by Brian Lumley
Nathan stared at him. ‘You think so? But how so? Surely Gustav Turchin will close the Perchorsk Gate, and you espers will continue to guard the one at Radujevac. Won’t that suffice?’
Then Trask told him about the Chernobyl Sarcophagus: how a nuclear curse had been visited on Earth by man’s stupidity. ‘So they built a wall round it and a roof over it,’ he went on, ‘thick enough to keep all of that weird heat in. It was quite a while ago. But just containing it wasn’t enough; they still had to know what was going on inside -that nothing else was going to escape! So every now and then they open the wall and go back in. They have to be sure, you see?
‘And it will be precisely the same with Sunside/Starside. Except, while a meltdown can’t think for itself, the Wamphyri can and do. And while the nuclear monster in that sarcophagus can’t deliberately try to break out .. .’ He paused, but he had made his point…
‘In that event, this whole world will suffer.’
‘It would be ruined!’ Trask corrected him. ‘As you know, rightly or wrongly, we used nuclear weapons to bring one of our own wars to an end. From time to time there’s been the threat of such usage ever since. But men have to live on the planet, and finally they’re seeing sense. Good news for my
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world, yes .. . but this one? The men of my world don’t have to live here; to them this is an alien place, and if some of them knew what we already know … I don’t think they’d even wait to see how it works out! And honestly, I can’t say I blame them. That’s another reason why we’re staying: to see it through with you, and to know how to report at the end of it.’
‘If you get back.’
‘We’re putting our faith in you.’
Nathan waved his hands helplessly. ‘But I can’t work miracles!’
Now, despite himself and the mood of their conversation, Trask did grin, and broadly. ‘Oh, really?’ he said. ‘I think some of us might disagree with you!’ Then he stopped smiling and sighed. ‘But … if you really can’t work a miracle, then we’ll simply have to trust to luck - or to the future?’
In the Necroscope’s mind, the subject had become depressing and so he changed it. ‘What do you make of this?’ he asked. And taking a sliver of charcoal from their small fire, he drew Ethloi’s ‘engine’, as he had come to think of it (the mathematician’s enigmatic diagram that so reminded him of pistons and pressure, motion and power), on the pale inner wall of a piece of bark.
‘What am I supposed to think of it?’ Trask asked. ‘What is it, anyway?’
That’s what I hoped you’d tell me,’ Nathan gloomily answered. And he attempted to explain the inexplicable, the hidden meaning in the thing which all the Thyre ancients had been trying to get over to him without understanding it themselves. ‘I had hoped that if anyone would recognize it, you would.’
That I’d know the “truth” of it?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you don’t know it,’ Trask answered. ‘And because they don’t know it. Show me an algebraic equation with two solutions, one right and one wrong, and I’ll choose
the right one. Tell me what this is, and I’ll know at once if you’re lying to me. But when you don’t know yourself? Why, I’m not even sure if this diagram is a question or the answer to one!’
Nathan was disappointed, but understood Trask’s explanation of his inability. And it dawned on him: of course Trask didn’t know! This thing was of the future, and the future was devious and deliberately obscure!
Again they changed the subject, and for long hours talked of other things …
Their watch passed quickly. On Starside, the bloodwar had been raging for a little over thirteen hours; before sleeping Nathan made a quick Mobius-jump to see how things stood. It was much the same as before, except the fighting now seemed to be concentrated around the aerie’s summit and the stack’s central levels. It would be another two to three hours before Devetaki caught Wratha, locked her in the silver cage and hoisted her on high.
Nathan returned to camp but was unable to sleep. He found himself torn two ways. He hadn’t seen enough of Misha - could never see enough of her - yet spent the night separated from her; and no way to tell how many nights were left to them. But Devetaki Skullguise had a locator whose special assignment was the whereabouts of the Necro-scope, Nathan Keogh. If he went into the desert, to Misha in the new oasis at Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs, Yefros might locate him there. All of the best-kept secrets of the Thyre would then be in jeopardy: their intelligence and the location of their colonies, their vulnerability … and their availability.
Previously, the Wamphyri (not unlike the Szgany, much to Nathan’s great shame) had considered the Thyre no better than desert trogs: inferior creatures scarcely fit for consumption. Only let them discover the truth of it - it might well mean a disaster! The dull trogs of Starside caverns were left mainly to their own devices because they were dull, unfeeling, incapable of resistance. What use to
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torture creatures who couldn’t appreciate the pain? Where the pleasure in hunting beings who didn’t have the sense or opportunity to hide? Why fuel oneself on trog blood, when there was always the sweet flesh of higher human beings? And as for trog women . .. well, there had never been a great many vampires of Black Boris’s persuasions.
But only let them get to know the Thyre . ..
It was unthinkable.
But indeed thinking about it - and between times turning over and over in his head the puzzles and enigmas posed by the esoteric dreaming of dead Thyre ancients - finally the Necroscope drifted into a deep sleep, and stayed that way for three solid hours. And because his friends (especially Atwei) among the not too distant Thyre knew that he needed his sleep, they made no ‘unseemly’ intrusions through the medium of their mentalism, and it was a credit to Sunside’s Great Majority that they didn’t disturb him either, despite that one of their number, and a special one at that, was herself disturbed almost to distraction …
Close to a deserted Szgany trail through the forest, not many miles from the camp, Nana Kiklu had a visitor at the low mound of earth where Lardis had dug a hole and burned her, then buried her ashes. Her visitor’s predicament - and Nana’s, that she couldn’t hug him, comfort him, hold his head to her breast - brought her to incorporeal tears that she somehow kept from spilling into the deadspeak aether. But she could feel him, or his presence certainly, and knew the feeling for a sign of his power and a symptom of his predicament both.
For despite that he was able to speak to her, using his own morbid version of deadspeak, and that she felt his presence, there was no warmth in him and he was not a Necroscope. The next best thing, then? Or the worst possible thing. And:
Mother? he said wonderingly, in his breathless whisper of a deadspeak voice, where he stood at her grave. Did you … did you call out to me? Wonderingly, aye, for none of the
dead had ever done that before! And through all Nana’s tears - shed for him - he knew that she had, and that he, Lord Nestor Lichloathe of the Wamphyri, had heard her. It was why he was here, for in fact he’d been on his way to find and kill Nathan when her crying had drawn him down out of the sky. What’s more he had found his brother (the faint but definite trail of his numbers vortex, at least) and had known that Nathan lay sleeping only a handful of miles away. So why he’d answered Nana’s cry at all was something of a mystery to him, which Nestor couldn’t fathom because the humanity was flown out of him and he was Wamphyri.
Then, when she was able, Nana told Nestor the story of his life, which no necromancer’s threats might ever have wrung from her, and slowly but surely the gaps in his damaged memory began to fill themselves in. Except, it would make no real difference to him (or so he thought), for the baby, boy and young man he’d once been were alien to him now, even different identities. And he was the Lord Nestor, of the Wamphyri.
So Nestor stood, then sat, and listened, while out of the cold, cold earth s
omething of warmth struggled to find its way into him, as Nana tried to warm him with memories that were no longer his. His mother’s purpose, a delaying tactic, was apparent, even transparent, yet there was more to it than that; for Nana had never been one for deceit, and was beyond it now that she knew the truth of the grave. Yet still the necromancer sat there, like a small but very dreadful boy at his mother’s knee. And while the greater part of him rejected her, other parts soaked up her words like rust loosened by oil, as the ghosts of memory’s faded pictures were retouched with living colour and texture on the screen of his mind.
And perhaps somewhere deep inside, the dry cogs of forgotten intelligence, mental machinery, began to mesh at last, and wheels creakingly to turn …
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Thus Nathan slept on through the night (though shortly he’d be up and about again), and for the moment knew nothing of Nestor at Nana’s graveside.
While in Starside:
Only Mangemanse continued to hold out with any measure of success. Throbbing with Canker’s moon-music and his ‘singing’, and defended by beasts, lieutenants and thralls (the dog-Lord’s ‘pups’, who in truth could only be likened to mad dogs), Mangemanse seemed impregnable. But on high, Wratha the Risen - who also had been known to use the word ‘impregnable’ from time to time - cackled like a madwoman behind silver bars and set her cage to rocking, and Wrathspire itself seemed all set to fall to the invaders from the east.
While in the east, where the jagged spine of the barrier mountains broke into spurs, sank to earth and buried itself at last, Spiro Killglance flew towards the last jumble of tumbled rocks that marked the eastern extreme of the range. Dressed in his customary rags - with the tails of a blood-spattered head-band streaming out behind him - he thought little or nothing. A wingspan to his left, his spare flyer glided effortlessly on breezes out of the north, and lulled by the interminable throb of powerful manta wings, Spiro’s power-crazed mind was for the moment weary . .. and blank.
Likewise Black Boris’s mind, blank, except he deliberately contrived to keep it so, in order to take Spiro by surprise, even as he’d taken Gorvi. For having received warning of Spiro’s approach from Desmodus bats recruited in the trog caverns as familiar creatures, Boris and a lieutenant were hiding in the last of the crags, crouched there astride flyers that hovered on the turbulent updrafts; while high overhead, obscured by a scud of clouds, a keen-eyed warrior floated on fully-inflated bladders, shadowing them and monitoring Spiro’s progress. Only one warrior this time, aye, for following the attack on Gorvi, Boris was satisfied that one was enough.
And indeed Spiro was surprised, no less than Gorvi
before him, when Boris and his man drifted free of the crags directly to the fore, blocking his way and facing him head-on. And: What have we here! Black Boris called out gleefully with his mentalism, when the fugitive was still some distance apart from him. But I do believe it’s Spiro Killglance! My, how you rebels flee the fighting - like bats from a leaking aerie.’
But Spiro had quickly recovered, and at once returned: Or female trogs from a cavern, when Black Boris drops his pants?
Boris’s turn to be surprised. This was a Spiro he had not seen before. Obviously, the years flown between had given him a little self-confidence; something must have, for sure! Why, it appears you’ve been spying on me! Boris chuckled as Spiro sped closer. Anyway, it’s a real treat to see that you’ve developed a sense of humour at Jast - though much too late, I’m sorry to say. But at least you can die laughing.
‘I intend to,’ Spiro was now close enough to shout. ‘Well, smiling, at least.’ And his bloodshot, deep-sunken eyes turned skywards as he heard the warrior’s propulsors start into life. Then, as the thing came squirting out of the clouds into view, Spiro saw what a monster it was. Albeit of the smaller variety, it was viciously equipped: a real test, at last, for his fresh-forged weapon.
‘And are you still smiling?’ Black Boris laughed over the throb and sputter of the warrior’s discharge.
‘Oh, there are smiles and smiles,’ Spiro answered, gathering his alien energies as the warrior came curving down on him from the star-splashed sky.
Now Boris was close enough to see Spiro’s face — more especially, his eyes — and to know where he had seen such before: in the face of Spiro’s father, the abominable Eygor Killglance! But that had been long and long ago, and surely . ..
‘.. . Surely I have inherited them at last!’ Spiro snarled, hunching down in his saddle.
The warrior was closing with him, zeroing in. Its many eyes were fixed on him .. . then fixed on his eyes! It could
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not look away! And: Aye, come and get it! Spiro thought, the while wondering if he really had the measure of this nightmare thing.
Spiro was in the middle, Boris and his lieutenant to the fore, and the warrior curving down out of the sky to the rear. Issuing mental commands, and reinforcing them by hauling on his reins and turning his mount sideways on, Spiro never once took his eyes off the descending monster. Levelling out of its dive, it sped towards him. Spiro was its target — and it was his as Spiro’s eyes underwent a weird and hideous metamorphosis. One eye bulged crimson; the other narrowed to a sulphur-dripping slit. Then -
- He let go his energies all in one massive blast!
Spiro’s mind-bolt was not visible, but its effect was!
The warrior opened its cavern jaws, as if to snap him from the sky. But its jaws kept on opening! The flesh stripped back from its ‘face’, its flanks, back and belly. Erectile spines detached from the creature’s true spine and flew like darts in all directions. Gas-bladders exploded outwards from under chitin scales and went flapping away like torn sails. The alveolar bone and cartilage skeleton began to buckle as its musculature was stripped away, and breaking in pieces it flew past a triumphant Spiro in a hail of black excrement and crimson plasma!
Flew past him . .. directly into Boris and his man! Boris avoided the worst of it, but his lieutenant was less fortunate. Sliced open by free-flying scything teeth and whirling spines and knocked out of his saddle, he went twirling down the night. His flyer, ripped in its membrane wings, body and neck, limped away towards the tumbling crags.
Which left Spiro and his spare flyer, and Black Boris, of course, alone in the sky …
And: There are smiles, and there are smiles, Spiro’s mental voice was a sinister rumble now in Boris’s mind, where the trog-fancier sat blood- and shit-streaked astride his startled mount. Boris would turn aside but couldn’t; Spiro’s eyes held him like a fly in a spider’s web.
Sp-Spiro, Boris managed to send at last, I . .. Z was onJy carrying out my duties .. ..’
But did you have to enjoy them so?
I…
Enough! I’m in a hurry.
He hurled his second bolt, and it was as if Boris and his mount had run full tilt into a mountainside. They crumpled up, and their debris went fluttering to earth in rags and ruin.
And: East, Spiro commanded his beasts without pause. East and Turgosheim. For I’ve a gorge to populate and rule. And whosoever thought Eygor KillgJance was a Power … well, just wait until he sees Spiro!
Far to the west and on Sunside:
Nana and Nestor sensed Nathan’s gradual awakening. Nestor felt the strengthening whirl of his brother’s numbers vortex, and Nana .. . simply knew. Yet both of them held back from any sort of action: Nana from warning the Necro-scope, because that could only accelerate the inevitable confrontation, and Nestor because he wanted to hear his story out in full.
The twin beliefs that formed Nestor’s single obsession and major misconception, that Nathan was a Great Enemy from years long forgotten, and that the woman Misha Zan-esti had betrayed Nestor to be with him, were so deeply ingrained in his scarred mind that hearing the truth from Nana was much like listening to a pack of lies - which made it hard to explain why he continued to listen, but he did. Perhaps it was the weird, calming effect of her
voice, the same in death as in life, which more than anything else stirred memories in him; or perhaps he was simply tired, drained by the disease that even now burned the life out of him. Whichever, Nestor sat still and listened as his mother expanded her story into a genuine delaying tactic, now that she knew her other son was awake.
So both of them kept their thoughts to themselves,
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excluding the living and the dead alike, silent and secretive as lovers whispering in the Sunside night…
Coming more fully awake, Nathan sniffed suspiciously at the air. Typical of his Szgany background, this action served to remind him who and what he was - originally. Oh, he was the son of the Necroscope, Harry Keogh, but he was also Szgany, a man of Sunside. All of his old feelings of alienage in his own land were gone now; Trask and the others were the aliens here. But they were also his friends and allies.
Nathan yawned and looked around a small clearing lit by flickering yellow firelight, then threw back the cured skin that was his blanket, stood up and glanced into a clear night sky. The position of the stars told him the hour of the night, and that he’d slept his three hours to the full. Although it wasn’t much, for the first time in a long time he felt that he’d actually had some rest. lan Goodly, David Chung and Grinner had taken over the watch. The former sat close to the fire with a wolf of the wild sprawled at his feet; Chung stretched his legs at the edge of the clearing; Zek slept on, and Trask had just settled to sleep close by.
Nathan stepped to Goodly and said, ‘I’m going to see how things are going at the last aerie. I’ll be … as long as it takes, a few minutes at most.’
