Free The Last Aerie by Brian Lumley Page A

however grudgingly, his flyer wheeled lumberingly north and seemed to hang there a moment in mid-air, suspended between the uppermost peaks. And as in a frenzy he cried, “Faster, fly faster!”, the beast commenced a leisurely drift inwards over peaks, ravines and plateau jumbles. Till finally, lowering its tapering neck and head, it slid gradually into a glide.
    Nestor couldn’t know it, but his mount found no great novelty in all this drama; it had flown this way before with Vasagi the Suck, and knew the route well enough; there was nothing new here except its rider, a feeble-seeming fellow at best. His thoughts were blunt as wedges, not needle-sharp, like the Suck’s. He’d not once used his spurs, but sat there wan and wind-lashed in the saddle. Why he was here at all remained a mystery.
    Perhaps Nestor sensed the flyer’s slow, dull thoughts, and its low regard for himself. But with the sun at his heels he was done with gentling the beast! He snatched the dart from under his crossbow’s tiller, leaned forward between the pommel horns and tickled the creature’s spine, then concentrated his thoughts in a stream of abuse along its leathery neck and into its head. And he finished with a threat:
    Make haste, now, or I’ll crawl along your neck and stick this in your ear! The beast heard him; more than that, it felt the first hot breath of the sun upon its hindquarters, put its nose down and glided into the shadows of a pass. And safe from the sun at last, it sped for Starside.
    Nestor breathed a sigh of relief, and in the next moment heard guttural laughter and a ringing cry: “Bravo!”
    It was Wran. He launched his flyer from the shadows of a ridge and came up alongside. “You made it by a breath! What? On a count of ten, your beast’s wings would have blackened and crisped to dust! Aye, and it’s a long way down, Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri…”
    His words carried on the air, but they were also in Nestor’s mind. It was an art of the Wamphyri; at close range like this they were thought-thieves to a man, but some much better than others. Vasagi had been a veritable master of telepathy, while Wran’s talent was merely middling. Now it was Nestor’s turn:
    Why did you wait?
    Ahhh! Wran was taken by surprise, but recovered in a moment. What? A mentalist, too? But is it you, Nestor, or simply the effect of Vasagi’s egg? If the latter, then obviously you got a good one … considering its source, that is. And again he laughed . As to why I waited: simple curiosity. Frankly, I didn’t think you’d make it. Since you have, and since I’m responsible /or your—predicament?—it seems only right that I should escort you into Starside, introduce you and make explanation. For you’re a cool one, Nestor, and in no way the fool I first considered you. The Suck was my enemy, but you’ll make a useful ally. And what will you get out of it? Well believe me, you’ll need all the friends you can get, in Wrathstack!
    Wrathstack? It was news to Nestor. But the suffix “stack” had brought a flash of memory. Synonymous with “aerie”, it had painted a picture in his mind of the last great redoubt of the Wamphyri, called … Karen-stack? It had been, upon a time, of that he was sure. Also that he had been there before. But when, how?
    His thoughts were so intense that Wran picked them from his mind without difficulty, and answered: Many a Lord or Lady has dwelled there from time to time, I should think, since the early days of Turgo Zolte. I can’t say, for I don’t know Starside’s history. But now the aerie has new tenants, and on the whole we call it Wrathstack after the Lady Wratha, who brought us here from Turgosheim in the east. His thoughts had turned sour now.
    She’s your leader? Nestor was mainly innocent, careless in his choice of words.
    She was, for a while , Wran growled in his head . And with a strong man to ride and guide her … who can say? She could be again. Well, a partner in leadership, at