The Source

by Brian Lumley

  In a single night of terror and madness—one sundown, the space of time between the sun’s setting and its rising again, a matter of only forty hours—Gorgan’s tribe was decimated! The Wamphyri had come, first Shaithis to demand the usual tribute, which he took; then Lesk the Glut; finally Lascula Longtooth. More might have come, Belath and Volse and the others, except that by then there was nothing left to take; or if they did come, then the survivors of Gorgan’s tribe were no longer in their customary holes waiting for them. For after Shaithis, when the Lords Lesk and Lascula found no tribute, they had simply killed the Council of Elders out of hand and proceeded to herd off the flower of the tribe itself! At which the handful of survivors, maybe fifty old ones and a hundred children, had fled for whichever sanctuaries they could discover. And not many of those in a land where the people of Gorgan’s tribe were universally loathed! From which time forward the tribe had been no more, and the youth Gorgan had vowed never to put his faith in any “deals” with the treacherous Wamphyri. Lardis, in his turn, was of the same mind: let other tribal leaders do what they would, go their own ways and good luck to them, his people would never submit to the Wamphyri, nor would they prey on brother and sister Travellers for dubious personal benefits and the well-being of vile, inhuman Starside overloads.

  As to how Lardis’s convictions worked in his favour:

  There were still tribes who operated one tithe system or another, using either captive Travellers stolen from other groups to placate the Wamphyri, or even drawing lots and sacrificing members of their own nomad communities. Such Travellers who had adopted or accepted this servile existence were generally of large eastern-flank tribes numbering more than a thousand strong. Their size protected them from any retaliatory attacks which previous victims might possibly dream up, and/or allowed them to make the required periodic sacrificial cull without appreciably diminishing the strength of the tribe.

  They dwelled east of the pass because the game was more plentiful there and survival, in one sense, that much easier. Lardis knew this and kept his people west of the pass; it was a little harder to make a living but it was also that much safer. When it was sunup he kept lookouts in the southern extremes of the pass, to warn of Travellers moving west and supply intelligence reports of their strengths, persuasions, and any possible dangers to his own people springing from their presence or route of passage.

  Lardis did not as a matter of course make war on Travellers who kowtowed to the Wamphyri but preferred to keep out of their way. In the event that they should war on him, however, he was always ready. His men—even many of his younger women—were well-trained, formidable fighters; they were skilled in ambush, entrapment, hand-to-hand combat, and in the use of all manner of weaponry. On the few occasions when outsiders had attempted to raid on him, then they’d been severely chastised; so that in the five years of his leadership the legend had spread abroad that he was not a man to fool with. He would accept small groups into the tribe for its own good, but would not amalgamate with larger bodies. His motto was this: to be medium-sized is to be safe. Not large enough to stir too much Wamphyri interest, mobile enough to confuse them, and just a trifle too vicious to tempt raiding parties from Wamphyri-supplicants. Up until now, at least, these integers had made for a remarkably effective equation.

  But Lardis’s scepticism (if not scorn) with regard to Wamphyri superiority, and his disgust at the mere thought of appeasement, were not the only reasons for his success. Oh, he knew well enough the purely physical and tactical superiority of the vampire Lords—their strengths and cruelties, the awesome horror of their war-beasts, the silent, speedy efficiency of their familiar spies the great bats, and the mobility of their flying creatures—but he also knew and made use of their weaknesses.

  They could only raid at night, usually in the lull before (or in the wake of) one or other of the interminable vampire wars—to supply their war effort or replenish a depleted capability as the case may be—and they invariably completed their raids with dispatch. They didn’t like to spend too much time Sunside, for while they were away they could never be sure what their Starside enemies were up to; aeries were wont to become occupied while their rightful masters were raiding abroad! Lardis knew, too, that the Wamphyri rarely raided west of the pass: most of the tribes, and especially those which were Wamphyri-supplicant, dwelled east; so why should the Wamphyri waste time chasing their prey in the west when it was openly on offer in the east? For the fact of it was that for all their much-vaunted pride and arrogance, the Wamphyri tended toward laziness. If they weren’t warring with each other or raiding, then they were scheming for war, indulging themselves, or asleep! That was a weakness, too. For the great part, Lardis Lidesci went without sleep. And at sundown he took his rest in the briefest snatches.

  Another Wamphyri weakness was this: that while it was hard to kill them, they could and did die eventually—and Lardis knew how to do it. But there was death and there was death. At the hands of another vampire, that was thinkable; Wamphyri pride would allow, however grudgingly, for that possibility. But at the hands of some lowly Traveller? Never! Where was the glory in that? What sort of way was that for a life to blink out? Lardis had killed no actual Lord, but he had twice dealt with aspirants to that final level of vampire power. They had been the sons and lieutenants of Lesk the Glut, who’d thought to come against him in the hour immediately before sunup, when he’d be unwary and emerging from his cave sanctuary; except Lardis didn’t know the meaning of the word “unwary.”

  Put a hardwood bolt through a vampire, behead him, burn his corpse … he was dead. But Lardis had made an example of Lesk’s lads. Staked out, the sun had found them and steamed them away slowly and with a great deal of shrieking. Aye, let other Traveller leaders balk at the difficulties involved in the slaying of vampires, but not Lardis. The Wamphyri had come to know his name, perhaps even to respect it. Being able to live for centuries, near-immortal, it was generally deemed unwise to go up against Travellers like Lardis, who could—and would, given the chance—so rapidly and cruelly shorten one’s span to nothing!

  Then there was the Wamphyri fear of silver, which metal was a poison to their systems, acting upon them like lead acts on men. Lardis had discovered a small mine of that rare metal in the western foothills, and now his arrows were tipped with it. Also, he smeared his weapons in the juice of the kneblasch root, whose garlic stink would bring about a partial paralysis in any vampire, causing endless vomiting and a general nervous disorder lasting for days. If a kneblasch-treated blade cut Wamphyri flesh, then the infected member must be shed and another grown in its place.

  It wasn’t so much that these things were secret or known only in the tribe of Lardis—indeed, all Travellers had been aware of these facts immemorially—but rather that Lardis dared use them in the defense of his people. The Wamphyri had forbidden to all Travellers the use of bronze mirrors, silver and kneblasch, on penalty of dire torture and death; but Lardis cared not a jot. He was already a marked man, and a man can die only once …

  These were some of the things, then, that influenced Lardis in the way he ruled his tribe and did his best to keep them secure west of the pass through the mountains; but there was one other element beyond Lardis’s control, which nevertheless figured high in his favour, confirming his commonsense measures. It was this: that somewhere in those western peaks, in a small, fertile valley, lived the one whom the Wamphyri feared and had named The-Dweller-in-His-Garden-in-the-West. The Dweller legend was the main reason Lardis had been away this time. Ostensibly he had been seeking new routes and harbour areas for the tribe (and in fact he’d discovered several) but in reality he had been trying to locate The Dweller. He’d reasoned that what was bad for the Wamphyri must be good for the tribe of Lardis the Traveller. Also, rumours had been spreading for some years now that The Dweller offered sanctuary to anyone with spit enough to dare seek him out. For Lardis himself, sanctuary wasn’t the hook, though certainly it would be a wonderful thing to find a saf
e, permanent home for the tribe; but if The Dweller had power to defy the Wamphyri … that in itself were sufficient reason to seek him out. Lardis would learn from him and with his new knowledge carry the fight right back to the very keeps of his vampire enemies.

  He had sought for him—and found him!

  Now he was back from that quest, and back barely in time to save the hell-lander woman Zekintha from Arlek’s treachery; Zekintha … and the newcomer, whose fighting skills Arlek’s dupes had mentioned in something approaching awe. On a one-to-one basis and without the intervention of his followers, Arlek hadn’t stood a chance against Jazz. Well, if there was one thing Lardis Lidesci liked, it was a good fair fighter. Or even a good dirty one!

  Lardis saw them coming across the canyon’s floor, stepped forward to meet them. He clasped Zek in his great arms, kissed her right ear. “Tear down the mountains!” he greeted her. And: “I’m glad you’re safe, Zekintha.”

  “Only just,” she answered, breathlessly. “All credit to this one,” and she nodded at Jazz.

  Weary now, and climbing out of his gear as if he unhitched an anchor, Jazz returned her nod, then looked all about in the canyon’s hushed twilight. Men and wolves moved here and there in the shadows of the cliffs, their jingling and low talk seeming very normal and pleasant to Jazz’s ears. But central in a jumble of boulders which lay towards the western wall burned a great fire, emitting roiling black smoke which climbed into a near perpendicular column in the still air. Arlek’s funeral pyre, he supposed.

  Some hundred or more yards to the south, the pass turned a little eastward and there commenced a steady descent toward the unseen foothills of Sunside. The rays of the slowly declining sun, blazing full through that last stretch of pass, beat on the western wall of the canyon and lit its crags and outcrops. Coming down from those heights, agile as goats, a half-dozen male Travellers bore mirrors like shields in their capable hands, always directing the sun’s beams into those gloomy deeps of the gorge which lay to the north. Jazz frowned as the first of the mirror-bearers came closer. The man’s great oval mirror was of glass, surely? Did the Travellers have that sort of technology at their disposal?

  Lardis watched Jazz strip down to his combat suit, then approached him smilingly with outstretched right hand. Jazz tried to take his hand, found himself clasping his forearm instead; Lardis likewise clasped his. It was a Traveller greeting. “A hell-lander,” Lardis nodded. “How are you called?”

  “Michael Simmons,” Jazz answered. “Jazz to my friends.”

  Again Lardis’s nod. “Then I’ll call you Jazz—for now. But I need time to make up my mind about you. I’ve heard rumours about hell-landers like yourself; some take sides with the Wamphyri, working for them as wizards.”

  “As you’ve seen,” Jazz told him, “I’m not one of them. And in any case, I don’t think any, er, hell-lander, would side with the Wamphyri of his own free will.”

  Lardis took Jazz aside, guided him toward a spot where a party of men sat forlornly on broken boulders, heads hanging low. Around them stood a guard composed of Lardis’s men. The ones who were seated had been Arlek’s followers; Jazz recognized several faces. As Jazz and Lardis approached, the captives hung their heads lower still. Lardis scowled at them, said: “Arlek would have given you to the Wamphyri Lord Shaithis. But he was a great coward, and he coveted the leadership of the tribe. You’ve seen the fire burning there?”

  Jazz nodded. “Zek told me what you’d do,” he said.

  “Zek?” Lardis’s smile faded a little. “Did you know her before? Did you come to seek her out and take her back?”

  “I came because I had no choice,” Jazz answered, “not because of Zek. I had heard something of her; we’d never met, not until now. Back in our own world, our people are … not friends.”

  “But here you’re both hell-landers, strangers in a strange world. It draws you together.” Lardis’s assessment was fairly accurate.

  Jazz shrugged. “I suppose it does.” He looked straight into Lardis’s face. “Will you make Zek an issue?”

  Lardis’s expression didn’t change. “No,” he said. “She’s a free woman. I have no time for small things. The tribe is my main concern. I have had thoughts about Zekintha, but … she would be too much of a distraction. Anyway, I fancy she’d rather be friend and adviser than wife. Also, she’s a hell-lander. A man shouldn’t get too close to something he doesn’t understand.”

  Jazz smiled. “The place you call the hell-lands is very large, with many people of diverse cultures. It’s a strange place, but hardly the hell you seem to imagine it to be.”

  Lardis raised his eyebrows, thought about what Jazz had said. “Zekintha says much the same thing,” he said. “She’s told me a great deal about it: weapons greater than all the Wamphyri’s war-beasts put together; a continent of black people dying in their thousands, of disease and starvation; wars in every corner of your world, men against men; machines that think and run and fly, all filled with fire and smoke and a terrible roaring. It sounds close enough to hell to me!”

  Jazz laughed out loud. “Put it that way and you could be right!” he said. He had kept his SMG, whose strap he now adjusted where it crossed his shoulder. Lardis glanced at the weapon, said:

  “Your … gun? The same as Zekintha’s. I saw her kill a bear with it. The bear had more holes than a fishing net! Now it is broken, but she still carries it.”

  “It can be repaired,” Jazz told him. “I’ll do it as soon as I have the time. But your people understand metal. It surprises me no one has tried to fix it.”

  “Because they’re afraid of it,” Lardis admitted. “Me too! They’re noisy things, these guns …”

  Jazz nodded his agreement. “But noise doesn’t kill the Wamphyri,” he said.

  Lardis grasped upon that, became excited as a child. “I heard the chattering of it, echoing up the pass! Did you really strike at Shaithis?”

  “At close range, too.” Jazz smiled wryly. “—for all the good it did! I put a good many holes in their flyers, and a few in them, too, I think—but it didn’t stop them.”

  “Better than nothing!” Lardis slapped his shoulder. “Their wounds will take time to heal. Give the vampires in them something to do. Keep them out of mischief a while!” Then he grew thoughtful again. “These men,” he scowled at the seated group of unfortunates, “were Arlek’s followers. If they’d had their way you’d be vampire-fodder by now. With your gun, you could kill them all as easy as that!” He snapped his fingers.

  Zek had followed on behind; she heard what Lardis said and her eyes went very wide. The men Lardis had been speaking about had also heard him (he’d ensured that they had); they straightened up where they sat, their faces suddenly gaunt and full of apprehension.

  Jazz looked at them, remembered how a few of them had seemed ill at ease with some of Arlek’s ideas and actions. “Arlek made fools of them,” he answered Lardis. “Great fools. And you weren’t here to set it right. He was a coward, as you’ve said; he needed others to lend his opinions strength. These are the ones who were foolish enough to listen to them. Obviously they wish they hadn’t. But you punish traitors, not fools.”

  Lardis glanced at Zek, grinned. “It might have been me speaking,” he said; and she relaxed and took a deep breath. “On the other hand,” Lardis continued, “one of these men struck you from behind. Don’t you feel any anger toward that one?”

  Jazz touched the tender bump behind his ear. “Some,” he admitted. “But not enough to want to kill him. I could teach him a lesson, perhaps?” He wondered what Lardis was after. Obviously he’d heard how Jazz had dispatched Arlek. Maybe he wanted to see his fighting skills at first hand. It would be a bonus for the tribe to have a man who could teach them or at least introduce superior fighting skills.

  “You want to teach him a lesson?” Lardis grinned. Jazz had guessed right. Now Lardis walked among the seated men, pushing them left and right off their boulder seats, roughly away from him as he poured hi
s silent scorn on them. “Which one of you struck him?” he demanded.

  A young man, muscular, nervous-looking, slowly stood up. Lardis pointed to an area of flat ground fairly clear of rocks. “Over there,” he growled.

  “Wait!” Jazz came forward. “Let’s at least make it a match. He doesn’t stand a chance on his own. Does he have a friend? A close friend?”

  Lardis raised his expressive eyebrows, shrugged. He scowled at the youth. “Well, do you? Unlikely, I should think.”

  Another young man, burlier, craggier, less apprehensive, got to his feet. As he joined the first on the open ground, Jazz thought: I deal with you first! Out loud he said: “That should do it.” He made sure his SMG was on safe and handed it to Lardis—who accepted it gingerly and held it awkwardly.

  Jazz approached his two opponents. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said casually. “Unless you haven’t the guts for it, in which case you can get down on your knees and kiss my boots!” The last was a deliberate ploy—to goad them into speedy action, cause them to lose their self-control.

  Which it did!

  They looked at each other, their chests filled out, and they charged like young bulls. And almost as wildly.

  Jazz had determined to put on a show for Lardis. He avoided the rush of the man who’d clubbed him, delivered a slicing rabbit punch to his neck as he flew past. Not sufficient to put him out of the fight—not yet—but just hard enough to send him dazed and sprawling to the hard ground. The second man, sturdier and a shade more wary, swerved his body and threw himself into a dive, rolling to knock Jazz’s feet out from under him. The plan failed as Jazz leaped high, avoiding his tumbling body, then stepped in close as the clever one sprang to his feet. He offered a feint, telegraphing a blow to his opponent’s face. The other saw it coming, snatched the top half of his body back out of harm’s way—which left his lower half not only exposed but proffered. Jazz kicked him smartly in the groin; but again, not hard enough to cripple him, sufficient only to make him curl up and drop like a stone.