The Last Aerie

  “We were talking about necromancy,” Nestor sighed. “Not my malaise.”

  “Malaise, aye,” the dog-Lord barked. “The very word! But you were morbid enough before, and now this necromancy? What, to talk to dead things? Huh! I see no sense in it. What can they tell you, anyway? How to survive? No, for they failed to survive. How to make merry? No, for they have lost the art of laughter. How to love—or lust? What, with parts all rotted away? Now tell me, what do you get from it? And if the answer is nothing, then I say let the dead alone and instead learn how to live!”

  “What do I get from it?”

  “What can they tell you that you don’t already know? For after all you’ve outlived them, haven’t you?”

  Nestor slowly shook his head and said, “But it isn’t like that. Now listen, and I’ll try to tell you. The last time I was on Sunside, after the raid, I sensed the freshly dead trembling where they lay. What’s more, I sensed that the ancient dead—who had passed on years before—were trembling, too. And all of them knowing me and going in fear of me.”

  “But of what do they go in fear?” Canker flapped his great hands.

  “In fear of my art.”

  “To talk to them?”

  Nestor looked away. “To torture them …”

  “Eh?” Canker sat up straighter.

  “The dead don’t talk to me of their own free will,” Nestor explained at last. “They have to be made to do it.”

  “You make them talk to you?”

  “It is my … my art, yes.”

  “By torturing them?” Canker goggled.

  “Ever since that first time, yes. But don’t you see? Carmen couldn’t have talked to me at all, if I wasn’t a necromancer.”

  “Carmen?”

  “That was her name. One of the girls that the Killglance brothers tried to steal away that time. Surely you remember? Better for her if they had! Since when the dead have avoided me, but they can’t avoid my art.”

  Canker sprang erect. “I have to see it for myself! On Sunside, yes, in just a few hours’ time. We’ll hunt together, and afterwards … you can show me how it’s done.”

  “I can show you it, certainly, but not how it’s done,” Nestor told him.

  “Eh?”

  “You won’t learn anything from it. What I do is not mentalism, not as you know it. You’ll be able to hear me talking to them if I ask my questions out loud, certainly, but you’ll never hear their answers. These are dead minds, Canker!”

  “Very well …” The other gave a shrug, pretended to understand. “But at least I’ll see you … at work, eh?”

  “Oh?” Nestor looked sideways at him. “And who’s the morbid one now, Canker?”

  “Morbid? Never! Eager for new experiences—always! Except … tell me this: how may one torture a dead, unfeeling man?”

  “That is my art,” Nestor answered. “When I touch them, they do feel it. They hear my words, which no one else can hear, not even my lieutenants; they feel my hands on them, the tearing of my nails; they know my threats are real. And as for what they tell me …”

  “Ah! The crux of the matter,” Canker cried. “Well, then, what do they tell you?”

  “Listen,” said Nestor, “for there’s that which you should know. Death … isn’t like that.” His voice was suddenly faraway, dreamy.

  “Eh? Not like what?”

  “Not like you think. You think that death’s the end, but it isn’t. They go on.”

  “The dead go on?” Canker gave a snort. “Hell, no! They go down in the ground, or onto a funeral pyre, or into the grinders for the provisioning. On Sunside they even go to waste, but that’s as far as they go. And here in the last aerie there’s no waste at all. If that’s what you meant by going on, then I have to agree. They go on in the bellies of our beasts, to fuel them in the flying and the fighting!”

  “You are talking about their bodies,” Nestor replied, his voice becoming firm again. “But I’m talking about their minds. Their minds go on, Canker. And so for as long as there’s something of body left to touch and torture, and mind which I may speak to, I can communicate with them. The Grand Inquisitor, who overcomes Death Himself!”

  Canker scowled, sniffed like the great red hound he was, shook his head. “But again I say, what use to—”

  “I’ll tell you what use,” Nestor cut him off. “What a man did in life, he continues to do when he’s dead. Not physically but in his mind! The lover loves, not with his wasted lich body, no, but in his mind! And he dreams of all the ways he never loved, even though it’s too late to try them. And the builder? Why, he continues to build, not of stone or stick or sod but airy thoughts! And he dreams of excellent houses and cities which can never be built, because no one knows what’s in his dead mind. And what of the thinkers who look outward to the stars and wonder? Now they have been given a gift of time, with nothing to do but study the wheeling of the spheres, and dream of other suns and worlds beyond this one. Then there are the hunters and weapon-makers. They hunt still, and forge their weapons as of old. They devise new traps for the beasts of the wild, superior in every way to the ones we use. And the weapons in their mental workshops are keener far, while ours are often blunt, clumsy, and turn to rust too quickly.” Nestor paused, and in a moment continued:

  “And you ask what use? Very well, I’ll tell you what use. Whatever a man was or did in life—whatever secrets he knew then, and anything he’s learned since, from the teeming dead; whatever new thoughts he has thought, or ancient schemes he’s schemed—I can know it all, by means of my art!”

  Canker was astonished. “Whatever he’s learned since? But how can he learn anything once he’s dead? I mean, from whom may he learn it?”

  “Ah!” said Nestor. “And that is something else that fascinates me. For just as we communicate with each other, so do the dead converse. They talk to each other in their graves and resting places, and their thoughts go out to all the dead without any man ever knowing or even suspecting them—except me. For I am a necromancer. But when they know I’m near, then they fall silent, for they fear my art. And they stay silent, until I touch them …”

  Nestor’s voice had sunk so low and turned so cold that Canker shivered … then gave himself a shake. “But you must demonstrate! Tonight, on Sunside. We hunt together, agreed?”

  “As you will,” answered Nestor.

  “And so you’re loathed by liches, eh?” Canker scratched at his too-long jaw. “Which is enough in itself to earn you a name.”

  “A name? But I already have a name.”

  “Pah! Nestor? What is that for a name? Good for a first name, aye. But as for your second—Lichloathe! That’s it: the necromancer Lord Nestor Lichloathe, of Lichscar!”

  “No!” said Nestor at once. “I mean, yes to the giving of names, but no to changing them. For I’m used to Suckscar now. Let it suffice.”

  “So be it.” Canker shrugged. “Now I get me down into Mangemanse to work on my instrument. Several hours to go, I think, before we’ll need to prepare for the raid. Then it’s off to Sunside, where with any luck I’ll witness this weird wonder that you work. Except, before I go …”

  “Yes?”

  “Earlier you mentioned your malaise.” Canker seemed anxious. He was genuinely fond of Nestor.

  Nestor’s turn to shrug. “I played a word game. It meant nothing.”

  “No,” said Canker. “Everything means something. Now tell me: are you getting enough of women?”

  “There are lovely girl thralls in my manse, yes,” Nestor answered.

  “And how do you feed yourself?”

  “The same as you. I don’t like it red so much, except for when I drink on Sunside. Apart from that I have good meat and wine, and occasionally a little fruit.”

  “And blood? Only on Sunside? You don’t use your thralls? But you should, Nestor, you should! For what are they after all but vessels? And never forget: the blood is the life!”

  “When I sleep, then I drink … occasi
onally.”

  “But carefully, eh? That Carmen incident taught you a lesson, it seems.”

  “Perhaps it did,” said Nestor.

  “Huh!” the dog-Lord grunted. “Then what is this malaise? Do you know its source?”

  “No,” Nestor lied. And feeling Canker’s thoughts nibbling at his own, he changed the subject. “So tell me, my friend, how goes it with your moon music? A whole year gone by, and still you’re hard at it.”

  Canker was distracted from his own line of questioning. “My music? My instrument? Hard at it? Too true! This music is no easy thing. But it comes, it comes. Have you not heard me, in the sunup when the others are fast asleep? Surely you recognized the tune you gave me?”

  “I’ve heard you,” Nestor nodded wryly, “and I’ve no doubt that Wratha and the others have, too, when we should have been asleep! As for knowing your tune: I knew it, vaguely.”

  “Oh—hah-ha!” Canker capered wildly, threw back his head and laughed. “And have I disturbed you, then? Good, excellent! Not so good that I have ruined your sleep—no, of course not, never that—but wonderful if I’ve managed to disturb the rest of them. It’s my image, you see. For I’m a madman and mischiefmaker. We have to keep up appearances.”

  Nestor managed a grin. “Well then, away with you and practice. Later we’ll fly out and do a little raiding on Sunside—but just the two of us, for as yet I’m jealous of this talent of mine and guard it well. And later we’ll seek out some old Szgany burial place, where you shall see what you shall see.”

  “Agreed!” Canker yelped, as Nestor patted him fondly on his furred and sloping back. And then the necromancer saw him out of Suckscar, accompanying the dog-Lord until at the last he loped out of sight, down and around the spiraling stairwell that descended into Mangemanse.

  But as soon as Canker was gone—

  Nestor returned to his brooding, to his … malaise? And indeed he knew its source. Somewhere in the world—far away, perhaps, but there nevertheless—his olden enemy out of Sunside lived on. That was the source of his disquiet. He knew that his enemy was alive just as surely as he recognized the pattern of the numbers vortex swirling in his head, that whirlwind rush of metaphysical symbols which was his enemy’s cloaking device, with which he kept his secret mind shielded.

  It rarely bothered Nestor in the dark of night, when he was up and prowling, or hunting on Sunside, or running Suckscar to his own design; but during the fear-fraught hours of seething sunlight on the barrier mountains, when Wrathstack slept and the furnace sun’s bright and lethal rays burned on the Lady Wratha’s highest turrets and towers—then he felt it.

  At first it would be in his dreams, which in themselves were a swirl of misty unmemory, or half-memory, of things he really did not wish to remember; but coming awake and as his dreams faded to wraiths, still the hated numbers vortex would linger on. Faint, ah, faint, but real for all that. And lying awake in his bed with his sleeping vampire women, as the cold sweat beaded his flesh and his nerves jangled with each smallest creak of a baffle or wailing of wind beyond his windows, then he would know that his olden enemy lived on. Moreover, he also knew that while for the moment that enemy was far removed, one day he would surely return …

  In a way he dreaded that day, without knowing why, but in another way he longed for it. For he would never be free of the numbers vortex until he was free of his enemy, who and whatever he was.

  But that was only one source of Nestor’s malaise, and the truth of it was that there was another. A need—a gap, a void in his existence—which required filling. For Canker had been partly right to question him about women. But there was a certain woman he had not questioned him about, because he had not known. Only Nestor himself knew, and he was loath to admit it. For after all, she’d made a fool of him once already.

  And yet … in his dreams, all too frequently, she seemed to call to him, and he felt her lure even in his waking hours; so that occasionally, musing, he would find himself (if only in his mind, in the eye of his memory) up there again on Wrathspire’s roof, his lips on hers and her breast in his hand.

  A malaise? No, it was the lingering afterimages of dreams such as these that distracted him. The conflict of his desires. On the one hand, revenge on his enemy. And on the other, Wratha the Risen: the thought of their steam rising up from a bed made sodden by their juices …

  That same sundown, an hour after the sun’s true setting—when the ethereal fan of pink and golden spokes which was its aftermath wheeled in the sky over Sunside and melted to an amethyst glow, and the night crept in, and stars clustered like nuggets of ice frozen in their eternal configurations, and the Icelands aurora fluttered its banners across all the northern skies—then the Wamphyri flew to Sunside. Not only Nestor Lichloathe and Canker Canison, but all of them.

  Taking their senior men with them and leaving lesser lieutenants and thralls in charge of their manses, they set out from Wrathstack to raid on the Szgany. They left in the space of the same hour but in small parties, not en masse; the time lay well in the past when they had worked as a single unit under Wratha. Nor were their parties uniform: the Guile’s lot flew south and a little east, and was composed of Gorvi himself, three lieutenants, and two small aerial warriors. The Killglance brothers headed due south, and took only their chief lieutenants along with them; they would seek their prey in roughly the same area where Wran and Vasagi the Suck had fought their unequal duel. And the Lady Wratha flew westwards with only two of her men, and used the glaring hell-lands Gate as her marker where she sped for the soaring spires and plateaus which were her favourite vantage points, from which she would choose her target.

  As for Canker and Nestor: they made for the great pass a little to the east of the hemisphere Gate, a dogleg gorge that split the barrier mountains to their roots, passing north to south right through them. If they were fortunate enough to recruit a handful of thralls beyond the pass, then their victims would find it an easy route to follow home to the last aerie.

  And gliding on a tail wind, they conversed as they went:

  An even, two-way split, Canker grunted in Nestor’s mind. We work together and share the spoils equally.

  Of course. The other agreed, but with this rider: And if there are women, we split them equally, too.

  Split them? Indeed I will! The dog-Lord laughed obscenely for a moment, then sobered. But yes, I understand, and I’m more than pleased with that arrangement. Damn, I have a few too many bitches in Mangemanse already! And when I’m away, like now, all they can do is squabble. They fight for my affections, Nestor.

  Nestor doubted it but said nothing. More likely Canker’s women fought to determine who would stay out of his bed! (This was a thought the necromancer kept to himself.) But forget Mangemanse, for the fact of it was that Suckscar did go a little short on women, and Nestor had lieutenants and thralls other than himself to consider. For if a man is not happy he will scheme and plot, eventually get himself in serious, even terminal trouble, and so deplete the aerie. On the other hand, genuine happiness as such is scarcely the province of vampire thralls, but … at least their loads might be made a little easier to bear.

  This last thought had escaped him and been picked up by Canker. “Too true!” the dog-Lord called through the blustery air, slicing it with his bark. “You have to keep them happy. For you can be sure there are those among ’em who’ll be lusting after your women even now—aye, and lusting after Suckscar, too! There must be, else nothing would ever change and no one ever ascend.”

  Nestor nodded and answered grimly, “Indeed, for it’s the getting there that counts.”

  “Right!” Canker howled. “And without new blood—among the Wamphyri, I mean—we’d all stagnate and become doddering old cripples like the lot we left behind in Turgosheim.”

  “You must tell me about them some time,” Nestor answered. “The full story. But for now … let’s keep the noise down. A few more miles and we’re through the pass, so from here on in silence is the order of
the night.”

  As you will. Canker fell silent a moment. Until: Ah! But can’t you just smell ’em from here, Nestor? Szgany! Meat on the hoof—sweet blood, hot and surging—young breasts and buttocks and cunt galore! Me? Why, I’ll risk the odd crossbow bolt any old time, to fire a few shots from my own weapon.”

  Your “image”? Nestor’s sarcasm dripped, but Canker chose to ignore it.

  No lad, not this time, he answered. Not my image but my lust. I want to be into a fresh, untainted woman. Or several!

  You’re a lech, said Nestor, but without malice. A satyr.

  Not a bit of it. Canker grinned across at him. I’m Wamphyri! And so are you …

  The Sunside end of the pass was in sight, and beyond it a far horizon still stained with strips of dying colour: dun orange, a pale, dirty yellow, and amethyst. Nestor and Canker ordered their flyers up, up, until they rode with a knot of dark clouds scudding south. Should they be seen from the ground, they’d be just two more clouds chasing the fallen sun.

  Now the hunt was on, for down below was Szgany territory. And as Nestor led the way and sped out with the clouds over the forest, so Canker inquired, And just where do you think you’re taking me? Man, these woods are dense, and the Szgany know them a damn sight better than we do! We should stick to the fringes, look for their fires. And where in hell do we land? And having landed, from where do we launch? I mean, I know you’re no novice, that you’ve done all this before, but you’re listening to the voice of real experience here. Seventy years of it. And I tell you we should—