E-Branch - Invaders Part 29

'Aye, and I also saw his manlike outline melt to a liquid blot of a shape that hunched down and became one with the silhouette of his black flyer. And I saw the burning eyes - but far too many eyes - that gazed back on Malstack from that hideously humped shape, as if their owner suspected that someone watched!

'Then he was off, and flyer and rider both, black on black, disappeared into the yawning gulf like a sc.r.a.p of burned cloth, or a tattered pennant slipped from its staff, fluttering on the winds that whine around the aeries of the Wamphyri...'

'That same time: 'Having seen Szwart off from Malstack's lofty premises, I returned to my master and the luminous Vavara - the very opposite of Szwart - where they continued to talk in Malinari's private chambers. In his absence, Szwart had become the subject of their conversation. Hearing his name mentioned, and because my interest had been piqued, however morbidly, I slipped back into the shadows and listened.

' "It was in his blood," Malinari was saying (so that I knew what next he would say), "and what is in the blood always comes out in the flesh - or in Szwart's case, what pa.s.ses for flesh!" And he went on to explain: '"Seventy years ago - a little before your time, Vavara - Szwart was born to a Lord and Lady of the Wamphyri. That alone would make him an exception to the general rule. For as you are well aware, when the time is right the Wamphyri transfuse their eggs to make egg-sons or -daughters; or we take Szgany women - er, forgive me, or men - and so beget blood-children. But it's rare that a Lord will take a Lady to wife, or vice versa. Rarer still where Lord Szwart is concerned, whose father was al so his mother's brot her!

' "Incest? - not so strange among the Wamphyri. But incestuous marriage, between twins? ' "To find a reason you must look back in time, but not too far.

Szwart's grandsire, his blood-grandsire, was cursed with a certain disorder which our kind don't care to mention. Oh, as a skill - a fearsome talent - we mention it with pride! But when it runs amok, then it becomes wnmentionable.

Metamorphism, aye. But note, my voice is hushed. Such matters are not to be spoken of lightly.

' "Before he knew that this weirdest and most loathsome of diseases was upon him, Lord Szwart's grandsire got twins out of a Szgany girl. Brother and sister, they grew up in their sire's aerie - Mittelmanse as it was then, named for its proximity to the centre - and ascended. They were Wamphyri!

' "By then their father's curse was known to all and sundry: he had practised his metamorphic flux beyond reasonable bounds, putting too great a strain on a leech which finally rebelled or went insane. Whichever, his flesh was out of control. Once in a thousand years this will happen: that instead of remaining 331.

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symbiont and host - two mutually dependent creatures in one body - the flesh of both mingles, and a resultant Thing emerges as a mindless, loathsome hybrid.

' "But the process was a slow one; the Lord of Mittelmanse was not immediately a madman, and knew as well as his children what was happening to him. The horror of it played on his mind; as his flesh gradually succ.u.mbed, he would come shrieking awake from nightmares, to find his limbs like ropes draped all about his room.' Or he would wander abroad in his sleep, to trap and convert his own loyal thral ls by means of absorption and a.s.similation. In stead of the blood, whole bodies were the life.' And he grew gross, when at times his flesh was soft as mud, and at others h.o.r.n.y and corrugated. And even his colour was changed - no longer that of undead flesh but the mottled and leprous hue of the leech.

' "And when he was lucid he made his children promise that they woul d not spre ad this thing abroad. Great Vampire that he was and malicious, still he would not wish this on another man or creature. For he knew what was in his blood, and in theirs, and that given the opportunity it would out. Wherefore it must not be given the opportunity ...

'"The twins, grown up now, planned to put their father in a pit; for according to the lore or history of Starside - what little has ever been recorded - that was usually the best way. Or they could kill him out of hand, by trapping him in an inescapable place and setting fire to him, before he became totally ungovernable.

' "But it didn't come to that. Fond of flying, he formed an airfoil and flew out upon the gulf one night. This involved, of course, a great effort of will - which he relaxed, perhaps deliberately, high over the boulder plains. And Thing that he was, his immediate devolution into something less than airworthy was instantly fatal. He fell like a stone, and even protoplasm will only stretch so far.

' "So much for him.

' "His sibling children made a pact: they would not go with others to spread the curse abroad but cleave to each other, and so keep the thing to house. And all the while, year after yea r, they lived in fear that it might be in them, too - which indeed it was. But because they kept their flux under strict rein, and used it sparingly, the curse skipp ed their generation - only to emerge in the next!

'"It came out in the young Szwart, aye. Having been suppressed in his parents, the vampire essence they pa.s.sed down to Szwart was of an entirely different order. How best to explain? When a man is born blind, his remaining senses may develop more fully in order to compensate for the loss. In Szwart's parents, the normal functions of their vampire leeches had been suppressed - which served only to magnify the essence that they pa.s.sed down to Szwart!

'"Szwart's will has kept him sane within limits, but he is a totally devolved creature. He sleeps alone, to ensure that no bloodson of his will carry this thing into the future. His ugliness is su ch that men might easily go insane if they saw him in the worst of his myriad ... designs. Tonigh t he maintained something of a manlike outline in order to be here with us, but normally he can't bear to be seen, which is why he shuns light and companionship. This last is no great hardship; we Wamphyri were ever loners. But let any man speak ou t against him as a freak - or shrink from the horror of him - it's as if his phobias were reinforced. And despite that he knows his ugliness well enough, knows the truth of it, still he will kill the offender, if only because his action or reaction reminded him of his infirmity."

'And Vavara said, "Yet you say he's not mad?"

'"Not yet," Malinari told her, "Though it must come eventually.

Perhaps in a hundred years, or fifty, or maybe less. But he was here tonight; you saw him; he reasons."

' "I have seen him, yes," Vavara answered. "And his reasoning is as warped and fluctuating as his flesh! He looked like a mad thing to me, or close enough."

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'"Have it your own way," my master told her. "But if he is a mad thing, then for the moment he's our mad thing. Also, he's the Lord of Darkspire, commander of men and monsters, and Darkspire guards our flanks ..."

'Then for a while they were silent, until Vavara inquired: "What of his parents, the incestuous twins?"

'"Szwart was born beautiful and seemed perfect," Malinari answered. "At seventeen he ascended. And at eighteen his father found him in Darkspire's Desmodus colony, hanging with the bats from the fretted ceiling - but hanging in flaps and folds, like a blob of dough such as the Szgany use when baking their bread! In his gluttony, he had absorbed a great many bats before falling asleep.

' "Father and mother both, they tried to trap and burn him. He trapped and burned them! So the story goes. My advice: never treat Szwart with disdain because he is not pretty. An d as for h is quirks: we are Wamphyri and we all have quirks - even you, Vavara, or so I've heard it rumoured. But with the exception of our mutual enemies, no one takes us to task over our little ... idiosyncrasies? As for Szwart, who is our ally: neither slight nor scorn him. And don't underestimate him, either Korath had been silent for some little time. Perhaps he brooded on the past. Whatever, Harry prodded him with a thought: Korath? And he responded with a grunt: Huh?

My time fare grows short now, (Harry's deadspeak voice was faint and wavering) and Jake isn't far from waking. We've come a long way, in more senses than one, but we're by no means finished. When I go, your contact with Jake goes with me. Then you will be alone. If you ever want to hear from us again -for who knows? We might yet find some mutual benefit in renewed contact - then you'd fast get on with your story. But make it as brief as possible. Here's how it goes: Malinari and the others, they lost their bloodwar and were banished. Then for four hundred years you survived the Icelands and eventually returned to Starside. And finally you came fare. That's the story, now fill in the details.

And Korath answered, Ah, but the details may take a little longer!

But not too long, said Harry.

As for Jake: this time he voiced no complaint. He was so 'into'

Starside now - Korath's story had so intrigued him - that he wanted to know the rest of it, no matter how ugly it might get.

And: Very well, said Korath. Then let's be done with it...

'So then, Malinari, Vavara, and Szwart, they were made out to be the weird ones, the freaks, the outsiders. But in fact they were no more freakish than many of the Lords and Ladies in the camp of Dramal Doombody. Ah, but Lord Doombody had problems of his own. For the time being it seemed he had his leprosy under control, true, but what of the future? Even a man as mighty as Dramal has his limits, and likewise his vampire leech. He knew it was time to consolidate his position against a dubious future, when he might become weak and vulnerable.

'Since his aerie towered close to the centre of the clump, Dramal had resolved to annex all of the neighbouring stacks and so make them his own, or at least give them to allies with whom he had unbreakable pacts. This way - as he became less capable over however long a time - he would be surrounded by "friends" as opposed to enemies. And there in a nutsh.e.l.l we have the real basis of what was falsely termed "Malinari's bloodwar": in fact it was forced on The Mind and the other "freaks" by Dramal himself.

'Anyway, my master and his allies were determined to make a good long fight of it, and they did. Briefly, then: 'Malinari, Vavara, and Szwart: they set to and strengthened their earthworks in Starside's bottoms, and manned them with every sort of vicious atrocity from their vats. The triangle of barren earth accommodating their aeries became their first line of defence. As for the stacks themselves: Malstack wasn't altogether impregnable, but still Malinari felt fairly secure.

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and walled ledges were few and well defended, and the gantlet approaches terrible in their severity. Over every possible avenue of invasion, corbels carved in the likeness of vomiting warrior-heads threatened boiling p.i.s.s and flaming tar.

'Vavara's Mazemanse was more problematic. But it had good points as well as bad. In silhouette, the aerie looked like the roof of an ancient cave upended, with spindly stalact.i.tes going up instead of down. Causeways and b.u.t.tresses stretched between, and various levels were roofed over with timbers out of Sunside and slate tiles from the scree slopes of the barrier mountains. Towards the centre the many rock spires were joined by ma.s.sive, mortared walls to form the bulk of the aerie.

Externally, radiating ribs of timber, the boles o f Sunside ironwoods, supported slate rooves and timbered battlements, and boulder walls built by ancestral inhabitants protected the whole from attack up the sliding scree shambles of the bottoms. 'When the war came, Mazemanse suffered its greatest damag e from aer ial warriors driven to crash headlong into the delicate outer spires, thus bringing them down on the inner walls, causeways, barracks, and other habitations. Small-minded, such creatures as were crippled in these deliberately contrived collisions would then sacrifice themselves by smashing down on roofs to break them in. Sometimes this worked, but on many occasions the roofs were false and hid needle spires or stakes of mountain pine. Impaled warriors would then be set on fire and fried in the fiery jets of their own gas-bladders; their molten fats and noxious liquids would be drained off as ammunition for the castle's corbel chutes.

'Szwart's Darkspire proved the most obstinate of Dramal's targets, and Szwart's men the most furious fighters. For there was something of Szwart himself in all his creatures. His warriors in the stony rubble at Darkspire's foot were night- black things that could not be seen by foot-soldiers until too late; his men manning the gantlets never retreated but fought to the death; others where they fed the corbel chutes - in the event that blazing fluids or white-hot-boulder ammunition should run low - would hurl themselves down on the invading hordes rather than quit the machicolation. Such dedication! ... but a rather simple explanation. Men and monsters both, they had been given a choice: deal with the enemy, or be dealt with by Szwart.

'Well, there you go ... the picture I paint is inadequate, but you require that I make a speedy end of it. We fought well, but a losing battle. Three stacks against the combined might of Starside? Still, I suppose it had to be. Avarice, bloodl.u.s.t and territorial expansion: such things are life itself, or undeath, or the true death, to the Wamphyri. But at least we were spared the true death. Had we died in battle, then that were something else. But we didn't. When the end was inevitable and we huddled in the blazing bulk of Malstack - Szwart blind ed by the fires, Vavara smudged, bloodied and wilting, and M alinari almost mindless from the sheer force of the telepathic demands he had made on his last few defenders - finally Dramal called for our surrender. What else could we do but accept? Following which, and in short order, we were spat upon, buffeted, generally humiliated, and banished.

'We were allowed one small warrior for escort, our flyers, and a handful of lieutenant and thrall survivors. That was all. Not much by way of a retinue, but beggars can't be choosers.

'And so we headed north for the Icelands, at first a distant shimmer, and then a hazy grey blanket that flickered on a horizon warped by weaving auroras and ice-chip stars. And from the moment of setting out, not one of us knew if we would make it or plummet into some frozen ocean and drown. But make it we did ...

'Below us the landscape changed, however slowly: 'First the bitter, white-rimed earth; then the blue-grey lakes, whose cold and sluggish waves seemed to crawl to sh.o.r.e; finally the endless white drifts that went on and on as far as the eyes could see, sprawling ever northwards. The snow wasn't entirely 336.

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strange to us; we had seen it before, however rarely, on the higher ridges of the barrier mountains - but never like this!

No earth showed through; we could not know if we crossed land or iced-over ocean deeps. We fed ourselves and our beasts on the blood and flesh of great white bears - and only occasionally on thralls - and forged on. We had no other choice; if we tried to sneak back into St arside, that would mean the true death for all of us.

'It was hard. When there were no bears we sipped sparingly from the stoppered spines of our flyers. One of Vavara's lieutenants let his greed get the better of him; when his exhausted flyer spiralled down to an icy hummock, we followed him down to feed. We fed on him, too, for without his flyer he wasn't going anywhere.

'Another time, a blizzard c ame up. We could not afford the energy required to climb above it. Landing, we sheltered behind the bulk of the warrior, one of Malinari's. Then it was that my master took from me - took more than was good for me, so that I was weakened. But at the same time I received of his strong vampire essence, which helped in my survival - the tenacity of the Great Vampire, aye.

'Where the auroras soared highest, we came upon mountains; a lesser range than the barrier mountains of Sunside/Starside - and never a tree to be seen - but with crags, gulleys, and ice- castles, even rivers of ice, frozen in position on the mountain slopes! And if nothing else, the endless boredom of our pa.s.sage over this white wilderness was broken.

'But we were broken, too, and exhausted we put down. Worst hit by the journey, Malinari's warrior was ready to give up the ghost. We saw to it that the beast didn't go to waste. Only its bones would be left, where for a while its ribcage would form the frame of an ice-house that we would build. But before then, while still the warrior's shrivelled flesh provided sustenance, we had time and strength for exploration.

'To the south a crack of fuzzy light showed on the horizon: sunup on Sunside, so faint and distant that even Szwart made no complaint! And making use of what little warmth it brought, the four of us - Szwart and Vavara, Malinari and myself- flew off to investigate the range of ice-draped mountains. My master and I, we headed west, Vavara and Szwart went east. When total darkness crept in again and the writhing auroras returned, we would join up and make report at the carca.s.s of the warrior. The rest of our men and beasts (four junior lieutenants and their flyers, for there were no more thralls left) would live off the carca.s.s until we got back. In the bitter cold, the warrior's meat would keep for long and long ...

'We flew for many a mile, Malinari gaunt where he sat tall in his ornate saddle only a wingspan's distance from my own flyer. Gaunt and silent, aye, so that I wondered what he was thinking - perhaps that he was hungry, and that he had had enough of stinking warrior meat!

'And indeed The Mind was thinking, though mercifully his thoughts were not of me. No, for I could feel them, probing out and ahead of us, searching for other lives in this white waste.

And he pointed, and called out to me: '"That way: an ocean where mighty fishes cruise the deeps, only surfacing to break the thin ice and breathe. But these are great hot-blooded things, and never a Szgany hook and line that could pull them forth!" Then he shook his head, and said: "This place - this land, these mountains at least - are cold and barren, and yet..." And he frowned.

'"Master?" I said.

'"Something ..." he answered, st ill frowning. "Something up ahead."

'And in another mile or so ... smoke, a distant puff! Several puffs, and a smudge, going up. And still we flitted across the wind-carved ice-castles and frozen fangs of the mountains.

'But now Malinari's concentration was rapt on that column of fire-smoke rising ahead. I saw what he saw, or so I thought: a 338.

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fire-mountain, black against white, where the snow had melted from its flanks.

'Then, suddenly, Malina ri hauled on his reins, rose up and to one side and climbed in a spiral. I quickly joined him, but when I might have questioned him - or rather, as my mind framed its concern - he held up a hand to silence me. And now his mental probes were venting in such powerful bursts from Malinari's mind that I could "hear" his questions, which he asked of some unseen other: ' "Who are you, in the mountain there? What do you here? Is this your territory, and if so by what right? By right of conquest, or simply because you are here?"

'And the answer came back with such force, in such a do omful cadence that we knew, my master and I, this was no middling intelligence or power which he had discovered: '"It is my territory because it is mine. That is my right. If you disput e it, then come on by all means. I have creatures to shatter you in pieces. Or go away, and I shall perhaps leave you in peace - a nd in one piece. As to who I am: I am who I am. As to what I was: I was the first, even th ough I may not be the last. I have been here a thousand years, which is my sole right to this place and sufficient. So begone!"

'Then with a hiss Malinari ceased all telepathic sendings. And I felt his guards go up as he turned and gazed wide-eyed at me.

"I know him!" he said, his jaws agape. "Something of him is in all of us!" And for a moment that was all he said ...

'Then I spied a pair of great white bears at the edge of a frozen lake. They had broken a hole in the ice and were fishing in the black water. I pointed them out to Malinar i, and he took us down to hover over our prey. The bears, startled by our sudden arrival, took to the water and vanished under the ice. Malinari was quick to dismount; he waited at the hole until one of the bears lifted her head. Then my master struck - struck with the strength of three or four men - and his gauntlet crushed in the bear's ear and the side of its head. Brained, the huge creature was dead in the water. We dragged it onto the ice in time to see the bear's mate surface. This time, in the moment before Malinari delivered his devastating blow, the great white beast roared its fury and raked his forearm. Containing his pain, my master wrapped his torn limb. Then, as we ate bear-heart while our flyers sipped blood, he said: "'My wound is slight, and it will heal quickly. His won't, ever.

The strongest survive. You are a strong one, Korath, and quick- sighted. So you survive. If you had not seen these bears, perhaps you would not survive. For I wish to stay here a while, to explore these ice-castles, and blood and flesh are the fuels I burn. If not the flesh of bears, what then?" An d his red eyes gloomed on me.

'Understanding him well enow, I deigned not to answer.

'And explore we did, but what we found ...!.

'"Korath," my master said, as we entered an ice-encased cavern. "Before I sensed the Greater Power in yonder fire- mountain - if it is a living fire-mountain, for I fancy the smoke is of man's making rather than Nature's - I sensed lesser thoughts, dreamier thoughts, from this frozen cave. Aye, and from others near and far. Who sleeps, I wonder, in such places?"

'We soon found out.

'Locked in the ice where he had frozen himself solid - completely encased, indeed buried in the clear ice - we found the much-reduced body of what was once a Lord of the Wamphyri! Wrinkled he was; his skin as white as snow, whose deep corrugations were like some strange pale leech's. And so we knew that he had been here for long and long. But strangely, his eyes were open, however glazed over. And: ' "Here we have one such dreamer," said Malinari, and even his voice was hushed in this cold and echoing chamber. "Except he doesn't so much dream as nightmare."

' "A dreamer, master?" I said. "But surely he is dead?"

' "Eh?" He raised a scornful eyebrow. "Where is your faith, Korath? Is it likely that Nephran Malinari is mistaken? And 340.

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for that matter, where is your faith in the Wamphyri, in their tenacity, their longevity? I heard this one's thoughts, I tell you - and I sensed his fear! No, he is not dead. Now look there."

'I looked where he pointed.

'The ancient sat behind twelve or fifteen feet of ice. But level with his ribs, a row of holes some two to three inches in diameter had been drilled a third of the way through to him.

On the floor, the acc.u.mulated ice chippings were heaped into small mounds directly beneath the holes.

'And Malinari said: "I don't think we need puzzle over the look of horror on his face. Something has been busy here, doing its best to get at him! But this ice is centuries old and hard as iron, and he chose his niche well. When it is time to freeze ourselves - when our food is used up - we must do the same ..."

' "Time to ... to free ze ourselves?" I repeated him. 'He looked at me. "In this cold place, only one way to survive the centuries. Like this one, we go down into the ice. But first we put some distance between."

'And like a fool, I repeated him again: "Between?" 'But he only nodded musingly, and said, "Between ourselves and Shaitan, aye. A thousand years ago and more he was banished here, and now lives in that fire-mountain. Others like this one, who came before or since, have found their own ways to live out the years: they sleep in the ice. But Shaitan is awake! Can you doubt it was a creature of his did this drilling? Well, he has the mountain's warmth and shelter, and no doubt defends it with just such beasts as did this. And here we are starvelings, with just one dead warrior to sustain us. So it's the ice for us, be sure. But not here, not this close to Shaitan in his fire- mountain."

'Following which we returned to the bears and loaded their drained carca.s.ses aboard our flyers, then flew back to rendezvous with Vavara and Szwart...

'Malinari told his colleagues what we had found. He convinced them that indeed Shaitan the Unborn held dominion in the west, and they agreed, however reluctantly, with his long-term plan of survival. As Vavara pointed out: "We shall only know if we are successful when we wake up. And if we don't, we weren't."

'The warrior lasted some little time, while we gradually strippe d the flesh from its bones. Eventually its flensed ribs formed the framework of an ice-house, which in the next blizzard became one with the landscape. But towards the end Malinari, Vavara, Szwart and the others were weary of all this and ready for ice-encas.e.m.e.nt. Meanwhile they had explored the local terrain, discovering an ice-cavern that suited their purpose.

'There in a niche, broad at the front, narrowing to nothing in the rear, we positioned ourselves. In front, the three lieutenants (they were down to three now); then the flyers all in a huddle, and behind and beneath their shielding wings Malinari and his Wamphyri colleagues. Myself, I was positioned on a ledge overlooking the rear of the niche.

'So stationed, the lieutenants would be the first to feel any exploratory stab from outside the ice. With any luck their physical agonies would transfer mentally and be "heard" by Malinari. He and the others might then be able to melt themselves free by will alone ... if they retained sufficient strength.

'But the surest way to remain alive and intact down all the unknown and unguessable years to come would be to fashion such an ice-shield as could not be broken into and looted. To this end the Wamphyri trio willed a mist like none before. It swirled up from the ice-layered floor, down from the festoons of jagged icicles in the cavern's roof, out from the crystallized walls, but mainly from their own pores. And drawn do wn by their m a.s.sed will to where we sat in our places, the mist solidified to form layer upon layer of ice, thick and thicker far than the sheath we had seen in the hidey-hole of the ancient.

'For long and long I watched it forming - until my eyes were frozen and I saw no more ...

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'We woke up!

'The ice was melting, and the air ... was wanner! Still cold, but warmer. Two lieutenants were dead - the true death, aye - and three flyers. Well, the third and last lieutenant, barring myself, was useless without a mount. He was Szwart's man, and though his blood was pale and slow, still it flowed... until Szwart stilled it forever.

'Then the three Great Vampires drained him, and I had my fill of his shrivelled flesh. Shrivelled, desiccated, sunken in: such was the case with all of us, our flyers, too. But at least we lived.

'And the great cave dripped with running water, and outside- 'Such a transformation! Over the far southern horizon, a glow as was never before seen from the Icelands. It could only be the sun, but visible in the sky however low to the horizon.

Malinari and Vavara felt its rays at once; not so much a burning as a severe irritation. It was the great distance, and the dimness of the glow through a mist over the ocean. But it must be said that Lord Szwart suffered, until he covered himself in his robe, averted his eyes and retreated into gloom.