The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  “Are you saying you can’t do it?” The Guile stared hard at him, then at the crumbling corpse. “Is he too far gone?”

  Nestor looked at him, blinked, and smiled a very terrible smile. “No, not at all,” he answered. “If he were ashes in an urn, still I could talk to him. Indeed, he’s listening to me even now.” His voice had fallen to a whisper, a dry throaty rustling.

  “Eh?” Gorvi’s jaw dropped.

  “Oh, yes.” Nestor uttered a strange sad sigh. “And can’t you see? He’s trembling, too.”

  The Guile took a pace back from the necromancer, who might just be a madman. “Trembling? But … I see nothing!”

  The other went down on his knees. “Seeing,” he said, “is not the art. Ah, but to feel him trembling, and to know it for a fact—that is the true art.”

  And, smiling again, he reached out his hands to the shuddering corpse of Jason Lidesci …

  5

  Conversation with a Corpse—Nestor and Wratha: The Assignation

  Gorvi the Guile was suddenly aware of a change in the psychic ether, the atmosphere, the very aura of the place. Starside in the vicinity of the Gate was a strange region: what with the blindly vacant glare of the dazzling white hemisphere portal, like an immense eye in its crater socket, lighting up the sterile soil, blackened boulders, and fused slag all about; and the riddled condition of the blasted earth and rock around the crater itself, as if a nest of giant worms had burrowed there; and that weird plume of softly pulsating luminescence reaching out from the Gate to point north like some dumbly accusing fox-fire finger. All of these things, plus the reason for his being here, had given Gorvi an unaccustomed feeling of foreboding. But he suspected that this new sensation, this tingle of awareness (but of what?) on the periphery of his vampire senses, was something other, greater, than any merely chance combination of location and circumstance.

  More sensitive to sinister influences than Canker Canison, the Guile sensed the flow of … something, between Nestor and the lich. And as the necromancer’s hands came down on the corpse’s crushed brow and shrunken chest, so that unknown something increased tenfold. In that same instant, Gorvi came to believe in Nestor’s talent; he was satisfied that the youth could actually converse with one who was no more. And perhaps hoping to eavesdrop on what passed between them, the living and the dead, he moved a little closer. But Nestor’s words were deadspeak, which the living cannot hear, as he said:

  Jason Lidesci, badly broken though you are—unrecognizable, and forgotten by me as all of my past with the Szgany is forgotten—still I know who you are. And I know that upon a time I knew you as you were. Now I want to know you again.

  The other said nothing, but Nestor felt him exerting his will and strengthening his resolve—to continue to say nothing.

  Ah! But that won’t work. I know how strong you are. Gorvi has told me how you hurled yourself down from Guilesump before you would talk to him, because you thought you could only die once. Well, that was true enough then. But through me you can feel the pain of death over and over again, as often—or as seldom—as you yourself will it. Or as often as I will it …

  But even though Nestor let the pause stretch itself into a monstrous threat, all he felt was a further strengthening of the other’s will. And he found it amazing that for one who was dead, this Jason could be so strong. Well, strong for the moment … but for how much longer?

  In fact, it wasn’t so much Jason’s strength that Nestor sensed but his strong inclination to disbelieve. For like certain others of the teeming dead when the necromancer first spoke to them, he also doubted this vampire Lord’s talent. After all, Jason had neither seen, felt, touched, nor tasted anything since the moment he’d launched himself on his fatal dive from Guilesump’s mist-slick wall. He had not even been aware of the grit and pebbles which had hammered themselves into his broken skull and limbs when he struck home, or the wind’s bluster about his ledge, or the tiny bats which flitted close to inspect his desiccated body, then flew off chittering into the gloom. Only the eternal darkness and loneliness had touched him, and the only taste he’d known was the bitter bile of frustration: that he was dead while such as Nestor, Gorvi, and the rest of the Wamphyri lived on to plague his people.

  So why should he now believe that Nestor Lichloathe could touch him, hurt him, cause him pain? What was pain anyway but the shrieking of tortured nerves or ligaments, or the bubbling up of morbid fluids in a sick body? And how may one even begin to feel it in nerves and muscles and veins which have cast off life and stiffened to knots of leathery gristle, or in fluids leeched off by the sucking winds, turned to vapour and blown away?

  But on the other hand:

  Jason had died a vampire, but knowing how he had died and why, the dead had come to accept him. While his other senses were sadly defunct, at least he could hear the Great Majority when they talked to him. But only them, until now. And from them he’d heard a good many things. Oh, he knew that the teeming dead believed in Nestor’s powers; for he’d heard them time and again whispering in their graves, terrified that sooner or later the monster would come for them. Why, there were even those among them who swore that they’d already suffered at his hands. But Jason found it hard to credit.

  Except … what of Nestor’s deadspeak, which Jason heard as plain as the voices of the Great Majority? It was one thing for the dead to use that metaphysical medium, but a living creature? And that was the reason he feared Nestor and hated the sound of his deadspeak voice. For the vampire Lord was not dead but very much alive; he had a leech; he was Wamphyri, yet he too was gifted with deadspeak. And if he had that … what else did he have? It was this which made Jason tremble.

  All of these thoughts were his, which he fought hard to keep to himself. But finally Nestor smiled his terrible smile; for concentrating on Jason’s corpse, directing all of his necromancer’s powers at the lich, at last he’d broken in on his victim’s thoughts and heard or sensed that last fearful query. And knowing that the dead man would hear him, he repeated his question out loud:

  “What else do I have? Is that what you want to know? Well, perhaps it’s time I showed you.”

  Without further pause he took his hand from Jason’s forehead, caught a papery eyelid between finger and thumb, and tore it free as easily as tearing the fragile wing of a moth! It was nothing—oh, a dreadful act, certainly: to defile a corpse—but nothing that required any real effort. To have done it to a living man would have been something else. That would involve a measure of resistance and a guaranteed response. But not from a dead man, surely. For the dead don’t feel pain … do they?

  Well, and now Nestor’s victim knew the folly in that line of reasoning. For Nestor was a necromancer, and Jason did feel it! Felt the blood spurt, the red ruin of his face, the impossible agony of that previously insensitive but now highly sensitized part torn away like a piece of bread from a loaf. Felt it and screamed, screamed, screamed!

  And: “Ah!” Nestor sighed. “So you have a voice after all. I was beginning to think you were dumb. But no, you’re merely stupid.”

  Gradually Jason’s sobbing shrieks subsided, became gasps of shock, horror, and finally petered out. Now it was as if he were a man holding his breath and hiding in the dark, but one who knew that his adversary could see in the dark and knew his every move. Yet still he was reticent and Nestor felt not only pain but defiance in him.

  “Must I hurt you again?”

  No! the other’s gasp of terror was as real as from a living throat. You are right: I am that Jason you knew in Settlement. I was taken on the night of the first raid, and it seems that you were, too. But you submitted, obviously, and I didn’t. Well, as a child you always played at being Wamphyri. It’s possible that some might even believe you’re the fortunate one. As for me, I don’t think so. Even dead and miserable, still I prefer it to the living death which is vampirism. For me there is no hell … except the one which you vampires have created to inhabit!

  “Well said,” Nest
or nodded. “You have a way with words, for all that a great many of them are wasted and others ill-advised. As for hell: there’s a hell for every man, be sure. Didn’t I just show you a small corner of yours? But let it be. I think I would prefer it if you simply answered my questions, rather than spouting your defiance and loathing. Do you agree? If not, there are other parts you can lose.” He tugged tentatively at the tattered web of what had been Jason’s left ear.

  Again the other’s gasp, and: No! No! Only ask your questions. And if I know the answers, I will tell you.

  “All of the answers?”

  As much as I know. But still there was an edge of sullen defiance in Jason’s deadspeak voice. Nestor shrugged. He would see what he would see.

  “And so you knew me in Settlement. Very well: tell me my history.”

  The other was puzzled. What? I should tell you what you already know?

  “No, only what I have forgotten. For you see, I have no memory prior to this. Well, some few fragments of memory: of being wounded, a near-drowning, a life in a cabin in the forest, finally of becoming Wamphyri. But of my childhood and my youth, nothing. You are now my memory, or will be. But first tell me this: when I spoke to you, you knew who I was without my telling you. How?”

  Because there was only one creature you could possibly be, Jason answered, for you are one of a kind. You are of the living—a sort of life, anyway—yet speak the language of the dead, and they fear you for both your voice and for your touch. I learned your name from them, the teeming dead, only to discover that I had known it long before that. For you are the necromancer Lord Nestor Lichloathe of the Wamphyri, once Nestor Kiklu of the Szgany Lidesci. And we grew up together, in Settlement. Better if we had died together, too.

  It was more or less as Nestor had expected. Except:

  “We … grew up together?” He frowned. “I have no recollection of that …” But in fact, in the back of his mind, a far faint scene was already glowing a little brighter: a picture of forest paths and glades, and children, three of them, laughing at their play. Two boys … and a girl; they were perhaps ten or eleven years old. But the scene was viewed through the eyes of a fourth child, which Nestor supposed could only be himself. Out of focus, the picture jogged Nestor’s memory a little, but not enough. Also, because of the current damage to the corpse of Jason Lidesci, Nestor had not managed to identify him as a member of the small group. And so:

  “Let me see you as you were,” he demanded of the trembling lich. And at once, despite that Jason did his best to stop it, a reflex picture of himself as a child was mirrored in the eye of his mind; which Nestor saw, of course. And now he knew that indeed Jason had been one of the children in the forest scene. But the other two?

  “Did you see those children in my mind?”

  Yes.

  “What were their names?”

  What? And have you also forgotten them? But they were your closest …

  Nestor sighed a false sigh and grasped the other’s lolling bottom jaw. He twisted it just a little, until brittle flesh at the right-hand corner of the corpse’s mouth began to tear like paper. Which was more than enough for Jason Lidesci. For to him it seemed that something was ripping his face apart!

  Ah, no! My face! He relapsed into racking sobs.

  “The other two?”

  Misha! Jason screamed aloud. The girl was Misha Zanesti! And sobbing brokenly, gasping his deadspeak agony, he hurriedly went on: As for the boy, he was … he was Nathan. But do what you will to me, Nestor, I can’t believe you’ve forgotten him!

  “Misha? Her name was … Misha?” Nestor’s voice was suddenly changed. Previously a whisper, now it was harsh, choked. And with his eyes bulging as his lips quivered back from fanglike teeth, he snatched away his hands from the dead man.

  Just how often had the necromancer woken up from angry, fretful, fading dreams with this very name on his lips, without knowing the meaning of it? Often enough, aye. But now he believed he did know. And slow as flabby bubbles in a swamp, gurgling up from his damaged memory, another picture formed: a wooded river bank, and the children as before. Except they seemed a little older now, and this time there were just the two of them …

  … Nathan and Misha.

  And Nestor a silent, stunned observer now, just as he had been then:

  The children at a bend in the river, where the rippling shallows had formed a beach of yellow sand and white shingle. Nathan sitting on a rock, with the woods as a backdrop; Misha swimming, laughing, taunting the boy on the bank. She stood there naked and posturing, beckoning, daring him to join her in the river. Sunlight shimmered on her brown pixie body, highlighting her barely formed breasts, glinting on jewel droplets of river water in the thin black cobweb of her pubic triangle. Not quite a child, Misha, but not yet a woman, she was all innocence (or not-quite-innocence), where she showed herself to this Nathan.

  And Nestor felt about her now as he had felt then: that he wanted her, yet at the same time despised her for her naivete: that she’d never recognized his feelings. In those early days he would not have known what to do with her anyway, but still he’d wanted her, even though her heart belonged to someone else. He knew it from a tearing inside, as if someone had squeezed his guts: that Misha had belonged to Nathan. And he wondered:

  Is this really the one, the child, girl, woman who later betrayed me? Was it Misha who spumed his love, in that time when he’d been capable of true love? But pointless to merely wonder, for he knew. And he also knew with whom she had betrayed him.

  For Nathan was ankle-deep in water now, throwing off his clothes, laughing as he rough-and-tumbled her in the shallows. Their bodies touching, not yet intimately, more like siblings. But Nestor knew that the intimacy would come later; even years later, by which time it would be too late for him.

  And so it was this Nathan who was his olden enemy; but an adversary of long standing, who it now appeared had even been Nestor’s rival in a mainly unremembered childhood!

  “His face,” Nestor rasped, as the scene in his mind faded to a misty shimmer, then vanished entirely. “You, Jason: show me what he looked like the last time you saw him.”

  That was the night of the raid, the other brokenly replied, knowing that he was beaten and how useless and painful it would be to speak anything other than the truth. All three of us had been to Starside with my father on his annual trek, and we were just home. It was the last time I saw Nathan, and the last time I saw you. Indeed it was the last time I saw anyone from Settlement, or anyone else entirely human, ever again.

  Nestor’s patience was running thin. He had asked for one clearly defined thing, and had been fobbed off with something else entirely. Obviously this Jason was exactly as Gorvi had reported him: surly, difficult, defiant even now. What’s more, it could be his screams had been louder than warranted by the amount of pain inflicted. In any case, Nestor had had enough.

  “It seems to me you’re deliberately slowing this down,” he snarled, reaching out again and grasping the corpse’s dangling, almost weightless arm. “Wherefore, I’ll say this only one more time: show me his face!”

  Yes! Yes! Jason was terrified, and real terror now, leaving no further doubt in Nestor’s black heart that at last he would get the truth. But just to be absolutely certain, he tugged on the arm until it almost came loose at the elbow! Which was the absolute end of Jason’s reticence, if there had actually been any in the first place.

  There are screams and there are screams. Jason Lidesci’s silent deadspeak screams that hideous night reached out in all directions. They echoed across the barren boulder plains, reverberated in the passes, flowed up and over the mountains into Sunside. The dead in all their many places heard him, and knew what was his torment … and could not offer a word of comfort, in case Nestor heard them and came to investigate. Filled with the most awful, impossible agony as he felt his flesh tear and his bones come loose at the joint, Jason’s screams were such as to wake the dead, except they dared not wake. For a necroma
ncer was come among them.

  “His face!” Nestor demanded yet again, and twisted the arm one last time, without giving his victim a chance to recover. And when at last Jason’s shrieking and sobbing subsided, finally Nestor’s order was obeyed.

  A face—Nathan’s face, Nestor’s olden enemy’s face, his Great Enemy’s face—came floating up from the pulsing red and black pit of pain which was Jason’s mind, and firmed into being where the necromancer could see it.

  And he knew it!

  Blond hair, blue eyes, and pale as could be. Handsome in a sad, shy sort of way. Szgany, and yet not Szgany. And suddenly Nestor remembered how sometimes he’d been ashamed to call Nathan his … to call him … his … his … his!

  His mind went blank, numb, rigid as the rock of the mountains themselves.

  But Jason’s mind—apart from his unspeakable agony, or perhaps because of it—was suddenly crystal clear. For looking in on Nestor’s deadspeak thoughts, he knew what the necromancer had searched for … and also the mind-warping shock of what he’d discovered. And:

  Oh, yes, he sobbed in Nestor’s mind. You are correct. And while you championed him as a boy, later there were times when you wouldn’t even accept him. Now you know why I couldn’t believe you had forgotten him. For indeed that face I showed you was the face of Nathan Kiklu. A far better man than you, Nestor, for all that he was your twin brother!

  Nestor jerked to his feet, recoiled from the truth of it like a startled deer. He who had been the torturer was now in turn tormented. His Great Enemy was his brother? Not identical, no, but Nathan and Nestor Kiklu? The same flesh? From the same womb? They had been Szgany together: Nestor, Misha, Nathan, and Jason. As children, they’d played, laughed, and cried together. And indeed in those childhood days Nestor had played at being a vampire Lord. But that was before he became Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri.

  And so for the very briefest of moments Nestor was reunited with his past, until his vampire saw the danger in it and worked to erase the error. The metamorphic synapses which had welded in that moment of memory came apart again, and Nestor came apart, too, from what human impulses had started to galvanize him.