The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  Chung shook his head. “I’ve kept my tracking to a minimum, a glance at a time. But I can go to the map board and show you where he is—I mean right now! That’s what I was talking about when I said we could bring him out. Under cover of darkness. A stealth helicopter, a team of SAS men, and me; we’d be in and out before the comrades even knew we …”

  “Comrades?” Trask held up a hand. “And that’s what I meant when I said we could guide him out. But go in and snatch him? The way you’re talking, anyone would think we’re at war! We’re not, not even a cold war. In fact, with Gustav Turchin in the chair, we never had it so good. Which is why we daren’t go stirring it up now. But if we can get Nathan closer to the border …”

  Suddenly Trask couldn’t resist it. Shrugging himself down from the podium, he headed for the map board and said, “Show me where he is.”

  Chung beat him to it, got there as the huge screen flickered to life. He held Harry Keogh’s old hairbrush tightly in his left hand, reached up his right hand, and placed it flat on the screen in an area to the west of the northern Urals. Then he closed his eyes. A smaller screen inset at the bottom right of the wall screen blurred into grey life, waiting to indicate a specific region. The map overall was sensitive but wouldn’t react to Chung’s entire palm, only to a finger. And as Chung’s brow creased into a tight frown and his eyes screwed yet more tightly shut, so he drew his fingers together until his hand was raised up and only the index finger touched the screen.

  And: “There!” he said.

  The inset screen snapped into a clear, detailed chart of the indicated area, a grid some ten by ten kilometres. Trask pressed the “hold” button; Chung removed his hand; the small, magnified area on the inset screen defined Nathan’s location: an area of woodland, forest trails, frozen marshes.

  “So he’s somewhere in there,” Trask mused, his eyes rapt on the screen.

  “No, not ‘somewhere.’” Chung wasn’t known for his modesty in matters such as this. “He’s dead centre.”

  In the next moment both men became aware of the perfume of a third person close behind them. Zek Föener. “David,” she said. “Ben. Do you remember that time in Rhodes? Harry was in the Carpathians, and we wondered how he was doing?”

  The two men looked at each other, then at Zek. And Trask said, “You want to establish contact?”

  “Why not?” She was deadly serious. “You want to guide him out of there, don’t you? And you know that the longer it takes, the greater the danger. Even now his chances are slimming down. So if we can reach him, and if he’s willing …”

  Trask pulled at his chin. The other espers had gathered round, were watching intensely. “Do it,” Trask said. “But if you do get through, make it as brief as possible. First establish contact, then we’ll work out details which you can relay later.”

  Then:

  Trask had seen all of this before, but it was new to some of the others. Zek closed her hand over Chung’s with the hairbrush still in it, and he touched the fingertips of his right hand to the centre of the small screen. Then they closed their eyes, breathed deeply, and concentrated, concentrated …

  … And gasped in unison!

  Zek’s hand flew from Chung’s; both of them staggered back away from the wall screen; Trask caught their arms, steadying them. But when Zek looked at him he saw her expression change from a look of astonishment to one of wonder. And: “Numbers!” she said. “He may not know how to use them, but they’re part of him anyway. Certainly he knows how to hide behind them.”

  “Oh yes, that’s him,” Trask said, snatching a breath; and it surprised him, with all of his experience, to discover that he’d actually been holding it!

  “But he is hiding,” Zek repeated, “shielding his mind. And his shield is … very powerful. If I’m to get through, I shall need help.”

  Trask knew what she meant. A group effort, of concentrated will. And as she and Chung stepped closer to the screen, so the espers clustered to them, linked hands, and formed a semicircle with Zek, Chung, and Trask at its centre. And now Trask’s hand, too, covered those of the telepath Zek and the locator Chung. And once again Chung made contact with the screen—

  —And with Nathan!

  But this time they were ready; Zek forced her telepathic probe straight into, and through, the whirling wall of Nathan’s numbers vortex. His mind—at first surprised, then afraid—was revealed to her:

  Who … ?

  A friend, she sent. Even as I was your father’s friend.

  My father?

  The Necroscope, Harry Keogh.

  For a single moment the vortex was reinforced; it whirled that much harder, faster, and threatened to hurl her out. But in the next it collapsed, and at its core … Nathan was a wondering child. And Zek sighed, for to her touch his mind was the image of his father’s in the long ago: warm, vulnerable, innocent. But that had always been the paradox, and never more than at the end. Harry Keogh, vampire, and vulnerable. A Necroscope, who talked to dead people, yet warm. A man with the powers of a destroying angel—even an Angel of Death—but innocent.

  He read these things and more, and knew that she had known his father. But who was she?

  She opened her secret mind. And now it was Nathan’s turn to gasp. Zek! His astonishment rang in her mind. Lardis’s hell-lander friend! He still speaks of you! You were there, with the Travellers in Sunside! You fought alongside the Szgany, in the battle for The Dweller’s garden before I was born!

  She formed a picture for him, of what it had been like. And there was no disguising the fact that she had been there, for no one who didn’t know the Wamphyri could ever attempt so vivid a description, or conjure such depths of loathing. But then her woman’s curiosity took over:

  How old are you, Nathan?

  He told her.

  And now Zek could see it all. When The Dweller returned Jazz and myself home—when he brought us back here—Harry stayed behind a while, in your world.

  Nathan took it up. My father, Hzak Kiklu—at least, he was the one I was always led to believe was my father—had been mortally wounded. He was dead. But my mother …

  Zek sensed Nathan’s confusion, the wound that was opening in him—a feeling of betrayal?—and was quick off the mark to counter it. Nana Kiklu? Your mother? Still alive and well? But she’s an incredibly brave woman, Nathan! Oh, yes, I remember Nana! It was the aftermath; she was lonely and had suffered … a lot! But Harry had suffered, too, and in a way he’d lost more than anyone. So they were two of a kind, thrown together by forces beyond their control. Except … I’m sure there was a lot more to it than just that. Zek tried to be as understanding, yet as honest, as circumstances allowed. They must have fallen in love.

  She could feel Trask’s grip tightening on her wrist, and heard his whisper in her ear: “Get out of there! Don’t jeopardize him!”

  You’ve lured me. Nathan was very quiet now, almost accusing. I have to know everything. And you knew I would …

  Nathan, she answered. You know Trask. His mind is an open book. He reads truth in men. Surely you read the truth in him? You’ll come to no harm with us. We won’t use you. And from now on I won’t intrude upon you again … unless you ask me to.

  There was a long pause, and then: What do you want me to do? Where must I go?

  I’ll get back to you soon, Zek told him with a glad sigh. Please be ready …

  That night, the Gypsies made camp in a forest on the edge of a frozen marsh twenty miles east of Kozhva. In the caravan of their old, leathery leader, Nathan was an honoured guest.

  From the moment he’d spotted them from his hiding place in the back of the supply vehicle out of Perchorsk (and risked his neck leaping from the truck’s tailgate into a bank of snow at the side of the road), Nathan had known that these were his people. They were almost indistinguishable from the Szgany of Sunside. That had come as a shock to him, to find such people here. And an even greater shock to hear their spoken language, which had more of the Sunside to
ngue in it than the Russian he had been “learning” in Perchorsk.

  Languages were easy for Nathan; matching spoken words to mind pictures was a simple device, which he’d learned from the desert-dwelling Thyre in their colonies south of Sunside. Thus, almost from his first fumbled conversation with the men of the caravans, understanding had been mutual and friendship inevitable. But he had sensed that meeting up with them was far more than just a matter of good fortune; it had seemed almost predestined, so that now he asked the old chief:

  “How did you know?”

  The other cocked his head to one side and winked. He was all dark-stained leather, a glint of gold tooth, a plain gold ring in the lobe of his right ear, and more gold on his fingers. But … no silver? “Ah, and so you sensed that, did you? That we’d been waiting for you?” The old man chuckled. “Well, that’s my secret. It’s why I’m the chief!”

  Of course Nathan could look inside his head if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t. That was something else he’d learned from the Thyre: that except in circumstances of mutually agreed intercourse between friends or colleagues, or in times of extreme danger to the community as a whole, the privacy of the individual was ever sacrosanct. A glance might be permissible, acceptable, almost unavoidable, but never the wholesale ransacking of a mind’s contents. In a nutshell: it was unseemly to steal the private thoughts of others when simple speech would suffice. A person must always be given the opportunity to speak his mind.

  It was why Nathan had restricted the use of his telepathy to learning the language of these Travellers. They knew nothing of his mentalism, nor would he enlighten them. For if he should appear too clever, if he knew or understood too much too soon, it could well distance them. And in the event of their rejection—if they were to brand him a thought-thief-eventually he might find himself deprived not only of their friendship but possibly of his liberty, too. Nathan still thought in Sunside/Starside terms, and probably always would.

  So he said nothing but simply sat and waited, and was at last rewarded, in some small measure at least, when finally the weathered old chief said, “There are some strange places in the world, don’t you think?”

  “I know very little of the world,” Nathan answered after a moment’s thought. “In what way, strange? What places do you mean?”

  “Oh, just places.” The old chief shrugged, puffed on his clay pipe, and continued to be vague. He didn’t appear concerned about his guest’s obvious ignorance, his lack of knowledge generally, or even his occasionally strange manner of expression. “I’m talking about the old places, you know? The timeless old places. Places the Szgany know—some of the Szgany, anyway—and which they visit from time to time. Places they’ve always visited.”

  Nathan wasn’t sure how best to answer that, and so returned to studying his surroundings:

  The caravan was similar to vehicles he’d seen on Sunside: four wheels, beast-drawn, varnished and painted with intricate, flowing designs. Central to the interior, a wood-burning stove stood on legs which were bolted to the floor; a fire-blackened flue went up through a metal collar to a cowled chimney in the roof. Festooned on the outside with all sorts of pots and pans and other implements that jingled and gonged when it moved, the caravan had a curving roof of varnished boards in place of the water-proofed hides Nathan was used to. Other than that, and especially here in the forest, he might fancy himself back on Sunside.

  But no, it was far too cold for Sunside, and these people were only the descendants of true Travellers. Nathan saw that now—knew that it must be so—and wondered how long since the first of them had accompanied their banished Wamphyri masters out of Starside and into these hell-lands. Then they had been thralls and now were free. So … what of their old masters?

  “I’m a Ferengi, did you know?” The old man grinned.

  Nathan gave a small start. Perhaps his unspoken question had been answered. On Sunside the name had been a curse since time immemorial! Of course, for among the Wamphyri there had always been creatures of that selfsame ilk. Ferenc, Ferenczy, Ferengi: in all its forms the name was an evil invocation.

  “Vladi Ferengi, aye,” the chief nodded. “Last of a long, long line. The very last, for my woman was barren—or maybe I was!” He grinned and patted the front of his baggy trousers. “This firm old friend steamed hot enough in the romp, but his issue was cold and dead—maybe. But what does it matter, eh? I have no sons, and that’s the end of it. My people will stop going there. To the strange places.”

  “You mean that you won’t be here to lead them there?” Nathan was curious now.

  “That’s right. I won’t be here to hear the call.”

  An idea was beginning to take shape. “All of this seems to connect up,” Nathan said. “You are trying to explain something which you yourself don’t understand, in the hope that I might understand it for you. And maybe I do … well, some of it. But first you must tell me: are the Szgany Ferengi an old people? How long have you been … here?”

  “My grandfather’s great-great-grandfather was a Ferengi, aye,” the old one answered. “That’s as far back as I care to trace the line. But I’ve no doubt that he would say the same, if he were here now! How long, you ask? I’ve seen the Ferengi device carved in the mountains of the Khorvaty, which is one of the strange places. But such a device, eh? And old as the mountains themselves.”

  Nathan knew the sigil he referred to; he’d seen it carved in the timber frame of Vladi’s caravan, skillfully disguised in the intricate but flowing designs that were painted there: the head of a devil, with crimson eyes, bifurcate tongue, and grinning jaws that dripped gouts of blood. He put the picture aside and said, “The Khorvaty? Do you mean back there? That place in the pass, Perchorsk, where I … came from?”

  “Eh? Ah, no! Not there! Only feelings there, Nathan, and recent ones at that: a dozen or two of years at best. Feelings, my son, which have spawned nothing. I thought that perhaps this time—” he shrugged “—but it was only you.”

  Nathan nodded. Things continued to connect, however dubiously. He didn’t much care for the connection, but must pursue it anyway. Perhaps he could accelerate the process. “Should I tell you a word, a name?”

  The chief raised an eyebrow. “By all means.”

  “Wamphyri!”

  It had the desired effect. “An emissary!” Vladi leaned forward and grasped Nathan’s arm, his astonishing speed belying his age. “You are from them, their messenger between the worlds! The Old Ferengi is dead—long live the Ferengi! Now quickly, tell me: what message does he send? And when will he come?”

  Nathan saw it all now: Vladi and his people were descended from Wamphyri supplicants. And suddenly his skin crawled under the old chief’s gaze and touch. But he mustn’t show it; and anyway, it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know, couldn’t possibly remember after all this time the true nature of the being or beings they still waited to serve, as their fathers’ fathers had served before them.

  Forsaking ethics for a moment, Nathan allowed himself a single glimpse behind the old chiefs eyes, and saw:

  … The figure of a great man, hands on hips. Toweringly benevolent. And all the world’s Travellers at his feet, under his care, prosperous in their gleaming, painted caravans and proudly flying his banner: the devil’s head with its crimson eyes, forked tongue, and spattered gouts of blood.

  But in the light of the latter … perhaps Vladi and his people weren’t so innocent after all.

  “You’re waiting for the Ferengi,” Nathan said, but very slowly and carefully. “I can only tell you this: that he—they—would come if only they could be sure of their reception.” It was true enough, he was sure. But to himself: Except they believe this place is hell, and I shall never enlighten them!

  “Ahhh!” The old man released Nathan’s arm and fell back in his seat against the caravan’s side. “But … do they think we have forgotten them?” For a moment his huge black eyes were empty, but then they brightened. “Surely the Ferengi would not send
you here without that they could recall you? When and how will you go back—from where will you depart—to reassure the Lords of their glorious reception here?”

  Before, Nathan had spoken a half-truth. Now he must lie outright, or at least shape his answer carefully, to disguise his real purpose. But since he’d now associated these supplicant Travellers with the Wamphyri, he shouldn’t find too much difficulty in lying. “There are Gates between worlds,” he said. “Back in Perchorsk, there was one such, but I may not go back that way. Now tell me: where are the other strange places?”

  “Do they wait for you there?” Vladi was excited again. He tapped rapidly upon the side of his veined nose, producing a hollow, drumming sound, and said, “I know them, these Gates and the strange places which contain them! Only tell me where you would go and we will take you there.”

  “Ah, but my route may be circuitous.” Nathan’s turn to be vague. “There is information I must gather along the way, before I can go back. You must not question me.”

  “Ahhh!” Again the old chief’s sigh. “Now we understand each other! But do you see why I was cautious? These things of which we speak, they are not ordinary things.”

  Nathan relaxed a little. “So, the Travelling Folk, you and your people, have waited all these years without number for the Wamphyri—the Ferengi—to return and lead you to greatness. But what of the Old Ferengi, who brought you here?”

  “Gone.” The other’s voice was a sad, empty sigh. “Turned to dust in their crumbling castles, or stiffened to stones in their unmarked tombs, or burned to ashes in the fires of men. They are no more.”

  “Men hunted them down?” Perhaps these hell-lands deserved their name after all: hell for the Wamphyri, at least.

  “I won’t speak of it!” Vladi shook his head. “The Szgany Ferengi remain true. When you return you must tell them this: that we remember them still, and will always be true to their memory. While I live, at least …”