E-Branch - Invaders Part 16

'But that lightll swear it shone through the very boulders where we crouched! For comparison, the Gate's glare was but a candle. And the light was merely the beginning, for then came the crack! Rut that doesn't convey it, for it was a sound like the earth splitting! And finally the blast.

'Well, I've seen what a grenade can do, but this ...

'Not even a million grenades - and all of them detonating at the same time - could equal it. But before that: 'I had looked up from behind the rocks where I crouched. I didn't know that Peder had failed to heed my warning. There he stood exposed, looking down on Starside. But then, in the smallest fraction of a second, that awful light jumped from Starside into the mountains and shone on Peder. Smoke leaped from him as from a leaf fallen in the fire. He screamed his agony, clutched at his face, tottered back away from the gap in the rocks. But even as he stumbled it was as if a giant's hand slapped at him, hurled him down. And I remember thinking: '"Perhaps this was how it was when the white sun fell!"

'Hot grit stinging, and stones spattering; the earth trembling, and lightning las.h.i.+ng the sky. And myself- aye, and the rest of my men with me - gasping in our terror of the unknown, while Peder moaned and sobbed where he had fallen.

'Then, in a while - as the frenzy of the winds gradually lessened, and the pebbles stopped falling, and the ground stopped shaking - that rumble of sound, that hissing of warm rain, that 169.

darkness closing in as the stars were shut out. And, when I dared look, that mushroom cloud going up and up, towering as high and higher than the mountains themselves. And the electrical storm in its dome, and the fires that billowed all up and down its pulsing stem ...

'Ben has told me what it was: a "tactical weapon," he says - which I'm told means a small one of its kind - had been fired through the Gate from the underground complex at Perchorsk. And would you believe it, he pretends not to understand why I still think of your world as the h.e.l.l-Lands!? 'So, we didn't know it was a weapon, and since its deadly cloud swept north we didn't suffer its effects on Sunside. But when it was all over and done the Gate shone as bright as ever, and Starside looked no different, except now beyond the Gate a softly glowing plume lay fallen on the earth, forever pointing in the direction of the Icelands. And no matter the rainstorms or howling winds, the plume was always there.

'Then for a while we blessed the Gate, because it had issued that awful breath of h.e.l.l that destroyed the first and last of the Wamphyri. So we thought for long and long. And this time I admit that I believed it, too. For with ah1 we had learned of the tenacity of the vampire, we had not yet learned the lessons of history...

'Let me go back a little way. At an earlier time, following the battle in The Dweller's garden, Harry Keogh, called h.e.l.l- Lander, had fallen sick. At the time we'd thought it must be similar to the sickness that was in his son, The Dweller, for both men had used the power of the sun itself as a weapon against the Wamphyri, wherefore both might have suffered similar scorchings. The Dweller - who had seemed the most badly burned - was soon well on his way to recovery; so we thought. Yet his father, far less badly affected, if at all... he had fallen ill.

'Er, but all of this is incidental to my story, you understand.

'Anyway, the Necroscope had a Szgany woman, Nana Kiklu, to tend him where he lay tossing in his fever upon a bed in one of the garden's houses ... The Dweller had built small stone homes for his trog servitors, and Harry lay ill in one of these.

Now, Nana's man, Hzak, had died in the fight for the garden, and she was without child. And here was Harry Keogh, also called Dwellersire, a handsome man of rare skills and soaring intelligence, mumbling in his fever dreams of olden loves and l.u.s.ts.

'I need s ay no more - indeed, I know no more - except that nine months later Nana gave birth to twin boys, one of whom was Nathan.

Which explains why we oft-times refer to "Harry and his sons".

As to the other son, Nestor ... but he grew up wild, and doesn't concern us here.

'Many years pa.s.sed and Nathan grew into a youth. But while he possessed the germ of his alien father's skills, no one knew of it because we believed he was Hzak Kiklu's son, conceived at the time of the battle in The Dweller's garden. Well, perhaps I had guessed otherwise. But Nana was a good, hard-working woman, and I was fond of her boys, both of them at that time.

And anyway, the Szgany Lidesci had always had more than its fair share of gossipy, chattering hags. It wasn't for me to offer them yet another tidbit to cackle over. And remember, even I didn't know that he was, or would soon become, more like his father.

'So then, and now you know something of Nathan. But a deal more to come later ...

'I have mentioned my annual trek into Starside, when - as if to rea.s.sure myself that the vampires were no more, and their aeries toppled, all save one - I would venture to the foot of lone Karenstack and gaze up at that great grim relic of ancient horror, and shout into its nether caverns until the echoes sounded to bring down the dust. Came a time, when I was returning home from just such a journey, I felt that I was witness to ... something. But I couldn't be sure.

'It had become my habit to pause in the mouth of the pa.s.s at a certain hour, the hour of sun-up, climb to a higher elevation and gaze back on the emptiness of Starside and the boulder plains. On 170.

171.

Sunside it would be morning now; but here, Starside of the pa.s.s, the barrier mountains cast their shadows for many an uncounted mile out across the barren waste. And here it was that a certain sight had never failed to gladden me: the first rays of the morning sun lighting on the topmost spires of the last great aerie of the Wamphyri.

'How it buoyed me up to see that purifying light burning there, to watch a golden stain spreading over the highest ramparts of that vast tower of evil, and to know that nothing was hiding within, behind bone balconies and black-draped windows. Yes, it made these pointless-seeming trips of mine worthwhile; it satisfied my seer's blood, which even now, all these years later, was wont to bring me awake, clammy and troubled in the dead of night.

'But this time, even after I had climbed back down to the pa.s.s, something seemed burned on the surface of my eye ... and in my mind. "But of course" - I told myself- "the sun, even reflected from the uppermost fangs of an aerie, is a brilliant, dazzling thing that can blur your vision and cast false images, if only momentarily." Ah, but on this occasion that moment went on and on, and I could not forget it.

'Karenstack: in my mind's eye it continued to burn. Karen-stack, and something else I had thought to see. And every time I closed my eyes the picture came up clearer: the aerie's crest aglow with its false halo of fire. But below the area of reflected light, where the golden rays could never reach: 'Black motes swirling, jetting, settling towards the yawning gape of a vast landing bay. They appeared as midges at that distance, but what would they be up close?

'It was my imagination, of course. What, close on a thousand sun-ups come and gone since the Gate spat h.e.l.l at the last of the Wamphyri, and still I didn't accept it but kept on conjuring nightmares out of thin air, sunlight, and swirls of dust?

HahlThey would say I was mad!

'And after that, the way I set off for home - almost at a run - I'm sure my companions did think I was mad. But even if I was, my seer's blood was not. And the attack on Sunside, and on Settlement, the town we had built at the edge of the forest under the mountains, came at the next sundown.

'The Wamphyri were back, this time from the east, a place beyond the Great Red Waste. They were led by a Lady, Wratha the Risen, and though Wratha's band was small its members were evil and ruthless as any gone before. Canker Canison was a dog- Lord; I hesitate even to hazard a guess at his lineage! And Gorvi the Guile, who was so devious as to be legendary even among his own kind. And Vasagi the Suck, whose face was like that of a stinging insect. Aye, and blood-crazed twins named Wran and Spiro - also called the Killglance brothers - whose very cognomen says it all. But they were only the harbingers of a worse, a greater force still to come.

'It was the Lord Vormulac Unsleep, who pursued Wratha from the east to punish her for fleeing his jurisdiction. And Vormulac's army was a horde!

'But let me cut a long story short. This was the time when Nathan came into his own, though not without great trials.

When he was taken by the Wamphyri and thrown into the Starside Gate, who could imagine he would be back? Here in your world, in Perchorsk, he was captured by evil men, escaped, fled to Ben Trask and E-Branch, who helped develop his powers ... even as they'll try to develop yours, Jake.

'Finally Nathan returned to Sunside, with Zek - sweet Zekintha, ah! - and Trask, lan Goodly, David Chung, and other good men, and marvellous weapons from the h.e.l.l-Lands - or "Earth," as I must learn to think of this place. And at last we could carry their bloodwar back to the Wamphyri on Starside!

'And we did. But Nathan: it seems he had his father's powers and then some. Or perhaps it was the talents of all of that brave band, for certainly they were all in on it at the end. It was five years ago, Jake, but I remember it like yesterday. Who could forget such a thing?

'Nathan and the others had walked into a trap at the Starside 172 Gate. He'd been trying to send his companions safely home again, back through the Gate to Perchorsk and out of the thick of the fighting. But vampire lieutenants stood in the way, and no room for manoeuvring. Nathan and his colleagues must stand and fight. They had Earth weapons, aye, but were low on ammunition; eventually they must be taken. And if Nathan were taken, what then of Sunside? But here I'm being selfish and perhaps I should ask: what then for Earth? For the Wamphyri - now under the leaders.h.i.+p of Devetaki Skullguise, a mentalist Lady of awesome skill and enormous greed - had learned the Gate's secret. They knew that beyond it lay an entire world ripe for the taking.

'Now, don't ask me how it was done, for I'm a simple man. But Nathan and the others, linking hands, they pitted themselves against the Starside Gate itself. The Gate is immovable-even that incredible "tactical weapon" that destroyed Shaithis and Shaitan had not moved it nor even marred its surface - and sitting there on the boulder plains it seemed anch.o.r.ed in position, perhap s by its own enormous gravi ty? Wherefore, in order to move the Gate, a man or men must move the world.'

'And they did. With all their weird talents together, acting in unison they willed the Gate to move south. South towards the rising sun, which had never once shone on Starside since an age long forgotten. And the Gate - and the world - moved!

The world turned, all Sunside/Starside, turning like a great wheel, and the sun rising ever faster over the barrier mountains. And the Wamphyri, their lieutenants, creatures and all were seared in a moment...

'And now, surely it must be over? Why, with the turning of the world even the last aerie had fallen like a felled giant, toppling onto the boulder plains! All that remained of that great and monstrous tower was its stump, like a flat-topped mound - or perhaps one of Ben Trask's "b.u.t.tes?" - glooming on the horizon, while its vile body sprawled like a corpse, crumbling in the new-found light of Starside.

'In the far east and west, as far as men were yet to journey, the vampire swamps were drying out, cracking open in their beds, cleansed by the sun. And in all the length and breadth of Sunside/Starside, no vampires existed - at least as far as men knew. But that didn't mean that men wouldn't ke ep watching, not while I lived, anyway!

'Nor was the transformation confined to the swamps. Water, presumably released from the Icelands, had brought great rains to the scrubland savannas, and showers even to the furnace deserts south of Sunside's fertile belt, until the land was green as far as the closest Thyre colonies. All of which processes of an altered Nature, and others, would continue a while yet- '-But not for long enough.

'As for the Starside Gate: that was scarcely the ominous place it had been. For now it was the centre of a lake, a constantly moving body of water diverted from its source in your world, in this world, Jake, and driven by its own weight into Starside.

And the wormholes around the Gate - or "energy channels," as Ben Trask calls them, which wound through solid rock to the first or "primal" Gate, the white sun deep in the belly of the crater - they had become whirlpool sinkholes, diverting the waters of the lake a second time and returning them to the Refuge at Radujevac in this world, Earth, and on into the Danube. Thus nothing was lost, and nothing gained.

'But what a wonder! That fountain of light, reaching up a hundred feet into the Starside night, lit up by the Gate glowing in its core, and raining its soft white waters on the land and into the lake! Moreover, it had closed off both routes out of and into Sunside/Starside, which preserved the integrity of both worlds ...

'And so things stood, for one and a half of your years - Earth years, that is - and seventy of my days, for the sun rose much higher now and the days were longer yet. Well, at least in the new beginning. But it wasn't destined to stay that way.

'Man can't master Nature, Jake. Or if he does his reign is 174.

175.

short. What Nathan and the men of E-Branch had done was against Nature ... what? To move a world? And slow but sure the lure of the white sun, its strange gravity, began to turn us northwards again. The days grew shorter, the sun sank ever lower, and Starside's shadows lengthened as before. The rains retreated, seasons we had known but briefly merged into one, the savannas wilted away to their usual russets and yellows.

Nightly the rim of the barrier mount ains showed more stars, flowing back into position from the north, and once again the grim Northstar, which had always shone on Kar enstack, rode high in the Starside sky.

'But were the Szgany dismayed? Or the trogs in their caverns, or the desert-dwelling Thyre? Not a bit of it! The trogs had detested the surplus of light; it destroyed their mushroom farms and irritated their skins and moon-white eyes. The Thyre in their subterranean colonies had been hard put to build barriers against unseasonal flood waters that coursed along their river routes. And the Szgany? We had enjoyed our permanence of climate; what need had we of seasons, when the trees were ever in fruit? But with the world turned ... even the foliage - the flora? - had suffered. Too much sun in the one season, a surfeit of rain in the next, and colder air in the third.

'And now back to normal, except there was no more scourge, no more vampires, no more Wamphyri.' They'd been erased forever out of our world and the Szgany could sleep easy in their beds and not fear for their lives and the blood of their loved ones. Why, we might even begin to explore those lands and territories previously forbidden to us - Starside itself, perhaps! And the great lakes or oceans that lay north of the boulder plains. And those unknown lands to east and west of the no-longer "barrier" mountains, beyond the dried-out swamps and the Great Red Waste; for it would take time for the swamps to revert. And the Thyre were no longer un-men but neighbours - we valued their friends.h.i.+p and had determined to share with them all the "technology" that Nathan had brought us from the h.e.l.l-Lands. Ah, how perfect it all seemed! 'Grand schemes and grander dreams, aye. 'Ah, Jake, but my seer's blood told me it wouldn't be so. And I fretted while I waited ...

'There are myths and there are legends. A myth is a story come down the ages, so changed by its re-telling over and over that that we may no longer say if it is true or simply a story. One such myth was Shaitan the Unborn - until he became re ality. A legend, on the other hand, is something much closer in time. A legend is not so old that it has lost its authenticity.

'Here in your world, Jake, you have a saying: "he's a living legend." Do you see what I mean? A thing - usually a man or woman - that attains legendary status even in its, his or her own lifetime. But legends are generally older than that, if not as old as myths. In Sunside, our days being so long, the Szgany use them as a measure much as you use years. And we have a legend that dates back twenty-five thousand sun-ups. Not as long as your history, no, but still five hundred years. Oh, yes, I have learned your numbering system. I pride myself that I've learned many things, even though I've no use for them on Sunside.

'But five hundred years ago in my world, there were three Great Vampires unlike any others before or since. And they were legends. Two of them were Lords (for now, the time being, let's say that they were Lords, past tense) and the other a so-called "Lady". But Vavara, believing her name potent enough in its own right, a warning enough in itself, scorned all t.i.tles and cognomens. The name itself would suffice, and she was simply Vavara. And perhaps she was right. For see, even as I speak that name - " Vavaaara" - so I shudder. Ugh!

'Not that she was ugly. On the contrary, she was incredibly beautiful - irresistibly so. And that was Vavara's menace: she was a beguiler, a spellbinder. It was a kind of hypnotism, Jake, but by no means the same as Grahame McGilchrist's. Grahame uses a drug to enhance the authority of his eyes and voice; his is a skill as opposed to a true Power. There again, who can say? Perhaps 176.

177.

Vavara's hypnotism was just such a skill, but one enhanced out of all proportion by her vampire leech, as all human senses are enhanced by vampirism.

'Trask's science has it that not only humans but all creatures possess lures other than the purely physical attractions efface and form. But in humans the voice and the eyes are especially important in defining a person's - what, charisma? Hah! But tha t is also a Szgany word, for personality. Ben talks about pheromones, and chemistry and such. But all I know of chemistry is how to mix a decent gunpowder. And it's a d.a.m.n hard thing to beguile a rocket, or silver shot from double barrels!

'Anyway, and whatever this attraction is, Vavara had it. And again, perhaps Ben's right. For the spell she cast over men was stronger than her power over women, and usually fatal. Any man who took her fancy - whether a simple Sunsider or even, on occasion, a Lord of the Wamphyri - he was a goner. To resist Vavara was a wasted effort.

'So much for the witch. Now for the wizards: 'The other two were Lords, as I have said. Lord Szwart was one, for he had taken his Szgany name, by which the Szgany knew him: Szwart, p.r.o.nounced like the German "schwartz," which means black. And black he was, blacker than night, black as the black heart of the leech that empowered him ... but with what strange powers? I've said he was blacker than night: a totally inadequate description. Lord Szwart was the night!

'Now, all of the Wamphyri are children of the night. Certainly they are, for they cannot bear the sunlight. And because night is their element - because they are awake at night, and see and revel and hunt at night - it is like a cloak they wear, disguising them even from the most keen-sighted of men. On Sunside when vampires were abroad in the forest, the Szgany would lie still in their hiding places and watch them pa.s.s. And sometimes when they pa.s.sed a clinging mist would spring out of the earth, by which you would know they were there; or perhaps the stars would blink as a shape flowed across them, but you would not see whose shape it was, 178.

just a darkness in the lesser dark. And sometimes - oh, sometimes - the mist and the shape would come close, closer, and sniff... and laugh!

'But you must excuse me, Jake, the things of which I speak are not pleasant things. I may not speak of them without remembering ...

'Anyway, Lord Szwart's command over the night was so much greater than any other's that when the sun was down he was simply invisible. He made no mists, blotted no stars, and cast no shadows. Yet he was seen, but only once, by a man of the Szgany - seen in a storm, in a flash of lightning - and then no more. But the man who saw him was a madman until his dying day, which wasn't long in coming. For he went into the woods to dig a hole to hide in, but never stopped digging! And when finally the pit fell in on him, he didn't cry out in his horror at being buried alive but only his lunatic joy... for at last he was safe, and Lord Szwart could never get him now.

'I do not know what Lord Szwart was. Only that he was Wamphyri.

'Which leaves one other, and perhaps the most dangerous of all.

Lord Nephran Malinari - called Malinari the Mind, or simply The Mind - was a mentalist, a thought-thief, a mind-reader without peer. None of the stripling telepaths in Ben Trask's E- Branch today would have stood a chance against Lord Malinari in any battle of minds, nor all of them together. Let me tell you how it was with him: 'Among the Szgany, even more so than in your people, there were weird talents. My own sixth sense - my seer's blood - is but one example. But we had mentalists, too, and oneiromancers, and even men like lan Goodly, aye, despite that their precognition was a dubious art at best. For it's as I've said, there's a trace of the Wamphyri in all men of Sunside; their taint lingers on, and I fancy it has carried over even into this world. But Malinari... was special. His evil was special!

Why, among the Wamphyri themselves, Lord Nephran Malinari had no friends. But don't 179.

let me mislead you, Jake: it's not that the Wamphyri were given to forming lasting relationsh ips. They weren't, but some of them did form alliances; well, occasionally. But never with Malinari the Mind. How may a man trust, or remain on good terms, wit h a creature who knows his every thought, who is one step ahead of his every move? The Wamphyri are devious, secretive... but how to keep secrets from such as Malinari?

'Let him but touch a man, a mere touch of the fingertips, and it was as though the other's thoughts flowed like water - or like blood? - out of their owner and into the mind of Malinari.

Ah, a vampire with a difference: he slaked two kinds of thirst, the one for blood and the other for knowledge! No idle curiosity, Jake, but the l.u.s.t for knowledge itself. And once a thing was learned, Nephran Malinari never forgot it.

'But of course in Sunside/Starsi de, just as in this world, there were those who could not be read. Be it strength of will, or simply their nature, there was a wall in their minds no ordinary mentalist could ever breach. Ah, but Lord Malinari was no ordinary mentalist. I have said his touch opened the way. So it did, like opening a dam in a pent river. But if the soft brush of fingertips would not suffice ... there was another way. 'Fingerti ps ... and the incredible strength of the Wamphyri ... Trask says it's their metamorphis m that allows them to punch stiffened fingers into a man's chest to nip his heart. I think so, too, for it certainly wasn't brute force with Malinari. His fingers were fluid, like liquid, allowing the exploration of a man's inner ear, or the sockets behind his eyes, or the brain itself. And whenever The Mind stole a man's thoughts out of his very brain ... then he left nothing behind. No, not even the will to live ...

'We're almost done. What remains is not for me to tell but for Ben Trask - in his own time, that is.

'Just one more thing. I spoke of Vavara, Lord Szwart, and Malinari the Mind in the past tense. For that's how I heard of them, around camp fires when I was a boy, as part of Sunside's legends. The final part of the legend had it that four hundred years ago the rest of Starside's Lords and Ladies got together to be rid of them, and it took all of their strength and their fighting forces together to do it, to banish them into the Icelands.

'But five years ago - when Nathan and Trask's espers turned Sunside/Starside towards the sun - it appears that some of the ice melted. And if Vavara, Szwart, and Nephran Malinari were locked in the ice, waiting out the long cold years ... ?

'That's Trask's explanation, anyway.

'And now we're done, for that's all I know of it, or all I'm willing to say for now ... except for one final thing that I'm sure you've worked out for yourself: the fact that they're back, Jake.

All three of those monsters, they're back.

'And that's the nature of Trask's mission. It's what he and his espers are pledged to do. For once again there are vampires on the loose- '-And no longer confined to Sunside/Starside!'

181.

180.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Trask's Story When Jake looked up he was alone. Perhaps he'd been asleep by the end of Lardis's story, but he didn't think so. It had gone in, all of it, and perhaps a lot more than Lardis had actually said. Weird, but that's how it had felt during the telling: as if Jake had been there on Sunside/Starside; as if he had known all or most of these things - the sights and sounds and smells of Lardis's world - and had only needed the old gypsy's corroboration.

But that was during the telling, and now it was all receding; the scenes that Lardis had painted so inadequately, which Jake's own mind had coloured, and into which he'd inserted the finis.h.i.+ng touches, were just words instead of feelings, sensations ... emotions? And all that was left was a legend in its own right. Half of a legend, anyway.

'You didn't tell me everything...' Jake accused, before he fully realized that he was alone. Then, looking all around and feeling foolish, he stood up, tossed aside the dregs of coffee gone cold in his cup, stretched the stiffness out of his limbs. It would be good to get some real sleep sometime.

Suddenly the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness of the place had become oppressive, weighing on him ... until he spied movement in the clump of pale, stumpy trees between himself and the big Ops truck. It was Ben Tra sk, dappled grey and green and gold in the partial shade of the trees, heading his way.

'Jake?' Trask called ahead. He wa sn't shouting, but in the clear morning air - the silence of the near-deserted campsite - sound carried a long way. And drawing closer, Trask asked, 'Did I hear you talking to someone?'

'Talking to myself,' Jake an swered, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. 'Or maybe to one of your ghosts - Lardis? That old man has this strange effect on me. He doesn't just tell a story but takes me with him! Says his piece and leaves me there, then vanishes.'

'Sunside/Starside?'

Jake nodded. 'But he left a lot out.'

'He was told to,' Trask said. 'But that's okay... you can have the rest of it from me. Most of it, anyway. And if there's stuff I leave out, you'll just have to believe me that there's a good reason. Let's go to the Ops truck. It's going to get hot out here in the next hour or so, by which time the choppe r will be back and we can get on our way. Meanwhile, the Ops truck has air- conditioning.'

As they walked back towards the articulated vehicle, Jake said, 'The stuff Lardis left out, I mean apart from the technical stuff, or "science," as he calls it, was mainly to do with people.

Harry Keogh, of course, the mysterious Necroscope? But also his sons: The Dweller, Nestor, and Nathan. Huh! I learned more about Vavara, Malinari, and Szwart than about these human figures.'

Trask looked at him but said nothing, and so Jake went on: 'That term, Necroscope. It comes up time and time again. Now I know what a telescope is. "Tele" is from the Greek, right?

Far, as in far away? Likewise "micro" in microscope, which obviously means very small. But Necroscope? An instrument for seeing corpses?'

'Something like that,' Trask told him.

'And that makes sense to you?'