This time, when Wran’s pause threatened to extend itself indefinitely, Gorvi the Guile put in, “All very interesting, I readily submit, though none of it explains this Nestor’s custody of Vasagi’s egg. Was it won, or illegally … bequeathed? Which is to say, not by the Suck, but by his destroyer, Wran. You’ll concede I have a point. For here sits Gore Sucksthrall, first-chosen lieutenant of Vasagi himself, and rightful aspirant to Suckscar. Must he now stand aside for this Nestor? An unusual procedure, to say the least.”
“Bah!” This from Wratha. “What’s so unusual, Gorvi? Think back on your own ascension, as I often think on mine. It’s the getting there that’s important, not the means. Aye, the getting there, and the wanting to be there! And yet … it would seem you’ve asked a valid question: was it done out of spite, maliciously conceived and contrived by Wran the Rage, or was Nestor receptive? And I ask another: if the latter, how so? For in all my days I’ve never yet heard of a Traveller who desired to be Wamphyri—not before the fact, at least.”
Canker Canison sat up straighter, slapped a hand flat on the table, and barked: “Only one person to ask!” And turning to Nestor, where so far he’d sat silent: “You, Nestor. You have a vampire egg in you. But did you desire to be Wamphyri, or was it forced upon you?”
“What the hell odds does it make?” Wran roared, coming to his feet. “Wratha has it right: it’s getting there that counts. As for eggs: don’t we bequeath them where we will? We do, when we have the choice. Well, when last I saw Vasagi the Suck, he had no choice. I pegged his broken body out to burn. And now I wish I’d let his leech and egg burn with him!”
“May I speak?” Gore Sucksthrall growled, but quietly. And when they looked at him:
“It seems to me that the Lord Wran engineered this thing,” Gore said. “Not to thwart me—of course not, for I am nothing as yet—but to punish his old enemy the Lord Vasagi, who was my master. It would seem a grand jest, to transfer the Suck’s egg to this … this innocent. And of course, cowed by Wran and afraid of us all, this unworthy receptacle sits here, numb and dumb, and praying it’s all a dream. Myself, I would aspire to Suckscar, and no question about it. Except a usurper has Vasagi’s egg. Doubtless it was torn from my master’s body, or fled him upon his death. Which seems to me the easiest way to regain it—and now, before the egg becomes a leech, or while the vampire is still a tadpole. Wherefore I challenge this Nestor to a trial of combat. The time, place, and manner of his death, I leave to him.”
Gore was right. Deep in Nestor’s core, Vasagi’s seed was as yet a tadpole. Be that as it may, already it could sense the strength of its host—and his weaknesses. But the latter only served the parasite’s purposes; rather, they worked to its benefit. Nestor had no history, nothing to cling to, and therefore no resistance to the seething metamorphosis taking place within him. On the other hand, his vampire had no real “intelligence” as such; as yet embryonic, its sole purpose was to enhance the darker facets of its host, while simultaneously blunting his human compassion and deadening his sensibilities. In so doing, it honed to a razor’s edge those skills necessary to Nestor’s—and of course its own—survival. For above all else, the vampire is tenacious.
And Gore was quite wrong: instead of sitting there “numb and dumb,” Nestor had taken his small but deadly crossbow from his belt and into his lap, fitted its bolt, and now only required to load it. While the first of these actions had been easy, going all unseen behind and below the bulk of the great table, the last would take some small effort and could never be accomplished in secret, especially now that all eyes were on him. He hesitated … there was still time enough … he would wait and see what he would see.
Canker, on Nestor’s immediate left, had doubtless seen his furtive movements; he said nothing but simply sat there, feral eyes blazing, holding his dog’s breath and glancing from Nestor to Gore and back again. Gore had meanwhile put both of his huge hands flat on the table and looked about ready to stand up. His eyes were likewise feral—and full of murder. He had made his challenge; if it went unaccepted, or even unanswered by Nestor, plainly Gore would have the right to act.
Nestor sat stiff as a ramrod and looked at Gore. The man was a vampire; he had put on flesh and bulked out until he was almost massive as a Lord; clad in heavy leather, he made two of Nestor. On the other hand, he was unarmed; even more important, he had no egg. Perhaps Nestor could talk him down. For as well as tenacious, the vampire is devious.
When it seemed the tableau could hold no longer—that Gore must now get up, come round the table, dispose of Nestor, and claim his rights—that was when Nestor spoke. But even now alien stuff was at work in him, and as well as being tenacious and full of guile, in circumstances like these the vampire is often abrupt and aggressive:
“It happened much as Wran told it,” he began, in a voice deep, dark, and arresting, “yet also as you have it, Gore Sucksthrall. I was coming to Starside, the last aerie, to be a Lord. Except I believed I already was Wamphyri—or had been—and I had forgotten or been robbed of my inheritance. Why, I still believe it, even now! It was as if I cried out to be Wamphyri! All of which I made known to Wran the Rage. And I’m in Wran’s debt, it’s true, for in his own sweet way he … reminded me, of certain procedures. So that however you would have it, the fact remains that I am now Wamphyri! And I caution you, Gore: be my thrall and live, or—”
“Or?” Gore was on his feet. “What? I should become your thrall … or?” He was grey as lead, puffed up, bloated with rage and lust. Lust for Nestor’s blood, egg, life, all three. He licked his lips greedily, knotted his fists into clubs at his sides, thrust his head forward menacingly. For a moment his eyes stood out like yellow plums in his face. Then …
He moved! But as for coming round the table, nothing so refined. Gore Sucksthrall took the shortest route and came over it!
Platters large and small went flying, jugs of wine were hurled aside, as the lieutenant swung up onto the table, took one pace forward, and crouched down to launch himself full in Nestor’s face. Nestor came to his feet, knocking his chair on its side as he threw himself backwards. And in his few remaining seconds, he loaded his crossbow. Roaring with rage, Gore was already in midflight; too late he saw the weapon in Nestor’s hand; Nestor didn’t have time or need to aim but merely pointed … and pulled the trigger!
The bolt took Gore dead centre between the eyes, caved in the bridge of his nose, smashed through his brain, and only came to a halt when its head bit through the back of his skull in a splintering of bone and splash of blood. Dead in midair, or as dead as a vampire can be while still he has a head, his mouth chomped and drooled vacuously as he flew. But his eyes no longer saw, and his outstretched hands were limp as rags.
Nestor stepped lithely aside as Gore crashed down upon the polished stone floor and skidded to a crumpled halt. Possibly he could survive even now, as a crippled mute if nothing else. Certainly his metamorphic flesh and bones would heal, and part of the brain repair itself, at least. But Nestor’s vampire nature was stirring to life, and he wasn’t about to allow that. These Lords and Lady harboured doubts about his fitness to be one of them. Well, he was Wamphyri, and now was as good a time as any to show them!
There was one large knife on the table for carving. Nestor could take Gore’s head if he wanted it. But he saw another, far easier way.
Astonishingly, the fallen lieutenant had pushed himself up onto all fours. He was kneeling there, head down, slopping blood and brains, and shaking like a palsied dog. And a stream of slurred, stuttering, meaningless words or noises was issuing from his morbidly grimacing mouth. Nestor dropped his crossbow to the floor, went to him, grasped his topknot with both hands, and dragged him to a window. On hands and knees, Gore skidded in blood, drool, and brain fluid forward onto a fretted cartilage balcony. Nestor got behind him, put a foot firmly on his backside, and shoved. Part of the balcony shattered, and Gore took the pieces with him into space.
Out there, close to three thousand feet o
f unresisting air, and at its bottom the scree jumbles, dirt, and solid rock. When he hit, Gore Sucksthrall would shatter into so much mush and a fistful of jellied pieces. Gorvi the Guile’s flightless guardian warriors would snarl and threaten over what few morsels they could salvage …
Nestor turned from the window, and on his way back to the table picked up his crossbow. Gorvi, malicious as ever, was the first to find his voice. Pointing at Nestor’s weapon, he said, “That is forbidden! Not only in Wrathspire, but even throughout the entire aerie.”
Canker slapped the table and barked, “But we all knew he had it. He’s Szgany, isn’t he? This is how they arm themselves. Szgany, aye, and a mere youth. It’s just that we knew—or we supposed—that he’d never have the guts to use it!”
Nestor stood by his toppled chair, lifted his crossbow by its tiller overhead, and said, “If this weapon offends you, then it likewise offends me. So be it.” And he brought it down shatteringly on the table’s rim, so as to break it into pieces. “In any case, I’ve no more use for it. Not now that I have Vasagi’s gauntlet.” And turning to Canker Canison: “You are wrong, Canker. Perhaps I was Szgany, but no more.”
All of these had been good moves; coming in quick succession, and startling, they had fixed the attention of the others about the table. Frowning, they stared at Nestor in silence for long seconds. Then Wran grinned, however lopsidedly, and looked along the table at Wratha. “Lady,” he said, “I recall you were saying something about your own ascension? If the stories I’ve heard are true, that, too, was a bloody affair.”
On another occasion Wratha might well have taken offence, and even now it was her instinct to say, “Oh, and what of your own and Spiro’s, and Gorvi’s?” But for the moment her thoughts were elsewhere, so that she musingly answered, “Those stories you’ve heard are true, aye.” Except she wasn’t looking at Wran but at Nestor.
The newcomer was made of the right stuff. She could feel it in him. Why, given time, she might even feel him in her! And that was a pleasant thought (if one she kept guarded); for her male thralls, handsome creatures though some of them might be, were like mice in her bed, timid and creeping. When Nestor was fully ascendant, it was possible he’d make a worthy lover … not to mention an ally …
Wratha gave herself a mental shake, and turned her gaze to Wran. “I was Szgany, and ascended in Turgosheim by my wits alone. When others would destroy me, I destroyed my so-called ‘master’ and took his egg. All true … as is what I said but a moment ago: it’s the getting there that counts.”
“Well?” Wran cried. “And hasn’t Nestor got there?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not yet a while. For being here and surviving here are different things. But … certainly he’s on his way.” Then, nodding her approval and looking at them all in turn, Spiro, Canker, Gorvi, Wran, and lastly Nestor, finally she said, “My Lords, I give you Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri—perhaps. But what say you?”
Canker accepted him readily enough. “You must visit me in Mangemanse,” he barked. “By all means come and inspect my instrument of bones!”
Wran and Spiro were well satisfied but didn’t wish to display it, and so answered in unison, cautiously, “Let’s wait and see how all works out.”
Gorvi scowled, and said, “It seems I’m a minority of one. But … very well, Nestor is a Lord—with one proviso! We’ll give him five sunups and if he doesn’t fit, then he goes back to Sunside. And to certain death.”
Wratha looked at Nestor and said, “Well?”
He shrugged. “I’ve no complaints.”
“Good!” she said. And to the others, lifting her goblet, “A toast, then. To Lord Nestor of Suckscar: a successful ascension!”
“Success!” they chorused, lifting their jacks, Gorvi with some ill grace. But before drinking, he couldn’t resist adding, “Success, aye. Or whatever …”
However alien in aspect Vasagi had been, Wratha the Risen had regarded him as something of an ally; hence his habitation of the levels closest to her own. Now, as Wran’s reception broke up, the Killglance brothers offered to accompany the newcomer down into Suckscar before returning to their flyers.
Canker, whose Mangemanse levels lay directly below Nestor’s, went with them. Coming up, he’d used exterior causeways, covered ledges, and dizzy bridges suspended from the underside of various flying buttresses. He could have flown, of course, but that would have meant saddling a flyer, a launching, landing, et cetera. And Canker, having only just remembered his appointment, had been late enough already. On the spur of the moment, out of grudging respect for the property of another—not to mention the very real threat of hostility from who or whatever the Suck had left in charge in his absence—Canker had chosen his vertiginous but otherwise unobtrusive route around Suckscar. Now that he knew Nestor, however, and with his permission on this occasion, a return descent through Suckscar seemed the easiest, most obvious route.
Oddly, as the four descended and Wran and Spiro led the way, proceeding a little ahead of Nestor, Canker stayed very much “to heel” behind him. Glancing back on occasion, Nestor would find the other padding along in his wake, tongue lolling, for all the world like some grotesque, upright dog. But in no way a “pet.” And yet in some ways that, too. For whenever Nestor paused, Canker would likewise come to a halt and cock his head on one side, as if he waited on some command or other! On the other hand, his half-human expression was difficult to gauge; Nestor had seen similar looks on the faces of wolves tracking their prey.
Through Wratha’s launching bays they went, down massive stairs chiseled from the bed of a sloping shaft, towards the uppermost of Suckscar’s levels. Here the brothers Killglance proceeded cautiously indeed, prompting Nestor to inquire, “A problem?”
Glancing back at him in the gloom of the unlit stairwell, Spiro scowled and impatiently replied, “What? And didn’t you see Wratha’s warriors? Do you think she’s the only one keeps guardians like that? Well, let me tell you we all have them, and so did Vasagi!”
Canker at once put a hand on Nestor’s shoulder, and thrusting his muzzle forward snarled at Spiro, “Then you should let Nestor go first! He has Vasagi’s egg, after all. And just as I sniffed it out, so shall they. Why, anyone would suspect that Suckscar was yours now—yours and Wran’s together—and not Nestor’s at all!”
“Meaning?” Wran turned swiftly in the cramped confines of the sloping tunnel. His eyes had narrowed to slits of scarlet light.
But Nestor intervened, squeezing forwards and replying on Canker’s behalf, “Meaning simply that as Suckscar’s new master, I should go first. Canker is right.”
“Indeed I am,” Canker growled, following close behind. And now the brothers brought up the rear.
Nestor went a little faster; he was eager to discover the extent of Vasagi’s holdings, and just exactly what his inheritance would be. And as he went he noticed that even in the dim light of the tunnel, while he was fully aware of the darkness, still he could see almost as well as in broad daylight. Which could only be further evidence of his vampire change.
Eventually, reaching a landing and turning through thirty degrees—as light showed at the bottom of the shaft, where the echoes of their footsteps had preceded them—so other sounds came back. But these were the echoes of furtive movement. And now it was Nestor’s turn to pause.
“No,” Canker growled in his ear. “Go on. They will recognize you. Take my word for it. You are Wamphyri!”
On Sunside, Nestor had always had a way with dogs; he and his forgotten brother alike. As children, wild dogs had come to them out of the forest, not to harm them but to play; domesticated wolves, “guard dogs,” had permitted the very roughest of rough-and-tumbling without turning on them; wild wolves in the hills had sat still at their approach, and not slunk but moved cautiously, almost reluctantly, out of their path. Nestor had never made anything of it; it was simply that canine creatures trusted him, and he in turn trusted them and was unafraid. And it was the same now with Canke
r Canison. Nestor believed what Canker said. And he understood why this—what, this monster?—stuck so close to him. Out of nothing, a relationship had been formed. Nestor wasn’t sure if he appreciated it or not, but he trusted it, certainly.
He went unafraid down the stairwell to the bottom, only pausing when something stirred and flowed forward in a narrow archway at the very foot of the stairs. And “something” was as good a way as any of describing it! It was different again from one of Wratha’s personal guardians: black as night, shaped like a bat hanging from a ceiling, but upright, with its head at the top; wider than a man, and a good deal taller; eyes which were crimson wedges in a furred, elongated head. A bat, probably—or what was once a bat—yet manlike, too. A composite creature, bred of Vasagi’s vats, retaining sufficient intelligence to obey his commands. Or one command, at least. To guard this stairwell.
The thing was hard to discern; it seemed wrapped in darkness, shrouded in gloom, cloaked in its own smoky fur. But when it thrust its half-rodent, half-human face forward to hiss and spit saliva, its purpose and determination were obvious. And if Nestor and the others would go forward, the only way was past this guardian.
“Huh!” Canker coughed in Nestor’s ear, gripped his shoulder. “Not so grotesque. All of Vasagi’s creatures are different … he was always experimenting! I’ve not seen this one before. But go forward, present yourself.”
The monster was three paces away, still mainly hidden in its own gloom and that of the archway. Nestor took one tentative step along the now horizontal corridor—and the guardian flowed out of its niche, blocking the way! Also, it became more nearly visible. It was cloaked in darkness: in black, leathery, membranous wings which folded across its body, overlapping. But where the folds hugged closest to flesh, there the darkness was alive with pink, wriggling worms!