The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  When they were safely down and dismounted, Nestor went to them. “Well done,” he told Zahar cursorily, before turning to Canker.

  The dog-Lord bayed like the great hound that he was, gathered Nestor up in his arms, and growled, “But I have worried over you!” His scarlet eyes with their yellow pupils narrowed as they inspected Nestor’s facial ravages. “Not without cause, it seems.”

  Nestor held him off and shrugged. “A few scars? They are nothing. I may even wear them as a trophy. Aye, for it seems I’ve won, Canker. It seems I’ve won!” And sharply, to Zahar: “You’re sure?”

  “About your enemy?” Nestor’s lieutenant snapped alert. “I brought him awake in the moment before I tossed him into the Gate. Oh, he knew where he was going, all right—to hell!”

  “Huh!” Canker growled, as Nestor relaxed and smiled a grim smile. “Well, perhaps one day you’ll tell me what this was all about! Meanwhile, what are we doing here? For if you’ll take a look back there …” Their eyes turned in the direction of his pointing hand.

  Behind them, rising up from the unseen valleys and forests in a haze of golden dust motes, dawn proclaimed itself. It was daubed pink and yellow on the underbellies of Sunside’s drifting clouds, and painted amethyst on the curving southern rim of the star-shot, blue-black atmosphere. It was given voice in the startled songs of mountain birds, and echoed in a soughing wind as thermals commenced to rise and draw cold air out of the dark vault of Starside.

  They mounted up and launched into the dawn wind, set their course east and a little to the north, to take them home to the last aerie. But in something less than an hour, as they glided down across the Starside foothills and passed low over the hell-lands Gate …

  … A diversion!

  What?! Nestor and the dog-Lord issued their mental question-exclamations almost in unison, while Zahar said nothing but simply stared down in astonishment and fascination at the glaring white dome of the Gate … and at the figure which even now stepped down from its crater rim, to go stumbling and teetering out across the boulder plain!

  A woman? Nestor hissed. But human? Here?

  And Canker, gawping: Some Traveller woman, do you think? Taken on Sunside in the night, in thrall to Gorvi or the Killglance brothers, and left to find her own way home to the last aerie? But … would they really leave a creature as beautiful as this to the perils of beasts and mountain passes? It seems scarcely possible!

  Hauling on their reins, they brought their flyers round in a tight semicircle and commanded them to sideslip this way and that, settling to the sterile boulder plain like flat pebbles to the bottom of a pool. And glancing at Canker as they landed, Nestor saw that the dog-Lord was transfixed, his long jaw hanging loose as his eyes soaked up the sight of the girl from the Gate.

  “A creature as beautiful as this,” Canker had said. And indeed she was beautiful … and her colours totally alien! Nestor couldn’t say if he’d seen such colours before, or even if they’d existed … in a woman. But in a man? What of his Great Enemy, Nathan, gone now into another world? Hadn’t his colours been much the same? And hadn’t he always dreamed of a place where they would fit, where he would be accepted? Somehow Nestor knew that he had. Maybe they were all the same in that far strange world, that alien hell, even as the Szgany were the same in Sunside. Or perhaps this was just some weird and wonderful coincidence.

  For the woman from the Gate was a statuesque, unheard-of silvery blonde, and her eyes were blue as the sky’s vault on a clear day! Her skin was pale, unblemished, perfect; likewise her features. Long-limbed, her flesh was firm beneath undergarments of sheer silk, which were clearly visible under the swirl and waft of a gown wispy as butterfly wings. Less than opaque, the garment floated as if fashioned of shimmery silver cobwebs!

  She had seen them falling out of the sky, landing and dismounting. Now she ran from them and a wailing cry, like that of a frightened infant, came back to them. Canker immediately went to all fours and was after her in a series of leaps and bounds. But catching up with her, strangely … he held back! The dog-Lord and the alien woman faced each other; she put up hands formed into claws, with sharp, scarlet nails, and snarled at him; he stood there upright, stalled and astonished, jaw lolling open.

  The tableau remained frozen until Nestor and Zahar came on the scene. Then:

  “Keep back!” Canker growled, whirling on the pair as they approached; and Nestor had never heard so clear a threat in any voice! But from the dog-Lord? He couldn’t believe it. Yet Canker’s muzzle dripped saliva, his fangs were sharp as bone knives where the soft, shiny black leather of his mouth was drawn back and wrinkled, and his eyes glared a savagery completely out of character—at least where Nestor was concerned.

  “What is it, my friend?” Nestor’s own voice was as calm and hushed as ever; which was as well, for it brought the other to his senses.

  “Eh?” Canker shook his head as if to clear it, glanced at Nestor and Zahar, and returned his gaze to the girl. She looked into the cores of his piercing animal eyes, shrank from him and hissed like a wild creature, spitting her terror. But as Canker took a step towards her and loomed close, she knew his overwhelming power and submitted to it. She stood up straight, arms by her sides, trembling in all her limbs. Then her eyes rolled up and she would have crumpled to the hard earth; except the dog-Lord swept her up, but oh so gently, into his great arms!

  And turning to Nestor: “Eh?” he said again. “But isn’t it obvious what—who—she is?”

  “No.” Nestor shook his head, stared hard at the girl in the other’s arms. “Not at all obvious. For I’ve never seen anything like her.”

  “But I have!” Canker barked. “Often, in my dreams! Didn’t I describe her well enough? I know I did. Only turn your eyes to the sky, Nestor, if you would know her heavenly origin. Up there, the hurtling moon! For she is my silver moon mistress!”

  Nestor glanced at the sky, the tumbling moon, then stared his amaze at Canker. “Your … ?”

  “Aye, at last!” The dog-Lord was triumphant. “I called her down with my moon music, and goddess that she is—of her own free will—she came through hell itself, to be by my side in Mangemanse!”

  PART FIVE:

  DISCOVERING HARRY

  1

  Harry’s Room Revisited

  Nathan Keogh was far from innumerate, not any longer, but he was illiterate. The Szgany of Sunside had been good at making signs, but not at writing. Indeed they had no writing as such. Which was why he frowned at the menu Ben Trask had handed him just a moment before and shook his head apologetically. “I’ll have … whatever you’re having,” he told his mentor-in-chief, simply. Yet the look he gave the older man was anything but simple. If anything it was an accusation, but not in connection with ordering lunch in an Indian restaurant in London.

  Trask hadn’t intended to embarrass his protégé. “Ah! I’m sorry.” He held up his hands a moment, then let them fall despondently. And smiling wryly he said, “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Yes, you were,” the other nodded. “You were thinking how strange I am: untutored, often gauche—by your standards, at least—and rather primitive. Yet at the same time a potential superman, a fantastic weapon. And that’s how you’d like to use me, as Tzonov would have used me before you: as a weapon!”

  “But I wasn’t—” Trask the human lie detector started to deny it—and stopped. Looking into Nathan’s eyes, even without looking into them, he knew that the other spoke the truth. He had been thinking it, if only for a moment. But not quite the way Nathan had it. “Not like Tzonov would have used you, no,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “If you were going to read my mind anyway, you might have at least followed through,” Trask told him. “It’s like reading the first pages of a book, or a chapter out of the middle: you didn’t get the whole story.”

  “And what is the whole story?”

  “You would make a fantastic weapon, yes,” Trask nodded. “I was thinking that. And I would ‘
use you,’ if that’s the way you choose to see it. Not for myself, Nathan, but to save an entire world, or both of our worlds if it should come to that.” He sat back in his chair. “Very well, you want to read my mind. I have no problem with that. Go right ahead, and welcome to it. See if I’m telling you the truth.” Trask’s hypnotic implant was still in place, but he wasn’t using it. He hadn’t used it since Perchorsk three days ago.

  Nathan looked into Trask’s eyes a moment and felt tempted to scan his mind again, however briefly. Then his face coloured and he looked away. Trask thought he knew what the red flush signified: shame. The espers didn’t spy on each other and Nathan knew it. But he also knew that Trask had told him the truth, and that in any case the way Trask would or would not use him had nothing to do with his problem.

  Nathan’s problem was not that he didn’t trust Trask or his team of mindspies—he’d checked them all out and knew that he could, with his life—but simply that things weren’t moving fast enough for him. It was his mounting frustration. The novelty had worn off and in just a few days he was heartily sick of what seemed to him an entirely sick world. All he wanted now—and right now—was to get back to Sunside. Which Trask had told him just couldn’t be.

  Trask knew there was a problem, too. Nathan hadn’t spoken about it as yet, but it was there. Trask could play a guessing game with him, he supposed, and when he hit the right question read the truth of Nathan’s answer in his expression, but that wasn’t Trask’s way. Anyway, he believed he already knew what Nathan’s trouble was. “You’re homesick,” he said. “And you’re taking it out on your friends.”

  Trask had used a new word but its meaning was perfectly obvious. “Oh?” Nathan answered. “And wouldn’t you be … what, homesick? In a strange world, dressed in strange clothes, eating strange food and putting your trust—your entire life—in the hands of strangers? A world you always thought of as a sort of hell, and the more you get to know about it, the more likely it seems you were right! A world where you own nothing except what’s been given to you, where you don’t know anything except what you’re told, and where you can’t go anywhere unless you’re taken. This world of yours has so many wonders … and so many horrors! Why, you people don’t even understand its ailments yourselves! It astonishes me that madness isn’t rife, and I’ve only seen a small part of it. Homesick? Yes, I am. I have a wife on Sunside … maybe. But Sunside is a whole world away, and I don’t even know if she lived through the attack. By now, she could be in thrall to some vampire Lord in Starside.” But he didn’t say that the Lord would probably be his own brother, a vampire in his own right.

  “Homesick for a vampire world,” Trask said, trying hard to understand. Oh, he understood the loneliness, but not the rest of it. Instead of feeling … well, alone, yes, but safe, like a refugee, Nathan felt like an outcast. And despite the living nightmares which dwelled in Starside and called themselves Wamphyri, still he wanted to go home.

  “I can’t help reading you,” Nathan said, looking directly into Trask’s eyes. “Not when you’re coming across so clear. Yes, I still want to go home! Homesick? I suppose so, but that’s not all it is. I’m not sure what it is, except that somehow I might have the answer. I think it’s in me: the answer to all of this, the final destruction of the Wamphyri. A weapon? Yes, possibly, but in order to destroy the enemy you have to take your weapons to him. You can’t hide from him in alien worlds.”

  That had been pretty eloquent, Trask thought, from someone who just one short week ago didn’t understand a word of English. He tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound trite and was saved by the approach of a small, waddling, gap-toothed waiter. “Are you ready to order, sir?”

  “Onion bhagi starters for two,” Trask told him. “And a main course of chicken biriani. Also for two. Oh, and two beers.”

  They were in a place just off Oxford Street. It was a down-to-earth place, hardly haute (or nouvelle) cuisine, but Trask didn’t eat high class, not if he could avoid it. It just wasn’t his thing: collages in brightly coloured soup, raw vegetables, and half-cooked fish didn’t turn him on. And he didn’t think Nathan would respond to it either.

  “But you’re doing so well,” he said. “You’ve been with us, what, four, five days? Just five days,” he nodded, “and already you fit right in. And you’re learning, Nathan. We’re teaching you all we can—”

  “And learning from me?” Nathan was disarmingly frank.

  Trask nodded. “Yes, of course we are. How you feel about Sunside is how we feel about our world. And narrowing it down a little, it’s how we feel about our different cultures, east and west. Just as you have enemies in Starside, so we have potential enemies in the east. You know one of them, Nathan, and you discovered his intentions: to infiltrate your world as an aggressor. But if he succeeds … your world is only the first. Next comes our world, which he’ll overthrow using whatever resources he wins in Sunside/Starside. So you see, it’s as simple as that. We need to know about your world in order to counter his aggression, if it should ever come to that.”

  Nathan nodded. “I think I understand all of that. But now you have to understand. One of the first things they showed me in your headquarters was film of your history. It was very … condensed? Yes, but it was very—graphic?—too. And I keep thinking about it. Your wars have been devastating! And one of the worst things about them is that you don’t just fight them on your own and your enemy’s territory but on—neutral?—ground, too. And you leave the scars of your battles behind. As your weapons got better, the scars they left got bigger. Don’t forget, Ben, that I’ve seen the result of one of your weapons used on Starside. It was bad enough there, but if it had been Sunside …” He shook his head.

  “Not one of ours,” Trask told him. “Theirs.”

  “Does it really matter?”

  Trask thought about it a moment. But there was only one truth and he knew it. “If Tzonov investigates, invades, tries to plunder your world, we’ll do our damnedest to stop him. Oh, we’ll try to stop him here first, thwart his plans as best we can. But if we can’t … he’s not the only one with a gateway into Sunside/Starside.”

  Nathan’s face was suddenly very pale, sad. “So, despite all my arguments and everything you told me—that you only wanted to help me—still you will take your weapons, and men who can use them, an army however small, into Sunside?”

  “Against Tzonov—if it’s necessary that we go against him—yes.” Trask wasn’t going to lie; even if he did Nathan would know it sooner or later, and he wouldn’t forgive him for it.

  “Then you are as mad as he is!”

  “Not mad, dedicated.”

  “And is Tzonov dedicated, too?”

  “But to himself,” Trask nodded. “To his own ideals. While our dedication is to freedom.”

  “Your freedom. Not the freedom of the Travellers.”

  “The freedom of all men, Nathan. If this thing starts, and when it’s all over, your world can still be yours. But without your help it might not be. You might lose it to Turkur Tzonov and others just like him.”

  “Possibly.” Nathan looked doubtful, worried. “But on the other hand I see a very different … what, scenario? And I wonder: have you even considered it?—that Sunside/Starside might end up belonging to the Wamphyri in its entirety?” Just for a moment, the expression on Nathan’s face was so like his father’s had used to be—innocent, bemused, and lonely, yet paradoxically cold, knowing, enigmatic—that Trask actually saw Harry Keogh sitting there. But only for a moment, for in the next his laughter was forced, harsh, even sardonic. Until he was through and quietly said:

  “I tell you one more time: you, your people, Turkur Tzonov—anyone of this world who would venture into mine knowing so little about it—you are all mad! The Wamphyri will eat you. I mean they will simply—literally?—eat you!” He was still trying out new words. “Yes, literally. And very definitely …”

  Again he reminded Trask of his father; his conviction was
that concentrated, his warning that clear. Harry Keogh, yes, as Keenan Gormley had first known him, before the Necroscope developed his powers to their full. But Trask must be slipping: here Nathan had presented him with yet another opportunity to learn more about the Wamphyri, and he’d almost let it go.

  “You’ve seen film of our weapons of war, which make Lardis Lidesci’s shotguns look like toys, and yet you still think the Wamphyri can triumph?”

  Outside the plate-glass window a tourist bus passed slowly in heavy midday traffic. “Do you see that … vehicle?” Nathan indicated the bus. “In Turgosheim I saw one of Vormulac’s aerial warriors—a creature freshly waxed in his vats, twice the size of that vehicle, armoured like one of your tanks and weaponed tip to tail—go crashing into the gorge. It was a training flight and the warrior had … design faults? But when this monster hit the bottom, the force of the crash was such that it tore chunks of stone out of the turrets of a lesser manse. And even the chunks were as big as that vehicle!”

  Trask shrugged, but not carelessly. “You’ve seen our tanks, then. And their firepower? Now tell me: do you really think a warrior creature could stand up to a machine such as that?”

  “No.” Nathan shook his head. “Not even the most ferocious of them, for even they are only flesh and blood. I don’t think so and I didn’t say so. But now you tell me something: if you can’t get me through this Romanian Gate, how can you possibly hope to get a tank through?”

  Trask grinned, but again without malice, and said, “You haven’t seen all of our films, then. Nathan, we’ve got tank-killing weapons that can be fired by single soldiers as easily as you fire a crossbow! One good shot can take out an entire tank. And as for a warrior: they’d just blow it in half! And these are weapons which we can take through!”