by Brian Lumley
The numbers vortex!
That cryptic, madly whirling dust-devil device of symbols, figures and cyphers which, bursting out from the core of his twin’s weird mind, had often overflowed into Nestor’s dreams, too; Nathan’s mind-shield, wherein as a child he
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had used to hide himself away, now revealed him as a light in the night, or as the smell of Traveller campfires floating on the breeze off Sunside reveals a campsite, or the frenzied buzzing of carrion flies a piece of rotting meat.
Nestor had first sensed the thing as he and the others crossed the spine of the barrier mountains midway between the great pass and Settlement. But .. . behind him? Its source had been behind him, in Starside, in the vicinity of the Starside Gate. Now what would a man of Sunside be doing there? And what would a dead man be doing anywhere? But then, as they had descended into Sunside’s foothills, so the mountains had blocked it out a little; and, supposing it to have been a rogue memory out of times best forgotten (for what else could it be, since Nestor’s Great Enemy was no more?), he had tried his best to do the same: shut it out of his thoughts.
But as the massed might of Wrathstack spurted and pulsed west, like a flock of shadows against the greater shadow of the mountains, so the thing had been there again, swirling in Nestor’s vampire mind and stronger than ever before! For where in past times the vortex had been disordered, chaotic, insensible, now it had direction and was purposeful.
And yet if his Great Enemy was in fact alive, then what was happening here? For first Nestor had sensed him close to the hell-lands Gate, and now … far to the south, in the desert beyond the forests and savanna? It made no sense. No man (and certainly not a dead one) can be in two places at once!
Then Nestor had felt an urgent need to reprimand, or at least to question, his man Zahar, and had called him up alongside, the better to speak to him. And riding the night a little apart from the main force, without so much as glancing at his great grim lieutenant, Nestor had inquired of him in his softest ‘voice’:
Zahar, are you faithful?
“To you, master? Always.’ Zahar spoke the words out
loud, knowing that Nestor would ‘hear’ them despite the wind’s bluster. But for all that he had answered in the affirmative, still he’d been concerned. What was Nestor’s purpose, he’d wondered, asking such a question at a time and in a place such as this?
Then the necromancer had looked at him, a frowning, even disapproving glance across the gulf of air. And shuttering his scarlet eyes somewhat: But … have you never disobeyed me?
The other had given his head a fervent shake. ‘Nor shall I ever, Lord!’
For a moment Nestor had held his gaze, eye to eye in the night, across the squalling updrafts, scarlet to feral yellow. And he’d known that his lieutenant spoke the truth. For Zahar Lichloathe feared his master’s art and the pain it could bring not only in this world but also in the next. Not even the dead were safe from one such as he: a necromancer who tortured them for their secrets, causing them pain in their dead flesh as if it were alive. But in the course of the last four to five months Zahar had learned to fear him even more, when such a change was apparent in him that, by comparison, Zahar’s previous master Vasagi the Suck had seemed a friendly, even a merry creature.
Gazing at Nestor however briefly (for it is not seemly to look upon the Wamphyri too long or too openly), staring at him where he sat forward in the saddle and leaned a little into the wind, this is what Zahar saw:
A man changed immensely. Two and a half years ago he had been a six-footer, and now was almost seven. He’d been tanned by the sun, and was now pallored by the night, and by his condition; for his flesh had taken on the leaden look of undeath. His Szgany eyes had been dark, naturally … but not for long, a day at most; the Change That Shapes had taken him that fast! Wamphyri, aye - he’d been a natural! And eyes red as fire.
And yet .. . perhaps not as ‘natural’ as might at first be imagined. For he covered his leaden flesh as if ashamed of
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it, swathing himself in black, head to toe, so that his eyes burned out over a mask of black cloth. Shame or denial, whichever; but even as a Lord freshly ascended — through all the pain, frustration and uncertainty of his vampire metamorphosis - still Nestor had retained something of his Sunside heritage. And for a while, for all that he’d become more and more Wamphyri, still he had been the man.
Sufficient that when he went hunting in Sunside one night with the dog-Lord Canker Canison, he’d come back with a sweetheart out of earlier times: the girl Glina, who had loved him. Ah, but that had been the last of his humanity. For where now were Glina and the child she brought with her out of Sunside?
Zahar knew well enough, for he had been witness and more than witness. The child was dead, all burst into tatters from the force of his descent on to the rocks at the foot of Wrathstack; and Glina burned by the sun, and likewise fallen from on high; her body walled up with stones in a crevice west of the great pass. All of which by Nestor’s command, if not his hand, and the change still taking place in him.
All of this running concurrent with his affair with Wratha the Risen, during which his step had seemed lighter, his spirit uplifted. But their ‘love’ had been as false as Wratha herself was false … or as Nestor was false? In any case, it had not lasted. For by then he had discovered his necromancy: that he could speak with dead men, and torture them for their secrets. And when that had become known to him, his change had taken a new direction; it was a darker Nestor who stalked the night, and moved like a ghost through the mazy ways of Suckscar …
Oh, they saw each other from time to time even now, Nestor and Wratha, and went to each other in their beds; for they were Wamphyri and had their needs. But the first allegiance of a vampire Lord is to himself; he seeks security, provides for his longevity. This was no time for lovers, when winds of war were blowing out of the east from
beyond the Great Red Waste. There was Szgany blood to be spilled, undead armies to build. Aye, and soon there would be powerful invaders to be killed. That was the way of things: crush or be crushed.
So the delights of dalliance were put aside, and now the black-draped creature who rode the night wind alongside Zahar had precious little of the man in him, but a great deal of the vampire. More than that, however, there was something which Zahar couldn’t fathom. An unspeakable terror? (Nestor’s lieutenant scarcely dared think it, and he must never be overheard thinking it!) But … some morbid fear, perhaps, gnawing at his master’s necromantic mind?
… Zahar’s glance was too bold! Likewise his thoughts, however much he would shield them! Dangerously bold, aye! He knew it and looked away, forced his mind to opaque, meaningless meanderings. That way was the safest.. .
Reading most of Zahar’s thoughts anyway, Nestor had known that his man would never dare lie to him. But to be sure:
Zahar, he said, now listen. That night when I crashed on Sunside, and you thought that 1 was lost forever. You captured him, my Great Enemy, and told me how he awakened in the moment that you tossed him into the Gate. But are you sure - absolutely sure - that he disappeared into the Gate?
‘Yes, master -‘ and hastily’ ‘- but all in accordance with your orders!’
And: Of course, Nestor had nodded in a little while. Of course … But after Zahar had fallen back in line:
Again that disturbance of psyche, that thrill of awareness, that recognition of the vortex! It was here! He, Nathan … was here!
It came and went: a surge from far across the forest, to the south-east, then - nothing. As if a candle had been lit, however briefly, then snuffed. And at once a second flare-up, but fainter, from across the mountains in Starside. So
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that Nestor had wondered: one Great Enemy, or should that be two? … Or three? Or was it all in his head?
And then he had wondered: was that it? Was his mind going as well as his body? For Nathan and his number
s vortex weren’t the only curse on Nestor Lichloathe, and the thing in his body struck far more terror than any imagined condition of his mind. Ah, yes! For unlike the questionable nature of the latter, the thing in his body was indisputably real.
Yet both curses had the same source: a night of ill-omen some eighteen sundowns gone, when he and Zahar went a-hunting in Sunside … hunting for his Great Enemy, Nathan, and for a treacherous Lidesci bitch called Misha.
Then, as the Wamphyri Lords and their aerial army headed for Sanctuary Rock, so Nestor’s mind drifted back in time, recalling all the terrors of that night, but scarcely wishing to remember all the fearful times passed between …
The dog-Lord Canker Canison, who from time to time read the future in dreams, had warned Nestor not to go; but the necromancer would have none of it. His Great Enemy was in Sunside, and Nestor intended to have it out with him.
Canker had been right and the raid was a disaster. Nestor’s flyer was crippled, half of its face shot away, its small brain seriously damaged. Nestor, too, was badly wounded, half-blinded by silver shot from a Lidesci shotgun. Only sheer Wamphyri tenacity and willpower had kept him in the saddle as his dying beast glided south, losing height over the forest.
Then the crash .. . unconsciousness … a slow awakening. Some pain, best ignored. The Wamphyri turn pain aside, mainly; they suffer in silence while their parasites see to the mending. But the place of awakening: a leper colony!
Leprosy! Great bane of vampires!
Nestor had fled before the fear and loathing of it, and also before the killing rays of the rising sun, deep into the
forest, to a cave in the bank of a river where he’d slept and dreamed fever dreams through the long Sunside day. And while he moaned and nightmared, so his leech had commenced a healing metamorphism deep within his damaged flesh.
With the night he’d crossed into Starside, and there in the barrier mountains had been met by his man Zahar and Canker Canison. Apparently none the worse for wear (well, a couple of scratches and a scar or two, the deepest of which he might keep as a souvenir), but saying nothing at all of how he’d survived the previous day and night, Lord Nestor had returned to Suckscar, his manse in the last great aerie of the Wamphyri.
Following which … he scarcely desired to remember what had come after that. Not here and now, with so many keen Wamphyri minds around him. It could well be that he’d remembered too much already - but he doubted it. The minds of the others were intent upon what was to be, not what might have been.
But Zahar Lichloathe (once Sucksthrall), flying in line somewhat to the rear of his master, remembered that time just as well as Nestor. He guarded his thoughts as best he could, be sure, but he remembered all the same …
In Suckscar (named by and after Vasagi the Suck, its one-time master), the necromancer Lord Lichloathe had very quickly fallen into something of a routine, but one known only to himself, at first, and strange for a Lord of the Wamphyri. Perhaps even morbidly so. Zahar remembered the background details:
Penultimate of the stack’s great manses, situated beneath Wrathspire, which was the very tip and towered more than half a mile over the rubble and scree, Suckscar had been a dingy, doom-fraught place before Vasagi’s — demise? - and Nestor’s ascension. Even by Wamphyri standards, it had been doleful, with an aura all its own … or the Suck’s.
A cold one - entirely unfathomable except by his peers,
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and often by them, too - Vasagi had been a monster among monsters. The victim of a hereditary bone disease, when a surge of growth in his jaws and teeth had threatened to outstrip the metamorphic flesh of his face, then he’d simply extruded them. Which is to say, he’d stripped his upper jaw of teeth, unhinged the lower jaw, withdrawn all flesh from the offending bones and so been rid of them. And in their place he’d shaped his face to a tapering pink tentacle, tipped with a flexible needle siphon, not unlike the proboscis of a bee. This was a weapon he’d used with remarkable dexterity and in a variety of ways: sliding it into the finest vein to draw off blood, or through an eardrum or eye deep into the whorl of a brain to vampirize, instruct, cripple or kill.
Speechless because of his self-inflicted deformity, the Suck had become a master of mime; but he was also a mentalist second to none, so that between gestures and telepathy he was always understood . .. when he wanted to be. Keeping mainly to himself and to his manse, however, Vasagi had little use for speech of any sort, but preferred his privacy. Similarly, he had seemed to prefer austerity.
When Nestor had ascended to Suckscar after Wran the Rage killed (or incapacitated?) Vasagi in a Sunside duel, he’d been dismayed at the lack of lighting, heating, the inadequate water supply and the sparsity of facilities in general. The fixtures were all in place but mainly turned off or stopped up, for Vasagi had not availed himself of these common utilities. Likewise the lives of his thralls, be they fledgling vampires or lieutenants alike: austere. And because Vasagi was ‘dumb’, they too were quiet, sparing of speech, cowed where they crept through Suckscar.
And while it’s a fact that all vampire thralls fear their masters, Vasagi the Suck’s (especially his females) feared him more; for with his alien features - crimson eyes, weird snout and stabbing siphon - he looked far more an insect than a man. In the days before their Sunside duel, Wran the Rage had often taunted Vasagi that he only ever mounted
his odalisks from the rear, because they could not bear to look him in the face!
Well, and they’d bear it even less after the duel. For in an act as merciless as it was monstrous, Wran had severed Vasagi’s proboscis, leaving him only a red-spurting sleeve for a face. Except, of course, the vampire women of Suckscar would never see that awful sight, for this was a fight to the death … or rather, it should have been.
In any case, Wran had left the Suck broken and bloody, pegged out on the slope of a south-facing foothill; left him there in the twilight, in the dawn mists of Sunside, to await the rising sun and an agonizing death. Since when and to date, no one in the last aerie had seen or heard of him. There again, neither was he missed, except perhaps by the Lady Wratha, who had counted him an ally …
But in Suckscar (which for his own reasons Nestor had not renamed) Vasagi’s aura had lingered on; his people continued to be morose, alienated and sparing both of speech and the utilities … for a while, at least; until they were used to Nestor. Then:
The young Lord Lichloathe had changed all that. He was no cold creature but a man out of Sunside, and his likes and lusts more nearly a man’s. The vampire Lord Vasagi the Suck, when he’d taken a woman, had fucked and feasted at the same time, penetrating not only with his member but also his siphon, in breast, throat, or root of tongue. While bedding with him had been a very painful affair, with Nestor it should be a pleasure. Since he was mainly innocent of women, Vasagi’s odalisks had instructed him in their various ways, and Nestor had been an avid pupil. Until soon enough, with the assistance of the Szgany girl Glina Berea, he in turn instructed them.
As for Suckscar:
Nestor turned on the water which, drawn up from Gorvi’s wells, was processed by Wratha’s siphoneers in Wrathspire; he had the gas inlets cleaned and refurbished as required, drawing off his share of gas from the methane chambers of
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Madmanse to give Suckscar additional light and warmth; and despite that it might be considered a luxury, not a necessity, he even saw to the few requirements of his thralls, so that their lives, too, were not entirely lacking in comforts.
But in turn he demanded obedience absolute, from thralls and lieutenants alike, with harsh and occasionally fatal penalties for any who failed him. And because Nestor’s word was law, and his law was strict, they did not fail him. And everything in Suckscar was his: his people and creatures, even Vasagi’s warriors still waxing in their vats, were now Nestor’s to do with as he desired.
It had been a period of adjustment in Suckscar and, for Lord Lich
loathe’s thralls, in large part one of contentment (though it should be understood that ‘contentment’ and ‘happiness’ as such have no real place in the lives of thralls). But in any case the basic needs of their existence were much improved … in the beginning, at least. ..
… Until Nestor had discovered his necromancy; and especially later, following that night when he and Zahar had gone a-hunting together, across the barrier mountains in Sunside.
Since when, things had deteriorated. Not so much in the maintenance or ‘morale’ of Suckscar itself, but more properly in its Lord and master. His moods had grown changeable as the winds (but not his expression, which was ever grave), and his thralls had commenced to go quietly again, as in the days of Vasagi. It was, as Zahar had been quick to note, as if a morbid spell was upon him … or a morbid dread within.
Once, hurrying to Nestor’s private rooms with a message from the necromancer’s friend and neighbour in Mange-manse, the dog-Lord Canker Canison, Zahar had discovered his master naked, bathing, and apparently engaged in a most minute examination of his person, the skin of his forearms and thighs. So engrossed was he, that for a while Zahar’s presence had gone unnoticed. But when it was, then Nestor had been furious!
What? (he’d wanted to know as he hurriedly, tremblingly dressed himself). And did his most trusted lieutenant now spy on him in the privacy of his own apartments? Well then, from now on these rooms were forbidden to him and all others; nor would Zahar enter with any message unless Nestor first called for him. Moreover, there would be no more telepathic communication between the two unless Nestor himself initiated it; and should Zahar ever feel the need to encroach upon Nestor’s mind unbidden, in however small a degree … let him first discover the secrets of flight, for he would surely find himself hurled from one of Suck-scar’s windows! Zahar had never seen him so wroth .. .
