'It had become my habit to pause in the mouth of the pass 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 Sunside it would be morning now; but here, Starside of the pass, 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 pass, 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. Karenstack, 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 hell 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 Hell-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 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 leadership 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 anchored in position, perhaps by its own enormous gravity? 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 "buttes?" — 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 keep 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.