you who brought me down. So perhaps you're worthy to be Wamphyri at that. But you have my egg, my flyer . .. must you take my life, too? It is finished anyway - but not like this, I beg you. Pull out the pegs, and let me crawl away into some cave to die. But not in the sunlight, for you can't know what it is ... for one like me ... to die in sunlight...
Nestor knew well enough. Hadn't his flyer gone the same way, melting into stench and evaporation? But to pull out the pegs ... what if this creature were still dangerous?
The laughter which swelled in his mind then was bitter, and filled with a painful irony. Dangerous? Oh, I was, it's true! But now? I have no leech; I am broken, gutted, an empty shell. But you ... you are, or you were, Szgany. And you have things in you other than the morbid emotions of the Wamphyri. For a little while longer, at least. Which is why I beg you one last time; pull out the pegs.
Nestor did it, and crawled on. In a little while he could get to his feet. He looked back, and Vasagi was still stretched there; he hadn't moved; perhaps he couldn't. Nestor put him out of his mind and went to his flyer.
The beast saw him coming and looked at him through stupid, lustreless eyes. He approached it carefully, for he saw how it could roll or flop on him and crush his life out. But it was of vampire stuff and sensed the vampire in Nestor; it blinked its great eyes nervously as he took hold of its trappings, no more than that. Then, as he dragged himself up into the saddle, he saw Vasagi's bloody gauntlet hanging from a strap, where Wran had left it for him. Of course, for what's a Lord of the Wamphyri without his gauntlet?
Sunside was all hazy grey and green now, with mists rising out of the dark forests and blue smoke from distant campsites and townships, and all the birds waking up, commencing their dawn chorus. Central on the southern horizon, a yellow glow threatened at any moment to become a golden furnace.
Nestor dug his heels into his mount's sides at the base of its swaying neck, and gave a tentative jerk on the reins. 'Up,' he grunted. 'Let's be away.'
The creature craned its neck, looked at him curiously, stretched its manta wings - and did nothing. Nestor slapped its neck and the grey flesh twitched a little - that was all. 'Up!' he shouted, digging harder with his heels where rasps on Vasagi's boots had furrowed the beast's flanks. It grunted and quivered, but sat still. The answer was in Nestor's head, and finally he found it there.
I want you to fly! he told the creature. Up, now, into the sky, and home to Starside. Or would you rather melt when the sun comes up? Metamorphic muscles bunched then, and the flyer's thrusters coiled themselves as tight as springs. But still the beast would not, could not obey him. Till suddenly Vasagi's almost exhausted 'voice' joined Nestor's: Aye, you were ever a faithful beast. When I told you to stay, you stayed. But now you are his. It pleases me to give you to him . .. for a while, at least. So fly - fly!
The beast's wings extended from its sides as alveolate bones, membrane and muscle stretched and flowed in metamorphic flux. A moment more and it tilted forward on the rim of the bluff. Nestor clung with his knees, gripped hard on the reins. The flyer's thrusters uncoiled to hurl it aloft and forward ... it flew!
Wind whipped in Nestor's face as his weird mount glided out over Sunside, gaining height. But Sunside wasn't the way to go. And: 'Starside!' he shouted, with mind and mouth both. 'Starside!' Until the flyer arched its manta wings into vast scoops or air-traps, turned in a rising thermal, and climbed for the peaks.
And down in the misted valleys and forests, everything Nestor had been and done - everything which he'd known and had now forgotten, forsaken - was left far, far behind ...
Nathan followed the course of the Great Dark River, visiting Crack-in-the-Rocks, Many-Caverns, the twin colonies Lake-of-Light and Lake-of-Stars, and Place-of-the-Beast-Bones. Mostly he travelled the river route, deep under the desert; on occasion, where the river became a borehole with no path as such, he must be ferried