by Brian Lumley
“Shaitan and Shaithis were indeed destroyed, aye—but the last of the Wamphyri?
“No, not yet, and not by a long shot …”
Again Lardis paused, and when he continued his voice was filled with emotion, throaty with the knowledge of a great debt.
“The next time: we couldn’t possibly have survived without Ben Trask, Zekintha, Chung, Goodly, and Anna Marie English. Oh, and Harry Keogh’s son, Nathan, of course—called Nathan Kiklu, in my world. And called Necroscope in both worlds.
“I won’t delve into it too deeply: suffice to say that the Szgany came under threat from the east, from a place beyond the Great Red Waste, called Turgosheim. A place we’d never known to exist, because those regions were unexplored. But renegade vampire Lords and a Lady—the Lady Wratha, their leader—were on the run from Lord Vormulac Unsleep and his undead army, fleeing for their monstrous lives from sins against their own kind that we may only imagine. And Lord Vormulac and his creatures in hot pursuit. Ah, but his army was a horde!
“Wratha and her renegades were whelmed under, trapped and destroyed where they took refuge in the last great aerie of the Wamphyri, which had stood empty for so many years. But Vormulac, too, had been killed, ‘deposed’ by the Lady Devetaki Skullguise. And now, commanding his great army, Devetaki turned her attention on Sunside. For of course she must now replenish her forces and provision the last aerie. Provision it, aye, with flesh and blood out of Sunside.
“Which was when Nathan came into his own.
“Returning out of your world, this world, to Sunside, he brought back with him Ben Trask, Chung, Goodly, and Zek: sweet Zekintha, ab! And other good people, and weapons from the Hell-lands, or ‘Earth,’ as I must learn to think of this place. And at last we could take the bloodwar back to Devetaki Skullguise on Starside!
“And we did. But Nathan: it seems he had his father’s powers and then some. Or perhaps it was the talents of all of that brave band, for certainly they were all in on it at the end. It was five years ago, Jake, but I remember it like yesterday. Who could forget such a thing?
“Nathan and the others had walked into a trap at the Starside Gate. He’d been trying to send his companions safely home again, back through the Gate to Perchorsk and out of the thick of the fighting. But vampire lieutenants stood in the way, and no room for manoeuvering. Nathan and his colleagues must stand and fight. They had Earth weapons, aye, but were low on ammunition; eventually they must be taken. And if Nathan were taken, what then of Sunside? But here I’m being selfish and perhaps I should ask: what then for your Earth? For Devetaki had learned the secret of the Gate; she knew that it was the entrance to a new world, ripe for conquest.
“Now, don’t ask me how it was done, for I’m a simple man. But Nathan and the others, linking hands, they pitted themselves against the Starside Gate itself. The Gate is immovable—even that incredible ‘tactical weapon’ that destroyed Shaithis and Shaitan had not moved it nor even marred its surface—and sitting there on the boulder plains it seemed anchored in position, perhaps by its own enormous gravity. Wherefore, in order to move the Gate, a man or men must move the world!
“And they did. With all their weird talents together, acting in unison they willed the Gate to move south. South towards the rising sun, which had never once shone on Starside since an age long forgotten. And the Gate—and the world—moved! The world turned, all Sunside/Starside, turning like a great wheel, and the sun rising ever faster over the barrier mountains. And the Wamphyri, their lieutenants, creatures and all were seared in a moment … .
“And now, surely it must be over? Why, with the turning of the world even the last aerie had fallen like a felled giant, toppling onto the boulder plains! All that remained of that great and monstrous tower was its stump, like a flat-topped mound—or perhaps one of Ben Trask’s ‘buttes?—glooming on the horizon, while its vile body sprawled like a corpse, crumbling in the new-found light of Starside.
“In the far east and west, as far as men were yet to journey, the vampire swamps were drying out, cracking open in their beds, cleansed by the sun. And in all the length and breadth of Sunside/Starside, no vampires existed—at least as far as men knew. But that didn’t mean that men wouldn’t keep watching, not while I lived, anyway!
“Nor was the transformation confined to the swamps. Water, presumably released from the Icelands, had brought great rains to the scrubland savannas, and showers even to the furnace deserts south of Sunside’s fertile belt, until the land there was green. All of which processes of an altered nature, and others, would continue a while yet—
“—But not for long enough.
“As for the Starside Gate: that was scarcely the ominous place it had been. For now it was the centre of a lake, a constantly moving body of water diverted from its source in your world, in this world, Jake, and driven by its own weight into Starside. And the wormholes around the Gate—or ‘energy channels,’ as Ben Trask calls them, which wound through solid rock to the first or ‘primal Gate,’ the white sun deep in the belly of the crater—they had become whirlpool sinkholes, diverting the waters of the lake a second time and returning them to the Refuge at Radujevac in this world, Earth, and on into the Danube. Thus nothing was lost, and nothing gained.
“But what a wonder! That fountain of light, reaching up a hundred feet into the Starside night, lit up by the Gate glowing in its core, and raining its soft white waters on the land and into the lake! Moreover, it had closed off both routes out of and into Sunside/Starside, which preserved the integrity of both worlds … .
“And so things stood, for one and a half of your years—Earth years, that is—and seventy of my days, for the sun rose much higher now and the days were longer yet. Well, at least in the new beginning. But it wasn’t destined to stay that way.
“Man can’t master nature, Jake. Or if he does his reign is short. What Nathan and the men of E-Branch had done was against nature … what? To move a world? And slow but sure the lure of the white sun, its strange gravity, began to turn us northwards again. The days grew shorter, the sun sank ever lower, and Starside’s shadows lengthened as before. The rains retreated, seasons we had known but briefly merged into one, the savannas wilted away to their usual russets and yellows. Nightly the rim of the barrier mountains showed more stars, flowing back into position from the north, and once again the grim Northstar, which had always shone on Karenstack, rode high in the Starside sky.
“But were the Szgany dismayed? Not a bit of it! For we had enjoyed our permanence of climate; what need had we of seasons, when the trees were always in fruit? But with the world turned, even the foliage—the flora—had suffered. Too much sun in the one season, a surfeit of rains in the next, and colder air in the third.
“And now back to normal, except there was no more scourge, no more vampires, no more Wamphyri! They’d been erased forever out of our world and the Szgany could sleep easy in their beds and not fear for their lives and the blood of their loved ones. Why, we might even begin to explore those lands and territories previously forbidden to us—Starside itself, perhaps ! And the great lakes or oceans that lay north of the boulder plains. And those unknown lands to east and west of the no longer ‘barrier’ mountains, beyond the dried-out swamps and the Great Red Waste. How perfect it all seemed!
“Grand schemes and grander dreams, eh?
“Ah, Jake, but my seer’s blood told me it wouldn’t be so. And I fretted while I waited …
“There are myths and there are legends. A myth is a story come down the ages, so changed by its retelling over and over that that we may no longer say if it is true or simply a story. One such myth was Shaitan the Unborn—until he became reality. A legend, on the other hand, is something much closer in time. A legend is not so old that it has lost its authenticity.
“Here in your world, Jake, you have a saying: ‘he’s a living legend.’ Do you see what I mean? A thing—usually a man or woman-that attains legendary status even in its, his, or her own lifetime. But legen
ds are generally older than that, if not as old as myths. In Sunside, our days being so long, the Szgany use them as a measure much as you use years. And we have a legend that dates back twenty-five thousand sunups. Not as long as your history, no, but still five hundred years. Oh, yes, I have learned your numbering system. I pride myself that I’ve learned many things, even though I’ve no use for them on Sunside.
“But five hundred years ago in my world, there were three Great Vampires unlike any others before or since. And they were legends. Two of them were Lords (for now, the time being, let’s say that they were Lords, past tense) and the other a so-called ‘Lady.’ But Vavara, believing her name potent enough in its own right, a warning enough in itself, scorned all titles and cognomens. The name itself would suffice, and she was simply Vavara. And perhaps she was right. For see, even as I speak that name—Vavaaara—so I shudder. Ugh!
“Not that she was ugly. On the contrary, she was incredibly beautiful—irresistibly so. And that was Vavara’s menace: she was a beguiler, a spellbinder. It was a kind of hypnotism, Jake but by no means the same as Grahame McGilchrist’s. Grahame uses a drug to enhance the authority of his eyes and voice; his is a skill as opposed to a true Power. There again, who can say? Perhaps Vavara’s hypnotism was just such a skill, but one enhanced out of all proportion by her vampire leech, as all human senses are enhanced by vampirism.
“Trask’s science has it that not only humans but all creatures possess lures other than the purely physical attractions of face and form. But in humans the voice and the eyes are especially important in defining a person’s—what, charisma? Hab! But that is also a Szgany word for personality. Ben talks about pheromones, and chemistry and such. But all I know of chemistry is how to mix a decent gunpowder. And it’s a damn hard thing to beguile a rocket, or silver shot from double barrels!
Anyway, and whatever this attraction is, Vavara had it. And again, perhaps Ben’s right. For the spell she cast over men was stronger than her power over women, and usually fatal. Any man who took her fancy—whether a simple Sunsider or even on occasion a Lord of the Wamphyri—he was a goner. To resist Vavara were a wasted effort.
“So much for the witch, and now the wizards:
“The other two were Lords, as I have said. Lord Szwart was one, for he had taken his Szgany name, by which the Szgany knew him: Szwart, pronounced like the German schwartz, which means black. And black he was, blacker than night, black as the black heart of the leech that empowered him . but with what strange powers? I’ve said he was blacker than night: a totally inadequate description. Lord Szwart was the night!
“Now, all of the Wamphyri are children of the night. Certainly they are, for they cannot bear the sunlight. And because night is their element—because they are awake at night, and see and revel and hunt at night—it is like a cloak they wear, disguising them even from the most keen-sighted of men. On Sunside when vampires were abroad in the forest, the Szgany would lie still in their hiding places and watch them pass. And sometimes when they passed a clinging mist would spring out of the earth, by which you would know they were there; or perhaps the stars would blink as a shape flowed across them, but you would not see whose shape it was, just a darkness in the lesser dark. And sometimes—oh, sometimes—the mist and the shape would come close, closer, and sniff … and laugh!
“But you must excuse me, Jake, the things of which I speak are not pleasant things. I may not speak of them without remembering … .
“Anyway, Lord Szwart’s command over the night was so much greater than any other’s that when the sun was down he was simply invisible. He made no mists, blotted no stars, and cast no shadows. Yet he was seen, but only once, by a man of the Szgany—seen in a storm, in a flash of lightning—and then no more. But the man who saw him was a madman until his dying day, which wasn’t long in coming. For he went into the woods to dig a hole to hide in, but never stopped digging! And when finally the pit fell in on him, he didn’t cry out in his horror at being buried alive but only his lunatic joy . for at last he was safe, and Lord Szwart could never get him now.
“I do not know what Lord Szwart was. Only that he was Wamphyri.
“Which leaves one other, and perhaps the most dangerous of all. Lord Nephran Matinari—catted Malinari the Mind, or simply The Mind—was a mentalist, a thought-thief, a mindreader without peer. None of the stripling telepaths in Ben Trask’s E-Branch today would have stood a chance against Lord Malinari in any battle of minds, nor all of them together. Let me tell you how it was with him:
“Among the Szgany, even more so than in your people, there were weird talents. My own sixth sense—my seer’s blood—is but one example. But we had mentalists, too, and oneiromancers, and even men like Ian Goodly, aye, despite that their precognition was a dubious art at best. For it’s as I’ve said, there’s a trace of the Wamphyri in all men of Sunside; their taint lingers on, and I fancy it has carried over even into this world. But Malinari … was special. His evil was special! Why, among the Wamphyri themselves, Lord Nephran Malinari had no friends. But don’t let me mislead you, Jake: it’s not that the Wamphyri were given to forming lasting relationships. They weren’t, but some of them did form alliances; well, occasionally. But rarely with Malinari the Mind. How may a man trust, or remain on good terms, with a creature who knows his every thought, who is one step ahead of his every move? The Wamphyri are devious, secretive … but how to keep secrets from such as Malinari?
“Let him but touch a man, a mere touch of the fingertips, and it was as though the other’s thoughts flowed like water—or like blood?—out of their owner and into the mind of Malinari. Ah, a vampire with a difference: he slaked two kinds of thirst, the one for blood and the other for knowledge! No idle curiosity, Jake, but the lust for knowledge itself. And once a thing was learned, Nephran Malinari never forgot it.
“But of course in Sunside/Starside, just as in this world, there were those who could not be read. Be it strength of will, or simply their nature, there was a wall in their minds no ordinary mentalist could ever breach. Ah, but Lord Malinari was no ordinary mentalist. I have said his touch opened the way. So it did, like opening a dam in a pent river. But if the soft brush of fingertips would not suffice … there was another way.
“Fingertips … and the incredible strength of the Wamphyri … Trask says it’s their metamorphism that allows them to punch stiffened fingers into a man’s chest to nip his heart. I think so, too, for it certainly wasn’t brute force with Malinari. His fingers were fluid, like liquid, allowing the exploration of a man’s inner ear, or the sockets behind his eyes, or the brain itself. And whenever The Mind stole a man’s thoughts out of his very brain … then he left nothing behind. No, not even the will to live … .
“We’re almost done. What will remain is not for me to tell but for Ben himself—in his own time, that is.
“Just one more thing. I spoke of Vavara, Lord Szwart, and Malinari the Mind in the past tense. For that’s how I heard of them, around campfires when I was a boy, as part of Sunside’s legends. The final part of the legend had it that four hundred years ago the rest of Starside’s Lords and Ladies got together to be rid of them, and it took all of their strength and their fighting forces together to do it, to banish them into the Icelands.
“But five years ago—when Nathan and Ben Trask’s espers turned Sunside/ Starside towards the sun—it appears that some of the ice melted. And if Vavara, Szwart, and Nephran Malinari were locked in the ice, waiting out the long cold years … ?
“That’s Ben Trask’s explanation, anyway.
“And now we’re done, for that’s all I know of it, all I’m willing to say for now … except for one final thing that I’m certain you’ve worked out for yourself: the fact that they are back, Jake. All three of those monsters, they’re back.
“And that is the nature of Ben’s mission. It’s what he and his espers are pledged to do. For once again there are vampires on the loose“—And no longer confined to Sunside/Starside!”
&n
bsp; 13
TRASK’S STORY
When Jake looked up he was alone. Perhaps he’d been asleep by the end of Lardis’s story, but he didn’t think so. It had gone in, all of it, and perhaps a lot more than Lardis had actually said. Weird, but that’s how it had felt during the telling: as if Jake had been there on Sunside/Starside; as if he had known all or most of these things—the sights and sounds and smells of Lardis’s world—and had only needed the old Gypsy’s corroboration.
But that was during the telling, and now it was all receding; the scenes that Lardis had painted so inadequately, which Jake’s own mind had coloured, and into which he’d inserted the finishing touches, were just words instead of feelings, sensations … emotions? And all that was left was a legend in its own right. Half of a legend, anyway.
“You didn’t tell me everything … .” Jake accused, before he fully realized that he was alone. Then, looking all around and feeling foolish, he stood up, tossed aside the dregs of coffee gone cold in his cup, stretched the stiffness out of his limbs. It would be good to get some real sleep sometime.
Suddenly the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness of the place had become oppressive, weighing on him … until he spied movement in the clump of pale, stumpy trees between himself and the big ops truck. It was Ben Trask, dappled grey and green and gold in the partial shade of the trees, heading his way.
“Jake?” Trask called ahead. He wasn’t shouting, but in the clear morning air—the silence of the near-deserted campsite—sound carried a long way. And drawing closer, Trask asked, “Did I hear you talking to someone?”
“Talking to myself,” Jake answered, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. “Or maybe to one of your ghosts—Lardis? That old man has this strange effect on me. He doesn’t just tell a story but takes me with him! Says his piece and leaves me there, then vanishes.”
