The Source by Brian Lumley

For himself, Jazz had chosen a heavy caliber machine-gun, a Russian job firing a mix of tracer and explosive shells. The weapon could be used with a tripod or carried in both arms; it took a strong man to handle it. Jazz knew the gun and had trained with it; it was capable of laying down a deadly and shattering barrage of fire.

‘But still,’ he told The Dweller, ‘from what I’ve seen of Wamphyri warriors, I’d say these things are toys.’

Harry Jnr nodded, but: The flame-throwers are not toys,’ he said. ‘And I assure you the Wamphyri won’t like this silver shot! Still, I take your meaning. One warrior – even a dozen – but forty? Ah, but you haven’t seen all my weapons!’ He showed Jazz a grenade.

Jazz weighed the thing in his hand. It was as large as an orange and very heavy. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know this one.’

‘It’s American,’ The Dweller told him. ‘For clearing pill-boxes and foxholes. A very grim weapon: it shivers into fragments of blazing metallic phosphorus!’

Meanwhile, Harry Snr had used the Mobius Continuum (for the first time in this world) to convey two very important Travellers to a nearby peak rearing high over most of the others. They knew their job and had practiced it on many previous occasions. In a hollowed-out depression at the peak’s crest, literally an ‘aerie’ in its own right, great mirrors had been rigged on swivels to catch the dying sun’s rays and hurl them down – or up – at any attackers. The Travellers also had shotguns and bandoliers of vampire-lethal shells.

As Harry dropped off his astonished charges and prepared to return to the garden, so his keen eyes spotted something approaching in the sky. As yet it was two or three miles east of the garden, but even at that distance its size and shape made it unmistakable. A flyer, like Shaithis’s mount!

The Travellers had seen it too. ‘Shall we try to burn it?’ they cried, springing to their mirror-weapons.

‘One flyer?’ Harry frowned. Instinct cautioned him against abrupt action. ‘Not unless it makes an attack on the garden.’

He went back there, looked for Harry Jnr. Instead he found Zek Foener, her eyes closed where she stood facing east and slightly north, one trembling hand to her brow. ‘Is something wrong, Zek?’ Harry asked.

‘No, Harry,’ she answered, without opening her eyes. ‘something’s right! The Lady Karen is coming to join us.

She wants to fight on our side. She has four fine warriors, but they’re holding back until she calls to them. Now . . . she wants to know if it’s safe for her to land.’ ‘She’s not attacking us?’

‘She’s joining us!’ Zek repeated. ‘You don’t know her like I do, Harry. She’s different.’

Karen was closer now, a mile at the outside but still wary, still holding off. Everyone in the garden had seen her. Jazz Simmons came hurrying, a shining brass belt dangling from the ammo-housing of his gun. ‘What is it?’ he said.

At the same moment The Dweller had materialized. Zek spoke to both men, told them what she’d told Harry Snr. ‘Harry,’ The Dweller turned to his father. ‘Go and tell the Travellers to hold their fire. Let’s see if she’s genuine.’

Before anything else, Harry detoured straight to the peak where the Travellers manned their mirror-weapons. He passed on Harry Jnr’s message, then spread the word right through the garden and its defenders. Meanwhile, Zek had told the Lady Karen: land in front of the wall, between the wall and the cliffs.

Karen’s flyer swept closer, swooped lower, swiftly grew larger in the sky. Far behind it, four dark shapes made spurting motions across the star-sprinkled indigo of the heavens. Tiny at this distance, still everyone knew how big they really were, knew what they really were. ‘Here she comes,’ Zek breathed.

The flyer, turning face-on to a low night wind that moaned from the west, dropped lower. It seemed to hover for a moment, like a kite, then dipped down and uncoiled its nest of springy worm ‘legs’ to the earth. It bumped gently down, lowered its wings for stability. The thing parked there, swaying and nodding hugely, gazing with vacuous disinterest first at the garden, then down the sweeping ramps of the mountains to the plain, then back to the garden. Karen dismounted, came to the wall. She was dressed – or undressed – to cause consternation, as was her wont.

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