my meaning; he simply wasn't the man I'd known. But I believe he was soil my friend. And the Necroscope had chosen a most opportune time to return to my world, for my seer's blood had told me no lie: the Wamphyri were back in Sunside/Starside! Not only the last of them, but also the first.'Shaitan the Unborn himself, aye, come back like a plague thatcan never die ...'
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Rest Of Lardis's Story'Shaitan the Fallen - Shaitan the Unborn, Shaitan himself - and his banished descendant, Lord Shaithis: the two of them back in Starside after four years of peace and quiet and nights without nightmares, back from the Icelands. They had flyers and warrior beasts, the makings of a small but deadly army. And Harry Hell-Lander ... no longer himself. And his son The Dweller much less than himself, for he was a changeling creature. As for the Lady Karen: who could say what Karen would do or where her loyalties now lay, who for four long years had been alone and brooding in Karenstack, the last great aerie of the Wamphyri?'Well, the rest of it is strange and frightening. I know, I know: all of it is strange and frightening! But to me far worse, for it came of Earth's science, of which I knew nothing at that time. And when I saw it I knew we had named the Hell-Lands Gate aright, for most certainly this was made in hell. What? It was the very breath of hell.' This is how it was:
'Shaitan, Shaithis and their forces, they had made camp at the Starside Gate. The Necroscope had been taken prisoner, the Lady Karen, too, for in fact she'd sided with Harry. Which was only natural, I suppose. After all, Karen had always been Shaithis's most deadly enemy. As for the details: I can't be definite about any of this, because my observation point was so far away, high in the mountains. I assume they were suffering torture. Certainly bonfires were blazing down there among the many clumps of boulders surrounding the Gate.
'Then, I felt something happening. And I sensed it was of the Necroscope's doing. My seer's blood warned me not to look, and I warned the others there with me. Mostly, they heeded my cry of warning. But one of them, Peder Szekarly, was young and sometimes stupid - brave but stupid. He continued to look, and was witness to it. He saw it... then saw no more, ever again. The light was such that it burned him, burned his eyes out and blinded him. Nor did he live for very long.'But that lightll swear it shone through the very boulders where we crouched! For comparison, the Gate's glare was but a candle. And the light was merely the beginning, for then came the crack! Rut that doesn't convey it, for it was a sound like the earth splitting! And finally the blast.'Well, I've seen what a grenade can do, but this ...'Not even a million grenades - and all of them detonating at the same time - could equal it. But before that:'I had looked up from behind the rocks where I crouched. I didn't know that Peder had failed to heed my warning. There he stood exposed, looking down on Starside. But then, in the smallest fraction of a second, that awful light jumped from Starside into the mountains and shone on Peder. Smoke leaped from him as from a leaf fallen in the fire. He screamed his agony, clutched at his face, tottered back away from the gap in the rocks. But even as he stumbled it was as if a giant's hand slapped at him, hurled him down. And I remember thinking:'"Perhaps this was how it was when the white sun fell!"'Hot grit stinging, and stones spattering; the earth trembling, and lightning lashing the sky. And myself - aye, and the rest of my men with me - gasping in our terror of the unknown, while Peder moaned and sobbed where he had fallen.'Then, in a while - as the frenzy of the winds gradually lessened, and the pebbles stopped falling, and the ground stopped shaking - that rumble of sound, that hissing of warm rain, that169darkness closing in as the stars were shut out. And, when I dared look, that mushroom cloud going up and up, towering as high and higher than the