Necroscope V Deadspawn - By Brian Lumley Page 0,205

many of them?' he finally asked. 'Shaitan will be their leader, and Shaithis with him. But who else?'

'Survivors from the battle at the garden,' Karen answered. 'If they also survived the Icelands.'

'I remember.' Harry nodded. 'We've considered them before: Fess Ferenc, Volse Pinescu, Arkis Leperson and their thralls. No more than a handful. Or, if others of the Old Lords survived the ordeal of exile, a large handful.' He drew himself up. 'But I'm still the Necroscope. And again I say: can they come and go through the Möbius Continuum? Can they call up the dead out of their graves?' (And once more, to himself: Can you, Harry? Can you?)

'Shaitan may have the art,' she answered. 'For after all, he was the first of the Wamphyri. Since when, he's had time enough for studying. It's possible he can torment the dead for their secrets.'

'But will they answer him?' Harry growled, his eyes glowing like rubies in the firelight. 'No, no, I didn't mean necromancy but Necroscopy! A necromancer may "examine" a corpse or even a long-dead mummy, but I talk to the very spirits of the dead. And they love me; indeed, they'll rise up from their dust for me...' A lie. You even lie to yourself now. You are Wamphyri, Harry Keogh! Call up the dead? Ah, you used to, you used to.

He started to his feet: 'I have to try,' and went down to Starside's foothills under the garden, where long ago he called up an army of mummied trogs to do battle with Wamphyri trogs. He talked to their spirits in his fashion, but only the wind out of the north answered him. He sensed that they were there and heard him, but they kept silent. They were at peace now; why should they join the Necroscope in his turmoil?

He went up into the garden. There were graves - far too many of them - but untended now: Travellers who died in the great battle, trogs laid to rest in niches under the crags. They heard him, too, and remembered him well. But they felt something different in him which wasn't to their liking. Ah, Wamphyri! Necromancer! This man, or monster, had words which could call them to a horrid semblance of life even against their will.

'And I might!' he threatened, sensing their refusal, their terror. But from within: What, like Janos Ferenczy? What price now your 'humanity', Harry?

He went back to the aerie, to Karen, and told her bleakly, 'Once ... I could have commanded an army of the dead. Now there are just the two of us.'

Three, The Dweller's growl was in their minds, but clear as if he stood beside them. You fought for me once. Both of you, for my cause. My turn, now.

That seemed to decide it, to state their case, set their course. Even though it was the only course they'd ever had.

Karen fetched her gauntlet and dipped it in a cleansing acid solution, then set to oiling its joints. 'Me,' she said, 'I tore the living heart out of Lesk the Glut! Aye, and there was a lot more to fear in those days. And it dawns on me: I'm not afraid for myself but for the loss of what we have. Except that when you look at it, well, what do we have, after all?'

Harry jumped up, strode to and fro shaking his fists and raging inside and out. And then grew deadly calm. It was his vampire, of course, still seeking ascendancy. He nodded knowingly, and grunted, 'Well, and maybe I've kept you down long enough. Perhaps it's time I let you out.'

'What?' Karen looked up from working on her gauntlet.

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?' She arched her eyebrows.

'I only asked... where shall it be?'

The garden, said The Dweller, far away in the mountains.

They heard him, and Karen agreed, 'Aye, the garden has its merits. We know it well, anyway.'

Finally, with a furious nod, the Necroscope surrendered to his vampire. In part, at least. 'Very well,' he snarled, 'the garden. So be it!'

And so it would be.

In Starside ...

It was the hour when all that remains of the furnace sun is a smudgy grey luminosity in a sky gnawed by jutting fangs of mountain, and the nameless stars are chunks of alien ice freezing in weird orbits. The deepest, darkest hour of sundown, and the last of the Wamphyri - Shaithis and Shaitan, Harry Keogh and Karen - were coming together to do battle in an empty place once called the garden.