Brian Lumley - Blood Brothers

Then… the thing seemed to sense that it was finished. At the last an anguished howling was clearly audible. Mingling with the angry sputtering of propulsors, this formed a combination of alien, nerve-rending sounds which carried to Nathan as a groaning, echoing ululation: a death cry. And the doomed Thing spiralled down into deepening darkness, then plummeted, finally glanced from a corner turret of Trollmanse and slammed headlong into the rocky bottoms. Chunks of red, fleshy debris and shattered chitin armour flew everywhere, and the sounds of the crash echoed into silence…

Failures of this sort were not infrequent at first, but as time passed and the Lords became more proficient in the making of aerial warriors, they were fewer. And always Nathan was aware that these living engines of destruction were destined for olden Starside, and that eventually they would rain terror on Sunside, too. His Sunside, from which he'd fled like a coward to die in the desert…

Nathan visited the gas-beast caverns located close to the refuse pits, and understood the reason for that proximity. But the gaslings themselves… were something else which he would try in vain to forget. The horror of the thing — of all Runemanse — lay not so much in the physical reality of the system, but in its morbid and pitiless efficiency; for all of Maglore's creatures had once been men and expendable. And whenever Nathan looked at them, always the vestiges of men remained…

Eventually, when he had lived in Runemanse through thirty-odd sunups, Nathan went to see Maglore's flyers penned in the yawn of the landing-bay. The reason he'd not done so before was that Maglore had warned him off it: the north-facing wall was notorious for treacherous updrafts and freakish, blustery winds; the polished rock of the launching ramps was slippery as ice; there were no protective walls to impede the flyers on take-off. The Seer Lord had lost a lieutenant there once, who stepped in the wrong place and shot himself screaming into eternity.

Two of Maglore's three flyers were recent constructs: he had fashioned them as an exercise preparatory to starting work on his warriors. Skittish (for they sensed that Nathan was no vampire), the pair rolled their eyes and reared their diamond-shaped heads as he passed carefully along a railed walkway in front of their pens. But Maglore's scent was on him, and they quickly settled down again.

The third creature was different, however. Housed to one side of the precipitous launching bay, beneath an overhang in the lee of the cavern, it was far less nervous. Something about the thing attracted Nathan's attention. He gazed at the flyer in its pen: huge, grey, mute and comparatively docile, its huge head nodding at the end of a swaying neck, with eyes large as fists, moist and gleaming black in a weirdly manlike face. Eyes which might well be…

… But here Nathan paused in his musing. What on earth had he been thinking about? Manlike? And eyes which might well be…? For of course there was no manlike about it; those eyes were or had been human, Szgany! And again he reminded himself what he was looking at: a mutated, vampire thing — something that Maglore had changed — which, having undergone its metamorphosis, was human no more.

Leaning his elbows on the gated wall of the pen, he gazed into the great, sad, human eyes in the elongated, mutant head; gazed deep, and wondered: Who were you?

I was a youth upon a time, like you. The answer came back at once, shockingly, jerking Nathan rigidly upright against the wall! Then I was a man, a titheling, and Maglore's thralJ. But never a vampire thing… not until the end. Perhaps I of/ended him, though even now I don't know how. What does it matter? It is enough that what you see before you is all that remains of a man. Ah, but the Seer Lord of Runemanse was generous with my brain and made himself a crafty flyer this time — damn his black heart!

Shaken to his roots, Nathan clung to the wall and whispered: 'He left you your brain, a man's brain… entire?'

Not entire, no. The flyer's thoughts were vaguer now.

But enough that I remember… things. And among them my name. You asked me who I was. 7 was a thrall who knew writing and faithfully recorded the history of a race, according to the word of my master, Maglore. And my name was Karz Biteri…

Later, Nathan would spend many a long hour with Karz, or what had been Karz, learning Turgosheim's history from its onset. But on that first occasion he had been far more interested to know how the — creature? — had read his mind and been able to answer him so lucidly.

That was the way of it with all flyers, he was told, for they were the aerial command-posts of the Wamphyri with immediate access to their minds, so that they might react instantly to any order. In the reshaping of Karz's mind, when Maglore had given it something of his own alien essence, telepathy had been the governing factor. Desiring something special, he'd let Karz retain much of his memory and all of his knowledge of old Turgosheim. Thus Karz Biteri, Maglore's flyer now, was also a reference library on all Turgosheim's morbid past.

You, too, are a powerful telepath, Karz had told him then, and so we may converse. But you must learn how to shield your thoughts, and you should always remember: a man is never alone in Runemanse. When you thought you were on your own down here, I read a good many things in your head which Maglore would not like. If I could read them, so could he.

'I have shielded them,' Nathan had answered, 'constantly, or so I thought. But you're right: I thought I was alone here. And when I saw you, and realized what you were…'

You were shaken and forgot yourself, I know… The answer had been a sob, soliciting Nathan's pity; so that he'd said:

'You too should guard your thoughts, Karz, for I can feel your hatred for him. If Maglore should discover it…'

Ah, but he has, the other had cut him short. He knows! Why do you think he won't ride out upon the air? Because he fears I would tilt him into space. And so he made these new creatures, but doesn't trust them either! For if I can have such feelings, perhaps they have them, too. Oh, he knows they do not, but will not trust them anyway. It seems I have given him a bad dream that won't go away, for which I'm glad!

'Those are thoughts you really should watch,' Nathan had answered, 'and very carefully.'

He'd sensed a mental shrug as Karz answered, Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't care. What is my life, anyway? It were as well to launch myself at sunup, and cross the mountains into the sun!

At which Nathan had remembered Thikkoul's reading of his future in the stars:

'Now I see… a flight to freedom, yes! But… upon a dragon?' And Nathan had wondered: a dragon, or something that looks like one? And the thought had entered his head: why fly into the sun when there are other places to go and good works to accomplish along the way? Yes, and scores still unsettled?

Perhaps Karz had 'heard' the thought, perhaps not. But his great head had stopped nodding for a moment, and his huge dark eyes had gleamed a shade brighter…

Maglore made more creatures and cocooned them away in forbidden vaults. The more he worked at the fashioning, the less time he had for Nathan. Apart from taking his meals with Maglore, Nathan rarely saw the Seer Lord, for which he was glad. But that was during his waking hours, while sometimes in his dreams -

— He often wondered about his dreams: How he would start awake to discover his guard down and something other than his own thoughts oozing in his head, but something which always withdrew at once, leaving him his own man again. Maglore? But who else could it be? Not Eygor Killglance, for the old dead Thing in Madmanse made no bones about his presence but invariably introduced himself when he came in the night to wheedle and inveigle.