Deadspeak

He looked for Janos, saw the monster's fleeting shadow moving back into the darkness of the ruins. A ploy, a feint: Harry's cue to pursue him. Well, and wasn't that what he was here for?

As he followed after Janos, so the Grey One rushed up behind him and snapped at his heels. Harry stiffened his leg into a bar of flesh and bone and lashed out, and felt teeth crunch as his foot concertinaed the beast's slavering muzzle. He snarled at the creature and took up his sword two-handed... and astonishingly the wolf shrank back, whining!

Before Harry could wonder at the meaning of this, Bodrogk and one of his remaining four stepped from cover and together fell on the animal. The sounds of their attack were brief and reminded Harry of nothing so much as a butcher's shop as they first crippled the beast, then cut short its yelping and howling by taking its head.

Harry's eyes were more accustomed to the dark now; in fact his clarity of vision in the night was entirely remarkable and a wonder to him. But that was something else he had no time to consider. Instead he looked into the heart of the tumbled pile and saw Janos standing behind a toppled wall. The monster's gaze was fixed on a point beyond Harry - the Thracians, of course. But as he pointed his great talon of a hand, so the Necroscope shouted: 'Look out!'

'OGTHROD AI'F...' Janos commenced his crackling rune of devolution, and before he'd finished another Thracian had cried out, sighed, and crumbled into smoking, drifting dust. One of the two had been saved at least, and Harry found himself hoping it was Bodrogk.

But now the Necroscope went after Janos with a vengeance. Athletic, sure-footed even in the dark, he saw the vampire commence a descent apparently into the earth itself behind a mound of rubble. In the last moment before he disappeared he turned his freakish head and looked back, and Harry saw the crimson lamps of his eyes. There was a challenge written there which the Necroscope couldn't resist.

He found the stone trapdoor raised above hollowed steps leading down, and almost without thought began his own descent - until a voice from behind stopped him. Looking back, he saw Bodrogk and his remaining warriors converging on him. 'Harry,' the great Thracian rumbled. 'You'll be first down. Go swiftly! Preserve my Sofia!'

He nodded, clambered down the spiralling stairwell - a wall of stone on one side and a chasm opening on the other - down to the first landing. But setting foot on the solid stone floor...

Janos was waiting!

The vampire came from nowhere, knocked the sword out of Harry's hands, hurled the Necroscope against the wall with such force that all the wind was hammered out of him. Before he could draw breath Janos towered over him, closed one huge hand over his face and slammed his head against the wall. Physically there was no match: Harry went out like a light.

Harry... Haaarry! his mother cried out to him, a hundred mothers like her, an even larger number of friends and acquaintances, and all the dead in their graves across the world. Their voices soughed in the deadspeak aether, filled it, penetrated the threshold of Harry's subconscious mind and wrapped him in their warmth. Warmth, yes, for the minds of the dead are different from the common clay of their once-flesh.

Ma? he answered through his pain and the struggle to rise up, back into the conscious world. Ma... I'm hurt!

I know, son, she said, her voice brimming over. I feel it... we all of us do. Lie still, Harry, and feel how we feel for you. Behind her, the wash of background deadspeak was building up to a crescendo, a wall of mental moaning.

Lying still won't help, Ma, he said. Nor all the gnashing of teeth I hear going on there. I'm going to have to shut you all out. I need to wake up. And when I've done that I'll need help just to live.

But the dead can help, Harry! she told him. There's one trying to contact you even now who has part of the answer.

Möbius? She had to be talking about Möbius.

No, not him, Harry sensed the shake of her head. Another, someone who is much closer to you. Except there's not much left of him, Harry. You won't hear him against all of this. Wait, and I'll see if I can quiet them.

She retreated, spoke to others, passed on a message that spread outwards like ripples in a calm pond where a stone has been tossed, until it encompassed the world. The mental babble quickly faded away and an extraordinary silence followed. Out of which -- Harry?

Whoever it was, his deadspeak was so weak that at first the Necroscope thought he must be imagining it. But:

Are you looking for me? he answered, eventually. Who are you?

/ am nothing, the other sighed. Not even a whimper, not even a ghost. Or at very best a ghost even among ghosts. Why, even the dead have difficulty hearing my voice, Harry! My name was George Vulpe, and five years ago my friends and I discovered the Castle Ferenczy.

Harry nodded. He killed you, right?

He did more, worse, than that! the other moaned, his deadspeak thin as the slither of dry, dead leaves. He took my life, my body, and left me without... anything! Not even a place to rest.

Harry felt that this was very important. Can you explain?

I've spoken to a great many Zirras in the Place of Many Bones, George Vulpe told him. When the Ferenczy lay in his urn, they were the ones who came to feed and refuel him with their blood. But I was different. On my hands there were only three fingers!

Now Harry gasped. You were the one!

He has my body, the other said again. And I can't rest. Ever.

What was he? Harry wanted to know. / mean, how did he usurp you, drive you from your body?

The other explained. My blood drew him up from his urn. I was a son of his sons, from the Zirra clan. But I didn't know that. Only my blood knew.

He came from his urn? Harry pressed. As essential salts?

My blood transformed him.

Harry needed help to understand. He uncovered Faethor.

Damn you, Harry Keogh! the incorporeal vampire at once raged.

Be quiet! Harry told him. Explain what this man is saying to me.

Faethor heard Vulpe's story, said: Why, isn't it obvious?

Janos had taken precautions. When I reduced his brain and vampire both to ashes, his ever faithful Zirras hid him away in a secret place until he could perform this... this metempsychosis. But it wasn't merely a transfer of minds: Janos's leech was revived from its ashes. The creature itself entered this one's body! And now -

But Harry at once closed him down again. And: George, he said, thanks for your help. I don't see what good it will do me, but thanks anyway.

The only answer was a sigh, rapidly fading to nothing...

Harry strove to rise up from unconsciousness, to revive himself, to wake up. And was on the verge of succeeding, then Möbius came.

Harry! Möbius cried. We have it! We believe we have it! He entered the Necroscope's mind, and in another moment: Yes, yes - this must be right! But... are you ready?

I've never been so ready, Harry answered.

That's not what I meant, said Möbius. / mean, are you prepared mentally?

Prepared mentally? August, what is this?