The Last Aerie (90 page)

But as he rushed upon it, so the thing dissolved into golden atoms, and reformed into a door! And together, Nathan and Zek fell through it…

A moment earlier, Ian Goodly the precog had shouted: “Out! Get out of here!” And the three espers had scrambled for the door, leaving it swinging behind them. Now, on the inward swing, as the door went to close itself on Harry’s room, it was punched as by a massive fist and thrown open again. And three hundred gallons of salt sea water came pouring through into the corridor!

David Chung got the worst of it and was knocked from his feet. He wasn’t hurt but simply sprawled there, with his fist clenched tightly on Nathan’s earring. Except … it no longer vibrated. And Chung knew why. To confirm it:

From Harry’s room as the salty flood dispersed along the corridor, Nathan’s voice gasping his relief. And a strangled coughing and gurgling as Zek Föener strove to throw up all of the water she’d taken in and start to breathe again …

EPILOGUE

In Wrathstack, olden Starside’s last great aerie of the Wamphyri, the Lady Wratha sat with her so-called “colleagues” and closest neighbours, the dog-Lord Canker Canison of Mangemanse on her left, and the necromancer Nestor Lichloathe of Suckscar on her right. The three were seated in chairs spread wide apart along one side of the banquet table in Wrathstack’s great hall, while seated opposite, the Lords Gorvi the Guile of Guilesump, and Wran the Rage and his brother Spiro Killglance of Madmanse, glared their suspicion and Wamphyri animosity across the broad black iron-wood expanse. Wratha the Risen had called this meeting, and out of curiosity if for no other reason, the vampire Lords attended it.

There had been the usual “banter”—a string of taunts, ripostes and scarcely concealed challenges—but now that her guests had settled down Wratha made no bones of it but launched straight into her proposal:

“I suspect I’m speaking the minds of all present,” she said, “when I tell you I’ve had enough of the Szgany Lidesci. Don’t you agree? Isn’t it high time we put aside lesser squabbles, got together and wiped Lardis and his band off the face of Sunside? Only deal with the Lidescis, finish them for good … the other tribes will succumb in a six-month, and Sunside will be ours to use as we will! Then we’ll have all the good Szgany flesh we need to fill the stack with fighting men and beasts and build an army invincible …” She sat back in her chair. “Well, I’ve said all that before and now I’ve said it for the last time. That’s me done and it’s your turn. So tell me, how shall it be?”

And in a little while: “Still empire-building, are you, Wratha?” said Wran, scowling and stroking his wen. “What, and will you bring us together again under your leadership? Aye, and rob us of our get, as once before you robbed us?”

And Gorvi the Guile put in: “Or is it that you’ve started to fear us now that our lieutenants are up to strength and our many warriors waxed for war? What brings you to this, Wratha, that you now counsel unity and cooperation among those you’ve
so long abandoned?”

At which, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, Nestor growled, “What’s that you say about fear, Gorvi the Gutless? Best remember: when you speak to Wratha like that, you’re also speaking to Canker and me, who fear no man, for we are united! Frankly, I’m sick of hearing how “clever” and “artful” you are, when your only real forte is cowardice! If it were my say, I’d gladly cut you off down in the stinking roots of this place and let you rot there—except to desert you would leave the stack undefended when … if …” Here, apparently lost for words, the necromancer paused, gave a snort of disgust, and sat back scowling in his chair.

Gorvi smiled a typically sarcastic, oily smile but made no answer. But Wran, immediately suspicious, snapped: “What’s that you said? About the stack being undefended, if and when?” And then, staring at Wratha: “Out with it, Lady—what’s all this about?”

Canker leaned forward in his chair and coughed, “Me, Wran! Ask
me
what it’s about.”

Spiro Killglance, usually silent, spoke up from directly opposite the dog-Lord. “You then. What goes on?”

“I read the future in dreams,” Canker barked. “That’s what goes on. And I have dreamed of an aerial army circling the last aerie … so many of them, why, they were like stink-gnats over goat droppings! Their flyers were a horde, and their leader—was Vormulac!”

There was a long silence, then Gorvi’s laugh—but shaky for all that. “What, and should we quiver and quake because you have deigned to dream?
Hah!
And why, pray, should we place any faith in your dreams, dog-Lord? All men nightmare … and you more than most, I should think.”

And again Wratha spoke. “Laugh all you like, but Canker has the power. To deny it is purest folly. Didn’t we
all
laugh at his plan to call down a silver mistress from the moon? Aye, we did. And do we still laugh? She’s there even now, in Mangemanse! Maybe she came from the moon and maybe not, but silver she is and real, and Canker’s got her. Also, Nestor Lichloathe here swears by Canker’s dreams, for he is witness to the truth of them. Now listen: I warned you long ago that Vormulac would follow us out of Turgosheim. Well, he will, and soon. Perhaps too soon! Will you be ready, united, to meet him face to face? Or would you prefer to hang from the battlements in chains, and die in reek and smoulder with the rising sun?”

She looked from face to face, at each Lord in his turn, even Nestor and Canker. And not a man of them said a word but sat there stonily in his chair, with that last monstrous picture she’d painted burning vividly in his mind.

So that at last Wratha was satisfied and knew she would have her way …

In Turgosheim:

In the first hour of sundown, Maglore the Mage watched a menacing flypast of monsters, a grand aerial parade through the gorge’s blustery upper regions, level with its rim and the topmost promontory turret of Runemanse.

Vormulac Unsleep had ordered the display so that he might review his army’s fitness for war prior to its departure westward over the Great Red Waste, hopefully to Olden Starside and legendary lands of plenty. For when next the sun sank down and darkness fell on the barrier mountains, then the Lord Vormulac and his many lesser Generals—and all of their men, mounts, and warrior creatures—would vacate Turgosheim en masse, hell bent for adventure, discovery, almost certainly war, and definitely conquest. And to the warrior-Lord Vormulac of melancholy Vormspire, this had seemed as good a time as any to mass his forces and test out their battle-worthiness in the air.

Mainly it was a test of their flying skills in an ordered body. For patently, there could be no doubt but that they were fighting men and beasts: they were vampires all, or of vampire stuff, at least. Even the moderately docile flyers were built of metamorphic flesh vampirized specifically to that end. And as for the carnivore warriors …

So that in fact the pomp and ceremony of this grand aerial display was as much for the glory of Vormulac as for any other reason; it was his chance to drill and parade the lesser Lords in his command, and show them his might. And it was their opportunity to rattle their battle-gauntlets, flex their muscles, and feel the “pride” of their vampire heritage.
Wamphyri!

And so Maglore gazed out across the great gorge of Turgosheim at gloomy Vormspire with its pale orange chimney flares and glimmery ghost-fires flickering in its windows, and knew that Vormulac stood on a balcony there, watching the parade. And the seer-Lord rejoiced for Vormulac Unsleep, that soon he would fly off with his army into the unknown, possibly to conquest and even greater glory. Indeed, Maglore revelled in the thought even more than Vormulac himself … but for different reasons entirely.

And round the rim in a mighty circle swept the myriad aerial creatures of Vormulac’s command: men, flyers, and warriors all, and Maglore smiling and nodding his head as he recognized the various sigils, standards and pennants held aloft to flutter in the hot exhaust of propulsive orifices and the tainted breeze of passage:

Vormulac’s own “hanging man” emblem, Lord Grigor Hakson’s “rampant rod”, the virgin grandam Devetaki’s “grin-scowl mask”, Eran Painscar’s “spiny gauntlet”, Zindevar Cronesap’s “spitted pig” (in fact a spitted man … right down to the apple in his mouth!), and many another; each contingent led by its master or mistress General, in orderly ranks, proud under its own banner and respectfully distanced from the next flight in line or group a-flank. The gleam of polished leather, golden ornamentation, iron-studded trappings; the cacophony of gongs from all the manses and spires around; the rattle of drums and blaring of golden horns, and the bellowing cough and sputter of warrior exhausts …

… All very grand, and the seer-Lord hoped that Vormulac took pleasure in the spectacle. But as for Maglore himself: he would be glad when it was over and done with, and even more so to see them gone from the gorge of Turgosheim forever. For once they were gone, they’d never get back in again, be sure!

Ah, but these were thoughts which he must keep to himself! For a little while longer, anyway. Indeed, for while Vormulac was powerful and dangerous, he wasn’t the only one with dreams of empire. And in Maglore’s book at least, he certainly wasn’t worthy of such dreams …

In Suckscar:

The young Lord Nestor Lichloathe of the Wamphyri came yelping awake in his bed, laved in the cold sweat of his nightmare and full of its terror. Even a Lord of the Wamphyri, and a necromancer to boot, terrified of a dream! But this was in no way a rare complaint:
all
men nightmare, and vampires are no exception. For however monstrous a man may become in his prime, the dormant fears of his past will take root again and grow up huge in his dreams, and always have the power to frighten him anew. Except, what was Nestor anyway but a young man even now? There had scarcely been time for the fears of his childhood to mature into this. Also, the terrors of his youth were long forgotten; his youth
entire
, forgotten!… In the main.

No, this was a far more recent thing: a recurrent dream which Nestor had dreamed frequently—too frequently—ever since a certain disastrous night on Sunside; a dream which invariably unmanned him, bringing him awake to this condition of mental agitation and uneasy premonitions of physical… what, decline?

It could be, of course, that he’d supped too well; there were fresh bloodstains on his pillow, marking the spot where a love-thrall had lain until he’d sent her away. Or perhaps his posture had been wrong; had he slept on his arm, he wondered, until it, too, had gone to sleep? Whichever, the dream—or its prophetic nature?—was the reason he no longer slept in Wratha’s bed; no, not for all her heat. And not from fear of her, either. Rather for fear of himself.

Getting up, he paced the floor this way and that. His arm still tingled. His left arm and hand. But for the moment he did not look at them …