The Source by Brian Lumley

Harry had followed him, said: ‘Where will I find you?’

‘Here. I’ll wait for you.’

Harry used the Mobius Continuum and went to the wall. Men with flame-throwers were hosing down a stricken warrior; Karen fought with a lieutenant, dispatching him even as Harry arrived. ‘Don’t question this,’ he said. ‘Come, quickly!’

He caught her up, stepped through a Mobius door, emerged down on the plain of boulders at a safe distance from the glaring sphere Gate. Dazed, she swayed for a moment and her scarlet eyes went round as saucers. ‘How .?’

‘Which is your stack?’ he asked her.

She pointed and he caught her to him again . . .

Harry left her in her deserted aerie, returned to the garden. His son was waiting. ‘Do you understand?’ The Dweller wanted to know.

‘Yes,’ Harry nodded. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

They entered the Mobius Continuum and Harry Jnr moved away very quickly, across the mountains to Sun-side and from there –

– To the sun! He stood off from that monstrous furnace in deep space, opened a Mobius door. Harry heard his hiss of torment, also his directed thought: Now!

Harry opened a Mobius door on the garden, trapped and fixed it there, let his son re-direct and pour sunlight through the Mobius Continuum and out through Harry’s door. The garden was at once bathed in intense, glaring, golden light!

Harry turned the door like the gun-turret of a tank, sending his shaft of concentrated sunlight sliding across the garden. The beam struck warriors where they ravaged forward across the saddle. It ate into them like acid, devouring their vampire flesh. For this was sunlight, but not thinned by distance, not diluted by atmosphere. It was the essence of the sun! The monsters melted, boiled away and slumped down into sticky black pools.

Ahhh! The Dweller’s agony was a fire in its own right, burning in his father’s mind. The beam shut off, gave Harry time to recoup, rest from the task of holding steady and controlling his Mobius door.

‘Son?’ his anxious thoughts went out along the Mobius way. ‘Are you all right?’

No!. . . Yes. Yes, I’m all right. Give me a moment. . .

Harry waited, conjured a door and looked out. He chose new targets: the Lords Belath and Menor where they came striding through a host of panicking Travellers, swatting them like flies.

Now!

Harry fixed the door, guided his son’s sun-blast through it. The brilliant beam fell on Belath and Menor like a solid shaft of gold. It super-heated them, blew away their skins and flesh in writhing, stinking evaporation. As the Travellers scrambled wildly away from them, they exploded into tatters of smouldering vileness.

Harry turned his beam to the north, found a warrior in mid-air, descending toward the defenders at the wall. He shrivelled the thing before it could come too close, reduced it to a tarry fireball that fell well beyond the cliffs. Other warriors were overhead, and flyers with their startled riders. Harry swung the door horizontally, turned its beam into a giant searchlight. The sun shone upwards, from the earth!

Monstrous debris rained from the sky, and: Ahhh! Again the beam was shut off.

‘Son! son!’ Harry cried into the Mobius Continuum. ‘Let that be an end to it. They’re beaten, moving off. Stop now, before you kill yourself!’

No! the other’s Mobius voice was a shudder. They must never recover from this. Go down onto the boulder plain, close to their stacks.

Harry understood. He did as directed.

Now!

The Dweller’s beam reached out and licked at the base of Shaithis’s stack. It played there for a moment, blazed in across bony balconies and through cartilage windows, found the gas-beasts in their places. In an uncontrollable chain-reaction of living bombs, the stack’s base exploded outwards, hurling rock, bones, cartilage carcasses and all far out onto the plain. The stack teetered, crumpled downward into itself, toppled. Falling, it flew apart; but before its gigantic sections could strike earth, already Harry had redirected his beam.

And one by one the aeries were brought crashing down on the shuddering plain, reduced to rubble, erased.

Twice more during the work The Dweller cried out and the beam was shut off. But in the end only the Lady Karen’s stack remained. And:

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