Necroscope IV Deadspeak - By Brian Lumley Page 0,108

would be too late. For one of these crumbling piles was surely Faethor's, and pretty soon the bulldozers would level it, too, into the earth forever.

Harry shivered again, got down from the wall on the other side and made his way from ruin to ruin, searching for the right one. And as evening turned to twilight he found and knew the place at once, just from its feel. The birds kept their distance, singing their muted evening songs in trees and bushes hundreds of yards away, so that they scarcely reached here at all; there were no bees or flying insects and the foliage bore neither flower nor fruit; even the common spiders kept well clear of Faethor's last place in all the world. It seemed a singular warning, and yet one which Harry must ignore.

The place was not exactly as he remembered it. The absence of adequate drainage had threaded it with small, stagnant streams, where every slightest hollow had become a pool. A veritable swamp, normally it would be alive with mosquitoes, but of course it was not. At least Harry needn't worry about being bitten while he slept. But that (being bitten) was a thought he could well do without!

In the deepening twilight he took out a sleeping-bag from his holdall and made down his bed on a grassy hump within low, ivy-clad walls. Before settling he answered the call of nature behind a crumbling mound of rubble some little way apart, and returning to his place saw that he wasn't entirely alone here. At least the small Romanian bats weren't afraid of this place; they flitted silently overhead, then swept away to do their hunting elsewhere. Perhaps in their way they paid homage to the ancient, evil Thing which had died here.

Harry smoked one of his rare cigarettes, then tossed away the stub like a tiny meteorite in the night to sizzle out in a small pool of water. Finally he pulled up the zipper on his sleeping-bag and made himself as comfortable as possible, and prepared to face whatever his dreams would conjure...

Harry? The monstrous, gurgling voice was there at once, touching upon his sleeping mind without preamble. So, and it would seem that you have come. It sounded as close and vibrant as if-a living person spoke to him, and Harry sensed no small measure of satisfaction in it. But in his dream, try as he may, he couldn't remember what he was doing here. Oh, he knew Faethor's mental voice well enough, but not why the vampire had chosen to seek him out. Unless it was to torment him. And so he kept silent, for the one thing he did remember was that he was forbidden to speak to the dead.

What, all of that again? Faethor was impatient. Now listen to me, Harry Keogh: I didn't seek you out but the other way around. It is you who visits me here in Romania. And as for being forbidden to speak to me - or to the dead in general - surely that is why you are here, so that I may undo what has been done to you?

'But ... if I speak to you,' Harry paused and waited for the pain to strike him down, which it did not, 'there's this pain that comes and -'

And has it come? No, because you are asleep and dreaming. Conscious, you may not converse with me. But you are not conscious. Now tell me, pray, may we get on?

Now Harry remembered: asleep, his deadspeak couldn't hurt him. Oh yes, he remembered that now -and more than that. 'I came ... to find out about Janos Ferenczy!'

Indeed, Faethor answered, that is one of the reasons why you are here. But it is not the only one. Before we consider all of that, however, first answer me this: did you come here of your own free will?

'I'm here out of necessity,' said Harry, 'because there are vampires in my world again.'

But did you come as a free man, as you yourself willed it? Or were you compelled by force, cajoled or coerced against your own natural desires?

By now Harry was fully 'awake' in his dream and more surely aware of the vampire's wiles. Moreover, he'd grown as skilled in their word-games as the Wamphyri themselves and knew that they were only a form of verbal manoeuvring. 'Compelled?' he said. 'Well, no one pushed me. Coerced? On the contrary, my friends would have kept me back! But cajoled? Only