there it exploded in a flash of light as bright and momentarily brighter than the sun itself! Light, heat, and a blast of alien energy that lacerated the flesh of the unfortunate thralls and blew them off the stone stairway, down into the rubble. They were in pieces, dead before they hit bottom. And Szwart hissing and shrieking, reeling on the high stairs where he tried to regain his man-shape, failed, and collapsed again to a slithering stain.
'All of this shocking, aye, but none so much as what Lord Szwart called out to us as finally he reformed, shaping himself into an airfoil and launching in search of some night-dark place in which to regain his composure:
''He was not there!' he shrilled. 'He is not here! No man, that one, but a ghost! Perhaps the spirit of all the Szgany we ever took in our lives, all combined in one vengeful ghost!'
'And Malinari turned to Vavara and said, 'Szwart is right. Not that Nathan is a ghost, but that he's no longer here. For a moment I touched his mind — real in the field of my probes, as real as the shields he raised against me — and in the next moment, gone! So if you think we have seen awesome weapons at work this night, well, now we have seen a real weapon: the man Nathan himself.
But all of this bears thinking about, and I shall give it my gravest consideration.'
'And despite that The Mind had chosen his words carefully, perhaps because he felt he must retain at least a measure of control, still his sprouting scythe teeth were awash in his own blood where he ground them deep into his lips and riven gums…
'And Malinari did give it his gravest consideration, as did we all; but no amount of thinking could compensate for our losses, or dream up a successful defence against future depredations by the demon Nathan. Thus that entire night was a disaster, and no guarantee that things were ever going to get any better.
'We went subterranean. Unthinkable, eh — that the Wamphyri should ever flee from a man? From the sun, aye, but not from a single man! — yet such was the case. If we could not build on high, then we must build below, where the stumps of the toppled stacks were riddled with tunnels, caverns, and places which, in the olden times, were only ever fit for bats and beetles.
'And despite that our work force was reduced — our flyers, too, and our warriors boiled in their vats — still we had several hundreds of thralls and provisions aplenty.
'The thralls were put to work; they cleared the debris from ancient diggings, moved our provisions to safety, and built defensive positions on the surface. New vats of metamorphosis were discovered or dug, into which we sacrificed a third of our manpower, the raw materials of our future flyers and warriors. And we commenced keeping a watch… can you believe it? The Wamphyri, vigilant against any further sabotage attempts by this mere man! Moreover, it was more rigidly enforced than any watch that our vanished ancestors had ever kept against each other.
'But this last was a necessity, for from then on, whenever we raided against the Szgany, we could be sure that retaliation would follow hot on our heels. And Nathan Kiklu — man or ghost or whatever he was — he was everywhere. If we raided in the far western reaches of Sunside, he would soon be there with a party of Lidesci fighters, with 'guns,' 'grenades' and 'rockets', setting fire to the wings of our flyers, blinding them with silver shot, and knocking our thralls out of their saddles before they could even touch down! Thus, for every man we recruited in Sunside, one of ours was killed by Nathan and his Szgany soldiers. And every forward step was followed by one to the rear.
'East, west, wherever we struck, Nathan and his men could be there in a trice. How? It was beyond us. Moreover, lie would snipe on us from afar, and shoot our thralls dead in their defensive or watchtower positions. Until my master and his colleagues were obliged to devise a new strategy.
'Instead of inhabiting just one central area of Starside's olden ruins, now we spread out and stationed men in every shattered stump and heap of rubble. For one thing was certain: whoever or whatever Nathan was, and for all that he could appear almost magically, anywhere, in extremely short order, he couldn't possibly be everywhere at once.' And so we maintained something of our equilibrium, despite that we made little progress…
'One night my master flew out alone. Returning shortly, he complained bitterly that: 'This damned Szgany bastard — he has spies in the barrier mountains! Hah! That is how he knows where we will raid: they watch us fly up from the boulder plains, the direction we take, then make report to him. I tracked them with my mentalism — which is how I discovered theirs!'
' 'What? They are thought-thieves, these men?' Vavara found it hard to believe. 'Mentalists?'
'Malinari laughed like a madman, and answered, 'Even as we are mentalists, aye. So says Malinari the Mind, the greatest of them all. But… they are not men!'
' 'Not men?' And now Szwart was baffled. 'Not men, you say? Then what — trogs?'
'Malinari gave a wild shake of his head and waved his arms in consternation. 'Not trogs, no — but dogs!' ht said. 'Wolves of the wild that think like men. Stranger still, they call this Nathan uncle! He is their kin!'
' 'Then he is a dog-Lord!' said Vavara. 'It's the only possible solution. This hated enemy of ours is Wamphyri! He dwells in the mountain heights, rules on Sunside, and keeps the Szgany for himself. His needs are so slight that the tribes suffer him for his protection. I must be right. Nathan is a changeling.'
'And Szwart said, 'But a dog-Lord? With powers such as he commands? And as for suffering him for his protection — against what? What was there before we came?'
'My master threw up his hands, crying, 'I don't know! I no longer know anything… except that I am sick to death of this Nathan, of this ruined place, and of all this endless work performed without reward. This work that gets us nowhere…'
'We took to raiding separately but simultaneously in locations far apart, and we covered our movements with great stealth. For again the principle applied: that Nathan couldn't be everywhere at once. And at last a small measure of success — which didn't last long. He couldn't be everywhere, but his weapons could.
'From thralls freshly converted we learned how he had disseminated his destructive devices — his guns and grenades, and so forth — among as many of the tribes as possible. And he had taught them how to use them. But these weapons and the 'ammunition' they used were not in unlimited supply. From time to time Nathan must replenish them by venturing into the Hell-lands.
'That in itself posed a question: how was it possible for Nathan to make these trips to the Hell-lands without using the Starside Gate? For the Gate was no longer accessible. Where in our time it had rested in the bottom of a crater in the lee of the foothills not far from the great pass, now it was raised up and stood in the centre of a lake! And that lake of white water had many small whirlpools to suck a swimmer down.
'Often in our forays across the barrier mountains into Sunside we had seen it there: that fountain of water, all lit from within, rising up high into the night and falling back into the lake.
'In order to solve that problem, we flew out one night; or rather, Malinari and Vavara flew out, and a few lieutenants and thralls in attendance. For Lord Szwart would not consider going anywhere near such a brilliant source of light, despite that it was cold.
'Ah, but that was indeed a fortunate trip — for the Wamphyri at least, if not (as it later turned out) for me; though of course I could not know that then. Anyway, during the long day previous, while we vampires slept or carried out our subterranean duties beneath the stumps of the old stacks, apparently the lake had run dry!
'And there stood the Gate, raised up in its crater socket, like the blind white eye of some fallen Cyclops shining up into the night. But as for the lake and its fountain of milky water: they were no more, not even a trickle.' The earth was dry, caked, and wrinkled into channels that showed how the water had disappeared down circular boreholes that angled into the bedrock like conduits to hell. A weird thing, this Gate; weird as the tumbling moon or ice-chip stars, and just as inexplicable.
'Malinari, Vavara and their men had left their flyers in the shadowy foothills between the Gate and the great pass, well away from the Gate itself. Facing downhill on a moderate slope, the flyers were positioned for immediate flight. It was a safety measure, to ensure a quick getaway should such become necessary. And so it may be seen that even among the Great Vampires the Hell-lands Gate was held in no small measure of respect.
'And separating into small, wide-spread groups, we applied the same caution to our method of approach — moving from boulder clump to boulder clump, and always sticking to the shadows — as we drew closer to the Gate. But we were still some distance away when suddenly my master threw up a warning hand, and issued a mental alarm that reached out to all of us:
''Something is coming through the Gate!' his voice hissed in our minds, as we melted back into darkest shadows.
'And he was correct, of course. He had sensed their alien minds, these men of the Hell-lands (of your world,
