Necroscope IV Deadspeak - By Brian Lumley Page 0,3
on the steps of an ornately carved and painted wagon, with a whetstone and his long-bladed knife, bringing the cutting edge to a scintillant shimmer of silver in the flicker of near-distant firelight. While in the yellow lamplight behind him where the door stood open, his mother sat sobbing, wringing her hands, praying for all she was worth to One who was not a god - indeed, to One who was the very opposite - that He spare her son this night. But praying in vain.
And as one tune ended and bright skirts whispered to a halt, falling about gleaming brown limbs, and moustached men quit their leaping and high-kicking - in that interval when the fiddlers sipped their brandy before starting up again - then the moon showed its rim above the mountains, whose misted crags were brought to a sudden prominence. And as mouths gaped open and all eyes turned upwards to the risen moon, so the mournful howl of a wolf drifted down to them from unseen aeries of rock.
For a single moment the tableau stood frozen... but the next saw dark eyes turning to gaze at the young man on the caravan steps. He stood up, looked up at the moon and the crags, and sighed. And sheathing his knife he stepped down to the clearing, crossed it on stiff legs, headed for the darkness beyond the encircling wagons.
His mother broke the silence. Her wail, rising to a shriek of anguish, was that of a banshee as she hurled herself from their caravan home, crashed down the wooden steps, came reeling after her son, her arms outstretched. But she did not go to him; instead she fell to her knees some paces away, her arms still reaching, aching for him. For the chief of this band, their 'king', had stepped forward to embrace the young man. He hugged him, kissed him on both cheeks, released him. And without more ado the chosen one went out of the firelight, between the wagons, and was swallowed by darkness.
'Dumitru!' his mother screamed. She got to her feet, made to rush after him - and flew into the arms of her king.
'Peace, woman,' he told her gruffly, his throat bobbing. 'We've seen it coming a month now, watched the change in him. The Old One has called and Dumitru answers. We knew what to expect. This is always the way of it.'
'But he's my son, my son!' she sobbed rackingly into his chest.
'Aye,' he said, his own voice finally breaking, sending tears coursing down his leathery cheeks. 'And mine... mine too... aye.'
He led her stumbling and sobbing back to their caravan, and behind them the music started up again, and the dancing, and the feasting and drinking.
Dumitru Zirra climbed the ramparts of the Zarundului like a fox born to those heights. The moon lit a path for him, but even without that silver swath he would have known the way. For there was guidance from within: a voice inside his head, which was not his voice, told him where to step, reach, grasp. There were paths up here, if you knew them, but between these hairpin tracks were vertiginous shortcuts. Dumitru chose the latter, or someone made that choice for him.
Dumiitruuu! the dark voice crooned to him, drawing out his name like a cry of torment. Ah, my faithful, my Szgaaany, son of my sons. Step here, and there, and here, Dumiitruuu. And here, where the wolf stepped - see his mark on the rock? The father of your fathers awaits you, Dumiitruuu. The moon is risen up and the hour draws niiigh. Make haste, my son, for I'm old and dry and shrivelled close to death - the true death! But you shall succour me, Dumiitruuu. Aye, and all your youth and strength be miiine!
Almost to the tree line the youth laboured, his breath ragged and his hands bloody from the climbing, to the blackest crags of all where a vast ruin humped against the final cliff. On the one side a gorge so sheer and black it might descend to hell, and on the other the last of the tall firs shielding the tumbled pile of some ancient keep, set back against sheer-rising walls of rock. Dumitru saw the place and for a moment was brought up short, but then he also saw the flame-eyed wolf standing in the broken gates of the ruin and hesitated no more. He went on, and the great wolf led the way.