Bloodwars

by Brian Lumley

  Since the game was up, the Seer-Lord would let his spiteful nature hold full sway; whatever he had put over on the Necroscope, he would now use it to belittle him. It was the way of the Wamphyri: if they could not torture their victims physically, they would do it mentally. This time, however, his mockery went too far; Nathan was no longer a shivering thrall in promontory Runemanse, but his own free man - and a power!

  Listen to me, he said. So, you have enjoyed spying on me from afar. You’ve enjoyed my pleasures and hope that by telling me about it they’ll be reduced. But you’re like a spoiled child, Maglore! Because you cannot have all your own way, you seek to subtract from the lives of others. Hah! And you’re the one who counted yourself superior to the other Lords! Aye, and I remember your silly model of Tur-gosheim, its spires and manses: how you would hurl your so-called spells and imprecations against the houses of your betters when you thought that they had slighted you. But in fact they never had slighted you; indeed, they rarely so much as noticed you! What, doddering old Maglore, who sent young men to service his wenches because he was way

  past doing it for himself? Well, at least those young men were men by comparison! Scum of the earth - indeed, vampires, aye - but men next to you, Maglore! Men next to you!

  The part about Maglore’s impotency was a lie, of course, but that too was the way of the vampire, and perfectly acceptable in their taunting and wordgames; and the Necroscope had always been good at matching taunts.

  Maglore was furious. His telepathic aura seethed with his hatred. If I could … if I could but reach out across all of the miles between, he choked the thought out.

  ‘Ware how you threaten, Maglore! Nathan too was enraged, but somehow managed to control it. His telepathic voice was a hiss, as if spoken through clenched teeth. For you’re impotent in more ways than one. No, you can’t reach out, and there’s no tool of yours can harm me here. But as for me …

  Eh? the other gasped, sensing a threat.

  And quietly now: I go where I will, Nathan told him. And indeed I do reach out - at will! I speak to the dead … who listen to me/ But I’m sure you know all this by now. Except … do you know it all? How little do you know, Maglore?

  And again: Eh? But what’s to know?

  Oh, you long suspected that I conferred with some other in Turgosheim, but has it not dawned on you with whom I conferred? No, you may not ‘reach out’ and strike at me, but I come and go as I will; I talk to the dead, who advise me; through me, they seek revenge on the living! Yet how may the dead harm the living? Or is there something more? Do you remember, Maglore, how you told me that Runemanse was haunted?

  Runemanse? the other gasped. Haunted?

  Or, if not Runemanse itself, Nathan went on, then gloomy, shadowed Madmanse in the levels below? No, you may not strike at me, nor even reach out to touch me from this time forward. Look! (He slipped Maglore’s sigil from his ear and pushed it down into a heap of humming beast-droppings.)

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  There! And will you read me now? Well, good luck to you! May the stink-gnats entertain you - you have comparable minds, after all. And so I’m free of you, Maglore. But .. . are you free?

  Free? the other gibbered. Why I rule now in Turgosheim! All is mine! What do I care for Madmanse?

  Care? Ah, no. (Nathan was enjoying it now.) But fear? Ah, yes!

  There’s nothing to fear in Madmanse! Just an old and crumbling dead thing. Eygor may not harm me!

  Really? Nathan’s voice was a sly whisper. Can you be sure? Well, we shall see .. .

  Maglore pulled himself together and snarled: When next we meet, Nathan Seersthrall, you are a dead man. Or a man changed forever into something hideous!

  But: I doubt that we shall ever meet, Nathan told him. I doubt that I shall ever speak to you again, not in this world. Nor am I your thrall — but you may one day be mine. For after all, I converse with the dead!

  Nathan, I…

  .. . Farewell, Maglore. I leave your sigil, your shewstone, where it and where you belong - in the shit of a beast! Spy on that, if you will.

  He withdrew his probe, and the telepathic aether fell silent on the instant.

  The Sunside day was a long one, worth more than four of parallel Earth’s days, but the time was not wasted. There was good, genuinely restful sleep to be had; there were visits and arrangements to be made; there was a handful of teeming dead whom the Necroscope must speak to. Not least his mother, Nana, who considered herself the most fortunate of all the teeming dead in that she still had her son and, through Nathan, Sunside and the Szgany.

  Through his wolves in the heights, Nathan kept a watchful, wary eye on the Wamphyri. Through deadspeak contacts such as Jason Lidesci, he updated himself on the necrology

  of men and monsters alike. And through the talents of Zek Foener and David Chung, he was able to locate, advise and make arrangements for the safety of a good many more Travellers. Survivors of Tireni Scarp and Mirlu Township were discovered in the west, and told to prepare for evacuation; others to the east fell in with Nathan’s plans.

  The Necroscope was relieved to discover large numbers of Travellers in the woods, even though the majority of them trusted only to themselves and kept hidden away. But that was probably as well; after all, it would be impossible to move all of them to safety. Still, it was heartening to note that while Wratha and the others had been resident in Starside for three and a half years — a period of prolonged Wamphyri depredations - still the tribes flourished.

  And on that theme - the theme of burgeoning against all odds - something else had become very noticeable; not only to Nathan, but to everyone who had previous knowledge of it. ‘What do you make of it?’ Ben Trask asked Nathan at Lardis’s camp.

  The Necroscope smiled and shrugged. ‘Well, it’s plain to see what Andrei Romani makes of it, at least! But, then Andrei doesn’t know her as we do.’

  The subject of Trask’s inquiry was Anna Marie English, the previously wilting ecopath. In tune with the Earth (this earth, too, apparently) to such an extent that her own physical well-being was governed by her unique ‘talent’, an incredible metamorphosis now seemed to be at work in her. She was growing … younger! Previously drab, arthritic, stumbling and bleary-eyed — in short, grown old before her time - now the years seemed to be falling off her.

  ‘During the night,’ Trask said, ‘no one noticed her. She was with us, that was all. And now, because they’ll see her as she is now, in the morning light, this is how they’ll think of her from now on; they won’t realize that there’s been a change in her. But back on Earth a week ago … well, you saw how she was. She never would have made last night’s trek. A few miles would have been enough to cripple her. But take a look at her now …’

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  Nathan looked. According to Trask, during other conversations, when the ecopath had been twenty-four she’d looked fifty. When Nathan had first met her just a few months ago, she’d been forty but still looked fifty! It had seemed to say a great deal for her home world, that after years of ecological depredations Mother Earth was struggling to be back on her feet; a fact that seemed mirrored in Anna Marie’s ‘vitality’, the abeyance of her physical decline. It had meant that men were learning to abide by rules of ecological conservation and sensible husbandry of a planet’s resources, albeit the parallel planet beyond the Gate. So what was going on here?

  Anna Marie was forty-one but looked thirty-five! She had put aside her thick-lensed spectacles and hearing-aid; her eyes and hair shone; her liver spots were little more than freckles. She who had limped now held herself upright, her head high, and the defect in her hip was barely noticeable. Her movements were flowing, her limbs seemed supple, and her hair — bounced! When she smiled, her teeth gleamed! Anna Marie wasn’t beautiful, but she was undeniably attractive.

  Certainly, Andrei Romani was attracted. He stood watching while she taught a small group of orphaned children a game out of the hell-lands: Ring-a-Rin
g o’Roses. Children had been Anna Marie’s life ever since the Romanian Refuge: which reminded the Necroscope of someone else who had loved children … in Turgosheim’s Sunside. So she had told him, anyway.

  Orlea, Maglore’s love-thrall in Runemanse. For a time she had been Nathan’s lover - albeit wrapped and gifted to him by Maglore. A gift he daren’t refuse at first, until in a while he hadn’t wanted to! It had lasted … for a time, until the Seer-Lord had put a stop to it. Just part of the evil old bastard’s game, his plan to corrupt Nathan, subvert him to his cause …

  ‘Well?’ said Trask.

  ‘Umm? Oh, what do I make of it?’ Nathan came back to

  the present. ‘Well, this is a young world; an unspoiled world, at least. Ignore the Wamphyri, and the “Nature” of this world is healthy. However briefly, Anna Marie is now part of Sunside/Starside, and so reflects its quality.’

  Trask nodded. ‘I thought that might be your solution. But it feels wrong to me. It could be wishful thinking, of course, but I would like to think she reflects what’s still to come.’

  ‘Only time will tell.’ Nathan’s shrug was perhaps a little careless, which was hardly intentional. But as Trask was suddenly aware, the Necroscope’s mind was on other things …

  The worst of it was, Nathan couldn’t tell anyone where he planned to go or what he would do there. But, subconsciously, Orlea’s plight - her situation in Runemanse as Maglore’s ‘companion’ - had bothered the Necroscope for a long time. The Seer-Lord had not changed her (not during Nathan’s time with him, at least), for he had valued her humanity; with Orlea, as with Nathan, he had been assured of his own ‘superiority’.

  But Orlea’s story had warmed Nathan in soulless Runemanse; he still remembered the way she had asked after Sunside’s children, and suspected that she’d mourned the warmth and light of times forever past. Well, and if what he planned worked out -

  - But even if it failed to work out, why should she suffer the .. . the hospitality of that loathsome Lord of the Wamphyri a moment longer? She’d told Nathan she loved Maglore that time, but he had suspected it was a love born out of madness - or of the fact that the Seer-Lord was her only protection in a place void of the light and love of humanity. Well, now there was a choice, something other than Maglore’s dubious ‘protection’, if Orlea would only avail herself of it. Wherefore:

  In the afternoon, after eating and sleeping, Nathan made sure he was up before Misha in the camp at the edge of the forest. This was deliberate; he couldn’t tell her his mission

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  for obvious reasons. She wouldn’t understand his motives, or might think she understood them too well! He didn’t want to deceive her, but neither could he hurt her. If he could get Orlea out of Runemanse, he would place her in a small Thyre colony until later he could move her back into Turgosheim’s Sunside. All of this kept secret, of course. But … it was all hit and miss, all ifs and buts. For example: if ought should happen to him, Orlea would be stuck with the Thyre; but even then, would that be any worse than a life of ever-increasing morbidity and madness in promontory Rune-manse? No, of course not.

  Nor could Nathan mention his mission to Trask or Lardis; so much as hint at it, they would try to dissuade him. Rightly so, for if anything were to happen to him … what price then, Lardis’s dreams, his hopes? And what of Trask’s chance of returning home? Nathan supposed he was being selfish; but how, if he worked for the well-being of another? Also, he remembered Orlea so well; she had been like a breath of fresh air in the otherwise vile atmosphere of Runemanse. It was even possible she’d saved his sanity, so that the very thought of her still trapped there was abhorrent to him.

  And so, saying nothing to anyone, he walked out a little way on to the prairie, conjured a door, and moved -

  — To the rim of Turgosheim, within the fortifications of the roof of the rearing turret that was Runemanse. It was past noon, but the sun was still ‘high’ in the southern sky; its rays burned on the upper ramparts. The hour was such that in most of the conquered manses a majority of men and monsters alike would be sleeping. Yet still Nathan guarded his secret mind, shrouding it in numbers as he moved swiftly to the low parapet wall, leaned across it and looked down on gloomy, smoking, vapour-wreathed Turgosheim.

  He knew that he had the co-ordinates and could find his way directly into Orlea’s locked room. It was simply a matter of familiarity; and certainly (he felt the blood rising to his face at the thought) he had been familiar enough with

  that room in his time. But what of Maglore? Even the Seer-Lord must sleep at times, and midday was as good a time as any. Also, when Maglore had … when he had wanted Orlea, he had used to call for her. Her room had been hers alone, where she’d known complete privacy. A singularly rare thing, in Runemanse!

  Nathan dared not probe telepathically - but neither could he stand here, wavering on the rim like a boy desperate to swim who fancies the water is too cold. He made up his mind -made to conjure a door, too - and in that selfsame moment saw them: Maglore and Orlea, together on the low-walled platform of a balcony one tier down from his own position, gazing out over Turgosheim. He saw them, and they .. . sensed him! His surprise had served to focus his thoughts upon them; as their presence had registered in Nathan’s mind, so had his in theirs. Galvanized, their heads cranked back; their widening eyes swivelled up to glare the shock of recognition into his own.

  You! Maglore’s mental croak rumbled in Nathan’s head. And:

  Nathaaan! Orlea hissed, her eyes like lanterns in the balcony’s shade, flaring to match the Seer-Lord’s own!

  Gasping his horror, Nathan thought: I should have known it! She was here too long. She was Maglore’s for far too Jong! And the Lady Orlea looking at him with uniformly scarlet eyes, her ruby lips slowly forming into a smile that displayed eye-teeth like small curved knives.

  And the Seer-Lord pointing a taloned hand, snarling: ‘See, now! Didn’t I tell you he comes and goes like a ghost?’ Except the Necroscope knew that Maglore’s spoken words were merely a subterfuge, a ruse, a cover for his unspoken query and command: Where are you, dull and stupid beasts, so-caJled ‘guardians’ of the roof? My enemy is upon me even now! Come . .. see to him .. . destroy him.’!!

  This had always been Nathan’s main advantage over Maglore: his ability to read the mage’s thoughts while guarding his own. But even if he had not ‘heard’ Maglore’s

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  command, he most certainly would have heard the grunts of startled inquiry and scrabbling of horny feet on the vast flat roof. So that, turning from the rim, he saw his second error: that he’d failed to credit the oh so clever Maglore with even a modicum of intelligence. Or if not that, then that he had started to put too much faith in his own powers, until he believed they’d made him invincible. What? But naturally Maglore would post guards here! Even in his great triumph he would know better than to leave unguarded a possible route of entry into Runemanse.

  Doubtless these creatures of Maglore’s had been stationed in the squat turrets that knobbed the wall at the rear of the promontory, where it bottlenecked into a mighty bridge of rock. The wall with its turret battlements, and the precipitous gulf itself, kept Runemanse safe from attack from the great plateau that sprawled for seven miles to the south before sloping down into the wooded foothills of Tur-gosheim’s Sunside. The guardians had been keeping watch outside the wall and to the south, on the lookout for any creeping incursion; but Nathan had arrived here instantly, north of the wall and within its demarcation. Wherefore the guardians, in tune with their Lord’s mind, had been unaware of the Necroscope’s presence until the moment Maglore himself sensed it.

  They were not warriors so much as personal guards, produce of Maglore’s vats, but of recent construction and utterly nightmarish aspect! And vampires, of course. The Necroscope had never seen anything quite like them before, so that for a moment they unmanned him. They were spidery things, many-armed and -legged - but their l
imbs were those of men, with grapples and pincers in place of hands and feet! Ravenously hungry, they came scuttling at great speed and in red-eyed rage from the shadowy doorways of their turret observation posts.

  Nathan gathered his wits, conjured a door, glanced down at Maglore one last time and called out, ‘Enjoy your triumph while you may, Maglore of Runemanse - for it won’t last long.’

  But as the roof’s grotesque guardians came scurrying like great grey spiders, he stepped back from the rim and in through his Mobius door, and without pause collapsed it behind him. And as he returned to the temporary camp of the Lidescis in his own Sunside those thousands of miles to the west, he could scarcely help but view his threat (which at best was braggadocio) with dismay. Aye, for with all Turgosheim and its conquered denizens at Maglore’s command, the Seer-Lord’s triumph might easily last a very long time indeed!

  Soured by what he had seen, saddened by Orlea’s conversion to vampirism, the Necroscope must leave it at that.

  For now, at least…

  PART EIGHT

  Bloodwars!

  I

  Timescan - Two Fly Out -Stormclouds on Starside

  Nathan had no choice but to forget about Orlea, just as he’d been obliged to forget about Siggi Dam. His interest had lain in setting them free, but they were beyond that now. They had become irretrievably part of the vampire world; they were vampires, and he was sworn to destroy them.

  For the first two-thirds of a long but less then interminable afternoon, he was quiet to the point of withdrawn. But as the sun dawdled east on its low, slow trajectory, almost imperceptibly losing height, he gradually came out of it. And if his moods were noticed and people wondered about them, nothing was said. For after all, the Necroscope had many problems.