“—Years without number, aye.” Lardis nodded, taking it up where the old Gypsy had left off. “For long and long, Vladi—a lifetime wasted, as your father wasted his before you. For what did you find but a fiend who took one of yours and changed her? What did you find but the wampir, the bloodsucker of legend? Do not be mistaken: I know the bloody history of you and yours, my friend. Now look at me and tell me: can’t you see and even hear it in me? My looks, and the dappled light of distant forests in my eyes? And my tongue, which is the old, the original Szgany language out of another world? Surely you, of all people, recognize the truth when you see it? What, Vladi Ferengi and that knowing old beak of his? Well then, and what does your beak smell here, in the shape of Lardis Lidesci?”
The precog Ian Goodly, who had spent some time—or as he would have it, too much time—in Sunside/Starside, understood much of what Lardis had said. Straightening up where he sat, he glanced sideways, warningly at his old friend but remained silent. He was concerned that Lardis shouldn’t give too much away. On the other hand, while Goodly did not agree entirely with the Old Lidesci’s approach, he acknowledged that he was speaking to one of his own kind, a fellow Traveller, and had to accept that he was probably best equipped for the job.
And as for Liz, understanding little of what she heard yet knowing most of what Lardis had said by reason of her telepathy: to her it was as if his words were hypnotic in their monotonous pacing. And likewise to Vladi Ferengi.
The old man’s jaw had fallen open. Leaning forward in his chair, balancing himself with his spindly arms on the table, he stared at Lardis at first in disbelief. But the more he looked, the more obvious the truth became to him. And yes, his nostrils gaped wide as he sniffed out Lardis’s origins; and yes, his old eyes opened wider as he began to accept that Lardis was what he said he was.
“I could smell it on you in my camp, near Eleshnitsa,” the old Traveller said then, his voice trembling. “The smell of the source world, where all of the Szgany had their beginnings. But I had searched for so long, and always in vain, that I supposed I was mistaken. There is no water in the desert, only mirages. You were a mirage in the desert of my dreaming! Also, what were you but a man? Only a man and scarcely a prince, or the mighty boyar of my searching. Now you tell me you are a king—and not only that but a messenger out of time, too! Except your message is a hard one, Lardis of the Lidescis, and I don’t think that I can bear it. Are you saying that my people are … that they’re less than honourable?”
“And even less than that,” said Lardis. “Or if not you and your people, then your ancient line—your ancestors—certainly.”
“Then I won’t accept it!” The fire flared again in Vladi’s eyes, and he thumped the table with both fists, making it jump.
“Oh?” said Lardis, without flinching. “Is it so? And yet I sense that you’ve suspected it for long and long, and that I am only telling you what you’ve known deep in your heart for years without number. As for my origins—and therefore my authority in such matters—I can prove them. There’s a word I would say to you, Vladi of the Szgany Ferengi.”
“A word?” the other fumed and sputtered. “What word?”
“Wamphyyyri!” Lardis growled it like a wolf.
“Ahhhh!” Vladi sighed, drawing back again.
“And when you sat by your grandfather as he told his campfire stories, as his grandfather told them to him,” Lardis went on relentlessly, “didn’t he ever speak that word? And didn’t he tell you its meaning?”
“He did! He did!” said the old man. “He told me that they—the Wamphyri—were our enemies in the old times, which was why the Ferenc brought us away from the old world into this one. Also, he told me that the Wamphyri were bloodsuckers, who could not live in the sunlight but came in the dead of night to steal our wives and children in the dark. And that forever and always such would be our lot: to give away our children to strangers.”
“Which you are still doing to this very day,” said Lardis grimly and unforgivingly. “in Romania, Bulgaria, and many other places, giving away and even selling your own children. Because it runs in your vile blood, Vladi, come down to you through all the forgotten centuries. For I tell you as a true witness, that in a far vampire world your ancestors, the Szgany Ferengi, were Wamphyri supplicants who gave of their blood to a vampire Lord! And that is precisely what you have done, in Kavála, in Greece. Now, I can’t yet say if that was deliberate, a monstrous act of sacrifice, or an accident which came about because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But whichever, that poor young girl you buried with silver on her eyes was a victim of your search and perhaps of what you found—or of something that found you!”
“But I … I …” Vladi stuttered.
“If you are innocent, however,” Lardis went on, “then your legends have been distorted in the telling—distorted by time, perhaps, or perhaps by shame—by the shame of your supplicant ancestors.”
“By shame?” Old Vladi sat limply, shrunken now. All of the fire had gone out of him. “What are you saying? That because my forebears did wrong in the past, they changed the history of my people to suit, to hide their sins? Is that what you’re saying? But even if you’re right, what wrong have I done?”
“You’ve done according to your blood,” said Lardis. “Right or wrong is for you and you alone to say. As for myself, I say: purge yourself of all these old legends, these dreams, which in fact are nightmares. Tell me what I require to know, Vladi, and help me and my friends rid the world of a great horror.”
“So then,” said Vladi, shaking his head in a dazed manner, trying hard to sit up straighter in his chair, “you are not the Ferenc. No, obviously not, for you are only a man, and you deny him.” He was babbling now, and it was as if all that Lardis had told him had flown over his head, or as if he’d heard only what he wanted to hear and would only answer accordingly. “Very well, then perhaps you are the messenger, or a messenger of sorts? Is that it? Did you come to tell me … to tell me that the Ferenc and his kind … that they are no more? Are you saying that … saying that my long search is ended? Is that why you are here?”
“Ferenczys?” said Lardis. “So far as I know—so far as I pray—they are no more. The last of them was in my time: Fess Ferenc, a grotesque monster in his aerie in Starside, in a vampire world beyond the Gates you call the strange places. But if by ‘his kind’ you mean the Wamphyri … oh, yes, they are still here, old Vladi. Some of them are here even now, in this world. But haven’t I already said as much? That girl of yours: she was taken by one of the Wamphyri, a female, we think, who came here recently from the source world. I and others like me would seek them out, to destroy them. That’s why I’ve come to see you. Not to accuse you in person but to ask your help. Only refuse it—” Lardis nodded grimly, “—then I’ll accuse!”
“Destroy them? The Wamphyri, our olden enemies? Of course they must be destroyed! But—” Vladi was confused; he began to rock to and fro, and his old eyes seemed suddenly glazed. “What am I to make of all this? I have spent a lifetime, and I cannot … I do not … and what of the old legends? … They spoke of the old times, the history of my people. And now you would tell me … you would say that they are lies, all of them?”
Lardis nodded. “Some of them, at least.”
“But the Ferenc … he was a great—”
“A great monster!” said Lardis. “Aye, for whichever Ferenc this ‘mighty boyar’ of yours was, he was nevertheless a Lord of Vampires, banished out of Sunside by his own kind, the Wamphyri. Which tells its own tale: that this so-called hero was banished for his sins by the greatest sinners of all time! Hah! So there you have it. Ferenc, Ferenczy, or Ferengi, they were all of the one blood, Vladi, and they were monsters all.”
“But the legends! The legends handed down to us out of the old times—”
“The old times?” Lardis cut him short, and Liz got up and went round to Vladi’s side of the table, putting her arm around his frail shoulde
rs to support and steady him. “Let me tell you how it was in those old times,” Lardis went on. “How it was and how it is even now in Sunside/Starside, beyond those Gates that you know as the strange places. Aye, and how it might yet be in this world, if we can’t stop this cancer from spreading further. Hear me out, and then judge for yourself whether or not I speak truly or falsely.”
And finally Vladi nodded. “Go on then, I’ll hear you out.”
Then, after a moment’s thought, Lardis went on to tell the whole story, but as briefly as possible, painting word-pictures in the old Szgany tongue, and letting the Gypsy king’s imagination (and perhaps ancestral memories) fill in the blank spaces.
Until at last, when Lardis was finished, and after several long seconds of silence:
“I … I think you must be mistaken,” said Vladi, steadier in his voice now but still trembling in his limbs. “I pray that you are mistaken. But whether you are or you aren’t, I cannot—dare not—tell my people what you have told me! What, that our proudest legend is only the shameful lie of cowardly forebears? No, never that! But I can and must put an end to my search. For if what you say is true, then on this occasion this old beak of mine led me in an entirely wrong direction, which brought about a monstrous thing. The girl, yes—‘little Maria,’ which is how I shall always remember her—she was related to me, as are all of the Szgany Ferengi. But oh, that lovely child … drained of her life force, dead and gone from us, and lodged in the earth. And all because … because I led my people astray!”
“But better dead, buried, and gone from all of us,” Lardis spoke more quietly now, “than one of the undead in the aerie of some Lord or Lady of the Wamphyri. Well, at least you suspected that much, and were wise enough to put a stake through her.”
“Eh? What’s that?” the old Romany king stared hard at him. “Do you think we did that? No, no—it must have been the work of frightened villagers, but never me and mine! Yet now … now it would seem they were right to do such a terrible thing.” And there were tears in old Vladi’s eyes as he looked at Lardis and said, “But the Wamphyri? In this world? And one of them took my sweet little Maria? Is it so?”
“We’re seeking them out,” Lardis told him again, “even the one who did this thing, and others like her, to put them out of their misery and out of our sight forever.”
Vladi breathed deep and sat up straighter. “Then I’ll tell you how it was,” he said, “—and where It is—but I cannot be exact for I don’t know all the details. Maria, she told us very little. She was mazed, and she was—”
“—Undead,” said Lardis, “aye.”
And Liz, her arm around Vladi’s slumped shoulders, came in with: “Whatever you can tell us will be of great assistance. We don’t know a lot, and this … this creature has hidden herself away from us. But one thing seems certain, if we don’t find her there’ll be a great many more innocents lost to the cold earth. Either that or they’ll be walking upon it, lusting for blood in the night!”
And Ian Goodly said, “It’s your chance to redeem yourself, Vladi, you and all your people. What was done is done. The past is beyond reckoning now, but the future is still to come. While we still have a future, we all must do our best to protect it.”
“There’s not a lot to tell,” said Vladi then. “I dreamed a dream of the strange places, and of one who came out of them to seek his people. We would come south for the winter, as always, despite that this year the winter is late. And this old beak of mine smelled the wind off the Greek islands; I seemed to detect a scent out of time; I knew that something very strange awaited us, and thought that perhaps this time … this time the legend would be answered.
“In Kavála we took a ferry to … to the island. We didn’t pay a lot, but still the Greeks were glad of our custom in what had proved for them a very poor season. And so we brightened up our caravans and wandered the island’s villages. The coins were slow in coming, but they came little by little. And of course I followed my nose.
“We camped for some few days on the outskirts of a village called Skala Astris, where a deep gorge shaded us from the sun. Maria Cilestu sold paper flowers. She went out one morning with a basket … and she didn’t come back! But this was scarcely an unheard of situation. We had had the occasional runaway before: handsome young men—and pretty young girls, too—who perhaps received offers they couldn’t refuse. For you know, it can be a hard life on the road, and I had always tried to understand the feelings and motives of any who wanted to break with it. But on an island such as that, so very small, how far could Maria run? Not far, be sure. Also, since we would be there a while longer, we knew she could always change her mind and come back to us.
“Maria had never known her father, and her mother had died some time ago. Personally, I wasn’t too concerned over her; she had always proved capable at taking care of herself. Of course, some of the younger men worried about her, the ones who fancied her, you know. But there were none who could lay claim to her. And anyway, I was far more concerned about the island itself.
“For to this old beak of mine … I don’t know … I can’t say, but it had an odd atmosphere, that island. Well, of course it did—which was why I had taken my people there in the first place! But now that we were there …
“I had dreams—dreams about the campfire, more properly a bonfire! I would find myself standing beside this great fire in the night, waiting. And all my people there with me, but all in a huddle, shivering, clinging tight together. Don’t ask me what it was about, for I hate to think. But they were ominous, those dreams, and they left me feeling ill.
“In the daylight hours, that weird atmosphere was scarcely any weaker, while at night … I wouldn’t even consider letting my men light a fire! What, music and dancing? And the smell of roasting meats going up into the night air? Not on that island, no! From the Greek tavernas—aye, by all means—but not from any campfire of mine! And yet I couldn’t say why …”
“But I can,” said Lardis grimly. “You dreamed what was in your blood, Vladi: dreams out of time, a time when the fires of your forebears called the Wamphyri to the feast. A time such as I’ve spoken of, when they came in the night and sniffed out the camps of the Szgany in Sunside. And your shivering people? They huddled together because they knew the meaning of that bonfire. It was a signal fire, to light the way for the Ferenc, for this ‘great boyar’ of yours, calling him to the tithe—to his blood tribute!”
“But—”
“—But that was in your dreams,” Lardis continued, “while in your waking hours you fretted over it and wouldn’t allow the setting of any fires in your camp! So there’s hope for you yet, old king. You know what’s right and what’s wrong—even if your ancestors didn’t.”
“Do you think so?” Vladi’s eyes were pleading now.
But Lardis only nodded and said, “Get on with your story.”
And after a moment’s pause: “Nothing more to tell,” Vladi shrugged apologetically. “My dreams got worse; instead of discovering the one for whom I had searched for so long, my no longer trustworthy old beak had led me into the presence of something bad, something evil. That was when I decided to break camp and return to the mainland. And as we left that place, I never once looked back.
“At the ferry, Maria was waiting. But she was changed. And the rest you know: that business at the mainland hospital, when she begged to be allowed to go with us, and we took her without permission … the newspaper men … the police … those sweet Sisters of Mercy … hah! My camp was like a busy crossroads in the middle of some vast and sprawling city! Well, not that bad, but bad enough.
“So that by the time I saw you, Lardis of the Lidescis, in the forest at Eleshnitsa, I’d had all I could take of outsiders. I mention that now by way … by way of an apology.”
“No need,” said Lardis, with a shake of his head. “I think that you’ve acquitted yourself, King Vladi.”
“And now all that we need,” said Liz, “is the name of that island.”
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“It was Krassos,” said the other. “And if that’s where you are headed, then good luck to you. But as for myself—”
“—Your wandering days are over,” said the precog. “I can see your future very clearly, old king. From here you’ll return to your people in the forests, where you will spend a good many years yet before your time is up. As for the strange places—” he shook his head, “—they won’t call to you any longer.”
“I believe you,” said Vladi. “And since I’m the last of my line, what little of my bad blood still remains in my people is so diluted that I know there can never be another old beak like mine. As for the Ferenc: I know the truth now. His ways are not ours, and I have been an old fool. Now I’ll make sure he’s forgotten, and that no man goes in search of him again.”
“But don’t you understand?” said Lardis, frowning. “Didn’t I make myself clear when I told you that there is no Ferenc?”
At which the old man gazed at him steadily and for several long moments before answering, “I wish you were correct, Lardis Lidesci, but I fear that you are mistaken. There is just such a one. Perhaps the last of his kind, I can’t say, but he is still there. Somewhere on the shores of the Middle Sea, in the cities of men, he’s there. I didn’t find him for all my wandering, no, it’s true. But I fancy that’s because he hasn’t found himself.”
“Hasn’t found himself?” Lardis’s frown deepened, furrowing his brow. “What can you mean?”
“Perhaps he’s biding his time,” said Vladi, “not yet ready to reveal himself. If so, then he’ll be too late; I’m done with him now. And when I’m gone mine won’t know him. No, for I’ll do my best to dismantle at least one false legend before I die.”
“Your vow?” said Lardis, realizing that whatever the Gypsy king believed, it could make little or no difference now. And:
“Aye,” said Vladi. “My Szgany vow!”
11
LONDON … BAGHERIA … CASTELLANO’S STORY …