by Brian Lumley
The precog looked up and nodded. In the ruddy firelight, half-shadowed, his face looked even more skull-like. Then we can talk,’ he said, in that way of his. And Nathan knew that they would indeed be talking, and that therefore he was safe to make his jump.
He went out onto Starside, to a different location this time, scanned the last aerie, and saw that things had changed. There was no fighting in the uppermost levels, and most of the fires were out. Smoke-blackened landing-bays, windows, various cracks and crevices transformed the head of the stack into a pitted skull; the plateau roof was alive with massed movement but no sign of hostilities. These men and creatures were obviously the victors, and Wrathspire the vanquished.
Centrally, however, Mangemanse continued to hold out. Several airborne warriors held the manse in siege, cruising to and fro, or standing off and hovering on grotesquely inflated bladders. And in the levels immediately above and especially below that obstinate manse, there was still a deal of warlike activity where internal fires burned behind windows like eyes, and smoke poured from scorched, slit-like nostrils.
Best evidence that Mangemanse continued defiant came in the form of Canker Canison’s moon music: an uproar of nerve-shredding proportions, a cacophony that swelled on the bitter wind from the north and poured out from the rear of the stack as from a hundred lunatic organists. It reached out to Nathan more than a mile away, passed over him and rebounded from the astonished barrier mountains themselves! Unbeknown to the Necroscope, this was the dog-Lord’s prelude to flight, when Canker would launch for the moon to do mortal battle with its priests for all of the silver goddesses which he knew he’d find there. What Nathan did know or suspect was that, by now, Siggi Dam and the rest of Canker’s people must be stone-deaf, or at least as mad as their Lord.
Nathan had seen enough and returned to Sunside. He took with him a picture in his mind of all those men and monsters milling on the roof of the last aerie, and wondered what Devetaki Skullguise’s next move would be. Indeed, he knew what it must be but refused to dwell upon it. Best to answer it when it came …
Back at camp, he sat by the fire and spoke to the locator Chung. ‘When I woke up, I thought I sensed something north of here. How about you?’
Chung shrugged, but not negligently. ‘Yes and no. I keep getting a feeling that someone is out there, and once or twice I’ve seemed to detect mind-smog. But it could be nerves. This is some nervy place! Anyway, it was nothing substantial.’
Nathan nodded and turned to Goodly. ‘What do you see?’
The precog looked at him. ‘Ahead of us? Something so big, it won’t register. That’s as much as I can say.’
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That could mean anything.’
‘That’s the way it is. The future can be anything. Especially here.’
‘Oh?’
‘It feels all wrong. It is all wrong!’
‘What is?’ Nathan was interested. It was a rare thing to see lan Goodly agitated, as he was now.
This world!’ The other threw up his hands. ‘I mean, this parallel place! The sun, moon and stars. In my own world I did a little amateur astronomy. Not a lot, but enough to know that this place is all wrong. We don’t see nearly enough of the sun - yet the days are longer than the nights! And the moon tumbles, which means it has an eccentric orbit or rotation or both. Also, I’ve watched the stars, which move quickly, then slowly. Or we do.’
Nathan nodded. ‘I’ve always known these things - every Traveller has - without knowing what they mean. But now … I think I do. Remember, we had little or no science. Then, in your world, I took in a lot of learning in a short time, and certain things stuck in my mind. The thing is, I’ve never had my father’s instinct for these things; most of what I know came from my studies on Earth, or from the dead … or from Harry’s dart. In your world, I had the time but I didn’t have the maths for it. Now I have the maths but I don’t have the time. But as I said, I think I do understand .. . certain things.’
‘Go on,’ said Goodly.
The Starside Gate - the original Gate, at the bottom of the crater - was a black hole that went wrong. When it fell on this world it created havoc, did a lot of damage. Changing from a black to a grey hole, it had a new kind of gravity, a special gravity that becomes apparent and intrudes when I try to form a MSbius door too close to the centre. Anyway, the Gate’s gravity and that of this planet hold each other like balls on a bolas, at the opposite ends of a rope. The true gravity of the planet has been interfered with, which causes its eccentricity. When I was at E-Branch, someone showed me how to make what he called a Mexican jumping bean: a
tube of silver foil around a small ball-bearing, with the ends sealed off. When you roll it lengthwise, it wobbles, goes fast then slow, because its centre of gravity is changing. This isn’t a precise - what, analogy? - because the opposed centres of gravity of Sunside/Starside are fixed; which is to say, the rope between the balls on the bolas isn’t a rope at all, but an unbreakable, unbendable bar of invisible supermetal. That’s why the balance is all wrong; there is no flexibility.’
Goodly gave a nod, of partial understanding at least. To cut it short, during daylight hours -‘
‘- The world is turning more slowly,’ Nathan finished it for him, ‘and the days are longer. That’s why the stars seem to move so queerly, and it also accounts for the moon’s tumbling. The moon is just like the ball-bearing in the Mexican jumping bean, trapped in the silver foil of a complicated gravita …’
He cut it short as David Chung suddenly jerked alert and came to his feet. ‘Oh-oh!’ he said. And Grinner likewise gave a start as Nathan and Goodly quickly stood up. Chung followed up with: ‘He’s back, Nathan - and fixing a powerful probe on you!’
Nathan sent a telepathic thought winging - and immediately made contact. He knew the other at once, and his location! Gasping, he reached for a machine-pistol hanging by its strap from the bough of a fallen tree. But Goodly said: ‘No! You’re going to need that,’ and pointed to the loaded rocket-launcher in its oiled skin. The precog was trembling like a leaf, his eyes wide and wild.
Zek and Trask had come awake. Trask wearily mumbled, ‘Eh? What …?’ But Nathan had no time for explanations. His brother Nestor was at Nana Kiklu’s grave -
— And Nestor was a necromancer!
It was the last throw of Nestor’s parasite, a final attempt by his weakened, leprosy-infected leech to regain ascendancy: the denial of Nana Kiklu’s truth. When Nana had reached that point in her story where it became clear that Misha Zanesti had been Nathan’s woman right from the start, and
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never Nestor’s, everything his evil Wamphyri nature was based upon had seemed set to crumble, and Nestor himself to admit the error of his ways, like a child confessing a small crime. Except in him the crime would have been enormous - his life dedicated to a lie!
But the vampire is tenacious: Nestor must be made to cling to his beliefs, for his power was tied to them. And the vampire is jealous, possessive, territorial: if he once gives up something which is his, where will it end? Must he then relinquish everything? And the vampire is the ultimate liar, to whom the truth is anathema. For the one great truth is that the host is not master of his own destiny but the puppet of his leech, and dances to the tune of an alien intruder. And above all the vampire is Evil, and must oppose Good as surely as black challenges white, day night, the sun the stars.
So that when Nana had told him: You can’t put them apart. Not even by killing them. Especially not by killing them! Love will out, even in death. For as I know as well and better than most, what we did in life we continue to do in death. And they will be lovers to The End! Even as I love you, with a mother’s love for her son! - then his leech, its essence, the chemical governor of his blood, his brain and every enhanced Wamphyri emotion, had fought back.
NO! NO! NO! And at last his cry out loud: ‘NoooooooF And the deliberate opening of his mind, the pouring forth of venom
into the mental aether, the unutterable stench of pus and poison in his vampire probe where it sped direct to the source of the cursed numbers vortex .. . Nathan in the camp-clearing, only a few miles away.
And Nana’s incorporeal tears at last spilling over, uncaring now except for her boys, for the love of both of them, despite that one was grown to a monster.
This was what Nathan had heard or sensed through two simultaneous media: his brother’s rage and his mother’s anguish. With the result that he had jumped to a logical but incorrect conclusion: that even now Nestor rooted like a pig
in the damp earth and ashes of Nana’s shallow plot, torturing her for esoteric knowledge - exactly what the necromancer had desired him to think! The hunt was over, for Nathan would now come to him.
And Nathan did come … with a rocket-launcher seated on his shoulder!
Nestor was surprised at the speed of Nathan’s reaction. Despite that he knew his brother had the power to ‘come and go’, Nathan’s almost instantaneous appearance in that small clearing, in the cold blue light of the stars, astonished him where he came slowly to his feet. And at his feet, Nana’s grave all undisturbed, so that Nathan knew he’d been fooled into coming here. But with the launcher on his shoulder and his finger on its trigger, maybe he wasn’t such a fool after all.
They faced each other across Nana’s mound: blood brothers, but as different - more different - than any brothers before them. Nathan was a little over six feet tall, but his brother could give him ten inches more. The first was blonde, fair of skin, with eyes of a sapphire-blue; the other was morbid-grey, raven-haired and crimson-eyed. And of course, the Necroscope was entirely human.
He looked upon his brother, the two of them motionless, and Nathan’s finger unflinching on the trigger. But for all that he was fuelled by hatred, by a dire loathing and natural dread of the Wamphyri, he knew he couldn’t make the first and last move, couldn’t pull that trigger. Despite what he’d seen in future time, it was out of the question .. . he couldn’t do it! Not with his mother’s pitiful deadspeak cries ringing out in his metaphysical mind: Nathan, no! Nathan! You would never forgive yourself!
But her soulful supplications weren’t for him alone. Nestor. Son. Everything 1 told you is the truth. If you must die, then die. But not this way, I beg you. This way you’ll be cursed by the dead for all eternity!
And: ‘So, little brother,’ Nestor sighed, his voice muffled,
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a panting rasp from behind gauze wrappings. And inclining his head, he went on, ‘My Great Enemy, you - a mere man! Betrayer, thief, plague in my mind and curse on my being — you? Such a flimsy thing as you? Well, your mother pleads for you, and rightly.’
Nathan daren’t so much as blink, but he could speak. ‘And for you, Nestor. She pleads for you, too.’
Nestor stepped aside from the mound, edged closer, and his eyes seemed to drip fire. ‘But I don’t need her pleas.’
‘Nor I, while I hold this weapon. You saw it used before, on the dome of Sanctuary Rock.’
Nestor scarcely seemed to move — yet stood all of a long pace closer! ‘Why should I fear death, even the true death? I’m doomed anyway, as a leper, Nathan. That, too, is your fault.’
‘No, I’ll not be blamed for that,’ Nathan answered. The Szgany give blame where it’s due, but by the same token they also know how to accept responsibility for their actions. They don’t accuse their fellow men out of spite. But then, neither have they leeches to appease!’ He could have bitten his tongue, but couldn’t help it; it was tit for tat; he’d fallen into the mode of Wamphyri argument automatically, giving blow for blow.
‘Are you saying I’m less than a man?’ Nestor was no more than two paces away now.
‘I’m saying you’re Wamphyri,’ Nathan croaked from a bone-dry, gulping throat. ‘Which means that you can’t win, for your greatest battle is already lost!’
And: Nathaaan! Nana wailed. Nestooor!
The tendrils of a mist began to coil from under Nestor’s cloak, lapping his feet. ‘You are my Great Enemy!’ he breathed, and the mist was also in his breath. Now he stood only a single pace away, at arm’s length, and his eyes were like magnets that held Nathan’s in an iron grip. But the Necroscope’s finger was still cold on the trigger of his weapon. And:
‘It seems we must have it out,’ husked Nestor. Except —
- Suddenly they were not alone!
IV
The Death of Nestor -Intuition - Deai With a Devii.’
The whup! . .. whup.’ … whup! of mighty membrane wings as dark manta shadows blotted out the stars and mentalist voices spoke in the trembling aether:
So, Nestor! (It was the voice of Carmen Who-Should-Not-Be.) And how is my handsome lusty Lord, after all this time? For upon a time you made a Lady out of a poor thrall -you loved her to death, or undeath! And while she slept you pegged her out where the sun would find her. But the Lord Vasagi found her first. As we have now found you!
She came from the south, skimming the trees, wild and weird in her saddle, her scarlet jaws agape! Her flyer dipped … its belly-pouch yawned open . .. Nestor had nowhere to run, and suddenly his legs had no strength to carry him! Full-waxed, his disease was out of control, running rampant through his system.
‘Down!’ Nathan yelled. And, astonished, Nestor knew that his Necroscope brother shouted at him! He fell beside Nana’s mound, and Carmen’s flyer came on.
But a powerful mentalist was in Nathan’s mind, reading the secrets of his awesome weapon there. And: Carmen, beware! That one is dangerous; he will surely kill you! It was Vasagi, whose telepathic voice Nathan would know anywhere. Vasagi, his mother’s murderer! There was blood and a mutual death-vow between them, and this Carmen was a creature of his.
Before, when he faced Nestor point-blank, nothing short of a direct, full-frontal attack could have induced the Necro-
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scope to pull the trigger of his rocket-launcher. Now, nothing could have stopped him! Heeding Vasagi’s warning, Carmen swerved and flew off at a tangent, gaining elevation to clear the trees at the side of the clearing.
Aiming twelve inches ahead of her middle, Nathan squeezed off his missile - which hurtled home along a path of sizzling, blinding fire. There came a flash and a hot blast, and Carmen cleared the trees … in small pieces and a scarlet spray! And Carmen-Who-Should-Not-Be, was not. Her mount, its thorny spine gouged by a great bite where the saddle had been, issued a single shrilling bleat and crumpled head-on into the trees. While overhead:
One of you is weak as a sick wolf-cub, Vasagi sent, as he began side-slipping his flyer to earth, and the other is merely human, Szgany, and now weaponless: scarcely a match for Vasagi. But Vasagi was not the one who threw down the gauntlet!
His mount settled like a leaf on a still day, or a flat stone through water, slipping from side to side with its manta wings arched into air-trap scoops. But despite that Carmen was dead, still Nathan detected two alien minds in the telepathic aether. The other . .. belonged to Vasagi’s flyer!
‘Karz!’ Nathan gasped. ‘Karz Biteri!’ And at last his old friend knew him, too: Nathan Seersthrall, called Kiklu, who had flown him to freedom out of Runemanse in Turgosheim. Then:
No! said Karz to Vasagi. I may not take you down. We have journeyed far enough together, you and I. Amazingly, a vampire flyer defied its Lord and rider!
Take me down now! Vasagi’s voice was a grunt, a threat, as Karz plied his wings and rose up a little.
No! Karz denied him yet again. I have had more than enough of you, Vasagi. As of now we go our own ways, you and I. It was always our agreement.
Vasagi was furious. Beast, I order you — take me down!
Nathan sensed Karz’s mental shrug. So be it…
And somewhat higher than the treetops, Karz did an utterly unthinkable thing and reneged on a Lord of the
Wamphyri! Folding a wing and rolling over sideways, he flexed his body like a
steel spring and hurled Vasagi from the saddle.
Vasagi the Gape fell. He fluttered through the higher foliage, smashed through lower branches, thumped down in dark green undergrowth. The fall might well have stunned a man, but never a vampire Lord. A mist issued from the night-dark forest and Vasagi was in it. Nestor, too, continued to manufacture his mist, and the clearing lay deep in milky white. Then:
Go! said Nana to Nathan. Go now, while you may.
But as the Necroscope conjured a door, he saw the writhing mist part as his brother Nestor flowed upright from it and hurled himself upon Vasagi - where the Gape had tried to creep up on Nathan! And:
Go! Nestor repeated Nana, even as he grappled with the monstrous Vasagi. This one is mine. Upon a time I gave him life; a mistake I’ll now try to correct, before my own wasted existence and body are finished. So go while you can, little brother, and consider yourself lucky!
Nathan went, but not too far. Time seemed to blur … lan Goodly was waiting at the camp for Nathan with what he needed, or what the precog knew Nathan would be needing … he was so sure of himself, he twisted the grenade’s fins as he thrust it into Nathan’s hand. All of which took perhaps five or six seconds; the next four would be crucial.
One: Nathan took the grenade and trusted to the future -or rather, to the understanding Goodly had with the future.
Two: He conjured a door and sped back to the unequal combat in the clearing.
Three: he vacated the Mobius Continuum into a waist-deep sea of mist that lapped like blue-tinged milk but had an ugly living (or undead) texture to it. Somewhere in there, Nestor and Vasagi struggled even now.
Four: his time was up and he must use the grenade!
Meanwhile:
Ten seconds is life or death in hand-to-hand combat,
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especially when the combatants are Wamphyri! Nestor was weak, made weak by his disease, but Vasagi was at the peak of his power - made even stronger by his madness. And in his madness, he hadn’t once paused to consider the reason for his opponent’s weakness; he knew only that he was under attack, and must retaliate. Vasagi had no gauntlet; indeed, Nestor wore his gauntlet, taken for his own after Vasagi’s duel with Wran: just another infuriating factor, on top of the death of Carmen, which had served to madden the Gape even further. Being raked with his own gauntlet as Nestor tackled him had been the last straw! And knocking Nestor down - and falling on him to enfold his upper half in vertical jaws all of three feet long - had been Vasagi’s answer to injury added to insult.