E-Branch - Invaders Part 28

'As to who or what Szwart is: the best that I can offer - he is Wamphyri! But he is the essence of Wamphyri, distilled or filtered by the foulness of his forebears, mutated beyond recognition not by Nature but by necessity, more leech than Lord, and a fly-the-light in the fullest sense of the word.

'The flickering light of candles, torchlight, firelight - the light of man-made combustion - these are the only kinds of light his eyes can bear, and even then not with complete impunity.

But if the light matches the fire of his eyes he is fairly safe.

Brighter than that, he knows pain! And any who would give Szwart pain ... let him first pierce himself with silver dipped in kneblasch, fasten boulders to his neck, slit his wrists, and leap from the topmost battlements of the tallest aerie.' Then he might be safe from Szwart.

'And only let someone declare enmity towards Szwart - let him broadcast his aversions or discuss them with his peers, and then have his words find their way back to the night-black master of Darkspire - and no matter who this loudmouth might be, whether high or low in the Wamphyri peckin g order, b e sure that Szwart would do his d.a.m.nedest to put a stop to such mutterings.

'Aye, and when Szwart did his d.a.m.nedest... 'There was one Narkus Stakis, Lord of Narkslump, a collapsed pile on the western fringe of the clump, who from the onset of all the rumour-mongering and side-choosing had voiced abroad his detestation of Lord Szwart. Precisely why he held Szwart in such low esteem, who could say? Perhaps he'd had wind of Lord Doombody's provisioning and other preparations for war, and the accompanying rumour that Drama! intended to root out all "deviants" (which is to say his enemies, real and imagined) from the ranks of the Wamphyri.

'If that were a fact, then the proximity of Szwart's Darkspire to DramaTs Dramstack in the core of the clump would seem certain to make Szwart just such an enemy. For if Lord Doombody wished to expand territorially (a.s.suming that this was his real purpose) he must first annex Darkspire, Szwart's gloomy, shadow-shrouded manse across too small a gulf of air. And so, and also because Drama! controlled a large percentage of Starside power, the very inferior Narkus Stakis had determined to side with him - whether or no Dramal required him as an ally.

'Alas for him that he made known his decision, especially his disinclination towards Szwart...

'Lord Szwart was black; his aerie was black, and shadowed for the most part by mighty Dramstack; his warriors and flyers were black, and the black of night was his medium. Lord Stakis's Narkslump, more a great cleft knoll than a stack proper, stood in the western fringe of the cl.u.s.ter and low to the earth, and its silhouette against the northern auroras was more a ragged hump than a fang. Gloom was its constant companion.

'On the night that Narkus died a great drift of cloud obscured the moon and stars, and Starside was never so dark. The clouds sweeping north out of Sunside were black and swollen in their bellies, pregnant with rain that las hed at the aeries of the Wamphyri. There had been fantastic ligh tnings over the barrier mountains, and the wide forests of Sunside would be awash in the aftermath of the storm. Not a good night for raid ing on the Szgany, not w ith the air full of ozone, when careless flyers and riders might so easily attract h.e.l.l-fire from the sky, to singe them and send them plummeting. For which reasons most of the Lords and Ladies stayed to house. Most of them. 'But throughout the night several watchkeepers in aeries near the western rim, where they looked down on Narkslump's split dome, had noted how Lord Stakis's nightlights - the braziers within his battlements, behind the merlons and embrasures, and the torches in his watchtower turrets - were going out one by one, as if extinguished by the torrential rains. Except they were still going out long after the rains were done.

'Came morning; the Wamphyri stayed abed while the accursed sun rose up and up, to its zenith, when the spires of 318.

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the highest stacks were lit by its rays, and many-layered curtains were drawn against its lethal heat. The day pa.s.sed as all days must; soon it was night again, and the Lords and Ladies up and about. Lights burned in all the aeries - except Narkslump.

'And slow but sure the truth became known. A small handful of thrall survivors came on flyers and on foot, over the barren boulder plains to neighbouring Scarstack and Lurelodge, begging refuge from the master and mistress respectively of those middling manses. A body of men flew out from Scarstack to Narkslump and down into its landing bays. And later, in the midnight hour, they reported back to Lord Oulios the Scar on Narkslump's condition as they had found it. Also on Narkus's condition, as they had found him, his three lieutenants, and the body (or bodies?) of his thralls.

'Word spread swiftly abroad, to all the stacks of the Wamphyri.

And now certain things were remembered from the previous night: 'In Dramstack, when the rains were at their worst, how the aerie's Desmodus colony was startled from its roost. A thousand great bats, all chittering and panick ed for no apparent reason, whirling, colliding, and scolding where they circled the fretted ceiling of their cavern lair. And Lord Dramal Doombody, nodding in his private chambers, startled awake by confused mental messages from these bat familiars: A dark shadow - a stranger, doubtless an enemy - has pa.s.sed close by. Though he was cloaked in darkness, we sensed him, his eyes burning on Dramstack. They seethed and were full of hatred!

'But Dramal's watchmen, huddling miserably in their draughty turrets and cold stone niches, and his flightless guardian warriors, rumbling behind the earthworks and on the boulder- strewn approaches to towering Dramstack, had seen nothing but a fleeting shadow: that of a cloud, they said. And cold, wet and dull, they failed to wonder why the shadow had sped west rather than north.

'And so Dramal had ordered his familiars: Go back to sleep!

You nightmared. The pounding rain and lightning shook you loose from your dusty perches. No stranger is come to harm me or mine in Dramstack.

'Not him or his, no ...

'A similar disturbance had been recorded in Karl Szorkala's Karlspire. And further west, in the grounds of Lady Sasha Lureswain's Lurelodge, one of her earthbound warriors had reared up and buffeted ineffectually at a dark blur of a shape that fluttered to a landing just beyond the bounds of Sasha's demesne - in Lord Stakis's territory, aye.

'So to the report of them that flew from Scarstack to Narkslump, when they returned to Oulios the Scar in his high place. Narkslump was intact, as were its flyers and warrior creatures, all dutifully in their places, however nervous, unattended, and unfed. Vampire thralls, however - male and female, eunuchs and fighting men alike, some twenty in all - lay dead in their beds or at their various places of duty: in the walls and corridors, on the causeways, and in Narkus's harem.

Likewise Narkus himself and his three lieutenants, all dead in their quarters.

'Well, Narkslump was scarcely a fortress such as towering Dramstack. And Narkus lorded it - or he had used to - over a mere dribble of men and monsters compared to the greater Lords in their lofty aeries. Even a small invasion force, if its components were stealthy and well ordered, could have infiltrated Narkslump's defences under cover of the storm. But that wasn't the way the survivors in Scarstack and Lurelodge told it.

'According to one of them, a sentry on the night in question: '"The night was dark and overcast; residual rain dripped from roofs, b.u.t.tresses, causeways, overhangs. I was cold, wet, uncomfortable in my niche. And I admit that I stayed well back, to avoid getting wetter still. But it was also a night of shadows. When I came out one time to scan abroad, I looked down on the lower ramparts where a colleague was keeping watch. Failing to see him, I a.s.sumed that he too was avoiding the worst of the drench. But I did see a shadow - or I thought it was a shadow 320.

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- that flowed swiftly along the walkway and disappeared into a niche, then returned and continued along the ramparts. A stain, a blot on the stone, a shadow, aye ... but mobile?

'"There again, the clouds were fleeting and there were so many shadows, and I have only a thrall's eyes. A lieutenant's eyes might have been keener, better suited, but lieut enants do not guard the walls. My Lord Stakis's eyes would certainly have noted any weirdness or peculiarity, but he was in his chambers. ' "When next I looked out and down, my colleague's brazier was out; a hiss of steam rose up; I a.s.sumed that there had been more rain, or my friend had been negligent of his fire. And the night was even darker.

' "My duty station was lit fitfully by twin torches ensconced under slate awnings that fended off the rain. I replenished them with fresh f.a.ggots before returning to my niche and snuggling deeper yet. Time pa.s.sed; perhaps I heard a grunt or call - a gurgled cry? - from the north flank. But in any case I ventured out again, to the northernmost poin t of my picket, where I leaned from an embrasure to look down on the adjacent flank. In the misted gloom of a landing bay, there was no watchman to be seen, but the steam of his extinguished brazier rose up!

' "It was time I made report. But only recently recruited, my vampire skills were weak; I was not yet linked to my master. If I cried out with my mind alone, Lord Stakis would not 'hear'

my alert, and deep within the rock he couldn't possibly hear my voice. Wherefore a dilemma: should I desert my position and go to the Lieutenant of the Watch, who I knew to be a very difficult man? And if I did, and nothing was found amiss, what then?

' "I leaned out again and looked down ... and at once drew back! For traversing the scarp directly below me - coming diagonally upwards across the treacherous, rain-slick face of the rock and scarcely pausing to negotiate the way - I had spied a lumpy shadow like a dark blot against the lesser darkness. But did I say dark? The shadow was block! And where it merged with other shadows it disappeared completely, only to emerge a moment later, always climbing towards my battlements station.

' "Now I knew to run and make report - or at least to run, if nothing else! But already the shadow was stretching itself, groping like the fingers of some phantom hand towards the merlons between myself and the entrance to Narkslump's east wing. Even if I ran this unknown thing would be there first, perhaps waiting for me. Neither was there any other route of entry - nor of escape - from my position on the outer face.

' "Now, I am not a man to shrink from any normal darkness.

Murky gloamings and the weird nebulosities of Sunside bogs had never frightened me. But this was no ordinary sha dow. There was something sinister, knowing, clever, abo ut it; it moved as on a mission, and in my heart I knew I couldn't stop it. Only let me try ... it would certainly stop me! But as yet it didn't even know that I was there. Or at least, I hoped that was the case.

' "And as quietly as possible I crept into my niche, drew as far back as I could go among the spiders and beetles - then farther yet until the sharp rock of the split sc.r.a.ped my chest and my back - and finally held still, so very still, there in the dark and the dust.

' "And eventually something came.

' "Do not ask me what it was, but it came and was a part of the darkness. And while I couldn't see it, I knew it was there.

Then-"

""Indeed I am here!' A voice came to me like the rustle of lea ves, so close I felt the breath of it ! And it continued: 'I see you are afraid, and that is good. Be afraid, my friend, and make no outcry. Stay here for long and long in this tight crevi ce, while I go ab out my business, and I won't harm you. But if you come out ...

ah, that would be a brief but very unfortunate affair. So then, do we have an understanding?' '"I could only nod, and though I saw nothing at all, still the shadow saw me. 'Good,' it husked, and spoke no more.

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' "Then I was alo ne again - and pleased to be alone - for long and long ..

'"... How long I cannot say. But when I dared to come out I saw that my torches were expired, and looking closer I saw they had been capped - put out - deliberately. And not only my torches but all the lights in Narkslump, till tip to toe the aerie stood in darkness most utter.

'"Then when I went inside I found what I found, and discovered the hidy-holes of a handful of others with tales to tell much like my own. Following which... can you blame us that we fled that haunted place, and came with all dispatch here ... ?"

'That was the thrall's story, and the other survivors with him agreed with everything he said. But survivors of what?'

Since the answer to Korath Mindsthrall's final question was obvious, a reply seemed unn ecessary. But Harry Keogh answered him anyway, saying, Survivors of Lord Szwart, of course.

Harry's words - more definite, decisive in Jake Cutter's mind - startled him from the reverie induced by Korath's narrative; from what had seemed like a dream within a dream, where everything that the ex-vampire lieutenant described had seemed as real as if Jake himself had been there , in another time and another world. And: 'What? Where?'

Jake gave himself a shake. And looking all about he saw debris: the buckled stanchions and shattered concrete slabs fallen from the ceiling, the partly-gleaming, scorch-scarred rim of the monitor conduit rising from the sullen swirl of dark waters.

That was where th is fragment of the history of a vampire world had its origin: that ugly pipe where Korath had died the true death, which still contained his bones, sloughed clean and washed white by the water. And J ake shuddered.

Harry sensed his unease, and asked, Are you all right?

'No,' Jak e answered. "And I don't thin k I'll ever be all right again.'

You will lie, the other told him. You have to be. Anyway, we still aren't through here. I want to know more about Szwart - what he is and how he came to be - and I think Korath knows it all. But I sense that he's slowing up, holding back To which Korath immediately replied, And you are correct!

For it dawns on me that I do myself no good here. When you have learned your fill, what then of me? No forgiveness, shunned by the living and the dead alike, washed away to nothing and dispersed across an alien land? Hah! Surely I can do better.

You are dead, said Harry. These things are what happen to the dead, in circ.u.mstances such as yours.

And Korath answered, Ah, cold, cold!

No, said Harry, not entirely. Merely truthful. I won't lie to you that there's anything in this for you. Only our company, for however long it lasts.

But Korath said: Yet your dead converse! I know, for I have heard them whispering in their graves. When they sense me listening, then they keep quiet or exclude me. So why can't they converse with me?

They don't like you, said Harry. Can you blame them? Being dead, they hate death. And they know that you thrived on it! - I did what vampires do. Is there no pity?

For you, none.

Then I have none for you! Korath sulked. You dare to go up against Vavara, Szwart, Malinari? Without knowing all there is to know about them?

Good l uck to you. You are dead men and may think of me again some time, when you lie broken or drained, or minced into warrior feed. Then perhaps you'll wish we had spoken at greater length, but too late. Until that time you'll hear no more from me. He fell silent. But: You have no idea how weary I am of all your bluff and bl.u.s.ter, Harry told him. What do you expect of me? What can I possibly do for you? You are dead, Korath!

You, too, Korath answered. And yet you have mobility, companions.h.i.+p ... a future?

My case is different, said Harry. And as for the future, I never underestimate it.

And Jake's case? His future?

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There was a slyness in Korath's deadspeak voice, and Harry didn't like it. He wondered if he detected some hidden innuendo, or more likely some kind of threat. Jake is a dreamer, he said. Right now he is no more and no less. He's my apprentice, if you like, and for the moment knows very little about such things - but he will learn. And: 'Huh!' Jake snorted. 'Even if I don't want to, it seems!'

Yessss, said Korath. And I can feel your apprehension. But still Harry is right and you should ... learn. If not from him, then perhaps from me?

Harry was at once alarmed. You know what we want from you. And that's all we want. So what's it to beP Szwart's origins?

(Harry's deadspeak nod). And more about Malinari's bloodwar - how you survived the Icelands, and how finally you came here.

Korath sighed and said, Very well For I am forgiving, even if you are not.

He was silent for a moment, then sighed again and said: The rest of it, then ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Survivors 'I can't swear to Szwart's origin/ Korath commenced the final chapter of his story. 'I can only repeat what I heard of him in the service of my master, Malinari of Malstack, all those years ago. And of course I can report what I have seen of him, for he was after all Malinari's co-conspirator, along with Vavara, and shared with them in their banishment wh en they were whelmed by the forces of Dramal Doombody ...

'As for Szwart's "visit" to Lord Stakis's Narkslump: while that had occurred as a prelude to the actual hostilities, obviously it was an important factor in the heightening tension between the soon-to-be-warring parties. I recall that soon after Narkus's demise, as angry rumblings from the aeries grew louder, Malinari arranged the latest of several get-togethers with his future partners, Vavara and Szwart.

'By then, when they ventured abroad from their respective stacks, all three "outsiders" - rejects, as it were, excluded or ostracized by the rest of th e Wamphyn - were constantly on the alert f or trouble: the imposition of restrictions over disputed airs.p.a.ce, skirmishes over boundaries, even ambushes were by no means unlikely. But since by chance their stacks formed a close triangle in the centre of the clump, and the s.p.a.ce within that triangle was theirs, flights between were generally accomplished without threat or interruption. And of course the close proximity 326.

of their aeries was yet another good reason for forming their alliance: back to back, they presented a more formidable foe.

'Anyway, Szwart and Vavara came on flyers across the respective gulfs from Darkspire and Mazemanse, to meet with my master in Malstack. And that was the first time that I saw Szwart. For contrary to certain Szgany campfire tales of the time, Lord Szwart was visible when he so desired. In any reasonable degree of light, and when he chose to a.s.sume an acceptable form (which invariably cost and, indeed, still costs him no small effort of will) he could be seen, though he much preferred not to be. But in his condition ... well, that was surely understandable.

'But I sense that I've whetted your curiosity; you are wondering what "condition" I speak of, and what do I mean by "acceptable form"? We shall get to these things.

'So then, Lord Szwart came from Darkspire, and I was sent to bid him welcome to Malstack and organize the stabling of his flyer, just as I had seen to Vavara's when a little earlier she had arrived from Mazemanse, her castle of vertiginous balconies and fretted, spindly spires. 'I remember the time was several hours past sundown, when only the last faint rays of a dying sun limned the peaks of the barrier mountains in gold. This vestigial glimmer posed no real threat to the Wamphyri in general (even at noon the deadly rays probed only the uppermost spires of Starside's tallest aeries), but it was a problem for Szwart, who dreaded to be seen. 'And there we have it: 'Lord Szwart's fear of light wasn't that it might destroy him but that it made him visible.' This weird photophobia wasn't so much a physical as a mental disability. Which perhaps serves to explain his reclusive nature: his rumoured celibacy, and the fact that he so rarely went abroad from his aerie (and then only into Sunside, to hunt) and never mingled with other than his thralls or creatures of his own device in lonely, shadow-cursed Darkspire.

'But it wasn't only in his mind, this ugliness that Szwart couldn't bear to display. It wasn't merely imaginary. Rather it was very real, and hereditary ...

'He arrived in a Malstack landing bay. His flyer was black as night; swooping across the gulf it had been clearly visible, but in the shadow of Malstack it simply disappeared. I stood in the gape of the landing bay, waiting - and suddenly Szwart was there! A black shape buffeted night-black air in my face as the shadows that were Szwart and his flyer alighted. Then, while he dismounted, I called for thralls to see to his beast. And looming close, Szwart said: '"You, lieutenant - take me to Malinari."

'His voice was a gasp, a pant, a flurry of wind through a narrow crevice. And there he was, Szwart himself, all cloaked in black - a blot of a figure that showed neither features nor anything else of its once-humanity - standing before me in the flickering torchlight of the landing bay!

'But while Szwart himself was featureless, carved from jet, and his voice a flutter of bat-wings, his presence was awesome; as solid as the great rocks on Starside's barren boulder plains.

And his aura in the night: that was such as to make even my vampire flesh creep - and I was a lieutenant! So that I could well understand how Narkslump's lowly thralls had felt when confronted by Lord Szwart.

'He gloomed at me through eyes like slits of fire, his only parts that weren't black. "Well? And am I to be left to find my own way?" For I was so startled, I had made no effort to attend him!

'"No, Lord," I answered. "I am your guide. But here in Malstack, protocol demanded that I stood silent until commanded by you."

' "Fool!" he said. "I did so command you! And now take me to Malinari! Or perhaps I strike you as ... odd in some weird way? Is it so?" With which he flowed closer, and his outline became less manlike, even more a blot or a shadow, like a lump drifted from the darkness in the unlit deeps of Malstack's bas.e.m.e.nt.

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'"Not at all, Lord!" I backed off. "I was simply in awe of my master's honoured guest - so much so that my tongue clove to ... to the roof of my ... of my mouth." It was scarcely a lie!

' "You must consider yourself fortunate that you still have a tongue," Szwart whispered, withdrawing something that was not quite a hand from where it had been reaching for me. "Also fortunate that my protocol forbids the killing of an ally's lieutenant on his home ground."

' "Yes, Lord!" I bowed, and before things could go even more awry turned and forced my numb legs to bear me in the direction of my master's chambers. Lord Szwart followed on behind me, and I could feel him there, silent, intense, and seething; though I fancied it wasn't his thoughts that seethed so much as his person! Perhaps it was so. I can't rightly say, for I never looked back ...

'When Szwart left I was there to see hi m go, though on this occasion there was no contact. When the keeper of Malinari's pens handed him the reins of his flyer, I was situated in a window a little higher in the sheer wall of the aerie. From there I watched him mount, launch, and fly away.