The Last Aerie (10 page)

They sped on, gaining height over a wilderness of twisted bone and fretted rock ruins, over tortured cartilage relics and fire-blackened mounds, where other grand aeries had exploded in their bases and slumped down into themselves, forming pyramids of scree and rubble. And Wrathstack drawing ever closer, rearing on high, its uppermost towers, battlements, launching-bays and windows most of a kilometre high and more than an acre in cross-section.

And: “Up now, up!” Wran shouted. “Let the winds take you, where they spiral round this last great spire.”

Climb, Nestor commanded his flyer. Follow on behind. Gain height. Form scoops with your wings, trap the air, and rise on the rising thermals. It was all sound advice, but wasted; good practice but nothing more. His creature was experienced in all such matters.

And Wrathstack loomed closer still…

II

The Last Aerie

Less than a hundred metres from the wall of the colossal stack, both flyers discovered sighing currents of air and commenced a mighty rising spiral. And as they climbed, so Nestor benefited from Wran’s knowledge of the place.

Down below
, the Rage sent,
in the nethermost levels, the very bowels
of
the place, that’s Gorvi’s domain. The dark and devious Gorvi the Guile. He keeps the wells, and has flightless warriors on the ground, to repel any would-be incursions. Hah! A pointless exercise! If ever we’re attacked, it won’t be from the ground. It’s just a measure of the way he watches his back. We don’t call him the Guile for nothing. Ah, see? Here he comes now, eager to know who won the duel and now returns victorious out of Sunside. But myself or Vasagi, what odds? It will make no difference to Gorvi. He’ll be sour—he always is!

A flyer launched from a cavern mouth beneath an overhang of rock and came spiraling up behind. Fresh from resting, the creature fanned its manta wings and rapidly gained on Wran and Nestor’s weary beasts. Nestor twisted in his saddle and looked back and down; his wide, curious eyes met Gorvi’s only a wing-span to the left and a metre or two below, and he saw immediately how well the other’s nickname suited him.

The Guile sat hunched, by no means cadaverous yet remarkably corpse-like, scowling in his saddle. The dome of his head was shaven save for a single central lock, with a knot hanging to the rear. Dressed in black, with his cloak belling out like tattered wings, the contrast of his sallow features turned him to a leprous vulture settling to its prey. With eyes so deeply sunken they were little more than a crimson glimmer, yet shifty for all that, and hands clutching the reins like skinny claws, this was Gorvi. He seemed a sinister creature: but of course, for he was Wamphyri! And he didn’t like the way Nestor stared back at him.

“What’s this?” Gorvi finally called out to Wran. “Some captive you’ve brought back out of Sunside? A new lieutenant, perhaps? Was he your second in the duel, Wran? And if so, did Vasagi have one also? If not … be sure there’ll be some who say you cheated.”

Wran dropped back a little and settled lower, leveling with Gorvi. “Do you think so?” he called across, scowling to match the other’s scowl. “They’ll say I cheated, eh? Well as long as you’re not one of them, you’ll be safe. Or is it that you, too, would care to fly to Sunside with me, and try your luck in the gloomy forests?”

“I meant nothing by it.” Gorvi shrugged and reined back a little. “I was making conversation, that’s all. And so you’ve taken a prisoner. But a proud one, if I’m not mistaken.”

Again Nestor turned to look back at Gorvi, and this time his lip curled a little as he shouted, “You want to know who I am, Gorvi the Guile? Then speak
to
me, not about me! My name’s Nestor—Lord Nestor, of the Wamphyri—and the last thing I am is a captive!”

“Eh?” Gorvi was astonished, if not outraged. “But—”

“No buts!” Wran cut him short. “Learn all about it at my reception. But until then, keep your nose out! I’m instructing the young Lord Nestor in the ways of the stack: its personalities and their responsibilities in the various levels which they inhabit. Our time is short. So begone!”

Gorvi reined in more yet, and fell to the rear. And Wran continued, proudly:

“These next levels up—a good many, as you see—are mine; mine and my brother Spiro’s, wherein we control the main refuse pits and methane chambers. These are a great responsibility, a huge weight upon our shoulders … which are broad to take it! If not for the diligence of the brothers Killglance, the stack would go without heat and light, eventually without inhabitants. Seven great levels—high-ceilinged, indeed cavernous, and likewise huge across—that is the extent of Madmanse. For we’ve named our place in memory of our old manse in Turgosheim, do you see? But new Madmanse is far and away superior to our haunted old promontory home in the east. And oh so well equipped!

“We have launching bays, vats for the brewing of creatures, and all manner of rooms, halls, and stables. In Turgosheim in the time of the tithe, fresh meat was hard to come by. We kept beasts to supplement our diet. But here? Sunside is a well-stocked larder, a hive full of honey, a bottomless well of sweet … whatever.” And chuckling obscenely, he glanced across at Nestor.

As they spiraled higher still, Nestor began to shiver, for the cold was finding its way into his bones. Soon … he’d no longer notice it too much. But for now he sat like an icicle in his saddle. In any case he was soon distracted, as out from a yawning launching bay sprang Spiro Killglance aboard a flyer of his own. “Ho, brother!” he shouted gleefully across at Wran. “So you’ve had it out and the Suck is no more. I for one never doubted the outcome. But how did you deal with him … and our friend?” His eyebrows came together in a frown as first he stared, then glared, at Nestor.

Nestor in turn stared back, and committed Spiro’s details to memory. Patently the brothers were twins, and possibly even identical, though certainly not in their mannerisms or mode of dress. For where Wran actually looked the Lord (as Nestor had always imagined Lords to be), Spiro seemed far more a vagabond or ruffian, removed from his brother as chalk from cheese. He was loutish, with a loose-hanging lower lip and mainly malign expression, and his “clothes” were disreputable to say the least: a rag of leather for a shirt, a dirty breechclout, and a strip of cloth on his forehead to keep his unkempt hair out of his fiery scarlet eyes. Other than this, and the fact that Wran wore a small black wen upon his chin, the brothers were physically alike: tall, broad-shouldered, and a little overweight. They might even be said to be handsome—or perhaps “handsome specimens”. Certainly they were not ugly, not in appearance, anyway.

“By now Vasagi’s blood is boiling to slime!” Wran answered his brother’s query. “I drained his leech, then pegged him out on a hillside to await the sun’s rising. As for this one,” he glanced again at Nestor, “he was of use to me. At any rate, I count him an ally. He is the Lord Nestor.”

Spiro’s eyebrows peaked. “A Lord, did you say?”

“Indeed!” Wran answered. “For he has the Suck’s egg!”

“Ahhh!”
sighed the other, in amaze. “But … you must tell me all.”

“All in good time,” Wran replied. “But for now let’s get on.” And to Nestor:

Where was
I? Ah, yes, Madmanse, which now falls behind and below. And up ahead: Mangemanse, where Canker Canison crows to the moon; and higher still … Suckscar!
Hah! But now it
shall have a new name, to go with its new master. What do you say to that, Nestor?

In Nestor’s youth, he’d learned a trick to keep his brother’s thoughts out of his mind. Though his youth and even his brother were forgotten to him now (except he knew the latter as a vague and largely mythical “enemy” dwelling on Sunside), the trick itself remained accessible. It involved thinking obliquely, “to one side” of his main stream of thoughts, and so keeping his secrets to himself. The art was an instinctive thing, and useful now as never before. For Wran believed that Vasagi had melted in the sun.

Perhaps he had, and perhaps not. But Nestor saw how hazardous it could be to admit what he’d done: namely, that he’d set Vasagi free after Wran had left him for dead. Perhaps for a similar if not quite the same reason, he should also leave well enough alone in the re-naming of Vasagi’s manse.

For which reason, finally:
Let the name stand
, he answered Wran in his own mode.
Suckscar
will suffice, for now at least.

But then, a moment more and he gasped aloud. For suddenly Wran’s meaning had sunk in! That Suckscar should be named anew, with a name to suit … himself! Its new master! Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri! And finally, no longer guarding his thoughts but letting them fly free:
For now … I really
am
Wamphyri!

But:
Huh!
came Spiro’s mental grunt. And to Wran:
Brother, you’re
changeable as the winds chasing themselves around Wrathstack I thought we’d arranged that I should be master of Suckscar? That way, between us, we’d control almost half the stack. And now?

Now?
Wran answered (and this time
he
was the one to guard his thoughts, ensuring they went only to Spiro).
Why, with this simpleton Nestor in place—if we can fix it—it will amount to much the same thing! That way, before too long and after we settle one or two other scores, why, you’ll still be available to inhabit some other level, eh?

Then for a while, gradually receding, their chuckles hung black as sin and just as secretive, dwindling to nothing in the mental ether. And now there were four flyers, all strung out in a row, climbing towards the higher levels and bays …

“Nestor,” Wran eventually called aloud, as rocky caverns and ledges, fretted bone causeways, and external staircases of fused cartilage and stone slipped down and away into the abyss of air. “There goes Mangemanse below. Only four levels, as you see. More than sufficient for the great hound who dwells there, and not much I can tell you about them. Their master’s responsibilities are few; indeed, he seems to exist only to keep us apart! Wratha and the rest of us, I mean. But when we take to our beds, Canker is often on the prowl. He keeps more bitches than the rest of us—he has his needs, you know?—but his real mistress is the silver moon. Oh, you’ll hear his howling soon enough, as he sings his devotions to his goddess on high! Still, it surprises me he’s not here for my reception.”

“Ah, but other things are on his mind,” Spiro cut in across the blustery gulf. “For Canker builds a thing of bones!”

“He builds … a what?” Wran shook his head and laughed his amaze.

“A device of pipes large and small, made from the hollow bones of warriors where he finds them littered on the boulder plains. He’s spent the entire night with his lieutenants, flying to and fro, lifting up bones to his kennel.”

“But why? For what good reason? A device, you say? What sort of device?”

Spiro shrugged. “An instrument—musical, he says.”

“Musical?” Wran was nonplussed. “Like the Szgany troupe which Devetaki Skullguise kept in Masque-manse? Aye,
they
were musicians, but Canker? An instrument of hollow bones?”

“To help him in his devotions,” Spiro tried to explain. “He swears the moon’s deaf and can’t hear him, or else she’d come down to be his lover. And so he’s determined to sing all the louder, with the help of the thing which he fashions from these bones. How? Don’t ask me—ask him!
Hah!
And to think, they call
us
the mad ones! But we only rage, we don’t rave!”

“Suckscar!” Wran cried, forgetting in a moment Canker’s doings. “And these were Vasagi’s levels: yours, now, Nestor. Or soon to be, we hope. Not much to tell; not much to
do
, in Suckscar, for the heavy duties are all below. But Vasagi was the expert in metamorphism: he could make
monsters!
His vats will be yours now, including the beasts which are brewing in them. But you’ll doubtless fashion creatures of your own … given time, and with a little help. A favour for a favour, eh, Spiro?” He winked at his brother, gliding now to one side. “We can all use a little help, from time to time. But in any case, enough of that; for you’ll soon be exploring Suckscar to your heart’s content.”

He lifted his head, looked on and up, and smiled
a
gaping smile. “And now—to my reception!”

Three-quarters of a kilometre below, the collapsed mounds and shattered stacks of toppled aeries were stony jumbles on a pebble plain. South-west, majestic now, the barrier mountains were golden in their peaks; while central and to the east, the grey gradually faded to yellow. Hours yet, some thirty or more, before the sun would strike through the central peaks and play her rays on Wrathstack, and then only in these highest levels. Still and all, in other times the Wamphyri would be preparing for their long sleep, for even the thought of the sun was unbearable. Except now … a victor had returned out of Sunside and desired his reception. It was only just, after all.