Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (38 page)

not her own, out of times when she’d lacked experience.

And for every thousand feet she climbed, she would move laterally a kilometer or more, ever deeper into the mazy interior of the mountain system, where few climbers had ventured before. But in one hundred and seventy years -especially the last thirty - there had
been
climbers, some of whom had come too close.

Well, the Cairngorms were notoriously unforgiving mountains, and in places they were entirely inaccessible. Some bodies had never been, never would be discovered. But Bonnie Jean knew where the bones of a handful of them lay, at least; knew, too, what was become of their flesh …

Some two hours after midday, she rested on a ledge overlooking a dark ravine with a waterfall and white water that rushed down to the swollen,’ near-distant Spey. Almost all the snows of winter had melted down into the earth and the rocks now, to filter their way into falls and cataracts. The heavy rains of the last few months had added to the tumult, and the tumbling tributary four hundred and fifty feet below sent up spray to dampen the rocks. Higher up, a series of caves opened into a far greater cavern system: the lair itself.

B.J. could have - perhaps should have - chosen the ‘easy’ route into the lair: up onto the plateau’s shattered roof, and down through any one of several shafts into the dusty, rubble-strewn heart of the place. But this way had been a challenge, albeit a small one, for here the rock was rotten and given to crumbling. Thus it presented her with an opportunity to test secondary skills, this time with the generally despised apparatus of the professional climber.

And having eaten just a bite, and sipped a little water, then - for the first time during her climb - pitons and hammer, karabiners and fine, light nylon rope came into play. She used them all to form a hoist, then cranked herself up onto the last ledge, where a treacherously fractured ‘window’ opened into the gloom of the lair. And leaning back with her feet on the ledge and every ounce of her weight suspended on the rope, she looked down through all that deadly height to where fangs of rock were blackened by the torrent, and the gorge was a snarling gash of a mouth more terrible than any dark beast’s—

—Almost.

And so into the lair, which for all B.J. ‘s previous visits was at least as fearsome a step as the actual climb itself …

Once inside, after a brief scramble through shrouding cobwebs, accumulated dust and sharp, stony debris, B.J.

wasted no time. With the ease of any night-sighted animal and most wild creatures, her eyes very quickly adjusted to the gloom. Had it been pitch-black, they would have served her just as well. So that even as she shrugged out of her Brian Lumley

194

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

195

harness, she was able to gauge fairly accurately her location in this cavern system which she had explored so many times before. She knew where she was, and therefore where He was.

And between them, maybe two hundred feet of pitfalls and crumbling pathways, jumbles of falen, hexagonal pilars, and dizzy causeways over crevasses which, for al she knew, might wel go down to the roots of the mountains. On this one level she had explored the lair, for this was His place. But as for other possible levels: she didn’t know, couldn’t say.

And apart from the natural obstacles of this great cavern, there was one other thing standing between B.J. and her Master. A
Thing,
yes, and she shuddered at the thought of it… even the ‘wee mistress’ herself.

It was something of His, she knew, but still it was beyond reason. Beyond her reason, anyway. But it was sentient; it knew things, sensed things. It would know she was here, and it would stir when she passed by.
And
it would know why she was here … that it, the Thing itself, was one of her reasons. For just as B.J.

‘s Master hungered, so did His creature …

That would be the part she disliked, the one aspect of her duty that bothered her. Her Master’s needs were one thing, but the needs of His creature were something else. She …
disliked
feeding it, even with beast’s blood. Also, she never failed to be amazed by the fact that so little could satisfy so much. But would it be the same when the Thing was up? Surely He intended to bring it up, else what was its purpose? But Bonnie Jean had never inquired about it; it wasn’t her business to question but to guard and inform, as it was her duty to obey.

The place was unquiet; only take a single step away from the crack of light gleaming through the dusty, irregular shape of the ‘window,’ and silence fel as if someone had switched it on - or switched al sound off -except for the echoes of the lair itself: the dripping of water in various unseen locations, and B.J.’s own breathing, her own muffled movements. Quiet, yet unquiet… But by no means a contradiction of terms. The tumult of the gorge was dead here; it couldn’t find its way in; something shut it out.

There was some light, at least; rays or curtains of dim light filtering dustily down from various faults in a ceiling of il-defined height and extent: the shafts through which she might have descended, if she’d chosen a different route. Light in
this
place, anyway, but not where He lay. For B.J. ‘s Master could no longer suffer direct sunlight. The moon was His light, and the ful moon His glory! And it would be the same for B.J. in time to come, for she too was a moon child. So far as possible, she shunned the sun even now, though as yet it wouldn’t kill her - not in her human form, at least. And she had often wondered: why here? Why build a lair in this high

place, when Radu might have found Himself a place of darkness utter? But as she knew wel enough, it had been a mater of circumstance, not choice. And anyway, He had been used - in a different age, in a different world - to a lofty manse indeed. But then, He’d been used to many things in His time …

Carrying her pack slung over her shoulder, and following a trail of poorly arranged ‘flagstones’ long since falen from the ceiling, Bonnie Jean set out through the maze of stony rubble. In places the path was obscured, almost obliterated, where recent falls had crashed down and caved-in the paving stones or hurled them aside, forming angular granite piles and jumbles of rock which were almost crystalline in their nitre-fused shapes. But ‘recent’ in B.J.’s terms meant other than it would to persons of normal longevity. Indeed, it meant
any
time in the last ten decades! Still, it was as well that her Master’s time would soon be up - that
He
would soon be up - for this place wouldn’t last forever. And in this modern world …

well, “repairs’ were out of the question! Oh, there remained a handful of thralls in various parts, and B.J. ‘s girls, of course, but getting them up here safely and secretly would be nigh impossible, and the task itself utterly beyond them.

This place had been ‘built’ before B.J.’s time, and the thralls who had built it for Him had died at their work. But in that bygone time all the land around was a wilderness, when prying eyes were few and far between …

Thus her thoughts ran as she approached the place of the
Thing,
that dark cave to one side of the main cavern, where the light never reached and the silence was near absolute; the
physical
silence, anyway. But the atmosphere, or aether - if there really were such a thing -seemed to seethe here; she felt the oppressive weight of the place almost tangibly upon her shoulders.

B.J. was no mentalist (it was only the awesome strength of her Master’s sendings that made possible communication with Him, let alone His creature!), but as always in this place, so close to the
Thing,
she sensed emanations of weird entity, the foetal fumblings of that which waited to be born. And because it was her duty, despite the fact that she hated it, still she turned from the path, however briefly, entered the cave of the
Thing,
and thus ‘announced’ her presence.

And as her eyes adjusted to the greater darkness, so the aura of awful sentience - of a vacant yet savage awareness

- grew more tangible yet…
and
the sure knowledge that she in her turn had been recognized.

An outline or silhouette took shape in the darkness, one which radiated its own almost imperceptible red glow, like the embers of an almost-dead fire in a dark room. It was a cylindrical shape formed of hexagonal granite columns standing on end like the staves of a barrel. At their bases these pillars were buried in rubble and buttressed with

196

Brian Lumley

boulders to stop them toppling outwards; they formed the walls of a massive container or vat. But several of them were cracked, and others were slightly splayed or stood askew, or had been forced apart by the geological stresses of the mountains, allowing trickles of a resinous sealant or preservative to escape from within and form puddles hardening to amber at the bases of the surrounding boulders.

B.J. approached the vat, reached out tentatively at first, but finally placed her hands upon two of the columns. The stone was cold to her touch; it shouldn’t convey anything but that it was stone; nothing of the nature of its contents should be apparent. But something was apparent. And B.J. thought:
Ifs like listening to the sea in a sounding shel. Except the sea has an entirely natural sound, with nothing of sentience and
entirely oblivious to the rest of the world around it. It can’t respond, except to ignore.

But this
Thing,
her Master’s creature, was not oblivious. And even as she listened to it, so it ‘listened’ to her. And:
Thud!
(Dully, like some far, faint vibration, felt in her fingertips).

She had felt, heard or sensed it before and didn’t recoil. In another five minutes, or fifteen, or twenty, if she cared to stand here so long, she would hear it again.

The slowed-down, almost-stilled, hibernating heartbeat of the
Thing.
No, not hibernating (she corrected herself) but suspended, indefinitely extended … waiting! And alive, oh yes!

Alive, in there, Her Master’s future … what, guardian? Something to take her place, when He was up again? That was a thought she had thought before, even scarcely daring to think it. His own fierce creature, to guard Him in His lair …

Thud!

And this time, because she stood there rapt in thought - and perhaps unworthy thoughts, at that, because He had assured her often enough that she would always have a place with Him - Bonnie Jean was startled and snatched back her hands.

Was it intelligent, like Him, she wondered? Would it perhaps be jealous of her, this unborn
Thing?

She moved quickly to the side of the stone vat, climbed a stairway of stacked slabs, finaly gazed down into the solidified murky swirl of a mainly opaque, luminous resin reservoir. And with eyes feral in the darkness, she kneeled at the rim to peer through the crusted surface deep into the looser liquids beneath, at the foetal
Thing
that was curled there -

—
That massive wedge of a head as seen in profile. Those long dog jaws. The dark orbit of an eye big as a platter!

The last time she was here, its heartbeat had been slower, and the great lid of its eye entirely closed, asleep. But now:
Thud!

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

197

The
Thing
quickened beyond a doubt, and the lid of its eye seemed gashed where a crack of yelow light glowed from within, brighter than its protective resin sheath …

Bonnie Jean stood up, descended the stairs, left the cave for the less fearsome labyrinth of the cavern complex, and finaly ran breathlessly to her Master …

… To Radu Lykan.

I

SHAITAN: HIS RISE AND FALL.

CAMS SAPIENS: THE WEREWOLF

CONNECTION.

Shaitan the Unborn came out of the vampire swamps, oh, a long time ago. The first and worst of the Wamphyri - the first of the Great Vampires - Shaitan was the source of undeath.

He came out of the west and saw that the darkness of Starside was good, but he felt through the thinning mists the withering rays of a hot sun blazing through the high passes of the barrier mountains; it turned his skin rough and red. So he took the left-hand path round the mountains, and came upon the boulder plains of gaunt and gloomy Starside whereon dweled nothing of any threat; while southwards lay the sun which was injurious (and possibly even fatal) to him and al such as he would bring into the world. From which time forward he would always choose a dark and sinistral path through life …

When he knew a strange dark thirst, he drank of the sweet water tumbling down from the mountains; it quenched his thirst but did not truly satisfy him. When he felt a strange dark hunger, he ate grasses, herbs, some bitter fruits. These served to fil him but the hunger would not pass. It was the hunger of an evil spore, a leech, which had taken root within Shaitan, body, mind, and soul

… if there had been a soul.

Shaitan was unclothed but unashamed, for he knew that he was beautiful; and he would display his beauty. So he compared himself to the beasts of the wild, of the swamps, foothills and mountains, and saw that their beauty came from their innocence. For which reason it was useless to display himself or even impose his wil upon them. Unintelligent, innocent, they could not deny that he knew best; they would bend to his wil too easily. Wherefore he would impose that wil upon others of his own design. Except… where were they?

Travelling east, he looked for them but discovered them not yet a while. And in his loneliness he took bats for familiars, whose flying skils he envied.

Eventually he came upon trogs, cavern un-men and -women, who were scarcely beautiful and not greatly like unto himself; but Shaitan Brian Lumley

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

202

203

corrupted them anyway, filling them with his vices, and making them sick and dead and undead. He took trog women to his bed, and there was issue. Such ‘children’ as were born were hideous, insane, ever hungry! They suckled blood, not milk, and grew too fast. Their mothers lay on them to smother them. Shaitan devoured one, in order to taste of its flesh. It satisfied the hunger of his leech … barely, for a while.