Unable to tear his eyes away, Thibor groaned and grew pale at the sight of that which followed.
‘A cutting, aye,' Faethor's voice was low, trembling with dark passions, ‘to be nurtured in flesh already tainted and falling into decay. The lowest form of Wamphyri existence, it will come to nothing so long as it has no living host. But it will live, devour, grow strong — and hide! When there is nothing left of Arvos it will hide in the earth and wait. Like the vine, waiting for a tree. The cut-off leg of a starfish, which does not die but waits to grow a new body — except this thing I make waits to inhabit one! Mindless, unthinking, it will be a thing of the most primitive instincts. But it can nevertheless outlast the ages. Until some unwary man finds it, and it finds him…'
His incredible, bloody, throbbing forefinger touched Arvos' flesh… and leprous white rootlets sprang forth, slid like worms in earth into the gypsy's chest! Small flaps of fretted skin were laid back; the pseudopod developed tiny glistening teeth of its own; it began to gnaw its way inside. Thibor would have looked away but he could not. Faethor's ‘finger' broke off with a soft tearing sound and quickly burrowed its way out of sight within the corpse.
Faethor held up his hand. The severed member was shrinking back into him, pseudoflesh melting into his flesh. The cancerous colours went out of it; it assumed a more normal shape; the old fingernail fell to the floor, and right in front of Thibor's eyes a new, pink shell began to form.
‘Well then, my hero son who came here to kill me,' Faethor slowly stood up and held out his hand toward Thibor's bloodless face. ‘And could you have killed this?'
Thibor drew back his face, head and body, tried to cringe into the very stone to avoid that pointing finger. But Faethor only laughed. ‘What? You think that I would…? But no, no, not you, my son. Oh, I could, be sure! And forever you'd be in thrall to me. But that is the second state of the Wamphyri and unworthy of you.
No, for I hold you in the highest esteem. Why, you shall have my very egg!'
Thibor tried to find words but his throat lacked moisture, was dry as a desert. Faethor laughed again and drew back that threatening hand of his. He turned away and stepped to where the squat Wallach lay humped on the stone flags, gurglingly breathing, face down in a dusty corner. ‘He is in that second state,' Thibor's tormentor explained. ‘I took from him and gave him something back. Flesh of my flesh is in him now, healing him, changing him. His tears and broken bones will mend and he will live — for as long as I will it. But he will always be slave to me, to do my bidding, obey my every command. You see, he is vampire, but without vampire mind. The mind comes only from the egg and he is not grown from seed but is merely… a cutting. When he wakes, which will be soon, then you will understand.'
‘Understand?' Thibor found his voice, however cracked. ‘But how can I understand? Why should I want to understand? You are a monster, I understand that! Arvos is dead, and yet you… you did that to him! Why? Nothing can live in him now but maggots.'
Faethor shook his head. ‘No, his flesh is like fertile soil — or the fertile sea. Think of the starfish.'
‘You will grow another… another you? Inside him?' Thibor was very nearly gibbering now.
‘It will consume him,' Faethor answered. ‘But another me — no. I have mind. It will not have mind. Arvos cannot be a host for his mind is dead, do you see? He is food, nothing more. When it grows it will not be like me. Only like… what you saw.' He held up his pale, newly formed index finger.
‘And the other?' Thibor managed to nod in the direction of the man — that which had been a man — snoring and gasping in the corner. -
‘When I took him he was alive,' said Faethor. ‘His mind was alive. What I gave him is now growing in his body, and in his mind. Oh, he died, but only to make way for the life of the Wamphyri. Which is not life but undeath. He will not return to true life but to undeath.'
‘Madness!' Thibor moaned.
‘As for this one —, The Ferenczy stepped into shadows on the far side of the cell, where the light did not quite reach. The legs and one arm of Thibor's second Wallach comrade protruded from the darkness, until Faethor dragged all of him into view. ‘This one will be food for both of them. Until the mindless one hides himself away, and the other takes up his duties as your servant here.'
‘My servant?' Thibor was bewildered. ‘Here?'
‘Do you hear nothing I say?' Faethor's turn to scowl. ‘For more than two hundred years I have cared for myself, protected myself, stayed alone and lonely in a world expanding, changing, full of new wonders. This I have done for my seed, which now is ready to be passed on, passed down, to you. You will stay behind and keep this place, these lands, this "legend" of the Ferenczy alive. But I shall go out amongst men and revel! There are wars to be won, honours to be earned, history is in the making. Aye, and there are women to be spoiled!'
‘Honours, you?' Thibor had regained something of his former nerve. ‘I doubt it. And for a creature "alone and lonely", you seem to know a great deal of what is passing in the world.'
Faethor smiled his ghastliest smile. ‘Another secret art of the Wamphyri,' he chuckled obscenely in his throat. ‘One of several. Beguilement is another — which you saw at work between myself and Arvos, binding his mind to mine so that we could talk to each other over great distances — and then there is the art of the necromancer.'
Necromancy! Thibor had heard of that. The eastern barbarians had their magicians, who could open the bellies of dead men to read their lives' secrets in their smoking guts.
‘Necromancy,' Faethor nodded, seeing the look in Thibor's eyes, ‘aye. I shall teach it to you soon. It has allowed me to confirm my choice of yourself as a future vessel of the Wamphyri. For who would know better of you and your deeds, your strengths and weaknesses, your travels and adventures, than a former colleague, eh?' He stooped and effortlessly flopped the body of the thin Wallach over onto its back. And Thibor saw what had been done. No wolf pack had done this, for nothing was eaten.
The thin, hunched Wallach — an aggressive man in life, who had always gone with his chin thrust forward — seemed even thinner now. His trunk had been laid open from groin to gullet, with all of his pipes and organs loose and flopping, and the heart in particular hanging by a thread, literally torn out. Thibor's sword had gutted men as thoroughly as this, and it had meant nothing. But by the Ferenczy's own account, this man had already been dead. And his enormous wound was not the work of a sword.
Thibor shuddered, turned his eyes away from the mutilated corpse and inadvertently found Faethor's hands. The monster's nails were sharp as knives. Worse, (Thibor felt dizzy, even faint,) his teeth were like chisels.
‘Why?' The word left Thibor's lips as a whisper.
‘I've told you why.' Faethor was growing impatient. ‘I wanted to know about you. In life he was your friend. You were in his blood, his lungs, his heart. In death he was loyal, too, for he would not give up his secrets easily. See how loose are his innards. Ah! How I teased them, to wrest their secrets from him.'
All the strength went out of Thibor's legs and he fell in his chains like a man crucified. ‘If I'm to die, kill me now,' he gasped. ‘Have done with this.'
Faethor flowed close, closer, stood not an arm's length away. ‘The first state of being — the prime condition of the Wamphyri — does not require death. You may think that you are dying, when first the seed puts out its rootlets into your brain and sends them groping along the marrow of your spine, but you will not die. After that…‘ he shrugged. ‘The transition may be laboriously slow or lightning swift, one can never tell. But of one thing be sure, it will happen.'