Necroscope II Wamphyri(Vampyri) - By Brian Lumley Page 0,67

have mind. Arvos cannot be a host for his mind is dead, do you see? He is food, nothing more. When it grows it will not be like me. Only like... what you saw.' He held up his pale, newly formed index finger.

'And the other?' Thibor managed to nod in the direction of the man - that which had been a man - snoring and gasping in the corner. -

'When I took him he was alive,' said Faethor. 'His mind was alive. What I gave him is now growing in his body, and in his mind. Oh, he died, but only to make way for the life of the Wamphyri. Which is not life but undeath. He will not return to true life but to undeath.'

'Madness!' Thibor moaned.

'As for this one - , The Ferenczy stepped into shadows on the far side of the cell, where the light did not quite reach. The legs and one arm of Thibor's second Wallach comrade protruded from the darkness, until Faethor dragged all of him into view. 'This one will be food for both of them. Until the mindless one hides himself away, and the other takes up his duties as your servant here.'

'My servant?' Thibor was bewildered. 'Here?'

'Do you hear nothing I say?' Faethor's turn to scowl. 'For more than two hundred years I have cared for myself, protected myself, stayed alone and lonely in a world expanding, changing, full of new wonders. This I have done for my seed, which now is ready to be passed on, passed down, to you. You will stay behind and keep this place, these lands, this "legend" of the Ferenczy alive. But I shall go out amongst men and revel! There are wars to be won, honours to be earned, history is in the making. Aye, and there are women to be spoiled!'

'Honours, you?' Thibor had regained something of his former nerve. 'I doubt it. And for a creature "alone and lonely", you seem to know a great deal of what is passing in the world.'

Faethor smiled his ghastliest smile. 'Another secret art of the Wamphyri,' he chuckled obscenely in his throat. 'One of several. Beguilement is another - which you saw at work between myself and Arvos, binding his mind to mine so that we could talk to each other over great distances - and then there is the art of the necromancer.'

Necromancy! Thibor had heard of that. The eastern barbarians had their magicians, who could open the bellies of dead men to read their lives' secrets in their smoking guts.

'Necromancy,' Faethor nodded, seeing the look in Thibor's eyes, 'aye. I shall teach it to you soon. It has allowed me to confirm my choice of yourself as a future vessel of the Wamphyri. For who would know better of you and your deeds, your strengths and weaknesses, your travels and adventures, than a former colleague, eh?' He stooped and effortlessly flopped the body of the thin Wallach over onto its back. And Thibor saw what had been done. No wolf pack had done this, for nothing was eaten.

The thin, hunched Wallach - an aggressive man in life, who had always gone with his chin thrust forward - seemed even thinner now. His trunk had been laid open from groin to gullet, with all of his pipes and organs loose and flopping, and the heart in particular hanging by a thread, literally torn out. Thibor's sword had gutted men as thoroughly as this, and it had meant nothing. But by the Ferenczy's own account, this man had already been dead. And his enormous wound was not the work of a sword . .

Thibor shuddered, turned his eyes away from the mutilated corpse and inadvertently found Faethor's hands. The monster's nails were sharp as knives. Worse, (Thibor felt dizzy, even faint,) his teeth were like chisels.

'Why?' The word left Thibor's lips as a whisper.

'I've told you why.' Faethor was growing impatient. 'I wanted to know about you. In life he was your friend. You were in his blood, his lungs, his heart. In death he was loyal, too, for he would not give up his secrets easily. See how loose are his innards. Ah! How I teased them, to wrest their secrets from him.'

All the strength went out of Thibor's legs and he fell in his chains like a man crucified. 'If I'm to die, kill me now,' he gasped. 'Have done with this.'

Faethor flowed close, closer, stood not an arm's length away. 'The first