Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  Only call me up, I shall be your most powerful ally! And when it’s over I’ll go down again, just a mound of bones in a refuse pit in Madmanse, in Turgosheim. Just think of the benefits: to fight fire with fear, and destroy with a glance! For you have my word, Nathan: when Eygor walks again, called up by the Necroscope, yours shall be the power, and none shall stand against my killing eye, which I shall gift to you!

  From the first word Nathan had known who it was, the only one it could be, with his ghastly, gurgling, suggestive, insinuating, inveigling and very nearly hypnotic voice. Powerfully talented in death, even as he’d been in life, Eygor Killglance of the Wamphyri, an ex-vampire Lord, reached

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  out with his deadspeak across all the miles from Tur-gosheim, to offer again his terms, as once before he’d offered them in Maglore’s promontory aerie, Runemanse.

  Because Nathan was deeply asleep, his mind was receptive, if not to Eygor’s unthinkable suggestions, certainly to his insidious probe, his evil presence. And triggered by the other’s voice, pictures were conjured to the mirror of Nathan’s memory - from another time, a different dream -of a nightmare Thing in its Madmanse pit:

  It leaned or slumped against the wall like some strange stalagmite formation - much like the creatures in the cave at the Radujevac Gate, without their sheaths of glazed dripstone - but its shape was much too irregular and its texture darker than the salty, nitre-streaked, natural stone wall. It was .. . that monstrous amalgam, Eygor Killglance! And even as the picture registered on the screen of Nathan’s mind — as his feverish gaze once more took in the Thing’s gigantic size, freakish proportions, and the grotesque, almost enquiring angle of its head, fused like a melted candle to the wall - so the eyes in that head began to crack open! And as before, Nathan could well understand and believe their power to kill!

  At that, Nathan would have snatched himself awake, but the hypnotic strength of Eygor’s deadspeak, his awesome mentalism, was such as to paralyse and hold him rooted; like a man on the edge of sleep who knows he should move but cannot, not even to save his life! And yet again, as the clotted gurgle of Eygor’s mind spanned all the miles between, so the monster pleaded his position, pressed his ‘ case, and proposed his potentially lethal contract:

  Yes, Nathan. My killing eye: it can be yours! Do you remember, in Turgosheim, how we . .. discussed it? Ah, you think you don’t need me now, Nathan, but you will. Just think: the power of your mind, the mind of the Necroscope, coupled to the seething, searing energy of my eyes! Even the Wamphyri would shrink to a stench, would be blasted to shreds in the cleansing beams of your gaze!

  ‘Cleansing?’ Nathan found his voice at last, if not the strength of will to wake himself up. ‘Your gaze, cleansing? As acid cleans, maybe - except it would sear my mind, too!’

  No, no, no! Not my gaze, yours! And you would be using it only for … well, for good, yes! Can’t you see the wonderful irony in it? Isn’t it what you want: to destroy the Wamphyri?

  ‘Oh, yes, but not if I must make a monster of myself! Just look what your “talent” has done to you. Just see what’s become of your eyes.’

  And, flinching, Nathan looked again at that mind-picture of Eygor Killglance as he’d seen him before - let his gaze crawl slowly over all eighteen or more feet of that monstrous, mummified anomaly of fused bone, black, corrugated flesh, knobs of gristly cartilage and massive plates of blue-gleaming chitin like the armour of insects, but insects grown to tanks in the armouries of the not-so-alien world beyond the Starside Gate. Anthropomorphic, certainly, which was all that could be said of Eygor’s relationship to humanity. For while men may have a similar shape, they do not have additional mouths in… various places.

  But quite apart from the diseased overall design of this monster, the most terrible thing was the knowledge that it was Eygor’s own design! This was how, towards the end, the loathsome Thing in the pit had shaped himself! Those horny fossiled feet and shrivelled leathery thighs; those withered arms that terminated in talons; the arched back, and those jutting shoulders, and the misshapen screaming skull thrown back and fused to the wall by nitre, jaws frozen in some everlasting rictus. Oh, he’d not wanted this desiccation, this gradual deterioration, this death, never that, but the rest of it was the very essence of Eygor!

  And finally those eyes, now fully open, exactly as the Necroscope remembered them from a previous dream. And remembering, he heard again Eygor’s words just as then, indeed, as Eygor repeated them now:

  Only see how I cry, Nathan, because my sons blinded me,

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  because my eyes are blind and white. Ah, but upon a time the right one was filled with blood! See! And at once, the right eye of the gargoyle dripped scarlet. While the left was full of pus! And now the left one turned yellow and swollen, like a boil about to burst. And Nathan knew that if it did and the poison splashed him, then he’d be infected, heir to the monster’s powers!

  And: Only call me up so that I may take revenge on my bastard bloodsons, Eygor begged him, and the power can be yours as easily as that! Do it, Nathan! Do it now!

  Eygor was there in Nathan’s head, frantically seeking out the metaphysical mechanism - the Necroscope’s esoteric art — the power to cancel death and return him to undeath!

  CALL … ME … UP!

  Nathan could do it: he could call the dead - this monster himself - up out of the earth, out of death. And for the very first time he actually knew he could do it! Twice in the past he had done it, but without knowing. Or perhaps on those occasions they had come of their own accord, out of their love for him. But this One did not love anyone or thing, and so must be brought up — by Nathan’s art.

  He … must… be … brought… up!

  The massive weight of Eygor’s mentalism .. .

  His hypnotism .. .

  His terrible eyes . ..

  Nathan tossed in his fever; his mind burned. In the depths of his mortal soul, a darkness seethed. But:

  No!!! No, Nathan!

  It was as if with that cool but urgent thought, a scented breeze, a mental fragrance, a waft of fresh air blew across his burning brain, bearing away the stench of the thing in its Madmanse pit, in Turgosheim. And:

  No, came the thought again, but sighing its relief now as the danger receded, as Nathan unfroze, drove Eygor out and the monster’s raging voice echoed into a distant denial, a sobbing curse, a fading, chittering hissss!

  Then he was gone, and the timely intruder spoke again, however severely:

  Nathan! Ah, and didn’t I warn you upon a time: beware what you would call up to a semblance of life, lest some things may prove harder to put down?

  ‘Rogei! Thank God for you!’ For it was Rogei of the Thyre, of course, that dead old … man in the Cavern of. the Ancients. The first of the dead to recognize Nathan and speak to him openly, even to the extent of saving his life. Twice, in fact: then and now. Nathan’s thoughts were dead-speak, and in answer:

  The shake of an incorporeal head, Rogei’s denial. No, the first time it was your life, this time your soul - possibly. But did I hear you offer thanks to a god? Didn’t your god die at the time of the white sun? So you told me, at least.

  Nathan was still shuddering from his encounter with Eygor; he didn’t want to go into that now: that the god he had called upon was an alien god, and the phrase a frequent

  - and frequently empty — benediction from an alien world. The Thyre were far less familiar with their god; but still, maybe Rogei would understand if he said:

  ‘Perhaps I meant Him Who Listens, if that is permissible?’

  Certainly, for He listens to everyone. And everywhere! So maybe the wise old Rogei had heard the Necroscope’s thoughts about an alien world after all…

  As Nathan’s nerves settled down, he changed the subject: ‘Why did you seek me out? - Not that I don’t appreciate it.’

  Because I was concerned. For long and long, ever since the time you left us, I searched for you with my
deadspeak. I knew that you were, that you lived. But it has grown to be a habit. Now that you are back — despite that it’s unseemly

  - still I search! Except . .. perhaps it’s no longer unseemly, for we all would know how you fare. But all of that is a feeble excuse; I had no right; 1 invaded your privacy. Forgive me.

  ‘Forgive you? Rogei, continue to seek me out. And promise me that you will, please do!’

  As you will, Nathaoan …

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  … ‘Nathan?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nathan!’

  He started massively as he felt a hand on his shoulder, tugging insistently. ‘Who —!’

  He sat up - sprang upright from the waist in a tumble of furs! And it was Misha. And he was drenched in sweat. And she was wet, too. Wet, worried, and huge-eyed where she stood beside their bed. ‘You were nightmaring,’ she told him breathlessly. ‘But I was so tired … I took a long time to wake up. By then you’d calmed down. I got up, heard sounds in the Rock, came to wake you …’

  Nathan heard sounds, too. A stirring in the guts of Sanctuary Rock, movement, and an echoing voice that cried: ‘Gather up your things, whatever you will take with you. We’re to move out within the hour. Lardis’s orders. So gather up your stuff, for we’re on the move.’

  And from the far corners of the labyrinth, other voices faintly echoing, but crying the same sad message.

  ‘Gather up your things . .. your things .. . things.’

  ‘We’re moving out. .. moving out.. . out.’

  The Szgany Lidesci would be Travellers again.

  Ill

  The Return of Vasagil The Death of Nana Kiklu

  In Wrathstack, strange forces were in motion.

  The dog-Lord Canker Canison had blocked passageways leading up from Mangemanse into Nestor Lichloathe’s Suck-scar. And in Suckscar, Nestor’s favourite flyer had apparently gone mad, reduced to rubble the cartilage walls of its pen, destroyed a launching-bay’s safety barrier and launched of its own accord; all of this before the warrior-Lord Vormulac Unsleep’s observation posts were in place, so that the escaped flyer had gone undetected, unmolested as it fled south-west by south for Sunside.

  Also in Suckscar: Nestor’s morbid mood was grown out of all proportion, as if to encompass his entire manse. And despite that Wrathstack must soon come under siege, there was an unaccustomed air of inactivity about Suckscar -a nameless sense of futility, a breathless, creeping expectancy - with Nestor himself a gaunt grey ghost, listlessly issuing orders that carried little of their former authority; neither weight of will, nor terror of Lord Lichloathe’s necromancy. For, much like the master himself, his lieutenants and thralls moved as if stricken with the same weird malaise …

  On the other hand, down below in the shadowy levels of Guilesump: Gorvi the Guile was anything but listless; indeed, his basement manse was witness to a frenzy of industry hitherto unknown! Complaining warriors were hauled prematurely from their vats, cauldrons of urine and wastes were set above the many corbel-chutes over the entrances (with faggots below all ready to be fired), spiked

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  grilles were fitted to windows and bays, and ground-based warriors stationed in the scree-canyon gantlets, where Gorvi ordered them to hide and wait in ambush.

  Likewise in Wran and Spiro’s Madmanse: except here, too, a noticeable difference. For the Killglance brothers no longer worked in unison; Wran’s forces defended the north-and south-eastern half of Madmanse, and Spiro’s the western half. And if it were not for the fact that at last Vormulac had come out of the east, then possibly they’d be at each other’s throats even now. It had much to do with Spiro’s killing eye: the fact that he had it while Wran did not. For Wran had always enjoyed playing ‘big brother’, and Spiro wasn’t about to let him ‘Lord’ it any longer. They were equals or they were nothing. Except they couldn’t be equals, for Wran considered himself superior. And Spiro felt slighted, for he was the one who had inherited his father’s killing eye. From Spiro’s point of view: Wran should now consider himself a junior partner, for the boot was on the other foot. And from Wran’s …

  … He remembered old Eygor, the way his cruelty had grown apace with his power. And already Spiro was full of a new confidence, so that while Wran was apprehensive about the fighting to come, his brother seemed to welcome, even to invite it. Naturally, for it would give him the chance to exercise his heart-bursting glance, his killing eye. Ah, but when the fighting was done, however it went, what then? Would history repeat itself, Wran wondered? Not if he could help it, for he’d felt the lash of his father’s glance once too often. The first time he felt his brother’s would be the last - for Spiro. But it might not even come to that, or it might come sooner than that. And from now on, Spiro must never turn his back on Wran the Rage …

  So much for Madmanse. While in Wrathspire:

  Only the Lady Wratha remained unchanged. Only Wratha the Risen, risen highest of them all, was her own person. And that was just as well for she had a war to plan, and a war that she dared not lose. Indeed, losing was an outcome

  she wouldn’t even consider, for then she knew what must next be considered. And she remembered how Nestor’s love-thrall Glina had puffed into fire and smouldered in the seethe of the sun. She had been a comparative newcomer, but Wratha? Even her bones would calcine in the sun’s blast, and all her liquids steam away in a trice!

  Then Wratha shuddered; aye, even Wratha. For she knew how Vormulac would deal with her, even as he had dealt with others before her. Lord Unsleep’s sigil said it all: a hanging man, or what remained of one - a tarry skeleton wrapped in chains - with rotting black flesh sliding from its bones!

  But she must not dwell on that .. . there was a war to plan … the others would be waiting for her call, to learn Wratha’s strategy, or lack of one! She felt momentary anger - with herself -that she’d allowed her thoughts to stray when there was so much to do. But these were strange times as well as dangerous ones, and it took fortitude simply to stand up straight and bear the weight of things. Or did she mean the weight of years? Suddenly, the Lady knew how long she had lived .. . and at once felt the angry-squirming of her leech!

  A long time since that had happened; it served to remind her, and only just in time, that she was Wamphyri!

  Cunning - tenacity - longevity - Wamphyyyri!

  What? How long she had lived? She was not old but young, a mere girl! And while there was blood she would always be young!

  Her leech settled down again and began pumping its vampire essence into her veins. Its host was strong; it had nothing to fear; the long red years stretched out before both of them.

  And yet, even as the Lady began to make her plans, still she found herself listening to the stack. It sounded, or felt, all wrong. Her telepathic probe went out from her .. . feeling … feeling.

  Gorvi was a coward; he sweated to block himself in, without realizing that he also blocked his escape routes!

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  Wran and Spiro’s thoughts were hateful — of each other as much as their enemies! All previous slander to the contrary, however, the brothers were not mad, except as berserks. But as for the dog-Lord in Mangemanse, Canker and his infernal moon music - that same, simple Szgany tune played over and over, louder and ever louder on his instrument of bones - oh, he was mad, and growing madder by the minute! That clout he had taken seemed to have been the last straw to break a shad’s (or dog’s) back. Or his brain.

  And finally there was Nestor.

  But from neighbouring Suckscar’s no longer handsome, indeed scarcely visible young Lord Lichloathe, behind his mummy or cerecloth wrappings, only an echoing mental silence like a sullen veil over his thoughts, a cloud of gloom that had nothing to do with the coming war. Perhaps it was his necromancy (a suspect art at best), which gave him that doomful air. But certainly the change in him was like night into day. And for a single moment Wratha felt some strange emotion or poignancy deep inside w
hich she could not fathom. Regret, perhaps -?

  - That he was not the man she’d thought him?

  But of course he wasn’t; he was only a boy! And as for his Misha on Sunside: how quickly things could change. Wratha couldn’t give a damn for this Misha now. Nor for the Lidescis as a whole. Time to rekindle that fire later, if there should be a later, when this rabble out of Turgosheim had been dealt with.

  Except it would never be dealt with, not if she failed to hold her war council.

  Enough!

  She sent her familiar bats winging, to call the others up into Wrathspire …

  Travellers again.

  It had been a while, almost seventeen years, in fact, since Lardis Lidesci last sent his people out into the forest trails from Settlement. Then … it had been a precautionary meas-

  ure; the Wamphyri, under Shaitan the Unborn, had returned out of the Icelands and there had been danger. But they never had raided on Settlement. Not at that time, anyway.

  And while the Szgany Lidesci had scattered into the woods, Lardis and a small party of his senior men had gone to hold a war conference with Harry Keogh, his son The Dweller, and the Lady Karen in a place called The Garden. But they had arrived at The Garden too late: Karen and the Necroscope were already at war, and The Dweller and his pack .. . were only wolves.

  But at least Lardis, Andrei Romani and a small handful of others had been there to see the end of it: the brilliant flash of white light in the vicinity of the Starside Gate, the mighty thunderclap that shook the mountains to their roots, the weird lightnings, and the roiling, writhing mushroom-cloud that spilled its hot red and yellow guts as it rose nodding to the sky. And then the warm winds blowing through the passes out of Starside, bringing a creeping sickness and in some cases death.