The Last Aerie
Authors: Brian Lumley
Tags: #Fiction, #Vampires, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Horror Tales, #Horror, #Fiction - Horror, #General, #Science Fiction, #Twins, #Horror - General, #Horror Fiction, #Mystery & Detective
THE LAST AERIE
“Lumley uses language deftly to conjure his alien universe, and both setting and characters are vivid and engaging. Fans of the Necroscope series and this Vampire World series will undoubtedly enjoy this adventure.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Vampires like you’ve never seen before. Lumley has created his unique brand of the monster, with a complex nature found nowhere else.”
—Science Fiction Chronicle
“Outstanding. A vigorous novel that draws strength from both its depth of world building and the psychology of its characters. The genre of fantastic literature is greatly improved by the publication of this work, which is very highly recommended.”
—
Wilson Library Bulletin
BRIAN LUMLEY
“Lumley’s cleverly crafted wamphyric saga crackles with the author’s sense of high adventure and panache.”
—Rex Miller
“Lumley never oversteps the delicate line between blood-chilling horror and cold gruel. An accomplished word-smith, Lumley wields a pen with the deft skill of a surgeon, drawing just enough blood to titillate without offending his readers.”
—
The Phoenix Gazette
BLOOD BROTHERS
“Brian Lumley’s continuing series of vampire novels is truly a stunning achievement!
Blood Brothers
[
is
] a piece of throat-clutching entertainment.”
—Ray Garton
“The voice of the vampire—powerful, unscrupulous, passionate—is sometimes the most enjoyable aspect of any vampire novel. [
Blood Brothers
is] at its strongest when the monster speaks.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A wild, often gruesome ride. Lumley’s Wamphyri are larger-than-life creatures of tremendous appetites and evil, and their creator spares us nothing in telling us their tale. Lumley has drawn a harsh, exquisitely detailed picture of a world so full of horrors that we shudder to think of it.”
—Rapport
TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY
The Necroscope Series
Necroscope
Necroscope II: Vamphyri!
Necroscope III: The Source
Necroscope IV: Deadspeak
Necroscope V: Deadspawn
Blood Brothers
The Last Aerie
Bloodwars
Necroscope: The Lost Years
Necroscope: Resurgence
Necroscope: Invaders
Necroscope: Defilers
The Titus Crow Series
Titus Crow Volume One: The Burrowers Beneath & Transition
Titus Crow Volume Two: The Clock of Dreams
&
Spawn of the Winds
Titus Crow Volume Three: In the Moons of Borea
&
Elysia
The Psychomech Trilogy
Psychomech
Psychosphere
Psychamok
Other Novels
Demogorgon
The House of Doors
Maze of Worlds
Contents
I: Harry’s Passing
II: Harry’s Room
I: Sunside
II: The Last Aerie
III: Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri
IV: Suckscar
V: Mangemanse—Spiders—Canker’s Moon Lure
VI: The Bonesong—Wratha—Carmen
I: Perchorsk
II: The Visitor, and a Visit
III: Nathan … Kiklu?
IV: Nathan and Siggi
V: Out of Perchorsk
VI: Off and Running
VII: Szgany Ferengi
VIII: Not Quite Hell, And Sheer Hell!
PART FOUR: THE REST OF NESTOR’S STORY
I: Nestor, Necromancer! Hunting on Sunside
II: Nestor’s Art
III: After the Hunt: Nestor and Glina
IV: Wratha’s Vow—Gorvi’s Proposition
V: Conversation with a Corpse—Nestor and Wratha: The Assignation
VI: Nestor and Wratha: Their Joining
VII: Wratha’s New Raiders
VIII: Wratha’s Rout—Glina’s End
IX: Return of the Enemy—Nestor’s Revenge—Canker’s Moon-mistress
I: Harry’s Room Revisited
II: Nathan’s Conversion
III: The Nightmare Zone
IV: To Soothe the Dead
V: Dead Voices
VI: Confrontation—Conclusion—Connections
VII: Incentive
VIII: Doors!
This is a work of Action. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are Fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
THE LAST AERIE
Copyright © 1993 by Brian Lumley
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010”
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 0-812-52062-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-17431
First edition: August 1993
First mass market edition: October 1994
Printed in the United States of America
09876543
RÉSUMÉ
The year now is 2006, but—
—Twenty-one years ago in a parallel vampire world, twin sons were born to Nana Kiklu of the Szgany Lidesci. Known only to Nana herself, the father of her twins was a man from another world: the hell-lander Harry Keogh. Even for an alien Harry had not been just any man. Indeed, in his time he had been unique, sui generis: the original Necroscope.
By no means identical at birth—Nathan fair and “freakish,” and Nestor dark, typically Gypsy—the boys grew up to an entirely disparate manhood. Even as a child Nathan had been fey and gifted with weird powers, which for the most part he kept to himself; while Nestor had been strong, lusty, open as the sky. Nathan, realizing his differences, had only wanted to be normal, to belong …
somewhere;
while Nestor, entirely at home with his environment, had been filled with all of the confidence so desperately lacking in his brother, as if he had taken Nathan’s share, too.
Playing childhood’s games in Sunside’s forests, Nathan was always the reluctant Traveller, while Nestor’s role was invariably that of a Lord of the Wamphyri; except the Wamphyri were no more, for they had been destroyed by Harry Keogh. Or so the Lidescis and all the other Szgany tribes believed …
But when the youths were eighteen, then a new generation of vampires had arrived out of Turgosheim in the east, and all the terrors of night were returned with a vengeance. In a raid on Settlement, Nestor was concussed and snatched by a Wamphyri flyer. Crippled, the beast crashed on Sunside but Nestor survived. Amnesiac, he remembered only the most recent things: the flyer melting in the rays of the freshly risen sun; dim scenes of Settlement under attack; and a grimly prophetic phrase from a childhood game, repeating over and over in his damaged head,
I am the Lord Nestor, of the Wamphyri!
Meanwhile, Nathan had learned that Nestor was still alive on Sunside, and set out to follow his trail… which ended in a broad, still river where Nathan felt certain his brother had drowned. Thus during the raid on Settlement, Nathan had lost, or thought he’d lost, his mother, sweetheart, and now his brother.
Always an outsider even among his own, what was there for him now in Sunside? Long days of alienation from the Szgany, and endless nights of terror from the Wamphyri? In his misery he wandered out across Sunside’s furnace deserts to die.
But in the desert he was rescued by the Thyre, a nomadic race with whom the Travellers traded periodically, considered to be only slightly less primitive than the shuffling, cavern-dwelling trogs of Starside. They were far from primitive, however, and Nathan soon discovered their telepathy, especially the telepathy of their revered, entombed Ancients: deadspeak. Thus, without ever having known his father, he learned that he was a Necroscope. Then for some time he wandered east, and soon became a legend among his brown Thyre friends.
At the same time, having been pulled from the river more dead than alive, Nestor had lived through many sunups (weeks) with the Bereas, a lone family unit dwelling hermitlike in the deep forest. And while Nathan trekked the course of a mainly subterranean river under the burning desert, visiting the many Thyre colonies, Nestor’s various wounds healed and he returned to health … in body, if not in mind.