Deadspeak Page 29

  But first … do you remember the story of Thibor in his early days? How he robbed me of my castle in the Khorvaty? And how I, most sorely injured, fled westwards? Let me remind you, then.

  This is how it was …

  X: Bloodson

  THIBOR THE WALLACH, THAT CURSED INGRATE—TO WHOM I had given my egg, name, and banner, and into whose hands I had bequeathed my castle, lands, and Wamphyri powers—had injured me sorely.

  Thrown down burning from the walls of my castle, I experienced the ultimate agonies. A myriad minion bats fluttered to me as I fell, were scorched and died for their troubles, but dampened my flames not at all. I crashed through trees and shrubs, and pinwheeled aflame down the sides of the gorge to the very bottom. But my fall had been broken in part by the foliage, and I came to rest in a shallow pool which alone saved my melting Wamphyri flesh.

  As close to true death as a vampire might come and remain undead, I put out a desperate call to my faithful Gypsies where they camped in the valley. They came, lifted my body from the still, salving water and cared for it, and carried me west over the mountains into Hungary. Protecting me from jars and jolts, hiding me from potential enemies, keeping me safe from the sun’s searing rays, at last they brought me to a place of rest. Aye, and it was a long rest: a time of enforced retirement, for recuperation, for the reshaping of my broken body; a long, long rest indeed!

  For how Thibor had hurt me! All bones broken, back and neck, skull and limbs; chest caved in, heart and lungs aman-gle; skin flayed by boulders and sharp branches, and seared with fire … even the vampire in me was burned, bruised, and battered. A month in the healing? A year? Nay, a hundred years!

  My long convalescence was spent in an inaccessible mountain retreat, and all the while my Szgany tended me, and their sons, and their sons. Aye, and their sweet, firm-breasted daughters, too. Slowly the vampire in me healed itself, and then healed me. Wamphyri, I walked again, practised my arts, made myself wiser, stronger, more awesome than ever before. And eventually I went abroad from my aerie and made plans for my life’s adventure.

  Ah, but it was a terrible world in which I emerged, with wars everywhere, great suffering, famines, pestilence! Terrible, aye, but the stuff of life to me—for I was Wamphyri!

  I found myself the ruins of a keep in the border with Wallachia and used the tumbled stones to build a small castle there. Almost impregnable within its walls, I set myself up as a boyar of some means. I led a mixed body of Szgany, Hungarians, and local Wallachs, housed them and paid them good wages, was soon accepted as a landowner and leader. And so I became a small power in the land.

  As for Wallachia: I avoided venturing there, mainly. For there was one in Wallachia whose strength and cruelties were already renowned: a mercenary Voevod named Thibor, who fought for the Wallach princelings. I did not wish to meet this one (who should by rights be keeping guard over my lands and properties in the Khorvaty even now!), not yet; for in the event of my seeing him, I might not be able to contain myself. Which could well prove fatal, for he was now grown to a far greater power than I myself. No, my revenge must wait … what is time to the Wamphyri, eh?

  Time in the tumult of its passing, where an entire day is like the single tick of a great clock—it is nothing. But when each vastly extended tick is precisely the same as the one gone before, and when they begin to fall like thunderclaps upon the ear … ah, but then one discovers time’s restrictions, from which only boredom and uttermost ennui may ensue. And that is everything! I was restless, confined, pent up. There was I, lusty, strong, something of a power, and nowhere to channel my energies. The time was coming when I must go farther abroad in the roiling world.

  But then, in the year 1178, a diversion.

  Over a period of some few years I’d been hearing tales of a Szgany woman who was a true observer of times; which is to say, she had the power of precognition. Eventually my curiosity was piqued and I determined to see her. She was not of my own band of Gypsies, and so I had to wait for her to venture into those mountainous regions within my control.

  Meanwhile, I sent out messengers to direct her wanderings aright, describing how and when she and her band came within my spheres, they would be offered every hospitality, treated with utmost respect, and paid in gold for whichever services they might render unto me. And in the interim, while I waited on the advent of this alleged oracle, I determined to practise what small talent I possessed in casting a few weirds of my own.

  I mixed certain herbs and burned them, fell asleep breathing their incense, and sought by oneiromancy to divine the way it would be between myself and this doubtless fraudulent witch, this “Marilena” (for such was her name). Aye, for in those days I had good reason to be interested in talented folk, and to seek them out whenever the opportunity arose. My son Thibor had been abroad for several human lifetimes now, and might have spawned all manner of curiosities in the land!

  And so I sought out all such anomalies, and in so doing prided myself with the discovery of charlatans. But … if I should come across a genuine talent (and if Wamphyri blood should course in the veins of such a one) then he or she would be a goner! For while to a creature such as I the blood is—or was—the life, the sweetest nectar of all may only be sipped from the undead font of another vampire! A font, aye, for such a sip is surely holy—to one such as I am, at least.

  But … only picture my astonishment when finally my oneiromancy produced results, and I dreamed of this dark angel where I had thought to discover a hag!

  What? She was a child! I saw her in my dreams: a lovely child, aye, and innocent I thought (but wrongly, for she was knowing as a whore!). She came to me naked—all curves, creamy and brown, unblemished; dark in her eyes and in her shining hair; the lips of her face red as cherries, and those of her oyster when I opened it the hue of freshly slaughtered meat—to stand before me unashamed. Two centuries gone by since Thibor destroyed my castle in the Khorvaty, and raped my vampire women and put them down; between then and now I had tasted my share of soft Szgany flesh, spilling myself into such Gypsy odalisques as pleased me. Nothing of “love” in it, mind you; that word was only applicable to others, never to myself. But now … ?

  It was the human side of me, of course, which from time to time held sway in my dreams. I gazed upon this sweet, sensuous princess of the Travelling Folk through eyes fogged by human weakness. The shuddering of my loins was the love (call it that if you will) of a man, but never the raging lust of the Wamphyri. And to my shame, my dreams were wet, and I came in my blankets like a trembling lad stroking the teats of his first girl!

  But … the trouble with oneiromancy was always this: had it been a true and accurate prediction of the future, or was it just a dream? Thereafter, in order to reinforce my findings (and perhaps for other reasons, for plainly I was besotted), night after night would find me burning my herbs and willing myself into divinatory dreams. And always they were the same, except that the better we got to know each other, Marilena and I, the more pleasurable our loveplay became and myself ever more enamoured; until I knew that instead of a mere dream, I must have the real thing or go mad!

  Which was when she came to me, as it were, in the flesh.

  She was of the camp of Grigor Zirra, called “King” Zirra; indeed, Marilena was Grigor’s daughter. And so I had been right: she was a “princess” of the Travelling Folk.

  It was winter when they came, the end of January, and never so biting cold in all the years of my memory. My own Szgany stationed their caravans and carts in clusters close to my walls, banked them in with huge bricks of snow smoothed to ice, pitched their tents within the clusters, and tethered their beasts inside with them, for their warmth. Ah, they had known it would be a hard winter, these wise ones! In the caves all around they had worked long and hard, storing fodder for their animals. Even so, men and beasts alike would be hard put to see it through that winter without they relied on the patronage of the boyar in his castle.

  I kept all my doors unbarred to t
hem, and my halls warm with fires everywhere. My good grogs and coarse red wines were made available for the asking, likewise grain to make their bread; it cost me nothing; these things belonged to the Szgany anyway, for in better seasons they’d given them all to me, who had no need of them!

  One midmorning a man came to me. He had been hunting in the mountains, which were my mountains. I did not deny the Gypsies this privilege; if they shot three pigs or woodcocks, one was mine, and so on. And he told me of the Szgany Zirra: that they were caught in a pass close by, where an avalanche had carried their caravans away! Only a handful survived, he said, scattered in the tumbled drifts.

  I knew his report was true. Last night I had dreamed again my herbal dreams, but this time devoid of carnal delights and filled instead with blizzards and the screams of those swept away and dying! And because I had not dreamed of my Marilena, I wondered … was she one of them?

  Then I called for my Szgany chief and told him, “There is a girl trapped in the snows. This man knows where she is. She and her people are Szgany. Go, find them, dig them out, and bring them here. And hurry, for if you are too late and she is dead … the house of the Ferenczy may feel that its hospitality is wasted on such as you and yours. Is this understood?”

  It was, and he went in all haste.

  In the afternoon my chief and his men returned. He made report: of the Szgany Zirra, which had numbered as many as fifty, he had found only Grigor Zirra himself and a dozen of his band alive. Three of the survivors were broken but would mend, two more were old women and might not, and of the rest … one was Grigor’s daughter, called Marilena, an observer of times!

  I commanded him, “Have your women tend them, feed them, give them whatsoever they need. Spare nothing to make them welcome, comfortable, at ease in this place. I take it they have nothing? Nothing of extra clothing, no carts or coverings? So, without me they are destitute. Very well, quarter them within the castle’s walls. Find them warm rooms within easy reach of my own, where they may stay apart.” And seeing a puzzled look in his eyes: “Well?”

  “You own people might think it strange, master,” he said, “that you treat the strangers so well. That we make way for them, who owe you no allegiance.”

  “You are forthright and I like you for it,” I told him. “I, too, shall be forthright. I have heard it said of the woman Marilena Zirra that she is comely. If this is true, it may be that I shall want her, for you Gypsies are not the only ones who feel the cold of a night! Wherefore treat her people with respect, especially her father and family, if such as these survived. I do not wish they should find me a cold and cruel man.”

  “What? You, master?” he said, with no trace of emotion in his voice, his face utterly blank. “Cold? Cruel? Who would ever believe it?”

  I regarded him awhile, finally saying, “Forthright is one thing, and forward another entirely. Do you seek to be familiar with me? I tell you honestly, I cannot believe you would enjoy such … familiarity. Wherefore, when you say certain things to me, and in such a way, it should always please you to smile …” I stared at him and rumbled a little deep in my throat, until he grew uncomfortable.

  “Master,” he said, beginning to tremble, “I meant no—”

  “Hush!” I quieted him. “You are safe, my mood is a good one! Now heed me well. Later, when the Zirras are recovered, return and take me among them where they are quartered. Until then, begone.”

  But when I went among them, I was not pleased. It wasn’t that my instructions had not been followed; they had, to the letter. It was simply that the ordeal of these people had been such that they were mazed and vacant. It would take a little time in the healing. Meanwhile, they sat in their rags and trembled, and spoke only when they were spoken to.

  As for the supposed “princess” of my dreams: where was she? One filthy bundle huddled to the fire looked much like the next to me. It annoyed me that my dreams had lied to me; I felt that I had failed in my oneiromancy; I hated failure, especially in myself.

  So I stood and gloomed over these dregs awhile and finally asked, “Which one of you is Grigor Zirra?”

  He stood up: a nothing, a wisp, pale from the snow and his suffering, the loss of his people. He was not old, but neither did he look young. There had been strength in his leanness once, but now it looked washed out of him. Unlike myself, he was entirely human, and he had lost … much.

  “I am the Ferenczy,” I told him. “This is my castle. The people about are my people, Szgany like yourself. For the time being, it pleases me to give you shelter. But I have heard there is an observer of times among you, and it also pleases me to contemplate such mysteries. Where is this witch—or wizard?”

  “Your hospitality is vast as your legend,” he answered. “Alas that in my sorrow I cannot more fully declare my appreciation. For something of me died this day. She was my wife, swept from the cliff. Now I have only a daughter, a child, who reads the future in the stars, in the palm of your hand, and in her dreams. She is no witch, lord, but a true observer of times, my Marilena, of whom you have heard.”

  “And where is she?”

  He looked at me and there was fear in his eyes. But I felt a tug at the sleeve of my robe and started that someone dared touch me. None of my own had laid finger on me unbidden since the day I rose up from my sickbed! I looked … and saw one of the rag bundles risen to its feet to stand beside me … its eyes were huge, dark beneath a fur hood … its hair was all black ringlets, spilling about a heart-shaped face … its lips were the colour of cherries, bright as blood. And upon my arm her tiny hand, whose fingers numbered only three, as I had seen them in my dreams!

  “I am Marilena, Lord,” she said. “Forgive my father, for he loves and fears for me; there are some in the land dubious of mysteries they cannot fathom, and unkind to certain women whom they term witches.”

  My heart felt staggered! She could be none other! I knew the voice! I saw through all her clothes to the very princess of my dreams, knowing that what was in there was a wonder. And: “I … know you,” I said, my voice choked.

  “And I you, Lord. I have seen you in my future. Often. You are in no wise a stranger!”

  I had no words. Or if I had, they were stuck in my throat. But … I was the Ferenczy! Should I dance, laugh out loud, pick her up, and whirl her all about? Oh, I wanted to, but I could not reveal my emotions. I stood there thunderstruck, like a great fool, frozen, until she came to my rescue.

  “If you would have me read for you, Lord, then take me aside from here. Here my concentration suffers, for there is much sadness—aye, and various comings and goings, and likewise much fuss and to-do—oh, and many small matters to interfere with my scrying. A private place would be to some advantage …”

  Oh? Indeed it would! “Come with me,” I said.

  “Lord!” her father stopped us. “She is innocent!” The last word was spoken on a rising note—of pleading, perhaps? My nature was not unknown among the Szgany.

  But … didn’t he know his own daughter? It was in my mind to say to him, “Lying Gypsy dog! What, this one, innocent? Man, she has licked my entire body clean as if bathed! I have fired my fluids into her throat every night for a month from the coaxing of her tongue and tiny, three-fingered hands! Innocent? If she is innocent, then so am I!” Ah, but how could I say these things? For the fact of it was that I had only ever dreamed my love affair with Marilena!

  Again she rescued me.

  “Father!” She rebuked him before I could more than pierce him with my eyes. “I have seen what will be. For me the future is, father, and I have read no harm in it. Not at the hands of the Ferenczy.”

  He had seen my look, however, and knew how far he strained my hospitality. “Forgive me, Lord,” he said, lowering his head. “Instead of speaking as a man sorely in your debt, I spoke only as a father. My daughter is only seventeen and we are fallen among strangers. The Zirras have lost enough this day. Ah! Ah! I meant nothing by that! But do you see? I trip over my own tongue even no
w! It is the grief. My mind is stricken. I meant nothing. It is the grief!” And sobbing, he collapsed.

  I stooped a little and put my hand on his head. “Be at your ease. He who harms you or yours in the house of the Ferenczy answers to me!” And then I led her to my quarters …

  Once there, alone, where none dare disturb, I lifted off her coat of furs until she stood in a peasant dress. Now she looked even more like the princess I knew, but not enough. My eyes burned on her, burned for the sight of her. And she knew it.

  “How can this be?” she said, full of wonder. “I truly know you! Never were my dreams more potent!”

  “You are right,” I said. “We are not … strangers. We have shared the same dreams.”

  “You have great scars,” she said, “here on your arm, and here in your side.” And even I, the Ferenczy, trembled where she touched me.

  “And you,” I told her, “have a tiny red mole, like a single tear of blood, in the centre of your back …”

  Beside my fire, which roared into a great chimney, there stood a stone trough for the bathing. Over the fire, a mighty cauldron of water added steam to the smoke. She went to the tripod and turned the gear, pouring water into the trough. She knew how to do it from her dreams! “I am unclean from the journey,” she explained, “and rough from the snows.”

  She stripped and I bathed her, and then she bathed me. “And how is this for a private reading?” I chuckled. But as I opened her and went to slip inside:

  “Ah!” she gasped. “But our mutual dreams took no account of my inexperience. My father told the truth, Lord. The future is closing fast, be sure, but I am still a virgin!”

  “Ah!” I answered her, moan for moan, the while gentling my way inside. “But weren’t we all, once upon a time?”

  How my vampire raged within me then, but I held him back and loved her only as a man. Else the first time were surely her last …

  Now let me make it plain. What had happened was this: