by Brian Lumley
But unknown to the sleepers, there was a fourth, far less conspicuous watcher. Once known as The Dweller, now he was a lean grey shape who kept himself apart, observing the unkempt garden from the cover of the ragged tree line. Sometimes, in a flash of memory, he would understand why he had come here, but at others he wasn’t quite sure. Anyway, here he was.
And it was his snarled mind-call—together with a sudden bellowing and screaming of embattled beasts—which startled the Necroscope and his Lady awake when at last the invaders struck. And for all their precautions, still they were taken by surprise, for the enemy didn’t strike out of Starside at all but from Sunside over the mountains, where it was still sundown!
The invaders had departed Karen’s aerie in full force, crossed the peaks far to the east where there was no one to observe them, and turned west in the lee of the mountains. Under cover of the great barrier range, their Sunside flight path had followed the spine of the crags to the latitude of the garden, where, rising up over the peaks to look down on the territory of the defenders, they’d carefully noted the locations of the warriors and the fact that nothing else was stirring. Then their probes had discovered Karen’s sleeping mind. As for the Necroscope’s mind: even asleep it had been shielded and impenetrable. And dreaming.
Harry dreamed that he sped down Starside’s future time-stream; his eyes were full of the dazzle of blue, green, and red lines of life, and his ears seemed tuned to the unending Ahhhhhhhh! monotone of life’s expansion into all of the tomorrows of all the Universes of Light. Last time he had been with Karen, but this time he was alone, paying more attention to his surroundings, and aware of the convergence of scarlet vampire threads upon his own. And just when it seemed they must fuse together in some weird temporal collision, that was the point at which Möbius time turned golden in that furious melting pot which terminated … everything?
Maybe not.
But that was when his dream terminated, and Harry sprang awake in the ruined Traveller dwelling which he and Karen had made their headquarters. And Karen, too, waking up in his arms.
“The warriors!” she gasped, expanding her hand to thrust it into the coarse-lined matrix of her gauntlet.
“I’ll see,” Harry answered, already on his feet and conjuring a Möbius door, which coincided with the door frame of the stone-fashioned dwelling. And as he stepped through both, so he glanced at the sky. Up there, flyers! He saw them in the moment before the Möbius Continuum enveloped him: vast manta-shapes pulsing on high, from whose saddles Wamphyri riders directed the attack of their warriors. But apart from warriors already landed and joined in battle with Karen’s creatures, there were several still airborne, squirting across the stars like aerial octopi, their vanes extended and propulsion orifices blasting. Three of them in a protective triangle formation around their controllers, but how many were already down?
Harry emerged from the Continuum at the back of the saddle. Karen’s guardian warrior was under attack from two lesser but incredibly ferocious beasts; one was underneath, pincers and sickles working to disembowel, while the other rode its back, biting a way through to the spine. Even metamorphic flesh must soon succumb to this!
Disengage, the Necroscope ordered. Get aloft if you can. Harass the enemy in the sky. In order to address the warrior, he had opened his mind. Karen was in at once:
I’ve launched the warrior from the ledge in the crags, she immediately informed. He’s fast and fierce. If you can get that one airborne … Shaithis and Shaitan may well be disadvantaged. Their flyers are unconventional, heavily armored, but still no match for warriors. Maybe we can knock the bastards out of the sky!
But now, in close proximity with the enemy, their thoughts were no longer private. Ho, Karen! Shaithis called down gleefully from on high. Ever treacherous, eh? Why, I do believe you’d damn me with your last breath. And so you shall, for I shall see to it! And to Harry, growlingly, As for you, Hell-lander: ah, but I remember you well enow! For I had an aerie, upon a time—till you and your Dweller son reduced it to so much rubble. But where’s your son now, eh? A great wolf, I hear, siring pups by the light of the moon. Oh? Ha, ha, ha! And what bitch did you get him out of, eh?
Harry heard Shaithis’s sneering clearly enough; also Shaitan’s abrupt interruption, which oozed in his mind like mental slime: Taunting serves no purpose. Kill him, by all means, when the time is right—but until then let it be.
The Necroscope’s vampire raged; it wanted its way; its demands on Harry were mental as well as physical, so that he could almost hear it screaming: “Give me the right! Let me smite them! Only give your mind and body to me, and in my turn I’ll give you … everything!” But Harry knew it was a lie and that in fact his parasite would take everything.
He heard a buffeting of air, adopted a defensive crouch, and glanced aloft. Karen was already airborne; Harry’s flyer, which she had sent, made a tight turn and descended towards him. As the creature’s fifty-foot span of membranous manta wing, spongy flesh, cartilage, and alveolate bone swooped low overhead, Harry leaped and snatched at the harness fittings under its neck. Another moment and he was hauling himself into the saddle. And on the ground the beleaguered warrior threw off its attackers and squirted aloft.
Good! Harry told it. Now get up there with your ugly twin and help him tear those enemy flyers out of the sky.
Let’s all assist them, came Karen’s mind-call, as her beast commenced climbing a spiraling wind off Starside to where the invaders seemed to sit among the stars.
And rising up towards the armored flyers of Shaithis and Shaitan within their arrowhead formation of hissing, throbbing warriors, Harry queried: Where’s our warrior number three?
Dead on the ground, Necroscope, Karen answered grimly. Crushed by the most terrible construct I ever saw. In the old days, even to conceive of such a beast would have meant automatic banishment. The old rule was simple: never bring to being anything which might prove difficult to put down. For even the feeblest brain will eventually learn tricks of its own. As for these things which Shaithis and Shaitan have devised—especially that one—why, can’t you feel their evil intelligence? They are abominations!
Harry looked all around in the sky, finally glanced down through a thousand feet of dark, empty air and saw what followed on behind. And: I see what you mean, he said.
What he saw was this:
Rising alongside Karen and himself, in the same section of the spiral, the warrior he had ordered aloft dripped fluids from an underbelly whose scaly armor had been breached. Plasma gouts gleamed red as a ruby necklace where metamorphic tissues were already at work healing deep neck wounds. For the present the warrior’s propulsors blasted as before, but Harry fancied he could detect a sputtering even now.
A little higher than he and Karen and climbing that much faster, the unscathed warrior she’d launched from the crags vented propulsive gases in a fury. It snorted like a dragon where it made an all too obvious beeline for the alien flyers and their riders overhead. Responding like monstrous automata to the threat, the trio of escorting warriors turned inwards and began to converge, lost a little height, then fell like stones with their vanes angling them towards their target.
All of this registered in a moment: the fact that here in the middle air and overhead, Karen and the Necroscope were already gravely outnumbered. As for the situation below, that was worse. The enemy warriors which had given Karen’s creature a mauling at the back of the garden had launched themselves into the same updraft and were gaining; and coming up even faster behind them was that destroyer of her third creature, which she’d described as the most terrible warrior she ever saw. No expert in such things, still Harry had to agree.
It had squid-like lines … which was where any comparison with creatures of previous knowledge must break down. Gigantic, it was flesh and blood, cartilage and bone, but it had the look and grey mottling of some weird flexible metal. Clusters of gas bladders like strange wattles bulked out its throbbing body and detracted from
its maneuverability, but were necessary to carry the extra weight of its arms and armor. These were not additional to the warrior but integral; like a great thunder lizard of primal Earth, its weaponry was all built-in. Except Nature in her wildest dreams had never equipped anything like this. No, for this thing was of Shaithis’s fashioning.
Well, Necroscope? Karen’s telepathic voice was suddenly shrill with alarm.
Running for it will simply delay things, he answered.
So? Panic was rising in her like the wind off Starside.
So let’s give it our best shot right here and now!
Overhead, a deadly arrowhead formation stooped on Karen’s warrior like hawks to a pigeon. Harry ordered his flyer, Stay with your mistress, then rolled from his saddle through a hastily conjured Möbius door … and emerged in the next moment onto the scaled back of Karen’s warrior, where he could almost taste the hot stench of the incoming warriors. That close!
Sideslip! he ordered his startled mount. And conjuring a massive door, he guided the monster through it. The enemy trio slammed together in a snarling knot where Harry had been, but now he came squirting out of the Möbius Continuum far above them—on a level with the armored flyers of Shaithis and Shaitan! Even as his eyes met theirs across the gulf of air, so he picked up something of Shaithis’s telepathic ranting:
You and your damned magic, you ordure of the Hell-lands!
Harry was distracted; he’d looked into the scarlet eyes of Shaitan, too, and the Fallen One had looked burningly into his. No hatred in the mind of that great leech, no, not for the Necroscope; only an intense curiosity. Save your curses, he told Shaithis. For this one might yet do us great harm. Then you’ll have real reason to curse him. And Harry heard that, too.
Down below, the trio of confused warriors had untangled themselves; their propulsors roared as they commenced climbing again. Two of you. Shaithis called to them. To me, and hurry! But to the third warrior: Get after the woman. You know what to do …
Slimy bastard thing! Harry hurled the thought at Shaithis before realizing it was no great insult. He looked for Karen’s flyer and saw it turn out of the rising spiral to follow the mountains east. A pair of warriors—one of which was her own wounded creature—spurted in her wake; they clashed sporadically, fiercely in the sky. Karen’s warrior was getting the worst of it, but her flyer was gaining time and distance. For the moment Harry seemed to have lost the giant warrior.
Chancing that Karen was in no immediate danger, he clung to the scales of his monstrous mount and sent it spurting head-on at his enemies. They turned tail and sped out over Starside’s plain of boulders, heading roughly towards the broken aeries of the Wamphyri. Now it became apparent that the flyers had the advantage of speed in level flight; seeing that he couldn’t hope to catch them this way, Harry conjured a door and guided his warrior through it—
—And emerged directly above the flyers where they streamlined themselves and winged east. Shaithis heard the warrior’s howling propulsors, felt its shadow on his back, and looked up. The Necroscope’s grin was scarlet, furious, as he slammed his mount down on Shaithis’s flyer and tried to crush him in his saddle. His target at once hurled himself flat in the hollow of his mount’s shoulders. Harry’s warrior extended grapples, pincers, retractable jaws, began cutting the flyer to pieces in midair; its razor-sharp appendages came dangerously close to Shaithis where he squirmed for his life. Dripping the blood of its torn victim, Harry’s warrior lifted up a little, again dashed all of its bulk down on the flyer. And slipping from his saddle to hang from its trappings in the scarlet rain, Shaithis knew his beast was a goner.
Shaitan! he cried out where he dangled.
The great leech flew slightly below and to one side. Jump! he advised, passing directly underneath. Shaithis made to leap for his ancestor’s flyer … was thrown off course as for the third time Harry’s warrior crashed down onto his mount’s back, breaking it. And tumbling past Shaitan, Shaithis found himself in free-fall.
It was a while since Shaithis had flown in his own right, but he was in fine fettle and had more than sufficient height. His loose clothes ripped as he flattened himself into a prehistoric, pterodactyl airfoil, and gradually his plummet slowed to a glide. Far to the east he spied a glowing beacon down on the boulder plain and knew it for the Gate to the Hell-lands. It made a good marker and he aimed himself in that direction.
The Necroscope had lost him. A dark speck in a darker sky, Shaithis had vanished. But Shaitan remained to be dealt with. Meanwhile, that immemorial father of vampires had drawn ahead; Harry could cover the same distance in the time it took to conjure an equation. He made to do so … and his warrior was hit from behind! The shock almost tore him loose from the plates of his mount’s back. Behind him, that most monstrous warrior of all gripped his creature in crab claws and tore out great chunks of meat from the musculature of its sputtering propulsive vents. Shaitan’s other creatures stayed well back to let their far more monstrous cousin get on with its work.
In the last few seconds Karen had linked minds with Harry. She saw his problems and he saw hers: the lesser warrior which Shaithis had sent after her had dispatched her fighting creature and was now closing on her flyer. To Karen, it all seemed ended. Necroscope, it’s over! she sent. My mount’s a weakling, already winded. There’s only myself to blame, for I designed him. I’d head for the furnace lands and a golden death in the rising sun, but doubt if we’d make it. Well, at least I’ll go out honorably: a gauntlet against a warrior!
Riding Karen’s last creature where its mewling, slavering attacker shredded its way to him, the Necroscope looked out through Karen’s eyes:
Her flyer heaved and panted where she drove it south for the great pass, for already its altitude was insufficient to carry it over the peaks. But spurting down on her from above and behind came that monster which Shaithis had ordered: Get after the woman. You know what to do! And directly down below, close to where the gash of the great pass split the mountains … that glaring light? Starside’s Gate, of course; Harry would have known it at once, except this aerial view was new to him. In the next moment, turning that view red, the torn carcass of Karen’s defeated warrior crashed down and burst into pieces.
And its destroyer was falling on Karen ever faster.
Harry tumbled from his doomed creature’s back through a Möbius door, stepped out into the foothills rising up from Starside’s portal. The Gate was a fault in the matter of the multiverse, a huge distortion in the fabric of Möbius space-time; but the Necroscope was far enough away that it had little effect. He scanned the wide mouth of the pass where the enemy warrior was playing with Karen’s exhausted flyer, forcing it down. A second flyer, riderless, flapped uselessly close by: Harry’s mount, which he’d ordered to stay with its mistress. He took the Möbius route into its saddle and called to Karen:
We’re not done yet.
She heard him, but so did Shaithis. At the end of his long, fast glide he landed close to the Gate and re-formed into his man-shape. And seeing his warrior in the sky where it menaced the flyers and their riders, he ordered it: Bring me the woman—in pieces, if that’s the only way!
The warrior’s response was immediate: it crashed its bulk down onto Karen’s flyer and knocked her half out of the saddle. And while she reeled there and tried to recover her senses and balance both, it put out appendages with hooked claspers and snatched her up. Then, with its propulsors roaring triumphantly, the monster smashed down on the riderless flyer one last time to break its neck. And as Karen’s crippled beast spun and tumbled down out of the sky into the pass, so the warrior turned back towards the boulder plain.
Good! Shaithis applauded his beast. Bring her to me.
Harry sent his mount plummeting from on high directly into the path of the warrior; ignoring him, the thing came straight on. He sent: Release her to me, directly into its small brain.
Do not! its rightful master countered his command. Knock him aside … crush him if you can!
The monster was upon Harry. Karen, held fast in its palps of chitin thorns—which pierced her flesh, holding her like a fish on a hundred hooks—could only scream as its neck arched to strike at him; while jaws like a small cave, more lethally equipped than the mouth of Tyrannosaurus rex, opened to sweep him up.
What happened next was all instinct. It was as if Faethor Ferenczy lived in the Necroscope yet, and whispered in his ear: When he opens his great jaws at you, go in through them! Harry knew he could never hope to cause this creature any real physical injury, not from the outside. But somewhere within that monstrous skull was a tiny brain; and somewhere inside himself, something was or still desired to be Wamphyri!
Go in through them!
Harry stood up in the saddle, stepped into the stench of the warrior’s mouth as it snapped shut on him. But within that door of teeth was another conjured from his metaphysical mind. He passed through that one, too, into the Möbius Continuum … and out again within the warrior’s head. Physically inside its head! Among the rude materials of its cranium, the pulsing pipes and conduits, knobs and nodules, muck and mucous membrane of its living skull!
He felt the cringing of displaced mush—the shrinking of metamorphic flesh as his body materialized to rub against raw nerve endings and wet, spongy tissues, and the throb of plasma carrying oxygen to the small, agonized brain—then reached out with tearing, taloned vampire hands to find and fondle the central ganglion itself. And to crush it into so much pulp. Then—
