A nervous tic jumped in Thibor’s shoulder: the strain of hanging so long in chains, of course. ‘Now you tell me,’ he answered, ‘what starfish have to do with you and I?’
‘With you, nothing, not yet. But with the Wamphyri why, “nature” has granted us the same boon! How may you cut down an enemy if each lopped portion sprouts a new body, eh?’ Faethor grinned through the yellow bone mesh of his teeth. ‘And how may any mere man kill a vampire? Now see why I like you so well, my son. For who but a hero would come up here to destroy the indestructible?’
In the eye of Thibor’s memory, he heard again the words of a certain contact in the Kievan Vlad’s court:
They put stakes through their hearts and cut off their heads. . . better still, they break them up entirely and burn all the pieces. . even a small part of a vampire may grow whole again in the body of an unwary man . . . like a leech, but on the inside!
‘In the bed of the forest,’ Faethor broke into his morbid thoughts, ‘grow many vines. They seek the light, and climb great trees to reach the fresh, free air. Some “foolish” vines, as it were, may even grow so thickly as to kill their trees and bring them crashing down; and so destroy themselves. You’ve seen that, I’m sure. But others simply use the great trunks of their hosts; they share the earth and the air and the light between them; they live out their lives together. Indeed some vines are beneficial to their host trees. Ah! But then comes the drought. The trees wither, blacken, crumble, and the forest is no more. But down in the fertile earth the vines live on, waiting. Aye, and when more trees grow in fifty, an hundred years, back come the vines to climb again towards the light. Who is the stronger: the tree for his girth and sturdy branches, or the slender, insubstantial vine for his patience? If patience is a virtue, Thibor of Wallachia, then the Wamphyri are virtuous as all the ages . .
‘Trees, fishes, vines.’ Thibor shook his head. ‘You rave, Faethor Ferenczy!’
‘All of these things I’ve told you,’ the other was undeterred, ‘you will understand . . . eventually. But before you can begin to understand, first you must believe in me. In what I am.’
‘I’ll never —‘ Thibor began, only to be cut short.
‘Oh, but you will!’ the Ferenczy hissed, his awful tongue lashing in the cave of his mouth. ‘Now listen: I have willed my egg. I have brought it on and it is forming even now. Each of the Wamphyri has but one egg, one seed, in a lifetime; one chance to recreate the true fruit; one opportunity to carve his changeling “nature” into the living being of another. You are the host I have chosen for my egg.’
‘Your egg?’ Thibor wrinkled his nose, scowled, drew back as far as his chains would allow. ‘Your seed? You are beyond help, Faethor.’
‘Alas,’ said the other, lip curling and great nostrils flaring, ‘but you are the one who is beyond help!’ His cloak billowed as he flowed towards the broken body of old Arvos. He hoisted the gypsy’s corpse upright in one hand, like a bundle. of rags, perched it, head stiffly lolling, in a niche in the stone wall. ‘We have no sex as such,’ he said, glaring across the cell at Thibor. ‘Only the sex of our hosts. Ah! But we multiply their zest an hundred times! We have no lust except theirs, which we double and redouble. We may, and do, drive them to excesses — in all of their passions — but we heal their wounds, too, when the excess is too great for human flesh and blood to endure. And with long, long years, even centuries, so man and vampire grow into one creature. They become inseparable, except under extreme duress. I, who was a man, have now reached just such a maturity. So shall you, in perhaps a thousand years.’
Once more, futilely, Thibor tugged at his chains. Impossible to break or even strain them. He could put a thumb through each link!