Necroscope II Wamphyri(Vampyri) - By Brian Lumley Page 0,102

from a narrow ledge in the cliff at the rear, where a roofed over causeway of doubtful timbers formed a bridge from the ledge to a window in the wall of the second tower. Doubtless this had been the Ferenczy's bolthole, which he'd never had cause to use. But if he could get out that way, so could he get in. I found oil, drenched the planking, set fire to the causeway and stayed long enough to ensure that it was well ablaze.

I paused periodically at other embrasures to gaze out on the night. At first there were only the moon and stars, stray wisps of cloud, the valley, silvered, touched occasionally by fleeting shadows. But as I proceeded with my task of lighting and securing the castle, so I was aware that things were beginning to stir. A wolf howled mournfully afar, then closer, then many wolves. The trees in the gorge were inky now, ominous as the gates to the underworld.

In the first tower I found a barred, bolted room. A treasure house, maybe? I threw back the bolts, lifted the bar, put my shoulder to the door. But the key had been turned in the great lock and removed. I leaned my ear to the oak panels and listened: there was sly movement in there, and... whispering?

Perhaps it was as well the door was locked. Perhaps it had been locked not to keep thieves out but something else.

I climbed to the hall where Faethor had poisoned me, and there found my weapons where I had last seen them. More, I took down from the wall a mighty long-handled axe. Then, armed to the teeth, I returned to the locked room. There I loaded my crossbow and placed it close to hand, stuck my sword point-down in a crack in the floor, ready for grasping, and took both hands to the axe in a huge swing at the door. I succeeded with that blow in caving in a narrow panel, but at the same time I dislodged from its hiding place atop the lintel a rusty iron key.

The key fitted the lock. I was on the point of turning it to enter, when - such a clamouring from the wolves! So loud I could

hear its doomful dinning even down here! Something was afoot.

I left the door unopened, took up my weapons and raced up winding stairs to the upper levels. Wolves howled all around the castle now, but they were loudest at the rear. In a very little while I traced the uproar to the burning causeway, and arrived in time to see the bridge go crashing down, blazing into the back chasm. And there across the gap were Faethor's wolves in a pack, crowding the narrow ledge.

Behind them in the shadow of the cliff... was that the Ferenczy himself? The hairs on my neck stood erect. If it was him, he stood crookedly, like a queer bent shadow. Broken from his fall? I took up my crossbow but when I looked again - gone! Or perhaps he'd never been there. The wolves were real enough, however, and now the leader, a giant of a beast, stood at the rim measuring the gap.

It would be a leap of all of thirty feet, possible only if he had a clear run along the ledge. And even as I thought it, so the lesser wolves made way, shrank back into shadows, left the ledge clear. He ran back, turned, made his loping run and leaped - and mid-flight met my bolt, which sank directly into his heart. Dead, but still snarling his last snarl, he hit the rim of the opening and went tumbling into oblivion. And when I looked up, the rest of the pack had melted away.

But I knew that the Ferenczy would not give up that easily.

I went up onto the battlements, found jars up there full of oil and cauldrons seated on tilting gear. Setting fires in braziers under the cauldrons, I half-filled each one with oil and left them to simmer. And only then did I return to the locked room.

As 1 approached a hand, slender, female, wriggled in the hole in the panelling, tried desperately to reach and take hold of the key in the lock. What? A prisoner? A woman? But then I remembered what old Arvos had said about the Ferenczy's household: 'Retainers? Serfs? He has none. A woman or two, perhaps, but no men.' Here was a seeming contradiction: if this