16
Man to Man, Face to Face
'Harry!' Someone gave his shoulder an urgent shake. 'Harry, wake up!'
The Necroscope came instantly awake, almost like stepping through a Möbius door from one existence to another, from dream to waking. He saw the Gypsy he had spoken to and shared food with, whose blanket lay across his legs. And his first thought was: How does he know my name? Following which he relaxed. Of course he would know his name. Janos had told it to him. He would have told all of his thralls and human servants and other minion creatures the name of his greatest enemy.
'What is it?' Harry sat up.
'You've slept an hour,' the other answered. 'We'll soon be moving on. I'm taking my blanket. Also, there is something you should see.'
'Oh?'
The Gypsy nodded. His eyes were keen now, dark and sharp. 'Do you have a friend who searches for you?'
'What? A friend, here?' Was it possible Darcy Clarke or one of the others had followed him here from Rhodes? Harry shook his head. 'I don't think so.'
'An enemy, then, who follows on behind? In a car?'
Harry stood up. 'You've seen such a one? Show me.'
'Follow me,' said the other. 'But keep low.'
He moved at a lope through the trees to a hedgerow. Harry followed him and was aware of the other Gypsies scattered here and there throughout the encampment. Each of them to a man was silent but tense in the dappled green shade of the trees. Their belongings were all packed away. They were ready to move.
'There,' said Harry's guide. He stood aside to let the Necroscope peer through the bushes.
On the other side of the road a man sat at the wheel of an old beetle Volkswagen, looking at the entrance to the encampment. Harry didn't know him, but ... he knew him. Now that his attention had been focussed on him, he remembered. He'd been on the plane, this man. And... in Mezobereny? Possibly. That cigarette holder was a dead giveaway. Likewise his generally snaky, effeminate style. And now Harry remembered, too, that earlier brush with the Securitatea in Romania. Had this man been their contact in Rhodes? An agent, perhaps, for the USSR's E-Branch?
He glanced at the Gypsy beside him and said, 'An enemy - possibly.' But then he saw the knife ready in the other's hand, and raised an eyebrow. 'Oh?'
The other smiled, without humour. The Szgany don't much care for silent watchers.'
But Harry wondered: had the knife been for him, if he'd tried to make a run for it? A threat, to bring him to heel? 'What now?' he said.
'Watch,' said the other.
A Gypsy girl in a bright dress and a shawl crossed the road to the car, and Nikolai Zharov sat up straighter at the wheel. She showed him a basket filled with trinkets, knick-knacks, and spoke to him. But he shook his head. Then he showed her some paper money and in turn spoke to her, questioningly. She took the money, nodded eagerly, pointed through the forest. Zharov frowned, questioned her again. She became more insistent, stamped her foot, pointed again in the direction of Gyula, along the forest road.
Finally Zharov scowled, nodded, started up his car. He drove off in a cloud of dust. Harry turned to the Gypsy and said: 'He was an enemy, then. And the girl has sent him off on a wild goose chase?'
'Yes. Now we'll be on our way.'
'We?' Harry continued to stare at him.
The man sheathed his knife. 'We Travellers,' he answered. 'Who else? If you had been awake you could have eaten with us. But - ' he shrugged,' - we saved you a little soup.'
Another man approached with a bowl and wooden spoon, which he offered to Harry.
Harry looked at it.
Don't! said a deadspeak voice in his head, that of the dead Gypsy king.
Poison? Harry answered. Your people are trying to kill me?
No, they desire you to be still for an hour or two. Only drink this, and you will be still!
And sick?
No. Perhaps a mild soreness in the head - which a drink of clean water will drive away. But if you drink the soup... then all is lost. Across the border you'll go, and up into the ageless hills and craggy mountains - which, as you know, belong to the Old Ferenczy!
But Harry only smiled and grunted his satisfaction. So be it, he said, and drank the soup...
Nikolai Zharov drove as far as Gyula and midway into the town, then finally paid attention to a small niggling voice in the back of his mind: the one that was telling him, more insistently with each passing moment, that he was a fool! Finally he turned his car around and drove furiously back the way he'd come. If Keogh had gone to Gyula he could check it later. But meanwhile, if the Gypsy girl had been lying...
The Traveller camp was empty - as though the Gypsies had never been there. Zharov cursed, turned left onto the main road and gunned his engine. And up ahead he saw the first of the caravans passing leisurely through the border checkpoint.
He arrived in a skidding of tyres, jumped from the car and ran headlong into the one-room, chalet-style building. The border policeman behind his elevated desk picked up his peaked, flat-topped hat and rammed it on his head. He glared at Zharov and the Russian glared back. Beyond the dusty, fly-specked windows, the last caravan was just passing under the raised pole.
'What?' the Russian yelled. 'Are you some kind of madman? What are you, Hungarian or Romanian?'
The other was young, big-bellied, red-faced. A Transylvanian village peasant, he had joined the Securitatea because it had seemed easier than farming. Not much money in it, but at least he could do a bit of bullying now and then. He quite liked bullying, but he wasn't keen on being bullied.
'Who are you?' he scowled, his piggy eyes startled.
'Clown!' Zharov raged. 'Those Gypsies - do they simply come and go? Isn't this supposed to be a checkpoint? Does President Ceausescu know that these riff-raff pass across his borders without so much as a by your leave? Get off your fat backside; follow me; a spy is hiding in those caravans!'
The border policeman's expression had changed. For all he knew (and despite the other's harsh foreign accent), Zharov might well be some high-ranking Securitatea official; certainly he acted like one. But what was all this about spies? Flushing an even brighter red, he hurried out from behind his desk, did up a loose button on his sweat-stained blue uniform shirt, nervously fingered the two-day-old stubble on his chin. Zharov led him out of the shack, got back into his car and hurled the passenger-side door open. 'In!' he snapped.
Cramming himself into the small seat, the confused man blusteringly protested: 'But the Travellers aren't a problem. No one ever troubles them. Why, they've been coming this way for years! They are taking one of their own to bury him. And it can't be right to interfere with a funeral.'
'Lunatic!' Zharov put his foot down hard, skidded dangerously close to the rearmost caravan and began to overtake the column. 'Did you even look to see if they might be up to something? No, of course not! I tell you they have a British spy with them called Harry Keogh. He's a wanted man in both the USSR and Romania. Well, and now he's in your country and therefore under your jurisdiction. This could well be a feather in your cap - but only if you follow my instructions to the letter.'
'Yes, I see that,' the other mumbled, though in fact he saw very little.
'Do you have a weapon?'
'What? Up here? What would I shoot, squirrels?'
Zharov growled and stamped on his brakes, skidding the car sideways in front of the first horse-drawn caravan. The column at once slowed and began to concertina, and as the dust settled Zharov and the blustering border policeman got out of the car.
The KGB man pointed at the covered caravans, where scowling Gypsies were even now climbing down onto the road. 'Search them,' he ordered.
'But what's to search?' said the other, still mystified. 'They're caravans. A seat at the front, a door at the back, one room in between. A glance will suffice.'
'Any space which would conceal a man, that's what you search!' Zharov snapped.
'But... what does he look like?' the other threw up his hands.
'Fool!' Zharov shouted. 'Ask what he doesn't look like! He doesn't look like a fucking Gypsy!'
The mood of the Travellers was ugly and getting worse as the Russian and his Securitatea aide moved down the line of caravans, yanking open their doors and looking inside. As they approached the last in line, the funeral vehicle, so a group of the Szgany put themselves in their way.
Zharov snatched out his automatic and waved it at them. 'Out of the way. If you interfere I won't hesitate to use this. This is a matter of security, and grave consequences may ensue. Now open this door.'
The Gypsy who had spoken to Harry Keogh stepped forward. 'This was our king. We go to bury him. You may not go into this caravan.'
Zharov stuck the gun up under his jaw. 'Open up now,' he snarled, 'or they'll be burying two of you!'
The door was opened; Zharov saw two coffins lying side by side on low trestles where they had been secured to the floor; he climbed the steps and went in. The border policeman and Gypsy spokesman went with him. He pointed to the left-hand coffin, said: 'That one... open it.'
'You are cursed!' said the Gypsy. 'For all your days, which won't be many, you are cursed.'
The coffins were of flimsy construction, little more than thin boards, built by the Travellers themselves. Zharov gave his gun to the mortified border policeman, who fully expected the next curse to be directed at him, and took out his bone-handled knife. At the press of a switch eight inches of steel rod with a needle point slid into view. Without pause Zharov raised his arm and drove the tool down and through the timber lid, so that it disappeared to the hilt into the space which would be occupied by the face of whoever lay within.
Inside the coffin, muffled, someone gasped: 'Huh - huh - huh!' And there came a bumping and a scrabbling at the lid.
The Gypsy's dark eyes bugged; he crossed himself, stepped back on wobbly legs; likewise the border policeman. But Zharov hadn't noticed. Nor had he noticed the high smell, which wasn't merely garlic. Grinning savagely, he yanked his weapon free and jammed its point under the edge of the lid, wrenching here and there until it was loose. Then he put the bone handle between his teeth, took the lid in both hands and yanked it half-open.
And from within, someone pushed it the rest of the way... but it wasn't Harry Keogh!
Then-
- Even as the Russian's eyes stood out in his pallid face, so Vasile Zirra coughed and grunted in his coffin, and reached up a leathery arm to grasp Zharov and lever himself upright!
'God!' the KGB man choked then. 'G - G �C God!' His knife fell from his slack jaws into the coffin. The old dead Gypsy king took it up at once and drove it into Zharov's bulging left eye - all the way in, until it scraped the inside of his skull at the back. That was enough, more than enough.
Zharov blew froth from his jaws and stepped woodenly back until he met the side of the caravan, then toppled over sideways. Falling, he made a rattling sound in his throat, and, striking the floor, twitched a little. And then he was still.
But nothing else was still.
At the front of the column a Gypsy drove Zharov's car into the ditch at the side of the road. The Securitatea lout was reeling back in the direction of his border post, shouting: 'It had nothing to do with me - nothing -nothing!' The Szgany spokesman stepped over Zharov's body, looked fearfully at his old king lying stiff and dead again in his coffin, crossed himself a second time and manhandled the cover back into place. Then someone shouted, 'Giddup!' and the column was off again at the trot.
Half a mile down the road, where the roadside ditch was deep and grown with brambles and nettles, Nikolai Zharov's corpse was disposed of. It bounced from caravan to road to ditch, and flopped from view into the greenery...
Even as Harry had drained the soup in the bowl to its last drop, drug and all, so he'd brought Wellesley's talent into play and closed his mind off from outside interference. The Gypsy potion had been quick-acting; he hadn't even remembered being bundled into the funeral caravan and 'lain to rest' in the second coffin.
But his mental isolation had disadvantages, too. For one, the dead could no longer communicate with him. He had of course taken this into account, weighing it against what Vasile Zirra had told him about the short-term effect of the Gypsy drug. And he'd been sure he could spare an hour or two at least. What the old king hadn't told him was that only a spoonful or two of drugged soup would suffice. In draining the bowl dry, the Necroscope had dosed himself far too liberally.
Now, slowly coming awake - half-way between the subconscious and conscious worlds - he collapsed Wellesley's mind-shield and allowed himself to drift amidst murmuring deadspeak background static. Vasile Zirra, lying only inches away from him, was the first to recognize Harry's resurgence.
Harry Keogh? the dead old man's voice was tinged with sadness and not a little frustration. You are a brash young man. The spider sits waiting to entrap you, and you have to throw yourself into his web! Because you were kind to me - and because the dead love you - I jeopardized my own position to warn you off, and you ignored me. So now you pay the penalty.
At the mention of penalties, Harry began to come faster awake. Even though he hadn't yet opened his eyes, still he could feel the jolting of the caravan and so knew that he was en route. But how far into his journey?
You drank all of the soup, Vasile reminded him. Halmagiu is... very close! I know this land well; I sense it; the hour approaches midnight, and the mountains loom even now.
Harry panicked a little then and woke up with something of a shock - and panicked even more when he discovered himself inside a box which by its shape could only be a coffin! Vasile Zirra calmed him at once:
That must be how they brought you across the border. No, it isn't your grave but merely your refuge - for now. Then he told Harry about Zharov.
Harry answered aloud, whispering in the confines of the fragile box: 'You protected me?'
You have the power, Harry, the other shrugged. So it was partly that, for you, and it was... partly for him.
'For him?' But Harry knew well enough who he meant. 'For Janos Ferenczy?'
When you allowed yourself to be drugged, you placed yourself in his power, in the hands of his people. The Zirras are his people, my son.
Harry's answer was bitter, delivered in a tone he rarely if ever used with the dead: 'Then the Zirras are cowards! In the beginning, long before your time - indeed more than seven long centuries ago - Janos fooled the Zirras. He beguiled them, fascinated them, won them over by use of hypnosis and other powers come down to him from his evil father. He made them love him, but only so that he could use them. Before Janos, the true Wamphyri were always loyal to their Gypsy retainers, and in their turn earned the respect of the Szgany forever. There was a bond between them. But what has Janos given you? Nothing but terror and death. And even dead, still you are afraid of him.'
Especially dead! came the answer. Don't you know what he could do to me? He is the phoenix, risen from hell's flames. Aye, and he could raise me up, too, if he wished it, even from my salts! These old bones, this old flesh, has suffered enough. Many brave sons of the Zirras have gone up into those mountains to appease the Great Boyar; even my own son, Dumitru, gone from us these long years. Cowards? What could we do, who are merely men, against the might of the Wamphyri?
Harry snorted. 'He isn't Wamphyri! Oh, he desires to be, but there's that of the true vampire essence which escapes him still. What could you do against him? If you had had the heart, you and a band of your men could have gone up to his castle in the mountains, sought him out in his place and ended it there and then. You could have done it ten, twenty, even hundreds of years ago! Even as I must do it now.'
Not Wamphyri? the other was astonished. But... he is!
'Wrong! He has his own form of necromancy, true -and certainly it's as cruel a thing as anything the Wamphyri ever used - but it is not the true art. He is a shape-changer, within limits. But can he form himself into an aerofoil and fly? No, he uses an aeroplane. He is a deceiver, a powerful, dangerous, clever vampire - but he is not Wamphyri.'
He is what he is, said Vasile, but more thoughtfully now. And whatever he is, he was too strong for me and mine.
Harry snorted again. 'Then leave me be. I'll need to find help elsewhere.'
Smarting from Harry's scorn, the old Gypsy king said: Anyway, what do you know of the Wamphyri? What does anyone know of them?
But Harry ignored him, shut him out, and sent forward his deadspeak thoughts into Halmagiu, to the graveyard there. And from there, even up to the ruined old castle in the heights...
Black Romanian bats in their dozens flitted overhead, occasionally coming into the gleam of swaying, jolting lamplight where they escorted the jingling column of caravans through the rising, misted Transylvanian countryside. And the same bats flew over the crumbling walls and ruins of Castle Ferenczy.
Janos was there, a dark silhouette on a bluff overlooking the valley. Like a great bat himself, he sniffed the night and observed with some satisfaction the mist lying like milk in the valleys. The mist was his, as were the bats, as were the Szgany Zirra. And in his way, Janos had communicated with all three. 'My people have him,' he said, as if to remind himself. It was a phrase he'd repeated often enough through the afternoon and into the night. He turned to his vampire thralls, Sandra and Ken Layard, and said it yet again: 'They have the Necroscope and will bring him to me. He is asleep, drugged, which is doubtless why you can't know his whereabouts or read his mind. For your powers are puny things with severe limitations.'
But even as Janos spoke so his locator gave a sudden start. 'Ah!' Layard gasped. And: There... there he is!'
Janos grasped his arm, said: 'Where is he?'
Layard's eyes were closed; he was concentrating; his head turned slowly through an angle directed out over the valley to one which encompassed the mountain's flank, and finally the mist-concealed village. 'Close,' he said. 'Down there. Close to Halmagiu.'
Janos's eyes lit like lamps with their wicks suddenly turned high. He looked at Sandra. 'Well?'
She locked on to Layard's extrasensory current, followed his scan. And: 'Yes,' she said, slowly nodding. 'He is there.'
'And his thoughts?' Janos was eager. 'What is the Necroscope thinking? Is it as I suspected? Is he afraid? Ah, he is talented, this one, but what use esoteric talents against muscle which is utterly ruthless? He speaks to the dead, yes, but my Szgany are very much alive!' And to himself he thought: Aye, he speaks to the dead. Even to my father, who from time to time lodges in his mind! Which means that just as I know the Necroscope, likewise the dog knows me! I cannot relax. This will not be over... until it is over. Perhaps I should have them kill him now, and resurrect him at my leisure. But where would be the glory, the satisfaction, in that? That is not the way, not if I would be Wamphyri! I must be the one to kill him, and then have him up to acknowledge me as his master!
Sandra clung to Layard's arm and locked on to Harry's deadspeak signals... and in the next moment snatched herself back from the locator so as to collide with Janos himself. He grabbed her, steadied her. 'Well?'
'He ... he speaks with the dead!'
'Which dead? Where?' His wolf's jaws gaped expectantly.
'In the cemetery in Halmagiu,' she gasped. 'And in your castle!'
'Halmagiu?' The ridges in his convoluted bat's snout quivered. 'The villagers have feared me for centuries, even when I was dust in a jar. No satisfaction for him there. And the dead in my castle? They are mainly Zirras.' He laughed hideously, and perhaps a little nervously. 'They gave their lives up to me; they will not hearken to him in death; he wastes his time!'
Sandra, for all her vampire strength, was still shaken. 'He ... he talked to a great many, and they were not Gypsies. They were warriors in their day, almost to a man. I sensed the merest murmur of their dead minds, but each and every one, they burned with their hatred for you!'
'What?' For a moment Janos stood frozen - and in the next bayed a laugh which was more a howl. 'My Thracians? My Greeks, Persians, Scythians? They are dust, the veriest salts of men! Only the guards which I raised up from them have form. Oh, I grant you, the Necroscope may call up corpses to walk again - but even he cannot build flesh and bone from a handful of dust. And even if he could, why, I would simply put them down again! I have him; he is desperate and seeks to enlist impossible allies; let him talk to them.'
He laughed again, briefly, and turning towards the dark, irregular pile of his ruined castle, narrowed his scarlet eyes. 'Come,' he grunted then. 'There are certain preparations to be made.'
A handful of Szgany menfolk bundled Harry through the woods and past the outcropping knoll with its cairn of soulstones beneath the cliff. His hands were bound behind him and he stumbled frequently; his head ached miserably, as from some massive hangover; but as the group passed close to the base of the knoll, so he sensed the wispy wraiths of once-men all around.
Harry let his deadspeak touch them, and knew at once that they were only the echoes of the Zirras he had spoken to in the Place of Many Bones deep in the ruins of the Castle Ferenczy. The knoll's base was lapped by a clinging ground mist, but its domed crest stood clear where the cairn of carved stones pointed at the rising moon. Men had carved those stones, their own headstones, before climbing to the heights and sacrificing themselves to a monster.
'Men?' Harry whispered to himself. 'Sheep, they were. Like sheep to the slaughter!'
His deadspeak was heard, as he had intended it should be, and from the castle in the heights was answered:
Not all of us, Harry Keogh. I for one would have fought him, but he was in my brain and squeezed it like a plum. You may believe me when I say I did not go to the Ferenczy willingly. We were not such cowards as you think. Now tell me, did you ever see a compass point south? Just so easily might a Zirra, chosen by his master, turn away.
'Who are you?' Harry inquired.
Dumitru, son of Vasile.
'Well, at least you argue more persuasively than your father!' said Harry.
One of the Gypsies prodded him where they bundled him unceremoniously up the first leg of the climb. 'What are you mumbling about? Are you saying your prayers? Too late for that, if the Ferenczy has called you.'
Harry, said Dumitru Zirra, if I could help you I would, in however small a measure. But I may not. Here in the Place of Many Bones, I was gnawed upon by one of the Grey Ones who serve the Boyar Janos. He had my legs off at the knees! I could crawl if you called me up, but I could never fight. What, me, a half-man of bone and leather and bits of gristle? But only say it and III do what I can.
So, I've found a man at last, Harry answered, this time silently, in the unique manner of the Necroscope. But lie still, Dumitru Zirra, for I need more than old bones to go against Janos.
The way was harder now and the Gypsies sliced through the thongs binding Harry's wrists. Instead they put two nooses round his neck, one held by a man who stayed well ahead of him, and the other by a man to his rear. 'Only fall now, Englishman, and you hang yourself,' their spokesman told him. 'Or at very least stretch your neck a bit as we haul you up!' But Harry didn't intend to fall.
He called out to Möbius with his deadspeak: August? How's it coming?
We're almost there, Harry! came the excited answer from a Leipzig graveyard. It could be an hour, two, three at the outside.
Try thirty minutes, said Harry. I may not have much more than that left.
Other voices crowded Harry's Necroscope mind. From the graveyard in Halmagiu:
Harry Keogh ... we are shunned. Who named you a friend of the dead was a great liar!
Taken off guard, he answered aloud. 'I asked for your help. You refused me. It's not my fault the world's teeming dead hold you in contempt!'
The Szgany where they laboured up the mountainside in the streaming moonlight looked at each other. 'Is he mad? Always he talks to himself!'
Harry opened all the channels of his mind - removed all barriers within and without - and at once Faethor was raging at him: Idiot! I am the only one who can help you, and yet you keep me hooded like some vicious bird in a cage. Why do you do this, Harry?
Because I don't trust you, he answered silently. Your motives, your methods, you your black-hearted self! I don't trust a single thing you say or do, Faethor. You're not only a father of vampires but a father of liars, too. Still, you do have a choice.
A choice? What choice?
Get out of my mind and go back to your place in Ploiesti.
Not until this thing is seen through -to- the - end! And how can I be sure you'll stick to that? You can't, Necroscope!
Then sit in the dark, said Harry, closing him off again. And now the climb was half-way done...
In Rhodes it was 1:30 a.m.
Darcy Clarke and his team sat around a table in one of their hotel rooms. They had spent time recovering from their work, had eaten out as a group, had discussed their experiences and how they'd been affected and probably would be affected for a long time to come. But in the back of their minds each and every one of them had known that their own part in the fight was minimal, and that without Harry Keogh's success everything else was cosmetic and the partial elation they felt now only the lull before the real storm.
As they'd returned from their late meal, so Zek had come up with an idea. She was a telepath and David Chung a locator. Together, they might be able to reach Harry and see what were his circumstances.
Darcy had at once protested: 'But that's just what Harry didn't want! Look, if Janos got his mental hooks into you -'
'I've a feeling he'll be too much involved with Harry to be thinking about anything else,' Zek had cut in. 'Anyway, I want to do it. In the Lady Karen's stack - her aerie on Starside -1 had the job of reading the minds of a great many Wamphyri. Not one of them so much as suspected I was there, or if they did nothing came of it. That's the way I'll play it now.'
Still Darcy wasn't sure. 'I was only thinking about poor Trevor,' he said, 'and about Sandra...'
'Trevor Jordan wasn't expecting trouble,' Zek had answered, 'and Sandra was inexperienced and her talent variable. I'm not putting her down, just stating a fact.'
'But -'
'No!' and again she had cut him off. 'If David is willing, I want to do it. Harry means a lot to Jazz and me.'
At which Darcy had appealed to Jazz Simmons.
Jazz had shaken his head. 'If she says she'll do it, then she'll do it,' he said. 'Hey, don't take my word for it! I'm only married to her!'
And with reservations, finally Darcy had submitted. For the fact was that he as much as anyone else was interested to know Harry's circumstances.
Now the three who weren't participants, Darcy, Jazz and Ben Trask, sat around the table and concentrated on what Zek and David were doing: the latter with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, his hands resting lightly on the stock and body of Harry's crossbow where it sat on the table, and Zek similarly disposed, her hand on one of his.
They had been this way for a minute or two, waiting for Chung to locate the Necroscope through the medium of one of his own possessions. But as seconds ticked by in silence and the two participants grew even more still, so the watchers began to relax a little - even to fidget - and their thoughts to drift. And just at the moment that Jazz Simmons chose to scratch his nose, that was when contact was made.
It was brief:
David Chung uttered a long drawn-out sigh - and Zek snapped bolt upright in her chair. Her eyes remained closed for several long seconds while all the colour drained from her face. Then... they shot open and she snatched herself away from Chung, straightened to her feet and backed unsteadily away from the table.
Jazz went to her at once. 'Zek?' his voice was anxious. 'Are you OK?'
For a moment she stared right through him, then at him, and accepted his arms. He felt her trembling, but at last she answered: 'Yes, I'm all right. But Harry -'
'You found him?' Darcy too had risen to his feet.
'Oh, yes,' David Chung nodded. 'We found him. What did you read, Zek?'
She looked at him, looked at all of them, and freed herself from Jazz's arms. And said nothing.
Darcy said, 'Is he OK?' And he held his breath waiting for her answer.
Eventually she said, 'He's all right, yes, and he got there safely - to his destination, I mean. Also, I saw enough to know that it will all come to a head soon. But... something isn't right.'
Darcy's heart thudded in his chest. 'Not right? You mean he's already in trouble?'
She looked at him, and her look was so strange it was as if she gazed on alien things, in a world of ice beyond the times and places we know. 'In trouble? Oh, he's that, all right, but not necessarily the trouble you're thinking of.'
'Can you explain?'
She straightened up and gave herself a shake, and hugged her elbows. 'No, I can't,' she said, shaking her head. 'Not yet. And anyway, I could be mistaken.'
'But mistaken about what?' Darcy's frustration was mounting. 'Harry is going up against Janos Ferenczy personally, man to ... to thingl If he's in trouble before they even meet, his disadvantage could well be insurmountable!'
Again she gave him that strange look, and shook her head, and quietly said, 'No, not insurmountable. In fact on a one to one basis, I think you'll find that... that there's not a great deal to choose between them.'
Following which, and for quite a long time, she would say no more.
With the misted valley far below and in the streaming moonlight of the heights, Harry knew the climb would soon be over and he'd be face to face with hell. He had hoped to call up all the local dead into an army on his side, arid march with them on Janos's place. But even the dead were afraid. Now there was very little time left, and probably less hope. So the fact that he actually found himself anticipating what was to come was a very hard thing to explain. It could be of course that he'd simply 'cracked' under the strain, but he didn't think so. He'd never been the type.
His mind was still open and Möbius picked up his thoughts:
A breakdown? You? No, never! And especially not now, when we're so close. I need to be into your mind, Harry.
'Enter, of your own free will,' he answered, almost automatically.
The other was very quickly in and out, and he was excited as never before. It all fits! It all fits! he said. And the next time I come, I'm sure I'll be able to unlock those doors.
'But not right now?'
I'm afraid not.
'Then there may not be time for a next time.'
Don't give in, Harry!
'I haven't. I'm just facing facts.'
I swear we'll have the answer in minutes! And meanwhile you could try helping yourself.
'Help myself? How?'
Give yourself a problem in numbers. Set yourself a mathematical task. Prepare to re-establish your numeracy.
'I wouldn't even know what a mathematical problem looked like.'