The Last Aerie (54 page)

“Somehow I had been unarmed, my gauntlet had slipped from my bloodied forearm. And these people … how they could fight! The one with a knife and the other with her axe! Suddenly I was in trouble, and so called out to my flyer: “Roll on them, crush them!”

“The clumsy beast made to obey me. Thrusting itself out of the shambles of the house, it struck the woman with a wing tip and knocked her over the rim of the knoll in its steepest part. She disappeared with a cry into darkness. That left the youth, and a single clout stunned him.

“But I was wounded and that concerned me. Cut with silver, my ribs and arm would take a while in the healing. The hunt was over where I was concerned. I drank from the lad, only a little but enough, bundled him into my flyer’s pouch and launched for Starside and Guilesump.

“So my captive became a common thrall, and went about his menial tasks for a month or two in the basement levels of the last aerie. But later, when it became clear how extraordinary were these Settlement folk—like thorns in Wamphyri flesh—then I considered him again.

“The trouble with the Szgany Lidesci is this: they have a superb leader, a man called Lardis. Thralls taken from other towns and camps have informed us that Lardis was a young chief in the old days, in the time of the Old Wamphyri. Now he is an old chief, and so much wiser. No one knows our ways better than he does, and no one is better trained and equipped to kill us! Indeed, that’s his vow: to destroy the Wamphyri utterly, every last one of us. But he won’t, because he can’t. And even if he could, we would destroy him first.

“But … how may we go about it? What are his weaknesses? Apparently, he has none! And his strengths? Well, to start with he has Settlement. Yes, it’s still there! However much we tried to destroy the town during those early nights, in the long days that followed Lardis would build it up again. Except the houses are now traps for flyers and sometimes warriors, and there are twice as many crossbows on the stockade wall. So now Settlement exists solely as a lure for unwary vampires, and you could be forgiven for asking: why don’t we simply avoid it? But to know that there are men there—and probably women, too—through the long dark nights, is in itself a lure! It is as if Lardis were flaunting himself, saying “Come and get me!” And oh, we would dearly love to.

“For there’s good rich fighting blood in these Lidescis, Nestor. Good lieutenants in the making, good strong women for the loving, good flesh for the fashioning. And apart from all that, there’s revenge! For do you know, while we got thralls out of Twin Fords that first night, we got nothing out of Settlement but a bad taste in our mouths! Well, our get amounted to a handful at best. And of course there was this Jason, which I took from the house on the knoll. But damn few thralls out of Settlement, and that’s how it stands to this day. This Lardis Lidesci, he hunts changelings down with a will, and burns them before they can make it across the barrier mountains. So that now he’s as much a legend as we are!” Gorvi paused again, and glanced sideways at Nestor’s face in an attempt to gauge his thoughts … then looked again, more sharply.

And: “Is something the matter?” Gorvi queried. For a peculiar, faraway look had come over Nestor’s face, and he’d turned his head and eyes to gaze towards the south-west. In the direction of Settlement, in fact.

“Jason, did you say?” Nestor’s voice had also undergone a change; it was uncertain, faltering. Blinking his scarlet eyes, he stroked his temples and issued a small moan, as if he felt a pain. “This one you took from the house on the knoll—Jason?”

“Aye,” Gorvi nodded, frowning now. “What of it?”

And again the look of pain on Nestor’s face. But not truly a physical pain. Merely that of remembering. Then … it came to him in a flash! And: “Jason Lidesci,” he said. “Lardis Lidesci’s son! That house you destroyed on the knoll: it was the Old Lidesci’s place. You had your greatest enemy’s son in the palm of your hand, and you didn’t even know it!”

“What?” Gorvi’s mouth gaped open. “Are you sure?
How
can you be sure?”

“Because … because I knew him,” Nestor answered. “Jason, the house on the knoll, the town, everything! As you described it, so I remembered it. Some of it, I think.” But already the dazed look had crept back onto his face. He groaned, clenched his teeth, and slammed a fist like a rock into the palm of his hand, then cursed and turned away. “It comes and it goes. One minute I see … things, and the next they’re forgotten.”

“Our greatest enemy’s son!” Gorvi clapped a hand to his pallid forehead. “I might have known it! He was trouble from the very start! Surly, difficult and defiant. And when I sent for him, to question him about the Szgany Lidesci—that is, after they had become important to us—then he tried to make his escape from Guilesump and set out over the boulder plains for Sunside. Which would have been the end of him, of course, for the sun would have done for him. Except it didn’t come to that.

“I have warriors who guard the stack from ground attack. They drove him back and my lieutenants went to pick him up. No such luck! He dodged them, came back to Wrathstack and commenced to climb it by an exterior route. It was the worst possible move; on the approach to Madmanse the climb peters out, and the face leans into an overhang. But why did he climb? To what end? He would either fall or be retaken by a flyer, and he would be mine dead or alive. Well, I was soon to learn why he made for the heights. It was because he
intended
to kill himself!

“Such is the fighting spirit of these people. Rather than divulge the secrets of the Szgany Lidesci, this Jason—Lardis’s son, you say?—would climb up to a high place and throw himself down. And that’s exactly  what he did. Moreover, he had a sliver of ironwood with him which he held against his heart. When he crashed down it was driven into him and that was the end. For after all, even a vampire is only flesh and blood …

“He had fallen some one hundred and eighty feet onto a wide ledge and was dead in the instant he hit. I left him there as a warning to others. But as you know, Starside’s air is sharp and desiccating. Things rarely rot here but shrivel and mummify. As we are wont to say, dead men ‘stiffen to stones’. There are no carrion-eating birds here, and there was no way up to the body for my bulky earth-bound warriors, which might otherwise devour it. So … I left him there. Until a few hours ago.

“For recently I have heard it rumoured that you have the skills of a necromancer and torture dead men for their secrets. And that’s why I’ve come here, against my better instincts, out onto the boulder plains at sunup to talk to you. I want
you
to talk to
him
, and discover the secrets of the Szgany Lidesci!”

Nestor was almost himself again. “What secrets, exactly?”

“Why, is it not obvious?” Gorvi raised his eyebrows. “Now listen. The reason this Lardis and his people are such a nuisance to us is simple: by daylight they’re up and about setting traps and such in Settlement and the regions around, and then by night they vanish into their hiding places which we haven’t yet found. What I want to know—or rather what we, you and I, need to know—is this: where do they go to, and where and when are they at their most vulnerable? As soon as we discover these things, then we shall raid on them with as much force as we can muster and make them ours. For once they’re scattered, then they’re finished. We can pick them off at our leisure.”

“It would appear to make sense,” Nestor nodded. “But tell me: just where would you have me perform my …
examination
of this Jason Lidesci?” In his weird and damaged mind, all memories of Settlement in a previous time had faded away again, but he felt the place had strong connections with his old, unknown enemy. With him and with someone Nestor had loved very dearly, who had betrayed him in favour of that same old adversary.

But Settlement? Had his betrayal—and the damage to his mind, which had robbed him of his past—had it really happened there?

So far in his raiding on Sunside, Nestor had avoided Settlement. He’d told himself it was out of respect for those same fierce Travellers which Gorvi had mentioned, the Lidescis. And indeed their name seemed far too familiar on his tongue. Only speak it … visions would pass like the streaks of shooting stars across his mind. Not memories as such, but monochrome scenes—bursts of white light and black silhouette, burning like after-images on his scarlet retinas—of mighty stockade walls and towers, with foothills looming on the one hand and dark forests on the other. But then there would be pain—in his brain, his very mind—and the scenes would shatter into fragments like a piece of slate broken against a boulder.

These uneasy thoughts of Nestor’s had taken but a moment, by which time Gorvi had answered, “Where will you examine him? Why, in Guilesump, where else? For that’s where Jason’s body is. I have his body, and you have the talent.”

Nestor looked at him. “You’d have me enter your manse of my own free will? Ah, no. I prefer a neutral place.”

Gorvi scowled. “Where then?”

Nestor thought about it. “In the glare of the hell-lands Gate, in the first hour of the next sundown …” He paused and thought again. “No, better than that, we’ll wait until all of the others have gone off raiding on Sunside. Then, you’ll fly to the Gate alone—well, with a dead man for company—and I shall follow on behind. And we’ll see what we’ll see.”

Gorvi shook his head, looked puzzled, but finally agreed. “So be it.”

Following which there was nothing else to say or do. And shortly thereafter in the sky over Starside, twin manta shapes pulsed and scudded with the clouds for Wrathstack…

* * *

In fact it was three hours after true sundown before the rest of the inhabitants of the last aerie had departed Wrathstack to go raiding on Sunside, but Gorvi was patient and Nestor had all the time in the world. For if the truth were known, the necromancer was not sure he wanted to know Jason Lidesci’s secrets after all; he was perhaps afraid that he would learn too much.

But Gorvi flew out as prearranged, and Nestor followed on. And just within the glare of the hell-lands Gate, they gentled their flyers to earth and Gorvi got down the long blanket roll from his beast’s side. Opening it, he beckoned Nestor closer.

As the Guile had forewarned, the lich was a broken, shriveled thing. Its contorted face told Nestor nothing: it could be anyone’s face. It had been badly battered in the fall from Guilesump and had dried like a papery wasp’s nest, all crumbling and flaky. And the body and limbs were no better. Most of the bones were broken, and some protruded like white kindling as from the makings of a fire.

“How long had he lain there, on that ledge?” Nestor inquired.

“Two years,” the other shrugged, “but not uselessly. Whenever I had a difficult thrall—it happens occasionally—I would take him to a high window and let him look down on this one, and ask him if he could walk upon the air like the Wamphyri. For as you must know, we Lords can fly when we must, but common thralls and lieutenants can’t. The sight of this Jason all crumpled there would usually bring them to their senses. And if not… there were always other ways.”

“Two years,” Nestor repeated him. “You must be right: the air of Starside is sterile, bloodless. It’s as if we’ve sucked the life right out of the place!”

“Not us but the barrier mountains.” Again Gorvi’s shrug. “Where there’s no light there’s little or no life. But there’s always undeath.”

“This is a mummy,” said Nestor. He gazed down on the shattered body, though as yet he had not touched it.

“Are you saying you can’t do it?” The Guile stared hard at him, then at the crumbling corpse. “Is he too far gone?”

Nestor looked at him, blinked, and smiled a very terrible smile. “No, not at all,” he answered. “If he were ashes in an urn, still I could talk to him. Indeed, he’s listening to me even now.” His voice had fallen to a whisper, a dry throaty rustling. “Eh?” Gorvi’s jaw dropped.

“Oh, yes.” Nestor uttered a strange, sad sigh. “And can’t you see? He’s trembling, too.”

The Guile took a pace back from the necromancer, who might just be a madman. “Trembling? But… I see nothing!”

The other went down on his knees. And: “Seeing,” he said, “is not the art. Ah, but to
feel
him trembling, and to know it for a fact—that is the true art.”

And smiling again, he reached out his hands to the shuddering corpse of Jason Lidesci…

V

Conversation with a

Corpse—

Nestor and Wratha: The

Assignation

Gorvi the Guile was suddenly aware of a change in the psychic ether, the atmosphere, the very aura of the place. Starside in the vicinity of the Gate was a strange region: what with the blindly vacant glare of the dazzling white hemisphere portal, like an immense eye in its crater socket, lighting up the sterile soil, blackened boulders and fused slag all about; and the riddled condition of the blasted earth and rock around the crater itself, as if a nest of giant worms had burrowed there; and that weird plume of softly pulsating luminescence reaching out from the Gate to point north like some dumbly accusing foxfire finger. All of these things, plus the reason for his being here, had given Gorvi an unaccustomed feeling of foreboding. But he suspected that this new sensation, this tingle of awareness (but of what?) on the periphery of his vampire senses, was something other, greater, than any chance combination of location and circumstance.