Invaders

by Brian Lumley

  “But now Malinari’s concentration was rapt on that column of fire-smoke rising ahead. I saw what he saw, or so I thought: a fire-mountain, black against white, where the snow had melted from its flanks.

  “Then, suddenly, Malinari hauled on his reins, rose up and to one side and climbed in a spiral. I quickly joined him, but when I might have questioned him—or rather, as my mind framed its concern—he held up a hand to silence me. And now his mental probes were venting in such powerful bursts from Malinari’s mind that I could ‘hear’ bis questions, which he asked of some unseen other:

  “Who are you, in the mountain there? What do you here? Is this your territory, and if so by what right? By right of conquest, or simply because you are here?

  “And the answer came back with such force, in such a doomful cadence that we knew, my master and I, this was no middling intelligence or power which he had discovered:

  “It is my territory because it is mine. That is my right. If you dispute it, then come on by all means. I have creatures to shatter you in pieces. Or go away, and I shall perhaps leave you in peace—and in one piece. As to who I am: I am who I am. As to what I was: I was the first, even though I may not be the last. I have been here a thousand years, which is my sole right to this place and sufficient. So begone!

  “Then with a hiss Malinari ceased all telepathic sendings. And I felt his guards go up as he turned and gazed wide-eyed at me. ‘I know him!’ he said, his jaws agape. ‘Something of him is in all of us!’ And for a moment that was all he said … .

  “Then I spied a pair of great white bears at the edge of a frozen lake. They had broken a hole in the ice and were fishing in the black water. I pointed them out to Malinari, and he took us down to hover over our prey. The bears, startled by our sudden arrival, took to the water and vanished under the ice. Malinari was quick to dismount; he waited at the hole until one of the bears lifted her head. Then my master struck—struck with the strength of three or four men—and his gantlet crushed in the bear’s ear and the side of its head. Brained, the huge creature was dead in the water. We dragged it onto the ice in time to see the bear’s mate surface. This time, in the moment before Malinari delivered his devastating blow, the great white beast roared its fury and raked his forearm. Containing his pain, my master wrapped his torn limb. Then, as we ate bear heart while our flyers sipped blood, he said:

  “‘My wound is slight, and it will heal quickly. His won’t ever. The strongest survive. You are a strong one, Korath, and quick-sighted. So you survive. If you had not seen these bears, perhaps you would not survive. For I wish to stay here awhile, to explore these ice castles, and blood and flesh are the fuels I burn. If not the flesh of bears, what then?’ And his red eyes gloomed on me.

  “Understanding him well enow, I deigned not to answer.”

  “And explore we did, but what we found … !

  “‘Korath,’ my master said, as we entered an ice-encased cavern. ‘Before I sensed the Greater Power in yonder fire-mountain—if it is a living fire-mountain, for I fancy the smoke is of man’s making rather than Nature’s—I sensed lesser thoughts, dreamier thoughts, from this frozen cave. Aye, and from others near and far. Who sleeps, I wonder, in such places?’

  “We soon found out.

  “Locked in the ice where he had frozen himself solid—completely encased, indeed buried in the clear ice—we found the much-reduced body of what was once a Lord of the Wamphyri! Wrinkled he was; his skin as white as snow, whose deep corrugations were like some strange pale leech’s. And so we knew that he had been here for long and long. But strangely, his eyes were open, however glazed-over. And:

  “‘Here we have one such dreamer,’ said Malinari, and even his voice was hushed in this cold and echoing chamber. ‘Except he doesn’t so much dream as nightmare.’

  “‘A dreamer, master?’ I said. ‘But surely he is dead?’

  “‘Eh?’ He raised a scornful eyebrow. ‘Where is your faith, Korath? Is it likely that Nephran Malinari is mistaken? And for that matter, where is your faith in the Wamphyri, in their tenacity, their longevity? I heard this one’s thoughts, I tell you—and I sensed his fear! No, he is not dead. Now look there.’

  “I looked where he pointed.

  “The ancient sat behind twelve or fifteen feet of ice. But level with his ribs, a row of holes some two to three inches in diameter had been drilled a third of the way through to him. On the floor, the accumulated ice chippings were heaped into small mounds directly beneath the holes.

  “And Malinari said: ‘I don’t think we need puzzle over the look of horror on his face. Something has been busy here, doing its best to get at him! But this ice is centuries old and hard as iron, and he chose his niche well. When it is time to freeze ourselves—when our food is used up—we must do the same … .’

  “‘Time to … to freeze ourselves?’ I repeated him.

  “He looked at me. ‘In this cold place, only one way to survive the centuries. Like this one, we go down into the ice. But first we put some distance between.’

  “And like a fool, I repeated him again: ‘Between?’

  “But he only nodded musingly, and said, ‘Between ourselves and Shaitan, aye. A thousand years ago and more he was banished here, and now lives in that fire-mountain. Others like this one, who came before or since, have found their own ways to live out the years: they sleep in the ice. But Shaitan is awake! Can you doubt it was a creature of his did this drilling? Well, he has the mountain’s warmth and shelter, and no doubt defends it with just such beasts as did this. And here we are starvelings, with just one dead warrior to sustain us. So it’s the ice for us, be sure. But not here, not this close to Shaitan in his fire-mountain.’

  “Following which we returned to the bears and loaded their drained carcasses aboard our flyers, then flew back to rendezvous with Vavara and Szwart … .

  “Malinari told his colleagues what we had found. He convinced them that indeed Shaitan the Unborn held dominion in the west, and they agreed, however reluctantly, with his long-term plan of survival. As Vavara pointed out: ‘We shall only know if we are successful when we wake up. And if we don’t, we weren’t.’

  “The warrior lasted some little time, while we gradually stripped the flesh from its bones. Eventually its flensed ribs formed the framework of an ice house, which in the next blizzard became one with the landscape. But toward the end Malinari, Vavara, Szwart, and the others were weary of all this and ready for ice-encasement. Meanwhile they had explored the local terrain, discovering an ice-cavern that suited their purpose.

  “There in a niche, broad at the front, narrowing to nothing in the rear, we positioned ourselves. In front, the three lieutenants (they were down to three now); then the flyers all in a huddle, and behind and beneath their shielding wings Malinari and his Wamphyri colleagues. Myself, I was positioned on a ledge overlooking the rear of the niche.

  “So stationed, the lieutenants would be the first to feel any exploratory stab from outside the ice. With any luck their physical agonies would transfer mentally and be ‘heard’ by Malinari. He and the others might then be able to melt themselves free by will alone … if they retained sufficient strength.

  “But the surest way to remain alive and intact down all the unknown and unguessable years to come would be to fashion such an ice-shield as could not be broken into and looted. To this end the Wamphyri trio willed a mist like none before. It swirled up from the ice-layered floor, down from the festoons of jagged icicles in the cavern’s roof, out from the crystalized walls, but mainly from their own pores. And drawn down by their massed will to where we sat in our places, the mist solidified to form layer upon layer of ice, thick and thicker far than the sheath we had seen in the hidy-hole of the ancient.

  “For long and long I watched it forming—until my eyes were frozen and I saw no more … .

  “We woke up!

  “The ice was melting, and the air … was warmer! Still cold, but warmer. Two lieutenants were dead—the true death,
aye—and three flyers. Well, the third and last lieutenant, barring myself, was useless without a mount. He was Szwart’s man, and though his blood was pale and slow, still it flowed … until Szwart stilled it forever.

  “Then the three great Vampires drained him, and I had my fill of his shrivelled flesh. Shrivelled, desiccated, sunken in: such was the case with all of us, our flyers, too. But at least we lived.

  “And the great cave dripped with running water, and outside—

  “Such a transformation! Over the far southern horizon, a glow as was never before seen from the Icelands. It could only be the sun, but visible in the sky however low to the horizon. Malinari and Vavara felt its rays at once; not so much a burning as a severe irritation. It was the great distance, and the dimness of the glow through a mist over the ocean. But it must be said that Lord Szwart suffered, until he covered himself in his robe, averted his eyes and retreated into gloom. His suffering was more mental than physical, I fancy.

  “There were bears in some profusion, many with cubs, and even a fox or two, snowy white where they scavenged for sprats at the water’s rim. And great fishes as big as warriors spouting in the sea. ‘More than sufficient of food,’ said Malinari, ‘to fuel us on our journey home.’

  “And Szwart wanted to know: ‘What has happened here?’

  “‘A freak in the weather,’ my master told him. ’It is the only answer. And it is our freedom to return to Starside!’

  “‘We were banished,’ said Vavara, who had been a hag, but already was regaining much of her former beauty.

  “‘Aye, long and long ago,’ said Malinari. And he took her down to the ice house in the ribs of our long-extinct warrior.

  Gnawed on by bears, wolves, foxes, whatever, its bones had collapsed to nothing and lay flat to the cold slurry. And: ‘An hundred years,’ said Malinari. ‘Or two, or three—or maybe more! And our enemies in Starside? Killed off by now in their bloodwars. And that diseased old tyrant, Dramal Doombody: by now he is no more, sloughed away to rot and ruin. But we, the forgotten of Starside, go on. We are survivors, Vavara. And we shall return!’

  “And we did. But before then we flew west to explore Shaitan the Unborn’s fire-mountain. This was only made possible by his absence; Malinari no longer sensed his presence in the extinct volcano, and the smoke of his fires no longer rose up. We found mighty vats of plasma; once frozen, they were now rancid, crawling with maggots, and gave offence. These and other signs of fairly recent habitation told of a Being not long moved on.

  “‘It seems that he, too, has returned into Starside,’ was Lord Szwart’s opinion.

  “But be that as it may, we never found him there … .”

  23

  NATHAN’S WAR

  In the sump of the once-refuge (and yet not really there, for in fact Jake Cutter was asleep and uneasily dreaming in a jet-copter speeding east towards Brisbane across the vastly sprawling Simpson Desert), Harry Keogh’s deadspeak voice once again startled Jake from the weird reverie induced by Korath Mindsthrall’s story:

  You’ve done well, Korath, and we are almost finished now, Harry said.

  Almost? The vampire answered gloomily, by now perhaps resignedly. What more can you possibly want of me?

  Well, we know what you failed to find when you returned to Starside, the ex-Necroscope, or rather his revenant—or better still this facet of him—answered. You didn’t find Shaitan or any others of the Wamphyri, and you certainly didn’t find their aeries! Instead you found the hollow stumps of those once-great stacks, which you, your master, and his colleagues were obliged to use as temporary dwelling places. Then, once again, you commenced raiding on Sunside’s Szgany. You can take it from there.

  But it scarcely seems worthwhile, Korath protested. For it appears you already know it all!

  Not all of it. (The shake of an incorporeal head.) How did Malinari and the others fair on Sunside, for instance? We would like to know how the Szgany … welcomed them? Also, we want to know what made those three Great Vampires desert Starside, risk their necks by venturing into the ill-omened subterranean Gate, and come here. And since you were involved, who better to ask?

  Very well, Korath grated, his patience all but used up. If it would please you——It would, Harry told him. And it would serve to keep us here a while longer at least.

  Then, with a sigh, Korath put the finishing touches to his tale:

  “We flew home, to what had been our home. You are correct: the aeries were gone, like vast stone corpses fallen on the barren boulder plains. And arriving in the hour before sunup, we were obliged to find shelter in their shattered stumps.

  “The Desmodus colonies were still there, and we found ourselves greeted by descendants of the descendants of our former familiars. At least they were the same! And like the bats themselves, we sheltered from the sun (which seemed to rise marginally higher in the sky) in their lowly crumbling caverns in the echoing basement levels of the shattered stacks.

  “Night came, and with it the fear that perhaps the Szgany were no more: that they, too, might have succumbed to whatever disaster was befallen here. But when we flew to the higher ridges of the barrier mountains and looked down on Sunside—

  “—Ah! But the Szgany were there, and in such numbers!

  “Their campfires—and in many cases more permanent town or settlement fires—lit the night like so many glowworms in the dark of forests which, in our time, had not seen so much as a nightlight, but only the telltale smoke of cottage or caravan stoves! And here they were all joyous, juicy, and fearless, our beloved Szgany of Sunside. The sounds of their music drifted up to our keen vampire ears, and the smells of their cooking—and of them—to our wide, straining nostrils. Ah, that was a beautiful moment!

  “And Malinari said: The Wamphyri are gone. We three alone of all the Great Vampires survive.’ (He excluded me, of course.) ‘Do you see, Vavara? We are survivors, the only survivors! And so I was right.’

  “‘And now we go down,’ whispered Szwart, ‘to the feast!’

  “But: ‘Ah, no, not so,’ said The Mind, holding up a cautionary hand. ‘Those tribes down there, they do not know we are back. If we raid here, now, then they will know. And next time will be that much harder. But we have aeries to build and furnish, lieutenants and thralls to recruit, warrior creatures and flyers to breed in our vats—hah! When we have first discovered or dug vats, in the wreckage of those shattered stumps!

  “‘Also, you must ask yourself what happened here. Did the Wamphyri destroy themselves or were they destroyed? And if the latter, by whom? The Szgany? Ah, no, Lord Szwart, having survived the Icelands, I am in no great hurry to show myself here. For my thoughts have gone out and found an odd sense of security and freedom in the Szgany. Why, they are unafraid! Perhaps because they no longer have reason to be afraid. Which in turn might mean that we do. Wherefore we must be cautious and first discover the secret of these changes in the scheme of things.’

  “‘So what would you suggest?’ Szwart hissed. That we sit here all night and admire their fires?’

  “Malinari shook his head. Those tribes down there, close-packed in this central area of Sunside. If we raid on one, then by morning all of them will know. And we need time to reestablish ourselves. So this is what we will do. Tonight we split up. Vavara raids in the far west, you in the east, but this side of the great pass. I shall raid beyond the pass. And we glut, aye, but mainly we recruit—we recruit furiously, taking as many as we can. We share our spoils equally, building together, allies by circumstance as we have always been. This way, gradually, we shall discover what’s what here: how things stand, and why they seem so different now. Is it agreed?’

  “After some small haggling it was so agreed, and as Malinari had decreed we recruited ‘furiously.’ We converted men into thralls, from whose ranks we chose lieutenants; these were soon able to make more thralls—and so on. And we stockpiled drink and foodstuffs (aye, and other good stuff) out of Sunside, and put a taskforce to work digging in th
e rubble-strewn stumps of the old fallen stacks, building walls around our chosen habitations and roofing them over.

  “During all of this construction, occasionally our workers would uncover vats, gas-beast chambers, or cocooned matter from yesteryear. Of course, the greater mass of the once-living material was putrid, no longer useable; some of it, however, contained a spark and was digestible, assimilable by newer, fresher material out of Sunside. And so we progressed.

  “But time passed, and word of our presence also passed—from tribe to tribe and clan to clan—until all the peoples of Sunside knew that the Wamphyri were back in Starside. It didn’t take long, say ten or twelve sundowns.

  “Meanwhile we had recruited some eight hundred men, women, and children. Moreover, deep beneath the foundations of a toppled aerie, our workers had discovered a cache of well-preserved metamorphic liquids requiring little more than imprinting—an infusion of essence and a few nodes of rudimentary intelligence—to stimulate growth. And now we could fill the vats with vampiric life.

  “First we made flyers, successfully! And later we tried for warriors, but that was when the trouble started. It was a tribe known for its aggressive nature in the olden times, and no less ferocious now: the Szgany Lidesci, whose territory lay mid-west of Sunside in fertile forests under cavern-riddled foothills.

  “Apparently the Lidescis had found a hero, a youth or man called Nathan Kiklu, who had ventured into forbidden places and returned with awesome weapons. It was a story we heard over and over again from thralls recruited in Sunside: how this Nathan’s brother had been Wamphyri—Lord Nestor, of an aerie so mighty it could only have been Dramstack, or whatever it was called in his time—and how he had contrived to hurl his Szgany sibling into the Hell-lands Gate.

  “Well, the Gate was a legend; in our time it had been used as a punishment, and no man or creature who entered, ‘banished’ into the white glare of the Starside Gate, had ever returned to tell of his adventures. But that was then and this was now, and for a certainty this Nathan was extant; all too soon, we would begin to experience his works at firsthand.