The Last Aerie (20 page)

“Ah, but of course that is not allowed to happen! As soon as a man is stilled and cocooned—before eggs can be laid in him—I have him removed from this place to my larder. Later, when I require him up and about, it’s the work of a moment to have a female administer the antidote. What could be simpler?”

Walking with Canker through the hollow, echoing maze of Mangemanse’s upper level, Nestor offered a shrug. Deep inside, perhaps something of the old Nestor rebelled; if so, his parasite quickly subdued it. “It seems simple enough,” he finally answered. “Except … do you keep trogs in your larder, too?”

“Eh?” Canker frowned. “Ah!—that one back there? No, no—he is not for eating. Not by me, at least! But you see, the spiders look after me, and I must look after the spiders. That trog you saw, he is a receptacle, a hatchery. What, and should I let the beasts die out? No, of course not, for they serve me too well. The trog’s dull life is burgeoning even now, and so is a new generation of grubs, burrowing in his innards.

“But enough of that. Let’s down into Mangemanse proper, and see what’s to be seen.” They had reached the north-eastern corner of the stack, where windows looked out on mile upon mile of barren boulder plains and a distant, dark-blue horizon, cold and sombre under the occasional writhing wisp of auroral sheen. Here a wide staircase led down, and as Nestor followed on close behind the dog-Lord, his first view of Canker’s great hall surprised him more than just a little. Here at least, Mangemanse was not what he’d supposed it would be …

If Nestor had been puzzled by Canker’s remark about descending into Mangemanse “proper”, he was puzzled no more. Up above, in the level immediately below his own Suckscar, the aura had been one of emptiness, desolation, abandonment. Ah, but all deliberately contrived! Nestor saw that now: that the upper level had been kept that way—gloomy, echoing, guarded, and forbidding—
because
of its proximity to the one-time manse of Vasagi the Suck. There was nothing up there which a neighbour would covet, just empty rooms, mazy corridors, a cave of spiders (of which Vasagi, and now Nestor, had sufficient of his own) and a ferocious guardian equipped not only with a physical “voice”, but also with a cunning intelligence and a strong telepathic connection with its master. That level was a gantlet, a place to be approached with great caution and suspicion, if not actual fear and trepidation; though who in his right mind would want to run such a gantlet in the first place, Nestor couldn’t say. Perhaps those “powerful enemies in the east” which Canker had mentioned. But down here:

As opposed to a midden, stink-hole or kennel, Mange-manse “proper” was immaculate, which in the richness and variety of its appointments by far outdid the austerity and dingy furnishings of Suckscar! The walls were hung with tapestries, hunting scenes mainly, at which well-clothed vampire women worked even now, stitching and embellishing. A kitchen in an alcove to one side issued mouth-watering aromas and billowing wafts of smoke and steam into a chimney hole in the ceiling. More windows, cut high in the walls, let in all that was required of light; since these faced well away from the sun and towards the north-east, their ornate baffles, screens and bat-fur curtains were kept mainly open, aerating the place.

Canker pointed out a great high archway in an inner wall; surmounted by a recently cemented keystone bearing his sickle-moon sigil, this was the entrance to his private apartments. He made no attempt to show Nestor inside, but explained: “I keep a watcher just within who has no eyes and so works by smell alone. This makes him extra vigilant, and he accepts only me and mine. Instant death to anyone else—friend, foe, whatever—who so much as puts a toe across that threshold. Be advised: that is one place where you must
never
go, neither of your own free will nor by invitation, not even mine! No, for you are a Lord of the Wamphyri in your own right; be sure he would sniff out your leech and fall on you in a moment!”

They left Canker’s great hall and struck out north through a maze of well-kept corridors and lesser halls. And in a while, as they proceeded:

“It was a mistake to come here,” said Nestor, musingly.

“How so?” Canker coughed.

“Because it makes me realize how much of my own place goes unseen, as yet unexplored! But since we seem to have struck up something of a friendship, it would have been impolite of me to refuse you.”

“Impolite?” Canker grinned, but ruefully. “Precious little of politics here, Nestor! What rules the Wamphyri make are for breaking; their ‘chivalry’ is a sham; if a Lord can lie and go undetected, be sure he’ll never tell the truth. If you find one you think you can trust, odds are he’s made a fool of you. When a Lord laughs with you, make sure he doesn’t continue when your back is turned. And any bargain you may strike, strike it twice and make doubly sure you nail it down!”

Nestor looked at him earnestly. “Oh, and is your chivalry—the friendship which you’ve shown me—a sham, Canker? Do you also lie? In trusting you, am I a fool? Do you laugh with me, or behind my back?”

“I’m as big a liar as the rest,” the dog-Lord answered, carelessly. “As for chivalry: let a man cross me, I’ll ambush and gut him at my first opportunity! Comradeship and laughter? There are laughs and there are laughs. But you …” He paused in his loping, caught Nestor’s arms and looked him straight in the eye, very seriously, with his great shaggy head cocked a little on one side. “You … are
different
. To answer your question: no, I’ll not betray you. But you’re not yet full-fledged; and when your leech rides ascendant, well, it could yet be a question of who betrays who.”

By now they had crossed the span of Mangemanse to reach a cold and blustery cavern in the north-facing wall. Out there, seen through a series of small round window holes, the distant horizon was of a variegated blue and purple, shimmering through amethyst to indigo and back again, under the weave of the Icelands aurora.

But here inside the cavern—once a long, low-ceilinged landing bay by its looks—this was where Canker had been at work on his “musical instrument”. Nestor gazed in open astonishment at the gleaming white jumble where Canker stepped proudly, carefully among the various half-finished assemblies, and marvelled at the dog-Lord’s industry, that he had conceived of and commenced to build such a thing.

It was of alveolate bones, of course, many of them thin as a man’s arm, while others were vast beyond reason: the leg and thigh-bones of warrior creatures of the Old Wamphyri who, in ages past, had warred with each other and ridden their vampire beasts to battle and death out across the boulder plains more than two thousand feet below. For in those days there had been many aeries, whose Lords and Ladies were forever feuding. And so the littered gullies and dried-out river beds of Starside’s bottoms formed a monstrous ossuary.

Now: Canker had started to carve these hollowed relics of bygone ages, to pierce them and fit the holes with oiled, sliding plugs, and to join the resulting—flutes?—together in series from large bones to small. He had strapped them side by side with leather fastenings, their open ends facing the blustery gulf beyond the landing-bay. While in the mouth of the bay itself, there a series of massive baffles—the oarlike scapulae of monsters—were held in position by ropes and turned on pivots at Canker’s command. And indeed there seemed something of order in his work, which was why Nestor marvelled.

“There,” said Canker, gratified. “I see it in your face: you acknowledge my skill in the construction of this work! Ah, and one day you’ll applaud my artistry, too, as I orchestrate the very winds and cause these bones to sound! But … would you like a demonstration? Stand back then, and you shall see. Oh, it’s not perfected, not yet by a long shot. But one day, one day.”

And as Nestor looked on, Canker loosened the baffle-ropes where they were coiled on capstans …

VI

The Bonesong—

Wratha—Carmen

In all the levels of the last great aerie of the Wamphyri—in echoing halls which now were mainly empty except for drowsy vampire guards and watchkeeping monsters, in winding, mazy corridors and stairwells, storerooms, communal and private places—the
sound
gradually became apparent. It might be the sighing of the wind flowing down from the Icelands, drawn by the sun rising over Sunside, where even now mists had been lured up from foothills and crags to obscure the yellow peaks of the barrier range. It might be a mewling of monsters waxing in their vats, things which had been men and now were less (or more?) than men, giving hideous voice and readying themselves for their new roles. It might be the scorching of the sun on the south-facing flanks of Wrathspire itself, as if its rays ate like acid into the harrowed rock of morbid centuries.

It might have been any or all of these things, a combination of sounds amplified by the comparative quiet and the aching acoustic hollowness of the kilometre-high stack, but it was none of them. It was, instead, a sounding of bones. It was Canker Canison at his first fumbling trial run, adjusting the baffles which directed the gusting dawn winds through the maze of grotesque bone pipes which was his moon lure. And it sounded, however faintly at first, in every inch of the stack from Gorvi’s basement apartments to the tip of the topmost turret of Wrathspire itself.

Down in Guilesump, the water in Gorvi’s wells seemed to tremble on the surface as from some internal stirring. Dust, falling in rills, formed curtains like drifting smoke or the weird weave of Iceland’s auroras without their phosphorescent sheen. The Guile’s watchmen turned wondering eyes upwards to cavern ceilings, only to blink and feel the sting as the fine grey dust settled into them.

In Madmanse, the brothers Wran and Spiro Killglance slept and dreamed their red dreams, but all disturbed and distorted by the sound. Half-waking, Wran aimed a sluggish thought at unseen but suspect guardian creatures which he supposed were quarrelling:
Be still! Stop fighting. Keep watch! Or should I simply dissolve you in the vats and start again?
Having issued the threat, he returned to his hideous dreaming. But still the sound was there.

And Spiro cried out—once, twice, sharply and fearfully from his bed—and whined: “Eygor, our father which we murdered! But … are you here, too? Does your uneasy spirit prowl the last aerie, the new Mad-manse, just as it stalked the corridors of that haunted old place in Turgosheim? So be it! I am not afraid. For there’s no power in your eyes now. You may not destroy
me
with a glance!” All very defiant and brave-sounding. Bravo! But Spiro’s voice had faded to a dry, mumbling croak at the end. And there was no answer except the bonesong.

In Suckscar, Zahar and Grig shared the duties of Lieutenant of the Guard the better to keep an eye on the common thrall pickets and watchmen; for Nestor’s orders (his dire threats and warnings) had not gone astray. Currently, Grig was half-asleep on a bench not far from where Nestor had left him on his descent into Mangemanse, and Zahar nursed his crippled but rapidly healing arm and hand as he crept up on watchmen to catch them out.

To them the wail and throb and thunder of Canker’s music seemed a song of grave foreboding; issuing from Mangemanse, it might easily spell trouble and even death for their new master, who seemed bent on suicide in those unknown levels of kennel-stench and canine perversion. Aye, for even among the Wamphyri, Canker was perverse. Not that Zahar and Grig would worry much over Nestor’s demise, but more about their own futures if such were the case.

And overhead, in Wrathspire, Wratha tossed in her bed and called out wearily for her love-thrall to attend her. He came, shuddering, from his fur-draped bench in a niche, massaged her back with trembling hands, and told her, “Hush, now! Rest easy, Lady. No harm befalls.” Her vampire lover was young and strong, but not as strong as he had been and no longer so young. He ate like a shad but his weight went down ounce by ounce; his cheeks were sinking in upon themselves; his nerves were breaking. And the smile he must smile for Wratha was often as not a grimace … but not when she could see it, only when he practised. For in his heart of hearts he knew it would not be long before the Lady sought a replacement; knew also what had befallen the one who had gone before him. Wrathspire had its requirements and little went to waste. There was always the provisioning …

To Wratha’s love-thrall the bonesong was the merest hum vibrating upwards through the rock under his feet and into him: a loose window baffle perhaps, thrumming in a crosswind. But to Wratha it was something else. Her acute Wamphyri senses, which numbered more than five, loaned it new accent and meaning, especially in her vampire sleep. It was an accusing voice which howled out of the past, and was borne to her on beams of sunlight from far across the barrier mountains.