by Brian Lumley
And now Nathan’s face was grimmer yet. ‘It could only have been him, yes,’ he answered.
Andrei’s turn to speak up: ‘It was Canker! Kirk and me, we saw some of it. The dog-Lord’s got him, aye.’
But the Necroscope shook his head. ‘No, it was Canker who took him, but it’s a Lady who has him now. The Lady Siggi Dam!’ He looked at Trask. ‘Knowing what Tzonov has
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done, and for all that I know he’s evil, I couldn’t have wished worse on him .. .’
But Lardis grunted, ‘An enemy is an enemy!’ As always (or as he always appeared to be) the Old Lidesci was iron. ‘What’s done is done … now we get on with what’s still to be done.’
And Nathan agreed with him. The rest of tonight, when I have the weapons, we go to work on the Wamphyri. And again it will be me, Ben, David … and perhaps you, John Carling?’ He nodded to indicate the caver. That is, if you’d like to be in on it? I can only use men who are familiar with these weapons.’
Now Chung frowned. ‘We … are going to attack the Wamphyri, right?’
‘Hit and run,’ Nathan told him. ‘Guerilla warfare. I saw film of it at E-Branch HQ in London.’ He explained his intentions, and Trask excitedly said:
That would work!’
‘It would certainly confuse the hell out of them,’ Chung agreed.
That’s my intention, yes,’ Nathan said. To confuse them - and also to kill the black-hearted bastards!’ He showed his teeth. ‘As many as possible!’ And then, more calmly, ‘For you see, I … I gave my word to someone that I would kill a few of them for him at least. But the idea will be to use our weapons as sparingly yet effectively as possible.’
‘Very well.’ Trask nodded. ‘It’s a plan of sorts, anyway. And it will certainly show these monsters that they’re not invulnerable, or even safe from attack. In fact it will probably come as a hell of a shock to them! But suppose we get through the rest of the night intact - what then?’
Tomorrow morning we … we practise a game,’ Nathan answered. The Szgany Lidesci, all of us. A very special game.’
‘Oh?’ Lardis grunted. ‘We’ll have time for playing games, will we? What, like children d’you mean? Hide and seek?’
‘Exactly like that!’ Nathan nodded. ‘Hide and seek, yes.
So that when next the Wamphyri come hunting, they’ll find nothing. Absolutely nothing!’
‘Explain,’ Lardis demanded.
‘I can’t,’ Nathan answered. ‘Not without breaking a trust. And anyway I don’t know if my plan will be accepted … by certain others. But it may be, and so, if the time should come, we must be ready; which is why in the morning we’ll play this game of mine. Like children, yes. Like all the children, and for the children. And for the future of all of the Szgany, if they are to have a future …’
It was all beyond Lardis, but he didn’t press it. Nathan was their one hope now, especially since Sanctuary Rock was no more, and so they must play it his way - including his mysterious ‘game’.
Nathan looked at Trask and Chung. ‘How long to get ready?’
The two glanced at each other, and Trask said, ‘I suppose we’re as ready as we’ll ever be right now. Give us a moment to check our weapons, and —’
‘No weapons,’ Nathan shook his head. ‘Not going out, anyway. But coming back … with any luck, you’ll have a lot more than you can handle!’
Trask nodded, licked his lips and said, Then we’re ready when you are.’
Nathan stood up, stepped away from the fire and glanced at the sky, the stars in their eternal wheel. And: ‘Give me a few moments,’ he said. Which was as long as it took him …
… To make a Mobius jump out on to the plain of boulders, close but not too close to the Gate, yet close enough that he felt its repulsion - a weird deflection even within the Mobius Continuum — which caused his exit door to warp and waver as he stepped through it onto Starside. And a moment more to clamber up onto a natural causeway of boulders and scan the land all about for the Wamphyri or their creatures.
Shielding his eyes against the near-distant glare of the Gate, he looked north and believed he saw .. . was that a
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manta shape, pulsing against the weave of the northern auroras? Perhaps, but if so it was at least a mile away, or even more. So much for eyesight … but there were other senses, too.
Nathan put out a telepathic probe and felt … something? No, nothing -not of the Wamphyri anyway - not nearby. He was edgy, that was all. But certainly the psychic aether was alive with their echoes, their afterimages, the slime-trails of their having been here, the taint of their existence. Faint thoughts reached him from far across the boulder plains … others from the mountains east of the pass, and … again that sensation of - of what? Held breath? Or was it simply him - Nathan himself - holding his breath?
He checked his location. He wasn’t too far from the clump of boulders where Trask and Chung had taken refuge and stashed their weapons. Then, there had been an injured warrior to contend with. But no sign of that creature now . ..
He climbed back down from the rocks, ran halfway towards the clump, brought a halt and conjured a door. This time it was more stable, but still it trembled a little. Nathan decided to try a little experiment and turned the door in the direction of the Gate; its trembling increased and he could feel the Gate’s resistance, the way it pushed at his door. It was like the nervous, fluttering activity of a small magnet with its like pole too close to the like pole of a large magnet; the big one would turn it around if it could, then suck it in! But if it couldn’t turn it around it would simply repulse it, shoot it away like a bullet from a gun, into unknown places. In E-Branch HQ, Nathan had read the Keogh files. He knew that his father had done just that: conjured a door too close to the Perchorsk Gate, and been hurled into space! And he wondered:
If a door was big enough, strong enough, and the mind that made it was powerful enough - which would give way first, the metaphysical Mobius Continuum and the mind that controlled it, or the hyperspatial, transdimensional Gate?
Almost automatically, instinctively, he began to study the maths of the problem - until he realized what he was doing and knew that he didn’t have the time for it, and that anyway there was no requirement. Then he collapsed his door and moved a few paces farther away from the Gate, where he paused to scan the sky again. The flyer was still there, but if anything the distance had increased. There was no danger that he could see, and so …
. .. He returned to the camp on Sunside, held his new door steady as he guided Trask and Chung inside, and so transferred them to Starside. There, when they’d recovered from their momentary disorientation, he led the way to the clump of boulders where all three men saw what had happened to Gorvi the Guile’s warrior. Its awful debris was strewn across the uneven ground; bloodied, blue-grey chitin scales as big as dinner plates were scattered everywhere … gnawed cartilage .. . grooved, white-gleaming bone . .. and the churned, dark-stained earth. A great many creatures had disposed of the one, in a mighty and monstrous provisioning.
They walked among the remains of the thing, with the starlit silence of Starside pressing down on them —
- Until Trask whispered: ‘God, what a nightmarish place! Let’s collect the guns and get out of here!’
‘We must consider ourselves lucky,’ Nathan told him. The guns might easily have been discovered. But even beast-minders would have kept well out of it while a frenzy such as that was in progress!’
Then, as the three approached the entrance gap into the clump — something suddenly appeared there! Two of them!
‘Ben?’
Trask started and cried out. Chung, too; even the Necro-scope felt his blood run cold - and in the next moment warm - as finally he recognized the voice, figure and telepathic aura of Zek Foener, and understood what he’d sensed when last he was here, what or who it was that had held its psychic breath.
Zek Foener and lan Goodly.
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She literally flew into Ben’s arms; and the spindly, cadaverous precog wasn’t far behind, first clutching Trask’s hand, then grasping Chung to him in an entirely uncharacteristic hug.
Thank God!’ Goodly piped. ‘Thank God it’s you!’
Nathan was the only one to keep a level head. ‘The guns,’ he reminded them. ‘Get the weapons!’ And while Trask and Chung entered the clump and re-emerged, he gave Zek a hug and clasped hands with Goodly. Then —
- All four linked arms, holding tight to the Necroscope as he conjured a door, guided them through its invisible portal and took them back to the Sunside camp …
Between them, Zek and Goodly told their story, how Gustav Turchin had let them use the Perchorsk Gate to come through into Starside. It had been Zek’s intention to contact Nathan telepathically as soon as they emerged on to the plain of boulders, but the sight of a flyer in the alien sky of the vampire world had changed her mind; she hadn’t dared use her mentalism until she could be sure that the Necroscope alone would hear her.
And as the flyer had passed overhead, heading out across the boulder plains, Zek and the precog had taken refuge in the nest of leaning boulders -where they had stumbled across Ben Trask’s cache of weapons. At that, they had known that if Nathan lived he must return here sooner or later, but they’d scarcely expected it to be so soon.
Also, and where weapons were concerned, there was now a new cache which Nathan would have to recover at some time in the future. For Zek and Goodly had come through the ‘white tunnel’ from Perchorsk aboard a battery-powered cart or buggy, one of three that Per-chorsk’s scientists used to trundle heavy instruments from place to place around the core; still aboard were two Russian-built machine-pistols and a small wooden box of one hundred and twenty golfball-size grenades. Buggy and weapons had come courtesy of Gustav Turchin.
The location of the cache: inside the Starside Gate! Zek and Goodly had dismounted well within the tunnel, and had left the cart in neutral at the other end of a length of nylon rope, the last six inches of which protruded from the hemisphere of white light. They had done this because Goodly’s talent had foreseen some small problem on the boulder plains: the lone flyer which both Nathan and the newcomers had seen in the aurora-shot distance. And so, as soon as Nathan wanted to do it, he could take someone back there to the Gate, haul the cart through, and recover the weapons.
But something was obviously puzzling him, and now he gave it voice. ‘We’ve always known that the Gates were oneway systems,’ he said, ‘but now we know something else about them.’
‘Oh?’ Trask waited for him to continue.
Nathan nodded. ‘Obviously they can be used more than once, but only in the same direction! Zek has been through the Perchorsk Gate twice.’
‘Absolutely right!’ Zek put in excitedly. ‘For a while, we thought that lan might have to come through on his own, or maybe with other espers from E-Branch. But lan’s a precog, and he had seen both of us coming through from Perchorsk! As soon as we got out there from London, I knew he was correct; close up, I could actually feeJ the pull of that white monster; no repulsion whatsoever. It seems it was something that Harry himself didn’t know: that while you can’t return through the same Gate, you can use that Gate more than once. It’s like the circulatory system of the heart, with oneway valves to stop blood flowing downhill between beats. The blood circulates time and time over but can’t back-up on itself. So if I wanted to, I could use the lower Starside Gate to go to Romania, and the Perchorsk Gate to come through into Starside, over and over again!’
‘But,’ said Trask, looking thoughtful, ‘doesn’t that mean that if you had used both Gates to get here, you’d probably be stuck here forever? Zek Foener, are you trying to tell me that you were willing to consider that risk?’
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She hugged his arm. ‘Not really, Ben. Remember, the Romanian Gate is temporarily out of action; we couldn’t have used it anyway. So I suppose what I’m telling you is that I trust lan’s talent, and that he hadn’t foreseen that kind of disaster . ..’
‘Then what kind of disaster has he foreseen?’ Trask glanced at Goodly.
The precog shrugged, looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ve only covered what had to be covered,’ he piped. ‘I’ve never trusted the future and don’t intend to start now. Don’t ask me to look, Ben - and especially not in this place! But when I’m needed, then you’ll know you can rely on me.’
Trask continued to look thoughtful. ‘So … that time when Harry Keogh used the Gate at Perchorsk to escape from us - or rather, when he removed his potential plague from our world - in fact he could have used the Romanian Gate a second time?’
‘Yes,’ Zek told him.
Trask nodded, and said, Then I think perhaps he did know about it. But he was Wamphyri, and he was just cussed enough to want to do it his way, despite - or because of - all the odds against him. To go out in a blaze of glory on a big motorcycle, shouting “To hell with you” at the whole damn world!’
And: ‘Huh!’ Lardis Lidesci grunted appreciatively. ‘That sounds exactly like Harry Hell-lander to me!’
Til tell you what really sounds like him,’ Trask continued. ‘If Harry did know about the Gates, if he suspected deep down inside, with that intuitive grasp of his, then what he did -to use both Gates, and so get himself stuck here -would be the perfect way to ensure that he could never bring the plague of vampirism back into our Earth. That would be exactly Harry’s kind of sacrifice …’
After a moment, Goodly said, ‘Was that how The Dweller did it, do you think? Came and went between here and our world on a regular basis?’
‘No.’ Nathan shook his head. ‘The Dweller found Sunside/
Starside - came here, lived here - before the Perchorsk Gate came into being. The Dweller was very special, that’s all. In the Mobius Continuum, he … he knew the directions of places, even of parallel universes.’
He looked at Zek and Goodly, and almost accusingly asked: ‘Why did you come? It could cause - I don’t know -complications?’
Goodly explained why, and there were several reasons. For one, he had ‘seen’ that they would come. Two, they’d desired to use their knowledge and talents in the fight against the Wamphyri. Also, they’d come to bring their weapons — and a warning: that Turchin would close Perchorsk permanently in just two and a half to three Sunside days’ time. And finally a second warning, different but no less important — certainly no less ominous — that Geoffrey Paxton had followed Nathan and the others through into Sunside/Starside, where he planned to regain his ‘stolen’ telepathy.
‘Except it’s the way we think he’ll try to get it back,’ Goodly gloomed. ‘For you see, we didn’t tell Turchin our worst fear: that perhaps Paxton desires to be Wamphyri!’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘But that’s what we’re obliged to believe. We had an empath go over Paxton’s place, get a picture of his psychological profile. And quite simply, Paxton is Keogh-crazy! In a way, he hates the very thought of Harry, and anything or anyone to do with him, for what Harry did to him; but in another way, he loves the idea of the Necroscope’s power. Harry Keogh was a telepath, a teleport, finally a vampire. Paxton will try to do it in reverse: become a vampire, regain his telepathy, use Nathan to discover the Mobius Continuum. It’s his obsession . ..’
‘Power-mad!’ Trask nodded. ‘He always was, right from the start. And that’s before he’s Wamphyri! Just think of it: if he actually got those things he craves, and then took them back to our world. Earth would have a scarlet emperor! And God help us, but if that’s what he wants, he can certainly find it here!’
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‘He’s a madman,’ Nathan summed it up. ‘You just don’t get to be a Lord of the Wamphyri as easily as that. But it’s a very simple thing to get drained, eaten, enthralled, or changed utterly into . .. something else. Anyway, let’s forget him for now. There’s still a lot to be done and time is wasting.�
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Then he quickly went on to detail most of what had transpired during the course of just one night, since his return to the vampire world. He finished with Turkur Tzonov, how the Russian esper had been taken by Canker Canison and Siggi Dam, and concluded: ‘I think we can safely say that Tzonov is no longer a problem. For all that he’s an evil, resourceful man, there’s no coming back from where he is now. I was privy to something of what Siggi was thinking when Canker snatched him. Frankly, I wish I hadn’t been …’ And after a moment’s silence:
‘As for Paxton, we’ll face that problem when or if it comes up. But nothing else has changed, except we now have two extra “weapons” to add to our list. I mean Zek and lan, of course.’
‘And now?’ Lardis Lidesci was finally over the fact that Zek Foener was here again, back in the vampire world. Later he would introduce her to Lissa, and if it wasn’t too painful they might even talk about Jazz, The Dweller, Harry Hell-lander, the old times . .. but all of that must wait until sunup. For there was still work to be done tonight.
‘Now?’ The Necroscope Nathan Keogh was looking at Lardis in that new, grim way of his. Looking at him and agreeing with him: ‘Now we carry on with what we were doing .. .’
After that: a trip to the dome of Sanctuary Rock with Kirk and Andrei, to collect the remainder of the hell-land weapons, and finally it was time to wage war.
Long ago, in the half-mythical, crimson history of Sunside/Starside, the Lords of the Wamphyri had christened their inter-aerie feuds ‘bloodwars’; now, Nathan intended to
give that word new meaning. Except he would not be taking and using blood but spilling it, wasting it. The blood of vampires: Wamphyri blood!
First, however, there were those he must speak to, and to him it was like going to church to offer up a prayer. Except, of course, he had no church but only a private shrine with a secret door. The legend carved upon that door was ‘dead-speak’, and the Necroscope held the one and only key. But knowing how the Great Majority value their privacy, he took the Mobius route out into the desert and chose a lonely place under the stars, where any intercourse with the dead would not be disturbed by the tumult of the living.
