by Brian Lumley
Chapter 28
'No,' she shook her head, 'but I made you think so. ' And as his face fell: 'From now on you must never look at me with those eyes, Nathan, for if he sees it he'll punish both of us, which in my case would be unfair. You mean nothing to me, not as a lover. But as a friend . . . ?'
'Shall we be friends, then?' She was closing the door on him, for good.
'Best if we are,' she answered. 'There are a hundred rooms and workshops in my master's house, and he wants you to see all of them. But if you would prefer the company of some other . . . ?'
'No,' said Nathan, as the door closed in his face, and he heard the bolt slide home. 'No, but I'll always be grateful for your company, and for your friendship. '
'So be it,' she whispered from beyond the door . . .
After that she was cold and withdrawn as ever, and Nathan made no further advances towards her. But when it was Maglore's time for sleeping, and when Nathan would see Orlea on her way to her master's apartments . . . sometimes he felt embittered.
Maglore called for him often during that early period, and whatever Nathan was doing he must rush to the Seer Lord's side. Once, entering Maglore's apartments, he found a handsome, slim, broad-shouldered vampire Lord waiting there. But as this stranger spoke to him he started, and actually staggered from the shock. For the voice, if not the vibrant body it came out of, was unmistakable: it was Maglore's!
'How do I look?' Maglore inquired, when Nathan had recovered.
'Young!' He blurted out the first word that came to him. 'A man in his prime, forty or forty-five! You look . . . like a Lord!'
'Like a "real" Lord, do you mean?' Maglore chuckled. But his amusement was brief, and in a moment his brow clouded over. 'All my life I've denied the thing within,' he growled. 'Except when I may no longer -when I cannot deny it! Then, briefly I am as you see me now. For this is how I am "rewarded" for my cooperation. Which only goes to prove that however much I deny my creature, and myself, still the blood is the life. Now go, my son, and reflect on the wonder you have seen, and how it was achieved. And always remember, I am Wamphyri!' And to give his words more emphasis yet, he yawned his jaws to show Nathan the forked tongue that flickered in the red vault of his mouth.
But as Nathan headed for the spiral stairwell, so Maglore called after him: 'My son!' He looked back, and the young Seer Lord stood there smiling. 'Now tell me, do you understand the provisioning?'
Nathan shook his head. There's a great deal of Rune-manse I've not yet visited. '
Then do so, today, now. '
Nathan nodded. 'And shall Orlea take me there?'
'Ah, no - not this time. Take yourself there, or go with one of my men. But along the way, you may tell Orlea that I am waiting . . . '
Nathan did as he was told. The last had been a cruel command and Maglore knew it, but not as cruel as ordering Nathan to visit the rooms and workshops of the provisioning.
He went there with Karpath, a thrall of Maglore's for three years, a lieutenant for eleven, and now the Seer Lord's right-hand man. Karpath was interested in Nathan, and as they descended through the many levels asked him: 'How do you find our master?'
Nathan looked at the other. Two inches taller than Nathan, Karpath was broad as a door, heavy-jawed, grey as slate and more than three hundred pounds of solid vampire flesh. His eyes held an inner fire which, however mutely, spoke volumes. No common thrall -nor even an ordinary lieutenant - it was obvious that Karpath had known the virulent bite of a true Wamphyri Lord, and often. Something of Maglore himself was in his blood.
'How do I find Maglore?' Nathan repeated him. But then, remembering the Seer Lord's emphasis, he replied: 'He is Wamphyri, and I'm not even a thrall. I find him awesome!'
'You would like to be like him, then?' Karpath kept his voice low, but it was full of some inner passion. Nathan read his mind, made open and receptive through previous invasions of Maglore's. He was thinking: This one grows close to the Seer Lord. But is he a rival? I crave Maglore's egg and will have it, come what may! There may not be room for the two of us - this Nathan PalebJood and Karpath Seerson - in Rune-manse.
Nathan had to work hard to avoid recoiling from the several vicious, bloody, and terminal scenes which came seething out of Karpath's skull then, and knew he must take care how he answered. Not only had Karpath chosen his own name in advance of his anticipated succession to Maglore's seat, but that of his supposed rival too!
'Be like him? Like Maglore? Wamphyri?' Nathan's shudder was only half-feigned. 'I think I would prefer to die first!'
And you would, most assuredly! Karpath thought. But. . . perhaps I concern myself unnecessarily. This Nathan's blood is indeed pale, and weak as water. Out loud, he said nothing.
They reached the lowest level of Runemanse. Below lay Madmanse, and Karpath showed Nathan the dank, disused steps: 'an old stairwell, winding down, down', just as Eygor Killglance had described it.
Nathan wanted to know: 'Can we go down there?'
Karpath looked at him. 'We can - but we won't. Now that Wran and Spiro are flown, it is an empty place. Only a ghost dwells there now. '
'A ghost?' Nathan played the innocent, but knew very well who Karpath meant.
The ghost of Eygor Killglance,' the other confirmed it. The Seer Lord suspects that he was murdered but no one knows the truth of it, except perhaps his murderers. Eygor was very powerful and had the Evil Eye: he destroyed his enemies with a glance! His ghost is strong, too, and wafts like a giant shadow in Madmanse. When Wratha and her traitors fled from Turgosheim, their spires and manses were sacked and offered to others. Several tried to dwell in Madmanse, but all felt Eygor's presence there and could not stay. The place is hollow and echoing now. Maglore goes there from time to time, but alone. ' Karpath gave a shrug. 'Perhaps he will extend his holdings downwards. I do not know . . . '
Then Nathan was shown the provisioning: The granary, where grain, fruits, wines and other produce out of Sunside were stored; the mill and mixing rooms where the raw materials of food were ground down and prepared in various ways, for many of Mag-lore's creatures had special requirements; the bakery and kitchens, and finally . . . the slaughterhouse and storerooms. The first of these was not in use at the time. Nathan saw huge stained chopping blocks, saws, cleavers and other implements, buckets for blood and troughs for offal, that was all. But it was enough.
He had already visited the odious pens in a high, south-facing flank of Runemanse, from which at sunup goats and pigs were driven out on to a false plateau to enjoy a few brief hours of sunlit freedom in a small field of shallow earth, scrub, and coarse grasses behind a low stone wall. And there, where a handful of rabbits ran wild, such animals spent the last of their days. For these larger beasts were hard to breed; they sickened quickly in Turgosheim and could not be kept alive. That was no great problem; the provisioning was an ongoing process; Runemanse's turnover was swift.
Karpath took him into a cold-storage room with huge windows open to the north, where the draughts were freezing cold. In there, rows of heavily salted carcasses hung from hooks - but not all the cadavers were of animals. Suddenly and without warning, Nathan came upon two which were not. . .
Then, as he choked and reeled dizzily from the room, he found himself caught up under the arm, and supported until his stomach had stopped churning. Finally Karpath released him and said, This is what Maglore wanted you to see. It is something of an incentive if men see what might befall them, should they fail in their duties. '
'In there,' Nathan choked the words out, 'I saw two men. One of them was a surly youth out of Kehrlscrag. He was taken in the tithe at the same time as I myself, so that we came to Runemanse together. And the other -'
'- Was Nicolae Seersthrall, aye,' Karpath grunted. The first was too surly, and the second - too talkative, I think? Had you stayed long enough, you might also have seen the girl Magda. But obviously you've no stomach fo
r it. '
Fighting to control his gagging, Nathan said, 'I take the water which I use for drinking and bathing from the catchment sluices in Runemanse's outer walls. So does Orlea, Maglore's woman. It's rainwater, pure and simple. But I also know that the majority of Maglore's thralls and creatures drink water which has been passed through and purified by a . . . a man, or what's left of a man, a siphoneer. Then there's . . . my food?' He looked at the lieutenant pleadingly. 'Karpath, I've got to know. Have I eaten food which was prepared here? Just how are those human bodies used?'
The other grinned. 'Don't you trust Maglore, then?'
Trust him?' Feeling desperately ill, Nathan leaned his upper body out of a window embrasure.
Karpath was right behind him, whispering, 'Can you trust any of us, in Runemanse?'
Nathan saw a picture in the other's mind: one of himself, tumbling, turning, rushing to earth! But it was whimsical and meant nothing. It was simply wishful thinking, accompanied by the thought: No, for it would only jeopardize my future. This Nathan is weak, a freak, nothing. Maglore's egg would wither and die in him. While out loud he continued:
'Your fears are empty, Nathan. Nothing of nasty vampire stuff will get into you via your food. Why should Maglore wish to poison you that way, when a simple bite would suffice? Aye, and there are other ways: a fond fatherly kiss or a little sodomy, or simply by giving you to his women for a night. . . or to his men? No, only the lowliest thralls - who lack the power of infection, except by direct contact - prepare food for my master's table. And as for Maglore: except when he requires blood, he is satisfied to eat the meat of beasts and birds. But then, so do we all in Runemanse . . . mainly. '
Nathan stood up straighter, glanced towards the cold room, and said: 'How . . . was it for them?'
Karpath shrugged. The men, if you would call them that - personally I prefer to call them boys - were given to the women of Runemanse for their pleasure, to be drained of their sex and their blood, and Magda was given to the younger male thralls. Dead, all three would soon become undead, which was not desirable. So while they lay in their vampire sleep, they were butchered, quartered, and their parts hung up for keeping. That is how it was for them. As for how it's yet to be:
'Maglore may well require flesh for the fashioning. Also, there's meal and bone to be ground down for the manse's flyers, its gas-beasts and emergent warriors. The flyers and gaslings consume grain, mainly, and a little Sunside honey for energy, and blood or flesh naturally; for they are vampire creatures, as are all of Mag-lore's constructs. But warriors, especially young ones fresh out of their vats, must have it red! As for Maglore's lieutenants and thralls: well, it's good to have a roast now and then. All of these uses are in order . . . '
'A . . . roast?' Feeling his blood draining again, Nathan turned away. 'Cannibalism!'
Karpath grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, snarled: 'No, vampirism! If ever you get to be one, then maybe you'll understand. ' Except the knowledge will come too late, or I shall not suffer a rival in Runemanse!
NathanshutoutKarpath'smurderousthoughts, pulled himself together, stood up straighter and remembered what Maglore had told him: to walk boldly and without fear. Then, shrugging the grinning lieutenant's huge paw from his shoulder, he said: 'Are we finished here?'
Karpath sensed his resolve. The grin slid from his grey face as he growled, 'I've nothing else to show you. '
Then I'll be on my way. '
'Where to?'
'Wherever I wish. For as you know well enough, Maglore has given me access to all of Runemanse, and I even eat with him. I shall go to him; perhaps he already misses me; he worries constantly, for my safety. ' He said these things deliberately.
Karpath was suspicious at once. Waves of jealousy flooded out from him. 'What will you tell him?'
Nathan looked him straight in the eyes. 'Karpath, listen to me and listen carefully. Maglore prizes me for my colours, and for my "innocence". Well, I'm no longer entirely innocent, but he'll keep me free of vampire influences, if he can; you've said as much yourself. But on the other hand he prizes you for your strength and for your . . . loyalty? And so we're not rivals, you and I. But think about this: if he is forced to make a life or death choice between us, which of us shall live?'
'What?' Karpath's brows gathered like thunderheads as he considered it.
Nathan shrugged. 'Maglore can always make himself a new lieutenant, but where would he find another familiar like me? Now, I say again: we are not rivals, but if you're determined to be my enemy -' he turned and walked away,'- so be it. '
And behind him, Karpath made no reply but let him go. . .
Time passed. Nathan spent a great deal of it asleep, conserving both his physical and mental reserves. When he was awake, however, he scarcely went short of exercise: Runemanse was a far more vertical than horizontal place, and the stairwells seemed interminable.
Now that the provisioning was behind him, he felt fit to tackle anything; he didn't think Runemanse would contain anything worse than what he'd already seen or experienced. In a way he was right and it didn't, but in other ways . . .
He saw the Seer Lord's warriors 'waxing' in their hugely excavated vats. Apart from their armour plating, which reminded him a little of his deadspeak dream of Madmanse and Eygor Killglance's anomalous blue-gleaming appendages, the creatures in their loathsome entirety were like nothing else Nathan had ever seen before. But in any case, they were not things which a healthy mind would want to dwell upon, not if a man desired to sleep soundly. One thing he did notice: for warriors, they were a good deal smaller than those beasts of Wratha's which had ravaged in Settlement, and they weren't built for flying. However Maglore intended to use them, they wouldn't be taking part in any attack upon Wratha the Risen in olden Starside.
But the intentions of Turgosheim's other Lords were less ambiguous. From the window of his room, night after night, Nathan spied upon the training flights of monsters. Any excessive use of torches or brightening of the gas jet flares, or unaccustomed activity in this or that launching-bay along the wall of the gorge, would tell him where to look. And then he would hear again, even as he'd heard it in Settlement that time, the sputtering throb of propulsive vents as nightmare shapes went spurting through the rising vapours of Turgosheim.
Most of the Lords and Ladies tested their creatures from time to time, but not all were successful. During a session in the twilight hours before sunup, Nathan watched one especially disastrous test-flight. Vast and lumbering, the creature flew out from Vormspire with the rumble of its propulsors echoing over Turgosheim, its armour glinting ruddily in the lights of the manses, and its exhaust vapours shaped by the winds into a fantastic, billowing slipstream. A monstrous and terrifying sight, it came throbbing across the gorge with a row of sentient saucer eyes flickering this way and that within the visor of its triple-horned, heavily plated prow. But it was perhaps too heavily plated, and its balance ill-aligned.
Tilting to avoid the jutting promontory of Devetaki's Masquemanse, suddenly its nose dipped and the tilt became too steep. It attempted to adjust its balance but overcompensated. There followed a lurching roll, then a shuddering, total capsize! Upside-down, the monster's starboard gas bladders were torn open on the jagged flank of Masquemanse; deflating in a moment, they fluttered like curtains in the wind as the damaged warrior was deflected out over the gorge.
Then . . . the thing seemed to sense that it was finished. At the last an anguished howling was clearly audible. Mingling with the angry sputtering of propulsors, this formed a combination of alien, nerve-rending sounds which carried to Nathan as a groaning, echoing ululation: a death cry. And the doomed Thing spiralled down into deepening darkness, then plummeted, finally glanced from a corner turret of Trollmanse and slammed headlong into the rocky bottoms. Chunks of red, fleshy debris and shattered chitin armour flew everywhere, and the sounds of the crash echoed into silence .
. .
Failures of this sort were not infrequent at first, but as time passed and the Lords became more proficient in the making of aerial warriors, they were fewer. And always Nathan was aware that these living engines of destruction were destined for olden Starside, and that eventually they would rain terror on Sunside, too. His Sunside, from which he'd fled like a coward to die in the desert. . .
Nathan visited the gas-beast caverns located close to the refuse pits, and understood the reason for that proximity. But the gaslings themselves . . . were something else which he would try in vain to forget. The horror of the thing - of all Runemanse - lay not so much in the physical reality of the system, but in its morbid and pitiless efficiency; for all of Maglore's creatures had once been men and expendable. And whenever Nathan looked at them, always the vestiges of men remained . . .
Eventually, when he had lived in Runemanse through thirty-odd sunups, Nathan went to see Maglore's flyers penned in the yawn of the landing-bay. The reason he'd not done so before was that Maglore had warned him off it: the north-facing wall was notorious for treacherous updrafts and freakish, blustery winds; the polished rock of the launching ramps was slippery as ice; there were no protective walls to impede the flyers on take-off. The Seer Lord had lost a lieutenant there once, who stepped in the wrong place and shot himself screaming into eternity.
Two of Maglore's three flyers were recent constructs: he had fashioned them as an exercise preparatory to starting work on his warriors. Skittish (for they sensed that Nathan was no vampire), the pair rolled their eyes and reared their diamond-shaped heads as he passed carefully along a railed walkway in front of their pens. But Maglore's scent was on him, and they quickly settled down again.
The third creature was different, however. Housed to one side of the precipitous launching bay, beneath an overhang in the lee of the cavern, it was far less nervous. Something about the thing attracted Nathan's attention. He gazed at the flyer in its pen: huge, grey, mute and comparatively docile, its huge head nodding at the end of a swaying neck, with eyes large as fists, moist and gleaming black in a weirdly manlike face. Eyes which might well be. . .
. . . But here Nathan paused in his musing. What on earth had he been thinking about? Manlike? And eyes which might well be . . . ? For of course there was no manlike about it; those eyes were or had been human, Szgany! And again he reminded himself what he was looking at: a mutated, vampire thing - something that Maglore had changed - which, having undergone its metamorphosis, was human no more.
Leaning his elbows on the gated wall of the pen, he gazed into the great, sad, human eyes in the elongated, mutant head; gazed deep, and wondered: Who were you?
I was a youth upon a time, like you. The answer came back at once, shockingly, jerking Nathan rigidly upright against the wall! Then I was a man, a titheling, and Maglore's thralJ. But never a vampire thing . . . not until the end. Perhaps I of ended him, though even now I don't know how. What does it matter? It is enough that what you see before you is all that remains of a man. Ah, but the Seer Lord of Runemanse was generous with my brain and made himself a crafty flyer this time - damn his black heart!
Shaken to his roots, Nathan clung to the wall and whispered: 'He left you your brain, a man's brain . . . entire?'
Not entire, no. The flyer's thoughts were vaguer now.
But enough that I remember . . . things. And among them my name. You asked me who I was. 7 was a thrall who knew writing and faithfully recorded the history of a race, according to the word of my master, Maglore. And my name was Karz Biteri. . .
Later, Nathan would spend many a long hour with Karz, or what had been Karz, learning Turgosheim's history from its onset. But on that first occasion he had been far more interested to know how the - creature? - had read his mind and been able to answer him so lucidly.
That was the way of it with all flyers, he was told, for they were the aerial command-posts of the Wamphyri with immediate access to their minds, so that they might react instantly to any order. In the reshaping of Karz's mind, when Maglore had given it something of his own alien essence, telepathy had been the governing factor. Desiring something special, he'd let Karz retain much of his memory and all of his knowledge of old Turgosheim. Thus Karz Biteri, Maglore's flyer now, was also a reference library on all Turgosheim's morbid past.
You, too, are a powerful telepath, Karz had told him then, and so we may converse. But you must learn how to shield your thoughts, and you should always remember: a man is never alone in Runemanse. When you thought you were on your own down here, I read a good many things in your head which Maglore would not like. If I could read them, so could he.
'I have shielded them,' Nathan had answered, 'constantly, or so I thought. But you're right: I thought I was alone here. And when I saw you, and realized what you were. . . '
You were shaken and forgot yourself, I know. . . The answer had been a sob, soliciting Nathan's pity; so that he'd said:
'You too should guard your thoughts, Karz, for I can feel your hatred for him. If Maglore should discover it. . . '
Ah, but he has, the other had cut him short. He knows! Why do you think he won't ride out upon the air? Because he fears I would tilt him into space. And so he made these new creatures, but doesn't trust them either! For if I can have such feelings, perhaps they have them, too. Oh, he knows they do not, but will not trust them anyway. It seems I have given him a bad dream that won't go away, for which I'm glad!
'Those are thoughts you really should watch,' Nathan had answered, 'and very carefully. '
He'd sensed a mental shrug as Karz answered, Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't care. What is my life, anyway? It were as well to launch myself at sunup, and cross the mountains into the sun!
At which Nathan had remembered Thikkoul's reading of his future in the stars:
'Now I see . . . a flight to freedom, yes! But . . . upon a dragon?' And Nathan had wondered: a dragon, or something that looks like one? And the thought had entered his head: why fly into the sun when there are other places to go and good works to accomplish along the way? Yes, and scores still unsettled?
Perhaps Karz had 'heard' the thought, perhaps not. But his great head had stopped nodding for a moment, and his huge dark eyes had gleamed a shade brighter. . .
Maglore made more creatures and cocooned them away in forbidden vaults. The more he worked at the fashioning, the less time he had for Nathan. Apart from taking his meals with Maglore, Nathan rarely saw the Seer Lord, for which he was glad. But that was during his waking hours, while sometimes in his dreams -
- He often wondered about his dreams: How he would start awake to discover his guard down and something other than his own thoughts oozing in his head, but something which always withdrew at once, leaving him his own man again. Maglore? But who else could it be? Not Eygor Killglance, for the old dead Thing in Madmanse made no bones about his presence but invariably introduced himself when he came in the night to wheedle and inveigle.
As for what Eygor wanted: some kind of bargain he wished to strike, some sort of promise to extract, and something evil to engineer from beyond the grave. So far Nathan had resisted him, but still he was curious and had long ago determined to go down into empty, echoing Madmanse one day . . .
Once, when the moon was full and floating outside his window, Nathan woke up and went to dash his face with water from a bowl beside his bed. But before he could lower his hands to the bowl, he saw the moon mirrored in the still water, and likewise his face. Then, as so often before, the stargazer Thikkoul's words had come back to him:
'I see your face, your hollow eyes and greying hair . . . ' For indeed his eyes were sunken in dark orbits, and his yellow hair was flecked with grey . . .
Time passed ever more swiftly, and Maglore grew sparing in his use of thralls and recent arrivals out of Sun-side. Now that he had enough warriors, it seemed he was conserving his energies and the raw materials of his metamorphic
art in anticipation of some new endeavour.
One evening he called Nathan to him, asked for his wrist strap and snapped it into short sections. 'You with your fine clothes,' he said, 'wearing this scrap of leather like a brand! If you must be branded do it in style. Here . . . ' And he gave him a sigil in solid gold, an inch long, whose design was the same familiar loop with a half-twist. Fashioned on Sunside, it was an earring, which Maglore told him to wear in his left ear.
By way of explaining his gift, the Seer Lord said, 'Since you're the very jewel of a lad yourself - and it being a well-known fact how much you Szgany like your jingly bits and pieces - I knew you would appreciate it. '
Til need my ear pierced,' Nathan said, without considering his words. Maglore feigned a coy look, then grinned and displayed eye-teeth as sharp as needles.
'If you were a lass, I might consider doing it myself!' he said. 'Why, I might do it anyway! Except I prize you for what you are, not for what I can make of you. You'd best have Orlea do it with a hot needle, and remain in your room until it's healed. '
Then, as Nathan was leaving, Maglore said: 'When Orlea's finished with her jabbing, send her to me. For while some jabs hurt, others are a pleasure. Oh, I follow Turgo Zolte's teachings, it's true, but even the strictest adherent has certain needs . . . "
Nathan chose his time carefully. And at the height of sunup when Maglore slept and the aerie was quiet, he made his way down into Madmanse.
I've been expecting you, Eygor's deadspeak voice came oozing in his mind, as he descended the cobwebbed stairwell to the uppermost, deserted levels of the stripped, haunted manse. For plainly you're an inquiring youth who can't bear a mystery to go unfathomed.
Even though a hazy light came in from the gorge, Nathan struck flints to a torch; the innermost rooms and passageways were dark, and the place had the feel of a tomb. Ah, but it is a tomb. ' Eygor told him. That of a blind, blameless thing discarded like refuse into a pit, to die there and stiffen to a stone.
'Blameless?'
I was Wamphyri! How can you blame a creature for acting out its nature? Is the wolf to be blamed for worrying rabbits? Or did you only come here to scold me for those deeds which I was obliged to perform, by reason of the monstrous leech which all my life controlled and corrupted me?
'All men have urges,' Nathan answered, descending another stairwell towards the source of Eygor's dead-speak, and checking that his footprints lay clear in the dust behind him. 'But we don't all give in to them. '
Which is of course the difference between us, the other came back at once. For where mere men are not obliged to vent their passions, 1 was Wamphyri.
Tell me your story,' said Nathan. 'I've had some of it, from someone who knows all the history of Turgosheim, but not the end of it. That is the mystery. How did you die, Eygor?'
I died as I lived - as I was, yes, obliged to live - cruelly, even by Wamphyri standards. For I died at the hands of my own bloodsons. Would you hear of it?
That's why I'm here,' Nathan told him.
Then I'll not keep you. It was like this: I had the evil eye. Only show me a man, a target, Szgany, and I could crush him with a glance. Such was the energy of my Wamphyri mind, I could store it up and release it from my eyes like lightning - like a poisoned dart - to wrench my targets and stop their hearts! Do you believe me?
Nathan shrugged. 'Why should you lie - ?' he began.
Just so, Eygor cut him off.
'- You poor, "blameless" creature . . . '
The other's turn to shrug. Well then, perhaps not entirely blameless. But . . . it was my leech! With a creature like that inside me, how might I deny myself? Why, even 'aesthetes' such as Maglore are still Wamphyri. '
And how well Nathan knew it! By now he had descended to the heart of Madmanse, where he paused in a hall with a walled well. But when he held his torch out over the low wall, he saw that the irregular throat of the pit was choked with boulders. The place could hardly be a real well, not this far from Turgosheim's lowest levels, but had more the look of a methane chamber or refuse pit. So why had it been sealed? Nathan's thoughts were deadspeak, of course, which Eygor heard and answered: It was sealed to . keep me down! The dead thing's nightmare voice was very close now, gurgling like a sucking swamp. You've come as close as you can get to me, Nathan Seersthrall, except in your dreams. A stinking refuse pit, aye: the tomb of Eygor Killglance!
Suddenly the darkness was alive with unseen presences. The smoke from Nathan's torch writhed into unearthly shapes as if he'd breathed through it, or as if some draught had come moaning into the room. Except his breathing was more or less controlled, and if there had been a draught, he hadn't felt it. A moment ago, he'd thought to feel the clinging touch of cobwebs where they hung in festoons from the low ceiling, but as the flame of his torch melted them away, they were replaced by the fingers of some invisible wraith which brushed him as gently and secretly as a lover. It was as if something tried to know him, to be sure of his presence, his identity.
Ah, yesss! Eygor's voice seethed in his mind. And now you feel it, which all of the others felt before you. But you feel it more, for you are the Necroscope.
'What . . . was that?' Nathan had been holding his breath.
This place was mine, said the other. The porous stone, the very air. I was part of it and it was part of me. My breath and my sweat seeped into it, so that even now it remembers me. What was it? Call it my spirit, if you will. It has no form and cannot hurt you. But it guards this place for me and no one else shall ever dwell here, until those sons of mine return.
Nathan felt enclosed, strangled, dizzy. It was the smoke, the claustrophobia of the old, echoing place. He moved back a little from the choked pit. But at the same time, to keep the other engaged and know his mind: 'How did your bloodsons kill you?' he inquired. 'And why?'
Because they were cowards! And because . . .
'Yes?'
Perhaps I was hard with them . . . But it's a hard world (he was quick to defend unspoken brutalities) in which I wanted my sons to be strong. And so they were strong in the end, but not as I intended. They were strong against me! I should have seen it coming: they were lieutenants and would be Lords, and their father was the one thing that stood in their way.
Wran played the gentleman: he used his fine clothes as a shield against me, like the snobbery of a 'superior' whelp! As for Spiro; he dressed in rags, and made himself pitiful before me so that I would not strike him. Like a young male wolf, he wriggled on his back before the leader of the pack. But there was treachery in both of them. It was . . . my evil eye. Above all else, they feared that. Having seen it used against common thralls, they believed that one day I might. . .
'Use it against them?'
Eygor chuckled, as evil a 'sound' as Nathan ever heard. One thing to kill a mere man with a glance, he said, but something else entirely to kill a true vampire that way. Occasionally I lashed out at them, I admit it, but against them my eye was like a whip on the shaggy backs of dogs: it made them yelp, no more than that. But they felt my power growing stronger day by day, and finally I stung them once too often.
They gave me strong drink to deaden my senses, poisoned my food with silver, and while I lay in a coma . . . blinded me! Hot irons fried the surface of my eyes, until I leaped shrieking awake! And they taunted me as I followed after them in my agony, weeping acid tears and stumbling like a fool through the inky blind blackness of Madmanse.
Then . . . they were close and I sensed it. They stood right there before me, only a few paces away. I formed my hands into talons and rushed at them. And . . . they had brought me here, to a refuse pit! My legs struck the wall which you see before you; I fell! And while 1 lay at the bottom, broken in the mire, Wran and Spiro choked the pit with boulders.
For half a year I lived on muck and bones. And while my metamorphic flesh was still willing, 1 gathered to me the remnants of extinct creatures: th
e armour of warriors, and all of that which you saw in your dream. I made a giant of myself, my plan being to break out. But the pit was as deep as my 'food' was bad, so that my strength waned even as my size increased.
As for my eyes, I would repair them. But nothing I fashioned was nearly so good, and all of the evil had been burned right out of them. Finally I was starved. Too weak to struggle on, at last I slumped against the wall, where in the course of fifty years J commenced my stiffening. Thus Eygor KiJJgJance became the mummy-thing which you saw in your dream . . .
Nathan, who was almost inured to horror now, nodded and said, 'Your just deserts. '
You think so? Ah, but you're a hard one. ' And what of my bastard bloodsons? Should they go unpunished?
'Punished? They should be destroyed utterly!' Nathan answered. 'Not for what they did to you but for what they've done - and what they're doing even now - to Olden Sunside in the west. '
Ahhh! said Eygor, and Nathan read approval in his sigh. And so we are of a mind after all!
Nathan's torch was wavering; he turned to go, to follow his own tracks back the way he'd come. Wait! Eygor begged him.
'For what?' Nathan kept going, putting distance between. 'We've nothing in common. There's no way you can help me. But I sense that you would help yourself, even now!'
Nathan, it can be yours . . .
With his foot on a bottom step, Nathan paused. 'What can be mice?'
The evil eye of Eygor Killglance. I've read your dreams, your wildest flights of fancy, and know that you'd make war on the Wamphyri. But only think . . . what a weapon it would make. '
To kill men with a glance? To be a monster as you were a monster?'
But you said it yourself: 'All men have urges, but some control them. ' You, the Necroscope, would control this special urge. My power would be yours to use for good, not evil!
'I don't want it. ' Nathan climbed away from the voice, through the hollow shell of Madmanse.
But now that you know it's there you will, eventually.
And now that you know where I am, you'll be able to find me always. I'll never be far away, Nathan, wherever you are.
'Suppose I did . . . want it? What then? How would you give me your power? And what would you want in return?'
Oh, I would give it to you, never fear. And in return . . . my freedom1.
'Freedom? From what? You're a dead thing. ' "Away from the miasma of Eygor's mind, Nathan's dizziness quickly cleared. He went faster, and as he approached the outer wall and light came in from the gorge, so the other's deadspeak began to fade and break up. It wasn't so much that Eygor couldn't reach him, but that Nathan no longer desired to be reached. He felt that he'd escaped - but just in time - from something which would damn his soul forever.
My freedom from that, from death itself! Eygor was desperate now. You can do it, Nathan. I heard it from the Thyre, carried on their dreaming deadspeak thoughts . . . you, the Necroscope . . . it for Rogei . . . Cavern of the Ancients . . . . as a dead thing, too . . . gave him life . . . . ou willed it, you and Rogei together . . . because you needed . . . he was alive!
Nathan had heard enough. 'Return you to life? Never!' His torch went out and he ran in near-darkness to the final stairwell. And the night-dark spirit of the place was right behind him, snapping at his heels.
Not now but . . . some future time. If you should need me, I. . . here. All I ask . . . don't forget me . . .
Panting, trembling, Nathan came up into Runemanse, which seemed a healthy place now - almost. But in his metaphysical mind, burning like ice: Don't forget meeeeee! It was Eygor's last word, for the moment at least.
Nathan fled to the great hall, slowed down a little and headed wearily for his room. But in the passageway he ran into Orlea, who caught his arm to steady him. She saw his condition but made no comment except to tell him, 'Maglore wants you . . . '
In his spacious apartments Maglore paced to and fro, not worriedly but perhaps contemplatively, as if he deliberated upon some course of action. Approaching him, Nathan wondered what was on his mind. He suspected that this would not be the best time to try reading it, which was confirmed almost at once.
'Mentalism,' Maglore said enigmatically, but as yet not threateningly. He came to a halt, crooked a finger, and beckoned Nathan closer. 'Telepathy. There was a time when I asked you if you knew the meaning of it, to which you answered no. '
Nathan's shields were up, his thoughts impregnable. 'I remember, master. '