The Last Aerie (52 page)

Conducting her through Suckscar, and making known to his males the role she would play in the manse, Nestor fancied that his lieutenants and senior thralls found the swivel of her more than ample hips attractive, her glance alluring. But it could be that they desired to keep on her good side, because she was a favourite of their master and would now control the comings and goings of all the other women.

Finally he introduced her to his female thralls, each by name, and told them that from now on she would be in charge of their work roster, overseeing all of their duties. Glina’s word would be law among them; let anyone complain, make difficulties or put obstacles in her way, she would report that fact to Nestor and he would know how to correct the situation. But all of his thralls knew him now, how he meant what he said, and none of them were about to make difficulties.

Then, while Glina familiarized herself with her new duties, he went alone to his senior thralls and lieutenants and warned them off. What the dog-Lord had said to him, or hinted, about the more ambitious of his men lusting after power and position, had struck a chord. Perhaps he had allowed too much freedom in Suckscar, and the reins must now be tightened; his lieutenants were the first to feel his telepathic scrutiny.

But Zahar and Grig had learned their lessons well; they harboured no real ambitions in respect of Suckscar, nor did they seek to seduce Nestor’s women. What? Was it likely they would cross a man who could torture them alive, then torture them dead? No, for they knew that Nestor was a necromancer.

As for his lesser male thralls: His message to them was simple. Glina was now the first of his women in Suckscar. She
was
his. If any man so much as looked at her lustfully, Nestor would first feed his parts to a warrior, then feed
him
, slowly and feet first, into the meal grinders. And since these were simple thralls, he had allowed Glina to be in attendance when he instructed them in this fashion, so that she took it that indeed he valued her beyond all the other women. And her step grew a little lighter by virtue of that fact.

She was given her own rooms directly beneath Nestor’s in an excavated area under the sweeping stairs to his apartments, with a narrow spiral staircase that climbed up to an annexe off his bedchamber, and even had an older woman assigned to her to clean her rooms and mind the child. So that Glina’s lot was in every respect superior to any other woman’s in all Suckscar.

And so she took up her new life and duties, and quickly learned all that was required of her … at least with regard to her mundane responsibilities, within the manse.

Then, before the next sundown as she lay in her bed and wondered about Nestor where he slept somewhere overhead, suddenly she heard his call, or felt it, and knew that he wanted her. And climbing the spiral staircase to his chambers, she entered his bedroom …

… Only to discover that two others were there before her!

Nestor saw the look on her face and quickly cautioned her: “Say nothing. Do not offend me or mine. These girls are here to be instructed—by you! For although they are beautiful, they have forgotten the part which made them innocent and beguiling women. For there is innocence even in sex, but there is no satisfaction in sex with such as these, whose nature it is to be promiscuous. That is why you are here: to teach them the art of innocence, naiveté.”

She was bewildered. “But I don’t have that art.”

“But you do, for you satisfy me. And when they have learned it from you, then part of my life at least shall be complete.”

“You want me to show them how to—?”

“Yes,” he cut her short. “I want you to show them everything, Glina, while you still can. For as yet you’re more woman than vampire, and I have been bored in my bed for far too long. My needs are not well served here.”

Now at last she saw her true position in Suckscar. But she was his thrall and must obey. And she did.

And so the last flickering spark which yet remained in Glina Berea, which might even have been rekindled into love of sorts, however dark and strange, died in her that time. For she knew that whatever course her life took from this point forward, she would never forget the events which had befallen her: the fact that she was now a vampire, the similar fate of her mother and father, residents now in Mangemanse, the monstrous burning of her child.

Probably, the time would never come when she might take her revenge. But if it ever did—

Then she
would
take it…

IV

Wratha’s Vow—

Gorvi’s Proposition

In the heights of Wrathspire, Wratha the Risen brooded. Like a great black cloud she brooded, roiling and rumbling and constantly threatening rain. Except the Lady Wratha’s rain burned like acid! Six months and more she had been this way, while her thralls went in fear of their lives. Plainly she was distracted and they had learned to leave her that way. Only break into her train of thoughts and draw her back to reality, however briefly … all hell would break loose! She would fly into a rage, hurl abuse and other things, and rush through the manse like a lunatic storm, bowling everything over in her passing and issuing the direst threats left, right and center, at all and sundry.

For Wratha had a great many things on her mind, which demanded her utmost concentration and mental co-ordination; or so she was given to excuse herself—which in itself was strange, for as a Lady of the Wamphyri she scarcely required to make excuse for anything! But it was obvious that in fact her co-ordination was in tatters and her concentration non-existent. Something, it seemed, was stretching the Lady’s nerves to breaking.

She had lost all interest in the administration of Wrathspire, so that her lieutenants had never known such freedom in the running of the place. No domestic problem or dispute could be permitted to disturb her, no slightest whisper or unaccustomed jangle of sound, no unexpected footfall. She fell behind in her self-allotted duties (mainly the all-important overseeing of the aerie itself), and the orders-group meetings which had always been such a regular feature of life in Wrath-spire became fewer and fewer, until they ceased entirely.

Her males—almost all of them, from the lowliest novice to the most senior lieutenant—began to take advantage; likewise her vampire women. Lustful affairs, which Wratha had kept to a minimum for all that she knew her thralls must amuse themselves as best they could, swiftly gathered impetus; schedules suffered as a direct result; Wratha scarcely noticed.

Her love thralls could not satisfy her; when the best of them failed her, she murdered him in her bed. And the others grew thin.

The aerie quickly went to pieces. Grotesque siphoneers in their discreetly curtained niches developed sores and parasitic infestations, and the water they drew up from Guilesump’s wells became less than pure, because their wayward keeper serviced a woman instead of the flaccidly insensate creatures in his keep. Foetal warriors waxing in their vats went untended, and one of them even slumped, expired and eventually stank, because no one saw fit to drain the huge corpse of its corruptible wastes and morbid fluids. Cooks in their kitchens made do with what little was available, but the manse’s fare was less than satisfactory. Pantries and cold-storage rooms stood empty, likewise the granaries. Flyers went mewling hungry, and in the raids on Sunside were wont to grow weary and unreliable.

And through all of this, apparently unaware, Wratha merely brooded …

But during the long days when the rest of the stack slept, then she would sit up and send her thoughts down into Suckscar, to worm their way into Nestor’s dreaming mind. Before, this had been little more than an amusement: it had titillated Wratha to read his sleeping thoughts (or occasionally, when he was with a woman, his lustfully active thoughts; but rarely, because more often than not his women bored him, which pleased her). But now … it was no longer an amusement but an agony, and the Szgany girl Glina was the source of Wratha’s pain. For she had known Nestor as a man, while Wratha had not.

She was an artless shad at best, this Glina, yet apparently there was one art which she had mastered: the pleasuring of the necromancer Lord Nestor Lichloathe of the Wamphyri; mastered it to such an extent that Suckscar’s new Lord even required her to instruct his other women in order that they, too, might satisfy him. Except they were mainly incapable of instruction, for they had long since lost what Glina retained: that very artlessness which Wratha so despised!

It
was
that she was naive, or pretended to be because it pleased him. Her sex was always fresh, quivering, half-afraid, yet full of longing. She was a woman but continued to play the girl, the innocent, so that her Lord would need no other. For when he was with her he was the untried youth again, jerking erect as he stroked her teats or bruised them in his passion.

It was as if he remembered a time when love—human love, Szgany love—had been something other than lust and was trying to recapture it. Or … perhaps it was that he remembered some other
lover
, not this Glina, and was trying to recapture her!

And as soon as that thought came to Wratha, then she knew she was on the right track. For it made sense out of a paradox: how Nestor could fancy—and continue to fancy—this merely homely creature when he was surrounded by girls of Vasagi the Suck’s choice; for Vasagi had installed most of the women who dwelled now in Suckscar, and for all that he’d been a monster in his own right, the Suck had had an eye for beauty. But the difference was this: that Glina had actually loved Nestor upon a time. And for all that she had been a novice herself, still she had taught him all he knew. Now … he knew other things, but still he remembered how it had been with Glina. While his brain may have forgotten much of his past, his body
continued
to remember. And not only Glina, but someone before her.

Oh, Wratha knew
their
history well enough; she’d stolen it right out of their minds! She knew that Glina had been Nestor’s Sunside lover, for she had seen pictures from his past replayed a dozen times in the eye of his mind. But more than this, she knew there was a fury in him when he made love to Glina, which he would rather expend on this unknown Other. Some unrequited love out of his unremembered past? It could only be …

Whoever she was, this Other, it seemed to Wratha she was worthy of serious consideration; for if Nestor Lichloathe had found and brought back Glina out of Sunside—and out of his more recent past—then one day he might also find and bring back the Other, too, from a yet more distant period. And what then? All of Wratha’s plans gone up in smoke? No, not at all, for by then Nestor would
belong
to Wratha!

As for this Glina: what was she? Simple: she was nothing! What, this ungainly Szgany peasant? She was a flame that would soon flicker and die; a piece of tarnished property, a tool to be used, blunted, and eventually discarded. Ah, but if or when Wratha should ever set eyes on this Other, be
sure
she would know how best to deal with her! And she would deal with her, most certainly.

It was her vow …

In that same six-month period of twenty-six sunups, Nestor’s fame or infamy as a necromancer had spread through all of the stack. In every manse from Guilesump to Wrathspire, his talent was the subject of gossip and speculation. The former among the lieutenants of the Wamphyri and lesser thralls, and the latter among the vampire Lords themselves.

Canker Canison was mainly to blame for spreading the word. Pleased to call himself Nestor’s friend, he was “proud” of the comparative newcomer and desired to see him elevated among his peers. For the dog-Lord had the dubious gift of scrying future times, and he had foreseen that Nestor’s talent would make him very powerful, a force to be reckoned with in the last aerie.

And Canker was right.

Late one sundown after a full night’s raiding on Sunside, when the Lady and all the Lords were safely returned to their various manses, the lieutenant Grig Lichloathe made report to Nestor in the quiet room where he rested from his bloody work. There the Lord of Suckscar stretched out in a huge wickerwork chair, sipped coarse Szgany wine and watched the grey glimmer of a false dawn creeping on the distant crags. Nestor was reluctant to go to his bed because for months his dreams had been made wretched by recurrent erotic visions … mainly of Wratha the Risen. Over and over he would revisit Wrathspire’s roof to play out that scene where Wratha had fallen into his arms, but only to escape from him when she felt his surging ardour.

And when he started awake from dreams such as this, all drenched in sweat and whining his frustration—and with the soft curve of Wratha’s breast still warm in his tingling palm—then Nestor would put aside all thoughts of his other women, Glina included, as if they were nothing. For he knew now what he wanted, if not how to get it. Also, he was prideful. Wratha had made a fool of him once, and Nestor wasn’t about to let it happen again.