Blood Brothers

  I died as I lived—as I was, yes, obliged to live—cruelly, even by Wamphyri standards. For I died at the hands of my own bloodsons. Would you hear of it?

  “That’s why I’m here,” Nathan told him.

  Then I’ll not keep you. It was like this:

  I had the evil eye. Only show me a man, a target, Szgany, and I could crush him with a glance. Such was the energy of my Wamphyri mind, I could store it up and release it from my eyes like lightning—like a poisoned dart—to wrench my targets and stop their hearts! Do you believe me?

  Nathan shrugged. “Why should you lie—?” he began.

  Just so, Eygor cut him off.

  “—You poor, “blameless” creature …”

  The other’s turn to shrug. Well then, perhaps not entirely blameless. But … it was my leech! With a creature like that inside me, how might I deny myself? Why, even “aesthetes” such as Maglore are still Wamphyri.

  And how well Nathan knew it! By now he had descended to the heart of Madmanse, where he paused in a hall with a walled well. But when he held his torch out over the low wall, he saw that the irregular throat of the pit was choked with boulders. The place could hardly be a real well, not this far from Turgosheim’s lowest levels, but had more the look of a methane chamber or refuse pit. So why had it been sealed? Nathan’s thoughts were deadspeak, of course, which Eygor heard and answered:

  It was sealed to keep me down! The dead thing’s nightmare voice was very close now, gurgling like a sucking swamp. You’ve come as close as you can get to me, Nathan Seersthrall, except in your dreams. A stinking refuse pit, aye: the tomb of Eygor Killglance!

  Suddenly the darkness was alive with unseen presences. The smoke from Nathan’s torch writhed into unearthly shapes as if he’d breathed through it, or as if some draught had come moaning into the room. Except his breathing was more or less controlled, and if there had been a draught, he hadn’t felt it. A moment ago, he’d thought to feel the clinging touch of cobwebs where they hung in festoons from the low ceiling, but as the flame of his torch melted them away, they were replaced by the fingers of some invisible wraith which brushed him as gently and secretly as a lover. It was as if something tried to know him, to be sure of his presence, his identity.

  Ah, yesss! Eygor’s voice seethed in his mind. And now you feel it, which all of the others felt before you. But you feel it more, for you are the Necroscope.

  “What … was that?” Nathan had been holding his breath.

  This place was mine, said the other. The porous stone, the very air. I was part of it and it was part of me. My breath and my sweat seeped into it, so that even now it remembers me. What was it? Call it my spirit, if you will. It has no form and cannot hurt you. But it guards this place for me and no one else shall ever dwell here, until those sons of mine return.

  Nathan felt enclosed, strangled, dizzy. It was the smoke, the claustrophobia of the old, echoing place. He moved back a little from the choked pit. But at the same time, to keep the other engaged and know his mind: “How did your bloodsons kill you?” he inquired. “And why?”

  Because they were cowards! And because …

  “Yes?”

  Perhaps I was hard with them … But it’s a hard world (he was quick to defend unspoken brutalities) in which I wanted my sons to be strong. And so they were strong in the end, but not as I intended. They were strong against me! I should have seen it coming: they were lieutenants and would be Lords, and their father was the one thing that stood in their way.

  Wran played the gentleman: he used his fine clothes as a shield against me, like the snobbery of a “superior” whelp! As for Spiro; he dressed in rags, and made himself pitiful before me so that I would not strike him. Like a young male wolf, he wriggled on his back before the leader of the pack. But there was treachery in both of them. It was … my evil eye. Above all else, they feared that. Having seen it used against common thralls, they believed that one day I might…

  “Use it against them?”

  Eygor chuckled, as evil a “sound” as Nathan ever heard. One thing to kill a mere man with a glance, he said, but something else entirely to kill a true vampire that way. Occasionally I lashed out at them, I admit it, but against them my eye was like a whip on the shaggy backs of dogs: it made them yelp, no more than that. But they felt my power growing stronger day by day, and finally I stung them once too often.

  They gave me strong drink to deaden my senses, poisoned my food with silver, and while I lay in a coma … blinded me! Hot irons fried the surface of my eyes, until I leaped shrieking awake! And they taunted me as I followed after them in my agony, weeping acid tears and stumbling like a fool through the inky blind blackness of Madmanse.

  Then … they were close and I sensed it. They stood right there before me, only a few paces away. I formed my hands into talons and rushed at them. And … they had brought me here, to a refuse pit! My legs struck the wall which you see before you; I fell! And while I lay at the bottom, broken in the mire, Wran and Spiro choked the pit with boulders.

  For half a year I lived on muck and bones. And while my metamorphic flesh was still willing, I gathered to me the remnants of extinct creatures: the armour of warriors, and all of that which you saw in your dream. I made a giant of myself, my plan being to break out. But the pit was as deep as my “food” was bad, so that my strength waned even as my size increased.

  As for my eyes, I would repair them. But nothing I fashioned was nearly so good, and all of the evil had been burned right out of them. Finally I was starved. Too weak to struggle on, at last I slumped against the wall, where in the course of fifty years I commenced my stiffening. Thus Eygor Killglance became the mummy-thing which you saw in your dream …

  Nathan, who was almost inured to horror now, nodded and said, “Your just deserts.”

  You think so? Ah, but you’re a hard one. And what of my bastard bloodsons? Should they go unpunished?

  “Punished? They should be destroyed utterly!” Nathan answered. “Not for what they did to you but for what they’ve done—and what they’re doing even now—to Olden Sunside in the west.”

  Ahhh! said Eygor, and Nathan read approval in his sigh. And so we are of a mind after all!

  Nathan’s torch was wavering; he turned to go, to follow his own tracks back the way he’d come. Wait! Eygor begged him.

  “For what?” Nathan kept going, putting distance between. “We’ve nothing in common. There’s no way you can help me. But I sense that you would help yourself, even now!”

  Nathan, it can be yours …

  With his foot on a bottom step, Nathan paused. “What can be mice?”

  The evil eye of Eygor Killglance. I’ve read your dreams, your wildest flights of fancy, and know that you’d make war on the Wamphyri. But only think … what a weapon it would make.

  “To kill men with a glance? To be a monster as you were a monster?”

  But you said it yourself: “All men have urges, but some control them.” You, the Necroscope, would control this special urge. My power would be yours to use for good, not evil!

  “I don’t want it.” Nathan climbed away from the voice, through the hollow shell of Madmanse.

  But now that you know it’s there you will, eventually. And now that you know where I am, you’ll be able to find me always. I’ll never be far away, Nathan, wherever you are.

  “Suppose I did … want it? What then? How would you give me your power? And what would you want in return?”

  Oh, I would give it to you, never fear. And in return … my freedom.

  “Freedom? From what? You’re a dead thing.”

  Away from the miasma of Eygor’s mind, Nathan’s dizziness quickly cleared. He went faster, and as he approached the outer wall and light came in from the gorge, so the other’s deadspeak began to fade and break up. It wasn’t so much that Eygor couldn’t reach him, but that Nathan no longer desired to be reached. He felt that he’d escaped—but just in time—from something which would damn his soul f
orever.

  My freedom from that, from death itself! Eygor was desperate now. You can do it, Nathan. I heard it from the Thyre, carried on their dreaming deadspeak thoughts … you, the Necroscope … it for Rogei … Cavern of the Ancients … was a dead thing, too … gave him life … you willed it, you and Rogei together … because you needed … he was alive!

  Nathan had heard enough. “Return you to life? Never!” His torch went out and he ran in near-darkness to the final stairwell. And the night-dark spirit of the place was right behind him, snapping at his heels.

  Not now but … some future time. If you should need me, I…here. All I ask … don’t forget me …

  Panting, trembling, Nathan came up into Runemanse, which seemed a healthy place now—almost. But in his metaphysical mind, burning like ice: Don’t forget meeeeee! It was Eygor’s last word, for the moment at least.

  Nathan fled to the great hall, slowed down a little and headed wearily for his room. But in the passageway he ran into Orlea, who caught his arm to steady him. She saw his condition but made no comment except to tell him, “Maglore wants you …”

  In his spacious apartments Maglore paced to and fro, not worriedly but perhaps contemplatively, as if he deliberated upon some course of action. Approaching him, Nathan wondered what was on his mind. He suspected that this would not be the best time to try reading it, which was confirmed almost at once.

  “Mentalism,” Maglore said enigmatically, but as yet not threateningly. He came to a halt, crooked a finger, and beckoned Nathan closer. “Telepathy. There was a time when I asked you if you knew the meaning of it, to which you answered no.”

  Nathan’s shields were up, his thoughts impregnable. “I remember, master.”

  “Ah!” Maglore sighed and shook his head sadly. “You remember, do you? And so we are come to this. You my friend and companion, a liar who hides his every waking thought from me. And why? Because if I were to see inside your head, I would know the treachery you plan.”

  Nathan shook his head. His mouth was dry as dust but he forced words out of it anyway. “I have planned no treachery against you, master.” It was true, and because his words were simple they carried conviction. No treachery against Maglore, but merely an escape from him … Nathan clamped down on the thought at once. If Maglore were to suspect that he and Karz Biteri plotted flight … and again he screwed the lid down on the contents of his mind. The effort caused perspiration to break out on his forehead.

  Maglore saw it and smiled. “You are hot, my son.”

  “I’ve hurried,” Nathan answered.

  The other nodded, and thought: Aye, and you’re never lost for an answer, are you? No, for you are clever, and will serve my purpose ideally! You shall be my eyes and ears on the works of my enemies: those who exist now, across the world in Olden Starside, and those who are yet to be.

  Maglore’s probes were groping at the slippery, rotating wall of the numbers vortex, trying to find purchase there and so form a link with Nathan’s mind. But it was a one-way system: Nathan read Maglore, but the Seer Lord couldn’t read him! His mentalism was greater than Maglore’s; he read him effortlessly, without even trying to, and as yet without attempting to understand what he read. And with the knowledge of his mental superiority, something of Nathan’s confidence returned.

  “And so you’ve hurried here,” Maglore nodded. “Indeed you have—but from where?”

  Obviously he knew, and Nathan dared not lie about it. “I went down into Madmanse, but there was something there. I felt it, a presence. I fled before it, and returned here.”

  Clever. He will survive. Why, this one might even try to outwit Shaitan himself. Maglore withdrew his probes and turned abruptly away. And his voice was slightly sour as he said, “In your dreams you are not so stubborn.”

  “My dreams?” So it had been Maglore after all. Unable to spy upon Nathan’s waking mind, he had attempted to invade his sleep. But how often, and how well had he succeeded? “Have you looked upon my dreams? But what harm is there in dreaming? And is it treachery to dream of freedom? I have no control over my dreams, master.”

  Maglore faced him. “You have no sinister purpose, then?”

  “None.” Only a desperate desire to be out of here now; to convince Karz that we must flee; to get back to my own hind in Olden Sunside. But his secret mind was shielded, of course.

  “Then I’ve accused you falsely and you deserve an explanation,” Maglore nodded, however reluctantly; or was that, too, only part of the game which he played? “Very well, I will tell you:

  “The time rapidly approaches when I shall be master here. Not only in Runemanse, but the gorge entire, Turgosheim itself! You will have noticed how the Lords have perfected their flying warriors? I know you have. And for what? An attack upon Olden Starside and the renegade Wratha, who destroyed your tribe and in so doing sent you to me. Four months, sixteen sunups, until they set out. But Maglore stays here! I shall “keep” the gorge for Vormulac and be its caretaker, while the others go warring in the west. For I’m no warlord, do you see? And all the tribute of Olden Sunside shall be theirs, in that land you called home beyond the Great Red Waste.

  “But here in Turgosheim: my responsibilities will be onerous, with much to watch over—all Starside and Sunside, too—and I’ll harbour no dubious characters here in Runemanse to work against me while I perform my duties. Which is why I must be sure of my thralls, my lieutenants, my… friends? To that end I’ve visited you in your dreams, aye; for you’re a strange one, Nathan, a most uncommon man. You say you have no knowledge of mentaliam, and yet your thoughts are unreadable, as if kept behind closed doors. Perhaps it’s a ‘natural’ thing, inherited like your freakish colours. But it’s hard to trust a man whose thoughts are like the breath of bats, invisible.

  “What’s more, your dreams are stranger still! Who is it you talk to in your sleep? I have watched you sleeping; I know that you converse—but with whom, with what? Or is it just a dream? I doubt it, for I’ve sensed the thoughts of others from outside striving to reach you here. Who are they? Why is it I can’t read them? And often the thought occurs: was this Nathan sent here, to spy upon me, perhaps? Ah, but wouldn’t that be a thing: the Great Watcher, himself watched!

  “But enough; I doubted you; perhaps I still do and should study you more carefully, or draw you closer to me … in one way or another. I’ve neither bloodson nor egg-son, as you know. A man can’t live forever; especially not a Zolteist. Who knows but that you could be my vehicle, my window on tomorrow? Would you make a fitting vessel, Nathan, to carry Maglore’s egg into the future?”

  He clutched Nathan suddenly, his eyes gazing scarlet into blue, his nostrils flaring under convoluted ridges. Nathan was rooted to the spot, frozen, near-hypnotized by Maglore’s proximity. Behind his thin, cold, cruel mouth were jaws which could gape in a moment, a cloven tongue, and teeth—but such teeth—that could ruin a man’s face, rend his throat or poison his blood forever …

  … But Maglore released him, turned away again, and said, “You see what a quandary I’m in? So much to do and so little time, before I’m left alone here of all the Lords. And in addition to caring for Turgosheim, my own works to consider. For instance: an unruly flyer to change, an errant creature whose loyalty is suspect. Perhaps I’ll bring him to heel, or simply reduce him to fats and fluids and vampire stuff for the fashioning.”

  Nathan was aghast. He could only mean Karz!

  “Leave me now,” Maglore said. “I shall continue to trust you, for the moment at least. But for now I’m weary. We shall talk again. What will be will be.”

  Nathan said nothing, made to creep away.

  “But Nathan—” Maglore stopped him, as was his wont, “—I want you to think on this. I believe you would make a good son and a better Lord. You with your freakish colours and talents. It may not be your choice, but think on it anyway. Indeed, you must give it your most serious consideration …”

  He need not concern himself: Nathan could think o
f little else. On legs heavy as lead he made for the central stairwell, and pale as death descended. But he did not see Maglore watching him, or the grin on that one’s malevolent face as Nathan passed from view.

  Aye, think on it, Maglore thought (but secretly now, for he was sure of one of Nathan’s talents at least). Think well on it, my son—on how you must flee from it—and so become my eyes on the great wide world beyond!

  III

  Nathan waited out the long day and watched Maglore, but from a distance. The Seer Lord kept himself busy all day, and as night came down he retired. In this he was different from the other Lords; he took to his bed when he needed it, never on account of the sun alone.

  But as soon as Maglore slept, then Nathan hurried to the launching bay … and found Karz ready and waiting. Say nothing, that great sad creature told him, for there’s really no need. Maglore was here today and looked at me, and I read it in his eyes that my time was up. Since when I have waited for you. So let’s be up and gone from here.

  The saddle was huge, heavy, and awkward. Karz assisted where he could: lowering his neck, offering advice in respect of belts and buckles. At any moment a vampire thrall or lieutenant—especially the surly Karpath, who had been hovering over Nathan like a hawk for weeks now—might appear out of one of the stairwells. But the worst fears of the pair were not realized; there was only the wind and the deepening twilight, and the morbid lights of Turgosheim spread below and beyond.

  Nathan opened the gates and edged his mount out to the rim of the launching ramp, and shivered as he climbed up into the saddle. He had food, which he placed in a saddlebag to the right of the pommel. Karz felt him in position—and felt his fear, tangibly clammy—as he flopped forward on to the ramp.

  Hold on, he warned, unnecessarily, and in the next moment they were airborne. They soared out over the gulf, were buffeted into a steep climb on spiralling thermals, turned and passed high over the darkly jutting turret which was Runemanse. Nathan held his breath and looked down.