The Last Aerie (21 page)

“The sun is risen and smiles her sick, yellow smile at me,” she whispered, her voice all trembly, drowsy and dreaming, as her thrall’s clever hands soothed her a little. “Aye, smiling … even as she smiled at Karl the Crag that time, and turned his hair to smoke, and burned his eyes out! I can hear him crying out to me, demanding revenge! His voice is in the sun, which burns on Wrathspire even now.” And perspiring, yet with something of a shiver in her voice, she queried: “Are the drapes drawn?
Are
they?”

“Yes, Lady. Throughout all of Wrathspire. Except … this room has no drapes, for there are no windows. You rarely sleep where the sun can find you, Lady.”

“True,” she sighed in answer, drifting deeper into fevered dreams. “But I nightmare wherever I sleep …”

In Mangemanse, Nestor leaned back against a curved inner buttress with his hands clapped to his ringing ears. There stood Canker like a huge upright dog, outlined against the deep blue sheen of the northern horizon. With four baffle-ropes wrapped around each arm, he tried desperately hard, and uselessly, to control all of the wind inlets at once. The result for the last six or seven minutes had been an absolute cacophony, until Nestor could stand it no longer. Now, pale and shaken, he watched the laughing dog-Lord releasing rope after rope, until the numerous cartilage baffles were set loose to pivot and turn at will, knocked to and fro by the mindless wind.

Then for a while it was even worse. Several of the bellows between the baffles and the organ assemblies ruptured as great blasts of uncontrolled air tore into them; an eight foot tall baffle was wrenched loose from its seating in a splintering of cartilage and went clattering away along the outer wall of the stack and down into the abyss; one of the assemblies, virtually a pyramid of bones, began vibrating so violently that its bindings snapped, setting free a dozen or more mighty white tubes to go rolling and bouncing this way and that across the floor of the one-time landing bay. Canker, hastily winding ropes on capstans, had to dance to avoid being knocked off his feet.

At last the chaos was over and there came a blissful surcease. And despite the moaning of the wind round the last aerie, the “silence” was such that it was deafening. Furious about the damage, Canker stamped and roared, and finally turned to where Nestor staggered wan and very nearly deafened against the buttress.

“Did you hear? Did you see?” The dog-thing barked. On the one hand his fury was still plain to see, but on the other he seemed partially satisfied at least. “And what did you think?”

“Think?” Nestor answered. “Have you left me a brain with which to think?”

“Was it that bad?” Canker was at once crestfallen.

“Bad is not the word for what it was!”

“Aye, you are right.” The other nodded. “Too much for one man to handle, I think. But it was the first time I’d tried it, after all. Perhaps when I’ve repaired it, next time you’d care to give me a hand?”

Nestor shook his aching head, but carefully. “I think not. Compose your orchestra of lieutenants and thralls, Canker. For even the strongest friendship has its breaking point.”

“But you’ll admit the thing has possibilities?”

“Will it make music? Will it lure your mythical Lady down from the moon? Is that what you’re asking?”

For a moment Canker’s face turned yet more bestial and his jaws gaped wide, snarling … but in the next his expression was sad. “Mythical, Nestor?” he half-panted, half-whined. “
Huh!
I might have expected that from the others, but not from you. I tell you I have dreamed of her, and she
must
be from the moon! Where else, all dressed in silver, with her yellow hair and blue eyes? Have you not seen how the moon tumbles blue and yellow through the skies: blue in those parts which are turned to the Icelands, and yellow in the half that is lit by the furnace sun? And sometimes silver head to toe when the sun is down and the aurora flutters pale in the north? Do you not know that I am an oneiromancer and can read the future in dreams? Until you can readily understand such things, don’t speak to me of myths and fancies.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Nestor told him. “And in any case, who am I to say you’re wrong? I can’t even remember my own past—well, except in brief, meaningless flashes—let alone read the future!”

Canker came to him and clapped his shoulder. “I am not offended. We are friends, you and I, and must always speak the truth to one another. That’s how it shall be. But tell me, how may I learn the music? I mean, I understand the principle, but have no idea of the tune. It is for dancing, am I right? And for singing? Well I can sing, you may believe it! And I dance in a fashion, though not like you Szgany sing and dance.”

“The tune?” Nestor was puzzled. “But I’m sure there’s more than one tune. I think I know a few notes of several. Bring me a flute out of Sunside and I’ll teach you.”

“A song of love, of devotion, of worship!” Canker yelped his excitement. “That is what I require. I shall imitate your most beautiful tune, and fit my song to it. Then, eventually, I’ll lure my silver mistress down from the moon!”

Moon madness!
Nestor thought, but kept the thought well hidden …

On their way back to the midden stairwell to Suckscar, Nestor was quiet a while before saying: “Something is amiss here.”

“Eh?” Canker looked at him where they paused in the passageway to the foot of the stairs, where lurked the six-legged wolf creature. “Something amiss? In what way?”

“It was my impression … that is, I was given to understand —” Nestor paused for a moment, and finished in a rush: “— that you lived like a beast!” And backing away a little from the other: “If we are to be true friends, then surely I can say these things?”

Canker threw back his head and laughed, and was serious in a moment. “That is an image which I have deliberately fostered. And after all, I
am
a beast! But so are they all. And you too, Nestor, or you will be. But yes, I understand your meaning. My reason for this lifelong subterfuge is simple: survival! If my so-called colleagues think there is nothing to covet in Mange-manse, then they will covet nothing. If they believe I dwell in a pigsty, they will surely stay out of it. Just as long as they consider me a strange, mad creature, I have little to fear from them; for quite obviously I am harmless—that is, as long as I’m left to my own devices and not threatened. When abroad, hunting on Sunside, I ravage and rage and pose a dire threat, to females especially. There seems no purpose to the things I do. Ah, but there
is
a purpose! Certainly I achieve some gratification, some small satisfaction, from certain acts which others might consider gross. But more than that I perpetuate my image, the light in which those others see me.” He paused.

“Here in Mangemanse, however, as you have seen and as I trust you will keep to yourself, things are very different. My place is clean, neither a kennel nor
a
midden except in its approaches, which is a deliberate contrivance. What is more, I would hazard a guess that in its appointments—its staff, equipment, furnishings and facilities—Mangemanse is superior to almost any other house in all this great stack! Well, with the exception, perhaps, of Wrathspire. For indeed Wratha the Risen likes her little luxuries. But only let some vile intruder enter by this route—or by any route, up, down or sideways—and he’s bound to think as you thought when first you ventured here into stench and ordure, and so proceed no farther. Thus are my credentials, and my manse’s security, established.”

“And shall remain so,” Nestor nodded. “Also, I know your state of mind … I think.”

“My state of mind?” Canker raised a shaggy red eyebrow.

“Your attitude in this respect,” Nestor answered. “I seem to remember that sometimes on Sunside, if a guard-dog or -wolf is tethered or kennelled for too long in one place, then he may become ‘kennel-proud’; which is to say he’ll suffer no other creature within the boundary of his territory. Whenever this occurs, only the dog’s master may command him within that perimeter or bring him safely out of it. Add to this the fact that the Wamphyri are notoriously territorial…”

“Your reasoning is sound,” Canker nodded. “You are saying that perhaps I am suffering from this kennel-proudness, and it could be that you are right. Except there’s a flaw in it, for it doesn’t explain why I invited
you
to come down here. Unless for ‘master’ we substitute the word ‘friend’. But understand this: one thing I am proud of is my ancestry, however mongrel. The dog, even the fox—and especially the wolf—they are all of them noble beasts. Don’t you agree?”

“Certainly,” said Nestor, though he was not convinced. But best to keep the dog-Lord happy.

“For the wolf is a hunter who lives in the wild and relies solely upon his own skill,” Canker went on. “The fox is colourful, crafty beyond measure, a sneak thief and merciless killer. And as for the dog when he is trained? What more faithful creature exists in all the world?”

Nestor was surprised. “Do the Wamphyri keep dogs?”

“It’s not unknown. In Turgosheim, several Lords keep dogs, aye. They keep them as pets, and occasionally for the hunting. Ah, but it’s common knowledge that the Szgany of Sunside keep a great many dogs, for the security which they give! Not only to guard their encampments against hostile strangers, but also for early warning of Wamphyri raiders. As for myself … why, Mangemanse is full of dogs! They are my children!”

“Your chil —?”

“Oh,
ha-ha!
” Canker capered. “I have wives, Nestor, a good many. And they’ve borne me a good many pups. Ah, you’ve likely heard it said that girls stolen out of Sunside don’t last too long in Mangemanse, eh? Not so? Well, that’s the way they tell it, anyway. But it’s untrue. Just because I kill on Sunside—and remember, Canker has killed
with his member
, lad!—that’s not to say I do it in Mangemanse. What, I should worry my girl thralls to death like a wild dog among goats? Not at all. They are my wives who pleasure me. But none outside Mangemanse knows it. Except you, for you have seen. They work in my kitchens, at my tapestries, in my laundry and butcher shop, even in the pens and launching bays. As for my yelping bloodsons: what better way to build an army, and staff it with faithful lieutenants, than to ensure they’re of your own blood? And so another legend brought to its knees. I
am
a beast, aye … when it suits me to be one!”

Nestor nodded slowly and said, “Any who think you are mad, Canker Canison, quite obviously
they
are mad.”

But as he made his way up into Suckscar alone, he thought to himself:
As
for your silver mistress in the moon … well, there’s madness and there’s madness …

At the start of the next sunup, Nestor’s vampire came into its true ascendancy. In the interim, for a period equivalent to five days in the world beyond the glaring hell-lands Gate, he had expended furious and frightening Wamphyri energies exploring, charting and reorganizing Suckscar. And in that same period he had grown, changed, taken on a shape which was like yet unlike his own, the shape of a true Lord of the Wamphyri. His excessive activity was like a fever in his blood, which would not let him rest; it was the Change That Shapes; it was his rapid metamorphosis into something other than the Nestor he had been. And as the furnace sun rose up again beyond the barrier range to banish the shadows from the mountains, then it was that his vampire leech became fully ascendant.

The speed with which the change had occurred was astonishing, the activity of his parasite amazing. He would launch out from his manse upon his flyer, and when the others saw him circling Wrathstack, or soaring over Wrathspire itself, laughing into the wind, then they would wonder at it. But the fact of it was that Vasagi the Suck had been a master of metamorphism, and the answer lay in the genetic make-up of his egg. In that and in Nestor’s urgency to
be
Wamphyri!

Then, too, the other side of his morbid ancestry came into play. But morbid only in the sense of its infinitely dark possibilities, not in the nature of the one who had explored, possessed and used them; a man called Harry Keogh, Necroscope. In his own world a parallel universe away (and later in this one, too) Nestor’s father had been beloved of the teeming dead, the Great Majority. How could it have been otherwise? For Harry had been a lone candle glimmering in their eternal darkness, a warm spot in the chill of their unbeing, the only man of all living men who could talk to them and give them comfort. And more, he had been the only one who could die for them. In the end he had done just that: died for the dead and the living alike, for all the generations that were and those yet to come in two worlds. Except … his end had signaled a monstrous beginning, and Nestor was just another link in the endless chain.

Thus Harry’s darkest talent, or an even darker one, had been inherited by this Gypsy son of his, just as it had been passed on to Nestor’s brother, Nathan. But in Nestor the dark side was ascendant, and the dead would never love him. Indeed those who had passed beyond, and should be beyond all fear and feeling, would very soon fear him above all other living, dead, and undead creatures. Fear him, yes, together with all of his works. Because some of them would even
feel
the works of the vampire Lord Nestor!

Nothing of which was known to Nestor himself, for the Necroscope Harry Keogh had died when he was still a child, and Nestor had long since forgotten Nathan as a brother and now thought of him only as some hated rival or grim enemy out of the past. But Harry Keogh’s talent was in him for all that, or a hideously warped version of it at least.

Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri—Necroscope? No, never.

But necromancer? Ah, indeed …

It started like this:

Nestor was out flying. It seemed the only way to ease his spirit, still the weird tides surging in his blood and calm his burgeoning Wamphyri passions. Out there in the crisp, cold air, under fading ice-chip stars, feeling the rush of the slipstream over his flyer’s head and neck, he could forget … things. And that in itself was strange, for in truth he had very little to forget. Except perhaps the rushing whirlpool of numbers spiraling in his head, that madly whirling vortex which on occasion he dreamed of even now. The vortex and its treacherous origin: the mind of his olden enemy on Sunside.