'Ah!' Maglore sighed and shook his head sadly. 'You remember, do you? And so we are come to this. You my friend and companion, a liar who hides his every waking thought from me. And why? Because if I were to see inside your head, I would know the treachery you plan.'
Nathan shook his head. His mouth was dry as dust but he forced words out of it anyway. 'I have planned no treachery against you, master.' It was true, and because his words were simple they carried conviction. No treachery against Maglore, but merely an escape from him ... Nathan clamped down on the thought at once. If Maglore were to suspect that he and Karz Biteri plotted flight ... and again he screwed the lid down on the contents of his mind. The effort caused perspiration to break out on his forehead.
Maglore saw it and smiled. 'You are hot, my son.'
'I've hurried,' Nathan answered.
The other nodded, and thought: Aye, and you're never lost for an answer, are you? No, for you are clever, and will serve my purpose ideally! You shall be my eyes and ears on the works of my enemies: those who exist now, across the world in Olden Starside, and those who are yet to be.
Maglore's probes were groping at the slippery, rotating wall of the numbers vortex, trying to find purchase there and so form a link with Nathan's mind. But it was a one-way system: Nathan read Maglore, but the Seer Lord couldn't read him! His mentalism was greater than Maglore's; he read him effortlessly, without even trying to, and as yet without attempting to understand what he read. And with the knowledge of his mental superiority, something of Nathan's confidence returned.
'And so you've hurried here,' Maglore nodded. 'Indeed you have - but from where?'
Obviously he knew, and Nathan dared not lie about it. 'I went down into Madmanse, but there was something there. I felt it, a presence. I fled before it, and returned here.'
Clever. He will survive. Why, this one might even try to outwit Shaitan himself. Maglore withdrew his probes and turned abruptly away. And his voice was slightly sour as he said, 'In your dreams you are not so stubborn.'
'My dreams?' So it had been Maglore after all. Unable to spy upon Nathan's waking mind, he had attempted to invade his sleep. But how often, and how well had he succeeded? 'Have you looked upon my dreams? But what harm is there in dreaming? And is it treachery to dream of freedom? I have no control over my dreams, master.'
Maglore faced him. 'You have no sinister purpose, then?'
'None.' Only a desperate desire to be out of here now; to convince Karz that we must flee; to get back to my own hind in OJden Sunside. But his secret mind was shielded, of course.
Then I've accused you falsely and you deserve an explanation,' Maglore nodded, however reluctantly; or was that, too, only part of the game which he played? 'Very well, I will tell you: The time rapidly approaches when I shall be master here. Not only in Runemanse, but the gorge entire, Tur-gosheim itself! You will have noticed how the Lords have perfected their flying warriors? I know you have. And for what? An attack upon Olden Starside and the renegade Wratha, who destroyed your tribe and in so doing sent you to me. Four months, sixteen sunups, until they set out. But Maglore stays here! I shall "keep" the gorge for Vormulac and be its caretaker, while the others go warring in the west. For I'm no warlord, do you see? And all the tribute of Olden Sunside shall be theirs, in that land you called home beyond the Great Red Waste.
'But here in Turgosheim: my responsibilities will be onerous, with much to watch over - all Starside and Sunside, too - and I'll harbour no dubious characters here in Runemanse to work against me while I perform my duties. Which is why I must be sure of my thralls, my lieutenants, my... friends? To that end I've visited you in your dreams, aye; for you're a strange one, Nathan, a most uncommon man. You say you have no knowledge of mentaliam, and yet your thoughts are unreadable, as if kept behind closed doors. Perhaps it's a "natural" thing, inherited like your freakish colours. But it's hard to trust a man whose thoughts are like the breath of bats, invisible.
'What's more, your dreams are stranger still! Who is it you talk to in your sleep? I have watched you sleeping; I know that you converse - but with whom, with what? Or is it just a dream? I doubt it, for I've sensed the thoughts of others from outside striving to reach you here. Who are they? Why is it I can't read them? And often the thought occurs: was this Nathan sent here, to spy upon me, perhaps? Ah, but wouldn't that be a thing: the Great Watcher, himself watched!
'But enough; I doubted you; perhaps I still do and should study you more carefully, or draw you closer to me ... in one way or another. I've neither bloodson nor egg-son, as you know. A man can't live forever; especially not a Zolteist. Who knows but that you could be my vehicle, my window on tomorrow? Would you make a fitting vessel, Nathan, to carry Maglore's egg into the future?'
He clutched Nathan suddenly, his eyes gazing scarlet into blue, his nostrils flaring under convoluted ridges. Nathan was rooted to the spot, frozen, near-hypnotized by Maglore's proximity. Behind his thin, cold, cruel mouth were jaws which could gape in a moment, a cloven tongue, and teeth - but such teeth - that could ruin a man's face, rend his throat or poison his blood forever ...
... But Maglore released him, turned away again, and said, 'You see what a quandary I'm in? So much to do and so little time, before I'm left alone here of all the Lords. And in addition to caring for Turgosheim, my own works to consider. For instance: an unruly flyer to change, an errant creature whose loyalty is suspect. Perhaps I'll bring him to heel, or simply reduce him to fats and fluids and vampire stuff for the fashioning.'
Nathan was aghast. He could only mean Karz!
'Leave me now,' Maglore said. 'I shall continue to trust you, for the moment at least. But for now I'm weary. We shall talk again. What will be will be.'
Nathan said nothing, made to creep away.
'But Nathan -' Maglore stopped him, as was his wont, '- I want you to think on this. I believe you would make a good son and a better Lord. You with your freakish colours and talents. It may not be your choice, but think on it anyway. Indeed, you must give it your most serious consideration ...'
He need not concern himself: Nathan could think of little else. On legs heavy as lead he made for the central stairwell, and pale as death descended. But he did not see Maglore watching him, or the grin on that one's malevolent face as Nathan passed from view.
Aye, think on it, Maglore thought (but secretly now, for he was sure of one of Nathan's talents at least). Think well on it, my son - on how you must flee from it - and so become my eyes on the great wide world beyond!
Ill Nathan waited out the long day and watched Maglore, but from a distance. The Seer Lord kept himself busy all day, and as night came down he retired. In this he was different from the other Lords; he took to his bed when he needed it, never on account of the sun alone.
But as soon as Maglore slept, then Nathan hurried to the launching bay ... and found Karz ready and waiting. Say nothing, that great sad creature told him, for there's really no need. Maglore was here today and looked at me, and I read it in his eyes that my time was up. Since when I have waited for you. So Jet's be up and gone from here.
The saddle was huge, heavy, and awkward. Karz assisted where he could: lowering his neck, offering advice in respect of belts and buckles. At any moment a vampire thrall or lieutenant - especially the surly Kar-path, who had been hovering over Nathan like a hawk for weeks now - might appear out of one of the stairwells. But the worst fears of the pair were not realized; there was only the wind and the deepening twilight, and the morbid lights of Turgosheim spread below and beyond.
Nathan opened the gates and edged his mount out to the rim of the launching ramp, and shivered as he climbed up into the saddle. He had food, which he placed in a saddlebag to the right of the pommel. Karz felt him in position - and felt his fear, tangibly clammy - as he flopped forward on to the ramp.
Hold on, he warned, unnecessarily, and in the next moment they were airborne. They soared out over the gulf, were buffeted into a steep climb on spiralling ther-mals, turned and passed high over the darkly jutting turret which was Runemanse. Nathan held his breath and looked down.
The wind was in his eyes, bringing tears; he could see nothing; the rearing west wall of the gorge was a blur. From somewhere in the east there sounded the dull rumble of propulsors: a training flight, it could only be. Then the gorge lay behind and the mountain range stretched ahead. 'Will we make it?'
I'm well fuelled, Karz answered, well rested, and I have volition and motivation. I want to make it. In this I surely differ from any flyer who came this way before. We'll make it, yes. Even as he fell silent a tail wind came up, driving them west with a vengeance. Nathan's eyes were clear now; he felt the exhilaration of his flight 'upon a dragon'; he breathed deeply, almost as if he had never really breathed before, of air which tasted clean and sweet.
And down below, behind, on the very plateau of Runemanse, Maglore and Karpath watched them go; and the Seer Lord said to his lieutenant:
'Two birds with one stone. I have rid myself of Karz, who in any case was problematic, and I've gained a window on a far new world. For Nathan is a telepath, and powerful. Awake he hid it for me, but asleep ... oh, I found my way in, from time to time. Now, whenever his guard is down, I can be in again. Why, he wears my sigil in his ear, only six inches from the centre of his brain!' He glanced at Karpath. 'Do you understand?'
'No, Lord,' the other shrugged apologetically.
Disgusted, Maglore grunted, scowled and looked away. 'On the other hand, perhaps there'll be times when I'll miss him.' While to himself: And I still don't know who he talked to in his dreams, except that they were not of this world .. .
The night was long, but barely long enough. Only Karz's will sustained him, while Nathan lolled in the saddle like a zombie: awake one minute, drowsing the next, then starting awake again. But as an amethyst dawn crept in like some glowing tide along the rim of the world, and secret watchers in the barrier mountains yawned and relaxed after their long night's vigil, making ready to go down into Sunside, so the great grey shadow which was Karz went wafting overhead on arched, aching manta wings, and dipped down towards the foothills over Settlement. He was seen, of course; the blast of a shotgun sounded, not aimed at Karz or Nathan for they were already gone into the gloom; the echoes rolled down into Sunside, faintly but loud enough, and the pair were guaranteed a welcome.
Nathan had not anticipated that there would be men out and about in the pre-dawn heights. The sound of the shotgun had come as a surprise. Several such weapons existed, he knew, all in the hands of the Szgany Lidesci. So then, the Lidescis had not succumbed to vampire domination. Good, and Nathan had prayed it would be so; but the very fact of it made for a change in those sketchy plans which he'd so hastily prepared in Turgosheim.
'We've been seen,' he told Karz. 'I had hoped to go down into Sunside on foot, in secret; show myself to the Szgany in streaming sunlight; approach them as a man - obviously a man! Now ... they will surely connect me with a flyer seen settling towards the foothills. Namely, you.'
It's your problem, Nathan, the other answered, but weakly. I have played my part and for the moment can do no more ...
They landed on a slope high in the foothills two miles west of Settlement, and while Karz munched on resin-laden pine branches, Nathan found flints and lit a fire under a hornet's nest in a patch of mountain gorse. Stung three times for his efforts, he didn't mind. He broke a small corner off the huge comb, chewed wax and honey alike for instant energy, then fed the rest to Karz.
That will get me where I'm going. The flyer was grateful.
'I've been giving it some thought,' Nathan told him, despondent for the other: that Karz, even a vampire changeling like him, should contemplate so hideous a suicide. For it seemed to Nathan that Karz's humanity was proven. 'Why don't you fly west, beyond the range of Wratha and her creatures in Karenstack? For you said it yourself: you're different from any flyer that ever was. You can find a Starside cave and make it your own, sleep out the days and forage for your food in the warm evenings or the long dawns before the sunrise.'
I'm a vampire thing and bulky, Karz answered simply. Pine cones and honey are not enough.
Down the slope someone stepped on a branch; there sounded a breathless, whispered query. Karz turned his huge soft eyes on Nathan and said, Szgany, even as I was once Szgany but no longer. These are your people, and it's time I was on my way.
Nathan slowly nodded. 'At least you are your own ... man.' Then he backed off, and Karz launched himself south for the sun and rose up into a bank of cloud heading in the same direction. For a moment he was a misty outline, then gone ...
Nathan knew how it must be and wouldn't go rushing to his doom. But neither could he flee from it, for that would be to admit his guilt when in fact he was inno- cent. Waiting for them to come, he sat down on a flinty outcrop. But when he saw the first head bobbing in the gorse, and heard the climber's hoarse panting, he stood up to shout: 'You on the hillside, listen to me! I'm not Wamphyri! My name is Nathan Kiklu! I'm Nathan, of the Szgany Lidesci!'
'Oh, really?' a young voice, hoarse with fear and breathless from the efforts of its owner's climbing, came back. 'And you came here on a flyer out of Starside, right?'
Nathan was cold, tired; the wonder was that he was alive, that he hadn't died of exposure. Now that his feet were on the ground, all he wanted to do was rest. Wearily, he held out his arms and said, 'I have no weapons. Only look at me. Do I look like a Wamphyri Lord or lieutenant?'
Gorse bushes parted and an anxious face peered through; a youth shouldered his way into view; he looked carefully all around, then gave a piercing whistle. His crossbow was loaded, and now he aimed it at Nathan's heart. 'What do you look like to me?' he said, squinting down his sights. 'You look like a dead thing!'
In Nathan's entire body, there was no ounce of resistance left. But he tried one last time. 'I'm Nathan,' he said, 'Nathan Kiklu. I'm just a man.'
'You're a liar,' said the other. 'I saw you and the flyer together. Say goodbye to all this, Nathan Kiklu.'
'What?' A gruff voice sounded from behind him, and a wiry shoulder knocked him aside. 'Did you say Nathan Kiklu?' A face which Nathan knew stared into his across a distance of no more than nine or ten feet. Then, however slowly, recognition registered, and with his jaw hanging slack the other stepped forward. In his arms he cradled a weapon from another world: a shotgun, all gleaming for the care and attention he gave it. And finally: 'Why, I'll be ...!'
Small, wiry, weathered, it was Kirk Lisescu ...
In Old Starside's last aerie a young Lord came starting awake in a cold sweat. His dream had been very vivid, very weird, and very uneasy. For even the Wamphyri were men upon a time, whose dreams are like those of common men, with the power to transport them back to other times and places; so that the terrors they knew in their youth, before they were vampires, may rise up to trouble them again.
In this dream there had been no blood. Instead, the young Lord had battled through the ranks of a thousand dead men whose bloodless, crumbling bodies stood up again as quickly as he cut them down! But even though his every effort had seemed useless, still he'd fought through them to get to That which they protected, the Thing which they guarded, his Great Enemy from a youth which was now almost entirely forgotten.
And when finally he had stood upon a mound of crumbling, stinking human debris - pieces which yet clutched and clawed at him to pull him down - then the aerie of his alien foe had materialized: a rearing cone of whirling, mutating numbers! And within the rush and swirl of the cone, the infinitely sad face of a yellow-haired, blue-eyed giant; made sad, perhaps, by the sacrifice of his teeming dead army, but not by that alone. For strangely, inexplicably, he also felt for his vampire enemy.
Nestor had somehow known it, that his enemy cared for him. And that was when he'd been wrenched awake, as the sad sapphire eyes of the face in the numbers vortex had gazed right into his soul, or what was left of it...
Now, standing naked and trembling beside the thickly curtained windows with his hand on the rope, Nestor's scarlet eyes stared almost vacantly west and a little south, as if his gaze might penetrate to the outside and over the boulder plains to the mountains, and across them into Sunside. The drapes were of black bat fur, thick and heavily weighted; not a chink of light passed through from the outside, and nothing of Nestor's gaze the other way. But he could imagine well enough. The peaks of the barrier range would be golden, and in a little while the sun would aim its beams this way, too, and shine on Wrathspire.
Wrathspire. That was what the Lady had finally named this place, these upper levels: Wrathspire, after herself and after the memory of another aerie which she'd fled from in the east. The Lady Wratha, aye: Nestor's Lady, now, for as long as that would last. Why, he might even love her, if he were capable of loving anyone. But all of that had gone out of him a long time ago; a dream which was wrenched from him, just as he had been wrenched from his dream. Except...
... Something of the dream remained, niggling there in the back of his wounded mind. The whirling wall of numbers, fading but - real? Absent for so long and only now - returned?
Returned ...
The thought of that - of his Great Enemy, returned -made Nestor's vampire flesh tingle. And what of his stolen love? Was she out there even now, together with him? And were they lovers again, plotting against Nestor anew as once before they'd plotted in a time long forgotten?
'What's on your mind? Do you walk in your sleep?' Wratha's sleepy mumble reached him from their bed, or her bed, to which she invited him ever more frequently, until it was hard to remember when he'd last slept in his own. 'Have no fear but open the drapes if you want to look out, for I would know it if the sun were up. Oh, it is, and burning - but in Sunside! Not on Wrathspire, not yet. No, for I would feel it there, scorching the stone.'
He glanced at her sprawled unashamed, half-in, half-out of the sheets; then looked again, stared, and held his breath. One marble breast that lolled a little, tip-tilted; a flat, dimpled belly; a pale, rounded hip; the curves of thigh, leg, ankle and delicate foot. And central, a tight black mass where her thigh joined her body, half-hidden by the sheet. He breathed again. She was a wanton, this Wratha, and beautiful.
'I don't need to look out,' Nestor told her, his voice already choked with lust, like his bruised manhood, reacting to the lure of her sex as if he'd never known her. 'For I know what's out there ... and also what's in here.' The room was in total darkness; it made no difference, for they were Wamphyri. Wratha lifted her head and saw him as clear as daylight, his shaft rising and hardening as his red eyes fed upon her.
Then come to bed and ride awhile,' she said. 'Or let me ride you, until you fire your juices into me. Or let my tongue tease the sweet nectar from you. Whichever way you will it, so long as we then may sleep. For though I'm weary, still I won't rest, not with you at the window like that.' And to herself: You are young, strong, beautiful, and mine.' And innocent? Oh, you were, you were.' Not a virgin, not quite, but next best. Some duJJ Szgany cow had known you, without knowing how to handle you. Ah, but Wratha knew! A touch was all it took. Why, I remember how you almost came in my hand the first time I touched you, and how I brought you along like an infant learning to walk ... since when you've learned to run! But to think of you running with someone else ... I would kill her first, or you, or both of you! Is that what disturbed you? Did you dream of her again? Of Misha? Only let me come upon a Misha - any Misha - among Sunside's sluts ... I'll throw her from the highest balcony!
He went back to the bed and at once sank into her flesh, which sucked at him as powerfully as the first time. That was how it was with Wratha: always like the first time. It was hot and it was cold and it was pain and it was pleasure, and when he thought he had nothing left there was always more. But it was not love, and both he and Wratha knew it.
Before they slept he let his mind drift out, out across the boulder plains to Sunside. But the searing sun was higher now and he felt it on the mountains; it leeched on his probe and weakened it, until he could feel its heat even from here. If the numbers vortex was there, it was shielded by an impenetrable veil of golden fire, which would last even as long as the day. But when the long day was done -
- There was always the night...
Two miles into the woods, in an area of freakish rock formations, hot springs and volcanic blowholes, there Lardis Lidesci and a team of tried and trusted men worked hard and sweated in tropical heat and acrid reek. Settlement lay to the north-east something less than three miles away, and the honeycombed outcrop of Sanctuary Rock stood half a mile closer, due north in the foothills. But here where the sprawling forest thinned out into an ugly scar or natural clearing, and the earth was a treacherous, crumbling, steamy grey crust streaked with ashes, sulphur and other mineral deposits, Lardis and his team built warrior traps.
The morning was already a quarter spent when Kirk Lisescu and three others, one of them a stranger, came out of the woods from the north. They hailed the old Lidesci where he supervised the lowering of the last framework of brittle poles into position over a lethal sulphur pit, to be covered with a camouflage of coarse nets and tufts of withered gorse dipped in sulphur to simulate life; the finished effect being to imitate firm ground. Tonight someone would stay out here, just one brave soul in all the empty miles around, to light small, discreet fires in the centre of this vast trap. The first would be lit an hour after sundown, the second when the first went out, and the last - if the others proved ineffective - midway through the night. From on high the place would have the appearance of a Szgany encampment, where some fool had forgotten to damp down the evening's fire. But as for any flyers or warriors who fell to earth here to investigate ....hey'd very quickly discover that it wasn't earth!
Eventually Lardis was satisfied; he looked up, squinted his eyes and frowned inquisitively at Kirk and his party, then walked a well-marked path to the safe margin where they waited. And: 'Kirk,' he called out. 'But you should be at the Rock and resting by now! And a well-earned rest at that! So what brings you...?' His query petered out, for in that moment Lardis had taken a closer look at the stranger.
'Someone I thought you'd like to see,' Kirk answered with a grin. 'For it's been ... what, almost a three-year?'
'Lardis,' Nathan smiled, however tiredly. They had slept on the way here, under the trees, but he was still bone-weary. His eyes were hollow and his flesh wan; there was grey in the corn of his hair, which was no longer cropped but fell behind his ears and over the back of his collar; he stood taller, and his voice was deeper. But still, of all the Szgany in all Sunside, there could be no mistaking this one. And yet...
... For a moment Lardis stood stock still, blinking like a man struck between the eyes. For it seemed as if there were two men here, and that he should know both of them. Or was it simply that his mind made connections with times, places, and faces? No, for Nathan wasn't born then. What possible connection could there be between him and ... Harry Hell-lander?
But in another moment the double picture swam into one as Lardis's eyes focused and finally goggled. And as his mental confusion receded, so his jaw fell open and his breath was expelled in a gasp of acceptance, recognition. 'Nathan Kiklu!' He choked on the words, staggered forward, grabbed Nathan and clasped him to his barrel chest.
'Careful, Lardis!' Kirk warned, only half-jokingly. 'It's Nathan, all right, but he came out of Starside - on the back of a Wamphyri flyer!'
'What?' The old Lidesci stepped back a pace, held Nathan at arm's length. 'You did what?'
'It's a long story,' Nathan nodded.
'Long and daft,' Kirk agreed. 'I know for I've heard it! But I believe it, because no one could lie like that! Why Nathan's been where Wratha and the others came from, and come out of it unscathed!'
'Unscathed?' Lardis had a grip on himself. Narrowing his eyes, he looked at Kirk more seriously, questioningly now.
'Oh, I've tested him,' the wiry hunter nodded his understanding. 'Silver, kneblasch, whatever. But the best test of all is sunlight, and here he stands soaking it up! He's pale as ever, is Nathan, but he's still one of us.'
Everything from three years ago came back to Lardis in a rush. 'Nathan! We sent a runner after you but he didn't find you. You don't know about your mother, and Misha, and -'
'- I know it all,' Nathan cut him short, laughing. But the laughter went out of him in a moment. 'And all that time wasted, when I could have been here with you ... with them.'
Unashamed tears filled Lardis's eyes and for a moment he couldn't speak. Then, gruffly, 'But now you're back, and you can make up for lost time. Man, you've been a trouble to me!'
'What?' It was Nathan's turn to frown. 'What makes you say that? How could I be a trouble when I've been away?'
'Aye, and left a broken heart behind you! I gave her a year, then suggested she should marry. Now hold on! -don't look at me like that! - for she, too, told me what to do with my suggestion! So she takes care of her father still, but only him now, for her brother Nicolae's been dead a year. Well, and he's one among many, but there are enough left to remember you and welcome you back. Your mother, too, brave women that Nana is. She never stopped hoping; she knew you would be back! Why, even now she's always talking about you ... and ...' He paused and fell silent, and something of the excitement went out of him.
Nathan understood and shook his head. 'I picked up Nestor's trail, but lost it in a river. I think he drowned.'
For a moment they were both silent, until Lardis said, 'Look, we're all finished here. We can talk on the way back to Sanctuary Rock. Then, this afternoon, I'll be busy again while you ... renew old acquaintances?' And the familiar grin was back on his face again.
The rest of Lardis's men had joined him; Nathan knew one or two of them; he clasped forearms with them Szgany style but was too choked up to speak. After that, until they were underway for Sanctuary Rock, it was all business again for Lardis.
'You men, get out into the woods and hunt,' he told them. 'Food for the people, and for the fire.'
The fire?' Kirk Lisescu looked at him.
Lardis nodded. 'This place looks like a trap pretending to be an encampment. But if we leave some portions of meat to be thrown on the fires, then it will smell like an encampment! Should any Wamphyri or the like happen this way, they'll know there's food down here. And where there's food there's always ... food. They won't look too close before coming in for the kill.'
As Lardis's men dispersed into the woods, he called after them, 'As soon as you're finished here, make for the Rock and get your heads down. We'll be at it again this afternoon.' He turned to one who stood apart. 'You, Janos Raccas: you volunteered to stay back and see to the lure. Well, I won't wish you luck, for I'm sure we'll be having a drink together tonight at Sanctuary Rock, or tomorrow morning at latest.' He clasped the other's forearm. And finally, to Nathan, Kirk, and his watchmen: 'Right then, let's be off. There's never enough sunlight, and it's too precious to waste just standing around in it...'
Nathan told his story, only holding back when it came to his mainly subterranean journey along the course of the Great Dark River. His debt to the Thyre was beyond value, and he wouldn't repay it in treachery. But in any case Lardis made no comment; obviously a man can travel a long way in three years; Nathan had simply skipped his uneventful trek across the desert.
Still, while Nathan talked, he did feel Lardis's eyes on him from time to time: frowning, wondering, speculating? But about what? He suspected that he would be able to read the older man's mind quite easily ... but he wouldn't. He'd learned from the Thyre how it was as well to respect the private thoughts of others.
And indeed Lardis was thinking strange and speculative thoughts: about Nana, and a man called Harry Hell-lander out of another world, and about Nathan: about his origins. The son of Hzak Kiklu? Not this one. Lardis should have seen it before. But if not Hzak's son, whose? Harry's? Nathan had always been the strange one. But how strange? He had lived with vampires, and returned ...
Then, feeling the lad's eyes upon him for a change, Lardis had snapped out of it. It was all speculation anyway, and only Nana would know the truth of it. Nana, aye. And now there were other things which Lardis remembered . .. but he must put them aside, for the moment at least.
Far more important was Nathan's warning of the bloodwar to come: the news that the Wamphyri of Tur-gosheim planned an invasion of Wratha and her colleagues in Starside, which they would launch just four months from now. In the aftermath of that war, no matter what the outcome, the shadow over Sunside must surely be that much darker, and the final dissolution of the Szgany as a free people so much more certain. For the vampires would be depleted, and could only replenish themselves in Sunside.
Then for a time Lardis was quiet, his thoughts shrouded, his mood gloomy where they strode out along a woodland trail. But in a while: 'Only if we're weak enough to let it happen,' he growled. 'In which case we would deserve it. But we're not weak, lad - far from it -and forewarned is forearmed. Now, let me tell you how it's been for us while you were away ...
'The Wamphyri have raided Settlement eight times since then, but never so effectively as that first time and always to their cost. Does it surprise you that we're still around, still fighting back? It shouldn't.
Wratha and her bullies are a handful, it's true, but they're still only a handful. Me, I remember when I was your age, when the vampires were a plague! We fought back then, and we always will. And never forget, we have two great allies: the barrier range and the golden sun.
'Eight times they've been back, but a while now since the last time. That was when Misha lost her second brother, Nicolae. But as for the Wamphyri, they lost a great deal more. We have weapons, Nathan, and intelligence, and humanity! But all they have is their lust for blood and their mutual hatred. The first time they came - that night they took your brother, Nestor, and my own son, Jason - they were organized under Wratha; since when, they've become a rabble! They've split up and gone their own ways; they have no single leader as such but squabble with each other as in the old days, and with much the same result: vampire anarchy, disorder, fragmentation. Recently there have been rumours that they're working together again, some of them, but I doubt it.
'Do you remember Vratza Wransthrall, the night we burned him? I'm sure you do: how could you forget the things he said, when you thought that Canker Canison had taken Misha? Well, he as good as admitted that Wratha's plan was to build herself an army, with which to fight off the rest of them when they followed her out of Turgosheim. Or she might even use it to invade Turgosheim in her own right. Except it hasn't worked out that way.
'For now, as individual Lords - and "Lady", of course - they are lessened. Their raiding parties consist of a leader, two or three lieutenants, three flyers at most, and a warrior or two. They daren't keep more than a handful of lieutenants each for fear of treachery, of being usurped! Which has been to our advantage.
'I say again, they've raided Settlement just eight times since that first time, and each raid has cost them dearly! Do you remember the shotgun shells, the tubes of silver shot and black powder which provide the energy and killing substance of our guns? We exhausted them eighteen months ago, fighting off an attack. But then - a miracle! I sent a party of men across the mountains into The Dweller's garden, his armoury. The whole place has fallen into ruins; but in one of the little houses backed up to the wall of the saddle - in a cave at the back, snug and dry under dust and old leathers they found a box of shells. A whole box! Perhaps it was handed out to someone at the time of the battle for the garden, someone who never got the chance to use it. But it was an important find for two good reasons.
'One: we had one hundred and sixty good shells for use as early warning devices - not to mention lethal weapons - against the Wamphyri and their lieutenants. Two: ever since I saw The Dweller's weapons in action, I knew that we must have them. Which is why I've kept old Dimi Petrescu hard at it all these years trying to duplicate that black powder. Now that we had these shells, I could give Dimi a little more of the original stuff to work with. Until finally he succeeded!
'....r almost. Dimi's stuff isn't as good and it doesn't make effective cartridges, but it does make a bang! You remember the giant crossbows in Settlement? We still have them. But we also have rockets, and a lot of them! But dangerous? I've had a man blind himself, and another who blew an arm off. Ah, but on the other hand, when these things work properly, then they really do work! During one raid a year ago - Gorvi the Guile, it was, with a small handful of his lads and a warrior -didn't we make him pay? You can bet your life we did! Just you wait, Nathan, and you'll see! You'll see!
'And we've learned, lad, we've really learned. More than we ever knew before, and faster. Do you know what a flyer is? Certainly, for you flew one here out of Turgosheim. But do you know what a flyer in a pit is? No? Then I'll tell you: a flyer in a pit is a dead thing! Stick a flyer in a hole in the ground and it's useless; it can't launch itself, and has to be dragged free before it can get airborne again. So we dug pits in strategic positions in and around Settlement, with spikes in the bottom to impale their ugly bellies. That worked for a while, until the Wamphyri got the idea. Then they began crashing their beasts onto our houses, and launching them from the rubble. So we made dummy houses, fragile frameworks, with pits underneath! What's more, we left barrels of Petrescu's powder down there, all fused-up and ready to detonate! We've learned how to blast those wormy launching limbs right off them, melt 'em down hissing in their pits, and bury 'em for good when the stink has blown away!' Lardis smacked his lips, found relish in detailing the more gruesome aspects of his defensive systems.
Their warriors are the worst, of course,' he eventually continued, 'but even they are not invulnerable. We used to run from them once, but not any more. If you can get an explosive device into a warrior's gasbag, that's half the battle. And if you can explode oil of kneblasch in there, that's even better! You see, warriors manufacture gas for lift, buoyancy, but when they're on the ground the gas soaks back into their systems and the bladders are retracted. So, if you doctor a warrior's bladders with kneblasch just as he's coming in to land - he's done for, poisoned! Oh, they thrash around a bit and they're noisy about it, but they quiet down after they've burned a while ...' He gave a sharp, vicious nod.
'As for the Lords themselves, silver shot is the best bet. If you could hit one in the eyes he'd be finished. We've taken out lieutenants that way, with our shotguns, no trouble at all. But a lieutenant isn't a Lord. They're just too damned clever, the Lords, and we haven't managed to stop a one of them as yet. It's their Wamphyri senses. With more than the five we've got, they can sense trouble coming. They send their troops in first to clear the way, and as often as not to die for them. But a Lord is different. He can breathe a mist and melt right into it ...' Lardis paused to get his breath, then said:
'Aye, and I've gone on a bit, haven't I? But I wanted you to understand. We haven't given in to them, and we're not about to.'
Finally the old Lidesci fell silent, which gave Nathan the opportunity to say: 'But you've done so well! It's all ....onderful! And is it like this for all of the Szgany? Right across Sunside?'
Lardis glanced at him, shook his shaggy head and looked away. 'How can it be? Charity begins at home, son, and as far as I know it's only like this for the Szgany Lidesci. What do you expect? How far do you think we can stretch ourselves?'
'And the people of Twin Fords, Tireni Scarp, Mirlu Township and all the other towns and tribes?' Nathan's excitement was swiftly ebbing.
Lardis shrugged, but not callously. 'Should I give them gunpowder, so that they in turn may give it to the Wamphyri? How long before supplicant tribes started making it for them, eh? Or are you asking why I haven't gathered all of the tribes together? I'll tell you: because I've been through all of this before, Nathan, and small is safe. Now listen, Sanctuary Rock is only so big. Its caverns will take my people, but barely. And only my people know its secrets! Lad, why do you think I built Settlement where it stands, or leans, now? Because it was close to Sanctuary Rock, that's why! I never did trust my luck all that much, and as it happens I was right not to. No, for I knew that if there was a way back, the Wamphyri would find it. You know how a lichen clings to a rock? Well, that's nothing, compared to the way they cling to their filthy, miserable existence!'
'And Travellers when they pass through?' Nathan's voice was much quieter. 'Do you still give them shelter?'
'If they come in daylight, and if I know them, aye. But in the evening, or the night ... you're making jokes, Nathan! Think, man! Things aren't like that any more. Would you harbour a leper in your camp? Of course not. Well, then, how much more virulent is a vampire?'
Nathan nodded. 'You're right, of course ...' And after a moment's silence: 'What about the other townships? How have they fared?'
'Badly!' Lardis answered at once. 'Karl Zestos leads the people of Twin Fords, what's left of them. They're Travellers now, a small band torn to pieces in the raids. Karl's no fool, though. He's learning, just like I had to learn when I was his age. They have caverns in the cliffs east of here; not as good as Sanctuary Rock and not so easily defended, but they're working on it.'
Nathan nodded. 'He asked me to join him that time when I passed through Twin Fords. I liked him well enough, but I was still looking for Nestor. What about Mirlu Township?'
'Swept away!' said Lardis. 'Scattered, gone! Four or five sunups after Settlement, then it was Mirlu Township's turn. We expected them to come back here, if only to punish us for what we did to Vratza. But they fell on Mirlu instead. The brothers Wran and Spiro. They must be madmen!' (And Nathan thought: they are!) 'Sent in a warrior to wreck the place, and waited outside for the people as they fled. Aye, and the bastards recruited a few that night! The survivors are Travellers now, like all the rest. Only me and mine, and the folk of Tireni Scarp, have managed to hang on to what was theirs. And then by the skin of our teeth.'
Through the trees Nathan could see the foothills and the dome of Sanctuary Rock. The morning was only a third done and he was almost home. Or if not home exactly, back among his own people at least. He felt his heart leap inside him. His mother was alive and well... and Misha! All weariness fled, he felt he must run the rest of the way; and Lardis sensed it in him.
'Can't let you go, lad,' he said. There'll be some who know you, but others who don't. And there's not much of trust in men these days. You go in there bragging how you flew home on a vampire thing .. .' He shook his head. 'Anyway, I'm just as eager as you, if only to see your mother's face.' He glanced at Nathan and grinned. 'Not to mention Misha's.'
Nathan grabbed his arm. 'Is she ... is she ...?'
'She's a beauty!' Lardis stopped him. 'Ask any one of the young, single men and they'll all tell you the same thing: that Misha Zanesti is beautiful.'
Nathan's face fell. 'The young men? But, does she ... has she ...?'
'Now hold!' said Lardis. 'What's all this? Are we back to stuttering again? And why ask me? I'm an old lad and past that sort of thing - well, almost. Anyway, another hour and you'll be able to ask the girl herself.'
An hour! It sounded like a lifetime.
But it wasn't. ..
On the final approach to Sanctuary Rock along dusty foothill trails, Lardis and the others stepped very care- fully. 'Pits everywhere,' Lardis informed. 'Can you see them?'
'Now that you mention it, yes,' Nathan answered. 'A man would have to be a fool to fall into one.'
Lardis gave a grunt and shrugged. 'Well, people do forget from time to time, and then we have accidents. But flyers and the like aren't as bright as men -' (then, remembering Nathan's story about Karz Biteri) '- well, not usually. And anyway, at night they use their noses as much as their eyes.'
They climbed closer to the Rock, a gigantic outcrop jutting from the wooded hillside, bald and domed on top, but hollow as a rotten tooth in its base. 'And do you live here now?' Nathan had been inside the place as a child; it seemed a dire sort of existence, to actually live here.
'We hide here,' Lardis answered, 'but we still "live" in Settlement - because I won't let go! It's no great distance, and we always come back to the Rock at nights. But the Wamphyri? Territorial? Hah.' They don't know the half of it!'
'But if you still live in town, why have we come up here?'
'Because right now this is where the work is. Enough for everyone. We're hollowing the place out, making it liveable, and charging the larger outer caves with Dimi's powder. Yet another way to kill a warrior: flatten the bastard under a hundred tons of rock!'
'Without flattening yourself?'
'We've tunnelled our way through to the back and far side. It's quite a maze in there. So that now the Rock's a sanctuary, a makeshift home, a lethal trap and an escape route all in one. The Wamphyri haven't discovered us yet and with luck they never will. If they do...' Again Lardis's fatalistic shrug, 'it will cost them as dearly as it costs us.'
In the main entrance a chain of people, men and women, passed heavy leather buckets laden with dirt and small rocks from the inside to the open, and there tipped them over the rim of a shallow bluff on to the scree slopes below. Sweating and grimy, the people looked much alike. Most of them merely glanced at Lardis and his party, nodded, and carried on working. But one of them dropped her bucket and the work came to a halt.
Then ... it was as if a whirlwind had struck! Nana rushed at Nathan so as to almost knock him down. He wrapped her in his arms, grabbed her up fiercely, kissed her dirty neck and hugged her like a lover. His mother! Alive and well! Finally they held each other at arm's length, and Nathan's eyes drank Nana in; he let her aura, her smell - no, her scent - wash over him, and thought, She's so ... small!
'You're so ... big!' she said. There were tears behind her eyes, but she wouldn't cry in front of people.
Lardis put an arm round each of them. And to Nana: 'Take him to your place in the Rock,' he said. 'Let the work go. No one here will grudge you that.' His voice was husky, too.
On their way inside, still holding each other, they found their way blocked as a huge, frowning figure stepped out of the line. It was Varna Zanesti, Misha's father. He clasped forearms with Nathan, nodded and said, 'Well, what a sight for sore eyes you are! And do I have a son at last, or what?' As ever, Varna was straight to the point.
At first Nathan didn't understand, so Varna prompted him, 'That conversation we had, in Settlement that morning?'
Then Nathan understood, sighed and said, 'I'm honoured.'
'Huh!' Varna grunted. 'Damn right you are! Very well then, I'll see to it - and at once!' Finally he grinned.
'Where is she?' Nathan asked.
'In the woods with the children, teaching, gathering nuts, fruits. Will midday suit you?'
'Eh?'