The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  Now the creature’s jaws cracked open and yawned wide, and its teeth were visible like row upon row of long white needles, receding into its scarlet throat. Teeth like that could strip a man’s flesh to the bone, leaving his face or limbs flensed in a moment. But even now the thing was not as awesome as Wratha’s guardian beasts.

  You are mine! Nestor told it. I have Vasagi’s egg. Stand aside, for I would pass. Likewise these men with me, who are my friends … for now at least. He took another breathless pace forward—

  —And the creature flowed to meet him!

  Its wings opened, but they were not wings. From its forearms and underarms, down the sides of its body to its knees or where knees would be in a man, a thick webbing of flesh formed furry blankets which were like wings on both sides of the creature’s body. Superficially, they were wings. But in reality, they were traps!

  On Sunside there were flowers which functioned similarly; they had spined, fleshy petals that closed on insect victims to devour them. But this thing wasn’t designed to devour insects—and the Sunside flowers weren’t intelligent and mobile!

  Under the “wings,” before they closed on him, Nestor saw that the pink worms were merely the tips of a nest of lashing tentacles based around the dark orifice of a grinding, suctorial mouth. The thing had two mouths, only one of which was in its face. Then the tentacles locked him in, trapping his arms and crushing him to that more immediate mouth where its huge, quivering lips tasted him!

  For a moment—a single moment—Nestor was deaf, dumb, and blind. He was nauseated by the smell of rotting meat, the stench of an open stomach, the slick feel on his skin of some bio-acidic solution. A single moment … before the guardian released him, folded its flaps and flowed back from him in a confused fashion, blinked furnace eyes hesitantly, then shuffled backwards into its niche and cowered down.

  Nestor might have staggered a little, but Canker had come forward and was holding his elbow. “Excellent!” the dog-thing growled. “Vasagi’s beast acknowledges its new master.”

  Nestor’s skin was crawling head to toe, but he and Canker went on. And behind them, the thing in the dark archway opened its flaps again, lashed its tenatacles and hissed menacingly as Wran and Spiro followed—until Nestor turned and cautioned it: Be quiet! Did I not say that these men were with me?

  And as the thing fell silent and shrank back, so the four proceeded down into Suckscar …

  At the end of the short corridor, two more of Vasagi’s creatures were tethered in niches set back a little from the main passage. They were not too unlike Wratha’s personal guardians: brutal, ferocious things that howled and gibbered, tearing at their chains as Nestor and the others came into view. Their new master spoke to them at once, saying:

  “I am the Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri. Vasagi’s egg—and all of Vasagi’s things—are mine. Now what is this commotion? Desist … or suffer!” It was enough; the warriors sniffed him out and at once fell silent, shuffling uncomfortably in their places.

  Wran and Spiro were frankly astonished. Being Wamphyri, of course they too could have calmed the beasts … given sufficient time to threaten, cajole, and work on them. But Nestor had no experience of such things; even with Vasagi’s egg, still he was a newcomer here; and yet he instinctively, almost automatically fitted into place. And: “Yes,” Wran told him, “I think you’ll do very well indeed, in Suckscar.” But his scarlet eyes were shrouded. For it seemed to Wran that perhaps Nestor would do just a little too well here …

  Thralls and lieutenants alike had heard the rowing warriors. Two of the latter came at the run just as Nestor and the others entered Suckscar’s main hall. They were massive men, as are all the chosen lieutenants of the Wamphyri, so that Nestor felt dwarfed among his three companions and these newcomers. But the lieutenants, seeing Canker, Wran, and Spiro, skidded to a halt, looked at each other, and approached more cautiously.

  While they were still out of earshot, Canker warned, “Now comes the real test. For these are not dumb beasts but men, and they have brains that think. Better let me handle it, for now at least.”

  “Who goes there?” said one, the biggest of the two. “You Lords are trespassers! Unless Gore Sucksthrall accompanies you—and possibly even then—you have no business here. Vasagi would never have deigned to invite you.” He pointed at Nestor and scowled. “And what, pray, is that?”

  Despite Canker’s warning, Nestor narrowed his eyes and made to step forward; but the dog-thing got in his way. “You lads had better listen,” he coughed. “The Suck’s no more, for Wran the Rage killed him. Which I don’t need to tell you, for I’m sure someone at least must have been at a window, waiting for Vasagi to return out of Sunside. Ah, but while the Suck is gone, his egg goes on, for it fled into Nestor here—or the Lord Nestor, to you.”

  Their mouths fell open. But after a moment the bigger one spoke up again. “Oh, really? And this one’s come to claim Suckscar, right? Well, Lords Canker, Wran, Spiro, no disrespect to you, but I am Zahar, third-in-command in Suckscar after Gore. And I say to you that I myself could eat this one!” He prodded Nestor in the chest with a hard finger. “And as for when Gore Sucksthrall sees him …”

  He threw back his head and laughed, and went to prod Nestor again. But Nestor was lightning fast; he caught the offending finger in a clenched fist and bent it back all in one movement, so that it broke with a loud crack! Then, as Zahar howled and fell to his knees, Nestor kicked him as hard as he could in the throat, which served to silence him and send him sprawling. In another moment, Nestor was down beside him on one knee, pinning his topknot to the stone floor; and in the next the sharp point of Nestor’s six-inch knife was pricking the bulge of the lieutenant’s throbbing Adam’s apple.

  Before, the knife in Nestor’s belt had seemed barely significant; a piffling toothpick, the Wamphyri Lords and Lady had ignored it. Like his crossbow, he wouldn’t dare consider using it against such as them. Ah, but their thralls were a different matter! And now:

  “Gore Sucksthrall is dead!” Nestor snarled. “I killed him! Now swear allegiance to me—and at once—or follow him into eternity!”

  “Gak … gak … urk!” said Zahar, holding up a trembling hand and arm. It might have been threatening or pleading, that hand, for it was the one with a dangling digit; whichever, Nestor couldn’t take any chances. He slashed at the tendons in the joint of the elbow, which showed through where leather sleeves came together, and the arm flopped uselessly to the floor. And fast as thought, Nestor caught the crippled hand and took the finger, so that its stump had barely started to spurt as he came lithely to his feet.

  Zahar writhed like a crippled snake on the floor, hissing and coughing but making no sensible noises whatever. His inability to answer made no difference, for as Nestor now told him, “Good! Then you are now my man. Now watch!” And he deliberately gashed his own thumb, and let the blood drip into the joint of Zahar’s arm and onto his bloody hand. “See now: blood of my own Wamphyri flesh. The power of renewal, so that your arm may heal itself and your hand be whole again. Why, I have even honoured you, Zahar; you could as well be a bloodson … well, of sorts! But my bloodson and not Vasagi’s, for Vasagi is no more. And so a fatherly word of warning: from this time forward cower as you approach me! And when you stand in my presence, be sure to make no threatening movements. For if you do, the first will be the last. Remember: even now you would be dead, except I need you to run my manse.

  Nestor turned his back on the writhing, crippled Zahar and faced the second of the two. And he saw how Canker had held him back, when he might have come to Zahar’s aid. Then, raising an eyebrow, as if in faint surprise, Nestor said, “What’s this? Do you molest a man of mine, Canker?” Canker released the lieutenant at once, and Nestor offered his hand and forearm in the old Szgany greeting.

  The other was young, not long out of Sunside; but already he was inches taller than Nestor, broad, well-muscled, grey of flesh, and feral-eyed: a vampire in his own right. Not Wamphyri, no, but
given a hundred years he might be. If he lived. He spoke up, but falteringly: “I’m Grig Sucksthrall … or I was.”

  He sensed the authority in Nestor—and possibly the presence of Vasagi’s egg, too—and was awed and disadvantaged by the hot eyes of so many Lords looking on. Then, remembering the ways of Sunside, he fumblingly went to grasp Nestor’s profferred forearm. But no, Nestor grasped Grig’s hand instead and pressed Zahar’s severed digit into his palm. And as Grig’s jaw dropped, Nestor told him:

  “Eat it! Accept my food and live, and take shelter with me in Suckscar—or deny me now and suffer the consequences. But what’s this? Do you tremble? Ah, don’t worry! I shall not kill you but set you free on the boulder plains, to take your chances with the lowest of the low and live like a trog in a crevice. How shall it be?”

  Grig looked at the bloody finger in his grey hand, then at Zahar, who had struggled to a seated position, where now he was bent forward, rocking himself to and fro and moaning. And finally: “Lord,” he told Nestor, “Zahar is my friend … !”

  “Friend? Friend?” Nestor looked astonished. “And am I to be known as the Lord Nestor, who gives shelter to friends? No, I desire no friends in my house but only thralls and obedient lieutenants—who eat or go hungry at my command!” He stared hard, severely at the other. “For the last time, then: what’s it to be?”

  There and then Grig ate Zahar’s finger. And because Nestor held his gaze the while, he scarcely grimaced at all …

  4

  Suckscar

  Nestor sent Grig and Zahar off, to tend to the latter’s damaged hand and arm. And then the four Lords explored Suckscar.

  Wran, Spiro, and Canker had all been here before—but just the once—the day they arrived here along with Wratha, Vasagi, and their lieutenants, a handful of flyers and another of warriors, out of the east. Then, mainly at Wratha’s direction or insistence (the great stack had been sorely in need of repairs and maintenance, which she’d wanted set to rights at once), they’d moved in and laid claim to the various levels. And Suckscar had become Vasagi’s.

  He had named the five levels which made up his section of the stack out of admiration for their dramatic external appearance: they were deeply scarred from front to back (or south to north) with massive downward-slanting gouges, almost as if the sun rising over the barrier mountains had steamed their outer layers away like vampire flesh. But in fact the sun had never risen so high as to light on Suckscar’s levels; it was simply the result of the natural tilt of the rock layers, which were somewhat softer here, and the weathering of centuries and even millennia. Now these five levels, set immediately over Canker Canison’s Mangemanse, belonged to Nestor, and he explored them eagerly.

  In the first level he saw the great communal hall, where common thralls dwelled in caverns in the outer immensity of the perimeter wall, and a sweeping rock-hewn staircase the width of the hall itself led up to Vasagi the Suck’s once-private chambers. At the top and to the sides of the staircase were warriors or guardians of a unique design, which in function were similar to the creature in the stairwell encountered during the descent from Wratha’s landing bays. They looked like thick brown rugs sewn up from the skins of bears, but rugs don’t creep.

  As Nestor climbed the stairs, so these creatures flowed inwards along the upper steps, closing on him. But their stealth was such that when, halfway up, he paused to stare at them, the things were only rugs again! At which Canker Canison, who accompanied Nestor, sniffed the air and went more cautiously, pointing out: “More of the Suck’s things, aye. He was a master of metamorphism, that one …”

  Then Nestor climbed diagonally, almost threateningly, towards the closer of the two guardians, commanding it: Come on, then, and we’ll see what manner of creature you are! And creepingly, silently, the creature flowed down from above; likewise its twin on the other side, converging on him …

  Until the last moment, when suddenly they reared up! And then Nestor saw just how thick they were: like doughy blankets of flesh—like great bears, yes, but with their skeletal frames extruded and their flesh spread out, thick in the center and thin as membrane at the edges—with great bands of grey muscle rippling on the underside. And bearlike in their general structuring, too, except their legs and arms were boneless, supported only by springy cartilage, but sufficiently agile to lift and thrust themselves upon hapless victims.

  More: Nestor saw their mouths. Like the guardian in the stairwell, they had more than sufficient of those; or precisely sufficient, considering Vasagi’s purpose in creating them. For all these creatures consisted of was mouth, stomach and crushing muscle, and tiny red eyes, hidden in the topside fur. The mouths were many, small, red and suctorial, without teeth that Nestor could see; or if they were toothed then these were small and inconspicuous; but the drool which they issued smoked where it touched stone, so that Nestor knew it was acidic. And then he understood.

  Wrapped in a creature such as this, a man would be completely immobilized—fixed like a fly in honey, smothered and softened by digestive juices—and finally slurped away until his flensed bones were discarded in a clattering heap! But Nestor was no such victim.

  His egg, by now the merest tadpole of a leech, was strong and growing stronger by the moment. Its strength was Nestor’s, who was strong in his own right. Suckscar’s guardian creatures had been Vasagi’s and now were his, all of them. And they must be made to understand that he’d suffer no more threats, not in his own house!

  Standing his ground, he coughed up a great gob of phlegm to spit into the poisonous heart of the monster rearing before him! And turning on his heel, he pointed a commanding, threatening finger and issued a mind-blast that sent the other beast shrinking back from him: BEGONE!

  Something of Vasagi was in him, and just like the Suck’s other weird constructs, these things knew it. They collapsed like piles of fur to the steps, and bellied back from Nestor, grovelingly to their accustomed places. And now there was no one and nothing in Suckscar to say him no.

  Canker was impressed, and followed even closer to heel as they went up to Vasagi’s old rooms over the great hall. Behind them, Wran and Spiro were nowhere in sight. They were exploring on their own, a fact which had not gone unnoticed by Nestor. As well to suffer their rudeness … for now, at least.

  At the top of the wide flight, cartilage balconies extended left and right, grafted to ledges in the rock which spanned halfway across the great hall just below the ceiling. Up here, Nestor would be able to move about, keeping watch over the industries of common thralls and lieutenants alike. Tunnels in the walls at the rear of the ledges led to lesser rooms, galleries, storehouses, dizzy observation platforms supported by cartilage buttresses, and landing bays and stables in the outer “skin” of the aerie, whose rock had been worn into those deep and impressive scars for which the manse was named.

  From the outermost turret, looking hard right (due south), Nestor spied the barrier mountains golden in their peaks, while on high the clouds over teetering Wrathspire were lined with silver and hazy with deadly sunlight. Such observations helped with his orientation: temporal, spatial, and mundane, all three. For just as he had begun to think of himself as invincible, he was reminded of his mortality and the sun’s destructive power. And when he’d momentarily considered himself magnificent, the stack’s awesome majesty had reduced him to a flea. From which time forward his excitement was somewhat reduced …

  This was as well, for after the view from the platforms, landing bays, and bartizans, Nestor found Vasagi’s rooms something of a disappointment; patently the Suck had not been one for luxuries but within Wamphyri parameters had been satisfied with a life of austerity. His bed was of stone slabs raised up, with a large depression hollowed in the middle and filled with the cured furs of Sunside animals. Beneath the bed was a fire hole containing a few scattered ashes. A blackened bone flue angled off from the head of the bed to join with another above a massive fireplace in the vastly thick outer wall. In a curtained corner niche
, a dark-stained hole angled down into the floor, from which issued the occasional draught of fresh air. It was just as well that the other end of this hole vacated in some lofty, inaccessible exit over the abyss, for it had been Vasagi’s toilet.

  From another room, hewn deeper into the stack’s porous outer sheath, a large, deep, circular window fitted with cartilage baffles gazed out in a northeasterly direction, showing on the one hand the barrier range dwindling into distance and on the other the far, dark-blue sheen of the aurora-lit Icelands horizon. There were rooms with wooden tables and chairs, and others with benches cut in the walls. A large sloping hall was enclosed behind an east-facing wall with a row of window holes admitting a maximum of light—and of air! Before being walled in, this draughty gallery had been one of the manse’s great scars; during the period of Vasagi’s occupation at least, it had become his studio. This was where the Suck had worked on the “designs” of his metamorphic creatures, before he gave them life in his vats. And as Nestor examined the huge and intricate paintings, he felt glad Vasagi had not invested all of them in flesh.

  The east wing of this one level had now been explored, and Nestor and Canker returned to the sweeping staircase down into the great hall. But as they descended a cry rang out, and Canker was galvanized into activity. “Hah! I had expected it,” he growled. “The brothers Killglance, scavenging!”

  “What?” Nestor looked at him. “You can only mean pillaging, surely? But I am the master here, and all that is here is mine. Would they dare?”

  Canker snorted. “Wratha was right: being here and existing here are different things. Unless you are sure of a person or thing, never invite him or it into your house! If you must, make sure he, or it, enters of his own free will. Which is to say: he faces the consequences of any transgressions, whether of his making or of yours! Letting the brothers in here, why, that was like giving them licence to work their will! Remember: Wran the Rage killed Vasagi. Already he may consider himself entitled to whatever’s on offer, while you as yet merely aspire.” He shrugged. “In my way, I tried to warn you.”