The Last Aerie

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

THE LAST AERIE

TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY

Title Page

Copyright

RÉSUMÉ

PART ONE: E-BRANCH

I: Harry’s Passing

II: Harry’s Room

PART TWO: NESTOR’S STORY

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

PART THREE: THE OPPOSITION

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

PART FIVE: DICOVERING HARRY

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!

EPILOGUE

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”

www.tor.com

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.