Vampire World I: Blood Brothers

PART FOUR:



Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers



The Brothers - The Raids



I



Predawn twilight on Starside, sunup a few hours away, and the peaks of the barrier range already changing from one massively homogeneous black-fanged silhouette to gaunt, grey-featured sentinels in their own right, each taking on its own unique shape. Soon the sun's rays, glancing through the high passes, would colour them gold. The change from dark to light was always inspiring, even gladdening.



So thought Lardis, head man of the Szgany Lidesci.



But to have spent the best part of a night here - on Starside! at sundown! - under the silver light of the moon and the blue glitter of the stars ... and to have slept here! It was a thought which invariably set Lardis's scalp to tingling, brought gooseflesh creeping, and a sense of awe, wonder and heart-pounding horror bursting out afresh from every inch of his body and soul...



Every fifty sunups or thereabouts, Lardis would make this . .. this what, pilgrimage? - this passage of exorcism, anyway - into Starside, and across the barren boulder plains to the tumbled stacks of the Wamphyri; to Karenstack, the last aerie, and back again through the great pass to Sunside. But he knew he would never make it alone, that the ghosts of all that had been would journey with him, touching their cold fingers now and then to the knobs of his spine.



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A rite of exorcism, aye: to drive out the demons from his dreams and the olden nightmares even from his waking hours. A renewal of his faith, his belief - that the Wamphyri were no more, and would never return - in the shape of one more trek across their ancient territories, through all the long lonely hours of sundown, which had been their time. That was why Lardis came, why he continued to come and always would, as long as his legs could carry him: to convince himself of the marvellous truth, that they were no more.



'Dead and gone forever,' he muttered, mainly to himself, pausing to look back on Starside from a vantage point in the foothills, not far from the mouth of the pass. 'Wiped out in a body and cleansed from the world in what they thought was the hour of their triumph, when they toyed with their victims and glutted themselves at the shining sphere Gate. All of them that were left: Lord Shaithis, and even Shaitan the Unborn himself, who was their father, destroyed with their creatures. Likewise the Lady Karen, burned up in a single breath of hell, in the searing fire of something more hateful than all of them together! All gone, those creatures of evil. And possibly ... possibly some that were good, too, even if they did bear the seeds of evil within them.'



'Some that were ... what, "good", did you say?' An old and trusted friend and companion of Lardis's, Andrei Romani, stood there with him. 'Oh, really? The Wamphyri, d'you mean? Then perhaps you'll be so kind as to refresh my memory, for I'm damned if I can remember any that were good!'



Lardis glanced at him and nodded knowingly. 'Yes, you can. You're being contentious, that's all. What about Harry Hell-lander, called Dwellersire, who came from a world beyond the Gate to stand side by side with his son in the battle for the garden? And what of The Dweller himself, who with his father toppled all the stacks of the Wamphyri down on to the plain? Aye, and even the Lady Karen, who stood with them and fought against her own kind.'



Andrei looked astonished. 'Her own kind? Their own kind, you mean! She and the others, they were all Wamphyri! Harry Hell-lander, who could come and go in a twinkling, and call up the dead: he was Wamphyri, as well you know. Likewise his son, called The Dweller, who became a wolf ... and how was that for a hell-spawning menace? As for Karen: you forget, Lardis, that I was there in the garden that time, when she tore the living heart out of Lesk the Glut, and stood there laughing, drenched in his blood! Now she was Wamphyri! Aye, but the plague was in all of them, so don't tell me what's evil and what isn't! Me, I say that somewhere there's a God, and that finally He'd had enough of them. So that night He took 'em all, every last one, which left us to act as custodians of the peace.'



Lardis and Andrei: they were older now and their joints stiffening just a little, their hair mostly turned grey, and their eyes not quite so bright. But their memories were still sharp. And after all, fourteen years isn't such a very long time, not for memories such as theirs. So for all that they argued, each knew that the other was right in part, and so a balance was maintained.



'You're right,' Lardis grunted at last, 'and it's best that they're gone, all of them. But still I often wonder: if not for Harry, The Dweller, Karen ... what would have become of us? Where would we be now?'



'Dust, most likely,' Andrei answered, 'and nothing would matter any more.'



'And our children?'



There was no answer to that. Instead of searching for one, Andrei shivered and stamped his feet, then changed the subject. 'What the hell are we waiting for, anyway?' he wanted to know, raising his voice. And: 'Where the hell is that misfit son of Nana Kiklu?'



'What, me, a misfit?' came a loud, laughing inquiry from the shadows in the mouth of the pass. In the next moment there was movement there, where Nestor Kiklu and Lardis's son, Jason, had gone on ahead. They came out of the shadows into full view, and again Nestor inquired: 'Is someone taking my name in vain?'



'No, not you, but your dumbstruck brother Nathan,' Andrei shouted back. 'It's him who's keeping all of us waiting!'



Their shouting echoed reverberatingly through the pass, rolled up into the mountains and bounced down again, rang out across the plains of Starside. Lardis didn't much like it; it caused the small hairs to stir to life at the back of his neck, and made his breath plume that much faster in the cold air. Nor did he care for people calling Nathan Kiklu names, not even in misconceived jest, and not even Andrei. Oh, Nathan was a dummy, true enough, but there was a lot more than that to the lad. And: 'Quiet!' Lardis warned. 'For all that Star-side's empty now, still it's no place for shouting ...'



But someone had heard them, at least.



Down on the rim of the low crater which housed the Gate, Nestor Kiklu's twin brother Nathan came back to life where he stood gazing into the white hypnotic glare of the half-buried sphere of alien light. He mustn't touch that shining surface, he knew, on penalty of being drawn into it and vanishing forever. Out of this world, anyway. But still he was tempted.



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Tempted ... but not entirely stupid. For there were times when life seemed very good to Nathan right here, or rather, on Sunside. Sometimes life was good, anyway ...



It was just that the Gate was such a weird, inexplicable thing. If it were really a doorway into some other place, for instance - a place where there were people - then why didn't they come through it and make themselves known? Lardis Lidesci said that in the old days they had come through now and then, and that the Wamphyri had prized them for their strange powers. Maybe that's why they'd stopped coming. On the other hand, Lardis had been known to say many things about the Gate, the old days, the hell-landers ... everything.



Why, Nathan had even heard it rumoured that there'd once been a hell-lander woman Lardis had fancied! Except she already had a man, also a hell-lander. Her name had been Zek, short for Zekintha, and she could pick a man's thoughts right out of his head! Well, and so could Nathan, sometimes; Nestor's thoughts, anyway. But this Zek: she'd been pale and blonde, blue-eyed and ... beautiful? Now how could anyone with colours like those be beautiful? None of the Szgany had them -with the exception of Nathan himself, of course.



Anyway, most of these events Lardis spoke of had taken place before the Kiklu brothers were even born, and as Nathan had noted, with the passage of time Lardis found a great deal to say about almost everything of yesteryear. It wasn't so much that he was very old (though certainly his youth, as the leader of a wandering Szgany tribe in the shadow of the Wamphyri, must have taken its toll of him), but that there was little now to occupy his mind, so that he was wont to dwell too much in the past. Which was something Nathan understood well enough, for on occasion he was himself given to dwelling in other worlds, and adventuring in lands of fantasy. It helped shut the real world out: the sounds of Settlement and its scathing voices, with all the taunts and questions which in the main Nathan no longer bothered to answer, or answered with his stumbling stutter. For ever since the night of the red clouds and the thunder in the hills, he had spent his time withdrawing from this world.. .into others.



Other worlds, yes, and lands of fantasy ...



... The twilight mountainsides, for instance, when he was alone and his wolves would come whining out of the hills to be with him. That was a secret, however, something he kept to himself, lest Settlement's Szgany youths call him a liar. For as everyone knew, wolves must be caught as pups and trained, or else they can't be trusted.



... And in his daydreams, which he knew were morbid things, however much they fascinated him.



... But especially when he slept and dreamed of ... oh, of all manner and shape of things! Of the crumbling dead in their graves, who could talk to him if they wanted to but would not, though he frequently overheard them talking to each other; of meaningless yet maddeningly familiar numbers, cluttering his reeling brain until he thought his head must fill and burst from their constantly mutating rush and whirl; and of a different world of men which was weird and unknown as the spaces between the stars.



. .. Perhaps like the world beyond the Gate?



Again the shouting of the others reached out to him from the foothills and the pass; until at last Nathan backed away from the coldly glaring source of his fascination, and jumped down from the low crater wall. But as he picked his way very carefully between the gaping mouths of giant, perfectly circular wormholes where they pierced the ground and angled down into otherwise solid, compacted earth and rock all around the perimeter of the Gate, still he sensed the lure of the silent, shining sphere, and felt it like a magnet in his mind.



'Nathan!' Andrei Romani's call came yet again, distantly, followed in a while by the echoes of his bull voice rolling down from the hills: 'Nathaaan!'... 'Nath-aaan!... Nathaaan!'



Nathan had moved away from the Gate now, but still was unable to tear his eyes or his thoughts from it. The Gate to the hell-lands, another world, and possibly a world that was terrifying.



When Lardis talked of what had happened that night fourteen years ago, he usually spoke of 'a breath of hell', which came roaring out of the Gate to burn the Wamphyri in its fire. But at other times and less romantically, he had admitted that it might have been some kind of unthinkable weapon, whose power was such that the hell-landers themselves had little or no control over it. 'Whatever their world was like before,' (he would say), 'it really must be hell now, if that was merely the backdraught of one of their wars! Zekintha told me all about that: how their weapons were devastating.'



Measuring his pace, Nathan started to run. He had kept the others waiting too long and they'd be impatient. He was right: almost a mile away, Andrei Romani was complaining again. 'Is he deaf as well as dumb?'



"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"



Coming lithely, jinglingly from the mouth of the pass, Nestor and Jason joined the two older men. 'No,' Nestor shook his head and gave a disdainful grimace. 'My brother's neither deaf nor daft, nor even dumb. He doesn't want to speak, that's all. He's just... Nathan.'



Lardis glanced at Nestor, could almost taste the bitterness where his mouth puckered on his sour words. A pity they weren't closer, he thought, like they'd been as children. For then they had been inseparable.



Nestor had looked after his brother until they were well into their teens. Maybe he'd looked after him too well, fought one too many fights for him, taken one too many knocks on his behalf. Whatever, it wasn't the same between them now. And then there was Misha, of course. Young boys will always be boys and friends, until they grow into youths and become rivals.



Nathan and Nestor Kiklu: Nana's sons ...



Twins, yes (Lardis continued to consider them), but in no way identical. Indeed, they seemed poles apart: in their looks, philosophies, lifestyles. Nestor upright, brash, devil-may-care, outspoken and even noisy; Nathan weighed down (but with what?), withdrawn, serious, and silent of course.



Nestor was like his mother. Only see them together, and there could be no hiding the fact that he was her son. Except where Nana was small, Nestor was tall; as would his brother be tall, if only he would stand up straight! Long-limbed, both of them. Which was somewhat strange in itself; for their father, Hzak Kiklu, had been small like Nana. All the better for hiding in holes in the ground. Perhaps that was the reason. Many children had grown up tall and strong, since the destruction of the Wamphyri.



Nestor had his mother's dark, slightly slanted eyes, her straight nose however small, her glossy black hair falling to his broad shoulders. Her smile, too, which could be mysterious at times. His forehead was wide; his cheekbones high; his chin jutted a little, more so when he was angry. His body was that of an athlete, and he wore his jacket with the sleeves rolled back, to display the width of his forearms. He looked Szgany through and through. That was Nestor, a youth to be proud of. But as for Nathan: Well, a throwback there! Though to what, Lardis couldn't imagine. Nathan's eyes were less tilted, and for all that they were the deep blue of a sapphire, still they lacked the gem's great depth. Their gaze was usually vacant, misty, or at best wandering (much like the mind which directed them, Lardis supposed, and indeed, much like the lad himself). But the strangest thing about him was his hair, which was the colour of damp straw! It was like Zek's hair, but a little darker, and Nathan kept it cropped as if ashamed of it. Possibly he was, for like his other anomalies it set him apart.



As for the rest of his features: they were not too dissimilar from Nestor's. A strong chin, high cheekbones, broad forehead ... his mouth was fuller than Nestor's, less cynical, but given to twitching a little in the left-hand corner. Then of course there was his skin, which was pale to match the colour of his hair; so that all in all, he scarcely looked Szgany at all.



His mother said his pallor was due to spending too much time indoors, or walking abroad at sundown, when most of the Szgany stayed close to home. According to Nana, his health in general was poor, so that he avoided the common activities of Settlement's more active youths and preferred his own company. Well, the latter was quite obviously true enough. But to Lardis's knowledge, the rest of it simply didn't add up. On the contrary, Nathan seemed a wanderer born, and was forever out and about. Sunup and sundown alike, you would find him in the forest or on the mountain slopes, anywhere but indoors. And sickly? Lardis didn't think so. A disinclination towards japing, girl-taunting and -chasing, and rough-and-tumbling with the other louts didn't automatically make him sickly, did it?



No, Nathan wasn't just the runt of the litter, he was a throwback. But to what? And if he didn't look Szgany, then what did he look?



Lardis had pondered that question time and again: who did Nathan remind him of? Whose was that soft, that compassionate, indeed that innocent look in his eyes? But as always it remained a puzzle, an aggravation, a word stuck to the tip of his tongue which refused to eject and reveal itself. And Nathan himself an aggravation, so that at times even Lardis could kick him - if only to stir him to life!



That was why he had asked Nana Kiklu if he could bring her boys with him this time, into Starside on his annual pilgrimage: to get Nathan away from his old haunts, try to stir him into life. Maybe he'd find something here in the awesome barren wilderness to lure his mind back from wherever it wandered now ...



Even as Lardis Lidesci thought these things, so there sounded the soft, regular pad of flying feet and the clatter of pebbles, and an approaching man-shape silhouetted against the glare of the near-distant Gate. And as the light grew marginally brighter over Starside, Lardis's thoughts immediately changed tracks.



"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"



What, sickly, this one? Well, if so, then Lardis wished he was as sickly as that, with heart and lungs banging effortlessly away, as once they had used to, to power his tireless limbs. And vacant, Nathan? Not now at least. No, for his eyes were shining where he came panting to a halt, and shrugged in that apologetic way of his. He was sorry he'd kept them waiting.



'Did it interest you, then, the Gate?' Lardis asked him, before anyone else could speak.



Nathan already had his breathing under control. He looked at Lardis and nodded, however slowly. But a nod was an answer, which in itself was an improvement; usually you wouldn't even get that out of him. And Lardis was pleased. It was like when they sat at the campfire in Settlement and he told his stories of the old times, and sensed Nathan's attention rapt upon him above all the others put together. A dummy? Well, perhaps ... but only on the outside.



'Huh!' Nestor grunted. 'Oh, he's interested, sure enough. Interested in all the weird, unanswerable things. Stars in the sky: how many there are. Ripples on a river: why he can't count them. Where people go when they die, as if the smoke from their funeral pyres isn't answer enough in itself. And now the hell-lands Gate? Why, of course he's interested in it! If it doesn't matter a damn, then Nathan's bound to be interested in it.'



Again the sourness in his voice.



But Jason, Lardis's son, who was eighteen months younger than the Kiklu boys, was less hard on Nathan. 'The world's not much to Nathan's liking,' he said, 'and he steers as far clear of it as he can. Which is a very hard thing to do, because of course he must live in it! That's why he concerns himself with things which seem to us irrelevant. This way he has his world, and we have ours, and we don't cross over too much one way or the other.'



(And Lardis nodded, albeit to himself, for he considered this a statement of astonishing perception.)



Lardis was proud of his son; Jason was open-handed, instinctively fair-minded, handsome in his dark Gypsy fashion, and intelligent. But just like anyone else, he was wont to err now and then. Like now. And:



'The Gate isn't irrelevant,' Lardis quickly corrected him. 'Come up here a moment.' They climbed a small knoll - no more than a hump of jagged rock - to a slightly higher elevation, and from there looked back on Starside. Specifically at the Gate.



'It's getting lighter now,' Lardis pointed out what must be obvious to anyone. 'Another hour or so and the peaks will turn to gold, and so what I wanted to show you isn't so clear any more. Far better in the heart of sundown. And anyway it's fading with the years, washed down into the barren soil by the rains, and carried away by warm winds out of Sunside. But do you see the glow?'



They saw it: Maybe a hundred and fifty paces beyond the Gate, a raw crater in the earth whose sides were rough and broken, with a rim of fused slag like puckered skin around a giant wound. More stark and jagged than Starside's usually rounded boulders and other natural features, which had been worn down by the elements through untold centuries, this was a more recent thing, as if a shooting-star had crashed to earth here only a few short years ago.



Spreading out from the crater's farthest rim, a faintly glimmering plume of light lay upon the earth like the luminous early-morning ground mists of Sunside. A long, tapering spearhead, feather, or finger, it pointed towards the Icelands on the blue, aurora-lit horizon. But it was the earth itself - the barren soil and the stony ground - which glowed with this soft yet sinister radiance; as if some giant slug had passed this way, leaving its slime-trail to shine in the light of the stars.



'And over there,' said Lardis, pointing, his voice very quiet. Westwards, following the base of the mountains to the horizon and out of sight - given clearer definition in the shadow of the barrier range - the earth shone more brightly yet, with a light which came and went by degrees, like the foxfire of rotten wood or the cold luminescence of glowworms.



'Light,' Lardis gruffly continued. 'But not like the good clean light of day, nor even the light of a fire. A body can't live by it, and mustn't stay in it too long. It blasted Peder Szekarly that time, fourteen years ago: turned his skin white as a mushroom and robbed him of an heir. Aye, and it killed him, too, in the end. As for the trogs dwelling in the lee of the mountains: they paid the price, all right. It took them in their hundreds! But for their deep caves, they were finished for sure. Why, there are freaks among them still, whose fathers' blood was poisoned on that night of nights! The one good thing about it: it also fell on the swamps, since when we've had precious few vampire changelings ...'



'Aye, hellfire!' Andrei Romani nodded in agreement. 'And it's burning still, though not so hot now. Me, I say leave it be, and all of Starside, too. There's nothing but ghosts here now, and it's a wise man who leaves them to their own devices."



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'So you see,' said Lardis to Nestor, when they'd climbed down again and were headed for the pass, 'the Gate is hardly irrelevant. It's a marker shining there still, to remind us that this is the spot where the powers of the hell-lands and those of the Wamphyri clashed and cancelled each other out.'



'All very well,' Andrei put in, 'but what's all that to Nathan? Do you think it matters at all? I mean, do you think he understood or was interested in a single damn thing we've talked about? If so, well, he's not much for showing it!'



'He showed plenty of interest in the tumbled stacks of the Wamphyri,' Lardis replied. 'And in Karenstack, the last aerie, blackened like a chimney flue on that side facing the Gate. Aye, and I firmly believe he would have entered Karenstack to climb it, if we'd let him! And finally, it seems he also felt the mystery of the shining sphere Gate. If you ask me, I'd say that's a whole lot of interest - for a dummy.'



Just as they entered the shadow of the pass, he glanced at Nathan and saw the youth looking back at him. Nathan's eyes were shining again. With gratitude, Lardis thought.



But Nestor only said, 'About the Gate: I don't like to contradict you, Lardis - especially not you, a Lidesci, and leader of your people - but what is the Gate really except a ball of white light? So it attracted my brother ... so what? Don't moths flutter to a candle just as readily? And don't they get singed just as often?'



Which, however much he disliked it, was another statement Lardis couldn't dispute ...



For fifteen minutes or so they walked in shadows and silence, with only the jingling of their silver baubles to keep their thoughts company. Then a yellow glow came filtering down from above, as the first of the range's topmost peaks turned gold in the rays of a sun rising even now on Sunside. And:



'I timed that well,' Lardis grunted, pleased with himself. He struck off from the trail and climbed towards a ridge jutting over the western side of the pass. The others, all except Nathan who followed on directly behind Lardis (unquestioningly, of course), came to a halt and watched the two go. Until Nestor inquired of Andrei Romani:



'What now?'



'It's a ritual,' the other answered, 'which Lardis follows every year. Something he likes to see, back there on Starside. That jut of rock's his vantage point. Me, I've seen it before and can get along without it. I'll wait here and save my pins for walking. But you two can go on up, if you like.'



Nestor and Jason went scrambling after Lardis and Nathan, and after a steep but safe climb came upon them standing on a shelf from which they gazed north and a little east. The sunlight on the peaks was stronger now; it found passage between the high crags and cast a fan of beams out across Starside's sky. Up there, only the brightest stars survived; the stars, and the rippling auroras where they warped and fluttered over the far northern horizon.



'Sunup,' Lardis panted, his breathing still ragged from the climb. 'She rises slowly, the sun, along a low flat curve, and in the old days used to light on all the taller stacks one after the other in their turn. Now there's but one aerie left, as you've seen. But still I like to see the sun striking home in its topmost ramparts, and know that there's nothing hiding within, behind bone balconies and black-draped windows. Somehow, it's a very gratifying sight. But don't take my word for it; just wait and watch, and see for yourselves.' And he continued to gaze out across Starside.



Out there in what was once vampire heartland -rising up dramatically from a plain littered with the broken stumps and shattered segments of all the once-great stacks, which had not survived The Dweller's war on the Wamphyri - there stood Karenstack. Reaching almost a kilometre in height, the last aerie stood out as a lone fang of rock against the banded blue background of the north, its awesome shadow falling like a black, spastic arm far across Starside, and visibly stretching itself in the improving light, as if blindly groping for the north-eastern horizon.



The group on the bluff waited - a minute or two, three at the outside - for the sun's rays to sweep down, find them, and flood over them. Following which, in the very next moment, they observed the effect which Lardis had so desired to see: a golden stain spreading itself across the uppermost levels of the stack, burning in windows as hollow as eye-sockets, lighting up the grim mouths of launching bays, and seeming to set the high turrets and embrasures afire in a blinding effulgence.



And so like a giant candle, Karenstack stood falsely radiant amid Starside's silence, desolation and devastation ...



For long minutes the four stood there, their attention rapt upon the molten grandeur of Karenstack's crest, which had become the centrepiece in an otherwise bleak and barren scene. But as reflective angles changed and the golden fire began to fade on the stack's stone face, so their momentarily uplifted spirits settled down again and the sense of wonder departed.



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And from below: 'Ahoy, up there! Time we got on ..."



Lardis blinked, nodded, turned his face to the others. 'Andrei's right,' he said, shading his eyes against the unaccustomed dazzle. 'Let's get down.'



The young men went first, with Lardis bringing up the rear. But before following on behind, he cast one more glance out across Starside: its moonscape of endless, boulder-strewn plains, the distant glitter of a frozen ocean, the unvisioned but imagined Icelands under their fluttering aurora banners, and of course Karenstack. And at last he sighed and began to follow the three youths down into the gloom of the pass ...



....nd having descended a little way paused, rooted to the spot, suddenly frozen in his tracks. For Karen-stack was burning still in his mind's eye and on the lenses of his retinas. Karenstack and something else he'd seen, or thought to see - but what? He closed his eyes and the picture came up clearer: the aerie's crest aglow with its false halo of fire. But below the area of reflected light, where the golden rays could never reach: Black motes swirling, jetting, settling towards the yawning mouth of a vast landing bay; midges at this distance, but what would they be up close?



As if in answer to his inward-directed question, a small black bat hovered close to his face, fanning his cheek before side-slipping and stooping on a moth which he'd disturbed. In the next moment it was gone, and Lardis breathed easier. Bats, yes, that was what he'd seen: great clusters of them, closing on the stack. Except that unlike the little fellow who fanned his cheek, they'd been the great bats of Starside - aye, and familiars of the Wamphyri, upon a time - which Zek had called Desmodus. And their home would be Karen-stack itself, deserted now except for their black-furred colony.



'Father?' Jason's voice came from below. 'Are you coming? Can I give you a hand?'



'No, no,' Lardis husked from a dry throat, then swallowed and found his voice. 'I'm fine. I'm coming. Get on down.'



But from then on, and all the way back to where they had tethered their animals at the head of the descent to Sunside, and for most of the trek back to Settlement -which took the greater part of sunup to complete, for they had friends to see along the way - Lardis was far less given to talking and kept his thoughts to himself.



'Bats, yes,' he would mutter, and nod his head furiously, when the others were out of sight and hearing. The great bats of Starside.' Until, by the time they were home again, he had almost convinced himself.



During his waking hours, at least...



In his dreams, however, Lardis Lidesci was not convinced. For the blood of a seer still ran in his veins, and tormented him whenever he closed his eyes to sleep. It was weaker now, this sixth sense, this blessing or curse passed down to him out of a lost Szgany history, from some long-forgotten ancestor whose second sight must have been potent indeed, that its trace had survived all the sunups - and sundowns - flown between. But potent then, in some unknown long ago, and this was now.



It was now, and what small reserves of the thing remained in him seemed to have been running out ever since that time on Starside, when the Gate spewed fire and fury to write THE END on the last chapter of the Wamphyri. Or ... perhaps it ran as strong as ever in his veins, except in recent years there had been no use for it. For the Wamphyri were no more.



So why had it started to bother him again now? And why did it continue to bother him?



For on the long trek home he had slept and dreamed, and all of Lardis's dreams were nightmares, from which he would start snarling awake, wide-eyed and panting. Until, even in his waking hours, at last the four who travelled with him had heard him muttering: 'Bats, aye - the great Desmodus bats of Starside.' And they had seen him nodding his head furiously.



'What ails you?' Andrei Romani had wanted to know, as they approached Settlement in the hour before evening twilight. The youths had gone on ahead, to meet up with their young friends about the campfires -Nestor and Jason to dance a while perhaps, to enjoy the music, good cooking, company, conversation: to be Szgany - and Nathan to seek out and be with his mother.



'Nothing ails me!' Lardis had snapped. And then, almost in the same breath: 'Well, if you must know, my dreams ail me. And the mists. And the smoke from all those fires up ahead. And all the busy sounds of Settlement, which are a tumult even here, almost a mile away! What? Has all the caution gone out of the world? Do they tempt fate? Don't they know the hour, and that soon it will be sundown?'



He glanced all about, at the ground mist and the shadowy forest, finally at Andrei, who gazed back at him in amazement. And: 'Where is the watch?' Lardis continued. 'We haven't even been challenged! We've seen neither man, youth nor wolf, despite that we crossed into Lidesci territory well over an hour ago!'



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Andrei's astonishment, and his concern, were very genuine now. 'The watch?' he repeated. 'Man, you stood the watch down all of ten years ago! But the markers which define your boundaries are well maintained, and we haven't had a border dispute in ... oh, I can't remember! So why now, after all this time, do we suddenly need a watch?'



Lardis blinked his fierce brown eyes and something of the passion went out of them. He blinked again, frowned and shook his head. 'I ... I actually did that? I stood down the watch? Yes ... yes, of course I did.' For a single moment he looked shaken, confused, lost -



- But in the next the passion was back, and with it all the grim determination of his youth. He glanced knowingly at the darkening sky, where the first stars glittered like blue ice chips over Starside beyond the barrier range, sniffed suspiciously at the evening air, stared piercingly at a ground mist rising out of the woods. And: 'Great fool that I've been,' he growled, as if he couldn't believe it, 'I stood the watch down! ... And now must start it up again!'



Andrei Romani recognized it: that visionary fire in Lardis which had made him a great leader of the Szgany in a time when leaders were few and far between. But where once it had inspired men, now it caused a shiver to travel the length of Andrei's spine. 'What is it, Lardis?' he husked, gripping the other's arm. 'What did you see from that bluff in the great pass? I know you as well as any man, and you've not been the same since you climbed up there to watch the sun burning on Karenstack's face.'



Lardis felt Andrei's fingers digging into his arm, paused in his striding and turned to face him. His eyes held Andrei's as in a vice as he answered: 'I don't know what I saw, except that it frightened me and straightened out my addled senses. Or else addled them more yet.' He pulled himself free, turned and headed for Settlement as before.



Andrei frowned after him, then hurried to catch up. 'But you did see something?'



'Bats,' Lardis growled. 'Starside's great bats. That's what I took them for, what I've been telling myself they were ever since. Certainly they could have been, for I merely glimpsed them - a scattering of dots in the sky around Karenstack - which made no impression until after I'd started on my way down again. Well, and I know my eyes aren't all they used to be. But on the other hand, and if they weren't bats ... then what were they?'



Andrei's shrug tried hard to be careless but didn't' quite make it. 'But they were,' he said. 'It's just that you've been letting the old times crowd too close in your memory. Perhaps it's a warning: that you should give it a rest and quit trekking into Starside every fifty sunups or so. After all, you're not as young as you used to be.'



'No, and neither are you!' Lardis snapped. 'If you're so sure of what I didn't see, then why is your voice so anxious, eh? Who are you trying to convince, Andrei, me or yourself? But I'll tell you this ..." He broke his striding and rounded on the other. 'Since then it's like I've been asleep and I'm only now waking up. And my sleep had dulled senses which are only now coming alive. I can see, hear, feel, smell - I can remember -things! Things which I thought had gone forever.'



More stars had blinked into being. Again Lardis sniffed the night air, glared at the rising mist. 'Come on!' he said, striding harder yet for Settlement. 'And say no more. If I'm wrong - and I pray that I am wrong -then I'm nothing more than an old fool, frightened of my own shadow. Ah, but if I'm right... We have family and friends in the town, Andrei, and the long night is only just beginning!'



Together now, Lardis and Andrei, and breathlessly silent in the deepening shadows of the forest's fringe. And for all that they were tired where they followed sounds of laughter and music, smells of wood smoke and cooking fires, still they hurried. Hurried, yes; for as one man they were suddenly aware that those same sounds and smells were permeating the night air, rising through the wooded slopes into the peaks of the barrier range. And they were also aware that the campfires would be blazing like ... like beacons.



But more than that, they were aware of all the life in Settlement. And of all the hot Szgany blood ...



In the town, Jason Lidesci and Nestor Kiklu had gone one way, and Nathan Kiklu the other. The pair to the campfires, which burned through the night in the gathering places, and the one to his mother's house against the stockade wall.



In the central open space, a public place where the main fire and many lesser cooking-fires burned - where tables and chairs had already been laid out in preparation for Lardis's and the others' return, for the Szgany Lidesci rarely missed an opportunity to celebrate - Jason and Nestor had received a boisterous welcome from their friends, and then exchanged more sober greetings and information with the town's elder citizens and dignitaries.



"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"



The latter had wanted to know how the trip had gone? And where was Lardis now - and Andrei Romani? - how far behind the younger, fleeter members of the party? What news from the other towns and villages to the east? And so forth. Jason and Nestor had restricted their answers; everyone knew that Lardis and Andrei would want to tell everything in their own way, in their own good time. Indeed, the story-telling would form a major part of the celebrations.



Finding chairs in the quiet corner of an old stone wall, finally the two settled down with a jar of wine and a pair of small silver goblets between them. They weren't important now; Lardis Lidesci and Andrei Romani were the important ones, and their arrival imminent. Between times, Jason and Nestor could talk.



'My father sometimes worries me,' Jason admitted, having washed the trail's dust from his throat with a gulp of sweet wine.



And: 'Huh!' Nestor grunted. 'You should have my problems, for my brother worries me all the time!' His voice was at once sour, a sure sign that the conversation had returned to Nathan.



Jason was hardly taken aback. 'You're too hard on him,' he said.



'You think so?' Nestor raised an eyebrow. Eighteen months Jason's senior, he considered Lardis's son clever but naive; hardly the right kind of man to inherit the leadership of the clan when that time came, and never strong enough to hold it together and make it a power in the world. There was too much of the thinker in him, too little of the doer. 'But Nathan's not too hard on me, right?'



'Nathan, hard?' Now Jason was taken aback. 'But he's soft as a child!'



Nestor nodded. 'He is a child, in some things, aye. And in some ways he's an idiot, despite what your father thinks! But I'm his brother and so know him better than anyone, and there's another, weirder side to him.'



'Oh?'



'We're twins, as you know,' Nestor nodded. 'Not identical, no, but still our kinship goes deeper than ordinary flesh and blood. Far deeper.' He nodded again but angrily, even savagely. 'I mean, I wouldn't mind Nathan dreaming all the strange things he dreams, or blame him for living in his daydreams - just so long as he'd leave me out of them!'



'But how are you part of them?' Jason was puzzled. 'In what way do they concern you? Why, I've never met brothers more dissimilar than you two!'



'Huh!' Nestor grunted again. 'But up here,' he tapped his forehead, 'in our minds, we're not that dissimilar.' He leaned closer. 'Listen, and I'll tell you how it's been for as long as I can remember.' He got his thoughts in order, then:



'Among other things,' he began, 'my brother dreams of numbers. Great waves of numbers, all meaningless, swirling in his head like a river in flood! There's this -oh, I don't know - this fabulous "secret" behind them, which he seeks to discover, except he hasn't a clue where to begin. And so in his sleep he goes through the numbers again and again, endlessly searching them for their secret meaning. All very well, and I'd have no complaint - if only he would keep his dreams to himself!'



'What?'



Nestor nodded. 'Don't ask me how, but I "hear" his dreams! I can see him, feel him there in my head, lost in these damned numbers! Now to me, a number is the count of fish I've caught, division is the share-out after a day's hunting, and multiplication is what rabbits do. As for schooling: I got as much of that as I need - and all I can use - when I was a child. So, if I can't work something out on my fingers and toes, then I'm not interested in it. I'm not one of these so-called "wise men" who tinker with runes and scratch on slates to keep records and histories, or work out the distance to the moon, which they say is another world. I won't be around when the things we do today are history, and as for the distance to the moon: what possible use in knowing that, except to the wolves who sing to her?'



Jason was fascinated. 'You really hear his dreams?'



'Not all of them,' Nestor shrugged, concerned now that perhaps he was saying too much. 'For his mind is deep, like a well, and there's a lot he keeps hidden. Even so, it's full of faraway worlds and dead people ....nd numbers, of course! Not that I'd pry, you understand, for if it was up to me I'd have nothing at all to do with Nathan's damned dreams and fancies! But I can't control it. His dreams find their way into mine, so that he's just as big a pest asleep as when he's awake!'



Puzzled, Jason shook his head. 'But how can you be sure? How do you know you share the same dreams? Has he told you? A rare event that, for he scarcely speaks at all!'



'He doesn't have to,' Nestor was tired of the subject now. 'I only have to wake up in the middle of the night in our room, and look at him sleeping there, and I know. Now and then, not very often, I can read his mind as clearly as the spoor of a wild pig. Read it, and hate it!'



'Hate it?' Again Jason was astonished, by the fire in the other's voice, and by his passion. 'Hate your brother's mind? But why? Is he devious?'



"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"



But Nestor merely scowled, shook his head, and finally sighed. 'What, Nathan, devious? No, I hate it because he's as gentle and trusting as the doves nesting in the eaves!'



Jason found it all very hard to understand, and not least Nestor's curiously mixed emotions. 'You share your brother's dreams and read his thoughts,' he shook his head in wonder of it. 'Well, the way I see it, it can mean only one thing: that you are true Szgany, Nestor, both of you! For there are mysteries in our blood which even we can't understand. Why, there could even be something of the Wamphyri in you - !' He quickly held up a hand to ward off any protest (though in fact Nestor would be the last to take offence at his remark). '- As there is in most of us, naturally. For in the old days the Wamphyri were like a plague among us, and there are throwbacks even now. My father believes it's the source of all Szgany mysticism: the power of fortune-tellers who read dreams and palms, and seers who scry afar.'



Nestor pulled a face. 'You really believe in such stuff?' Obviously Jason was even more naive than he'd suspected. 'Can you show me one genuine - what, mystic? - in all Settlement? And am I, Nestor Kiklu, a mystic? Not likely, nor would I want to be. No, it's simply that we shared our mother's womb, were born together, and brought up almost as one. Except we're not one but entirely different. And finally ... I've had enough of him.'



'Of your own brother?'



'Yes,' Nestor answered. 'Of the trouble he's been to me, and the trouble still to come.'



'Ah!' said Jason. For he believed he understood something of that, at least.



Nestor frowned at him. 'Ah?'



Jason saw his mistake at once and tried to change the subject. 'Back on Starside, you said that Nathan was neither deaf nor daft. And yet a moment ago you called him an idiot. Something doesn't match up.'



Now Nestor scowled. 'A lot doesn't match up,' he answered. 'Like the way you're avoiding saying what's on your mind! Now out with it.'