Bloodwars Page 10

  Or at least, they were silent to Trask and the others. But not to the Necroscope. For when Nathan had spoken to Trask out loud, of course his words no less than his thoughts were deadspeak. His words and thoughts alike, they always were deadspeak — except when he shielded them. And the long-dead creatures of the cavern had heard him. Moreover they knew him, or his sort, at least, for he was not the first living man who had spoken to them in that way. Another had been here before him. And because of that other, the

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  dead of the cavern responded in a way which Nathan had grown to expect:

  Hah! Returned, are you? Well, and the first ever, be sure. Ah, but it took you long enough/ What? Nigh on a thousand sunups, I’d suspect. Still, what is time to such as us? This from a nightmarish, mummy-thing jammed tight in a niche, where dripstone had fused it in position like a weird embryo in a womb of gleaming calcium. A hideously misshapen skull, whose empty eye-sockets reflected the glare of the Gate, protruded from the grotesque stalactite. Frozen in true death, the yawning jaws were wolfish and toothed like a carnivore. And indeed this had been a carnivore — Wamphyri! Or a lieutenant on the brink of ascendancy, at the very least. But now it was just a dead thing. Yet still it seemed to leer at Trask and his party with a permanent, imperishable malignancy.

  Startled at first, Trask now stepped closer to the wall of the cavern and gazed up at the monster. Obviously it had crouched there like this for a very long time. ‘What, a statue? Or is it the real thing?’ Even asking it, he knew that the creature was or had been real, alive, of course. His talent told him that much. But he did not have Nathan’s talent, could scarcely imagine that even now the Necroscope and the ossified thing were conversing:

  ‘Oh, it’s the real thing,’ Nathan quietly answered. ‘Withered away, shrunken down and encased in stone, but definitely real.’ And then, to the long-dead lieutenant: I’m not who you think I am. That one was my father. He passed this way before me, on his way to Starside. He was Harry Keogh, and 1 am his son, Nathan.

  Indeed? And like father like son, you would follow in his footsteps, eh? Well, if he went to Starside, then your father’s Jong dead and gone from both worlds! Now begone. For this is a private place.

  It wasn’t usual for the dead to be so surly, abrupt, rude. But this wasn’t one of the usual dead. Unperturbed, Nathan inquired: Whose man were you, anyway?

  The other seemed astonished. His very presence — his previous nature — was enough in itself to cow the thoughts of most of the other dead people here. What was this Nathan anyway but a pup, and a human pup at that? Whose man was I? Why, I was my own man, of course -called Cezar Bitesthrall.

  But Nathan knew well enough how the Wamphyri named their thralls, and so could work it out for himself which Lord this one had served. Bitesthrall? But you’ve given yourself away, Cezar, he said. You were in thrall to Menor Maimbite, who died in the battle for The Dweller’s garden on Starside. Yes, and it was my father who killed him!

  Now the other really was astonished. You are little more than a boy, he gasped, and yet .. . you know so much! How is it you know so much? When a man passes through the Starside Gate, he is gone forever. Yet your knowledge of Starside is plainly considerable. But … did you say that Menor is dead? Truly?

  The caver spokesman, suddenly aware of a strange silence, said, ‘Well, what now?’ His colleagues were equally mystified, not least by Nathan’s expression as he stared at the freakish thing in its high niche.

  But Trask, Anna Marie and David Chung all knew what now: that Nathan was speaking to a dead man, or something which had once been a man. Espers, they sensed something of it at least.

  ‘In a minute,’ Trask whispered, stepping back a pace from Nathan but never taking his eyes off him for a moment. ‘But right now .. . would you mind keeping quiet for a while?’ Among the several things he hadn’t told them was this, that Nathan was a Necroscope. The concepts of telepor-tation and parallel universes were difficult enough, without that he should ask them to also believe in a man who conversed with the dead!

  Dead, yes, Nathan had meanwhile answered Cezar’s question. A thousand sunups ago, aye. And all of the olden Wamphyri with him.

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  A deadspeak gasp: What, all of them? Shaithis, Fess, Lesk? Not Lesk the Glut, surety?

  All of them, Nathan told him. He knew the names Cezar mentioned, for they were like old curse-words among the Travellers of Sunside.

  And that one who was here that time, your father, he did aJJ this?

  He helped to do it, certainly.

  And suddenly Cezar guffawed. But that old bastard Menor Maimbite, dead, eh? Oh, hah hah hah/

  You didn’t much care for your master, then.

  Cezar stopped laughing on the instant, and grunted, Care for him? I hated his black heart! He caught me licking a woman of his, cut out my tongue and made her eat it. And: There,’ he toJd me, ‘now she’s tasted your tongue with both her mouths - as I’m sure she’s tasted your sex!’ Then … he throttled her, and took me to the Starside Gate.

  Nathan had real experience of the Starside Gate and knew what that last meant. At least, he had experience of the Gate whose dome showed above the ground. Something over three years ago he’d seen it when accompanying Lardis Lidesci on his annual pilgrimage into the gaunt, aching emptiness which was then Starside. And just a few months ago he’d passed through it into Perchorsk. Moreover he’d had E-Branch’s Keogh files read to him and knew there were two Gates. The upper Gate had been created when a Russian experiment, the Perchorsk Projekt, backfired and blasted a grey hole between parallel dimensions; the second was a thing of nature, lodged beneath the first in what was once a pit and so invisible from the surface by virtue of its manmade twin. Since time immemorial, the lower, natural, original Gate — which had its exit here in this subterranean cavern in Romania - had been used infrequently and according to circumstance as an instrument of Wamphyri punishment, revenge or simple cruelty, into which the Lords of Starside had tossed enemies, vanquished foes and disobedient thralls.

  So you were hurled into the white gaping maw of hell. Nathan nodded grimly. Through which you sank down into this place.

  Aye, the other grunted. But when I got here the water was high and dark and swift. And so I crept up here onto this ledge and waited, waited, waited. Soon I was too weak to swim, even if I could swim, and the cold and the damp had stiffened all my joints. Starvation … I was not yet Wamphyri but a lieutenant .. . even a vampire’s longevity could not sustain me through the rigours of this place. And like all of these others, I feared the water mightily. Finally I was as you see me now, stiffened to a stone, or very nearly so. And that was the end of Cezar Bitesthrall … He uttered a deadspeak sigh, and after a moment continued, And you? Do you really intend to go in the other direction? What, and are you then a madman? Ah, but it will take real magic to keep you alive in Starside! Except - and yet again his gasp - No, not so! For They are no more, The Old Wamphyri, dead and gone forever. But… is it really so?

  They were gone for a while, Nathan answered.

  Eh? Explain!

  The Old Wamphyri are dead, aye. But in the east, beyond the Great Red Waste, others were waiting out their time. Now they are back in Starside, in the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. I go as my father went before me: to destroy them who destroy mine.

  But your name: Nathan Keogh? The first, however rare, is a Traveller name, be sure .. . but Keogh? Ah! I remember: your father’s name. And he -

  — Was a hell-lender, yes. Nathan nodded. But my mother was a Kiklu, Szgany.

  The other sighed his partial understanding, and said, Myself, I was of the Szgany Stengi, based fifty miles east of the great pass. There were Kiklus in my tribe, too … He fell silent, as if memories of the olden times were proving too much for him. But in another moment his deadspeak voice had turned hard as his calcium sheath: Huh! All such things

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  are done with now. E
ven life itself, done with. I was Szgany … I was made undead … possibly, I might even have been Wamphyri.’ But all of these years in this place, frozen in the true death . .. it’s as if all my life were a dream. And you have disturbed it. Because of you I know the truth of it: that it was wasted. You’ve brought me no comfort, Nathan Keogh.

  At which another voice — but a much harder, darker, even angry voice - broke in:

  Comfort? Is that what you’re all about, Cezar BitesthraJl? Comfort? What, and you a lieutenant of the Wamphyri? Hah! But Menor erred when he apprenticed you! Even here, in this dreary place, we have comforts enough. And we’ve had enough of talk, too. Now, still the chatter and let this fool go on to his sure death in Starside.

  Nathan located the source of the voice: a dripstone bulge in the wall where a gleaming calcium ‘candle’ seven feet tall seemed lodged in an ancient crevice under fang-like festoons of stalactite formations. The sheath was semi-opaque, glass-like; beneath it, frozen ferocious features were barely visible. But now that Nathan knew the source of the voice, he also knew the nature of its owner:

  Wamphyri!

  ‘Nathan!’ It was Anna Marie, breaking into his thoughts, drawing him back from his deadspeak communications.

  He glanced at her. ‘Yes?’

  ‘We can’t stay here. The cold. And the time. We’d planned for you to go through in three days’ time; by our calculations — based on what little we know - that would make it sunup on Sunside. But right now . .. the sun is sinking towards the barrier mountains even as we speak. And we don’t know how long the journey through the Gate is going to take.’

  Nathan turned to Trask. ‘While I talk to them, you could begin by passing my weapons up into the Gate. According to the files, they will be drawn up, go right through, slide down the dome of the underground Gate in Starside. And

  we won’t be far behind. We’ll go through together, or as close together as possible.’

  Then, as Trask and the others set to it, he turned again to the dripstone thing in its stalactite tomb: Who were you?

  Bah.’ (The vampire Lord’s voice was sour.) Rather, what am I now, that a mere child has power over me while I stand impotent, a stone which was once a man and more than a man, even a Lord of the Wamphyri!

  ‘But that was then and this is now.’ Nathan lapsed into common speech, which in his case was deadspeak, of course, but easier. ‘You were a man. You were Wamphyri. But now you are a fossil. This is probably your last chance to talk to a man of the living world, even of two worlds. Will you waste it?’

  The other considered his words; while from behind Nathan:

  ‘Now what the hell -?’ The caver spokesman snatched back his hand from where he had passed a box of ammunition up into the glare of the Gate. He’d been distracted by the sight and sound of Nathan talking to something locked in the dripstone; talking to it as if it lived and might even answer him back. The light .. . seemed to suck at me!’

  ‘Of course,’ Trask told him. ‘In the same way that it takes these weapons from us, so it will take us. It’s like an invisible conveyor-belt, or an elevator to another world.’ He passed up a self-loading rifle butt-first, watched the stock disappear into the glare and felt first the attraction, then the fierce, irresistible suction as the weapon was drawn from his hand and into the Gate. ‘Just don’t let your fingers touch the surface, that’s all - unless you want to be the first of us into Starside . ..’

  Who is there now in Starside to remember me? The ex-Lord of the Wamphyri wondered in Nathan’s mind.

  ‘No one, in Starside,’ Nathan answered. ‘But weren’t you a Traveller first? Didn’t you ascend in the usual way? You must have had your tribe like everyone else. Maybe sons of your sons are alive even now, on Sunside?’

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  I was a Ferenc, said the other gloomily. We were outcasts, supplicants. Metalworkers, we made war gauntlets for the Wamphyri. We had a ‘pact’ with them — hah! I was taken when I was seventeen. No human offspring from my loins, Nathan Keogh.

  But as the thing in the stalactite had mentioned the name Ferenc, so a massed groan of horror had gone up from others among the cavern’s inhabitants who, until now, had been silent. Ferenc! A curse in itself, the very word. And the object of their terror had heard their deadspeak moaning.

  Aye, a Ferenc/ he told them. And even now … well, quite obviously it means something, to be what I have been. That is why I find comfort, however cold, even in a place such as this. The very knowledge of your fear comforts me . .. that as a dead thing, even now I strike terror into your hearts. You quaking leathery trogs and Traveller cowards/ For such as you, even to be in the same company with myself … it’s an honour! And for as much as a stone thing may have thralls, all of you are my thralls from this time forward. So be it!

  Nathan bridled. This dead thing - Ferenc, Wamphyri, whatever — he should not have named Travellers cowards. The Szgany were never that. And so: ‘Pay him no heed,’ he told the ghosts of everyone who was ever trapped here. ‘For if he is the greatest of you all, then he is also the greatest coward! What, Wamphyri? Strong and fearless as ten men? Oh? But if so, how is it he’s still here? Or is it that he feared the water as much as the rest of you? - Aye, and maybe feared it even more! Now let me tell you something:

  ‘Since time immemorial this watercourse has been the route by which certain “brave” Wamphyri Lords invaded the hell-lands, so becoming a pestilence in both worlds. But in this world they were small,’ (which wasn’t entirely true; small in number, perhaps) ‘and kept small by the efforts of mere men! But this one — this Ferenc — was too small to even venture into the water! His supplicant blood ran true to the very end, aye. And how is that for a coward? Such as you

  could never be thralls to such as this. What? Why, he was even usurped and thrown from his seat in Starside, else why is he here at all?’

  Occasionally deadspeak conveys more than is said. But now the Ferenc’s fury couldn’t be more in evidence if he were alive and free of his stalactite sheath: Why … you . .. insolent… little … pup//.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet.’ Nathan climbed up to the encysted figure and rapped with hard knuckles against the dripstone. ‘And think on this, Ferenc. If ever I should pass this way again, I might easily bring a hammer and chisel with me and chip away at you until you’re no more. And when all of your pieces are rounded to pebbles in this dark river, and your evil essence dispersed far and wide, what will you have of “comforts” then, eh? And how many trembling thralls?’

  But from the other there was no answer at all, except perhaps a far faint whimper .. .

  ‘Nathan.’ Anna Marie was looking up at him. ‘The time.’

  And Trask said, ‘Son, it’s not getting any warmer in here. We’d best be on our way.’

  Nathan got down, said, ‘Very well. But that —’ he glanced up once last time at the horror in the crack, and glared at the thing - ‘was something I had to do. And anyway, my time wasn’t wasted. Like my father before me, I’ve learned something.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. That in death - even the true death - the Wamphyri are just as loathsome as in life or in undeath!’

  ‘How … how do we go about it?’ The caver spokesman’s voice shook a little.

  Trask shrugged. ‘You came close to answering that one yourself just a few minutes ago. Reach up, jump, and let the Gate do the rest. It will take you in, pass you through.’

  ‘Which will take . .. how long?’

  ‘We’re not sure,’ said Anna Marie.

  And Nathan told her, ‘If you go first we can help you.’

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  She moved between him and Trask; they lifted her up; she held up her arms and was taken effortlessly from them. And as she slid into the white glare, they heard her gasp, drawn out almost interminably as she disappeared. Trask followed immediately, so that as Anna Marie’s feet passed into the glare, he was already jumping and reaching out after her.

  ‘Quickly
!’ Nathan told Chung and the cavers. ‘Let’s all go through together.’ The cavers jumped almost as a man, and as a man were taken up. And Nathan and Chung were last.

  But as the others had disappeared into the sphere of white light, so Nathan had remembered one who wasn’t here. And also, he remembered his own Misha: the misery she must be experiencing, not knowing what had become of him. No need for Zek to go through that. Quickly he reached out for her, and made contact in the moment before he felt the Gate sucking at him. Then … it was the work of that single moment to pass on the information: that Ben Trask was on his way to Starside. But Zek’s answering mental cry — of denial, astonishment, pain — was shut off even as she issued it…

  After the initial suction, that first weird tug-o’-war between gravity and the Gate’s attraction, the feeling of being drawn up, of the defeat of gravity itself, disappeared completely. It was simply a drifting sensation, but of drifting upwards, like a swimmer surfacing after a dive.

  Looking up - or ahead? - Nathan and Chung could see the others as in a shaft of white light, seemingly floating there, unsupported. Anna Marie was in front, followed by Trask, then the cavers in a triangular formation. And they were all looking down or back at Nathan and Chung.

  In its way, Trask thought, it’s as strange as the Mobius Continuum: the weightlessness . .. the sensation of emptiness … the effortless mobility. But now, instead of moving from place to place, we’re moving between worlds!

  Unlike the Mobius Continuum, however, such thoughts