Blood Brothers Read online

  Old Jasef, with his mind-reading abilities and what-all: what he ate didn’t amount to much, nor was he troublesome. In his lean-to adjacent to Nana’s cabin, he lived out his time in what small comfort was available and was grateful. For he knew that in certain Szgany tribes he might not be so fortunate; he might even be put down, like his father before him, because there was something of the Wamphryi in him. It was very little and showed itself only in his mentalism, but in Lardis’s eyes that made him valuable. Especially now that things were starting to happen again, albeit things which the Szgany could well do without.

  Now Lardis looked back some thirteen sunups to the last time Nana brought Jasef Karis to see him—and to what had resulted from the visit:

  “Karen’s in her aerie and worried!” The old man’s hands had fluttered like brown-spotted birds. “Likewise Harry Wolfson where he prowls with the pack on Star-side’s flank, howling under the racing moon. Their thoughts are strange and ominous. I have seen with their eyes how the auroras writhe and pulse over the Icelands, and smelled with their nostrils the weird winds that blow from that cold realm!”

  Lardis had nodded, and asked: “What are their thoughts?”

  “Karen is uneasy—very! She makes monsters!”

  “Out of men?” Not wanting to believe it, Lardis had held his breath. It had been hard enough, that time four years ago, to believe she still lived! What, Karen alive? And Harry Dwellersire so sure that she was dead? But when The Dweller returned to Starside after delivering his father back to the hell-lands, then the truth of it had been seen: the Lady Karen herself had come visiting! She and The Dweller (two of a kind?), walking, talking together on the silvered slopes, in the heights over Star-side’s boulder plains. But why not? She had been his ally against the Wamphyri Lords, hadn’t she? She had been the one to bring first warning.

  And now this: she practised the arts of the Wamphyri and made monsters! But from what? Perhaps it was as well after all that The Dweller had become a changeling, whose powers waned like his waning man-flesh. Aye, for he was the leader of the grey brotherhood now—a wolf!—albeit a wolf with the pale slender hands of a human youth. Had it been otherwise … ah, what unthinkable nightmares he and Karen might have bred together! And what blood-lusting progeny, to come raiding again out of Starside!

  Jasef, however, had given a shake of his palsied head. “No, Karen took no men to make her creatures. Neither flesh of Travellers nor even trog flesh, but … stuff, which she discovered alive in the workshops of the Lords Menor Maimbite and Lesk the Glut, buried beneath the ruins of their toppled aeries.” Then with a shrug he’d added: “But what odds? For it, too, had been the stuff of men … upon a time.”

  While word of Karen’s weird industry and Harry Wolfson’s fretful prowling was bad enough news in itself, still Lardis had wanted to know why they’d been driven to these extremes; had Jasef gleaned the reason for it? Had The Dweller’s metamorphosis driven him mad? What did Karen fear that she made guardian creatures, when she herself was the last of the Wamphyri? There had been rumours: some said she’d taken men for lovers and never harmed a one of them. What had Jasef divined of these things? Anything at all? Or was he merely groping in the dark?

  “Awful winds whistling out of the Icelands,” the ancient had moaned, rolling his eyes. “The changeling and Karen, they have watched the auroras weaving, and listened to voices out of the living ice!”

  At which Lardis’s eyes had narrowed. Twice now the old man had mentioned the Icelands, those far northern regions beyond Starside, into which the Wamphryi had banished malefactors of their own kind since time immemorial. After the battle at the garden, several surviving Lords were known to have fled there: the gigantic, acromegalic Fess Ferenc, the entirely loathsome Volse Pinescu, the squat and vindictive Arkis Leperson—even the great Lord Shaithis himself, plus an unknown number of lieutenants and thralls. Well, and they were only the last of many gone before them. But none had ever returned. Not yet…

  And Lardis had shivered and husked: “Are you telling me that they fear the return of …?”

  “Wait! Wait!” Old Jasef had fluttered his hands. “In the hour before dawn I dreamed of The Dweller, the changeling, the wolf with a man’s hands. Except it was more than just a dream, and he asked for you, Lardis. If you would know more, then go and speak to him who runs with the pack.”

  “Oh?” Lardis had grunted, shrugging in that jerky way of his, to indicate his irritation. “Just like that? And should I, too, run with the wolves? And will they also respect my life, like the tame wolves of Settlement? Now tell me: even if I wanted to see The Dweller, how would I seek him out and where find him?” But he’d known the answer even before the question was out.

  “Where else?” said Jasef, cocking his head on one side.

  At the grave of his mother, of course …

  Nana and Jasef had reached the topmost flight. Puffing and panting where the going was steep, the old man leaned heavily on Nana. Their errand must be important. Lardis called down, “You should have sent a runner. I would have come to you.”

  A runner—even those simple words conjured images:

  Of a racing moon in the skies over Starside, and lean grey shapes, running like quicksilver, whose silhouettes seemed part of the night. Never fully seen—a grey blur on the periphery of sight—they melted into the ridges, the crags, the shadows of black and stirless trees. Their triangle eyes had been luminous in the garden’s preternatural gloom.

  For of course Lardis had known his duty, and despite his fear had gone there; climbed up to the high pass and through it to the garden, to meet with Harry Wolfson at the grave of the Gentle One Under the Stones. Oh, he’d not gone alone or unarmed; five of his best men had accompanied him, and he’d carried his shotgun and a box of silver-shot cartridges from The Dweller’s armoury. It wasn’t that Lardis didn’t trust Harry Wolfson: he had trusted, almost worshipped him in his time and would do so even now—to a point. But there had been word of him. Hunters on the evening slopes of Sunside, returning late to Settlement, Mirlu, Tireni Scarp, had seen him running with the pack. And he had howled with the best of them!

  They had their pact, however, and not a man of the western Szgany townships would ever shoot at a mountain wolf. Still, to be absolutely sure they’d not be tempted, Lardis had left his men to wait for him at the back of the garden, where the pass led down to Sunside. And then he’d gone on alone to the rendezvous, at the grave of The Dweller’s mother. Except it had not been the changeling whom Lardis met in the now ruined garden. Not him but his father, the Necroscope Harry Keogh, returned at last out of another world.

  Lardis could remember the first moments of that meeting in detail: how first the garden had been empty, then the tall figure of the hell-lander, standing there at the wall, alone, shoulders slumped, forlorn, where a moment ago there had been an empty space. And Lardis had known at once who this must be, for no other could come and go like that; and he’d wondered: Is this what The Dweller wanted me to know, that his father is back in the barrier mountains?

  But then, at Lardis’s approach, so Harry had straightened, turned, seen him there. And in that selfsame instant Lardis had known that The Dweller wasn’t the only changeling in Starside. Grey and gaunt, Harry’s flesh, and crimson his eyes. Wamphyri!

  As for the rest of that meeting—their actions, the substance of their conversation—it was all but forgotten. Lardis had wanted nothing so much as to be out of there. Perhaps he’d mentioned The Dweller’s fate, and something of his fears of a threat out of the Icelands; perhaps they’d spoken of the Lady Brenda, and the cairn where she lay buried; perhaps at that there had been something other than blood in the Necroscope’s eyes. One of the few things Lardis did remember, and clearly—one action of which he would always be ashamed—was that he’d discharged his weapon, uselessly, and that the hell-lander could so easily have killed him … but hadn’t.

  Later: they had stood together in silence at Brenda’s grave. But when
Harry inquired after the Travellers, then Lardis had been instantly suspicious. Worried about the other’s intentions, he’d asked: “And will you hunt on Sunside, Harry—hunt men, women and children—when the nights are dark?”

  “Does my son hunt the Szgany?” was Harry’s answer. “Did he ever?”

  But by then the atmosphere had been sour as Lardis’s mood. And as he’d headed for the pass where his men were hidden, his parting shot had been: “Oh, you’ll come a-hunting soon enough, for a woman to warm your bed, or a sweet Traveller child when you’re weary of rabbit meat!” And the howling of the wolves had followed him and his men all the way down to Sunside …

  Nana and Jasef had reached the top of the steps; Lardis took the old man, led him stumbling to his own chair and seated him there; Nana said:

  “I could have come on my own but Jasef said no, he wanted to speak to you in person. Also, you have privacy here. Such things as Jasef would tell you are best said in private. He doesn’t wish to panic the people.”

  “And you?” Lardis looked at her, giving the mentalist time to compose himself, catch his breath. “Has he told these things to you?”

  She shrugged. “I look after him; he mumbles in his sleep; from time to time I overhear things.”

  “I mumble, aye,” the old man agreed, showing his gums in a wry grin. “But ah, the substance of my mumbling!”

  “Let’s have it,” Lardis nodded grimly. “What is it now, old man?”

  Jasef made no bones of it: “The Wamphyri are back on Starside!”

  Even though Lardis had feared as much, still he was aghast. He shook his head, grasped Jasef’s arm. “But how can it be? Is it possible? We destroyed the Wamphyri!”

  “Not all of them,” said Jasef. “And now they’ve returned, Shaithis and one other, out of the Icelands. They plot against Harry Hell-lander, the Lady Karen, even the changeling. Their voices are in the wind over the barrier mountains, and in my dreams I hear them talking.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of sweet Traveller flesh, of the blood which is the life, of bairns to roast like suckling pigs, and women to rend with their lust! All of these things, which they’ve missed in exile in the Icelands. Even now they inhabit Karen’s aerie, flying out from it with their warriors invincible to raid on eastern tribes.”

  “Just two of them?”

  “What?” Jasef’s rheumy eyes peered at Lardis in wonder. “‘Just’ two of them, did you say? ‘Just’ two Wamphyri Lords?” And of course Lardis knew that he was right. It might as well be an army. Except … armies weren’t always victorious.

  Jasef read his mind. “Aye,” he nodded, “the Szgany Lidesci are protected: we have The Dweller’s weapons! Those weapons in which he instructed us, at least. But what of the other tribes and towns? ‘Just’ two of them—for now! But do you think the Wamphyri won’t take lieutenants? Do you think they won’t breed, make monsters? Lardis, I’m only an old man whose days are numbered, and so I have very little weight in the world. But I’ll tell you what I fear the most: that this is the beginning of the end for all of the Szgany.”

  Suddenly Lardis was desperate. He grasped Jasef’s arm that much tighter. “How can we be certain that you’ve read aright? You aren’t always so sure of yourself. Even your dreams are sometimes … only dreams.”

  “Not this time, Lardis,” the old man shook his head. “Alas, not this time. Do you think I enjoy playing harbinger, bringer of ill omen, like a man whose very breath carries the plague? Believe me, I do not. But I know the Wamphyri, and especially Shaithis, who was ever the clever one …” He paused to issue an involuntary, uncontrollable shudder. “Aye, that one’s thoughts are strong; they carry on the aether like cries across an echoing valley, and my mind the valley wall, which traps them for me to read.”

  Lardis turned this way and that in search of some unseen solution, but in the next moment hope lifted his voice. “What of Karen?” he demanded. “What of Harry Dwellersire? That one has powers, which he put to work in the battle for The Dweller’s garden. And the pair of them—forgive me for saying it, for even thinking it—they are Wamphryi in their own right! I can’t see them sitting still, doing nothing, while Shaithis regains his old influence, recoups his old territories. What? Unthinkable! We were allies before, we’ll be allies again.”

  Jasef nodded, however tremulously. “Better the devils you know, eh, Lardis? But weren’t you listening? Karen has already fled her stack! She’s .. with the hell-lander at this very moment, in his son’s garden. As for the changeling: almost certainly he’ll side with them against Shaithis and the others. But tell me, what can a wolf do? Ah, he isn’t The Dweller which once we knew!”

  Lardis paced back and forth, to and fro. “Well, at least I know what I must do!” he said, finally. And turning to Nana: “Go back down into Settlement, speak with Peder Szekarly, Kirk Lisescu, Andrei Romani and his brothers. Tell them to report to me, and at once—with their guns! We go again to the garden on Starside. If Harry Dwellersire and Karen are in need of soldiers … I’ll wait here and ready myself, until the five join me. We go to parley with them who defend the Starside garden, as they defended it once before. We go to offer our alliance, and to talk of war!”

  Nana nodded. Silent all of this time, now words tumbled from her lips in a breathless gush. “Lardis, do you think that I …? Could you possibly …? I mean to say … only that I should like very much to go with you!”

  Astonished, he looked at her, frowned, tucked his chin in. “You? Starside? Are your wits suddenly addled, Nana? You, with two small sons to care for, and them only a year older than my own Jason? How could I allow such a thing—and why would you want it? Don’t you know the danger?”

  “I … of course I do,” she looked away. “It was just … it was nothing but a whim.” And then, in another burst: “But I … I nursed Harry Dwellersire that time, and I wondered how he fares now that he is—”

  “—Changed!” Lardis finished it for her. “For he was only a man then, Nana—albeit a strange one—and now is other than a man. You may not go with me. What, to Starside? Of course you may not! Stay in Settlement and care for Hzak Kiklu’s children, while you may. A whim, you say? A damned foolish one, I say! And should I let a vampire Lord, even one such as Harry Dwellersire, lay crimson eyes on one of my own Szgany women? Such a fate could be yours … I would not wish it on a dog!”

  But: Ah! she thought. You don’t know, you don’t know!

  It was Lardis’s last word on the subject, however, and Nana was left silently cursing her own tongue, which had so nearly betrayed her …

  Returning downhill to Settlement was easier. As Nana and Jasef approached the last flight, where she would run on ahead with Lardis’s message to his men, the old man panted, “Nana, that was a mistake back there.”

  While she, too, was short of breath, still she held it for a moment. “What was a mistake?”

  “Forty sunups, thereabouts, a woman swells with her child,” the old mentalist played at being thoughtful. “But four years ago” (he did not say “years” but continued to use terms suited to Sunside and Szgany time scales) “there were events of great moment, when no one was keeping count.”

  “What are you saying?” But she knew very well what he was saying, even before he answered.

  “Hzak Kiklu died after the battle in the garden,” Jasef mused at length (a completely unnecessary reminder, which proved what Nana had always known anyway: that old as he was, still Jasef wasn’t the old fool that others believed him to be). “But before he died he was still very much the man. Obviously so, for you have your sons! Ah, but a long, slow pregnancy that, Nana,” he went on, “which lasted … what? Almost ten months?”

  “Ten and a half,” she muttered low. “But as you yourself have observed, no one was counting. Get to the point, Jasef.”

  “I was given into your care,” he said, “since when you’ve been good to me. There are some who wouldn’t have cared much one way or the other. What, an old tho
ught-thief like Jasef Karis? As well forget to feed him, let him lie on his pallet, fade away and die. But with you, I’ve wanted for nothing … well, maybe a new set of pumps in this old chest, a couple of decent teeth, new knees! But of comforts I’ve all I can use. So, I have my own reasons for being fond of you, Nana.”

  “It works both ways,” she answered. “You’re not such a bad one. So?”

  He was silent a moment, while they negotiated the final bend. But at last: “I saw you start,” he said, “when I told Lardis that Harry and Karen were together in the garden. Those black eyes of yours turned hot as coals, Nana.”

  “Hot for a moment,” she turned her face away. “But only a moment. His blood is in my children, after all.”

  He nodded, thought it over, and said, “What prompted you to keep it secret?”

  “Common sense,” she answered, “and maybe something other than that. There are a couple of women in Settlement who might have made much of it, and several who would have made too much! But at the time, when Harry lay ill in The Dweller’s garden, I didn’t think about him being a hell-lander. To me he was just a lonely man in a strange land, even as I myself was lonely. But you’re right; a lot was happening; by the time the twins were showing, events were crowding fast. Everything became a blur in the mind’s eye.”

  They were down on to the level. Nana released her charge’s arm, handed him his stick. “And now, even if I would tell, I can’t. Harry Hell-lander is Wamphyri! What would I gain from the truth? The best that could happen, my boys and I would be watched—always, and very, very closely—even in the best of times. And right now, with the Wamphyri back on Starside?” She shook her head. “When men are panicked, they are wont to stampede, Jasef. And then the innocent get trampled underfoot.”

  He nodded and watched her start away from him.

  “The innocent, aye,” he agreed. And a little louder, as she put distance between: “My father paid the price in full! Impaled, beheaded, burned. But then, he was no longer innocent. Indeed, and as the vampire change took hold on him, he was no longer a man!”