Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (68 page)

Well, if there were survivors, I do not know of them …

But of that handful who remained local and loyal to Radu, a few
did
survive. Aye, and six hundred years ago, an
ancestor of mine, a Mirlu, was one of them. We
had
to survive, else Radu himself could not. For who would there be to … to
tend
him in his secret lair? To listen to him dreaming? To reassure him, if only by our presence, of the time of his return?

To … to
console
him, in his long, lonely sleep?

My ancestor, aye. He, or more likely she, lived and died a moon child -but not without leaving an heir to her duties. And there
would always be an heir down the centuries. For four hundred years, Harry - a Mirlu to care for Radu in his
immemorial tomb! Until there was me …

And surely that is the true miracle: that to know him and be faithful to him - indeed, to dedicate one’s life to him -
is to extend that life indefinitely! Longevity beyond the wildest dreams of the boldest men of science and medicine!

And yet Radu has it, Harry, and so do I. And so can you!

But I fancy I’ve strayed … I was speaking of EgonDrakul… let me continue:

In Poland the Black Death had little impact. Why? Who can say? The plague was carried by rats of Asiatic origin; perhaps
there were too many rivers to cross: the Danube, the Elbe, the Oder. Anyway, and despite that
one third
of the European population
succumbed, Egon Drakul survived. OrifnotEgon himself, a blood-or egg-son, certainly.

Now, theDrakuls had been driven out of their foothold in Transylvania many hundreds of years earlier by successive waves of eastern
invaders. Their influence in that mountainous region had been eroded; they’d been less than covert in their activities; the legend
they originated was eradicated - almost.

But six hundred years ago, in the wake of plague, famine, war, and civil unrest in general - after the decimation of
Europe - it was time to return to the source land, the mountains that Egon knew so well. Why, upon a time he’d even
been a Lord there, no less than in Sturside in another world! So much I’ve gathered … for in two hundred years I have been
something of a far-traveller myself, when times have allowed. And on my Master’s behalf I’ve done what you will do: sought evidence of his
olden

enemies; sought to locate them, so that when Radu returns he’ll know their numbers and whereabouts.

And this much I have learned:

That indeed there was a Drakul in his Transylvanian castle until a time as recent as a hundred years ago! An ‘aristocrat,’

aye-a Count! The people around knew him, however, and eventually it was his time to move on again. But was it Egon Drakul?

Egon himself? Oh, I think so. And I have my reasons.

Radu had killed Egon’s brother Karl, then ‘gone to earth’ in Scotland. Perhaps Egon sought revenge. Perhaps he
would even seek out my Master! However it was, he had his thralls in England - ‘sleepers,’ if you will - and went
there. Now down the years this Drakul’s mentalist talent had grown; in order to inform his English thralls of his imminent arrival
on their soil, he reached out to them with his mind … and in so doing, likewise alerted Radu where he lay dreaming in his
mountain refuge! And Radu alerted me …

A hundred years ago, aye. Can you imagine how things have changed, Harry? There were no aeroplanes in those days; now men have
walked on the surface of our mistress moon, and sent their messages out to the stars’. The sciences were
stil
young, while superstition was still
rife. There were alchemists, and others who remembered and believed in the old legends. And there were some I feared, because of what they
believed. But there was no other way and I must protect my Master.

There was a much-travelled man, a doctor, who knew - who believed -the legend of the
Wampir.
And before the Drakul was
able to set up a colony in England, I made known to this doctor his presence here. It was easy … a letter … a warning. And it
coincided with a spate of strange deaths and deteriorations. Also, Egon had come aboard a ship; well, how else? But a plague ship
by the time it wrecked on the northeast coast! And so my doctor was convinced.

He put paid to Egon’s plans, pursued him back to Transylvania, brought him up out of his coffin into sunlight. It was the end
of one of the original Lords of the Wamphyri, brought about by
my
hand!… As instructed by my Master, of course.

But it was the
way
of it - the
way
of his true death - that convinced me it was Egon Drakul and none other, no
matter what names he may have used. To surrender to the sunlight like that, and devolve into so much dust. Ah, but
he had been Wamphyri for long and long …

And what an opportunity, eh? I couldn’t resist it: a trip to my Masters country, where first he entered this world.

And from there into the hinterland, where at least one ancient Drakul castle is standing to this day. My duties were such
that I could afford ninety days, no more: barely sufficient time. But I went anyway - to the castle of the dead Drakul.

What, on a whim? Never! My Lord Radu Lykan sent me, and with specific instructions at that. For he knew that
the Drakuls had been

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creatures of habit, by which I might know for certain it was Egon we had kiled. And in the dank and gloomy dungeons, in the spider-haunted vaults of that hated
place on its gaunt promontory, I found the evidence I sought:

A bed of earth in the crumbling debris of an antique cofin. Earth out of Starside, in a vampire world. But a cofin? One cofin? Ah,
wo …
there were
two
cofins!

The one, the old one, bore a
motif
in the shape of a riven man. And according to my Master Radu, it had been a Drakul punishment in Starside to tear enemies
asunder and let their guts rain down onto the boulder plains beneath the great aeries. The other cofin was newer. Some two or three hundred years old, it carried no special sigil
but only these initials: ‘D.D.’ Surely the second of the two must stand for Drakul?

There were Szgany around, Szekely. Apparently they were in thrall in one degree or another to the now absent Drakuls. They kept the castle, and sheltered within its structure through bad
winters. Me they hated on sight, but I am what I am and was not concerned. They melted away into the country around, leaving me to my own devices. But before
departing for England I…
found
a Szkeley youth who was … not adverse to talking tome.

And the youth told me that indeed the great Boya/s ‘son’ had set out with his retainers and journeyed east, at the selfsame time as his ‘father’ had ventured
westwards. So then, Egon was dead, but his son - egg-or bloodson, I can’t say
-
had fled east. But ‘east is a big place and too far away in those days for me to
visit. And it seems that this most recent Drakul had learned the lesson his forbears forgot or ignored: the maxim which has it that longevity is synonymous with
anonymity. For in al the years since I’ve heard no more of these terrible Drakuls. Except from Radu, who assures me that at host one of them survives still. ‘D.D.’

of course.

Wel, so much for them, who were in any case the least of Radu’s enemies. As for the worst of them: they were - they
are -
the Ferenczys!

Let me tell you what is known of them, but in order to do so I must go back a long, long way …

Now in the vampire world, Radu and the Ferenczy clan had been enemies from the start. Theirs was a bloodfeud that began long before they were Lords, when they were Szgany
in Sunside. Radu was a mere youth when the brutish Ferenczy brothers, Lagula and Rakhi, not only murdered his human father but raped to death his sister, the only creature he’d
ever cared for in al Sunside. When she was dead … then he cared for nothing much. Nothing but revenge.

No, not true: he was also fond of a she-wolf who wandered the Sunside hils with him during his days as a mountain man, a loner without a tribe, neither family nor friends, only the sun to warm
him and the stars for guide at night. Radu and his she-wolf, aye. But she was infected with

vampirism and had a leech; the parasite vacated her for Radu, who was a stronger, cleverer host. Thus he became Wamphyri.

But when Radu crossed into Starside, he found the Ferenczys already there, vampire Lords of their own great aeries. So their bloodfeud continued, becoming
part of the greater Wamphyri bloodwars. Eventualy Radu conquered and kiled both of the Ferenczy brothers, but not before Lagula had sired Nonari ‘the
Gross Ferenczy, whose left hand was like a club, with al the fingers fused into one.

And so the bloodwars went on, year in year out, for decades, until Starside was drenched in blood! But in the end the only real victor was neither dog-Lord,
Ferenczy, Drakul, nor any ‘common’ Lord. No. It was Shaitan the Unborn, first of them al, who had the wit to pick them of one by one when they were weakened
by the fighting. Then, when it was over, Shaitan banished them through the Gate for their troubles. Thus Radu came into this world, and his most hated enemies
with him - especialy Nonari the Gross.

They could have setled it then, but they were strangers in our world with troubles enough. So they went their own ways; Radu adventuring in the world, and
Nonari … doing whatever he did. But Nonari had sworn vengeance on Radu, his kith, kin, and spawn for al time to come, for the deaths of Lagula his father
and Rakhi his uncle: the impassioned vow of a Lord of the Wamphyri, which might even outlast eternity! And down al the years and centuries Radu stayed alert,
and kept an ear cocked at al times for word of Nonari Ferenczy.

He heard certain things. For instance:

How one ‘Onarius Ferengus,’ the Roman Governor of a smal province on the Black Sea, had died in the Year 445 of thereabouts, at the hands of unknown
barbarians. That was when Radu had been a Vandal, before they turned on him and drove him out of Italy. But he had also heard how this Onarius had a son in
the mountains north of Moldavia, in a place caled the Khorvaty. And this son’s name was Belos Pheropzis.

Down the years, as time and his travels alowed, Radu made inquiry but learned little. A hundred years later, when he was a Voevod in the eastern
Carpathians, he even tried to discover the whereabouts of this castle of Belos Pheropzis. Events intervened; his duties caled him away; the search must wait.

Centuries later he did come across the castle in the Khorvaty, but found it deserted and falling into ruin. Fortunately the people of the region kept records, and
they remembered.

Belos Pheropzis had been a great and terrible Boyar, and his mountain retreat secret and near-inaccessible, as Radu had discovered. He, too, had a son,
caled Waldemar Ferrenzig, and a daughter who never ventured out from the castle. It was rumoured that Belos slept with her, a not uncommon practice among
the Wamphyri.

Belos had finally come to grief fending of a party ofBulgar raiders; his castle was saved but he lost his life; surviving Bulgars likewise expired, in
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an avalanche brought about by Waldemar. And thereafter Waldemar slept with his sister…

There were two sons (but one of them might have been Waldemar s egg-son, who knows? Wamphyri bloodlines are intricate as their
histories are complex; even what I’ve told you so far is hearsay and unproven!) But at least one must have been a bloodson, by Waldemar,
most likely out of his sister. Well, brother murdered brother in an argument, and the survivor inherited the castle from
Waldemar. But as to what became of Waldemar himself… again I am at a loss.

The brother who inherited the Khorvaty castle was called Faethor, and he reverted to the original family name: Faethor Ferenczy …

BJ. paused as Harry’s body spasmed in an apparently involuntary (and inexplicable) jerk. It felt like the kick of a recumbent man in the moment before he falls asleep, which will often wake him up again. Except Harry’s ‘sleep’ was a state of deep hypnosis, and his reaction outside of B.J.’s previous experience.

‘Are you … cold?’ (For now she felt a shiver, or even a shudder, running through him). Kneeling over him, B.J. stirred blackened cinders to life and placed kindling and a smal log where the embers were stil hot. By which time Harry had settled down again and she could continue:

Faethor was a strange one. He would stay at home in his castle for decades at a time, but always in the end the blood would draw him out, and of he’d go
adventuring in a war-torn world. In the two hundred years preceding the Fourth Crusade he used a great many pseudonyms. He was, for instance, ‘Stefan
Ferrenzig,’ then ‘Peter,’ ‘Karl,’ and ‘Grigor,’ He
became
his own son time and time again, for he knew that a man may not be seen to live too long among common
men - and certainly not for centuries!