The Last Aerie (62 page)

And so the last aerie was filled with life of sorts, and Wratha was satisfied—to a point. But there remained several thorns in her side, which she could neither salve nor remove. The sharpest of these was NestorLichloathe’s refusal to raid on Settlement. Wratha had guessed the reason (that Misha, his unrequited love, was there, which he would not jeopardize), but without knowing Nestor’s real motive: that he was waiting for his Great Enemy to return out of far places to claim her in his own right. Then he would make his move, and claim
both
of them …

When they were not raiding, collecting tithe, seeing to the administration of their manses, Nestor and Wratha spent most of their time together. It was a mutual fascination, and one that waxed rather than waned. When she was on her own, Wratha found herself thinking of Nestor—always. Since he was now accessible, she’d mainly given up her mental invasions of his privacy, but she could never give up her consuming preoccupation with the
thought
of him: his beautiful young body, his sexual energy, and his determination—which rivaled her own—to be a leader among men, even among the Wamphyri. That might become a problem one day, for there can only be one leader of leaders. But that day was still a long way off. A joint bone-throne, maybe?

In which case, obviously Wratha’s love-thralls would have to go. Except … they already had! Where Wrath-spire was concerned they were less than drones now. Why, she hadn’t taken a man—any kind of man—since that first time with Nestor! She’d not needed to, for she was satisfied in that respect as never before. And of course, he would have to give up his vampire women. But there again, it appeared he’d already chosen that course for himself. He no longer so much as looked at his female thralls; even his old flame out of Sunside, Glina, with her supposed “innocent” sex, had been unable to tempt him. On those few occasions when Wratha had spied on him out of habit, she had seen that he now kept to himself, except for
her
self.

So, she no longer had any rivals here in the last aerie.

But in Sunside …?

Towards the end of that same four-month period of great activity and productivity, one sunup in the twilight hours before night:

Nestor and Wratha had taken a meal together in the Lady’s apartments. They’d shared common but satisfying fare: suckling pig roasted on a spit over glowing ironwood embers, and sliced Sunside fruits in aromatic Szgany brandy; all washed down with a peppery wine. Then they’d made love and slept wrapped in each other’s arms awhile, and had woken up to find themselves making love again! Afterwards, Wratha had made a last attempt to bring Nestor round to her way of thinking and convince him that they and Canker should now launch a massive joint attack on Settlement—ostensibly to bring down Lardis Lidesci. Being Nestor, of course he’d once again refused to be swayed.

Now, while she felt frustrated within herself, paradoxically the Lady felt nothing of anger towards Nestor. How could she
possibly
be angry with him, her lover, the young and handsome Lord Nestor Lichloathe of Suckscar? So that she issued a wry, silent snort and wondered:

Ah, but then again, how can a Lady of the Wamphyri possibly
feel so … so what? So soft? So hurt? So much like some common Szgany slut on Sunside? So … jealous? But jealous of what? An unknown girl out of his past, even out of his mind? Some figment of his impaired memory? Why, for all I know this Misha is a hag—or dead even—or someone Nestor would find unworthy now that he is Wamphyri!

But for all her attempts to apply cold logic to her confused emotions, still the Lady paced the floor of her bedroom, to and fro while her lover lay sleeping in her great bed. And glancing sideways at him from time to time, she considered her options; or rather her … her what? Her plight? That she was in love with him?

Was
it love, she wondered yet again, for maybe the hundredth time? Certainly something was wrong with her. It wasn’t simply that he was always on her mind. No, for more than just a thought, Nestor was in her eyes, her nostrils, her ears and mouth; and Wratha knew that she could
never
have enough of him in her body!

When they were apart:

She could
taste
him on the sensitive buds of her forked tongue. She could
smell
him—the pungent odour of his body, sweat, parts—like the scent of some weird Sunside orchid. She could
feel
him driving into her core, and see his face above her face: how his mouth fell open and his eyes closed, the perspiration forming on his brow in the instant that he fired his juices into her. And she could feel the hot splash of those juices, too, laving her insides: the way his sperm lived in her, tens of thousands of mindless minuscule lives … until her parasite leech released its own juices, like an acid to burn these tiny intruders.

Of course, that last didn’t have to be. She could will it otherwise if she so desired. She could still her leech and let Nestor’s seed live, and bring forth a child. But for what? She required no bloodsons, to grow up into men who would covet her manse and position. And yet … it would be an experience, to produce a child out of Nestor’s seed and her egg—her
human
egg, of course…

Hah!
But wasn’t that just the trouble? Thinking of Nestor, she even
thought
like a woman … like the common Szgany women of Sunside …

… Like this Misha?

And had she wanted his children, too?

That last thought increased Wratha’s frustration fourfold and even made her feel angry towards him! She whirled towards her great raised bed … and saw that he was stirring. She had thought he was asleep, but what if he’d been merely drowsing? Had he been listening in on her thoughts? Was he even now?

She shielded them at once! Her pride … Nestor must never know how deeply he … the strength of … he must
never
know! For such knowledge would make him strong and Wratha weak.

He groaned and raised himself up
a
little on one elbow, and she forced a smile and said, “Oh? Awake at last, are you? And nothing stirring? Well, that makes a change! If I didn’t know you were Wamphyri, I might suppose you were merely human after all! But see, I’ve brought a little wine.”

She poured smoky Szgany wine from a jug into a goblet and took it to him. And at the top of the wooden steps she kneeled beside him where he lay naked and spreadeagled.

As he took the goblet and slaked his thirst, she tilted her head on one side, smiled again (but softly this time, and almost as naturally as the girl she pretended to be) and said: “Look at you, Nestor, all sated and sprawled there defenceless as a child. Why, I could have poisoned that wine with grains of silver! While you were sleeping, I could have anointed you with oil of kneblasch, or plunged a silver dagger into your heart. Even now I could call one of my guardian creatures to slurp your soft flesh. Is it that you’ve no fear, or simply that you love and trust me?”

“It could be all three of those things,” he answered with a grin, “or none of them. But mainly it’s that I can’t get up off my backside!” And only half-mockingly he added: “What, and do you intend to kill me, then? As you killed Karl the Crag in your bed in Cragspire? If so, then do it now while I’m happy.”

“Karl was my master,” she answered, frowning. “Or thought he was. But he was
not
my lover. I’ve never had a lover, until you.” She reached out and gentled his flaccid, lifeless parts. They were bruised, but what is that to a vampire Lord? Then, still frowning, she said: “But… happy? Did you say happy?”

She found it odd that he would use such a word, for vampires were rarely, if ever, happy. Happiness … just wasn’t part of their landscape. Wratha must put it down to the fact that he wasn’t long Wamphyri, and still occasionally thought in Szgany terms. Oh, the Wamphyri knew well enough how to enjoy: how to revel in scarlet extravagance, and glut themselves with their excesses; how to laugh and roister, thrill and exult, usually at the expense and the pain of their victims. Certainly they understood pleasure: the gratification of their enhanced appetites and lusts in feasting, drinking and fornication—but again and always at the expense of others.

Indeed, that was their only “happiness”: the outrage and agony of common humanity. But Wratha suspected that Nestor had meant the true happiness, which astonished her. So that again she asked him:

“And are you …
happy
, Nestor?”

“I think so.” He clasped her to him. “I have all that a man needs, and in you more than
any
man could ever need! What more is there? Unless there’s some special delight which you haven’t yet shown me.”

Holding her like that, with his chin over her shoulder, Nestor’s face was hidden. Wratha suspected that he hid it deliberately; also his feelings, his true thoughts: that indeed there was something more. But not something which she could give him. And scanning his mind—and meeting with a blank wall—her suspicion seemed confirmed.

Turning her face away so as not to show her disappointment, she pushed him away, hurried down the steps and passed through into her dressing-room. Dressing, she heard him call out: “Wratha? Is there something?” What’s more, she felt
his
querying probe in
her
mind and immediately brought down mental shutters to close him out.

“No, nothing,” she called back to him. “But night falls fast and we’ve business to attend to.” What she really meant was that she had business to attend to.

On Sunside.

Killing business …

VIII

Wratha’s Rout—Glina’s End

Wratha’s orders were simple: put the women to death, all of them.

Not ravish them, or stun them and drink from the scarlet streams of their hearts, or by any other means molest and vampirize them, but simply kill them out of hand—dead!
All
of the women, the girls, even the smallest infant females of the Szgany Lidesci wherever they were found. And not just for the duration of this raid, but in all future raids, too.

For if there were no women, Wratha told herself contrarily (for of course she knew her real purpose in ordering this enormous atrocity), then eventually there would be no children; and without children the troublesome Lidescis would fade away and vanish in a single generation. Which is not a long time to one who has lived as long and remained as young as Wratha the Risen, or at least young in appearance. It was her way of making logical an entirely illogical command. For if the same rules were applied in all of Sunside, then Nestor’s prognosis would come true and it would be Turgosheim all over again.

But the truth of it was that her order would only apply here, in Lidesci territory, and her reason for issuing it was likewise simple: pure (or impure) jealousy, with perhaps a jot of vengeance thrown in for good measure, to cover her previous losses. Mainly the Lady was jealous of a past in which she had no part, and of a supposed love which she could not even begin to understand. For she had never known love—not as a common woman—until Nestor, and feared that she might never know it again. Savagely territorial, the Wamphyri do not give up their possessions easily. And Lord Nestor of Suckscar now belonged to Wratha the Risen, though not as much as Wratha belonged to him.

Rivalry? For Nestor’s love, his lust? Not in Wrath-stack, not any longer. For he was well and truly seduced, and Wratha even more so, indeed completely besotted. But in Sunside, possibly. Or impossibly, when her will was done. And with regard to the Lady Wratha’s will, and to orders, there was one other command which she issued:

If any man should discover a Misha among the Szgany Lidesci’s women, he was to bring her at once, unharmed in any way, to Wratha.
Then
she would be harmed, be sure, but not before the Lady had examined her most minutely, to discover Nestor’s preferences in women generally, and that which he most fancied in Misha specifically. Following which…Wratha would eat her living, smoking heart, and feed the rest of her to the frenzied warriors.

Which was the circuitous route by which the Lady’s lieutenants finally came to understand that it was an unknown girl, a mysterious Misha, who was the real reason why their Lady mustered her men—and monsters-at-arms in the early twilight, and waited impatiently for the last golden streak to fade from the peaks of the barrier mountains before launching them south for Sunside, Settlement, and infamous Lidesci territory.

And all of this while most of the stack’s inhabitants lay asleep.

But not all of them …

Nestor stood alone with his thoughts, gazing from a window in his south-facing room of repose. As usual, his eyes rested on the grey peaks of the craggy barrier mountains way beyond the distantly pulsating glowworm of the hell-lands Gate. There in the south-west, beyond the high scarps and plateaus, and across the foothills, at the edge of the forest, lay the once-bustling township of Settlement. And somewhere in the wilderness around that battered pile of a place—in the dark woods or cavern-riddled cliffs, or in the hollow roots of the mountains themselves—the Szgany Lidesci had their hiding places to which they retreated at fall of night.