Wamphyri! Brian Lumley

Half-way up, the inward-facing walls sprouted flying buttresses almost as massive as the towers themselves, which met across the gorge in a single span – like a stone bridge some eighty or ninety feet from tower to tower. Supported by the buttresses, a long single-storey hall with small square windows was constructed of timbers. It had a peaked roof of heavy slates; hall and roof both were in the same generally poor condition as the towers. But for the fact that two of the windows were lit with a flickering illumination, the entire pile might seem deserted, derelict. It was not how Thibor imagined the residence of a great Boyar should look; on the other hand, if he were a superstitious man, certainly he might believe that demons lived there.

The ranks of wolves began to thin out as they drew closer to the castle’s walls. Moving forward, it was not until the Wallach stood in the very shadow of those walls that he saw the castle’s simple defences: a trench fifteen feet wide and fifteen deep, excavated right down to solid rock, the bottom furnished with long pointed stakes set so close to each other that any man falling in must surely be speared. Then, too, he saw the door: a heavy, oak- boarded, iron-banded affair extended at its top to form a drawbridge. And even as he looked, so the door was creakingly lowered, heavy chains rattling as the trench was bridged.

In the opening thus revealed stood a cloaked figure holding before him a flaring torch. Behind the glare of that brand, little could be seen of features but a blur; all that Thibor could make of them was their paleness, and a vague awareness of grotesque proportions. He had his suspicions, however, and more than suspicions – which were fully borne out on the instant that the figure spoke: ‘And so you have come – of your own free will.’

Thibor had often been accused of being a cold man with a cold, emotionless voice. It was something he had never denied. But if his voice was cold, this voice might have issued from the grave itself. And where Thibor had found the voice soothing in the first instance, now it grated on his nerves like the ache of a rotten tooth, or cold steel on a living bone. It was old – hoary as the mountains, and possibly entrusted with as many secrets -but it was certainly not infirm. It held the authority of all dark knowledge.

‘My own free will?’ Thibor dared to look away from the figure, saw that he was quite alone. The wolves had melted into the night, into the mountains. Perhaps a single pair of yellow eyes gleamed for a moment under the trees, but that was all. He turned back to face his host. ‘Yes, of my own free will . . .’

Then you are welcome.’ The Boyar fixed his torch in a bracket just inside the doorway, bowed a little from the waist, stood to one side. And Thibor crossed the drawbridge, made to enter the house of the Ferenczy. But in the moment before he entered, he glanced up, saw the legend burned into the age-blackened oak of the arched lintel. He couldn’t read or write, but the cloaked man saw his glance and translated for him:

‘It says that this is the house of Waldemar Ferrenzig.

There is also a sign which dates it, showing that the castle is nearly two hundred years old. Waldemar was … he was my father. I am Faethor Ferrenzig, whom my people call “the Ferenczy’.

There was a fierce pride now in that dark voice, and for the first time Thibor felt himself unsure. He knew nothing of the castle; there might easily be many men lying in wait; the open door gaped like the maw of some unknown beast.

‘I have made preparations,’ said Thibor’s host. ‘Food and drink, and a fire to warm your bones.’ He deliberately turned his back, took a second torch from a dark niche in the wall and lit it from the first. As flames caught hold, so the shadows fled. The Ferenczy glanced once at his guest, unsmiling, then led the way inside. And the Wallach followed.