Necroscope

But you will, you will.

'And when will you tell me these things?'

When you can understand, Dragosani.

'You said I was your future. You said you were my past. That's a lie. I have no past. I'm just a boy.'

Oh? Ha, ha, ha! So you are, so you are. But in your thin blood runs the history of a race, Dragosani. I am in you and you are in me. And our line is... ancient! I know all you want to know, all you will want to know. Aye, and this knowledge shall be yours, and you shall be one of an elite and ancient order of beings.

Boris was half-way to the break now. Until this point and from the moment he fled, his conversation had been part bravado, part terror, like a man whistling in the dark. Now, feeling safer, he became curious again. Clinging to the bole of a tree and turning to look back, he asked: 'Why do you offer anything to me? What do you want of me?'

Nothing which you will not give freely. Only that which is offered freely. I want something of your youth, your blood, your life, Dragosani, that you may live in me. And in return... your life shall be as long, perhaps even longer, than mine.

Boris sensed something of the lust, the greed, the eternal endless craving. He understood - or misunderstood - and the darkness behind him seemed to swell, expand, rush upon him like some black poisonous cloud. He turned from it, fled, saw ahead the dazzling white of fire-break through the black boles of trees. 'You want to kill me!' he sobbed. 'You want me dead, like you!'

No, I want you undead. There is a difference. I am that d ifference. And so are you. It's in your blood - it's in your try name - Dragosaaniiii...

And as the voice faded to silence Boris emerged into the open space of the fire-break. In the fading light he felt fear falling from him like a weight, felt strangely - uplifted? - so that he held himself erect as he descended to the foot of the hill and found his sledge. Bubba had waited there, patiently, but when Boris reached out a hand to pat him the dog snarled and drew back, the hair rising in a stiff ridge all along his back. And after that Bubba would have nothing at all to do with him...

Under Dragosani's gaze the snow faded from memory and the slopes turned green again. The old scar of the fire-break was there still, but merging into the natural .contours of the hill under the weight of almost twenty years of growth. Saplings were grown into trees now, their foliage thickening, and in another twenty years it would be difficult to tell that the fire-break had ever been there in the first place.

Dragosani supposed that somewhere in the land ordi nances governing these parts, there must be a clause which still forbade farming or hewing or gaming on the green cross of the hills. Yes, for despite old Kinkovsi's lack of more typical peasant superstition (which was doubtless a direct spin-off of the relative tourist boom) the old fears still lived. The taboos were still there, even if their origins were forgotten. They still existed, as surely as the thing in the ground existed. Laws which were intended to isolate it now protected it, preserved it.

The thing in the ground. That was how he thought of it. Not as 'he' but 'it'. The old devil, the dragon, the vampir. The real vampire and not merely a creature of sensational novels and films. Still there, lying in the ground, waiting.

Again Dragosani let his mind slip back through the years...

When he was nine the local school in Lonesti had closed and his step-father had boarded him out to a school in Ploiesti. There in a very short time it had been discovered that his intelligence was of a high order, and the State had stepped in and sent him to a college in Bucharest. Always on the lookout for talent in the young of their satellite nations, Soviet officials from the Ministry of Education had eventually found him there and 'recommended' that he go on to higher education in Moscow. What they meant by 'higher education' was in fact intensive indoctrination, following which he would one day be sent back to Romania as a puppet official in a puppet government.

But before that - when he had first learned that he was to board in Ploiesti, and that he could only come home once or twice a year - then he had gone back to the dark glade under the trees to ask the advice of the thing in the ground. Now he went there again, on the wings of memory, and saw himself as he had been: a boy, sobbing into his hands where he kneeled beside a broken slab and poured his tears over the bas-relief motif of bat-dragon-devil.

What? Knowing I seek iron and strong meat, you offer me salt and gruel? Can this be you, Dragosani, who has the seed of greatness in him? Was I mistaken, then? And am I doomed to lie here forever?

Tm to go to school in Ploiesti. I'm to live there and only come back now and then.' And this is the cause of your grief? 'Yes.'

Then you are a girl! How would you hope to learn the ways of the world here in the shadow of the mountains? Why, even the birds that fly see more and farther than you have seen! The world is wide, Dragosani, and to know its ways you must walk them. And Ploiesti? But I know this P loiesti: it is distant by only a hard day's riding - two at the most! And is this a good reason to weep?'

'But I don't want to go...'

I did not want to be put in the ground, but they put me here. Dragosani, I have seen a sister with her head cut off, with a stake through her breast and her eyes hanging on her cheeks, and I did not weep. No, but I pursued her payers and ski