The Source
Page 24
Gustan shrank back. “I meant only—”
“Be quiet!” Shaithis cut him short. He came forward, sniffed at Zek and nodded his head. “Yes, there’s magic in this one. But remember—she escaped from the bitch Karen. Watch her carefully, Gustan.” Now he gazed at Jazz. “As for you—” Again he thrust his convoluted snout forward, seemed to use it like some monstrous bloodhound. And his eyes narrowed to scarlet slits.
“He’s a great magician!” Zek cried. She hung dangling in Gustan’s arms.
“Indeed!” Shaithis glanced at her. “And what, pray, is his talent? For I sense nothing of magic in him.”
“I … I read the future,” Jazz gasped from a crushed, O-shaped mouth.
Shaithis smiled a terrible smile. “Good, for I have certainly read yours.” And he nodded to the man who held Jazz aloft.
“Wait!” Zek cried. “It’s true, I tell you! You’ll lose a powerful ally if you kill him.”
“An ally?” Shaithis seemed amused. “A servant, perhaps.” He stroked his chin. “But very well, let us test this talent. Put him down.” Jazz was lowered until he stood on straining tip-toes.
Shaithis studied him closely, cocked his head on one side, thought of a suitable test. “Now tell me,” he finally said, “what you read in my future, hell-lander?”
Jazz knew he was finished, but there was still Zek to consider. “I’ll tell you this much,” he answered. “Harm this woman in any way—one hair of her head—and you’ll burn in hell. The sun shall surely rise on you, Shaithis of the Wamphyri!”
“That is not fortune-telling but wishful thinking!” Shaithis snapped. “Do you think to lay a curse on me? What, I am not to harm a hair of her head? This head, do you mean?” He reached out and grasped Zek’s blonde hair, bunched it in a knot, tightened his grip until she cried out.
And the sun at once rose in the pass through the mountains, and lit the place with its burning, lancing rays!
Before the man who held Jazz screamed in terror and hurled him away like a rag doll, the Englishman thought an entirely frivolous thought: “Now that’s what I call magic!”
Chapter Thirteen
Lardis Lidesci
THROWN DOWN, JAZZ AT ONCE SCRAMBLED TOWARD HIS gun, and no one made the least effort to stop him. The reason was simple: Shaithis and his two were moving back toward their mounts, scuttling like upright cockroaches where they threaded their way through scattered rocks and boulders, always seeking shade and refuge from the fatal, blazing light. And where and whenever that light fell upon them, then they screamed aloud as if scalded, covering their heads in their near-blind, blundering panic flight.
But one of them, Gustan, still carried Zek, who writhed like a snake in his grasp, beating at his head with her tiny hands. Gustan was Jazz’s first target.
He snatched up his SMG from the hard ground, tilted its barrel downward and shook it. A few tiny pebbles and a trickle of dust fell from the barrel and Jazz prayed there was nothing bigger lodged in there. Then he was down on one knee, seeking out Gustan’s fleeting, double-silhouette, finding it and aiming, and at last squeezing the trigger. The gun responded with a chattering diatribe of loud, lead obscenities, all hurled at Gustan’s lower legs. Shaithis’s lieutenant went down as if poleaxed, raising a cloud of dust where he screamed and flopped in the shadows of a low pile of rocks, and in the next moment Zek came scrambling free of him.
Jazz couldn’t fire again for fear of hitting her. “Keep to one side!” he hoarsely yelled. “Give me a clear line of fire!” She heard him, threw herself to one side. A target at once presented itself, moving frantically in a sweeping beam of light. Jazz fixed the vampire in the sights of his mind even as the light swept on, and again he fired. Screams and curses came echoing back. Jazz hoped it was Shaithis himself he’d hit but doubted it: the silhouette hadn’t had his bulk. On the other hand, he could still feel the bruises on his face where Shaithis’s second man had picked him up. That one would do nicely, thank you. The thing these creatures would have to learn was this: don’t mess with magicians from the hell-lands!
Zek came creeping from the shadows at the base of the cliffs. “It’s me!” she cried as he jerked his body in her direction. “Don’t shoot!” Wolf had met her half-way, was whining and prancing about her like a great puppy.
“Get behind me,” Jazz warned, waving the girl and the wolf aside. “Get me another magazine from my packs, quick!”
The searchlight beams from the high wall of cliffs to the south (that’s what they were like, Jazz thought: powerful spotlights, seeking out the enemy) continued to play, lancing down and throwing discs of reflected sunlight onto the canyon floor. Reflected, yes, Jazz nodded to himself, from mirrors. And thank God for whoever’s aiming them! And now a pair of beams converged on Shaithis himself where the Wamphyri Lord had almost reached the flank of the nearest flyer.
It was the opportunity Jazz had waited for. He could have taken Zek by the hand and fled south with her, but he’d hoped for a shot at Shaithis. Now his target sprang to the side of his mount and twin beams of light followed him. Beating at the brilliant beams where they fell on him, almost as if he beat at flames, but obviously with no effect whatever, Shaithis leaped to catch his beast’s harness and draw himself up into the ornate saddle. And that was where Jazz caught him. He’d held about a third of his magazine in reserve, maybe a dozen rounds, just for this.
He opened up, aiming carefully and squeezing off single shots, praying that at least one would find its target. Shaithis, in the act of climbing into the saddle, suddenly jerked and fell back, but still clung to the harness. Jazz cursed the inaccuracy of his short-range weapon, took still more careful aim. His next shot must have missed Shaithis but hit the flyer in a delicate spot, for the great beast threw back its head and gave a weird cry, then commenced lashing its tail frenziedly. A moment more of this before a nest of hideous worms seemed to uncoil from the creature’s belly, thrusting its bulk aloft. And still Shaithis clung there, even managing to haul himself safely into the saddle!
By then the other flyers were airborne, too, and Jazz was astonished to see that they both had riders! Gustan at least should be crippled—or should he? For now Jazz remembered Encounter Five. Bullets hadn’t stopped him, either, they’d merely inconvenienced him. Likewise, apparently, with Shaithis and his lieutenants.
Zek came from behind, slapped a fresh magazine into Jazz’s waiting hand. He loaded up, looked for his targets; glanced skyward at the wide ribbon of stars riding high over the rearing walls of the pass—and found all three “targets” sweeping down on him!
“Jazz, get down! Oh, get down!” Zek was screaming. She and Wolf went scrambling on their bellies into a tangle of jagged rocks, but Jazz saw that the aerial beasts would be upon him before he could follow suit. He couldn’t dodge them, but he might be able to turn them aside.
Again he went to one knee, and with the three flying creatures and their riders swooping upon him from only thirty metres away, he opened fire in a steady, sleeting arc of lead. Shaithis was in the centre, and that was where Jazz concentrated his fire. He laced the three creatures, and attempted to lace their riders, left to right and then back again to Shaithis. How he could miss at this range—if he missed—was beyond his understanding; but when the beasts and their Wamphyri masters were almost on top of him he began to believe he had in fact missed. Until the last moment.
For as the firing-pin on Jazz’s weapon slammed home on thin air and the gun fell silent, and even as he made to hurl himself flat behind the nearest boulder, then at last he saw the effect of his fire. The three beasts were bleeding dark red ichor from rows of black holes in the forward parts of their bodies, and their riders rocked to and fro in their saddles, apparently holding themselves upright by willpower alone!
Then—
A great lip of flesh opened in the belly of Shaithis’s mount as it swooped on Jazz, a trapdoor gash whose scalloped lower rim scraped across the top of the boulder shielding him and gouged at th
e dry, pebbly earth behind him. For a moment all was darkness and he smelled the powerful animal stench of the thing, but then its shadow lifted from him. By then, too, the unknown wielders of mirror-weapons had found their targets again and the flying beasts were bathed in lancing beams of searing light. And the light did actually sear them; for wherever the rays struck them, clouds of loathsome evaporation billowed outwards from the shrinking flesh of the beasts, like water boiling on dry-ice in the rarified air of high altitudes.
That was the end of it. Reeling in their saddles, the Wamphyri admitted defeat, dragged their bellowing, straining mounts skyward, wheeled in great arcs and went racing northward to the darkness and the shadows. When the pulsating throb of their leathery wings had faded into distance there was only the silence, and the pounding of Jazz’s heart in his chest.
“Zek?” he called out breathlessly in a little while. “Are you OK?”
She came out of hiding, nervously dusting herself down in a spotlight beam of bright light where it found the three, man, woman and wolf, and held steady on them. “I’m all right,” she said, but her voice was very trembly. Jazz put his gun down and reached for her where she stumbled into his arms. He held her loosely at first, then fiercely, as much for his own comfort as for hers. The encounter with the Wamphyri had shaken him badly. This was his natural reaction to it. So he told himself, anyway.
Zek clung to him briefly then freed herself and shielded her eyes against the light playing on them from the western heights of the pass. “We’re in full view,” she said.
Wasting no time, Jazz went to his packs, found another loaded magazine for his gun. He fitted it to his SMG, then seated himself and broke open small cardboard boxes of ammunition to start re-loading the empty magazines. This was his training surfacing. While he worked, he asked: “I take it we’ve been rescued—by friends?”
As if in answer, there came a shout which echoed down to them from the heights: “Zekintha—is it you? Is all well?” The voice was anxious, taut as the skin on a drumhead.
“Lardis Lidesci!” she breathed. And to Jazz. “Yes, we’ve been rescued. I’ve nothing to fear from Lardis—except Lardis himself! He fancies me a little, that’s all. But you can be sure he’s a good man.” Then she cupped her hands to her mouth and called back: “Lardis, we’re all right!”
“Come back along the pass,” his voice came echoing again in a moment. “You’re not safe there.”
“He’s telling us!” Jazz grunted. He finished loading up his packs, said, “Help me on with this kit.”
As they began to make their way south again, they could see several mirrors glinting on the western wall, where the setting sun still turned the crags to the colour of molten gold. The glittering flashes of light were descending, and every so often tiny human figures were glimpsed silhouetted against the sky. From the bed of the pass ahead came the distant jingle of Gypsy movements, and at last the panting of runners where they converged on Jazz, Zek and Wolf. Fleeting shadows became the outlines of men in Traveller garb, their faces anxious. Not men of Arlek’s party but faces which were new to Jazz. Zek knew them, however; she breathed her relief and said, “Oh, yes—we’re safe enough now.”
Oh? thought Jazz. And am I safe, too? What will your Lardis Lidesci think of me, I wonder?
From a distance of a mile and more to the south, shrill screams came echoing—cut off as they reached a crescendo of terror. Then silence reigned, the distant flames leaped up, burning orange and yellow.
Tiredly pacing it out beside Zek—with Lardis’s runners on the flanks urging them to greater speed, and Wolf loping in the shadows—Jazz said: “Now what do you reckon all that was about?”
Zek’s face was very pale. “I would guess Lardis has dealt with Arlek,” she quietly answered.
“Dealt with him?”
She nodded. “Arlek was ambitious. That’s no crime in itself, but he was also a traitor—and a coward! He sought to make deals with the Wamphyri, at the expense of others—at their total expense. Lardis has warned him before, on several occasions. Now he won’t have to warn him again.”
“You mean he’s killed him,” Jazz nodded. “Pretty rough justice around here.”
“It’s a rough world around here,” she said.
Arlek’s screams lingered in Jazz’s mind. “How would Lardis have done it?”
Zek looked away. “The punishment would fit the crime,” she finally answered. “I think that maybe Arlek died the death of a vampire: a stake through the heart, beheaded, burned.”
“Oh?” Jazz took that in, nodded again. “You mean just to be absolutely sure, right?”
Her answer contained no trace of humour. “That’s right,” she said, “to be absolutely sure. Vampires are hard things to kill, Jazz.”
He shook his head, thought: God, you’re a cool one!
“No, I’m not,” she clasped his hand tightly—very tightly—in her own. “It’s just that I’ve been here longer than you, that’s all …”
Lardis Lidesci wasn’t what Jazz had expected. He was maybe five-eight tall, long-haired, gangling in the arm as Jazz himself but built like a rhino as opposed to Jazz’s cat. He was young, too—younger by three or four years than Jazz—and, in sharp contrast to his squat shape, he seemed surprisingly agile. This agility of Lardis’s wasn’t only physical; his intelligence was patent in every brown wrinkle of his face, which was expressive and had more than its share of laughter-lines. Open and frank, Lardis’s round face framed in dark, flowing hair had slanted, bushy eyebrows, a flattened nose, and a wide mouth full of strong if uneven teeth. His brown eyes held nothing of malice; indeed, they were usually smiling, but they could also turn very thoughtful. On the Earth Jazz and Zek had left behind he’d have made a professional wrestler; certainly he looked like one. Among his people here in this vampire-ruled environment beyond the Gate he was a natural leader, and the great majority of his five-hundred strong “tribe” rallied behind him all the way. Arlek had been a rare exception which proved the value of Lardis’s rule, and Arlek was no more.
Since taking on the job of leader from his father five years ago when the elder Lidesci had grown crippled with some arthritic disease, Lardis had succeeded in keeping his Travellers free and secure from the ever-present Wamphyri threat; so that the tribe had grown and expanded, absorbing other smaller Gypsy groups into itself. Not nearly as large or strong as many of the eastern tribes, still Lardis’s people had a record for safety which was the envy of all the Travellers: namely that since he became leader, the Wamphyri had not once ravaged successfully amongst them. There were several reasons for this.
One of these stemmed from that fundamental difference between Lardis and Arlek, which was so strong that it had now resulted in the latter’s permanent removal. Lardis did not believe that the Wamphyri were the natural Lords and Masters of this sphere, or that the time must come when a devastating raid would decimate his tribe. He would not give in to the Wamphyri, would not placate them in any way. Other Traveller tribes had tried this in the past, were trying it even now, and it had never worked. Gorgan Lidesci, Lardis’s father, still talked of the fate of his first tribe, when he himself had been a mere boy.
In those days, for a time, there had been a measure of peace among the Wamphyri; this had enabled the vampire Lords to consolidate their forces and commence raiding far more effectively and in overwhelming numbers. Gorgan’s tribe; a large one and governed by a Council of Elders, had attempted to make a deal with the Wamphyri, to come to a mutually satisfactory “arrangement” with them. Before each sundown a raiding party would go out from Gorgan’s people to make captives of men and women of lesser Traveller groups. Since such minor groups might be as small as two- or three-family units, ranging up to the strength of small tribes of perhaps forty adults, and since they were scattered all along the Sunside flank of the mountains, there was little difficulty in obtaining before each sundown, a “tithe” of about a hundred people. These were kept prisoned through the long night
s, so that in the event of a Wamphyri raid they could be offered in appeasement. The belief among the elderly leaders of Gorgan’s tribe was simply this: that so long as the Wamphyri could find ready-made tribute, they would not have need to glut themselves on the tithe-paying people of the tribe; they would not bite, as it were, the hands that fed them.
For some years and through many nights this scenario held true. There were times when the Wamphyri came and others when they failed to find Gorgan’s tribe, (for the Travellers were never sedentary but constantly on the move, a restlessness bred into them through hundreds of years of Wamphyri rapaciousness), on which fortunate occasions at sunup the prisoners would be set free to fend for and feed themselves, and continue their lives as of old or until the next time they were taken prisoner, perhaps before the next sundown.
And when the Wamphyri did come, why, then there were offerings to be made, and the Wamphyri Lords, their warriors and undead soldiers would collect their tithe of one hundred Travellers and depart. In short, the Wamphyri became like tax-collectors; and true to the scenario, they did no harm to those who paid this regular human tribute.
With the result that the people of Gorgan’s tribe grew weak, fat and increasingly careless. They lost their urge to travel and so avoid Wamphyri incursions; they used regular routes, watering-holes and harbouring areas, and their treks along the Sunside flank of the mountains fell into ever more foreseeable patterns; contrary to the very nature of Travellers, there was no longer any mystery to their movements. In short, they no longer bothered to hide themselves and thus were easily found. Now there were far fewer nights of peace and rest, when more and more often the Wamphyri would come and carry off their human tribute; but what did that matter? The tribe itself was safe, wasn’t it?
Safe, yes—until the brief alliance of a handful of Wamphyri Lords had fallen apart, until they had quarreled and split up, and each faction of the former alliance determined to build up its individual forces, refill its storehouses, define once more its old territorial boundaries and become strong again in the former Wamphyri traditions! For when armies build for war—and in the case of the Wamphyri not against a mutual enemy but internecine, each vampire Lord against his neighbours—then they take and use whatever resources are available, with never a thought for conservation. And the natural resources of the Wamphyri had ever been the flesh and blood of Travellers!