Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

And Jake shivered, hugged himself and said, 'Don't let it worry you. I can't see me returning to this place without damn' good reason.' And the water gurgled darkly, and the sump stank of nitre and stale explosives, of horror and death and crumbling, shock-stressed concrete.

Then… you are finished here? Korath's doomful voice trembled. And is this my fate, to be left alone down here forever? Why, you have not even thanked me, much less pardoned me for being what I was made to be!

Thanked you? Harry said, his voice still far-distant and faintly echoing. Pardoned you? How many women did you rape and vampirize when you and your master %unted' the Szgany in Sunside? How many good men have you killed with your gauntlet and your bare hands?

Agghhh! Korath cried. And: Ah, no, don't… don't remind me! he pleaded. That wasn't me! Or it was, but I was driven to do these things. I was driven by… driven by my… (But here he came to an abrupt, stumbling, tongue-biting halt.)

… By your leech? Harry finished it for him. Your leech, Korath? And then to Jake: Do you see what I mean? Nothing more devious than a vampire, even when he's dead. This one had developed a leech and was ready to ascend. And Malinari was right to recruit him, for he was obviously the right stuff.

'But he is dead now/ Jake answered. 'And being dead, what more mischief can he possibly get up to?'

I sometimes wonder if you listen at all! Harry told him. can only hope you'll remember some of this when you're awake.p>

'Lord, who would want to?' Jake replied, then shivered and hugged himself tighter yet. 'And talking about being awake — or, if not awake, at least out of this place — aren't we just about finished here?'

Jake, (Harry sighed) try to get this foxed in your stubborn head. I'm not sure I'll be back. I may not be able to come back. So while I am here you had better be taking in everything you can. And whatever else you do, remember that in future time I've seen your blue life~thread crossed by the red of vampires. So, like it or not, one way or the other it's coming.

And Harry's deadspeak voice — despite that it was fainter yet

— was so sincere, so urgent and fraught, that finally Jake had to take note of what it was telling him. With which he resigned himself yet again, and said: 'So… what's next?'

Korath isn't finished, Harry answered, with something of a sigh

— but different this time because it was a sigh of relief, not one of frustration. We still don't know how he — how they — ended up here. We've only heard half of the story, and we still don't know very much at all about Vavara and Szwart.

Jake might have contradicted him, for he had learned something of Vavara and Szwart himself, from Lardis Lidesci. Before he could speak, however:

Nor are you going to know much about them! (Korath's surly voice.) Not from me, anyway. For you are ungrateful, and I have spoken my last. But:

Not your last and not nearly enough, Harry told him. Bluster all you like, Koratl, but I say you will speak.

Oh, and are you then a necromancer after all? Korath queried, sarcastically. If so, perhaps I should point out that I've neither living nor dead flesh for you to worry with your pincers and hot irons.

That's very true, Harry replied. But I think I could probably find a bone or two, washed clean in this pipe — if I were a necromancer. But I'm not, and anyway there's no need. For you know as well as I that as little as you are now, if we take our leave of you then you'll be even less. Or is our company worth nothing? In which case we must assume that you prefer this endless darkness, this eternal silence, and leave it at that. And leave you for ever and ever.

After a long moment it seemed that Korath sobbed, but very quietly. Until finally he answered: But you're a cold and cruel one, Harry Keogh.

And Harry told him, Ah, but I had good teachers. And they were vampires, too. So say on while you still have the chance, Korath, and while we are still here to bear you out…

'Fuelled by blood, Nephran Malinari's bloodwars were a terrible scourge on humanity/ Korath picked up the threads of his story. 'For as long as he ravaged on Sunside to provision fortress Malstack, so must the rest of the Wamphyri forage, lest Malinari's army so outstrip theirs as to whelm them under. Thus the Szgany suffered as never before — at least, not for sixty thousand sunups—' (twelve hundred years) 'since the mythic and immemorial time of Shaitan the Unborn's great wars, before he was unseated and banished north to the Icelands.

'The Mind's foes were many, his friends few. Even the latter were not his "friends" in the human sense of the word, that sort of comradeship being so rare among the Wamphyri as to be a myth in its own right! But at any rate, his dubious allies were Vavara — a Lady in all but name, for she would not accept that men call her "Lady" for fear it might damage her status by making her seem less than a Lord — and Szwart, which was the only name that suited a Thing such as he. Szwart, which means darkness! For indeed he was darkness, literally the darkest of all the Lords of the Wamphyri; something which I shall endeavour to explain in a little while. But for now, so much for Malinari's allies. Oh, there was a handful more, but Nephran, Szwart and Vavara (who insisted upon the status of a man despite her obvious, indeed devastating feminine charms and attributes), they were the generals, the triumvirate, the Big Three.

'Then there were The Mind's foes, the enemy proper; first and foremost, Drama! Doombody, the most powerful of the Wamphyri of that period. Some thirty years earlier, at the pinnacle of his power, Drama! had contracted leprosy from a comely Szgany woman in whom the disease had seeded itself but was not yet manifest; since when he had accepted to be known as "Lord Doombody". For, of course, his body was doomed, no matter how long it might take the great "Bane of Vampires" to run its course.

'As to Dramal's surname prior to his long-term but inevitably lethal error, I have no knowledge. But I do know that his aerie, Dramstack — one of the most massive of all the stacks — was generally avoided as a pesthole, even in my time. Nathless, before Dramal's leprosy began wearing on him — which is to say, for the duration of Malinari's war — he shared his stack with a lesser "colleague", Lord Zaddok Zangastari, who had the topmost ramparts and the aerie's penultimate level (called Zadscar, because it was his headquarters, and also because of its external figuration of slanting gouges) for his own. Not that Zaddok was in any way careless of his health, but this sharing was an expedience of war: since Dramstack (including Zadscar) stood close to Darkspire, Lord Szwart's manse near the centre of the clump, it were better that two armies occupy Dramal's vast aerie, thus presenting a powerful front across the dividing gulf and threatening Szwart's forces with a partial siege at least.

'But as for battle tactics… I cannot admit to any great authority. These things I mention were overheard and remembered from those occasions when Nephran's war-council of three — himself, Szwart, and Vavara — met in whichever of their aeries to consider and order the ongoing hostilities. So let me not stray but get on with naming names:

'After Dramal and Zadok came Lord Belath, a young Lord who had just the one name, with no sire's name and no cognomen.

Perhaps there was some secret in his ancestry that he did not wish divulged. As for a descriptive name or device which might best characterize him — there were some who fancied him "Belath the Beast", though I'm certain that no one ever suggested it to his face. Need I say more?

'But if Belath were beastly, then what of Lord Lesk, known as Lesk the Glut? For Lesk was a young berserker, only recently ascended, who was given to abandon himself as totally in battle as in his gluttony. Easily offended, he had even been known to take umbrage at his own personal warriors! If they were idle in answering his call, Lesk would work himself into a frenzy, challenge them to combat and beat them soundly… before returning them to their basics in his vats of metamorphism. And when his fury was in abeyance and his mood improved, then he would find time to rebuild them all over again. Thus, while The Glut could never be reckoned one of the great schemers, he was most certainly a mighty engine of destruction.