by Brian Lumley
Again he turned away — only to collide with a sleek she-wolf who came loping from the shadows. Her eyebrows were bushy, white as the snows of the higher peaks. They faced each other; perhaps some message passed between them; she whined a little, and Harry Wolfson snapped at her, deliberately clicking his teeth on thin air. Plainly the bitch was his. And to Lardis he said, 'She'll stay here, where there's no more danger.'
Lardis tried one last time. 'My men and I, we're going, too. We need to see. I have to know.'
The changeling thought about it for the briefest moment, then snarled his throaty answer: Then I'll leave you a guide. Follow him closely, for he knows the easiest route…'
Lardis returned to his men and found them on their own; the wolf pack had melted away into the shadows, leaving only one of the grey brothers behind. Lardis marked him: a flame-eyed silhouette, nervous and impatient, atop the garden's eastern flank. Kirk Lisescu nodded and remarked, That one's stayed back, apparently to keep watch over us!'
Lardis shook his head. 'No,' he corrected his colleague, 'he's our guide. We're to follow him to the hell-lands Gate. Or at least, we'll try to get close enough to see what goes on there.'
They struggled up the sloping eastern flank, gazed down on Starside laid out in weird, blue-tinged monochrome beneath them. The boulder plains, reaching out to a curved and shimmering, aurora-lit horizon; the jagged spines of mountains on their right, sprawling eastwards; seemingly endless miles of crags to cover before they would arrive at their destination, where the peaks looked down gauntly on the pockmarked crater which housed the hell-lands Gate.
Lardis had been there only once before, in his youth (and then at the height of sunup, of course, when the Wamphyri slept and dreamed their scarlet dreams behind the draped windows of their aeries), but even then he'd found the place ominous, unquiet, unknowable. That great ball of white light, glaring up and out of the earth like the eye of some buried giant from its socket, unblinking, malevolent, lending all the region around a leprous white and grey-blue aspect as of rotting flesh. And the stony crater itself, which formed the Gate's rim: pocked like rotten wood when the borers have been at work, shot through and through with alien wormholes. Even the solid rock…
While Lardis was there, a flock of bats had come to hunt midges, moths, other insects hatched or awakened by the sun's natural light blazing through a pass in the barrier range. One small creature, perhaps dazzled, had flitted too close to the Gate; its membrane wing touched the solid-seeming surface of white light; it disappeared without trace, apparently sucked right into the glare! For some little time Lardis had continued to watch, but the bat hadn't returned.
It had been a lesson in caution: don't approach the Gate too closely. Ah, but that time it had been sunup, while now it was a fresh sundown. And Lardis definitely did not intend to approach too closely. What, with the Wamphyri there? Madness! But he did have a plan, which as always was simple.
'See the grey one go?' he said. 'Heading down towards the timber-line? He'll know every tree like an old friend, and all the winding trails between. We'll make best time if we follow in his tracks.'
'Lardis,' said Andrei Romani, conversationally, 'you're a madman, I'm sure! Indeed, we all are, each and every mother's son! Made crazy by the blue-glittering stars!'
'Oh?' Lardis scarcely glanced at him, picked his way down between scree-littered spurs. 'Tell me more.'
'It's sundown on Starside,' the other continued, 'and all sensible folk hidden away. But us? We're following a mountain dog to see what the Wamphyri are up to! We should be in a hole somewhere on Sunside, waiting for the sun to rise and praying we'll still be around to see it!'
'But it's because we hate hiding in holes on Sunside that we're here!' Lardis reminded him. 'Me, I prefer the comforts of my house on the knoll, believe me — except I know I can't find peace there so long as the Wamphyri are wont to come a-hunting in the night. And right now… why, I've a chance to see with my own eyes how many they are and what are our chances. So that when we go back to Sunside, we'll know to do one of two things: either advise the Szgany of Settlement and the other townships of the precautions they must take, or tell them definitely that the Wamphyri are no more! And let me tell you something else, Andrei…' But here he paused.
For at the last moment Lardis had recognized a certain dangerous passion blazing up within himself. It was in the heat of his blood, the way he spat out his words, so that he knew he'd been on the point of uttering a vow. He was Szgany and proud of it, and a leader of men at that. Once spoken, a vow like that couldn't be revoked. Not and live with it, anyway.
'Oh?' Andrei prompted him. 'You were about to tell me…?'
Lardis bit his tongue, changed the subject:
'Do you know how far it is to the Gate?'
'Too far,' said Kirk Lisescu, clambering behind. 'Even on Sunside's levels it would take us an entire sunup to get from Settlement to the great pass. But up here, through all these crags and peaks…" He let it tail off, but Peder Szekarly at once took it up:
'Eighty-five miles from Settlement to the pass. But weaving through these high crags… a hundred, at least. And hard going at that.'
'Something less than forty hours to sunup," Lardis mused. 'Which is when we want to be there. For if by then the Wamphyri are still alive, still abroad, that's when they'll head for Karenstack — to be out of the light when the sun blazes between the peaks!' He made rapid calculations and continued:
'A generous ten hours for sleep, leaves almost thirty for travelling. Why, at something a little more than three miles to the hour, we'll be there in time aplenty!'
'But to see what?' Andrei gloomed. To discover… what? Hah! The worst, perhaps.'
Lardis gave a grunt and for a little while was silent.
The boles of tall, straight pines loomed out of the darkness below; along a track dappled with starlight, feral eyes gleamed silver and sentient; the grey brother waited patient and passionless while the four gained on him, then turned and headed east. They followed as close as possible in his tracks where he chose the least cluttered, most direct route through the straggling trees.
But while the wolf's passions were at an ebb, Lardis's were still flowing strong. He thought of Lissa and Jason on Sunside, the Szgany Lidesci in its entirety, all of the Traveller tribes in their various camps and townships across the barrier mountains. And then he thought of the horror of the Wamphyri, which he'd once considered over and done with.
But no, it wouldn't be over until it was over…
Until it was finished…
Finished utterly!
And at last Lardis's passions got the better of him.
'Whichever way it goes,' he ground out his Szgany vow from between clenched teeth, 'I'll see them dead! Beheaded, staked out, pegged down — spreadeagled in clean yellow sunlight — and steamed away in smoke and stink!'
His words were hot as hell, fiercely spoken: a growl of hatred, a promise, a threat, so that his men knew it was his vow. But it wasn't over yet.
'So far there are only the two of them,' Lardis finally continued. 'Two that we know of for sure, though they'll make lieutenants soon enough. Ah, but they are Wamphyri! And where can they go at sunup, eh? Where else but Karenstack, the last aerie! So mark well my words: if Harry and Karen are done for and we're left to fight on alone, and if Shaithis and his lot take up residence in that last great pesthole of a stack… then that's where we'll finish this thing. Not in the next sunup, no, nor even the one after that — but maybe in the next!'
"Ware, Lardis!' Andrei cautioned. 'Is this your vow?'
'It is,' Lardis answered, nodding his head in the gloom of the trees. 'It's mine, yours — it's that of all the men of the Szgany Lidesci! Now listen:
'Their works, the terrible works of the Wamphyri, take time. Time to take men and make them lieutenants, and time to make monsters from the flesh of Travellers and trogs. Two or three sunups are nothing, not time enough. But in Karenstack they'll think themselves se
cure. What? And who would dare to attack them on their own ground? We will, that's who!'
Peder Szekarly was astonished. 'Go against the Wamphyri, on Starside?' he whispered.
'During sunup, aye,' Lardis replied. 'With crossbows and sharp staves, hammers and stakes! With kneblasch, silver, and The Dweller's shotguns.'
'What?' said Kirk Lisescu, his voice hushed. Toys against the Wamphryi? And what about their warriors?'
'But their fighting creatures are vampires no less than the Wamphyri themselves!' Lardis replied, grabbing Kirk's arm for emphasis. 'We'll go there with our mirrors, given to us by The Dweller; we'll set fire to the drapes at the stack's doorways and lower windows; we'll reflect the sun's cleansing rays deep into the foul darkness. That's how we'll do it! Who would know the way better than us? Why, it was The Dweller and his father who showed us how! Well, and now it will be our turn.'
'Tear down the mountains!' Andrei Romani snarled aloud to match the spirit of the other's vision. And then (but a little less vigorously), 'But let's hope it won't come to that. After all, we could be wrong… maybe it's not such a hopeless case… it's a fact that Karen and the hell-lander are — or were — enormous powers in their own right.'
Andrei could hardly know it but his qualifying 'were' was close to the mark. For even as the four men set out upon their timber-line trek, far to the east, in the region of the glaring hell-lands Gate, Harry Keogh and the Lady Karen were already Shaithis's prisoners.
Which is to say, they were as good as dead…
Events followed slowly and seemed of little consequence, yet later would become concertinaed in Lardis's memory, each one hastening after the last, assuming varying degrees of importance.
After six hours trekking along the timber-line, the four were so exhausted they had to pause, eat, sleep, allow their aching muscles time for replenishment. They awakened with the coming of the hurtling moon, by the light of which their progress was that much faster.
Later, with the moon down again, they took it a little easier and fell into the natural, jingling, fast-striding pace of accustomed Travellers. They held back from talking, saved their breath for the work. Now and then they must climb where ridges and spurs broke the timber-line, but mainly they followed level contours. Plainly The Dweller had been right; their guide was completely familiar with these heights; either that or he was a creature of unerring instinct. They forged steadily east.
Another rest, another meal…
A string of long, flat, shallow saddles between elevated peaks like wave crests, where their striding ate up mile after mile unending, until finally and far too soon the easy going was eaten up entirely…
A region of sliding scree which the trees had gathered into a treacherous, teetering barricade. Only tread unwary, trip the wrong pebble, and the whole thing — trees, scree, men and all — would go avalanching down on to Starside. To prove it, there were plenty of breaks where the green belt had been swept away right down to the raw rock…
Another sleep period…
When they sat down, the grey one sat apart; when they lay flat, he stretched himself out. Coming awake, he'd be up first, waiting for them. They tossed him scraps of dried meat, which he 'wolfed', naturally. His job didn't allow for hunting.
Then, an odd thing: Twenty-five hours or almost two-thirds of the way into the trek, the wolf bitch which Lardis had seen with the changeling overtook them. He recognized her from her pure white, extraordinarily bushy eyebrows. She carried something in her dripping mouth, which she put down on approaching their guide. Then the two wolves went through a careful recognition ritual, following which she sat down with the other a while. Peder Szekarly tossed meat, which she gratefully accepted.
But Lardis was more interested in the item she'd carried in her mouth: a grenade, from The Dweller's armoury in the garden. Lardis knew what it was well enough; there'd been several left over from the battle four years ago; devastating devices, he'd wanted nothing to do with them. Aye, for there are weapons and there are weapons. A shotgun is controllable until the moment you pull the trigger, but one of these…?
Only arm it… and from then on, no way to change your mind. The rest was out of your hands — indeed it must be out of your hands, and as quickly as possible! What The Dweller's bitch would want with such a thing was a mystery, but as far as Lardis was concerned she was welcome to it. And in a little while she gathered it up in her mouth again, and set off east as before. Then-Six more hours of trekking, followed by a break (all too brief) before the next incident: a small, unequal dispute. But long before that the beacon of the sphere Gate was already making itself visible from time to time in the east. At first, as the distance between gradually narrowed down, it was the merest firefly glimmer; later it became a weird glow-worm radiation — light without heat — in the shadows of the barrier range where eastern foothills met boulder plains to merge into Starside's blue-tinged moonscape.
As for the dispute: This came where Lardis wanted to leave the pine-clad margin and climb diagonally towards the saddles between the high peaks: his escape route into Sunside, in the event a bolthole should become necessary. Their wolf guide thought differently, however; he had been told to stick to the timber-line and head for the ball of glaring white light close to the great pass, and he didn't intend straying from his duty. So that when the grey brother simply refused to change his tack… that was the end of the unspoken argument. But in any case (Lardis consoled himself), the way up had looked pretty rough going just there. And so the four men followed on behind their lupine guide as before, except that now they were constantly on the lookout for easy climbing.
They found it an hour later, just as a parting of the ways became absolutely necessary. For if indeed the Wamphyri were still abroad and active in the vicinity of the Gate, then from this point forward it would be madness to remain too far Starside of the peaks.
Climbing along an easy diagonal fault towards a system of crags, saddles and flat-topped plateaux, the four waved a farewell to their guide. For his part he simply watched them out of view, whined a little deep in his throat, finally put them out of mind and headed east…
Lardis and his colleagues took an hour to climb to the flat summits, a little longer to rest from their labours, then set off again in the direction of the great pass. The ground was unknown to them but the going was fairly easy. On those rare occasions when they caught a glimpse of the southern horizon between the peaks, it was a faint crack of amethyst streaked with silver. Three more hours and the silver would turn to gold.
Sunup, soon, and Lardis should be feeling happier. But he wasn't. Coursing through his veins, the blood of his unknown seer forefather was warning him of ominous times ahead…
Three hours later it started to rain; the way soon became slippery and precarious; Lardis deemed it dangerous to proceed. After their prodigious trek, they had reached a spot some four to five miles southwest of the Gate and now looked down on it from a vantage point in the high jumbles. Behind them, a promising looking pass wound between the peaks and presumably down to Sunside. And the sky in the south was brightening, however marginally, from minute to minute.
Lardis and his three huddled beneath the groping branches of a wind-blasted, grotesquely malformed tree until the rain stopped. And now their view of Starside and the glaring hell-lands Gate was that much clearer. Some miles east, the plains were heaped with the strange stumps and tumuli of tumbled Wamphyri stacks — Wenstack, once Volse Pinescu's place; the mad Lord Lesk's shattered Glutstack; sprawling, hugely humped sections of Shaithistack; the acromegalic Fess Ferenc's exploded Grosstack; the lesser Lord Grigis's Gougestack; Lascula Longtooth's Fangstack, and several more. Indeed, all of the great aeries of the Wamphyri, lying prone on the plains where they had fallen.
All save one. Karenstack.
But no lights in Karenstack's kilometre-high windows now, no smoke going up from its chimneys, no sinister motion behind its plateau battlements or in its launching bays. For the moment it wa
s… inert. But not quiescent.
Looking at it, Lardis shivered and felt the blood of his forefather stirring. Like a vision out of some future time, he watched the high windows come blazing into life, smoke start to belch from the chimneys, flyers cruising in the updrafts about the bays, where they queued for landings.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the vision passed, leaving Lardis to shiver again, breathe again, and remember again his vow…
'What now?' Andrei Romani grunted, but on a rising note. His attention was riveted on the Gate.
'Eh?' Lardis was drawn from his reverie.
'Fires!' Peder Szekarly gasped. His young eyes were that much sharper, keener. 'And some movement down there, close to the Gate. See, the sudden blazing up casts shadows. But things that big… can only be warriors!'
'The Wamphyri are camped there, aye,' Lardis's eyes had narrowed under the frowning overhang of his brow. The Lords, their flyers, their warriors. But why are they leaving it so late? Sunup is coming. They should be heading for Karenstack, before the first rays strike through the great pass. What's their business down there, so close to the sphere Gate?' He screwed up his eyes, vainly trying to make out those details which distance had forbidden them. Vainly, and perhaps mercifully, too.
'Look'' Kirk Lisescu's voice was no more than a tremor in the gradually brightening air. They saw where he pointed: the timber-line some hundreds of feet below their vantage point, but full of motion now as The Dweller's entire wolf pack came bounding in a silent flood up through the trees! They headed for the high crags, headed west, headed in any direction as long as it was away from the Gate, the Wamphyri, and their bonfires!
'Now what — ?' Andrei began — but Lardis grasped his arm and shut him off.
'Get down!' Lardis gasped, hurling himself out from under the tree's sparse branches and diving behind upthrusting crags. The seer in him had surfaced at last; he knew that whatever was coming… was already on its way!
