The Last Aerie

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by Brian Lumley


  Meanwhile, Nathan had learned that Nestor was still alive on Sunside, and set out to follow his trail … which ended in a broad, still river where Nathan felt certain his brother had drowned. Thus during the raid on Settlement, Nathan had lost, or thought he’d lost, his mother, sweetheart, and now his brother.

  Always an outsider even among his own, what was there for him now in Sunside? Long days of alienation from the Szgany, and endless nights of terror from the Wamphyri? In his misery he wandered out across Sunside’s furnace deserts to die.

  But in the desert he was rescued by the Thyre, a nomadic race with whom the Travellers traded periodically, considered to be only slightly less primitive than the shuffling, cavern-dwelling trogs of Starside. They were far from primitive, however, and Nathan soon discovered their telepathy, especially the telepathy of their revered, entombed Ancients: deadspeak. Thus, without ever having known his father, he learned that he was a Necroscope. Then for some time he wandered east, and soon became a legend among his brown Thyre friends.

  At the same time, having been pulled from the river more dead than alive, Nestor had lived through many sunups (weeks) with the Bereas, a lone family unit dwelling hermitlike in the deep forest. And while Nathan trekked the course of a mainly subterranean river under the burning desert, visiting the many Thyre colonies, Nestor’s various wounds healed and he returned to health … in body, if not in mind.

  But his memory was a vague, frightening, and fragmentary thing, in which the only “sensible” thought was this: I am the Lord Nestor, of the Wamphyri!

  Eventually, dissatisfied with his lot and still seeking his lost identity, one night when Nestor saw a vampire raiding party flying with the clouds and could no longer resist the lure of the legend burning in his brain, silently he left Brad Berea’s cabin and set out for Starside. For he knew now that he must go home to the last great aerie of the Wamphyri and reclaim his lost heritage. And during the course of his journey, at last Nestor met up with his fate—met up with real vampires—and became Wamphyri!

  As for Nathan:

  By now, following the subterranean river, he had crossed under the Great Red Waste into a land previously of myth. And far in the east, shown a picture of his future by a dead Thyre stargazer, he’d determined to return to Sunside—but not his own Sunside.

  For in the east as in the west, the land was split in two parts by a range of barrier mountains: south where the sun rose and shone on the land, and north where it lit only on the highest peaks. And the dark side, Starside, was of course a place of vampires.

  But unlike the western Szgany, the people of the eastern Sunside were downtrodden Wamphyri supplicants; they even gave of their young to the vampires! A terrible place and terrible people, quite beyond Nathan’s understanding. Yet according to the dead Thyre stargazer, Thikkoul, at least part of Nathan’s future lay in a mighty Starside gorge called Turgosheim: home of the Wamphyri!

  And so he left the desert and the Thyre, went into Sunside, was captured by his own kind and offered up to vampire lieutenants on their tithe route through the Szgany villages. So that eventually in Runemanse, vast promontory aerie of the Seer-Lord Maglore, Nathan learned all the lore of Turgosheim and the history of the Wamphyri in general.

  Except he was not vampirized by Maglore the Mage but kept as a “friend” or “familiar creature,” presumably for his weird colours and seeming innocence—in regard to which the Seer-Lord was mistaken. For Nathan’s twin talents of deadspeak and telepathy gave him an advantage over Maglore’s thralls, lieutenants, perhaps even Maglore himself. Or so he was allowed to believe …

  … Also allowed to believe that eventually he had escaped, when in fact he had been turned loose! And seated in the saddle of the flyer Karz Biteri (once a man, as were all Wamphyri constructs) Nathan had flown through the long night back to Olden Sunside/Starside, where in the dawn he had landed in the foothills over Settlement. Then Karz had flown on, presumably into the sun and a certain, perhaps merciful, death. And Nathan had gone down into Lidesci territory to discover, after all his trials, that his mother lived and was well; and Misha Zanesti, too, his long-lost sweetheart, alive and well.

  But Misha had been Nestor’s sweetheart, too, if only in his damaged mind, dreams, and desires; and in partial memories that came and went he imagined that she’d spurned him for the love of some Great Enemy. But now … in his way the Lord Nestor knew that this same Great Enemy, in fact his brother, was back in Sunside. Well, it was bearable that the “treacherous” Misha lived, but not that she lived with Nathan!

  Along with one of his lieutenants, Zahar, Nestor raided on Sunside and found Nathan and Misha at the end of their nuptial trek. And attempting to take Nathan prisoner, Nestor was partially blinded and his flyer mortally wounded by the leader of the Lidescis, using a shotgun, a weapon from the hell-lands. Crippled, the great beast flew out over Sunside’s night forest and crashed at the southern rim.

  There in the woods Nestor was discovered where he’d fallen and was taken in and cared for … by lepers! Waking close to dawn he had been terrified—even Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri, terrified—when he saw where he was. Leprosy, the great bane of vampires; and these lepers had cared for him, fed him, even breathed out the air he had breathed in!

  He fled their camp, hid in the back of a dark, damp cave in the bank of a river, slept off his fever and fatigue, and let his metamorphic flesh heal his wounds … and dreamed hideous dreams of a yet more hideous future …

  Meanwhile, when the lieutenant Zahar had seen how Nestor was lost, then he’d remembered his master’s orders. And because Nestor was a necromancer with powers transcending death itself, Zahar had carried out those orders to the full. Capturing Nathan and bearing him over the mountains, he had tossed him into the glaring hemisphere of the Starside Gate, an alleged portal to the hell-lands from which neither man nor monster had ever returned.

  So Nathan entered the world of his father …

  “Of all the bars at all

  the conventions in all the world,

  you had to walk into mine. Here’s

  looking at you, kid!”

  TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY

  BRIAN LUMLEY’S VAMPIRE WORLD

  Blood Brothers

  The Last Aerie

  Bloodwars*

  THE PSYCHOMECH TRILOGY

  Psychomech

  Psychosphere

  Psychamok

  THE NECROSCOPE SERIES

  Necroscope

  Necroscope II: Vamphyri!

  Necroscope III: The Source

  Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

  Necroscope V: Deadspawn

  OTHER NOVELS

  The House of Doors

  Demogorgon

  SHORT STORY COLLECTION

  Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi

  *Forthcoming in Hardcover

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  THE LAST AERIE

  Copyright © 1993 by Brian Lumley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10010

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  eISBN 9781429913249

  First eBook Edition : June 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lumley, Brian.

  The last aerie / Brian Lumley.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  1. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6062.U45L37 1993

  823’.914—dc20

  93-17431

  CIP

  First edition: August 1993

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