by Brian Lumley
“As to the first,” (for the first time since their conversation began, Khuv saw Agursky blink his eyes, nervously, two or three times in rapid succession,) “I can’t tell you. You would probably consider it preposterous, and I’m not even sure of it myself. But as for the second—”
And without further pause he told Khuv what his requirement was …
Chapter Twelve
Deal with the Devil
WHEN JAZZ SIMMONS REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS HE SAW that he was where he’d fallen, except now his hands were tied behind him. Zek, who hadn’t been trussed, was busy moistening his brow and lips with a water-soaked rag. She sighed in relief as he came to.
Arlek sat close by on a flat stone, watching her at her ministrations. Others of the clan or tribe moved in shadows which had lengthened a little, murmuring with low background voices. As Jazz struggled to sit up, so Arlek came across and stood over him. He fingered a lump under his ear where Jazz had hit him, displayed a right eye rapidly turning black and closing.
“I never saw anyone fight like you,” he stiffly complimented his captive. “I didn’t even see you strike me!”
Jazz grunted, propped himself against a boulder and brought his knees up a little. “That was the idea,” he said. “There’s a lot more I could show you, too, like how to fight the Wamphyri. That’s what my weapons were for: to keep me alive in a world where things like the Wamphyri rule. Where the hell do men stand in the scale of things on this world, anyway? Why bargain with the Wamphyri, or bow and scrape to them, when you can fight them?”
Despite his painful face, Arlek laughed out loud. Other Travellers heard him, came forward; he quickly repeated what Jazz had said. “Fight the Wamphyri, indeed! We are only lucky they spend so much time fighting with each other! But defy them? Hah! You don’t know what you’re saying. They don’t fight with Sunsiders, they just make slaves of them. Have you seen a Warrior? Of course not, else you’d not be here! That’s why we’re Travellers, because to remain in one place is to be at their mercy. You don’t ‘fight’ the Wamphyri, my stupid friend, you just stay out of their way—for as long as you can.”
He turned away, walked off with his followers. Over his shoulder he called back: “Talk with the woman. It’s high time she told you something about this world you’ve come to. At least then you’ll have some understanding of why I’m giving you—both of you—to Shaithis of the Wamphyri …”
Wolf loped out of the shadows, licked Jazz’s face. Jazz scowled at the animal. “Where were you when Zek and me were fighting, eh?”
“When you were fighting,” she corrected him. “Wolf wasn’t in it. Why should I risk his life? I told him to be still. He’s just back from seeing his brothers. The Travellers have three or four of them, all raised from cubs.”
“Funny,” Jazz said after a moment, “but you struck me as a woman who’d bite and scratch a lot.” He didn’t mean it as a reproach, but it was and he regretted it immediately.
“I would,” she said, “if there was any point. But I’d look silly trying to bite a dozen Travellers and their wolves, now wouldn’t I? My first concern was for you.”
Jazz sighed. “I suppose I went off half-cocked, didn’t I? But I thought you said we’d be safe?”
“We might have been,” she said, “but while you’ve been lying there Arlek’s had word from a runner that Lardis Lidesci is on his way back from the west. Arlek knows Lardis won’t give me to the Wamphyri, and so he’ll do it himself—now! There’ll be a price to pay when Lardis hears about it, but Arlek’s got this group on his side and believes that in the end Lardis will have to go along with him or split the tribe. In any case, by the time Lardis gets here it will be too late.”
Jazz said: “Can you touch me behind my ear just here? Ow! That feels tender!”
“It’s soft,” she said, and he thought he detected a catch in her voice. “God, I thought you were dead!” She squeezed cold water onto the back of his head, let it soak into the place where his hair was matted with blood. He looked beyond her to the south, to where the sun had gone down a little more, crept a little more to the east.
A stray beam lit her face, let him see her clearly and really close up for the first time. She was a bit grimy, but under the dirt she was very beautiful too. She’d be in her early thirties, only a few years older than Jazz himself. Maybe five-nine, slim, blonde and blue-eyed, her hair shone in the beam of sunlight; it looked golden and bounced on her shoulders when she moved. Her combat suit, tattered as it was getting to be, fitted her figure like a glove; it seemed to accentuate her delicate curves. Right here and now, Jazz supposed any woman would have looked good to him. But he couldn’t think of one he’d rather have here. Or, (he corrected himself,) rather not have here. This was no place for any woman.
“So what’s happening now?” he asked, when the cold water had taken some of the sting out of his neck and head.
“Arlek tracked me using the talents of an old man, Jasef Karis,” Zek told him. “It wasn’t too hard. There was really only one place I could head for: through the pass to the sphere, to see if I could make it back home. Anyway, Jasef’s like me, a telepath.”
“You told me the wild animals here had a degree of ESP,” Jazz reminded her, “but you didn’t say anything about the people. I’d got the impression that only the Wamphyri had these talents.”
“Generally, that’s true,” she answered. “Jasef’s father was taken prisoner in a Wamphyri raid; this was a long time ago, you understand. He escaped from them and came back over the mountains. He swore that he hadn’t been changed in any way. He’d escaped before the Lord Belath could make a mindless zombie of him. His wife took him back, of course, and they had a child: Jasef. But then it was discovered that Jasef’s father had lied. He had been changed by the Lord Belath, but he’d made his escape before the change could commence in him. The truth finally came out when he became uncontrollable—became, in fact, a thing! The Travellers knew how to deal with it; they staked it out, cut it in pieces and burned it. And afterwards they kept a close watch on Jasef and his mother. But they were OK. Jasef’s telepathy is something come down to him from his father, or from the thing that Lord Belath put into him.”
Jazz’s head swam, partly from the throbbing pain where he’d been clubbed but mainly from trying to take in all that Zek was telling him. “Stop!” he said. “Let’s concentrate on the important stuff. Tell me what else I’ll need to know about this planet. Draw me a map I can keep in my head. First the planet, then its peoples.”
“Very well,” she nodded, “but first you’d better know how we stand. Old Jasef and one or two men have gone on into the pass to see if there’s a watcher—a guardian creature—in the keep back there. If there is, Jasef will send a telepathic message through it to its master, the Lord Shaithis. The message will be that Arlek holds us captive, and that he’ll use us to strike a bargain with Shaithis. In return for us, Shaithis will promise not to raid on Lardis Lidesci’s tribe of Travellers. If it’s a deal, then we’ll be handed over.”
“From what Arlek was saying about the Wamphyri,” Jazz said. “I’m surprised they’ll even be interested in making a deal. If they’re so much to be feared, they can just take us anyway.”
“If they could find us,” she answered. “And only at night. They can only raid when the sun’s down below the rim of the world. Also, there are some eighteen to twenty Wamphyri Lords, and one Lady. They’re territorial; they vie with each other. They scheme against each other all the time, and go to war at every opportunity. It’s their nature. We’d be ace cards to any one of them—except the Lady Karen. I know for I was hers once, and she let me go.”
Jazz tucked that last away for later. “Why are we so important?” he wanted to know.
“Because we are magicians,” she said. “We have powers, weapons, skills they don’t understand. Even more so than the Travellers, we understand metals and mechanisms.”
“What?” Jazz was lost again. “Magicians?”
/> “I’m a telepath,” she shrugged. “To be ESP-endowed and a true man—or a woman—is a rare thing. Also, we’re not of this world. We come from the mysterious hell-lands. And when I first arrived here I had awesome weapons. So did you.”
“But I’m not ESP-talented,” Jazz reminded her. “What use will I be to them?”
She looked away. “Not a lot. Which means you’ll have to bluff your way.”
“I’ll have to what?”
“If in fact we go to the Lord Shaithis, you’ll need to tell him you … can read the future! Something like that. Something it’s hard to disprove.”
“Great!” said Jazz, dully. “Like Arlek, you mean? He said he’d read the future of the tribe.”
She faced him again, shook her head. “Arlek’s a charlatan. A cheap, trick fortune-teller, like many of Earth’s Gypsies. Our Earth, I mean. That’s why he’s so much against me, because he knows my talent’s real.”
“OK,” said Jazz. “Now let’s put our Earth right out of our minds and tell me some more about this Earth. Its topography, for example?”
“So simple you won’t believe it,” she answered. “I’ve already described the planet in relation to its sun and moon. Very well, now here’s that map you asked for:
“This is a world much the same size as Earth as near as I can make out. This mountain range lies slightly more south than north, points east and west. That’s using the compass Earth-style. The Wamphyri can’t stand sunlight. Just like the old legends of home say, too much sunlight is fatal to vampires. And they are vampires! Sunside of the mountains, that’s where the Travellers live. They are human beings, as you’ve seen. They live close to the mountain range for the water it gives them, and for the forests and game. Sunup they live in easily erected homes, at night they find caves and go as deep as possible! The mountains are riddled with fissures and caverns. Ten miles or so south of the mountains, there are no Travellers. There’s nothing there for them to live on. Just desert. There are scattered nomad tribes of aborigines; at high sunup they occasionally trade with the Travellers; I’ve seen them and they’re barely human. Several steps down from Australia’s bushmen. I don’t know how they live out there but they do. One hundred miles out from the mountains and even they can’t live. There’s nothing there at all, just scorched earth.”
Despite his discomfort, Jazz was finding all of this fascinating. “What about east and west?” he said.
She nodded: “Just coming to it. These mountains are about two and a half thousand miles east to west. This pass lies something like six hundred miles from the western extent of the range. Beyond the mountains west are swamps; likewise to the far east. No one knows their extent.”
“Why the hell don’t the Travellers live close to the swamps?” Jazz was puzzled. “If there are no mountains there, then there’s no protection from the sun. Which means there can’t be any Wamphyri.”
“Right!” she said. “The Wamphyri live only in their castles, right here behind these mountains. But the Travellers can’t go too far east or west, because the swamps are vampire breeding grounds. They are the source of vampirism, just as this world is the source of Earth’s legends.”
Jazz tried to take that in, shook his head. “You’ve lost me yet again,” he admitted. “No Wamphyri there, and yet vampires breed in the swamps?”
“Maybe you weren’t listening to me earlier,” she said. “I can understand that. It’s like Arlek said: you’ve a lot to learn. And only so much time in which to learn it. I told you that the Wamphyri are what happens when a vampire egg gets into a man or woman. Well, the true vampires live in the swamps. They breed there. Every now and then there’s an upsurge; they break out and infest the local animals. And they’d do the same to men, too, if there were any there. The Wamphyri go back to a time when men were infested. Now they do their own infesting.” She shuddered. “The Wamphyri are men, but changed by the vampires in them.”
Jazz took a deep breath, said: “Whoah! Let’s get back to topography.”
“Nothing more to tell,” she answered. “Starside are the Wamphyri castles and the Wamphyri themselves. North of them lie the icelands. One or two polar-type creatures live there, but that’s all. They’re legendary anyway, for no living Traveller ever saw one. Oh, and at the foot of the mountains on Starside, between the castles and the peaks, that’s where the troglodytes live. They’re subterranean, sub-human, too. They call themselves Szgany or trogs and hold the Wamphyri as gods. I saw specimens mothballed in the Lady Karen’s storehouses. They’re almost prehistoric.”
She paused for breath, finally said: “That’s it, the planet and its peoples in one. There’s only one thing I’ve left out—that I can think of at the moment, anyway—because I’m not sure of it myself. But you can be certain it’s something monstrous.”
“Monstrous?” Jazz repeated her. “Most of what I’ve heard is that! Let’s have it anyway, and then I’ve got some more questions for you.”
“Well,” she frowned, “there’s supposed to be something called ‘Arbiteri Ingertos Westweich.’ That’s from a Wamphyri phrase and it means—”
“Him in His Western Garden?” Jazz tried it for himself.
She smiled a half-smile, slowly nodded. “Arlek was wrong about you,” she said. “And so was I. You do learn fast. It’s The-Dweller-in-His-Garden-in-the-West.”
“Same difference.” Jazz shrugged, and then it was his turn to frown. “But that sounds sort of placid to me. Hardly monstrous!”
“That’s as it may be,” she answered, “but the Wamphyri fear it or him or whatever mightily. Now, I’ve told you how they’re forever squabbling, warring with each other? Well, in one circumstance—to one extent—they’re entirely united. All the Wamphyri. They’d give a lot to be rid of The Dweller. He’s legended to be a fabulous magician whose home is said to lie in a green valley somewhere in the central peaks to the west. I say ‘legended,’ but that might give the wrong impression. In fact it’s a very recent legend, maybe as little as a dozen Earth years. That’s when the stories started, apparently. Since then he’s been said to have lived there, marked out his own territory, guards it jealously and deals ruthlessly with would-be invaders.”
“Even the Wamphyri?”
“Especially the Wamphyri, as far as is known. The Wamphyri tell horror stories about him you wouldn’t believe. Which, considering their nature, is really saying something!”
As she finished speaking, so there was movement northward in the pass. Arlek and his men sprang immediately alert; they called forward their wolves, took up their arms. Jazz saw that they had torches smeared in a black, tarry liquid ready for lighting. Others stood ready with flints.
Arlek hurried over, hauled Jazz to his feet. “This could be Jasef,” he said, hoarsely, “and it could be something else. The sun is almost down.”
To Zek, Jazz said: “Are those flints of theirs reliable? There’s a book of matches in my top pocket. And cigarettes, too. Seems they didn’t want them, only the heavy stuff.” He’d spoken in Russian and Arlek hadn’t caught his meaning. The Gypsy turned his leathery face inquiringly in Zek’s direction.
She sneered at him, said something that Jazz didn’t catch. Then she unbuttoned Jazz’s pocket, took out the matches. She showed them to Arlek, struck one. It flared at once and the Gypsy cursed, gave a great start, struck it aside out of her hand. The look on his face was one of shock, total disbelief.
Zek quickly snarled something at him and this time Jazz caught the word “coward!” He wished she wouldn’t be so free with that word, not with Arlek. Then, very slowly and deliberately, as if she talked to a dull child, she hissed: “For the torches, you fool, in case this is not Jasef!”
He gawped at her, blinked his brown eyes nervously, but finally he nodded his understanding.
In any case, it was Jasef. An old man with a staff, assisted by two younger Gypsies, came hobbling gratefully into the last few feeble rays of sunlight. He made his way straight to Arlek, said: “The
re was a watcher, a trog. But the trog’s master, the Lord Shaithis, had given him the power to speak over great distances. He saw the man—this one, Jazz—come through the pass, and he reported it to Shaithis. Shaithis would have come at once, but the sun—”
“Yes, yes—get on with it,” Arlek snapped.
Jasef shrugged his frail shoulders. “I did not speak to this Szgany trog face to face, you understand. Worse things might have been lurking in the keep. I stayed outside and spoke to him in my head, in the manner of the Wamphyri.”
“Of course, that’s understood!” Arlek was almost beside himself.
“I gave the trog your message, and he passed it on to his Wamphyri Lord. Then he told me to return to you.”
“What?” Arlek was obviously dumbfounded. “Is that all?”
Again Jasef could only offer his shrug. “He said: ‘Tell Arlek of the Travellers that my Lord Shaithis will speak to him in person.’ I have no idea what he meant.”
“Old fool!” Arlek muttered. He turned away from Jasef—and Zek’s radio crackled where its aerial projected an inch or two from her pocket. Its tiny red monitor light began to blink and flicker. Arlek gasped and leaped backwards a full pace, pointed at the radio and stared round-eyed as Zek produced it. “More of your foul magic?” he half-accused. “We should have destroyed all of your things long ago—and you with them—instead of letting Lardis give them back to you!”
Zek had been startled, too, but only for a moment. Now she said: “I got them back because there was no harm in them and they were useless to you. Also because they were mine. Unlike you, Lardis isn’t a thief! I’ve told the Travellers many times that this thing is for communicating over great distances, haven’t I? But because there was no one to talk to it wouldn’t work. It’s a machine, not magic. Well, now there is someone to talk to, and he wants to communicate.” And to Jazz, in a lower tone: “I think I know what this means.”
He nodded, said: “Those ace cards you mentioned?”