by Brian Lumley
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VI The Big One.’
Goodly’s ‘Ahhh!’ was all the warning they got, as in the precog’s mind:
Jesus! Of course she knew that Nathan’s choices were infinite.’ Alexei Ye/ros had told her as much! That’s why she had to narrow his choices down and bring him here - to the Gate!
Nathan was thinking just one thought, one word: Trapped!
Zek and Chung, too: their talents likewise springing to the fore as the ambushers lifted their ‘radio silence’. Zek’s mentalism: the telepathic aether vibrant with the presence of monstrous minds! Chung’s lodestone skill: locating the source of the threat - and discovering it all around them!
As they came to a startled, stumbling halt, Trask saw the truth written on all their faces and gasped, The clever bitch! She made us jump from the fat into the fire.’
‘Better than that,’ the Necroscope told him. ‘She knows it’s the one place I can’t jump back out of! Not this close to the Gate!’ And now Nathan understood the reasoning behind Devetaki’s small detachments in the Starside foothills. These were the same men! Their mission: to disperse the grey brothers into the heights, then to deploy here, keep silent, wait.
He looked back the way they had come, between the boulder clumps, and saw figures moving languidly, even tauntingly, into view out of the shadows; a bulky lieutenant, well over six feet in height, and two male thralls, all three of them wearing murderous gauntlets. And from rocky hiding-
places all around, more vampires appearing, very sure of themselves, unhurriedly moving closer.
The lieutenant was a mentalist; Zek and Nathan’s eyes met in grim acknowledgement as they heard his thoughts fly south: We have them, my Lady!
And Devetaki’s answer: I know .. . well done … hold them there … I’m on my way!
The Perchorsk Gate,’ Trask snapped. ‘You’ve used it one way, Nathan - but only one way. So you can use it again. You can come with David and me, through into Perchorsk!’
Breaking into a run, the five made for the crater wall -and again skidded to a halt. They were cut off. Vampires were emerging from the magma ss wormholes all around the Gate, where they had been waiting in ambush. Two concentric rings of vampires, and the five caught between them.
Nathan was frustrated, afraid, angry; his eyes were burning in his face, hurting him with their stored energy. ‘All of you get behind me,’ he said. ‘Don’t look at my face!’ The unaccustomed, ugly tone of his voice - its threatening quality - caused them to obey at once. Behind him, the four formed a small circle facing outwards; Trask took Zek’s weapon and switched it to short burst; the familiar ch-ching! rang loud in the unnaturally quiet night as he cocked it. Zek passed him a spare magazine which he pocketed, sure that he’d be able to use it. The trouble was that it took too many bullets to knock these bastards down, and even then they wouldn’t stay down!
In front, towards the Gate, a row of vampires - mainly thralls — were up out of their magmass wormholes; others were still emerging. Behind, among the scattered rocks, the night was alive with sinuous motion and the gleam of feral eyes. The nearest of them was less than forty-five feet away, and their numbers were … far too many.
But Nathan had the answer to that. ‘Beware!’ he told them, sounding more like one of them now. ‘My eyes contain the power of life and death.’ It was no idle boast.
‘Oh, really?’ said the lieutenant, with an oily, glutinous
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chuckle. ‘Yet here we stand, untouched. Powers you surely have - we are all witness to that - but you are not the long-dead Eygor Killglance, nor his cowardly bloodson Spiro!’
The lieutenant was in command here. Swat him and the rest would be a rabble; they might panic, attack en masse, overwhelm by sheer weight of numbers. But show him something unpleasant, give him an example, teach him a lesson …
Nathan crouched down and concentrated his hatred into his eyes. His face became a tortured mask; his lips drew back from his teeth; he glanced at the thralls to left and right of the lieutenant, hurled two bolts in rapid succession, and snarled: ‘Die, then!’
And they did.
The one on the left threw wide his arms and opened his mouth to scream - but only blood emerged as his skull caved in, driving his brains out forcefully through eyes and ears! And the one on the right coughed a single unintelligible word, then staggered, hands fluttering like trapped birds. His body vibrated, his ribs and spine making audible crackling sounds as bones shivered into shards. Finally he crumpled, shuddering to earth like a lightning-struck tree!
And Nathan … Jiked it!
There!’ he said, his hideous face split by an even more hideous grin. But in the next moment:
Necroscope! (A well-known voice in his head.) Bring me up now. Your promise! Do it now, Necroscope/ - for the fiend MagJore has broken into my pit!
No! said Nathan, while still his intelligence was his own. This eye of yours is a power, it’s true, but it’s also a nightmare - which you knew when you gave it to me. So stay in your pit, Eygor. For after all, It’s the best pJace for you!
WHAT?
All of this in the Necroscope’s metaphysical mind, while in the physical world:
The vampires were slipping back into their magmass
wormholes; the lieutenant was loping for cover; thralls were scattering under the hot gaze of a man who was suddenly a monster. From behind a clump of boulders, briefly a target appeared; a thrall, who whirled a bolas over his head. Nathan was too late to catch him in the act; the man ducked back out of sight; his hurled weapon came whipping through the air towards the group of humans. Goodly cried his pain — before the bolas hit him!
The thing had three vicious, six-inch, razor-sharp hooks. Two of them clanged together, catching harmlessly in the precog’s clothing; the third whirled around him and hooked itself through his trousers into his inner right thigh. Goodly went down yelping.
The blurred glint of more bolas; a man stepped from cover to release his weapon; Nathan struck at him with his killing eye — but nothing happened!
I take it back! Eygor told him. I take back my eye! Liar! Cheat! You have robbed me of my vengeance, robbed even a dead thing of his one tomb, however inglorious! For Maglore shaJI give me many tombs, and all of them depleting me! His men are into my pit even now! You’ve doomed me, who did you no harm!
Vampires were creeping back out of their wormholes, their rockpile hiding places. Trask’s machine-pistol came coughing alive in short, staccato bursts; three thralls howled as they were knocked backwards, disappearing below the smooth rims of their chute-like refuges. Perhaps they would slip all the way to the bottom, shoot into the subterranean Gate and end their days as dripstone fossils in a Carpathian foothills cavern.
Then, abruptly, the chatter of the machine-pistol came to a halt; Trask swore as he tossed aside the empty magazine and slapped a new one — the last one — into its housing. And the Necroscope knew that he must have Eygor’s eye.
Give it back!
When you bring me up. But it’s now or never, Necroscope, for they are on me! And they will break - me — in - pieces! Coil me up now or it’s the end of you .. . and of meeeee!
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Damn you! Nathan ground his teeth. Damn your black heart to hell.’ Very well then, hear me now, Eygor Killglance. I command you: come up from the dead. Be alive, mobile in the world of the living - and return to me your eye!
And: SO BE IT! said the other, his lunatic laughter ringing out through all the deadspeak aether …
And in Madmanse, in Turgosheim:
The Runemage Maglore leaned on the shallow wall of an ancient refuse pit amid the piled rubble of excavation, and called down, ‘Well, how goes it?’ For just a moment ago there’d come a lull in the murmur of excited voices reaching up from the reeking gloom, where his thralls had discovered the incredible fossil, the gigantic amalgam that was Eygor Killglance.
‘Do you not hear me
?’ Maglore raised his voice. ‘I asked, what have you discov …’ At which point, he paused open-mouthed in the middle of a word, as a vast sigh went up or was sent up (sent, yes) by a mighty, monstrous mind into his mind! In that selfsame moment Maglore knew, even before the previous babble of thrall voices became a ripple of horror, and the ripple an uproar, and the uproar a mad scramble for the dozen ropes that hung down into the pit.
For suddenly there was mist down there in that mausoleum pit where no mist should be, a cold, cold mist that writhed up into the shaft, even to Maglore at the rim. He felt it … and felt what was in it! Faces appeared - the faces of men coming faster up the ropes than ever they’d gone down - gasping men, panting men, not screaming but saving their breath for climbing, as they fled the nightmare that was -
‘- Eygor!’ Maglore breathed, snatching himself back from the low wall, aware that his limbs had turned to rubber. And:
Maglooore! came the answer. What, and do you dare invade me in my own manse, Maglore?
Sounds from below - a strenuous grunting, a squelching, the crunch of ancient bones under some monstrous weight!
The mist grew thick where it swirled from the pit; the ropes went taught, stretched, snapped at the rim! All save one. The last of Maglore’s thralls reached up a hand to him, gasping, ‘Master, he lives! He … uh!’ Then his eyes went wide, his rope also parted … he was gone! Eygor’s mist swirled where he had been.
And Maglore likewise gone. Gone in a trice from the rim of the pit. Gone up through haunted Madmanse, into Rune-manse, where he called - where he shrieked and gibbered -for his lieutenants, his men and monsters, and ordered them down into Madmanse in a body, to do battle with the dead and alive and undead thing that was Eygor Killglance! But:
Ah, no! Not yet, my friend, Eygor told him. I’ll not be coming for you just yet. Live awhile, Maglore, and see what I learned down here in the bowels of the rock: about the fusion of disparate things, and the skills of artistic creation! No, no, don’t think it - I would not put you apart from the world, nor even apart from me. Instead I shall make you a part of me! Watch me if you will, Maglore — if you dare -while I put on flesh in the Gorge of Turgosheim!
Eygor had already ‘put on flesh’ in his pit: the flesh of Maglore’s thralls. But how, in what way? What manner of thing was he now? Maglore went to a window, to peer down with seer’s eyes through the fogs and reek, into the gloomy gulf.
Turgosheim: all of its creatures in all its manses were Maglore’s now, except Eygor. But then, who would want Eygor? And the Seer-Lord shuddered - even Lord Maglore of the Wamphyri, shuddering at the thought of the fate of his thralls in that pit - and shuddered again at the thought of what by now had surely come up out of that pit!
Then, down in the bottoms .. . what? A resurgence? Maglore ‘saw’ it, he sensed it: an outflowing, certainly. An exudation — a spewing out like pus from a boil - from the lower levels of Madmanse, down its ramps and through its gantlets, into the scree and rubble of the bottoms. Good! For several of Maglore’s warriors prowled down there, set loose
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in the bed of the gorge to keep him safe. Because they were his he knew their minds and could follow their progress as they, too, sensed this … eruption, and rushed to investigate.
He was with three of them - well, in part, given the limited capacity of their minds - as they came upon this strange new force, this swift-flowing Thing. With them, aye, as one by one they blinked out, or became one with it! What was it Eygor had talked about? The ‘putting on’ of flesh? And the fusion of disparate things? And what had he threatened? I shall make you a part of me! What? The absorption of creatures - even men - within himself? All vampires were eaters of life; indeed, the blood is the life! But this … was something else.
Maglore’s throat was dry. Perhaps he was mistaken. He must try again to penetrate the mists and reach his monsters’ minds. He did .. . and met a different sort of monster! Ah, no! Don’t be in such a hurry, Maglore! the Thing told him. Your turn soon enough .. .
The creature - this loathsome, flowing mass - was now at the gates of the squat, square gargoyle hump of Trollmanse, Lorn Halfstruck’s place, or what had been his place, on the bed of the gorge. Now its inhabitants were lieutenants and thralls of Maglore’s. Indeed his man Karpath was there in residence - caretaker, ‘master’ of a manse of his own at last - or until the Seer-Lord deemed otherwise. Or until something else deemed otherwise.
And Maglore sent directly into Karpath’s mind: Beware! A Thing approaches across the bottoms. It is at your gates even now!
The answer came at once:
Lord, there are no gates! They are fallen! And I … have seen this thing! Trollmanse, too, must fall; it cannot stand!
Maglore stood aghast. Karpath, listen to me. Do as I -
Too late! said the other, his faint, unequal mental voice a groan. Then silence. A vacuum . .. which swelled at once into an obscene chuckle! Eygor’s, of course.
Enough! Maglore no longer felt safe in his own manse!
Such a horror as this, loose in Turgosheim! And the Seer-Lord knew who to blame: that sapless freak Nathan! Except he wasn’t sapless but a power - and such a power!
Maglore’s dreadful premonitions multiplied themselves tenfold, even as Eygor Killglance was at this very moment putting on flesh and multiplying himself! Hurrying to his landing-bay, Maglore bumped into Orlea.
‘My Lord, what is it?’ The Lady’s eyes were wide. She felt the terror in him, in this place, in all Turgosheim. He thrust her aside; she must take her chances with the rest.
‘I’ve this and that to do,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother me now. There’s … oh, I don’t know, some small trouble below, in the bottoms.’ He did indeed have things to do: saddle a flyer, fly deep into the gorge, see how the nightmare progressed, its rate of acceleration. He should visit the highter spires and manses, advise their barricading, their defences. Could they be defended? Could anything be protected? If not, he must flee west and report this invasion-from-within to whoever commanded whatever was left of Vormulac’s army. One thing for certain: The Thing-That-Had-Been-Eygor could not follow him there, over the Great Red Waste! And no one in the west knew of his treachery.
Perhaps he should not even delay to inspect the bottoms, but go there now, far into Wratha’s land of milk and blood and honey in the west. Except he couldn’t set out tonight; dawn was too close; he must fly to the western extreme of the range and find a place to hide during the long day, then set off west at sundown. So great was Maglore’s terror of Eygor Killglance!
He was in such a hurry, so preoccupied with his problems, that he scarcely noted that a mount was waiting in the landing-bay, unattended, saddled and ready for flight. Climbing into a saddle that he hadn’t seen for years, he gave the silent, nodding beast only a cursory glance, then dug in his heels, urging the creature to flight.
But airborne, when he would descend, the flyer ascended; it gained altitude, cleared the rim and rose up on
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Turgosheim’s queasy thermals! Now what in the name of …? Down, he demanded. Skim the bottoms. 1 will observe. Except:
So, Maglore, I have you at last, Karz told him: an almost electric shock to the Seer-Lord’s system! You who, having made a man into a monster, never trusted to climb upon his back - and with good reason. He stalled, tilted, commenced a nosedive into the gorge. But I have seen what is happening here, and it suits my purpose admirably. For now I make a monster out of you!
Maglore clung on for dear life, or grim death. Drained by fear, he knew he wasn’t up to metamorphosis. He didn’t have the energy to change his shape to an airfoil and fly. Not a ‘physical’ sort by Wamphyri standards, he’d only rarely used the art, and then in his youth.
‘Karz Biteri - once-historian to the Wamphyri!’ Maglore choked the words out loud; they were whipped away by dark wind and dank fog. Below, the humped gargoyle bottoms took on shape through the wreathing mi
sts; also, a mobile half-acre of horror that rumbled over the bed of the gorge full of terrible intent! It was composed of many things, none of them clean, healthy or alive in the truest sense of the word. Debris of long-dead warriors, flesh of men, the undying mind of the maniac Eygor.
Karz was done with this world. But at least he was avenged. He flew straight for the centre of the mobile Thing, feeling only a momentary horror when it pulsed and turned its many eyes upwards to him, and sent the flung spume and froth of its tossing to meet and engulf him. Also to engulf his once-master - empty now of thoughts and words, runes, sigils and symbols - plunged to his death in a moment and blended with filth and oblivion …
While thousands of miles to the west, at the Starside Gate:
The Necroscope and his charges had taken temporary refuge in a shallow depression with a hard earth rim and a low wall of stones. What cover they had protected them
from hurled Wamphyri weapons; the vampires must step out into the open to direct and release their bolas. Whenever this happened, either Nathan with his killing eye or Trask with his machine-pistol would cut them down. Trask was low on bullets; the only advantage of Nathan’s weapon was that its results were permanent.
‘Is that what I felt when I woke you up?’ Trask asked him.
The Necroscope glanced at him (but carefully) with a face that was now totally alien: shrivelled and hateful, even luminous with evil power. ‘Yes. It was instinct in me, as it is in Eygor Killglance.’
Trask didn’t understand that last, so said nothing, but Zek read Nathan like a book; she squeezed his arm where he crouched beside her in the hole. She knew what he feared: that the eye’s influence would be too strong for him; that having resisted all else life in the vampire world could throw at him, finally he’d succumb to this. ‘You’re stronger than that,’ she whispered.
