by Brian Lumley
‘Of the direct line, yes,’ Nathan answered.
And Trask smiled and said: ‘But not of the Ferenczys.’
‘Eh?’ Lardis frowned. ‘Come again?’
‘It’s a common name in my world,’ Trask told him, and he looked at Andrei Romani. ‘Especially in Romania!’
Andrei drew breath in a great gasp. ‘Where? What did you say?’
Nathan stepped in at once. ‘It’s true enough, Andrei. In the hell-lands there’s a Gate - indeed, the original Gate -that opens into a country called Romania. And the Travellers, Gypsies, Szgany, Zigeuner, call them what you will, they are known collectively … as Romany!’
Andrei was agog. He glanced this way and that, said to Lardis, ‘Should I be insulted? Did ancestors of mine go into the hell-lands as vampire thralls?’
But again Nathan was quick off the mark. ‘Not necessarily. Romani is a common name, after all — you’ll forgive my saying so, I’m sure. But all along the mountain flank dwell Romanis, in no way related to you … or remotely at best.’
Andrei said, ‘Phew.’1 and sat back.
Trask checked his watch and warned, ‘Your hour is up.’
Lardis stood up. ‘Enough for now. We’re all of us on our knees. It has been a hard enough day for us Szgany, so it must have been — what, “hell”? — for you lot!’ He grinned through crooked ivory teeth, but in a moment was serious again. ‘I’ll have someone show you your places. Get your heads down by all means, but try not to make yourselves
too comfortable. Before midnight - long before — we shall be on our way out of here; where to … is my business. Sunup will find us in a new camp, which will be soon enough for weapon-training and what-all.
‘But you six, or seven if the woman was here …’ Lardis held out his long arms as if to encompass Carling and colleagues, then did the same towards Trask, Nathan, Chung. ‘Listen, I’m not much of a one for saying thanks: there’s never been a lot to say thanks for! Still, it’s plain to me that your being here saved us all tonight. I know that as soon as my lads get the chance, they’ll want to celebrate and have a do; aye, and rightly so, for it’s been a long time at that! Then you’ll be made welcome, be sure!’
And as his men lit torches and prepared to leave the cave, Lardis called out: ‘Oh, yes, and another thing. I give you fair warning: there’s a bunch of fine, brown-limbed lasses here, and many of them without men. So watch your step, you hell-landers! For believe me, they will be wanting to make you welcome, too!’
His chuckles followed them out into the mazy ways of the Rock …
Nathan made a small rasping sound in the back of his throat, then clearly spoke a name, however strange: ‘Thik-koul!’ For a moment disturbed, he struggled a little and turned over in his sleep. Misha, wide-awake, made room for him, then went back to cradling him when he’d settled down again.
Her arm went across his body; she pressed her breasts to his back; her hand found his manhood where it lay limp now. It was always a wonder to her how an item so small and soft could grow so large and hard, and so swiftly! But making love to her this time had been too much for him; physically exhausted even before the act, afterwards he had fallen straight into a deep sleep. It wasn’t his usual way, she was sure — not that she’d ever had him long enough to know his usual way! — but she had understood. Emptying
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himself into her had created this void in him: no movement, no thought, nothing but the salving surf of relief rolling over sharp reefs of body and mind. Except Nathan’s was a special mind and a stranger to inactivity. And so, in a very little while he had started to dream.
Now he was doing it again, and because she loved him Misha wondered what he was dreaming about this time. As if in answer: Thikkoul!’ he said again. It was a mumble fading into silence - and into a peculiar stillness! Indeed, he lay so very still that she knew he must be listening.
But to what…?
Nathaaan!
It came as from a million miles away, a voice remembered as if from a million years ago; so it seemed to the Necroscope. Yet how may a man recall to mind a voice he never before heard in life, whose owner was dead before he was even born? A normal man - or normal mind - may not, except perhaps in flashes of ancestral memory, if a man believed in such things. But normal minds are incapable of communication with the dead.
Nathaaan! The voice came again, like an echo out of space and time, but far more insistent than any dream; and the Necroscope had learned to know the difference. Which was why, for the third time in his sleep, he spoke the name of his real yet incorporeal contact: Thikkoul!’ Except this time he repeated it to himself, under his breath, in a language known as deadspeak, which was now as natural to him as breathing.
Had there been living minds in tune with Nathan’s at that moment (in fact there were several which were trying to contact him), they would doubtless be mystified by a sudden blackout — the fact that where Nathan’s subconscious mind had been, there was now a void. For only the dead could hear deadspeak. It was like radio without a receiver, or rather, the receiver was in Nathan’s head. It was like semaphore to a blind man, or a distant shout to a man stone-
deaf; and among the living, there was only one man who could receive, see, hear it. Or perhaps two, if Nestor were included; except his talent took on a different form, where incoming transmissions were not voluntary. No, not at all.
Nathaaan! And then, more clearly, homing in on the Necroscope at last: Nathan, is it really you? But then, who else can it be?
And who else could this be but Thikkoul, a Thyre astrologer whose talent was to the precog lan Goodly what Goodly’s was to some fairground faker! Thikkoul: who had read Nathan’s future in the stars, and read it true, however obliquely. Nathan remembered what Thikkoul had told him: how first he would be reunited — albeit briefly - with his mother and Misha, before disappearing from the world (from this world), ‘as in the blink of some monstrous glaring eye!’ And indeed he had gone out of this world: tossed half-conscious into the glaring eye of the hell-lands Gate by Nestor’s vampire lieutenant.
‘But you didn’t foretell my return?’
Because 1 looked no farther! And after ail, why should I? For when you are gone, you are gone! In my experience the total absence of a man indicates his demise. In all truth, Nathan, I had expected to talk to you again, but from our respective resting places. In any case, are you sorry that I was wrong?
‘No, of course not. And I’m not blaming you: your reading was accurate. It’s simply as you said: reading the future is a devious thing. That a point will be arrived at is inevitable, but how we arrive there is up to time and the tides!’
The tides?
‘An expression from another world.’ Except Thikkoul had seen it in his mind even before he could begin to explain. For the Thyre were amazing mentalists all, and their Great Majority had been practised in deadspeak long before the advent of Harry Keogh into their world.
Another world! And didn’t you always go in search of one? So why did you return?
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‘Because this is my world, and because everything I love is here.’
Also because everything you hate is here, 1 fancy.
The Wamphyri? Oh, yes! And we may have the means to destroy them at last…’ But here Nathan paused, for even in the seclusion of deadspeak that was something he didn’t want to go into. Anyway, he wasn’t sure of the details himself — except that the less anyone knew of them, dead or alive, the better. Which was why he now changed the subject:
Thikkoul… how did you know I was back?’
What, you? The one man who stands between life and death? Like a bridge between alien nations, a messenger between different spheres of existence, an envoy of the otherwise unknown? When you went from us, a solitary candle blinked out; when you returned, it burst back into flame! I would have tried to contact you earlier, but at first we did not dare believe.
‘We?’
Myself, and all of your friends among the Thyre ancients with whom you have spoken in the past, whose word you passed on to their descendants among the living. But in the Cavern of the Ancients, in Place-Under-the-Yellow-Cliffs, Rogei, Shaeken and others were suddenly excited! Via deadspeak, they spoke to their colleagues in other places. To Tolmia, and to Ethloi the Elder in Open-to-the-Sky, who passed the message on: that in fact you had returned! So it finally reached me, Thikkoul the Stargazer in the Hall of Endless Hours, in River’s Rush. And of course I had to speak to you, and offer my services.
‘Your services?’
Oh, yes! For now that you have a future - why, I can read it for you! But I admit, it’s for myself as much as for you: to see the stars again, through the eyes of the Necroscope!
Nathan thought about it. ‘It could be invaluable,’ he said eventually. And then, rather more cautiously: ‘But on the other hand, since whatever you see can’t be changed …? I mean, since what will be, will be …?
Of course, said Thikkoul, if disappointedly, and Nathan sensed his slow deadspeak nod. Of course. And I really can’t blame you that you do not wish to know. For after all, the future of any man, even the Necroscope, can only be so long. ..
‘But if I should change my mind -?’
- Yes, yes, that’s understood, said Thikkoul. And after a moment: I’ve interrupted your sleep enough. Only remember that I’m here if ever you should need me.
‘I will,’ Nathan answered, and felt Thikkoul’s incorporeal probe dwindling to nothing in his metaphysical mind. In another moment the deadspeak void had disappeared, too, and the Necroscope’s dreaming mind was open again …
… Open to those several others who had been trying to reach him ever since his return to his home world some hours ago, who had known that their best chance would come when he slept. Various obstructions — for one, the mass of the barrier mountains; for another, the fact that Nathan’s mind was either fully occupied or totally empty, a deadspeak void; and for a third, the fact that he slept in the Rock, though close to its outer perimeter - had so far kept them from him. But while they waited they had talked among themselves, as was their wont.
In previous times it had scarcely been necessary for them to communicate in this current fashion: living together and as joint leaders of the same pack (in itself a situation unthinkable among previous packs), and brothers out of the same litter, daily contact had more than sufficed. Recently, however, bitter circumstances had forced them apart, which was the reason they contacted Nathan now. That, and to welcome him home.
He had been listening to their telepathic conversation for several minutes before true cognizance dawned: that it wasn’t a dream but a reality. Had he been awake, Nathan would have made the connection at once; his own telepathy had long developed to that degree where he recognized the
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thoughts of others for what they were, no longer as the vague static or mental interference which he had known as a child. His telepathy and his deadspeak (different talents yet plainly analogous) had always been present in him but undeveloped through lack of practice, or lack of sympathetic minds on whom to practise. The dead wouldn’t speak to him, and apart from ‘his’ wolves, he had known no telepathic contact — or perhaps some, but only with Nestor, which was not an uncommon phenomenon between Szgany kith and kin.
In his travels, however, the ‘nomadic’ Thyre had opened up both of these esoteric channels to him, and in Ben Trask’s parallel world he had finally used his talent to befriend the teeming dead in a way superior to all his expectations in Sunside. For as far as Nathan was aware — and with the exception of the Thyre, of course - the Great Majority of his own world had not changed in their attitude: desiring no truck with him at all, they continued to shun him. Wherefore these communications he intercepted now, since they were not Thyre sendings and could not be Szgany deadspeak, were telepathic.
But to speak mind-to-mind with such as these! It resolved a question of old concern whose answer, while it had been made apparent in Trask’s world, was one that might only be verified here. And this communication was that verification.
It was something that Nathan had always questioned, while in his heart knowing that it was true: his weird ‘relationship’ with certain members of the grey brotherhood, the wild children of the night, the wolves who inhabited Sunside/Starside’s barrier mountains. But a relationship in the true and fullest sense of the word, as was now apparent. For Nathan’s older brother - not Nestor ‘Kiklu’ or whatever he called himself now, no, but a blood brother nevertheless, a true son of Harry Keogh and a woman of his Earth - had been The Dweller himself! And The Dweller had been a werewolf!
Even as Nathan slept on, the last pieces of an old puzzle
began slotting themselves into place in his metaphysical mind. The reason his wolves had always called him ‘uncle’. Surely it was as they themselves had often declared it to be: because he was their uncle! The reason why he’d always been aware of them as other than ‘just wolves’, and had exercised some power over them (and they over him): because they were of one origin with him, one blood. The reason why they had always seemed to watch over him as best they could: because ‘their father would have wished it’, even as they’d tried to tell him, upon a time!
And sleeping still, he remembered something else they had tried to tell him, which thrilled him to his very core! For he knew now that he was not the only Necroscope: what Harry Keogh had passed down to him, and in a yet more morbid manifestation to Nestor, had also been passed to Nathan’s nephew wolves.
It had happened on the night of Wratha’s very first attack on Settlement, when she and her renegades had flown from Karenstack (as the last aerie had been known then) over the barrier mountains and down into Sunside for the first time; and Nathan recalled what his wolves had revealed to him in the aftermath of that raid, during a similar exhausted sleep:
Things have come to pass, they had told him. Strange and monstrous creatures are come to dwell in Starside’s last great aerie, out of which they raid on Sunside. The woods and mountains are no longer safe, neither for wolves nor men. These are problems for which we have no answers, but… there is one at least who might know.
And Nathan had said, ‘But there is no answer to the Wamphyri.’
You may be right. You may be wrong. But our mother speaks to our father, who is your brother. If anyone would know, he is that one. And so we go to speak to the one who suckled us.
‘Your mother, a she-wolf?’
Aye, where her bones lie bleached in a secret place . ..
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It had been before Nathan discovered his talent, before he had even known what a Necroscope was. There was no way he could have understood their … what, riddles? But now … oh, now he understood well enough: that they, too, in their wolf way, were Necroscopes! Necroscopes, all three of them - and just as Nathan talked to his dead, so they talked to theirs!
‘Dock’, so called because his tail had been shortened by an angry vixen when he was a cub. And ‘Blaze’, after the diagonal white stripe across his forehead, as if the fur there was marked with frost. And ‘Grinner’, whose upper lip was given to curling, so that his teeth were always bared, even to friends. Nathan’s wolves: ‘his’ wolves - his nephews!
Even now they heard his thoughts, and answered them:
Uncle, Blaze growled, coughed, barked in his mind. And so you’ve come back at last. You and your numbers! There could be but one source.
‘My numbers?’ Nathan frowned.
Did you not know? But they issue from you like light from a beacon; not so much during the day, but most certainly when you sleep!
That gave Nathan something to think about, something to ponder when he woke up and all of this reverted to a dream or, if he was lucky, to memory. For if the numbers vortex made him apparent to his wolves, then how transparent was he to others? Half-forgotten things, which had disturbed and worried hi
m at the time of their occurrence, now stirred to renewed life:
In the world beyond the Starside Gate, Siggi Dam - not a locator but a telepath — had discovered him easily enough. And the last time he was here in Sunside his vampire brother Nestor had known his whereabouts precisely. But … the numbers vortex? was that it? The metaphysical mathematics he’d been born with: his betrayer? From now on he must suppress it, especially now that he was back with Lardis and the Szgany Lidesci. The last thing he desired to be was a beacon for the Wamphyri!
The shake of a deadspeak head. It was Blaze again. In aJI Sunside/Starside there are only five who give off numbers like that, and only five who can read them. If another mind were to touch yours - as mine touches it now - then he might experience your numbers vortex. But to us it has always been a clear signal, revealing your whereabouts. Alas, not only to us, but also … to your brother Nestor!
‘Five of us,’ Nathan answered. ‘Myself, the three of you, and Nestor. All of the one blood!’
The nod of a wolf head — the flash of its white stripe -registering as clearly as if Blaze were here right now. And Nathan could see him as he’d known him since his childhood: his eyes brown as dark wild honey in the twilight, but feral yellow at night. Lean and muscular; surefooted as a mountain goat, but fleeter far. And intelligent? Oh, way beyond the average intelligence of the pack! Except for individual markings and habits (Dock’s tail, or lack of one, and Grinner’s less than affectionate grin), all three of them were much of a muchness. Of course they were, for they were of the same litter, the one blood. As was Nathan of that blood. It made sense.
Yet something — indeed, several things - made very little sense or none at all. ‘Nestor has a numbers vortex, you say? My brother gives off numbers?’
His numbers aura is a weak thing and slowly fading, but we know him by it all the same. Aye, for our senses are keen, and we use them to their full - both our senses and his aura - to avoid him! Now Blaze’s wolf voice was a low growl, and bitter.