Five minutes later, after a series of short jumps, Harry’s exit door shimmered violently and seemed to bend back on itself. Harry emerged in deep water, swimming. He shone his torch ahead. The bore was almost circular, with maybe twelve inches between ceiling and water. He daren’t use the Continuum again and so put all of his efforts to swimming. The current wasn’t much but still it made for hard work.
Then, ahead, Harry saw a faintly luminous arc of light. He switched off his torch and hooked it to his belt, using both hands to aid his flippered feet in forging ahead. The arc expanded and the light grew stronger. White light!
Harry emerged into the cave of the sphere and gratefully hauled himself up onto the ledge – where he at once recoiled from what lay upon the moist floor! It was a headless corpse, running rapidly to decay. The head, also sloughing flesh, lay some little way along the ledge. ‘Jesus!’ Harry breathed. He had taken off his demand-valve attachment but now quickly replaced it to breathe bottled air. That was better. Then he examined the corpse more carefully – but without touching it. The severed spinal column was fat, reinforced with extra bone and sinew. It contained in effect two spines! Wamphyri! The head would likewise contain a composite brain, also turning to mush.
‘Who were you?’ Harry asked it.
/ was Corlis, of the Lady Karen’s aerie, the other moaned. Alas, I was too ambitious. Now go away — leave me to my misery.
Too ambitious?’ Harry gulped. ‘So it would appear!’ He glanced up at the sphere and quickly looked away. The light was unbearable. From a zippered pocket he took out dark goggles and put them on, then looked all about. A little apart from the corpse lay a modern walkie-talkie radio, somewhat battered, its aerial fully extended. Harry stared at it, shook his head. He could see that it was a Russian model; beyond that it seemed pointless to conjecture.
There were various niches in the walls, together with the mouths of many magmass wormholes. When Harry saw what some of these contained, then he remembered Faethor’s – or Belos’s – story.
High up in the curved wall, one such sat with its shrivelled legs dangling over the rim of a magmass hole. The thing was mummified, where dripstone had fused its legs to the wall and commenced covering them with gleaming calcium. An eyeless skull, hideously misshapen, leaned out. Frozen in death, its gaping jaws were wolfish, toothed like a carnivore. The creature seemed to leer at Harry with a permanent, imperishable malignancy. He wasn’t much worried; it had leered like that for a long, long time. Vampire killer! it suddenly accused.
Harry shrugged. ‘I can’t deny it. But on that score, it seems you at least have no worries. Nor any of you here.’
Now other voices joined the first: Impudent pup! And: This is a private place of the Wamphyri – begone! And: Who are you, to disturb our sleep of centuries?
‘Sorry,’ Harry shrugged, ‘but I’m not dressed for conversation – polite or otherwise. But I’d better inform you: I know that to a man you’re all exiles. You may have been high and mighty Wamphyri in your own world, but here you’re just crumbling old dead things! That’s how it goes. Now me, I won’t hold your past against you, as long as you don’t hold mine against me.’
After a moment of blank astonishment: You dare – !? they cried in one voice.
‘Now it’s cold in here,’ Harry continued unperturbed. ‘So I’m going to pick up a change of clothing. If by the time I return you’re feeling more sociable, we can start over and no hard feelings. If not – ‘ again his shrug. ‘It’s your loss, as the teeming dead would doubtless testify – if they’d waste their time talking to such as you!’
Before they could answer he took up his torch and flippers, slipped back into the water. It was icy cold but it would only be for a moment. He let the river bob him downstream to a safe distance, then conjured a slightly warped door and floated through it. He fixed the location firmly in his mind, went back to the copse and his kit-bag.