The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  She laughed a laugh empty as space. Not so, Nestor. It was to beg my forgiveness! Except you are Wamphyri and don’t know how. And anyway I do not, will not, cannot forgive you. Will you make me? Oh, I know you have the power. But though I may say the words, you know I’ll recant them in the very moment they are spoken. And what difference would it make? You are cursed. Not by me alone, but by all the dead!

  At which the vampire in him rose up. “So be it! What? And should I fear the dead? On the contrary: they fear me. Hah!”

  But after a moment, she told him: For now, perhaps. But in the end? You should never forget, Nestor, that all things have a beginning and an end. And as for the teeming dead: I think you should fear them, yesss …

  He suspected it would be the last thing she ever said to him and felt a momentary panic. “Explain yourself.”

  But she was silent.

  Then he called for Zahar, and told him, “In the twilight before sundown, bury her in the Starside foothills above the hell-lands Gate. Find a crevice in the rocks, and wall her up. But don’t tell me where you put her, for she’s forgotten now and should stay that way.”

  And to himself, in a fashion similar to Wratha’s short and cynical eulogy:

  Forgotten, aye—and all her curses with her!

  But do curses die as easily as women? Even vampire women, in the right circumstances? And even the Wamphyri, when their time is come?

  Somehow, Nestor doubted it …

  9

  Return of the Enemy—Nestor’s Revenge—Canker’s Moon-Mistress

  Gradually, achingly, Nestor came awake. But not to his soft bed and the comforts of some vampire girl’s breasts and buttocks in Suckscar. And yet his first thought was this: My life as a Lord has made me soft! Which was a contradiction in itself, for as a Lord of the Wamphyri Nestor was hard as never before, both physically and mentally hard, with little or nothing of human emotion left in him, and certainly nothing of the frailty of human flesh.

  But even the metamorphic flesh of a vampire has its weaknesses, such as sunlight, silver, kneblasch, and the sharp and splintery point of a hardwood stake; and, of course, a certain disease—a destroyer of the flesh itself, that causes it to slough away in lifeless pieces—which men have named leprosy and vampires avoid as surely as sunlight! For where the latter may be mercifully swift, the former is tortuously slow, irrevocable, and utterly merciless. The hundred-year death …

  Nestor came more surely awake, and at first was surprised by a discomfort so great it was pain. Then he remembered where he was; and the damp grit in the corner of his mouth, the small pebbles pressed into his face, and the earthy smell of a riverside cave confirmed it: his location and predicament both.

  He broke fragile scabs in the corners of his eyes as he forced them painfully, shrinkingly open, ready for the bright and deadly dazzle which might await them even now. But no, he was safe; his sleep had been a long one—of exhaustion, recuperation, replenishment—from which the setting sun and his vampire nature had finally called him awake.

  For outside, beyond the low, frowning mouth of his refuge, the gurgling river was a leaden grey and showed nothing of reflected sparkle. It was the twilight before sundown, which in a few more hours would turn to night … his time.

  He sat up—but too swiftly, abruptly—which caused him yet more pain. Indeed, it seemed there were several small hurts in his body unremembered from this morning, which only now made themselves apparent: a lump inside the knob of his left shoulder, where he’d broken his collarbone in the crash; lower ribs which were bruised, aching, and possibly broken; massive bruising covering all the left side of his body, hip, and thigh. Ah, but that had been a tumble!

  As for his face and eyes: they were healing, and rapidly. And Nestor knew it was the swift metamorphic reconstruction or revitalization of damaged parts which hurt him so. His vampire flesh had expelled those pellets of silver which the lepers in their colony had missed; his cracked and broken bones were fusing even now, so that soon they’d be stronger than the original material; the ravaged flesh of his face was sealing itself with scar tissue which eventually he could keep or shed to suit himself. (Probably he would keep it, if it was not too unsightly, as a reminder of the debt owed him by the Szgany Lidesci.)

  The Lidescis … the name was like bile in Nestor’s mouth. Perhaps it would have been better after all to let Wratha talk him into a massed raid upon them: himself, the dog-Lord, Wratha, and all their forces. If he had not been so stubborn—if he’d told his colleagues his secret, showed them Sanctuary Rock and led them in the battle to take it—things wouldn’t have come to such a pass. But as it was …

  What of this Nathan—his Great Enemy, the master of the numbers vortex, his unknown brother—now? And what of the bitch Misha, who had betrayed Nestor in a world largely forgotten? For those two were the real cause of his current fix, and the hell of it was that even now he didn’t know the outcome of his plan to trap and dispose of them: whether it had worked, in whole or in part, or been a total failure.

  Only Nestor’s lieutenant, Zahar Lichloathe, once Sucksthrall, could tell him that. And Zahar was in Suckscar, if he lived at all! But however things had gone, from Nestor’s current point of view they’d gone disastrously wrong! Yet, on the other hand … perhaps it wasn’t so terrible after all. For as he put out tentative vampire probes into the evening all about, and as he employed enhanced Wamphyri senses to listen and smell and feel the mental ether, nowhere could he detect the numbers vortex or even a trace of it. For the first time in as long as Nestor could remember, his mind seemed completely clear of it.

  As he gingerly fingered his torn but mending face, brushed tiny pebbles and grit from his hair, and prepared to go out into the lengthening shadows of twilight where the birds of the forest were hushed as they settled for night, Nestor thought back on the recent events leading to this present moment … after Glina had cursed him (a curse that echoed even now in Nestor’s memory like a weird invocation, and one which seemed to be working at that!) and following immediately upon her subsequent suicide:

  Though he had resisted temptation until three-quarters of the way through sunup, eventually the lure of Wratha’s vampire body had sufficed to draw Nestor up into her manse even as the water from Gorvi’s wells was drawn by her siphoneers. And despairing of what he had seen as a human failing and weakness, still he’d gone to her.

  But … it had not been the same. For Wratha it may have been, but not for Nestor. For he’d felt his dominance and had known that Wratha loved him, or that her feelings for him were a vampire’s equivalent of love. And the knowledge of her weakness in this respect had become his strength! Afterwards, when they had slept, then he’d dreamed again: of the numbers vortex, of course, and the One who hid in its heart, his hated brother, Nathan. But finally starting awake, Nestor had known that this dream had been different from any other.

  For even when he was fully conscious, something of it had stayed with him, niggling there at the back of his changeling mind—that maddening, meaningless swirl of mutating numbers! Oh, it was faint in the sighing of the fading sunlight on the mountains, yes, but it emanated from Sunside and Lidesci territory nevertheless. And it was real. No longer a memory but a fact; absent for so long and only now returned, but actually returned …

  Returned …

  The thought of that—of his Great Enemy, returned—had made Nestor’s vampire flesh tingle. And Misha, his stolen love? Was she, too, out there even now, together with him? Were they lovers again, plotting against Nestor anew as once before they had plotted in an earlier existence?

  And he had “known” that the answer to all of these inward-directed questions was yes!

  And he had also known what he must do about it.

  Back down in Suckscar, hearing Canker Canison singing to a pale, sunlit moon from some north-facing balcony in Mangemanse, Nestor had sought him out for his advice. And the oneiromantist dog-Lord had read his dream for him and looked into his future, but n
ot without a warning: that the future is a devious thing.

  “The danger lies not so much in reading what will be,” Canker had told him, “but in trying to alter it. The future is no less inviolable than the past. What has been is fixed that way forever. And what will be … will be!”

  Still Nestor had wanted to know: “And for me?”

  For answer, falling to all fours, Canker had tilted back his head and howled his misery! Then, springing upright again, he had clutched Nestor to him; and in the next moment his growl had been very deep and far too ominous as he said, “Perhaps it were best if you took me with you, my friend.”

  “Took you with me?”

  “To Sunside in the twilight, where you’ll do your best to scratch this itchy old scar of yours. For it seems to me you’ll be staying there a while, whether you want to or not. And a day on Sunside is death, as well you know …” Then the dog-Lord had brightened. “Yes, that’s it! I’ll go with you! For that’s the way I saw it: that you were not alone.”

  “I never intended to be,” Nestor had answered, shaking his head. “But I’ll not jeopardize you, for it isn’t your problem. No, I’ll take Zahar along. And that way this future you’ve seen won’t be changed. Except … I don’t yet know what you saw.”

  “I saw trouble, fire, pain, and torment,” Canker answered. “I saw brothers—twins and yet not twins—one of them hurt, damaged, perhaps permanently, and the other sent far, far away. Only don’t ask me which brother was which. And as for changing the future: don’t trouble yourself. For as I told you, it may not be changed. Nor will it be denied.”

  And Canker had stood there whining, perhaps even crying in his way, as Nestor returned thoughtfully to Suckscar …

  Then, almost too soon, it had been the twilight before sundown, and the grey peaks of the barrier mountains had beckoned Nestor as never before. He had felt lured by them where they turned to blue ash under a hurtling moon and ice-chip stars; lured by the peaks … and by the numbers vortex both! For instead of fading as of old, now the vortex had waxed in Nestor’s head to a living power, whirling like a dust devil in his enhanced Wamphyri mind, so that he had been doubly sure that his Great Enemy was back.

  And before the rest of the aerie was fully awake, Nestor and Zahar had saddled manta-winged mounts and flown to Sunside; so that by the time Canker had changed his mind about changing the future and rushed up from Mangemanse to restrain Nestor—and before Wratha had yawned three times, frowned, and sent out a vampire probe to seek him out and discover the reason for his absence from her bed—it was already too late.

  Resting a while in the barrier mountains, Nestor and Zahar had gazed down on Sunside. And by virtue of the numbers vortex, Nestor had known that his Great Enemy was down there even now. Except this time he could find him, by following that trail of alien numbers which rushed faster and faster, ever more maddeningly through his head. At long last he would track the maelstrom to its source and destroy it—destroy him—forever!

  And Misha, if she was with him? She would be stolen away into Starside, to be Nestor’s thrall in Suckscar. All of which had been explained to Zahar, so that Nestor need only caution him:

  “If aught befalls me, my enemy must not go free. No, for I can’t bear the thought of that! If I’m destined for hell, I want to know that he got there before me, or that he’s following close behind. These are my instructions:

  “He is mine and you shall take the girl. If all goes well we head home at once. But if I come to grief my order is this: drop the girl and take him! Do you understand?”

  Zahar had understood, and also Nestor’s next instruction: that his enemy was to be tossed alive into the hell-lands Gate on Starside!

  Then they had mounted up, and Nestor had told Zahar, “Now follow close behind and I’ll take you to them.” And he had. Up until which time, all had gone as planned. But from then on …

  All had gone astray.

  Oddly enough, Nestor remembered very little of it, other than that he’d followed the numbers vortex to its source, and discovered his prey heading west for Sanctuary Rock; the two of them together, of course. After that it should have been the very simplest thing: a Lord of the Wamphyri and his lieutenant, both of them mounted upon flyers, against a pair of Szgany lovers wandering in the twilight like lost waifs?

  He had seen them from on high and could not fail to note the travois they hauled behind them, weighted with their few worldly goods. And he’d known what that travois signified: that they were recently wed, and were even now returning from their nuptials. Well, what odds? Nathan had had Misha before, Nestor was sure, and it made little or no difference now. But it infuriated him nevertheless. And worse, it distracted him.

  He saw man and mate, but failed to see the other who was there, their possible salvation. That other who carried a shotgun, which Nestor remembered as being “a weapon out of another world.”

  Then, as the hunters descended through a thin mist under vibrating, membranous manta wings arched into air traps, the pair on the ground had seen them! Leaving the travois behind, they’d split up and scrambled in opposite directions. Acting on Nestor’s instructions, Zahar had gone after the girl while his master pursued Nathan. But in the milky swirl of a deepening mist, still Nestor had failed to appreciate the presence of a third Traveller. Until—

  —Twin flashes of light, matched by a double-barreled blast of sound! By which time it had been too late. Nestor’s flyer was hit in the face; indeed half of its face had been blown away, and the wonder was that the beast had managed to stay aloft. But that hadn’t been the end of it. There’d been more gunfire, this time directed at Nestor himself.

  The agony of those tiny, poisonous silver pellets chewing deep into his metamorphic flesh! Almost unseated, somehow Nestor had managed to hang on. And reeling sightless in the saddle, his face a raw red mess and consciousness slipping as he fought to command his crippled flyer up, away, and back to Starside, again he’d remembered Glina’s curse and Canker’s warning.

  Following which he remembered very little:

  A long low glide, and his inability to impress himself on his mount’s mind. The gradually declining beat of the flyer’s manta wings; its agonized mewling; the way it tilted first to the left, then to the right, its balance upset by the silver shot in its tiny brain. Unable to find the strength to climb, disoriented, dying, the beast had headed out over the Sunside forest … and crashed there.

  The crash! The whiplash as he was hurled from the flyer’s back. His body somersaulting, smashing against the bole of a great tree, falling through branches which snapped under his weight, down to the forest floor. And the darkness …

  Then:

  Ministering hands? Kindness? Ointments and bandages, to assist in the healing process which Nestor’s leech had already commenced. And brief bouts of consciousness. And the occasional wishful thought that perhaps Wratha had found him crashed and brought him back to the last aerie. But she hadn’t.

  No, for the lepers had found him!

  His hag-ridden, blundering, half-blind escape from their colony in the predawn light, and the knowledge etched in acid on his vampire mind that he had been in their hands, in their care, and breathing their air for the greater Part of a long Sunside night!

  Lepers!

  Leprosy!

  The Great Bane of the Wamphyri!

  Nestor snapped out of it … and found himself stripped naked, scrubbing himself in the river, scrubbing the feel, the smell, the taint, and even the knowledge of leprosy out of his body, his brain, his very existence. Except the knowledge was there forever, and he knew it. What had been could not be altered.

  Shivering, he went to the riverbank and dressed himself in his soiled clothes, and thought, It is contagious, but not inevitable. Also, I’m aware of the danger, and so is my leech.

  Within him, he knew that his parasite was working to discover and destroy anything of leprosy—anything alien at all—which it might find in his body and blood. But he knew
, too, that it had already tasked itself to produce an antidote to the poison of the silver shot; also that it worked hard to replace the tissues damaged by the shotgun blast and his crash both. In short, he knew that his leech was overburdened.

  But he must put it out of his mind. A man might live with lepers for years and remain free of the taint, and he had been with them for one night only. (What, with his torn flesh, open and inviting of contagion? And them feeding him, touching him, breathing on him?)

  Damn … it … to … hell!

  Nestor gritted his teeth, shook his head furiously, gazed north through bloodshot, blood-red eyes and glimpsed the first stars of night glittering over the barrier mountains. And high over the last aerie, the Northstar like some frozen blue jewel, calling to him as once before it had called.

  But the ice-chip stars were blurred, twin-imaged, and his damaged eyes filled with tears, of pain and frustration, as he tried in vain to fix those celestial gems in their orbits. All to no avail. It was useless; the healing could not be hastened but must take its own time; he must rely on his darker vampire senses to see him through the woods and across the mountains.

  Well, and that was something which Nestor had done before, too, with nothing to rely upon but the damaged mind and memory of a dull Szgany youth, and when all he had known was what he wanted to be. And now that he was? It should be easy.

  So he set off north, and gradually his aches and pains settled to a dull background throbbing, and his at-first cautious tread took on pace, rhythm, and the easy flow of the vampire to eat up the miles.

  As before, the Northstar was his pharos; it guided him along the shortest route, though naturally he followed trails old and new where they were available, just so long as they pointed in roughly the right direction. And in the deepening night Nestor was in no great hurry, for the night was his friend and he was Wamphyri and inexhaustible …