by Brian Lumley
In a rage, Devetaki looked all about — and saw what was required: a second pile of tarred faggots close to one of the pits. She gave orders, chose an easy route up the slope, and, sticking to the shadows, went after Tzonov. And her fury was such that she even forgot to change her mask .. .
At the place at the southern edge of the forest, where once a leper colony had huddled under the ironwoods, a gaunt-faced Lardis Lidesci had supervised the layout of his overnight camp before walking out under the stars to where Uruk Long-life lay wrapped in a blanket. It had been Lardis’s intention to honour his promise and bury Uruk with his own hands.
But having found a spot at the top of a low, grassy hummock, and before commencing to dig, some strange premonition had caused Lardis to look north . .. and a moment ago he’d seen the brilliant bomb-burst of the signal rocket over Sanctuary Rock! The flare-up had been dimmed by distance and a little moisture lingering in the air, but the Old Lidesci knew that he couldn’t be mistaken. In corrobora-tion, a lookout on a low rocky outcrop close by hallooed down to him: ‘Lardis, the Rock!’
Other lookouts up in the ironwoods around the camp must have seen it, too. Lardis heard their shouts, and set off
back at the run. Uruk Piatra would have to wait for his decent burial, but Lardis was sure he wouldn’t mind that now.
He made for an awning under a tree on the camp’s perimeter where he knew that Misha looked after Nathan, with Trask and others of the Necroscope’s party in attendance. High time the lad was back on his feet. It wasn’t that Lardis considered he was being coddled, but simply that his talents were needed. Lardis had friends back at Sanctuary Rock, and he wasn’t about to lose more good men to the vampires of Starside. Especially not these men.
Even as Lardis arrived at the makeshift shelter, Nathan was stirring. He had heard the disturbance in the camp, sensed that something was afoot. At first disorientated, his strange blue eyes finally focused on Misha, and the first word on his lips was a name:
‘Nana?’ But a moment later he knew that it hadn’t been a dream.
‘Lad!’ Lardis couldn’t wait a moment longer. ‘Nathan,’ he panted hoarsely. ‘There’s trouble at the Rock!’
‘What?’ Nathan was on his feet now, unsteady but rapidly gaining ground. Trouble?’ He was wan and shaken, but the heat of his fever had finally burned itself out.
‘Andrei and Kirk are back there,’ Lardis explained. They volunteered. And now there’s been a signal rocket. When we left the Rock, it was all primed-up as a trap for Wratha and her lot, should they return. Well, and it seems they have. But those two brave lads are still back there, and you are the only one who can bring them out.’
Now Nathan’s mind focused. He stood straighter, and his resolve tightened to twin fists of iron in his guts and in his heart. For a moment there was a brief surge of pain, a wash of misery, grief, and then a greater surge — of hatred! For the Wamphyri.
Lardis saw his expression, his attitude visibly changing, but couldn’t know what it meant. Time was of the essence. The Old Lidesci grasped Nathan’s arms and snarled through
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clenched yellow teeth: ‘Lad, do you know where you are? Have you understood what I said?’
Nathan shook him off, glared at him. ‘Yes, I understand!’ And now his turn to grab the Old Lidesci’s arms. ‘Andrei and Kirk: where will they be?’
The escape tunnels at the sides of the Rock, halfway up the slope, where the trees begin …’
Nathan nodded, pushed him away, stepped free of the group and looked up at the stars. They were his orientation. Now he knew where he was, and he’d known the Rock’s coordinates since childhood.
Misha flew to him, said, ‘Nathan!’
He kissed her and pushed her away, but gently, and said, ‘Yes, I’ll be careful.’
Trask said, ‘Can I help? Listen, why not take me with …’
But Nathan had already moved, stepping forward into nothing, into nowhere —
— And into everywhere! Into the Mobius Continuum, the source of The All, which existed before anything else existed, except perhaps The One whose mind it was! He stepped into that space between spaces, which is the junction of everywhere and when. Stepped in, chose his coordinates … and stepped out -
- Into the foothills over Sanctuary Rock.
Down there: smoke going up from several of the pits west of the Rock, one fire at least still burning, and a heavy reek of sulphur rising on man- or monster-made thermals. But as for the Rock itself … it had settled! Boulders, loosened by the massive convulsion of earth as the Rock’s lower levels concertinaed on themselves, were still tumbling from the slopes all around, and even up here in the foothills Nathan could sense minute tremors of the earth.
But he could sense more than that. Extending a telepathic probe, he found vampires — Wamphyri! And human thoughts, which was what he had hoped to find: thoughts to home in on. The difference was like night and day.
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Human thoughts were often light as thistledown, floating. But the thoughts of vampires seethed! They were heavy, clotted, thick as tar. Both sorts were here.
Kirk Lisescu’s mind felt stunned, and Andrei’s was full of curses. But their confusion following the devastation which they’d wrought on the Rock had left them open, not only to the Necroscope’s probe, but also to the Wamphyri. Whichever Lord or Lady was down there now, they would be able to find Andrei and Kirk as easily as Nathan had found them. It galvanized him to activity.
Focusing on Andrei, he entered the Mobius Continuum and went to him -
- And emerged to the east of Sanctuary Rock in a tangle of bushes and gorse that threatened at any moment to go sliding right into a yawning, grinding, groaning black fissure left by the Rock’s settling!
Andrei was cursing low but vividly, clinging to the roots of gorse and shrubs, his legs flailing uselessly in loose soil and unstable earth. Nathan had emerged a little above him in a patch of gorse, which alone arrested what must otherwise be a fall .. . and that was exactly how he would play it.
‘Andrei!’ he called down to the older man. ‘Look here!’
The other gasped, looked, said: ‘Eh? Nathan?’
‘Let go,’ Nathan told him. ‘Don’t fight it - go with me.’
And without further explanation, he himself let go and
plunged down on Andrei!
‘What? Let go?’ The other couldn’t believe it. ‘Have you
gone mad?’ In these circumstances, it was easy to forget just
who he was speaking to. But Nathan crashed into him and tore him loose anyway
- and at once conjured a door beneath them and fell into
it-
- And out again east of the Rock, close to Kirk Lisescu.
This time the ground was firmer; they emerged in a stand of trees. Andrei made an unintelligible sound, sat down in a clump of brambles and stuck his hands deep into the soil.
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And there was Kirk, a dark blot in the starlight, panting and wide-eyed, already halfway out of the trees and scrambling madly up the sliding face of the slope … until he recognized Nathan’s voice, calling: ‘Kirk, don’t be afraid. It’s me, Nathan!’
Then he came sliding back down into the trees where Andrei and Nathan grabbed at him. ‘What in the name of . ..?’ Kirk whispered, slack-jawed. ‘How in . ..?’ But by now both he and Andrei knew what in the name of, and how.
And without pause Nathan conjured a door and took them up into the foothills again, for orientation and a breather.
Except no sooner were they there —
- Gunfire, from below! The frenzied chatter of an automatic weapon! But who? Whoever, he was an entirely human being, certainly. Nathan could try probing him, except the time taken might prove to be the difference between life and death. And:
‘Wait for me,’ he told the others - as if there was anything else they could do - and took the Mobius route to the old Traveller trails east of the Ro
ck —
- Where just fifty yards from the firepits, he looked up at the lower escarpments as again the darkness was slashed by bright, staccato flashes of light and the savage rrrrip! of automatic fire. Up there, the night seethed with the bloodlust-ing thoughts of vampires, and even now a red-flaring torch was bobbing among them, igniting other torches. But why? What use did vampires have for torches? Darkness was better than daylight to them!
Nathan Mobius-jumped to the foot of the cliffs, some hundred yards from the activity. And now he knew the place; as a child he’d played with his brother Nestor and with Misha and Jason Lidesci in those selfsame caves and crevices, where now someone had taken refuge.
The night was alight with the torches of vampires. They were igniting them, and throwing them into a certain narrow-necked cave. Nathan knew it well. He pictured it in
his mind as he’d known it all those years ago. He was sure he had the co-ordinates. He jumped -
- And emerged in the interior of the cave, where even now someone moved in the smoky darkness, stamping out a torch. Whoever it was, he sensed Nathan in the moment he emerged and their eyes met in the flare of another blazing faggot where it landed at their feet.
Their eyes met, their minds locked, and they both knew!
Made aware, alert as never before - galvanized by terror -Tzonov moved like greased lightning. Grabbing Nathan’s arm, he rammed the hot muzzle of his weapon up into the soft flesh under Nathan’s jaw. And: ‘You!’ he breathed.
For answer, and however bitterly, Nathan said the first thing that came into his head. ‘I … I came to rescue you! To take you out of here.’ Because their eyes were still locked, the Russian knew exactly what he meant — also that he could do it. Of course he could; Tzonov had seen him do it in Perchorsk. And if that wasn’t proof enough … well, he was here, wasn’t he?
More torches were lobbed, came hissing, looping the loop, bouncing and showering sparks. Figures moved furtively in the mouth of the cave, just beyond the bottleneck. Tzonov coughed as acrid smoke snatched at his lungs, and said, ‘Very well, do it. Get us out of here!’
And, hugged close to the Russian, with the hard hot muzzle of Tzonov’s machine-pistol pressing up into his throat, Nathan had no choice. He did it…
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Tzonov: Taken Again -Misha: Made to Understand
To Turkur Tzonov, the Mobius Continuum was much as it was to anyone else - astonishing, frightening, an experience beyond experience, bearing no comparison to anything gone before. He was blind, weightless, lost in a darkness utter. And yet, for all his human ignorance, there were things he felt, things he knew instinctively: that the Continuum was infinite, and that in a way beyond comprehension it was sentient (therefore infinitely sentient?), and that he, Turkur Tzonov, had no right to be here. Only one human being had that right, the Necroscope himself, and he had earned it. Anyone else was either a guest… or a trespasser.
The Continuum would expel him if it could, or otherwise dispose of him, lose him in places, spaces, undreamed of; he knew it as surely as he knew his own name, knew also that his one hope of survival was Nathan Keogh. Like others before him, he clung to the Necroscope, and kept his machine-pistol jammed up under his chin. Feeling the hard, warm metal there, Nathan knew that any slight increase of pressure on the trigger would spread his brains across eternity! He could do only as Tzonov had ordered him to do: take him out of there.
But to where? To Lardis Lidesci, Trask and the others, and risk Tzonov killing one or all of them? To some place in the Sunside forest, and leave Andrei and Kirk defenceless in the foothills? Wherever he took Tzonov, the Russian had the upper hand; he wasn’t going to let go of Nathan just yet. An idea played in the Necroscope’s mind: to conjure a door and
step out, and collapse it before Tzonov could fully emerge.
And in the ‘mundane’ world of Sunside, what would remain of Turkur Tzonov after that? A weapon and a pair of arms, and perhaps a lower leg, sliced off above the knee? And if in the moment of the death-dealing act, there should occur one last nerveless twitch of the Russian’s trigger finger? All of this flashing through Nathan’s metaphysical mind, even his secret mind, as he forgot a simple yet all-important fact: that in the immeasurable echo chamber of the Mobius Continuum, even secret thoughts have weight! And the Russian was no mean mentalist in his own right.
Just try it.’ Tzonov’s own thoughts gonged viciously. But you’d better be sure that if I’m going to die, you’re coming with me, Necroscope!
Andrei and Kirk were waiting; theirs was by no means a secure location; Nathan went to them, knowing he would have to move on, and that Tzonov would know it, too. Oh, the Russian might want to kill him, but he wouldn’t be able to do it just yet.
They emerged on the crest of a false plateau, beneath the first real cliffs that went beetling up and finally reared into the barrier mountains. And Andrei and Kirk were still there, of course, knee-deep in a writhing ground mist, anxious for Nathan until the moment of his return - then yet more anxious when they saw his fix.
‘What the hell…?’ Andrei started forward. But Nathan, squirming in the Russian’s iron grip, waved him back. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Do nothing, make no move. This man will kill me if you push him too far. He’s a hell-lander, but he isn’t a friend. Let’s see what he wants.’
An esper, Tzonov understood almost everything of what had been said, knew that for the moment he was in no great danger. And now that he felt reasonably safe, a plan took shape in his mind. He knew that his men - if any of them survived - would still be trapped in the keep in the pass. Come daylight they’d strike out south, and eventually emerge from the pass into Sunside. That would be the ideal
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place to link up with them again. The Necroscope could take him there, a simple one-to-one proposition. And once they were there: goodbye, Necroscope! But if Tzonov allowed these Travellers to be taken along, too - they might fancy their chances during transit, or immediately after.
And in any case Tzonov couldn’t let them live. They knew him now as Nathan’s enemy. If circumstances were such that he was caused to stay in this world longer than he intended to - and if he should bump into these men again -they would want to know what had become of the Necroscope. They were the only witnesses that Tzonov had ever been with Nathan, and knew the circumstances of their being together. They’d name him as the Necroscope’s murderer. Which by then he most surely would be.
Nathan was in the Russian’s mind. He saw the whole thing and knew what was coming. All thoughts with regard to his own safety fled at once; he knew that Tzonov couldn’t kill him yet, not and get back down into Sunside to wait for his men. ‘Run!’ he yelled at his friends. ‘Now! Both of you!’ The ground mist was swirling more yet, and for the first time - even as he shouted - Nathan became aware of the texture of that mist: how it clung and felt against his skin. And from deep inside a warning voice was telling him, The Russian isn’t the only danger here!
Tzonov shifted his grip to Nathan’s throat, his windpipe. Iron fingers dug in as the Russian swung his weapon’s ugly muzzle after the ducking, weaving figures of the Travellers where they fled through the thickening mist. But sensing the Necroscope’s sudden tension, and feeling the spasm of fear — which wasn’t fear of Tzonov — that stiffened his body and limbs, he glanced into Nathan’s sapphire-blue eyes at point-blank range; which was the same as looking through a window into his mind. But if Nathan’s eyes were windows, they were also mirrors!
Nathan was thinking … absolutely nothing! However momentarily, his mind had gone blank, a wasteland of shock. But his mirror eyes told the whole story:
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Riding that vampire mist and settling towards their target on arched air-trap wings behind Tzonov, a pair of Wamphyri flyers had zeroed in on him and Nathan! Their long necks were outstretched and their saucer eyes unblinking. And their riders …
Him! A powerful vampire voice, female, echoed
in the minJs of both men. That one - the hairless one! And Tzonov knew that telepathic voice as he would know a lover’s kiss, or an enemy’s hatred - for he had known her, and in both senses!
And this time it was no artful ploy of Devetaki Skullguise but the real thing — Siggi Dam! Except the real thing was now just as deadly in its own right; or, considering the incredible being who was Siggi’s escort, it was a good deal worse!
He had no choice. Releasing Nathan, he whirled about-face and brought up his gun; the machine-pistol jerked in his hands, spitting fire and fury at the closest flyer and rider. His best shots burned deep grooves along the flyer’s neck; others expended themselves uselessly in the yawning pouch, or chipped soft cartilage from the leading-edge of a wing.
The beast’s rider - who in Tzonov’s eyes looked like an intelligent, upright wolf! — hauled on his reins and presented his mount’s corrugated underbelly. Tzonov threw himself flat as the creature’s pouch, thrusters and belly passed harmlessly but too close overhead, then got up on one knee and took aim at the second flyer and rider.
It was Siggi, but such a Siggi as Tzonov could never have expected to see! Wamphyri, and beautiful - horrifically beautiful - beyond words! Yet even now … was that fear he saw in her flaming scarlet eyes? Fear, yes, and loathing! Somehow she remembered him still. Well, fear and loathing were emotions he could deal with. Her weakness gave him strength.
As she turned her mount aside, Tzonov gritted his perfect teeth, narrowed his eyes, and took careful aim … and was
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hit from behind as the Necroscope flew at him in a headlong
