The Last Aerie

  Each window was fitted with black bat-fur drapes which presently stood open, giving access to the pale dawn light. Many hours still to go before the sun shone on Wrathspire, by which time the curtains would be drawn. But from where Nestor sat, if he turned his head a little, he could see the morning mists of Sunside gathering in the gaunt grey peaks and passes, forming clouds and drifting free. The sight was nothing new to him, except … in previous times, he’d seen it from the other side. Perhaps at that—at these distant echoes and thoughts out of the past, of Sunside and what he had been there—Nestor felt something of poignancy for a life gone and forgotten forever, but all such emotions were rapidly fading now.

  In two of the several “comers” of the mainly irregular hall, curtained areas hid Wratha’s smaller, personal warriors from view. But in a third she had deliberately left the drapes open. At sight of the creature shackled there, her guests were reminded yet again of Wratha’s sovereignty in these dizzy aerial levels. Twice the size of a man and nine times heavier, with overlapping, inch-thick scales of blue-grey, chitin armour, the creature was mainly claws, jaws, and teeth. Going on all fours like a bear (despite that it once was a man, or men), it would occasionally rear upright, grunt and mutter questioningly, and shake its chains curiously—but purely out of habit.

  During the daylight hours proper, when the sun was high and Wratha had taken to her bed, two of these beasts would be stationed in the stairwells near the launching bays, while the third would roam through Wrathspire top to bottom, guarding mainly against aerial incursions, but also patrolling Wratha’s chambers. The Lady’s lieutenants and thralls, some of whom had duties in these unsociable hours, had her scent upon them, of course, and so were safe. But as for any stranger …

  Nestor’s gaze was attracted to the dome of the ceiling, where on several occasions he’d sensed some strange, furtive activity. Now he saw what it was: a colony of giant Desmodus bats! For in the darkest corners and the gloom of deep ledges (from which locations their spillage could neither intrude nor disgust), Wrathspire’s lesser habitants clung like dense black cobwebs or fragments of a shroud to walls and ceiling, causing the darkness to crawl there. Even as Nestor watched, a party of latecomers entered through a window, chittering shrilly as they dispersed to various parts of the living blanket. Vampires all, though not of the human strain, these were Wratha’s familiars. And Nestor wondered—but in no way morbidly—if he would be heir to just such a colony, five levels down in Suckscar.

  While making these observations, Nestor had continued to eat, until now he was replete. Sighing, he stripped a last morsel of tender flesh from the thigh bone of a wolf cub, glanced round the table … and paused in his chewing. Every eye seemed rapt upon him: the way he had disposed of his food. Finally he put down the gleaming bone, ran his fingers through his hair to clean them, and glanced at Wran questioningly. The Rage seemed to find something amusing; he stifled a laugh and merely grinned, and took another sip from his jack. But Wratha, no less fascinated than the others, raised an eyebrow and said:

  “Well, at least one of us has an appetite!” Which galvanized the rest of her guests to something of activity, at least. For now they, too, took up their skewers …

  In a little while, as all of them about the table joined Nestor in swilling wine and picking at various tidbits, Wratha stood up and rapped for attention. “My Lords,” she began dryly. “We are gathered here to honour a special person upon a rare and special occasion. Namely: the reception of Wran Killglance on his return out of Sunside, where in the night he had business with Vasagi the Suck. Alas, Vasagi is no more. I now call upon Wran—called the Rage, and rightly—to tell us all, and spare no detail of trial and triumph in the telling.” She sat down. It had been a standard opening; the Lords among them had all heard much the same before in Turgosheim, usually from Vormulac Unsleep, master of melancholy Vormspire.

  Wran sat up straighter, and made as if to begin. At which—an interruption! It was a sound or series of sounds: a burble of notes, piping trills, as of Sunside birds—issuing from a stairwell. At first an odd fluting, soon it turned to laughter, and then the two interspersed. Curious whistles, and gales of raucous laughter! And:

  “Canker Canison!” Wran scowled, before that one had even presented himself. But in another moment he appeared, with one of Wratha’s thralls bowing him in. Nestor looked, saw him, and his jaw dropped. So this was the missing Lord. But a Lord? The others around the table were mainly human—or born of woman, at least—but this one? Oh, there was something of humanity in him, but there was a great deal more of something else!

  Later, Nestor would learn a little of Canker’s history, his unutterable lineage: that somewhere in his ancestry there had been a fox, dog, or wolf. Whichever, the creature had probably strayed from its normal hunting grounds on Sunside or in the mountains and wandered into the swamps east of Turgosheim to drink. There it had become infected by a spore and emerged a vampire changeling. After that, the possibilities were several:

  It had bitten or savaged someone, and so passed on a canine strain of vampirism. Or … inside the beast, a leech had developed from the vampire spore, whose egg later transferred to a man or woman, who became Wamphyri and ascended in Turgosheim. Or … some vampire had sired a litter on a dog bitch, she-wolf, or vixen; not necessarily by miscegenation, probably by biting the creature when she was pregnant. Or—in the case of someone like Canker—perhaps even sexually …

  Whichever, evidence of this—mongrel?—ancestry had been apparent in the line ever since, and never more so than in Canker Canison. Standing upright and leaning forward (his normal posture), he was tall as a tall man but his limbs were all out of proportion. Shoulders, thighs, and chest were massive, while forelegs were slender, sinewy, wolflike.

  Canker’s hands … were hands; but his knoblike, thickly padded feet were plainly paws. Instead of nails, his hands and feet alike were equipped with claws. Face and head, while basically human, were also disturbingly doglike, with long jaws and canine teeth, triangular eyes, and pointed ears which were mobile, expressive, and thickly furred. Named after the disease of the inner ear which had driven his father baying mad and caused his suicide, Canker, by use of his metamorphism (also by physically sculpting them), had caused the lobes of his own ears to be fretted into curious and intricate designs, which included his sigil, a sickle moon.

  Canker’s hair was a wiry, foxy red; his eyes, too, though in dusk or darkness they could as easily turn yellow and feral. His gait was more a long-striding lope than a walk proper, and from time to time he would fall to all fours, then push himself upright with sinuous ease. When he laughed there was more than a hint of howling in it and the gape of his jaws was enormous. Then, too, he would throw back his head and shake from tip to toe …

  He was laughing now, mainly at the long-suffering expressions on the faces of his peers. But as the dog-thing’s laughter died away, so his spiky eyebrows came together in a frown over his long, much-convoluted snout, and his voice became a growling rumble. “Eh, what? And have you started without me?”

  “The first gold is on the peaks, Canker,” Wratha observed, without turning a hair. “It is you who are late. For someone who observes the future in dreams, you scarcely seem to observe the present at all; you have no sense of occasion! But now that you are here, won’t you be seated?”

  “Late?” He sniffed the air, glancing here and there about the table. “Am I? In which case you must excuse me. I serve the moon, as well you know, and my industry on Her behalf is great. In honour of my silver mistress in the sky, I am constructing … an instrument!” He lifted a bone flute to his moist mouth, blew several ear-piercing notes, then loped to a chair midway between Nestor and Spiro. And seating himself, Canker tossed down the flute upon the table. “This was my inspiration.”

  The flute rolled to a rocking standstill in the middle of the table between Nestor and Gorvi the Guile; the latter picked it up, examined it, and said: “You found inspiration in this? A S
zgany toy?”

  “No.” Canker shook his head and scowled. “Only the pattern is Szgany. But I made this flute—of bone! Szgany flutes are of reed, and they break too easily. This one’s notes are purer, because the bore is perfect. Then, having made it, I remembered all the times I had flown over the boulder plains and seen the remains of olden battles. Why, in places the plains are a veritable boneyard! The wars of our ancestors were bloody indeed! Men and monsters alike have died out there, and for a thousand years their bones have bleached under the cold stars, made silver by the moon in Her passing.

  “And I thought: those bones have worshiped Her, too, but all in silence. They have worshiped my silver mistress, whose light has shone on them through all the centuries! And remembering this flute—or Szgany toy, if you insist”—he scowled at Gorvi—“I knew what I must do. And I have started!

  “In my house are many windows facing north, the Icelands, and the cold winds that blow. I shall build baffles there, in the central level, to gather the winds within my manse! There, too, I shall build my instrument.” He looked at the bone flute where Gorvi had put it down. “For if a mere ‘toy’ such as this, in combination with lungs such as mine, can make music fit for the ears of men, how then a mighty orchestra of bones, and the lungs of the very wind itself? So shall I worship Her on high, while Wrathstack thunders to the songs of the long dead and forgotten!” He fell quiet and glared all about the table.

  Gorvi nodded and put the flute down, and murmured wryly, “Fit for the ears of men, aye …”

  “What?” Canker had heard him. His ears were sensitive to a fault.

  But Gorvi only shrugged. “I was merely … savouring the phrase? Your appreciation of music goes deeper than we had suspected, Canker.”

  The other sat back again, loosely in his chair, and likewise shrugged. “It’s a means to an end, that’s all: to lure my silver mistress from the sky, and make her my mistress proper.” He held up a cautionary, protesting hand. “No, no! Not the moon itself, but the one who dwells there, who … who calls to me.” He saw the looks that passed between them, gave himself a shake, and sat up straighter.

  Then too, as if for the first time, he noticed Nestor and Gore Sucksthrall. “But what’s this? Do common thralls and lieutenants attend your reception, Wran?” And turning his head the other way: “Do you sup with servants, Wratha? Or is it perhaps that they’re the main course?” And he leered at Nestor.

  Wran said, “Canker, you are plainly exhausted. Gore Sucksthrall here is a lieutenant, sure enough, but Nestor? This one has ascended: he has an egg. Indeed, he has Vasagi’s egg, for the Suck has no more use for it! But I’m surprised you didn’t sniff it out for yourself.”

  “Ahhh! The vampire egg of Vasagi? This boy?” Canker leaned closer to Nestor and sniffed cautiously, as if at suspect meat. But in a moment: “Yes, I see you’re right!”

  “And now if you’ll hear me out, I’ll tell all,” said Wran.

  The others were all ears, except Nestor himself. He knew the tale well enough and could afford to let his attention wander a little. It didn’t wander too far, however, for diagonally across the table, Gore Sucksthrall was glaring pure poison at him from furious, blazing eyes!

  3

  Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri

  Wran kept it short:

  “Vasagi and I, we flew off in different directions from Madmanse and Suckscar. Our arguments had been one too many, and our enmity seemed insurmountable. This was the only honorable way to settle it: man to man on Sunside. For weapons we had our gauntlets, nothing else. I saw Vasagi flying at a distance. We acknowledged each other, a nod of the head. And even at that range he sent a thought: I hope you’ve said your last farewells, Wran. If not, too late now. For only one of us can return. Alas, it won’t be you!

  “I thought to make some derisory answer but the distance was increasing. Despite Vasagi’s superior mentalism, he probably wouldn’t hear me; my range was not so extensive. In that respect, who among us is—or was—equal to Vasagi? Having no speech as such, his telepathy supplemented his ridiculous miming! Still, his words had served as a warning. Not that I feared him, you understand, but he had reminded me of his skill as a thought-thief. From then on, I would keep my own thoughts very well guarded.

  “I landed on Sunside east of the great pass, and maneuvered my flyer back into a thicket of tall trees growing on the hillside. In front was a bluff. When all was done I could call my creature forward and launch without hindrance. And then I waited.” He paused.

  “You … waited?” said Gorvi. “You didn’t hunt for him?”

  Wran shook his head. “My thought was that he would hunt for me. If I moved about, changing my location, it would only make his task more difficult. And the sooner we came together the better. And so I waited … well, for a little while. But this was Sunside and I could smell the smoke of a Szgany campfire not long extinguished; so that suddenly, the urge was on me! Oh, it’s true I was here for different game this night of nights, but I saw no harm in mixing business with pleasure.

  “I went to my flyer and cautioned him to be still, quiet, and wait for me. I forbade any sort of commotion, for whatever reason. Then I headed east on foot, through the foothills. The smoke stench came from that direction; it was faint due to distance and the dispersal of small winds; its source might be as much as seven or eight miles away. That was nothing, for I had an entire night at my disposal. Also, I made no effort to hide my tracks but left a strong spoor. That way, if the Suck should discover my flyer, he would be able to follow my trail without difficulty. But I kept my thoughts constantly guarded, for if he sensed my confidence, it might caution him to keep back.

  “Well, eventually I found a small family group of Travellers where they sheltered in a cavelet. My first knowledge of them came when I stumbled across the male having a piss in the dead of night a little way from the cave. When I found him he was half asleep … fully asleep when I had done! The sleep of the undead. By now, enthralled, doubtless he’s following me through the pass. Later I’ll find him making his way to Wrathstack, wailing like a banshee and gnashing his teeth where he stumbles across the boulder plains. I hereby lay claim to him. But last night …

  “ … Having had his blood, a good deal of it, now I would enjoy his woman. But first I must deal with his children, lest there be crying and a deal of confusion. There were two Szgany whelps, a girl and boy. The girl was six or seven; I smothered her in her sleep. Her brother was a bairn; I crushed his head. And their mother was … succulent!” Wran paused to glance at Wratha. “But I won’t be indelicate. You men can ask me later. For now I’ll tell you only this: she lasted well …

  “Later, I trekked back towards the place where I’d left my flyer. The boy child dangled from my belt, trailing blood, which made my spoor easier still to follow. And always I kept my mind shielded. But do you know, such had been my … extravagance with the woman, that I actually felt weary! It was as if I had raged, though in truth I had not. My flesh had raged a little, perhaps, but … such is the nature of lust. So that what with these excesses of mine, and all the trekking afoot—plus the fact that during the previous day I’d been excited by the prospect of the night ahead, and so had not slept as best I might—I felt depleted. Or perhaps I had supped too well on the blood of the man and what little I’d had from his wife—and the rest of what I had had from her—until I was replete in every sense and now must sleep it off.

  “Except, somewhere out there in the night, Vasagi the Suck was likewise afoot. It gave me pause, but eventually I puzzled my way out of the dilemma.

  “I hastened to my flyer and curled myself in a belly ridge where the thrusters are lodged. And before sleeping I commanded the beast that if someone approached, namely Vasagi the Suck, I was to be awakened at once. Or if not—if he came gliding and in great stealth or disguised in a mist, remaining hidden until the last moment—then that my creature must thrust me aside to safety, and roll or fall upon Vasagi and so crush him.

&n
bsp; “But, no such incursion; I slept the best and possibly the longest sleep of my life! Then, awakening, I sensed sunup some hours away and knew that time was narrowing down. And still my business with the Suck remained unsettled. So … I would try to lure him one last time, and if that failed then I must resort to hunting him.

  “I left my flyer, proceeded some small distance on foot, and there built a fire in the lee of a rocky outcrop. I commenced roasting the boy child upon a spit, and before too long felt a presence. The feeling was momentary, but strong. In the night and the dark I fancied I felt eyes upon me, perhaps from on high. And of course I wondered: had Vasagi passed fleetingly overhead? It would seem the most likely explanation; certainly the sweet smell of roasting bairn would be a vast attraction. If so, then he had surely seen me.

  “I continued to roast my breakfast, and waited. And in a little while someone came! Ah, but he was clumsy, perhaps too eager? Above me in a nest of rounded boulders, I heard a pebble slither. Did he intend to jump down on me? Possibly. But I was ready, fully rested and wide awake … even eager! He came to his doom, be sure!

  “Except—it wasn’t Vasagi! It was this one!” And here Wran pointed dramatically at Nestor.

  “However unwittingly, this strange night-prowling Szgany youth had distracted me when, concentrating upon his approach, I had failed to detect the Suck’s! Or rather, Vasagi had utilized this one’s clumsiness to mask his own far more sinister slither. And while I was confused, finally he attacked!

  “Then …

  “Nestor shouted a warning! Also, he put a bolt in the Suck’s shoulder. But can you credit it? The intervention of a Traveller, a Szgany youth, in a grand duel of vampire Lords? It was astonishing, and it was ironic! For to my way of thinking, it evened up the balance admirably. Vasagi had used this lad to get close to me, and paid for his deviousness when Nestor turned on him. But injured, the Suck was yet more dangerous. And in the fight which ensued I sustained grave injuries of my own, mainly to my back. I intend to keep the scars, to illustrate the extent of Vasagi’s ferocity. Perhaps on some future occasion, you may even prevail upon me to display them for you …”