The Last Aerie (91 page)

And the nightmare still fresh in Nestor’s mind. Or if not a nightmare as such, a scene or memory out of the recent past. A monstrous detail of that night he’d spent on Sunside, in the camp … in the camp of the lepers:

That grey shape standing beside his bed, telling him where he was. And Nestor bolting upright, grabbing the dangling arms of the other’s cowled robe—empty sleeves which couldn’t take his weight! The way they’d torn at the shoulders to come away in Nestor’s hands as he fell back onto the bed. And the sight of the other’s twig arms with swollen fungus nubs for elbows!

Now Nestor looked at his left arm and hand, the first grey blotches there on flesh which as yet had not quite taken on the leaden aspect of a Lord of the Wamphyri. The numbness that came and went, making his wrist and hand seem lifeless, or at least insensitive.

Impulsively, he bit the ball of his thumb until the scarlet blood ran. But even so, it seemed to him it ran sluggishly. And as for pain: he’d felt none of it.

But now, before he could stop it, the rest of his nightmare loomed up large as life in his mind’s
eye; not a fragment out of the past this time, but … a glimpse into the future? Possibly:

A lone shuffling figure, slumped shoulders, dangling arms, and swaying head with chin on chest. And a trail of footprints in the gathering dust of dereliction, the forlorn track of the lone and lonely figure, wandering like a lost soul through the empty, echoing halls of deserted Suckscar. Everyone fled, save he, and only the chittering bats for company now, in the gloom of this hideous pesthole.

Then, in a chink of wan starlight where a mouldering curtain had been left open a crack, the figure paused. And almost as if sensing it were observed, looked back.

And Nestor seeing and recognizing that ravaged face: those watery, half-blind eyes; blotched, papery skin peeling from the ravaged bone; fretted lips crumbling over black teeth in shrivelled gums. He recognized the face, of course—

For it was his …

NEXT:

BLOODWARS

Invasion—Vasagi’s Story—the Wrath of Wratha!—Necroscope v. Necromancer—and more!