And after a moment’s silence, Faethor said thoughtfully, For one who seeks my help, you don’t much hide your feelings.
‘We are poles apart,’ Harry told him, ‘but we do have a mutual enemy.’
Thibor? Why then have you spent time with him?
‘Thibor is the source of the trouble,’ Harry answered. ‘He is, or was, your enemy, and what he left behind is my enemy. I hoped to learn things from him and was partially successful. Now he’ll tell me no more. You offered help, and here I am to accept your offer. But we don’t have to pretend friendship.’
Guileless, Faethor said. That is why they love you. But you are right: Thibor was and is my enemy. However much I’ve punished him, 1 can never punish him enough. So ask what you will of me, and I’ll answer all.
‘Then tell me this,’ said Harry, eager once more. ‘After he hurled you from your castle in flames, what became of you then?’
I shall be brief, Faethor answered, because I sense that this is only part of what you desire to know. Cast your mind back then, if you will, one thousand years into the past…
Thibor the Wallach, whom I had called son — to whom I had given my name and banner, and into whose hands I had bequeathed my castle, lands and Wamphyri power had injured me sorely. More sorely than even he suspected. That cursed ingrate!
Thrown down from the walls of my castle in flames, I was burned and blinded. Myriad minion bats fluttered to me as I fell, were scorched and died, but dampened the flames not at all. I crashed through trees and shrubs, tumbled in a thousand agonies down the steep side of the gorge, was torn by trees and boulders alike before striking bottom: But my fall was broken in part by the foliage, and I fell in a shallow pool which put out the flames that threatened to melt my Wamphyri flesh.
Stunned, as close to true death as a vampire might come and remain undead, still I put out a call to my faithful gypsies down in the valley. I know you will understand what I mean, Harry Keogh. We share the power to speak with others at a distance. To speak with the mind alone, as we do now. And the Szgany came.
They took out my body from the still, salving water and cared for it. They carried me west over the mountains into the Hungarian Kingdom. They protected me from jars and jolts, hid me from potential enemies, kept me from the sun’s searing rays. And at last they brought me to a place of rest. Ah! And that was a long rest: for recuperation, for reshaping, a time of enforced retirement.
I have said Thibor had hurt me. But how he had hurt me! I was sorely damaged. All bones broken: back and neck, skull and limbs. Chest staved in, heart and lungs a mangle. Skin flayed by fire, torn by sharp branches and boulders. Even the vampire in me, which occupied most parts and portions, was battered, torn and scorched. A week in the healing? A month? A year? Nay, an hundred years! A century, in which to dream my dreams of red —or night-black — revenge!
My long convalescence was spent in an inaccessible mountain retreat, but a place more a cavern than a castle; and all the while my Szgany tended me, and their sons, and their sons. And their daughters, too. Slowly I became whole again; the vampire in me healed itself, and then healed me; Wamphyri, I walked again, practised my arts, made myself wiser, stronger, more terrible than ever before. I went abroad from my aerie, made plans for my life’s adventure as if Thibor’s treachery had been but yesterday and all my wounds no more than a stiffness of the joints.
And it was a terrible world in which I emerged, with wars everywhere and great suffering, and famines, and pestilence. Terrible, aye, but the very stuff of life to me! For I was Wamphyri .
I builded me a small castle in the border with Wallachia, almost impregnable, and there set myself up as a Boyar of some means. I led a mixed body of Szgany, Hungarians and local Wallachs, paid them well, housed and fed them, was accepted as a landowner and leader. The Szgany, of course, would have followed me to the ends of the earth —and they did, they did! — not out of love but some strange emotion which is in the wild breast of all the Szgany. Simply say that I was a Power, and that they associated with me. As for my name: I became Stefan Ferrenzig, common enough in those parts. But that was only the first of my names. Thirty years after my full recovery I became the ‘son’ of Stefan, called Peter, and thirty years later Karl, then Grigor. A man must not be seen to live too long., and certainly not for centuries. You understand?