Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

dive!

  Why? .. . Nathan would never be able to say. But whatever she was now, Siggi Dam had suffered enough at the hands of this man. And anyway, she considered Nathan her friend. And what the hell - she had saved him, upon a time,

  hadn’t she?

  Tzonov cursed and went flying but retained his gun. And in the next moment he was back on his feet. Furious, he’d take any target he could get now. And the Necroscope himself was closest and most readily available. Grinning viciously, Tzonov grunted, ‘Goodbye, Gypsy!’

  Even as Nathan conjured a door he knew he was too late, so that what came next was almost an anticlimax:

  A bolas of three, eight-inch, razor-sharp hooks came whirling out of the mist and wrapped itself around Tzonov’s upper body. The Russian’s weapon was jerked aside, its shots deflected. He screamed as the hooks skewered him through combat-suit, flesh and muscle, and screamed again, louder, more desperately yet, as a thin line attached to the bolas tightened and he was drawn up into the air.

  And from above, Canker Canison’s grunt of monstrous satisfaction in Nathan’s mind: Got you, my friend! Got you at last! What? And did you think to find my silver moon mistress, steal her away and make her your own? If so, then now you have found her. Ah, but you’ve found Canker, too!

  Tzonov dropped his gun, howled his agony and clawed uselessly at the web of ropes that whirled him like a top as they unwound themselves. He would try to unhook himself if he could, which was about as possible as lifting himself by his own bootstraps. Suspended like an animal carcass on meat-hooks, he was drawn up into the mist and vanished — but his fading screams came back . .. oh, for a long time.

  Nathan’s door had collapsed. He reached out a telepathic probe, searched for vampires and found nothing but Canker Canison’s rapidly evaporating mental aura and fading chuckle. That and the Lady Siggi’s relief, and . .. the first

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  faint glimmer of morbid excitement, unthinkable anticipation in her changeling mind? But of course, for she was Wamphyri!

  Then, hallooing into the mist, the darkness and the echoing night, Nathan called for Andrei and Kirk. In a while, they found courage to answer him; he collected them, and took them via the Mobius route back to Lardis’s camp . ..

  There on the rim of the savanna, there were a good many people whom Nathan must speak to. First Misha, to tell her - even to show her - what must be made known to her. For, if he expected her understanding as well as her loyalty, she must be given to understand: that her husband was more than even she had suspected him to be. And when that was done he must speak to Lardis, Trask, anyone else with wisdom enough to guide him in the ways he intended to use himself. And finally, last but not least, he must speak to … oh, a Great Majority of others, who were no longer so lively.

  But first Misha.

  Having delivered Andrei and Kirk safe into the arms of Lardis, and cutting all of the Old Lidesci and Ben Trask’s questions short - promising them that he would tell them all that had transpired at Sanctuary Rock just as soon as he possibly could - Nathan walked with Misha out on to the prairie a little way.

  The night was more than halfway through; it had been a long, long night for both of them; Nathan’s tiredness was now entirely physical, and therefore something that he could fight. Misha on the other hand was sleepy beyond fighting. She would gladly surrender herself into the Necroscope’s arms, and fall asleep with him in the long grasses if he so desired it.

  But that wasn’t Nathan’s plan. Despite that he loved her desperately, he intended to make her more tired yet - to make her head whirl, to weary her emotionally as well as physically, with feelings she’d never before experienced — and so be sure that she would sleep. Because he had work

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  to do, and his young wife couldn’t be allowed to intrude while he did it.

  Also, knowing what he was, what he could do, Misha might rest peacefully in the knowledge that her man was ‘truly invulnerable’. Oh, he wasn’t, but in a little while she would think he was. And so, hugging her close in the chill of the night - in the light of a rising moon, under ice-blue stars as cold as their colour but warmer far here than in Starside - he turned to face north and looked back at the barrier mountains, a scalloped rim on the horizon, and at the Northstar over Wrathstack, that star of ill-omen glittering there, and said:

  ‘Misha, I’ve told you what I do, but I haven’t shown you. You of all people should know. You have the right. I’m not the boy, the youth, the man I was. We’ve scarcely had time to know each other, not the new people which we’ve become. And I know how you have worried about me for far too long. It’s time you stopped.’

  She smiled at him, that elfin look from their childhood, beguiling, mischievous, loving. A little girl in the sparkling river shallows, innocent in her nakedness, teasing him to come to her in the water. And later, years later: her hair dark as night, velvet, which in the light of the sun shone black as a raven’s wing. Her eyes, so huge and deeply brown under black, expressive, arching eyebrows, that they too looked black. Her mouth: small, straight and sweet under a tip-tilted nose which, /or all that it flared occasionally in true Gypsy fashion, had nothing hawkish or severe about it. Her ears, a little pointed, pale against the velvet of her hair where it fell in ringlets to her shoulders. Misha the girl, who was now Misha the woman and his wife.

  The vision from the past faded, and he saw her face as it was now: mature, lovely, longing. For peace. For children. For a chance — hope against hope — to live out her life, to live out their lives in freedom, side by side in a free world. All of it was there in Misha’s look, so that he didn’t have to read her mind. Not that he ever had or ever would, for in

  this respect he was wise beyond his talent and could gauge only too well the pitfalls of probing the thoughts of loved

  ones.

  ‘Now tell me,’ she said. ‘How am I to stop worrying about you? Will you ever be with me long enough that I can stop worrying?’

  He hugged her tighter still and said stumblingly, ‘Misha, listen. I’m trying to tell you .. . you have to understand that .. . that we go against the Wamphyri.’

  She offered a small frown, shrugged and said, ‘But haven’t we always?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was patient. ‘We always have. But this time it has to be different. This time all the vows we ever made - all of the Szgany since the beginning of what we call our “history” - must be realized! This time we fight them all the way, until they’re finished forever. We have to, because I want what every man of the Travellers ever wanted: to be able to love his woman every night without hiding in a hole in the ground. To watch my children grow up and know they’ll be mine always, not just future fodder for a vampire Lord and his beasts, or materials for his vats of metamorphism.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve heard Lardis say much the same thing -often …’ Too often, perhaps. And yes, he could see that Misha needed convincing.

  ‘Misha,’ he said, ‘in that world beyond the Starside Gate which we called the hell-lands, Ben Trask promised me a weapon to fight the Wamphyri even as Harry Keogh and his son The Dweller fought and destroyed them before we were born. And he kept his word - Trask gave me that weapon! Now I must discover the best way to use it.’

  ‘I have seen your weapons,’ she said. ‘Very impressive -and very limited.’ She was wise beyond her years, but she had read only half of his meaning.

  ‘My love,’ he said, holding her by the shoulders, looking deep into her eyes, sending her a telepathic message that even a child or the least talented person in the world must surely hear, The weapon I’m talking about… is me.’

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  ‘What …!’ Her gasp, as her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Nathan, I heard you speak - when you weren’t speaking!’

  But I was. Misha, I have things to show you. You have to know who 1 am, what I am.

  ‘I … I’m talking to myself!’ she said. ‘In my head! But I’m not thinking my own thoughts!’

&
nbsp; He shook his head, smiled and said, No, you’re hearing me! And I can hear your thoughts, too, if I so desire. But I don’t and I won’t. It’s part of the weapon which I am, which I’ll use against the Wamphyri. Do you want to see more?

  At first she couldn’t answer, but then she nodded. ‘Oh … yes!’

  ‘Then close your eyes, and keep them closed. You know that I … go places? You’ve seen me. But in between those places is a secret place. A place inside and outside time and space. You won’t be frightened?’ He conjured a Mobius door.

  ‘Not if I’m with you.’

  ‘You’ll feel that you’re floating, like this …’ He drew her through the door with him.

  ‘Nathan, I… AHHHHH!!!’ Her voice gonged in the primal night of the Mobius Continuum - but she kept her eyes tightly closed.

  Hush! he told her. In this place, words are Jike hammers, and they hurt. But thoughts are Jike words, which we can hear. Anyone could be a mentalist here, except no one else can come here. Now, imagine the deepest, darkest cave you ever saw. No Jight at all, no sound, nothing. And you are a moth floating in the dark. Do you have it?

  Yes, I think so.

  Open your eyes.

  Ahhhhh!

  It’s all right! Don’t cling so. Hold my hand. I have you. There!

  She was filled with wonder, and her Voice’ was the very smallest thing as she said, This is a very strange place, Nathan. An understatement, but what else was she to say?

  Everything began here, he told her. This is what was left when time and space flew outwards. In a way, it’s the centre. It seemed the simplest explanation.

  The shake of her head. I don’t understand.

  Don’t try to, just believe.

  He opened a past-time-door and held her on the threshold, where their shimmering life-threads of blue light uncoiled out of their bodies and went falling into the past, back into what had been, into the misty blue Origin of Human Life .. . and of life that was less, or more, than human. For there were a good many crimson threads among the blue: vampires, of course.

  Misha saw him limned in the light of their lives and the misty blue pulse of the past, and asked:

  What is it? What are we seeing? Where … is it?

  Our past, yours and mine, he told her. These blue threads, they are us. They were us! I can follow my life-line, I think, even to its source in my mother’s womb. But what is the use? I can’t materialize in the past. Only The Dweller could do that. This was to show you — to try and explain - what this place is. Now, are you ready to look into the future?

  She was eager now. Oh, yes!

  He closed the past-time-door and opened a door on the future. It was different, and it should have been glorious -the expansion of mankind into an ever-brightening future -but it was saddening. For the scarlet lines were there as before, but closer than before, encroaching on the blue. And even as Nathan and Misha looked on, many of the blue threads were blinking out of being, snuffed like candles, wrapped around and extinguished by the Wamphyri!

  Misha read in Nathan’s thoughts what it meant, and sadly asked him, Can you go there, too? It seems to me a good place to avoid! But if it’s the future, how may we avoid it?

  I think I can probably go there, yes, he told her. Except it would be dangerous, for the future’s a devious thing. But in any case, I can’t materialize there. So what would be the

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  point? What will be will be. Or as his father had used to say: What will be, has been .. .

  But will it be … like that?

  That’s how it must be - how it is - until we can put a stop to it. I haven’t looked too far. Perhaps I haven’t dared. But there is someone who might advise me. Maybe I’ll have to speak to him after all… later.

  And now the hardest part of all: Misha, now I’m going to take you somewhere else, out into the furnace desert. We have friends there.

  The Thyre?

  Fine people, he told her. Not at all like you might have imagined them to be.

  He closed the future-time-door, chose co-ordinates, went out across the savanna and the furnace desert - without crossing them - to a certain canyon, white in the light of a hurtling moon. And as Misha staggered where he gently set her down, he spoke telepathically to that faithful one who he knew would be waiting. And she told him yes, certainly he could bring his lady there …

  … Into the Cavern of the Ancients!

  This time Misha did stagger, quite helplessly, and would have fallen if Nathan hadn’t supported her. And: ‘What?’ She looked all about. ‘Where …?’

  ‘A sacred place,’ he told her, ‘where the Thyre remember their dead. For their dead are here.’

  The place was lit by candles, a great many, in the niches of the revered dead all around the walls. And in the centre of the dusty floor - Atwei, Nathan’s Thyre ‘sister’, seated at a small table, with the remains of a meal spread before her. She came to her feet at once, and almost ran to him … then remembered she was Thyre and came in less haste, which was seemly.

  ‘Nathan, brother. And …?’ She knew who, of course, for he had already ‘spoken’ to her. But it might seem unseemly to have spoken of another behind her back, as it were. Especially this other, Nathan’s wife. Also, Atwei knew that

  the Szgany were not as particular as the Thyre about protecting their names - that indeed, casual introductions were quite in order - or she would not have asked in the first place.

  ‘Misha,’ Misha said, however faintly, her pretty jaw hanging slack as finally she found her feet and gazed about in open astonishment at the Cavern of the Ancients:

  The domed ceiling of yellow sandstone with its cat’s-eye gash of white quartz crystal, that let in the moonlight like a ghostly swath across the floor; the crystal stalactites depending from the ceiling, and dripstone humps of crystal like frozen men all seated in a circle. And in niches carved out of the walls, actual frozen men, but frozen in the rigidity of death: the mummied ancients of the Thyre.

  None of which was new to Nathan, who was eager to get on. ‘Atwei, excuse my impatience,’ he said, ‘but will you speak to the elders for me? I have a very great favour to ask of them.’ And in her mind he showed her what that favour was.

  ‘Of course I will speak to them,’ she said. ‘For am I not one of them?’

  ‘You?’ He was taken aback. ‘But you’re a girl!’ He spoke in haste, but intended no disrespect and she knew it.

  She smiled, and explained: ‘My status is a token of their respect! For you are my brother, Necroscope.’

  It was no small compliment, and he accepted it as gracefully as he knew how. The Thyre … honour me. But Atwei, I need to speak to my wife. Will you go now, and see the elders personally?’

  ‘Of course.’ She began to turn away, then turned back. ‘I, too, have a favour to ask.’

  ‘Then ask it.’

  ‘Another time, some time when there is time, I would like you to meet my mate, my husband, Alaia - Al-ay-ee-ay. It would be our pleasure to have you share food with us, all four of us together.’

  Nathan smiled and was glad for her, and for a moment

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  forgot the weight of two worlds pressing down on him. But then: ‘I didn’t even know!’ he said. And as his smile faded: ‘Time, yes; only see how much of it has flown, sister, and how things have changed. And there are a great many things still to be changed. But yes, when there is time, then it would be our pleasure and an honour to eat with you and yours.’

  She was pleased and lowered her head, then turned and ran from the Cavern of the Ancients. In a little while they heard her feet pattering briefly in a tunnel that Nathan knew descended to the first Thyre colony he’d ever visited, called Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs.

  Then Misha looked at him and blinked. ‘Brother?’ Nathan nodded and told her. ‘I’m honoured to be her Szgany brother, yes. Atwei is my Thyre sister. When the Thyre found me dying, she was the one who nursed m
e back to health.’

  Again she staggered a little, and said, ‘My head is reeling!’ ‘Now see.’ He steadied her. ‘I’ve shown you these things so that you won’t worry about me when we’re apart, as we must be apart if I’m to work against the Wamphyri. Now that you’ve seen some of the things I can do, and the power of those weapons out of the hell-lands .. .’

  ‘… But you’re still only one man,’ she cut him off, and at once fell silent. For she knew his purpose now; also that she would never stop worrying about him, not as long as there was danger in the vampire world.

  And he knew that he must show her the rest. It was why he’d brought her here, to the one place - the one man - who could do it for him; or rather, who would do it for him, willingly and without question. Except, like his father before him, that wasn’t Nathan’s way. The teeming dead were his friends; he would never take from them, or expect of them beyond that they give him their friendship. And if what he wanted meant pain or even the smallest hurt, then he simply wouldn’t want it.

  Rogei knew his thoughts, of course, for they were dead-

  speak. No pain for me, my son, he said, for I am beyond that now. Oh, there is one who couJd hurt me, it’s true; you know him well enough.’ But as for you … it would be my pleasure. Yes, I believe these oJd bones can be made to move again, if only one last time.

  Nathan had walked Misha towards a special niche with its dusty ledge and crumbling tenant: Rogei, the first of all the dead to openly converse with him. Rogei the Ancient, in this his last resting place. And placing a hand gently on Rogei’s fragile chest, Nathan told Misha, ‘But I don’t have to be just one man, Misha. I have Lardis and the Szgany Lidesci. I have Ben Trask and his people. And I have … other friends, up in the mountains; you’ll be meeting them, too, in a little while. If I so desire it, I can even have an army. But that last… that last depends on them.’

  ‘Them?’ She hugged close to him. For suddenly she’d sensed something different in his voice: a strangeness? A very uncharacteristic coldness, certainly.