The Last Aerie

  “The choice is yours,” Nestor told him coldly. “Sunside or the provisioning. I have no interest in the matter. Go to Glina now and tell her, and by sunup let it be as I have ordered it.”

  “You won’t tell her yourself?” This was brave of Zahar.

  “Are you saying I fear her?” Nestor looked at him, raised a sardonic eyebrow. “No, I’m simply sick of her—and of all men and creatures who question me! Perhaps you fear her, eh? Or do you simply fear the change, when you won’t find it so easy to conduct your affairs?”

  “My … affairs, Lord?”

  “Your own and the affairs of all the others, too.” Nestor’s voice was very quiet, very dangerous now. “Do you think I don’t know how she arranges things for you?”

  And now Zahar was very brave. “But all to Suckscar’s benefit, Lord.”

  “There is only one creature in my manse which is entirely to Suckscar’s benefit,” Nestor told him, in little more than a whisper. “And I am it! But while I cannot be replaced, all else can and will be if I see fit. Now go, and be sure you carry out my orders.”

  “Yes, Lord.” And only too glad to be out of his master’s presence, Zahar retreated.

  It was the same sundown. Wratha had been back from her disastrous raid on Settlement for some time, but never a word out of Wrathspire. Doubtless she licked her wounds.

  While down in Suckscar:

  Nestor was now Wamphyri in the fullest sense of the word. He was enormously powerful, the Lord of a mighty manse, a necromancer who read the minds of men dead in their graves, and also … Wratha’s lover? As to that last: things could change. For as the Lady herself would be the first to admit, she was, after all, only a woman, no matter how high she had risen.

  Ambitious? Oh, she was that, all right! But what of Nestor’s own ambitions? He supposed they must clash eventually. It seemed unavoidable. Meanwhile, well, he would make the best of it. It wouldn’t be too hard. Certainly Wratha knew how to satisfy his lust.

  But there’s lust and there’s lust, which in a man is not always for the body of a woman. Nestor’s lust for revenge was powerful. Revenge on his Great Enemy, and on the girl who had betrayed him. That must come first. But afterwards—

  He considered the rest of the stack. Canker first.

  The dog-thing was not a problem. It was as if he followed Nestor to heel, like a tame wolf. He would make a fine, trustworthy lieutenant when the time came.

  Then he gave thought to Wran and Spiro. They, too, might be brought to heel. Wratha had done it, upon a time. Oh, they had slipped their leashes eventually, but that was because in bringing them here she had freed them from the tyrannous restrictions of Turgosheim. They had seen no point in trading one tyranny for another, one ruthless leader for a yet more ruthless priestess. The Killglance brothers were Lords, after all, and Wratha only a Lady …

  But Spiro: Nestor had heard how he continued to practice his killing eye. And with some success at last.

  On Sunside, during a raid, the brothers had got into trouble. Ambushed by desperate Travellers, they’d been obliged to fight hand to hand. Spiro had got his gauntlet stuck in the skull of a man, so that it was wrenched from his hand. Then, as another human attacked him with a machete, he’d tried to use his killing eye. And at last his father’s talent was seen to have been passed down to him! The metaphysical blast from his evil vampire eyes had been sufficient to burst his victim’s heart, rupture all of his vital organs, stop him dead—literally!

  So that now, while Wran had his rages (which were terrible in their own right), his brother had the killing eye of Eygor Killglance. But of course men were only weak and the Wamphyri were strong. Nestor did not for a moment believe that Spiro’s murderous glance could affect him, or any of the stack’s vampires, for that matter. Still, the weird talent of Spiro Killglance would be worth watching out for.

  Finally Gorvi:

  The Guile would not be difficult to sway, not when all of the others were seen to toe the line. But Nestor knew that he would always have to watch him. Gorvi must never be placed in a position of trust. Indeed, it were better if he occupied no position at all—except perhaps a very deep hole somewhere out on the boulder plains …

  Nestor had got so far with his thoughts—his p!ans?—for the future, when Grig came to him with a message from the Lady Wratha. It was a simple thing: “Come.”

  Grig delivered it and stood grinning.

  Usually Nestor would laugh along with him, for his lieutenants knew well enough what this kind of invitation from Wratha signified. But tonight he scowled, and Grig quickly changed his expression. “Lord?”

  “Is her messenger still here?”

  “In the upper corridor where it leads to her landing bays. I left him there, watched over by a guardian.”

  “Go to him,” Nestor said. “And tell him to tell her … no!”

  Grig gawped. “Simply that?”

  Nestor shrugged. “She asked for me with a single word. And that’s how I choose to deny her.”

  Grig backed away, turned to go, and Nestor stopped him with another single word. “Wait.”

  “Yes, Lord?”

  “From now on never smile in my presence unless I smile. Do not grin unless I grin. And don’t laugh, ever.”

  “No, Lord.”

  “And don’t forget,” Nestor warned. “For if you do … it’s difficult to smile without lips.”

  Grig fled …

  The night passed, however slowly. There were no more “commands” from Wratha that Nestor attend her, though on two occasions he sensed her mental groping at the edge of his awareness. He was strong now and knew how to shut her out. He did so.

  The aerie was unusually quiet—not only Suckscar but the entire stack top to bottom—tike the quiet on Sunside before a storm. Nestor sensed his colony of giant bats stirring in their cavern niches and felt ill at ease without knowing the source of his disquiet. He saw to the manse’s administration, then prepared for bed.

  He did not see Glina, or hear the customary wailing of her adopted child. Obviously Zahar had been diligent in carrying out his orders.

  Nestor felt lonely. He called for a girl, took her to his bed. She tried hard to please her master but … was cold. No, not cold, but after Wratha there was no real fire in her. Nestor sent her away.

  He slept …

  And dreamed of the numbers vortex. Of that, and of other—things.

  Nestor’s dreams were usually scarlet, as are the dreams of all the Wamphyri. But this time there was no blood. Instead, he dreamed of a bloodless war, of a battle with the dead, and Nestor Lichloathe the only living creature on all the battlefield!

  He fought alone, with neither men nor monsters to support him but only his clogged, stinking gauntlet, against a teeming legion of the dead whose crumbling, rotting bodies stood erect again as quickly as he cut them down! And despite that it was a hopeless task (for who may kill the dead?) still he willed himself to fight through them to get to That which they protected, the Thing which commanded them, his Great Enemy from times all but forgotten except in brief flashes of tantalizing memory.

  Finally, when he stood panting from his exertions upon a mound of soul-heaving corruption—human debris whose pieces yet clutched and clawed at him to pull him down—at last the mind-refuge of Nestor’s hated opponent materialized: a rearing, nodding cone like a tornado of rapidly mutating equations! The numbers vortex!

  And within the rush and swirl of the tornado, half hidden in the uproar of mad mathematical eruptions, Nestor saw the infinitely sad face of a yellow-haired, blue-eyed giant, made sad perhaps, by the almost sacrificial mutilation and slaughter of his teeming dead army. But not by that alone.

  For it was as if Nestor saw behind those plaintive sapphire eyes right into his enemy’s soul; and strangely, inexplicably, he knew that the giant felt for him, knew that his Great Enemy was sorry … for his brother, Nestor Lichloathe!

  At which a hand fell on his shoulder and he came starting awake! r />
  And it was sunup.

  Zahar was there, backing away as Nestor shot bolt upright in his tumbled bed. And the Lord of Suckscar was damp with cold sweat, panting for air as he adjusted to being awake. Then:

  “What is it?” he demanded, as finally he knew his whereabouts and took a grip on himself.

  “It is Glina, Lord.” Zahar’s face was pale even for a vampire.

  “What of her?”

  “I told her your intentions, your orders, with regard to herself and the child. She set to making her quarters clean and asked me to return in an hour. But when I went back she was not there. Neither Glina nor the baby.”

  “Fled? But how?” Nestor got up, got dressed.

  Zahar shook his head, sadly, Nestor thought. “No, not fled. In hiding. Waiting for sunup.”

  “Explain.”

  “I searched the manse but couldn’t find her. She couldn’t go up into Wrathspire, or down into Mangemanse, and so must be here. But Suckscar is vast, as well you know, and Glina is familiar with every nook and cranny. Also … a good many of your people owe her favours, Lord. Perhaps someone has hidden Glina away, just for a few hours. I hesitate to suggest it, but that is how it … how it begins to …” And he paused with the accusation only half spoken.

  “Go on,” Nestor told him. “I know what you would say: that Glina has friends. Difficult, between vampires, yes. And yet I, too, have one friend, at least.”

  Zahar nodded eagerly, and said, “Two, Lord, if you’ll only include me.” And he quickly continued, “I knew she must reveal herself eventually, knew she must come out if only to eat or to feed the child. Well, and finally she has come out, but as you see, not until the sun is up.

  “Where is she?”

  “She has climbed by an external route, up onto the south-facing wall of Wrathspire.”

  “And the child?”

  “He is with her.”

  Suicide, it could only be. And the infant? Far better to let him die now—swifdy, surely, and too young to know that he’d even lived—than take a chance he might go to the provisioning. So thought Glina. And Nestor knew she’d thought it.

  “Take me to where I can see her, talk to her.”

  “Yes, Lord. But … you’ve slept long and long. The sun is well up. I fear we’ll be too late.”

  In any case, they went. And on their way: “What is it you would say to her, Lord?” Zahar was curious. “Is it that you’ll try to bring her down?”

  Nestor glanced at him once only, with eyes that blazed up in his face like hell’s own fires. And: “No,” he answered. “Let her stay there and wait for the sun to strike. I have only one thing to say to Glina, and it’s this: good-bye!”

  And from then to Wratha’s landing bays, silence accompanied them the rest of the way …

  Wratha was there, too, with several of her lieutenants. Some of her men would climb up after Glina, but the Lady stopped them. “No, let’s wait and see what this silly woman will do. For it’s hard to believe she’d deliberately burn herself—not for the love of any man.” And she glanced sideways at Nestor.

  And moving closer to him, smiiing—yet hissing like some venomous snake in his mind—she asked, Why did you not come to me?

  Seeing Wratha again, seemingly demure and recovered from the ravages of her Settlement battle—gorgeous in a revealing gown, and utterly edible—and knowing he could be in her even now, Nestor’s lust flooded his veins to heat his blood as hotly as ever.

  Because I had things to do, he lied.

  Such as?

  Removing this one from office, and sending her away from me.

  Then she is here because of you?

  Yes, he answered, mainly out of Wamphyri vanity. And also because I would send her adopted brat back to Sunside—or to the provisioning.

  Oh? But I had heard rumours that he was your adopted son, too.

  So much for rumours, Nestor answered.

  They might have conversed further, but at that point a sigh went up from Zahar and the other lieutenants and thralls where they craned their necks to look up at the soaring, south-facing wall of Wrathspire. Their viewpoint was from a walled, natural promontory or broad balcony over Wratha’s main landing bay, whose elevation was some sixty feet short of the bleached-white upper levels. Up there, along a line so regular it might even be a fault in the aerie’s rock face, the natural features of fissured chimneys and ledges, and vampire-constructed buttresses, windows, and cartilage catwalks, turned abruptly from a weathered grey colour to an almost crystalline white, and the very rock itself seemed calcined with fire.

  And indeed it had been, for this was the sun’s demarcation line, above which the uppermost levels of the last aerie had been bleached white through centuries and even millennia of purifying sunlight. For when the solar furnace rose to its highest point over Sunside and blazed through the high peaks and passes, this was where its brilliant rays alighted, like a false halo to blister the corrupt head of the stack.

  Up there on a ledge, to which she’d scrambled from a cartilage catwalk where it petered out, Glina hugged a small bundle to her breast and crouched in the shade of a shallow niche. But it was too shallow, that niche, and would not save her when the sun crept beyond the peaks and its rays swept from east to west across the face of Wrathstack.

  Which was why Zahar and the others had issued their massed sigh, for even now the eastern corners of the upper spires were turning to glowing, blinding gold, as a seething vertical tide inched across the stone towards Glina in her crevice. She saw it too, and knew it was her time. Then—

  —She stepped out upon the ledge, and lowered her feral eyes upon Wratha, Nestor, Zahar, and the rest. But mainly Glina gazed at Nestor with eyes yellow as the brightening light they reflected, so that he could feel them burning on him.

  And Wratha frowned delicately and said, “She hates you.”

  To which he replied, “She has good reason.” But his voice was cracked and dry.

  At which juncture—a strange thing! For suddenly Nestor wanted to cry out, to warn Glina of the sun’s approach, command her to come down, find a window, creep in out of danger. He had thought that compassion and all such feeble human emotions were dead in him and flown forever, but now seemed unsure. A certain poignancy, a gnawing frustration, chewed at his insides. Guilt? In a Lord of the Wamphyri? Ridiculous! And yet …

  What was Glina after all but a harmless creature he’d stolen out of Sunside? What had she done to deserve an end such as this? But if she’d done nothing it was because she was nothing. Just a stupid Szgany bitch, a snap of the fingers. So why should he worry over her fate?

  Wratha had heard him. Exactly, she’s nothing. Why concern yourself? Because she was your first? But think: Wratha is your last! And is there any comparison? Between me and any Traveller shad? If so, then go to some other’s bed when your work is done. But be sure if you do that I won’t call for you again! A threat of sorts, but he sensed an edge of desperation in it. Whatever they had had together, Wratha clung to it still. It gave Nestor power over her, which he would test eventually. But for the moment—

  He made no answer, mainly because he was watching Glina; also watching the sun, or rather its seething, sighing, cleansing ray lighting up the face of Wrathspire as it drew close to the woman on her ledge. But much too late to do anything now. She was doomed.

  Another sigh went up from the assembled vampires. It was strange: a sigh of horror from such as these! But this would be their doom, too, if ever the sun should find them out.

  As a life nears its end, time speeds up. Nestor couldn’t remember who had said that: an old man, he believed, on Sunside, probably. Just another fragment from his forgotten past fitting itself into place. But as for what it meant:

  A man’s youth lasts forever, or seems to. But as he gets older, so the years get shorter. And his last few hours? They must fly like seconds. The same goes for women, of course. As for Glina, she was already down to those seconds. Five, four, three, two, one
… and then no more.

  At the end, the sun scythed across her in a rush!

  She felt its deadly light on her face, in her eyes!

  Her shoulders had been slumped, as in defeat, but now she snapped erect on her ledge. And as the first tendril of smoke puffed up in her hair, she looked one last time down on Nestor, and hurled the baby towards him!

  It fell short, and went without a cry fluttering into the abyss. It seemed to drift on the air, but in fact fell like a stone. And was gone …

  Then Glina cried out, but just once.

  She lifted up her arms to embrace the sun. Her face blackened in a moment and her shift billowed up from the steam and stench rising beneath it. Her hair burst into flames, and her shift followed suit. Yellow fire, almost invisible in the sunlight, enveloped her.

  For a moment more she stood there—like a human torch, a sacrifice to the sun—then crumpled to her knees and toppled forward into eternity …

  “Gone,” said Wratha with some satisfaction. And silently, to herself: An old flame, blazing to the end, finally consumed by its own fire. And all her “innocence” gone with her.

  She turned to Nestor, but he was no longer there. Instead, she saw him descending from the promontory to the landing bay, heading for Suckscar with Zahar. And: Nestor! she called after him.

  Later, he answered, without looking back. For he knew he had power over her. But he also had power over the dead, and now there was one among them to whom he must speak …

  He had her burned, blackened, broken body brought up, and in the privacy of his room of repose approached her. But before he could even touch her:

  You are cursed, Nestor, she told him, in a totally emotionless deadspeak voice, freed now from all the agony of death but remembering it well enough. You are all cursed, of course, but you especially.

  He held back and said, “When I brought you up here from the rubble and the scree, my only thought was to … comfort you?” Oddly, it was the truth, but even Nestor could see the cynicism in it now.