But at least he was airborne and Starside-bound at last. And his weird mount, so heavy and unwieldy on the ground? Now it glided like some prehistoric bird, balancing itself on turbulent currents of air and steadily gaining altitude. Bravo! Ah, but while it knew how to fly, Nestor did not!
Perhaps he had known it, upon a time, but all long forgotten now. Vague memories, revenant of some elusive, shadowy past—of a flyer just like this one, all crashed and broken on Sunside, screaming in lethal sunlight as its skin cracked open to issue jets of steam, and its fluids dripping free like the juices of a pig on a spit—were all that remained. Maybe that was how he’d got himself marooned and lost his memory in the first place, by crashing his flyer on Sunside and banging his head. It was an explanation, at least. Well, and now he’d be a Lord again, and have new things to remember. Ah, but new things to learn first, like flying!
As the mountainside fell away and the furious bluster slackened, he leaned forward between the jutting pommels and wiped at his streaming tears. And slitting his eyes, finally he could see again. Meanwhile, in its search for thermals, the flyer had spiraled south; and there, far out across the furnace desert, Nestor spied a spear of yellow light lancing from the molten horizon, striking west upon the flanks of the gaunt grey mountains. Sunup, and Nestor’s time on Sunside was at an end. “North!” he shouted at his mount. “North—Starside—the last aerie!”
From the west, all along the spine of the barrier range, the fan of fire crept closer and the mountains came alive with light. The yellow egg of the sun was set to hatch on the southern horizon, to let its golden bird of prey fly free!
But now, as if answering Nestor’s cry, however grudgingly, his flyer wheeled lumberingly north and seemed to hang there a moment in midair, suspended between the uppermost peaks. And as in a frenzy he cried, “Faster, fly faster!”, the beast commenced a leisurely drift inwards over peaks, ravines, and plateau jumbles. Till finally, lowering its tapering neck and head, it slid gradually into a glide.
Nestor couldn’t know it, but his mount found no great novelty in all this drama; it had flown this way before with Vasagi the Suck, and knew the route well enow; there was nothing new here except its rider, a feeble-seeming fellow at best. His thoughts were blunt as wedges, not needle-sharp, like the Suck’s. He’d not once used his spurs, but sat there wan and wind-lashed in the saddle. Why he was here at all remained a mystery.
Perhaps Nestor sensed the flyer’s slow, dull thoughts and its low regard for him. But with the sun at his heels he was done with gentling the beast! He snatched the dart from under his crossbow’s tiller, leaned forward between the pommel horns and tickled the creature’s spine, then concentrated his thoughts in a stream of abuse along its leathery neck and into its head. And he finished with a threat:
Make haste, now, or I’ll crawl along your neck and stick this in your ear! The beast heard him; more than that, it felt the first hot breath of the sun upon its hindquarters, put its nose down and glided into the shadows of a pass. And safe from the sun at last, it sped for Starside.
Nestor breathed a sigh of relief, and in the next moment heard guttural laughter and a ringing cry: “Bravo!”
It was Wran. He launched his flyer from the shadows of a ridge and came up alongside. “You made it by a breath! What? On a count of ten, your beast’s wings would have blackened and crisped to dust! Aye, and it’s a long way down, Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri …”
His words carried on the air, but they were also in Nestor’s mind. It was an art of the Wamphyri; at close range like this they were thought-thieves to a man, but some much better than others. Vasagi had been a veritable master of telepathy, while Wran’s talent was merely middling. Now it was Nestor’s turn:
Why did you wait?
Ahhh! Wran was taken by surprise, but recovered in a moment. What? A mentalist, too? But is it you, Nestor, or simply the effect of Vasagi’s egg? If the latter, then obviously you got a good one … considering its source, that is! And again he laughed. As to why I waited: simple curiosity. Frankly, I didn’t think you’d make it. Since you have, and since I’m responsible for your—predicament?—it seems only right that I should escort you into Starside, introduce you, and make explanation. For you’re a cool one, Nestor, and in no way the fool I first considered you. The Suck was my enemy, but you’ll make a useful ally. And what will you get out of it? Well, believe me, you’ll need all the friends you can get, in Wrathstack!
Wrathstack? It was news to Nestor. But the suffix “stack” had brought a flash of memory. Synonymous with “aerie,” it had painted a picture in his mind of the last great redoubt of the Wamphyri, called … Karenstack? It had been, upon a time, of that he was sure. Also that he had been there before. But when, how?
His thoughts were so intense that Wran picked them from his mind without difficulty, and answered, Many a Lord or Lady has dwelled there from time to time, I should think, since the early days of Turgo Zolte. I can’t say, for I don’t know Starside’s history. But now the aerie has new tenants, and on the whole we call it Wrathstack after the Lady Wratha, who brought us here from Turgosheim in the east. His thoughts had turned sour now.
She’s your leader? Nestor was mainly innocent, careless in his choice of words.
She was, for a while, Wran growled in his head. And with a strong man to ride and guide her … who can say? She could be again. Well, a partner in leadership, at least. But that’s for the future … Plainly, he’d grown tired of the conversation. Now let’s make haste, for I’ve been too long away. Aye, and things are wont to change in a hurry, in Wrathstack …
He drew ahead, put on a spurt, and sent his flyer diving into the Great Pass, which split the barrier range in a dogleg north to south. Nestor followed (by his will, or purely of his beast’s own inclination, he could not say) to hurtle above the bed of the pass at breakneck speed. The bend in the dogleg lay to the rear, a haze of yellow where the sun’s lethal rays were trapped for now. Any danger of burning was past, and the hackles on Nestor’s neck lay flat. The earlier exhilaration of his ride returned; feeling more in control, he began to enjoy it.
He urged his flyer on. Faster, faster! Get in front. Show that sluggish creature how to fly! His beast responded, pulled ahead, left Wran in its wake.
Hah! Wran called after him. And so you see, he bred good creatures, old Vasagi. But on the other hand, why, there’s not so much meat on you! And then, less grudgingly: Still, you do sit the beast well, so that what with your mentalism and all, I fancy you’ll do all right.
Nestor looked back and laughed, and cried out loud, “I’ll do better than all right!”
Oh, really? Wran pulled alongside again. Well, I hope you do, but the odds are all against it. What you have to remember is this: in Wrathstack we’re all vampires born. And me? Why, I might well have been born in the saddle!
But this time his laughter was grating as iron in cold ashes as he swerved his flyer in towards Nestor’s, caught it a glancing blow, and almost sent it crashing into the wall of the canyon! Turning side-on to fan the precipitous rock, the creature flattened like a leaf to scrape the weathered stone, and for a moment Nestor felt he’d be tilted into space. Then … the danger was past and he could breathe again, and from up ahead:
So you’ll do better than all right, will you? Maybe you will at that. But first you must live long enough, eh? It had been a lesson, and Nestor wouldn’t forget it. Just one of several things he wouldn’t forget … about Wran the Rage.
The end of the pass was now in sight, where the mountains sloped down to Starside’s boulder plains. And on the left, just coming into view, the bulging, blinding dome of the half-buried sphere portal to the hell-lands. Nestor knew it without knowing how he knew; likewise the plume or finger of glowing, poisoned earth that pointed from the Gate out across the barren plains towards the Icelands. To him, these things were more than adequate confirmation that indeed he’d been here before. If only he could remember.
But he was given
no time to ponder the enigma; for up ahead Wran swerved right, eastwards, away from the Gate and out towards Karenstack (no, Wrathstack, now), the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. Miles sped by beneath the manta flyers, where their moon- and star-cast shadows flowed like stains in the immemorial dust, or like clots of darkness over bald domed boulders and riven earth alike. And looming in the northeast, vast monument to the evil of ages past, Wrathstack was a lone fang among the stumps of fallen stacks, where the shattered aeries of the olden Lords lay in tumbled disarray, littering the plain like corpses or rotted mushrooms petrified to stone.
And as if Wran read Nestor’s mind again, though in fact he merely conversed, his question came ringing: “Oh, and have you been here before too, Lord Nestor?”
Aye, he had, the once at least. These jumbles of toppled stone, their configurations, seemed so familiar they were like memories in themselves; yet they failed to spark others in the aching void of Nestor’s head. But he made no comment, neither speech nor thought, except to drive his beast that much faster and draw level again with his vampire companion.
Ahead loomed a stack (or the stump of one), three-quarters of a kilometre broad at its scree-littered base, rising to three hundred metres high by two hundred wide where its hollow neck was like the shattered bole of an ancient tree felled by lightning and turned to stone. The rest of it, the aerie that had been, lay in blocks like the knuckles of a skeletal spine stretched out across the plain. But it was only the first of many.
Side by side, Wran and Nestor rose up and flew across the mighty stump from side to side, and looked down into its yawning, hollowed maw. There were rooms down there, vast pits, and stairwells of bone and stone, and polished vats like the molds for making monsters. “Exactly so!” cried Wran, picking up Nestor’s thoughts again. “For this was an aerie, upon a time! Why, it must have rivaled Wrathstack itself! In Turgosheim in the east, men and warriors have clashed, and blood been spilled, over many a lesser manse than this!”
Nestor looked across at him. “And yet now … why do you live lumped together in Wrathstack?”
“Ah-hah!” Wran cried. “It must be the recluse in you, as it was in Vasagi. He, too, would have stayed on his own, if he could. It was because the Suck felt crowded in Turgosheim that he came here with the rest of us to olden Starside. Or perhaps it’s simply your longing for an aerie and territories of your own, which is an urge common among the Wamphyri. But you know what, Nestor? Why, I find myself half willing to believe that the spirit of some olden creature—some vampire out of time—has indeed returned to inhabit you! In other words, you’re a natural, lad, a natural!”
They sped on, gaining height over a wilderness of twisted bone and fretted rock ruins, over tortured cartilage relics and fire-blackened mounds, where other grand aeries had exploded in their bases and slumped down into themselves, forming pyramids of scree and rubble. And Wrathstack drawing ever closer, rearing on high, its uppermost towers, battlements, launching bays, and windows most of a kilometre high and more than an acre in cross-section.
And: “Up now, up!” Wran shouted. “Let the winds take you, where they spiral round this last great spire.”
Climb, Nestor commanded his flyer. Follow on behind. Gain height. Form scoops with your wings, trap the air, and rise on the rising thermals. It was all sound advice, but wasted; good practice but nothing more. His creature was experienced in all such matters.
And Wrathstack loomed closer still …
2
The Last Aerie
Less than a hundred metres from the wall of the colossal stack, both flyers discovered sighing currents of air and commenced a mighty rising spiral. And as they climbed, so Nestor benefited from Wran’s knowledge of the place.
Down below, the Rage sent, in the nethermost levels, the very bowels of the place, that’s Gorvi’s domain. The dark and devious Gorvi the Guile. He keeps the wells, and has flightless warriors on the ground, to repel any would-be incursions. Hah! A pointless exercise! If ever we’re attacked, it won’t be from the ground. It’s just a measure of the way he watches his back. We don’t call him the Guile for nothing. Ah, see? Here he comes now, eager to know who won the duel and now returns victorious out of Sunside. But myself or Vasagi, what odds? It will make no difference to Gorvi. He’ll be sour—he always is!
A flyer launched from a cavern mouth beneath an overhang of rock and came spiraling up behind. Fresh from resting, the creature fanned its manta wings and rapidly gained on Wran’s and Nestor’s weary beasts. Nestor twisted in his saddle and looked back and down; his wide, curious eyes met Gorvi’s only a wingspan to the left and a metre or two below, and he saw immediately how well the other’s nickname suited him.
The Guile sat hunched, by no means cadaverous yet remarkably corpselike, scowling in his saddle. The dome of his head was shaven save for a single central lock, with a knot hanging to the rear. Dressed in black, with his cloak belling out like tattered wings, the contrast of his sallow features turned him to a leprous vulture settling to its prey. With eyes so deeply sunken they were little more than a crimson glimmer, yet shifty for all that, and hands clutching the reins like skinny claws, this was Gorvi. He seemed a sinister creature: but of course, for he was Wamphyri! And he didn’t like the way Nestor stared back at him.
“What’s this?” Gorvi finally called out to Wran. “Some captive you’ve brought back out of Sunside? A new lieutenant, perhaps? Was he your second in the duel, Wran? And if so, did Vasagi have one also? If not … be sure there’ll be some who’ll say you cheated.”
Wran dropped back a little and settled lower, leveling with Gorvi. “Do you think so?” he called across, scowling to match the other’s scowl. “They’ll say I cheated, eh? Well, as long as you’re not one of them, you’ll be safe. Or is it that you, too, would care to fly to Sunside with me, and try your luck in the gloomy forests?”
“I meant nothing by it.” Gorvi shrugged and reined back a little. “I was making conversation, that’s all. And so you’ve taken a prisoner. But a proud one, if I’m not mistaken.”
Again Nestor turned to look back at Gorvi, and this time his lip curled a little as he shouted, “You want to know who I am, Gorvi the Guile? Then speak to me, not about me! My name’s Nestor—Lord Nestor, of the Wamphyri—and the last thing I am is a captive!”
“Eh?” Gorvi was astonished, if not outraged. “But—”
“No buts!” Wran cut him short. “Learn all about it at my reception. But until then, keep your nose out! I’m instructing the young Lord Nestor in the ways of the stack: its personalities and their responsibilities in the various levels which they inhabit. Our time is short. So begone!”
Gorvi reined in more yet, and fell to the rear. And Wran continued, proudly:
“These next levels up—a good many, as you see—are mine; mine and my brother Spiro’s, wherein we control the main refuse pits and methane chambers. These are a great responsibility, a huge weight upon our shoulders … which are broad to take it! If not for the diligence of the brothers Killglance, the stack would go without heat and light, eventually without inhabitants. Seven great levels—high-ceilinged, indeed cavernous, and likewise huge across—that is the extent of Madmanse. For we’ve named our place in memory of our old manse in Turgosheim, do you see? But new Madmanse is far and away superior to our haunted old promontory home in the east. And oh so well equipped!
“We have launching bays, vats for the brewing of creatures, and all manner of rooms, halls, and stables. In Turgosheim in the time of the tithe, fresh meat was hard to come by. We kept beasts to supplement our diet. But here? Sunside is a well-stocked larder, a hive full of honey, a bottomless well of sweet … whatever.” And chuckling obscenely, he glanced across at Nestor.
As they spiraled higher still, Nestor began to shiver, for the cold was finding its way into his bones. Soon … he’d no longer notice it too much. But for now he sat like an icicle in his saddle. In any case he was soon distracted, as out from a yawning launching bay
sprang Spiro Killglance aboard a flyer of his own. “Ho, brother!” he shouted gleefully across at Wran. “So you’ve had it out and the Suck is no more. I for one never doubted the outcome. But how did you deal with him … and who is your friend?” His eyebrows came together in a frown as first he stared, then glared, at Nestor.
Nestor in turn stared back, and committed Spiro’s details to memory. Patently the brothers were twins, and possibly even identical, though certainly not in their mannerisms or mode of dress. For where Wran actually looked the Lord (as Nestor had always imagined Lords to be), Spiro seemed far more a vagabond or ruffian, removed from his brother as chalk from cheese. He was loutish, with a loose-hanging lower lip and mainly malign expression, and his “clothes” were disreputable, to say the least: a rag of leather for a shirt, a dirty breechclout, and a strip of cloth on his forehead to keep his unkempt hair out of his fiery scarlet eyes. Other than this, and the fact that Wran wore a small black wen upon his chin, the brothers were physically alike: tall, broad-shouldered, and a little overweight. They might even be said to be handsome—or perhaps “handsome specimens.” Certainly they were not ugly, not in appearance, anyway.
“By now Vasagi’s blood is boiling to slime!” Wran answered his brother’s query. “I drained his leech, then pegged him out on a hillside to await the sun’s rising. As for this one”—he glanced again at Nestor—“he was of use to me. At any rate, I count him an ally. He is the Lord Nestor.”