by Brian Lumley
In his more lucid moments, Harry knew that given even the best of conditions his injuries would take time in the healing; he had neither the conditions nor the time. After Shaitan gave him to Shaithis, the latter had had him crucified close to the Gate. Silver nails held him to the green timbers, and a silver spike passed through him, through his vampire and the trunk of the cross, and out the back where it was bent to one side. As fast as his Wamphyri flesh worked to repair him, so the silver poisoned him. And he guessed — no, he knew — that he wouldn’t come down off this cross alive. At his feet, a bonfire of dry, broken branches confirmed it.
A second cross had been erected for Karen. Sometimes she hung there, which impaired her healing processes and kept her servile, and at others she was absent. Harry felt for her most when her cross was empty, for that was when Shaithis used and abused her. If he had the strength, the Necroscope would talk to her telepathically; except he suspected she would not let him in. No, for she would keep her torments to herself and not add to his despair. But from time to time, when Karen’s cross was empty, Harry would look down on Shaithis’s tent of skins and the hatred would burn in him like a fire. And then — but far too late — he would wish he’d given his vampire free rein. Perhaps mercifully, such moments of mental clarity, understanding and remorse were few and far between.
He didn’t remember the arrival of the Travellers, called through the pass by Shaithis. ‘Loyal’ in their way to the Wamphyri, they were of a fearful, much-despised supplicant tribe of gauntlet-makers. En route here from Sunside and obedient to Shaithis’s commands, they’d stolen away the women and younger men from a party of less subjugated Travellers. Also, they had been employed to build the shelters of the vampire Lords, and to cut and gather the wood for fires and crosses. Little good any of this did them; Shaithis and his monstrous ancestor served all of them alike: they brutalized and impregnated the women, vampirized the pick of the men to be their thralls and lieutenants, and fed the rest to the warriors preparatory to the invasion of the Gate.
That last was something which the Necroscope did remember: the butchery as the last of the Travellers tried to flee, and the gluttony of the warriors. Especially he remembered how Shaithis, for his amusement, had given a Traveller woman to a warrior with the parts of a man. When it was over (and apparently aroused), Shaithis had taken Karen down from her cross and into his tent. And when that was over and she was nailed up again, then he had come to gloat at the foot of Harry’s cross.
‘I’ve had my fill of your bitch, wizard,’ he said with a shrug, as if in casual conversation. ‘It was even my thought to lie with her in the open and let you watch, except as you’ve seen these beasts of mine are frisky. I had no desire to give them ideas. But the next time she comes down off her cross…ah, that will be the last time. And while you are burning — or at least until the skin of your eyes turns black and peels away — you shall see it all. Only a shame that your own agonies must detract from your enjoyment of hers!’
Then… Harry’s hatred had been a greater torture than the nails and the spike together, so great that he was driven back into the darkness of oblivion. But not before he had heard the Fallen One’s mind-warning to his descendant.
‘Ware, Shaithis! Be advised not to drive this one too far. I fancy there’s that in him which even he fails to appreciate. Something beyond his control — some weird instinctive mechanism — which works through him. Don’t trigger it, my son. Even the Travellers, when they hunt and kill wild pigs, are wise enough not to taunt their prey.
But in Shaithis’s secret mind was nothing but scorn. He’d lived through too many auroras just dreaming of these moments of triumph. Taunt this tame pig of a Necroscope? Oh, yes! Right to the bitter end…
7 Fusion — Fission — Finale
The Wamphyri Lords stole more women out of Sunside; with their lust and their bellies satisfied, they slept; likewise their beasts and thralls. Sunup gradually approached and the sky began to lighten over Sunside. When the first soft rains awakened them, before the sun’s first deadly rays could shoot between the peaks into Starside and the north, then they would pass in through the Gate to invade the world beyond. But while they slept:
Harry Wolfson — once Harry Jr, then The Dweller, and now the leader of the grey brotherhood — padded down from the mountains and through the foothills, and stood off in the shadows to gaze upon the forces of evil where they lay in the Gate’s glare.
He gazed on them, and upon the naked human figures crucified in their midst. And while the great grey wolf had no way of knowing it, he, his father and Shaitan the Fallen, all three of them, shared a common problem: their memories were impaired. But where in Shaitan the deficiency had localized itself and was stable, and where in Harry Sr it gradually improved, in Harry Wolfson it grew worse from moment to moment, and would not improve until he was a wolf entire.
But for now faint memories stirred: of the woman in the hard ground who had suckled him, of a man on a cross who was his father, and of a girl likewise crucified who had been an ally. Also of a battle long, long ago, in a place called the garden, which had been the end of one life and the beginning of another; and of a second, more recent battle in the same place, in which he and his grey brothers had no part but were only observers. He remembered now how he had planned to fight in that battle, on the side of the two who were crucified, but… he didn’t remember his reasons. In any case, it would have made no difference; they’d done their fighting in the air and their warriors were huge, and he and the pack were only wolves. Yet still he felt that he’d somehow failed these poor, crucified creatures: the man unconscious on his cross, and the woman, awake, inured and even resigned now to pain, but not immune to her own black hatred.
Back in the foothills, one of the brothers lay back his head and howled at the moon rising over the mountains. In its lower quarter, the moon was golden with reflected light; soon it would be sunup. Another howl, echoing up to accompany the first, caused Harry Wolf son to issue an instinctive thought: Hush: Be quiet! Let the sleepers sleep on.
His brothers heard him, and so did the Lady Karen.
Dweller? Her thoughts were faint, shielded from the minds of the sleeping vampires. But they evoked a flood of memories, however blurred. Harry Wolf son knew she spoke to him.
I am that one, he finally answered. And again, I… was that one. But now he must know the truth and asked her: Did I… betray you?
The fight? (A shake of her head, telepathically sensed.) No, that was doomed from the start. Your father and I, we had already seen our futures: golden fire burning in the Möbius Continuum! As for our enemies: we thought we’d seen the end of them, too, but we were mistaken. For it appears that their futures don’t lie here in Starside but in the world beyond the Gate. Pictures accompanied her words — a scenario straight out of the Necroscope’s and her own trip in future time — and wondered if he would understand them.
He did, and: I’m sorry. But his memories were sharper now and coming faster. My father should have known better: to read the future is a devious thing.
Aye, she agreed. I thought the golden fire might be that of the sun. But no, it was only… fire. They both burn, it’s true, but Shaithis’s will burn the worst, because it is his. I hate the black bastard!
He saw the logs and branches heaped beneath her. Shaithis will burn you?
What’s left, when his warriors are through with me. And even in a wolf’s mind, she read horror.
Is there anything I can do? Harry Wolfson came closer, on his belly, creeping between thralls where they lay in an open circle around the two central black tents.
Go away, she answered. Back into the mountains. Save yourself. Become a wolf entire. Eat what you kill and never bite a man or woman, lest they suffer your fate!
But… we were together at the garden, he said. And in his mind she saw again the fire and death and destruction.
Yes, but you were a power then. You and your weapons. But no sooner that last thought th
an suddenly there was another in her head. One of revenge. Does anything remain of your armoury?
His mind was wandering again; he looked this way and that and wondered what he was doing here; his recently pregnant bitch would be hungry where she waited for him. Armoury?
He couldn’t remember, so she showed him a picture. Can you bring me one of these?
Some two hundred yards away out on the boulder plain, a sated warrior snorted in its sleep. Harry Wolfson snaked back into the shadows, loped for the foothills to rejoin the pack. A single thought came back to Karen before the connection was broken. Farewell!
And hanging there in her pain, in the night and the chill of Starside, she thought: He won’t remember. But she was wrong.
He came again, but barely in time; came with the clouds from the south, with the first warm rain, with the grey light glowing in the sky beyond the mountains. He came with the false dawn, before the true dawn of sunup, and braved the circle of thralls where now they scratched and muttered in their sleep. And climbing the logs and branches of Karen’s pyre, he stood upon his hind legs, face to face, as if to kiss her. But her mouth gaped like a gash in her metamorphic face, and what passed between the two was not a kiss.
Wizard, Necroscope, wake up!
Harry gave a start as Shaithis’s thoughts lashed him like a whip; his thoughts, and then his spoken words: ‘Your torment will soon be over, Necroscope. So open your eyes and say goodbye to all of this. To your Lady, your life… to everything.’
Harry’s thoughts had something of form and order; his mind was almost healed; his body, not nearly so. Silver was present in his vampire blood like grains of arsenic, so that his broken flesh and bones couldn’t mend. But he heard Shaithis taunting him and felt a splash of rain, and opened his soulful eyes in the dark grey predawn light. Then, he almost wished he was blind.
Lieutenants of Shaithis were up on ladders, bringing Karen down from her cross. Her head rolled this way and that and her limbs flopped loosely as they tossed her down on a blanket upon the stony ground. Shaithis turned from Harry’s cross, went to his tent and slashed through its ropes, collapsing it like a deflated balloon.
‘And so you see, Necroscope,’ he crowed, ‘how I intend to honour my promise. For perceiving that you now see, hear and understand all, this time — for the last time — I shall take her in the open. No thrill in it for me, not any more; this time my labours are all for you. And when I’m done, then you shall witness how my warriors deal with her! As well to keep one’s creatures happy, eh? For after all, they too were men, upon a time.’
The rain came on harder and Shaithis issued commands. His thralls ripped the collapsed tent into two halves, then used its torn skins to cover the faggots of the torture pyres. It would not do for them to get too wet. Shaithis had meanwhile returned to the foot of the cross; Shaitan, too, from his own tent. More leech than man, the Fallen One’s eyes were glowing embers in the shadow of a black, corrugated cowl of flesh.
‘It’s time,’ he said, his voice a phlegmy cough, ‘and the Gate awaits. I say have done with all this. Put the woman on her pyre and burn them.’
Shaithis paused. He was reminded, however briefly, of his old dream. But dreams are for dreamers, and he was weary now of all dark omens — especially his ancestor’s warnings. ‘This man was the cause of my exile in the Icelands,’ he answered. ‘I vowed revenge, and now I take it.’
They glared at each other, Shaitan and Shaithis. There in the Gate’s white dazzle, their eyes blazed where they measured one another. But finally the Fallen One turned away. ‘As you will,’ he said, but quietly. ‘So be it.’
The clouds were flown and the rain had stopped. Shaithis called his thralls to light torches. He took a torch and held it up to Harry on his cross. ‘Well, Necroscope, and why don’t you call up the dead? My ancestor has told me that in your own world you were their champion, and I saw you call up crumbling trogs in the battle for The Dweller’s garden. So why not now?’
Harry hadn’t the strength for it (which his tormentor knew well enough), but even if he were strong he knew that the dead wouldn’t answer him. No, for he was a vampire and they had forsaken him. But in the foothills behind the Gate, a grey shape fretted and whined, prowling to and fro, to and fro; and the pack watching him intently through feral eyes, where they lay with their tongues lolling and ears erect. The great wolf’s memory was imperfect and his nature devolving, but for now he understood the Necroscope’s every thought. In a bygone time, as a human infant, Harry Wolfson’s mind had been one with his father’s.
The Necroscope sensed his son there, felt his concern, and at once closed his mind to external scrying. It was an effort, but he did it. Shaitan knew it at once, flowed forward and said to Shaithis, ‘Get on with it. This one’s not finished, I tell you! Now he has closed his mind, so that we don’t know what’s brewing in there.’
‘In just a little while,’ the other snarled, ‘his brains will be brewing in there! But for now, leave… me… be.r
And again Shaitan backed off.
‘Well, Harry Keogh?’ Shaithis called up to the crucified man. He waved his torch and tugged aside the skins from the dry branches of the balefires. ‘And did you think to shut me out from your delicious agonies? And can you ignore the pain itself? Ah, we Wamphyri have our arts, it’s true: we steel ourselves to the throb of torn flesh and the ache of broken bones; aye, even as they’re healing. But the vampire never lived who was insensitive to fire. And you’ll feel it, too, Necroscope, when your flesh begins to melt!’ He reached down with his torch to the base of the pile. ‘So what do you say? Should I light it now? Are you ready to burn?’
And at last Harry answered him. ‘You burn, you… ordure of trogs and stench of gas-beasts! Burn in hell!’
Shaithis slapped his thigh and laughed like a madman. ‘Oh? Hah, ha, ha! A taunt for a taunt, eh? What, and do you think to insult you executioner?’ He touched his torch to tufts of kindling and a wisp of smoke at once curled up, then a small tongue of flame.
And in the shadowy foothills Harry Wolfson issued an ululating howl, then turned and at a fast lope headed downhill for the tableau set in the light of the Gate. The grey brotherhood made to accompany him, but he stopped them: No! Return to your mountains. What befalls me befalls.
Flames licked up from Harry’s pyre, small bright tongues but gaining rapidly. Shaithis went to Karen where his thralls held her down. She was conscious now, would throw them off but had no strength for it. ‘Necroscope,’ the vampire Lord continued to taunt, ‘wanderer in strange worlds and stranger spaces between the worlds. Now say, why don’t you conjure one of your mysterious boltholes and come down from your cross? Step down and challenge me face to face, and champion this bitch whose flesh we’ve both known. Come, Necroscope, save her from my embrace.’
Instinctively, Harry’s metaphysical mind began to conjure Möbius maths. Invisible to all other men, the shimmering frame of a door commenced to form in the eye of his mind. Except, of course, it was warped and highly volatile. Only let it develop fully and all of this would be over: so close to the Gate Harry would probably be shredded and his atoms diffused through the myriad universes of light. Maybe that was the answer, the way to go. At least he would be spared the agony of the fire. But what of the agony of others? What of the future agony of the entire world which lay beyond the Gate?
Too late to worry about that: Earth was already doomed. Or was it? For Harry knew that miracles can happen, and also that they occasionally happen when all seems lost. But in any case, he could always conjure another door — a bigger, more powerful door — when things became unbearable.
But: No! said Harry Wolfson in the Necroscope’s inner mind, even as he thought to collapse what he’d made. Hold it there, Father. Just for a moment. And Harry felt his son looking at the Möbius equations where they mutated in his mind, and at the flickering, warping configuration of the part-formed door. Looking, trying hard to understand… and finally remembering!
> In another moment the great wolf conjured equations which even Harry in the fullness of his powers could never have identified, symbols revenant of a time when the Necroscope’s son had been far more powerful than his father. For a few seconds certain of Harry Wolfson’s lost talents were recalled, and with the effortless skill of all but forgotten times he used one of them to diffuse through his father’s ill-formed door a picture of their here and now, and a warning of possible tomorrows. It sped out from him at the instantaneous speed of thought, into all the innumerable universes of light.
The Necroscope cancelled his own numbers and let go of the now highly dangerous door, which drifted away from him towards the magnet of the Gate. But his son’s message — and his warning — had been transmitted. Harry Wolfson had completed the mental part of his self-imposed mission; all that remained now was the physical. But where the first had been merely improbable, the rest was impossible. That made no difference, not to the great grey wolf, who remembered now that he had been a man. As well, then, to die like a man.
In through the encircling thralls he loped, like a wraith appearing from the smoke of Harry’s fire. And snarling he made for Shaithis where the vampire Lord kneeled beside Karen. But he didn’t make it; lieutenants got in his way; one of them hurled a spear and brought him down. Slavering and snarling, with the spear transfixing his breast and emerging bloody through his hackles, still his slender human hands reached spastically for Lord Shaithis — until a sword flashed silver and took his head.