The Last Aerie (45 page)

As they went, so she cried out: “What …? Who …?” For as yet she was like a lost child, with little or no understanding of her whereabouts and circumstances, except that she was a changeling whose change—whose very existence—had almost been terminated.

But the one in the cloak and mask merely hushed her and replied:
Quiet, now, Carmen, all is not lost. As was my fate, so is yours. Yet we have both escaped it. We are banished now, for the moment, and sent out of our rightful places. But still we’re alive, you and I; we’ll live on and grow strong, and one day return. We’ll return for our revenge, which will be sweet, I promise you! Trust me. I know the way.

And gasping, clutching her terror-parched throat, fainting in his arms in the darkness of their refuge, she knew that it was true, that if anyone knew the way it was this one whom she had thought dead and gone.

Oh, she had been glad enough then that he was no more, that the handsome Lord Nestor had come to take his place. But not as glad as she was now that he was back, not when it meant life to her. Both glad and terrified at one and the same time. For despite an awful, hideous alteration, she could not deny but that this was her old master. She’d guessed it as soon as she heard his mental voice, and now knew it definitely as he took off his mask and tossed it down.

But his face!
His mangled, maniac face!

And then she knew no more, for a while at least…

All of which lay two long years in the past, and only part of it known to Nestor (and then erroneously) where he lay healing and dreaming under the bank of the river in Sunside.

And as his metamorphic vampire flesh expelled the last few silver pellets of Szgany shot and the last drop of yellow pus, and the small wounds knitted over, so his dreams switched from the vacant meanderings of subconscious psyche to a more positive theme, when he lived again the life he’d known in Suckscar in his early days as Nestor of the Wamphyri…

Time had passed since Nestor’s ascension—six months, then nine—and the might-have-been “Lady” Carmen was all but forgotten. But the young Lord Nestor’s awful talent, which he had discovered through her, was not. Despite that it repulsed him, it also fascinated him, so that he was driven to experiment. For he was a necromancer with the power to question the dead, and he was the only one in all Wrathstack who could do it. It made him equal, perhaps even superior, to the rest of them.

But they all had their various quirks and talents, if “talent” may adequately describe Wamphyri mutations, anomalies, and aberrations. Wran with his rages, which gave him the strength of three; his brother Spiro, who constantly practiced to achieve his father’s killing eye, though with no noticeable success so far; Gorvi, whose guile was such that he would even cheat himself, if that were at all possible. And of course the Lady Wratha with her mentalism and mind-cloaking technique, so that she was able to read the thoughts of the others while yet keeping her own to herself—mainly. Even the dog-Lord, with his lycanthropy, which made him look even more like some monstrous wolf when he went off hunting on Sunside.

Yet Nestor’s talent was … different.

Word of it got out (this was hardly surprising; Wratha had spies everywhere, in all of the manses), and within a year everyone in Wrathstack knew that Nestor was a necromancer. Meanwhile, Canker Canison had become a frequent visitor to Suckscar, and his and Nestor’s friendship had developed.

“Useful, is it, this weird talent of yours?” Canker growled one evening, when at last the sun was off the peaks.

“It probably will be,” Nestor answered. “aye.”

They were sitting in one of Nestor’s private rooms, a place that looked south to the barrier range. He liked to sit here at this hour, watching the peaks turn from gold to grey. He would even sit here in the predawn hours, and witness the reverse. But on those occasions, long before the first true rays came stabbing through, then the curtains would be drawn and Nestor gone off to other, safer places.

“But just exactly
how
do you use it?” Canker was curious. “How are you using it now, I mean?”

Nestor shrugged. “At present, I merely … experiment.”

“You talk to dead men? And did it happen just like that? Suddenly you could talk to them?”

“Ah … no,” Nestor answered. “The first time, one of the dead talked to me. Except she was undead. Since when … well, the dead would not speak to me at all, if they had a choice.”

“She was undead, you say?” Canker frowned and his red eyebrows crushed together over his snout. “Then how could you be certain of your talent? The undead are not truly dead.”

“This was a thrall,” Nestor replied. “She was a mere vampire, not yet Wamphyri. At the time … I was inexperienced and had taken too much from her. But even so she would only become Wamphyri if I allowed it, which I did not. She had no mentalism as such, or should not have had it, and yet she spoke to me in my mind. She was
dead
, Canker, but when I touched her she knew me and named me for her murderer! In which she was correct, of course, for I could not suffer her to live.”

“And after that?”

“I had her destroyed: scorched at sunup on the high crags, which put an end to her. What’s more, it put an end to what was left in me of pity. And it was only then that I became Wamphyri in the fullest sense. For in our hearts we are cold creatures, Canker, and I was not cold—not completely—until then.”

“We’re not so cold,” Canker argued. “Indeed, we can be hot as a furnace at times! But we know how to do what must be done, and that without a deal of fuss. We are
survivors
, Nestor!”

“Without emotion, feeling, purpose? What use to survive as a piece of stone?”

“This is your leech arguing,” Canker coughed. “It can only be. You are playing word games, and your parasite directs their course. For as you must know by now, when the mood is on us we argue just for the sake of it, like now. But emotionless? Purposeless? The Wamphyri? Is that what you’re saying? Then you don’t know the half of it! But I believe I
do
know what’s wrong with you, my lad! Why, you haven’t given yourself a chance! You think you’ve seen it all. And is that all there is to it? you ask? To slake my thirst on blood forever and a day, and grow no older or wiser but live like some bloated leech in a pool?
Aha!
But Canker has the answer.”

“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 Suck-scar 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!”