Deadspeak

It was brief:

David Chung uttered a long drawn-out sigh - and Zek snapped bolt upright in her chair. Her eyes remained closed for several long seconds while all the colour drained from her face. Then... they shot open and she snatched herself away from Chung, straightened to her feet and backed unsteadily away from the table.

Jazz went to her at once. 'Zek?' his voice was anxious. 'Are you OK?'

For a moment she stared right through him, then at him, and accepted his arms. He felt her trembling, but at last she answered: 'Yes, I'm all right. But Harry -'

'You found him?' Darcy too had risen to his feet.

'Oh, yes,' David Chung nodded. 'We found him. What did you read, Zek?'

She looked at him, looked at all of them, and freed herself from Jazz's arms. And said nothing.

Darcy said, 'Is he OK?' And he held his breath waiting for her answer.

Eventually she said, 'He's all right, yes, and he got there safely - to his destination, I mean. Also, I saw enough to know that it will all come to a head soon. But... something isn't right.'

Darcy's heart thudded in his chest. 'Not right? You mean he's already in trouble?'

She looked at him, and her look was so strange it was as if she gazed on alien things, in a world of ice beyond the times and places we know. 'In trouble? Oh, he's that, all right, but not necessarily the trouble you're thinking of.'

'Can you explain?'

She straightened up and gave herself a shake, and hugged her elbows. 'No, I can't,' she said, shaking her head. 'Not yet. And anyway, I could be mistaken.'

'But mistaken about what?' Darcy's frustration was mounting. 'Harry is going up against Janos Ferenczy personally, man to ... to thingl If he's in trouble before they even meet, his disadvantage could well be insurmountable!'

Again she gave him that strange look, and shook her head, and quietly said, 'No, not insurmountable. In fact on a one to one basis, I think you'll find that... that there's not a great deal to choose between them.'

Following which, and for quite a long time, she would say no more.

With the misted valley far below and in the streaming moonlight of the heights, Harry knew the climb would soon be over and he'd be face to face with hell. He had hoped to call up all the local dead into an army on his side, arid march with them on Janos's place. But even the dead were afraid. Now there was very little time left, and probably less hope. So the fact that he actually found himself anticipating what was to come was a very hard thing to explain. It could be of course that he'd simply 'cracked' under the strain, but he didn't think so. He'd never been the type.

His mind was still open and Möbius picked up his thoughts:

A breakdown? You? No, never! And especially not now, when we're so close. I need to be into your mind, Harry.

'Enter, of your own free will,' he answered, almost automatically.

The other was very quickly in and out, and he was excited as never before. It all fits! It all fits! he said. And the next time I come, I'm sure I'll be able to unlock those doors.

'But not right now?'

I'm afraid not.

'Then there may not be time for a next time.'

Don't give in, Harry!

'I haven't. I'm just facing facts.'

I swear we'll have the answer in minutes! And meanwhile you could try helping yourself.

'Help myself? How?'

Give yourself a problem in numbers. Set yourself a mathematical task. Prepare to re-establish your numeracy.

'I wouldn't even know what a mathematical problem looked like.'

Then I'll set one for you. The great mathematician was silent for a moment, then said: Now listen. Stage one: I am nothing. Stage two: I am born and in the first second of my existence expand uniformly to a circumference of approximately 1,170,000 miles. Stage three: after my second second of uniform expansion my circumference is twice as great! Question: what am I?

'You're crazy,' said Harry, 'that's what you are! A minute ago I would have sworn it was me, but now I know that I'm perfectly sane. Compared to you, anyway.'

Harry?

Harry laughed out loud, causing the Gypsies who struggled up the final rise with him to jump. 'A madman,' they muttered, 'yes. The Ferenczy has driven him mad!'

The Necroscope used his deadspeak again: August, here's me who can't count his toes without getting nine, and you ask me to solve the riddles of the universe?

Pretty close, Harry, Möbius answered, pretty close. Just keep at it and I'll be back as soon as possible. His deadspeak faded and he was gone.

Jesus! said Harry to himself, shaking his head in disgust. Jesus!

But Möbius's question had stuck in his head. He couldn't give it his attention right now, but he knew it was in there, lodged firmly in his mind.

And now the party had reached the top of the cliffs; and somewhere here on this wind-blasted, sparsely-clad plateau, here lay the ruins of the Castle Ferenczy. That was where Janos waited; but right here and now, here at the top of the long climb... here something else waited. Seven somethings in all, or eight if one included the Grey One slinking in the moon-cast shadows. Harry's 'escort' to the lair of the undead vampire.

The two leading Zirras saw them first, then Harry, finally the three Gypsies who panted where they laboured close behind. All drew back, startled and gasping, except the Necroscope himself. For Harry knew that he stood in the presence of dead men, which was common ground for him. What he and the others with him saw was this:

Seven great Thracians, dead for more than two thousand years, raised up again from their burial urns to do Janos's bidding. They had the aspect of life at least, but there was a great deal of death in them, too. They wore helmets and some pieces of armour of their own period, but wherever their grey flesh showed naked it was scarred, disfigured. Their helmets were fearsome things, designed to terrify any beholder: they were domed, of gleaming bronze, with oval eye-holes dark in the flicker of their torches, and curved, downward-sweeping flanges to cover the jaws of the wearers.

All seven were big men, but their leader stood a good four inches taller than the rest. He stepped forward, massive, but the eyes behind the holes in his mask were red - with sorrow.

Bodrogk looked at Harry Keogh and the five who cowered behind him. 'Free him,' he said. His tongue was ancient but his meaning - the way his bronze sword touched Harry's ropes - couldn't be mistaken.

The Szgany spokesman stepped cautiously to Harry's side and loosened the nooses a little around his neck. And to Bodrogk the Gypsy said: 'You are ... the Ferenczy's creatures?'

Bodrogk didn't understand. He looked this way and that, frowning, wondering what the man's question had been. Harry read his deadspeak confusion and answered: 'He wants to know if Janos sent you.' He spoke the words aloud, letting his deadspeak do the translating. And now Bodrogk's gaze centred on Harry alone.

The massive Thracian paced forward and the Gypsies fell back. Bodrogk caught the ropes around Harry's neck and snapped them like threads. He grunted an introduction, then said: 'And so you are the Necroscope, beloved of all the world's dead.'

'Not all of them,' Harry shook his head, 'for there are cowards among the dead even as there are among the living. If I can't know them - because they are afraid to know me - then I can't befriend them. And anyway, Bodrogk, I've no great desire to be loved by thralls.'

Bodrogk's men had come forward, moving closer to the Gypsies on the bluff, herding them there. Now their huge leader took off his helmet and tossed it clanking aside. His neck was a bull's, his face full-bearded, fierce. But it was grey, that face, and, like the rest of his flesh, gaunt with an unspoken horror. His haggard, harried aspect told far better than any words the way in which Janos had dealt with him and his.