The Last Aerie (9 page)

Before, there’d been a crossbow bolt transfixing the V of muscle between Vasagi’s neck and shoulder. Nestor knew, for he was the one who had put it there (Wran had pulled it out when he pegged Vasagi down, just for the pleasure it gave him). Now the ironwood bolt lay in the bloodied dust, and Nestor’s empty crossbow swung at his hip. Automatically, he had taken up the bolt and clipped it into its housing under the crossbow’s tiller. For if he was really on his way to Starside, it would be as well to take a weapon along—especially now that he knew what to expect there! The crossbow should provide some security at least. For in all Sunside there was no finer shot than Nestor. So they had used to say back in … back in … back where? But Nestor no longer remembered.

Then he’d found Vasagi’s bloodied battle gauntlet hanging by a thong from the flyer’s saddle, where Wran had left it for him. But even then—with the deadly furnace sun so close to breaching the far horizon, and just as close to sending out its sighing, searing golden rays—still the flyer had known its would-be rider for a stranger and would not launch …

… Until the crippled Vasagi sent a mind-call winging, to stir the beast to action:
Aye, you were ever a
faithful creature. When I told you to stay, you stayed. But now you belong to another—it pleases me to give you to him—for a while, at least. And now it’s time to fly or die. So fly … fly!

Only then, on Vasagi’s command, had the flyer extended its wings; and as alveolate bones, membrane and muscle stretched in metamorphic flux, so the creature had launched itself aloft! A moment more, and then—

—Wind whipping in Nestor’s face as his mount glided out and turned in a rising thermal over Sunside! And as its arched manta wings formed vast scoops or air-traps, so the beast rose up towards the peaks, where soon the sun would strike with hammers of gold. But Nestor was no longer afraid, not of anything. For welling up from deep within his changeling’s mind and body, he’d heard the first discordant notes of a strange, savage and wonderful song—Wamphyri!

And
how
that silent song of metamorphosis had thrilled in his contaminated blood, for at last he had known he was on his way.

To Starside!

To the last aerie!

Wamphyri!
Wamphyyyyri …!

In Nestor’s dream the past came alive with such immediacy and in such vivid detail, it was as if he lived it again. Indeed, as if it were happening even now:

With the reins trapped in his right hand, and gripping the left-hand horn of twin pommels in the other, he used his knees to cling tightly to the hump of the well-rubbed leather saddle; and flattening himself down out of the slipstream, he leaned a little forward into the force of the blast. But even lacking fear and feeling a wild exhilaration, still he hung on for dear life. The wind in his face snatched at his breath and struck cold against his clenched teeth; he found his position precarious, to say the least, and jammed his heels firmly up under the flyer’s wings where they met its body, to give himself more purchase.

But at least he was airborne and Starside bound at last. And his weird mount, so heavy and unwieldy on the ground? Now it glided like some prehistoric bird, balancing itself on turbulent currents of air and steadily gaining altitude.
Bravo!
Ah, but while it knew how to fly, Nestor did not!

Perhaps he had known it, upon a time, but all long forgotten now. Vague memories, revenant of some elusive, shadowy past—of a flyer just like this one, all crashed and broken on Sunside, screaming in lethal sunlight as its skin cracked open to issue jets of steam, and its fluids dripping free like the juices of a pig on a spit—were all that remained. Maybe that was how he’d got himself marooned and lost his memory in the first place, by crashing his flyer on Sunside and banging his head. It was an explanation, at least. Well, and now he’d be a Lord again, and have new things to remember. Ah, but new things to
learn
first, like flying!

As the mountainside fell away, and the furious bluster slackened, he leaned forward between the jutting pommels and wiped at his streaming tears. And slitting his eyes, finally he could see again. Meanwhile in its search for thermals, the flyer had spiraled south; and there, far out across the furnace desert, Nestor spied a spear of yellow light lancing from the molten horizon, striking west upon the flanks of the gaunt grey mountains. Sunup, and Nestor’s time on Sunside was at an end. “North!” he shouted at his mount. “North—Starside—the last aerie!”

From the west, all along the spine of the barrier range, the fan of fire crept closer and the mountains came alive with light. The yellow egg of the sun was set to hatch on the southern horizon, to let its golden bird of prey fly free!

But now, as if answering Nestor’s cry however grudgingly, his flyer wheeled lumberingly north and seemed to hang there a moment in mid-air, suspended between the uppermost peaks. And as in a frenzy he cried, “Faster, fly faster!”, the beast commenced a leisurely drift inwards over peaks, ravines and plateau jumbles. Till finally, lowering its tapering neck and head, it slid gradually into a glide.

Nestor couldn’t know it, but his mount found no great novelty in all this drama; it had flown this way before with Vasagi the Suck, and knew the route well enough; there was nothing new here except its rider, a feeble-seeming fellow at best. His thoughts were blunt as wedges, not needle-sharp, like the Suck’s. He’d not once used his spurs, but sat there wan and wind-lashed in the saddle. Why he was here at all remained a mystery.

Perhaps Nestor sensed the flyer’s slow, dull thoughts, and its low regard for himself. But with the sun at his heels he was done with gentling the beast! He snatched the dart from under his crossbow’s tiller, leaned forward between the pommel horns and tickled the creature’s spine, then concentrated his thoughts in a stream of abuse along its leathery neck and into its head. And he finished with a threat:

Make haste, now, or I’ll crawl along your neck and stick this in your ear!
The beast heard him; more than that, it felt the first hot breath of the sun upon its hindquarters, put its nose down and glided into the shadows of a pass. And safe from the sun at last, it sped for Starside.

Nestor breathed a sigh of relief, and in the next moment heard guttural laughter and a ringing cry: “Bravo!”

It was Wran. He launched his flyer from the shadows of a ridge and came up alongside. “You made it by a breath! What? On a count of ten, your beast’s wings would have blackened and crisped to dust! Aye, and it’s a long way down, Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri…”

His words carried on the air, but they were also in Nestor’s mind. It was an art of the Wamphyri; at close range like this they were thought-thieves to a man, but some much better than others. Vasagi had been a veritable master of telepathy, while Wran’s talent was merely middling. Now it was Nestor’s turn:

Why did you wait?

Ahhh!
Wran was taken by surprise, but recovered in a moment.
What? A mentalist, too? But is it you, Nestor, or simply the effect of Vasagi’s egg?
If the latter, then obviously you got a good one … considering its source, that is.
And again he laughed
. As to why I waited: simple curiosity. Frankly, I didn’t think you’d make it. Since you have, and since I’m responsible /or your—predicament?—it seems only right that I should escort you into Starside, introduce you and make explanation. For you’re a cool one, Nestor, and in no way the fool I first considered you. The Suck was my enemy, but you’ll make a useful ally. And what will you get out of it? Well believe me, you’ll need all the friends you can get, in Wrathstack!

Wrathstack? It was news to Nestor. But the suffix “stack” had brought a flash of memory. Synonymous with “aerie”, it had painted a picture in his mind of the last great redoubt of the Wamphyri, called … Karen-stack? It had been, upon a time, of that he was sure. Also that he had been there before. But when, how?

His thoughts were so intense that Wran picked them from his mind without difficulty, and answered:
Many a Lord or Lady has dwelled there from time to time, I should think, since the early days
of Turgo Zolte. I can’t say, for I don’t know Starside’s history. But now the aerie has new tenants, and on the whole we call it Wrathstack after the Lady Wratha, who brought us here from Turgosheim in the east.
His thoughts had turned sour now.

She’s your leader?
Nestor was mainly innocent, careless in his choice of words.

She was, for a while
, Wran growled in his head
. And with a strong man to ride and guide her … who can say? She could be again. Well, a partner in leadership, at least. But that’s for the future …
Plainly, he’d grown tired of the conversation
. Now let’s make haste. For I’ve been too long away. Aye, and things are wont to change in a hurry, in Wrathstack …

He drew ahead, put on a spurt and sent his flyer diving into the Great Pass, which split the barrier range in a dogleg north to south. Nestor followed (by his will, or purely of his beast’s own inclination, he could not say) to hurtle above the bed of the pass at breakneck speed. The bend in the dogleg lay to the rear, a haze of yellow where the sun’s lethal rays were trapped for now. Any danger of burning was past, and the hackles on Nestor’s neck lay flat. The earlier exhilaration of his ride returned; feeling more in control, he began to enjoy it.

He urged his flyer on.
Faster, faster! Get in front. Show that sluggish creature how to fly!
His beast responded, pulled ahead, left Wran in its wake.

Hah!
Wran called after him.
And so you see, he bred good creatures, old Vasagi. But on the other hand, why, there’s not so much meat on you!
And then, less grudgingly:
Still, you do sit the beast well, so that what with your mentalism and all, I fancy you’ll do all right.

Nestor looked back and laughed, and cried out loud: “I’ll do better than all right!”

Oh, really?
Wran pulled alongside again.
Well,
I hope you do, but the odds are all against it. What you have to remember is this: in Wrathstack we’re all vampires born. And me? Why, I might well have been born in the saddle!

But this time his laughter was grating as iron in cold ashes as he swerved his flyer in towards Nestor’s, caught it a glancing blow, and almost sent it crashing into the wall of the canyon! Turning side-on to fan the precipitous rock, the creature flattened like a leaf to scrape the weathered stone, and for a moment Nestor felt he’d be tilted into space. Then … the danger was past and he could breathe again, and from up ahead:

So you’ll do better than all right, will you? Maybe you will at that. But first you must live long enough, eh?
It had been a lesson, and Nestor wouldn’t forget it. Just one of several things which he wouldn’t forget … about Wran the Rage.

The end of the pass was now in sight, where the mountains sloped down to Starside’s boulder plains. And on the left, just coming into view, the bulging, blinding dome of the half-buried sphere portal to the hell-lands. Nestor knew it without knowing how he knew; likewise the plume or finger of glowing, poisoned earth that pointed from the Gate out across the barren plains towards the Icelands. To him, these things were more than adequate confirmation that indeed he’d been here before. If only he could remember.

But he was given no time to ponder the enigma; for up ahead Wran swerved right, eastwards, away from the Gate and out towards Karenstack (no, Wrathstack, now), the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. Miles sped by beneath the manta flyers, where their moon- and star-cast shadows flowed like stains in the immemorial dust, or like clots of darkness over bald, domed boulders and riven earth alike. And looming in the north-east, vast monument to the evil of ages past, Wrathstack was a lone fang among the stumps of fallen stacks, where the shattered aeries of the olden Lords lay in tumbled disarray, littering the plain like corpses or rotted mushrooms petrified to stone.

And as if Wran read Nestor’s mind again, though in fact he merely conversed, his question came ringing: “Oh, and have you been here before, too, Lord Nestor?”

Aye, he had, the once at least. These jumbles of toppled stone, their configurations, seemed so familiar they were like memories in themselves; yet they failed to spark others in the aching void of Nestor’s head. But he made no comment, neither speech nor thought, except to drive his beast that much faster and draw level again with his vampire companion.

Ahead loomed a stack (or the stump of one), three-quarters of a kilometre broad at its scree-littered base, rising to three hundred metres high by two hundred wide where its hollow neck was like the shattered bole of an ancient tree felled by lightning and turned to stone. The rest of it, the aerie that had been, lay in blocks like the knuckles of a skeletal spine stretched out across the plain. But it was only the first of many.

Side by side, Wran and Nestor rose up and flew across the mighty stump from side to side, and looked down into its yawning, hollowed maw. There were rooms down there, vast pits, and stairwells of bone and stone, and polished vats like the molds for making monsters. “Exactly so!” cried Wran, picking up Nestor’s thoughts again. “For
this
was an aerie, upon a time! Why, it must have rivalled Wrathstack itself! In Turgosheim in the east, men and warriors have clashed, and blood been spilled, over many a lesser manse than this!”

Nestor looked across at him. “And yet now … why do you live lumped together in Wrathstack?”

“Ah-
hah!
” Wran cried. “It must be the recluse in you, as it was in Vasagi. He, too, would have stayed on his own, if he could. It was because the Suck felt crowded in Turgosheim, that he came here with the rest of us to olden Starside. Or perhaps it’s simply your longing for an aerie and territories of your own, which is an urge common among the Wamphyri. But you know what, Nestor? Why, I find myself half-willing to believe that the spirit of some olden creature—some vampire out of time—has indeed returned to inhabit you! In other words, you’re a natural, lad, a natural!”