send for Thibor on some pretext or other — to bestow upon him a great honour! Yes, that would do it. Vampires are often prideful; flattery, carefully applied, can win them over. Mircea must tell Thibor that he desired to make him Voevod in Chief over all Wallachia, with powers second only to Mircea himself.

‘Power? He has that already!'

‘Then tell him that eventually succession to the throne will not be out of the question.'

‘What?' The Prince pondered. ‘I must take advice.'

‘Ridiculous!' I was forceful. ‘He may have allies among your advisors. Don't you know his strength?'

‘Say on. .

‘When he comes, I shall be here. He must be told to come alone, his army staying on the Hungarian border to continue the skirmishing. Orders can be sent to them later, dispersing them to lesser, more trusted generals. You shall receive him alone — at night.'

‘Alone? At night?' Mircea the Monk was sore afraid.

‘You must drink with him. I shall give you wine with which to drug him. He is strong, however, and no amount of wine will kill him. It may not even render him unconscious. But it will rob him of his senses, make him clumsy, stupid, like a man drunk.

‘I shall be close at hand with four or five of the most trusted members of your guard. We'll confine him, naked, in a place you shall nominate. A special place, somewhere in the grounds of the palace. Then, when the sun rises, you will know you have trapped a vampire. The sun's rays on his flesh will be a torture to him! But that in itself will not be sufficient proof. No, for above all else we must be just. Bound, his jaws will be forced open. You shall see his tongue, 0 Prince — forked like a snake's, and red with blood!

‘At once a stake of hard wood shall be driven through his heart. This, for the greater part, will immobilise him. Then into a coffin with him, and off to a secret place. He shall be buried where no one should ever find him, a place forbidden to men from this time forward.'

‘Will it work?'

I gave the Prince my guarantee that it would work. And it did! Exactly as I have stated.

From Targoviste to the cruciform hills is perhaps one hundred miles. Thibor was carried there at all speed. Holy men came with us all the way, with exorcisms ringing until I thought I would be sick. I was dressed in the plain black habit of a monk, with the hood thrown up. None had seen my face except Mircea and a handful of officials at the palace, all of whom I had beguiled, or hypnotised as you now have it, to a degree.

There in the hills a rude mausoleum was hastily constructed of local stone; it bore no name or title, no special marks; standing low to the ground and ominous in a gloomy glade, as you have seen it, it would in itself suffice to keep away the merely curious. Years later someone cut Thibor's emblem into the stone — as an additional warning, perhaps. Or it could be that some Szgany or Szekely follower found him and marked the place, but feared to bring him up or lacked the wit.

I have gone ahead of myself.

We took him there, to the foothills of the Carpatii, and there he was lowered into his hole four or five feet deep in the dark earth. Wrapped in massy chains of silver and iron, he was, and the stake still in him and nailing him secure in his box. He lay pale as death, his eyes closed, for all the world a corpse. But I knew that he was not.

Night was falling. I told the soldiers and priests that I would climb down and behead Thibor, and set a fire of branches in his grave to burn him, and when the fire was dead fill in the hole. It was dangerous, witchcrafty work, I said, which could only be done by the light of the moon. They should now retreat, if they valued their souls. They went, stood off, and waited for me on the plain.

The moon, thin-horned, rose up. I looked down on Thibor and spoke to him in the manner of the Wamphyri. ‘Ah, my son, and so it is come to this. Sad, sad day for a fond father, who bestowed upon an ingrate son mighty powers to be wasted. A son who would not honour his father's ordinances, and is therefore fallen in the world. Wake up, Thibor, and let that also which is in you waken, for I know that you are not dead.'

His eyes opened a crack as my words sank in, then gaped wide in sudden understanding. I threw back my cowl so that he might see me, and smiled in a manner he must surely remember. He marked me and gave a great start. Then he marked his whereabouts — and screamed! Ah, how he screamed!

I threw earth down upon him.

'Mercy!' he cried out loud.

‘Mercy? But are you not Thibor the Wallach, given the name Ferenczy and commanded to tend in his absence the lands of Faethor of the Wamphyri? And if you are, what do you here, so far from your place of duty?'

‘Mercy! Mercy! Leave me my head, Faethor.'

‘I intend to!' I tossed in more dirt.

He saw my meaning, my intention, and went mad, shaking and vibrating and generally threatening to tear himself loose from his stake. I put down a long, stout pole into the grave and tapped home the stake more firmly, driving it through the bottom of the coffin itself. As for the coffin's lid, I merely let it stand there on its side in the bottom of the hole. What? Cover him up and lose sight of that frantic, fear-filled face? ‘But I am Wamphyri!' he screamed.

‘You could have been,' I told him. ‘Ah, you could have been! Now you are nothing.'

‘Old bastard! How I hate you!' he raved, blood in his eyes, his nostrils, the writhing gape of his mouth.

‘Mutual, my son.'

‘You are afraid. You fear me. That is the reason!'

‘Reason? You desire to know the reason? How fares my castle in the Khorvaty? What of my mountains, my dark forests, my lands? I will tell you: the Khans have held them for more than a century. And where were you, Thibor?'

‘It's true!' he screamed, through the earth I threw in his face. ‘You do fear me!'

‘If that were true, then I should most certainly behead you,' I smiled. ‘No, I merely hate you above all others. Do you remember how you burned me? I cursed you for a hundred years, Thibor. Now it is your turn to curse me for the rest of time. Or until you stiffen into a stone in

the dark earth.'

And without further ado I filled in his grave.

When he could no longer scream with his mouth he screamed with his mind. I relished each and every yelp. Then I built a small fire to fool the soldiers and the priests, and warmed myself before it for an hour, for the night was chill. And eventually I went down to the plain.

‘Farewell, my son,' I told Thibor. And then I shut him out of my mind, as I had shut him out of the world, forever.

‘And so you took your revenge on Thibor,' said Harry when Faethor paused. ‘You buried him alive — or undead — forever. Well, that might have suited your cruel purpose, Faethor Ferenczy, but you certainly weren't doing the world at large any favours by letting him keep his head. He corrupted Dragosani and planted his vampire seed in him, and between times infected the unborn Yulian Bodescu, who is now a vampire in his own right. Did you know these things?

Harry, said Faethor, in my life I was a master of telepathy, and in death...? Oh, the dead won't talk to me, and I can't blame them — but there is nothing to keep me from listening in on their conversations. In a way, it could even be argued that I'm a Necroscope, like you. Oh, I've read the thoughts of many. And there have been certain thoughts which interested me greatly — especially those of that dog Thibor. Yes, since my death, I have renewed my interest in his affairs. I know about Boris Dragosani and Yulian Bodescu.