'And not without good reason. One time when I went there, Harry came back. But he was changed. No, don't ask my meaning;
he simply wasn't the man I'd known. But I believe he was soil my friend. And the Necroscope had chosen a most opportune time to return to my world, for my seer's blood had told me no lie: the Wamphyri were back in Sunside/Starside! Not only the last of them, but also the first.
'Shaitan the Unborn himself, aye, come back like a plague that can never die…'
CHAPTER TWELVE The Rest Of Lardis's Story
'Shaitan the Fallen — Shaitan the Unborn, Shaitan himself— and his banished descendant, Lord Shaithis: the two of them back in Starside after four years of peace and quiet and nights without nightmares, back from the Icelands. They had flyers and warrior beasts, the makings of a small but deadly army. And Harry Hell-Lander… no longer himself. And his son The Dweller much less than himself, for he was a changeling creature. As for the Lady Karen: who could say what Karen would do or where her loyalties now lay, who for four long years had been alone and brooding in Karenstack, the last great aerie of the Wamphyri?
'Well, the rest of it is strange and frightening. I know, I know: all of it is strange and frightening! But to me far worse, for it came of Earth's science, of which I knew nothing at that time. And when I saw it I knew we had named the Hell-Lands Gate aright, for most certainly this was made in hell. What? It was the very breath of hell.' This is how it was:
'Shaitan, Shaithis and their forces, they had made camp at the Starside Gate. The Necroscope had been taken prisoner, the Lady Karen, too, for in fact she'd sided with Harry. Which was only natural, I suppose. After all, Karen had always been Shaithis's most deadly enemy. As for the details: I can't be definite about any of this, because my observation point was so far away, high in the mountains. I assume they were suffering torture. Certainly bonfires were blazing down there among the many clumps of boulders surrounding the Gate.
'Then, I felt something happening. And I sensed it was of the Necroscope's doing. My seer's blood warned me not to look, and I warned the others there with me. Mostly, they heeded my cry of warning. But one of them, Peder Szekarly, was young and sometimes stupid — brave but stupid. He continued to look, and was witness to it. He saw it… then saw no more, ever again. The light was such that it burned him, burned his eyes out and blinded him. Nor did he live for very long.
'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 lashing 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 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 Hell-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 hell 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 Hell-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 lusts.
'I need say 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 passed 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 reassure 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.