'Get up,' Nathan told him, shaking his head. Tm not Wamphyri.'
'You're not…?' A puzzled frown crossed the other's face; only to be replaced in a moment by narrowed eyes which glittered their suspicion. 'But you are one of theirs.'
'I'm nobody's,' Nathan said, stepping closer. Tm my own man, free, and you have nothing to fear from me.'
He went to take hold of his shoulder, draw the man to his feet. But the other fell backwards away from him, terrified in a moment.
'Your own man,' he babbled. 'Yes, yes, of course you are! And I'm a fool who says and questions too much, when in fact you are the one who should question, and I should supply the answers!'
Nathan felt sick with disgust. Perhaps this creature was the village idiot after all; but at least his words had given him an idea. 'You're right,' he said, nodding. That's what I need: a little shade and a few answers.'
'Then ask away!' the other cried, coming to a crouch and backing away towards the forest, and leaving his crossbow where it had fallen. 'Whatever questions you like, Lord. And if I can answer them I will, be sure!'
Nathan took up the weapon, loaded it with the spare bolt from under the tiller and applied the safety; and the other at once groaned and put up his trembling hands, as if to ward off a shot. Nathan looked at him, then at the crossbow in his hands and frowned again. 'What?' he said. 'Man, I won't shoot you! Do you always greet strangers this way?'
'Strangers!' the other was almost hysterical. 'Do I greet strangers this way… always? But there are no strangers! Who would come? Who can come… except such as you? As yet you are unchanged… but soon, ah, soon! You're one of theirs, I know it, come to practise your deceptions among your slaves!'
'Deceptions?'
'Ah! No! I did not mean it!' The other threw his arms wide and fell to his knees for a third time in the dappled shade of the trees. 'Forgive me! I am confused!'
'You're… a fool!' Nathan couldn't contain himself. The hunter burst out sobbing at once, crying:
'No, no! I was not taken in the tithe! Please don't take me now! Whatever you want, only ask it of me, but let me be a man all my days and not… not a monster!
'Now listen to me,' Nathan hardened his voice. 'You are wasting my time. There's something I want to know. And that's all I want with you.' He tossed the crossbow aside.
'Ask away! Ask away!'
'lozel Kotys — where can I find him?'
'Eh? lozel the mystic? lozel the hermit?'
'If that's what you call him,' Nathan nodded.
'lozel, aye!' the other's eyes started, as if he made some connection. 'For he has been there, of course!'
'Do — you — know him!?' Nathan's patience was exhausted; he spoke through clenched teeth.
'Yes! Yes, of course!' The hunter turned, pointed north across the forest to where a steep, thinly clad knoll or outcrop reared above the trees. There… a mile… the knoll. And at its foot, a cave. lozel lives there, alone. Only head for the knoll, through the woods, you'll cross a path, well-worn, which runs between the town and his cave.'
'Show me,' said Nathan.
'Indeed, yes, of course!' The hunter made to set off at once, but Nathan stopped him.
'Pick up your crossbow.'
'My weapon, aye!' the other licked his lips, trembling as he did as he was told…
Along the way were other hunters; glimpsed dimly between the misty trees, they were like wraiths drawn out of the earth by the warmth of the new day. No one approached, and in a few minutes Nathan's guide found the path: a narrow way cut through the woods. By then it was almost full daylight, and Nathan had had more than enough of the cowed hunter's company. 'You say this path will lead me direct to lozel's cave?'
'Indeed, Lord. Indeed it will.'
'I thank you,' said Nathan. 'From here on I go alone.'
'I… can go?'
'Of course.' Nathan turned his back on him and followed the path. But he was aware that behind him the hunter backed off — slowly at first, breathlessly — then turned and tiptoed away, and finally ran for Vladistown. Shaking his head, Nathan went on.
lozel Kotys was up and about. In the mouth of his cave, the hermit braised slivers of skewered pork on hot stones at the rim of his fire. Becoming aware of Nathan's approach about the same time as Nathan smelled his cooking, lozel looked down from the elevated shelf in front of his cave and saw a vague, grey figure where his feet stirred the lapping mist.
'Now hold!' the hermit's voice rang out, wavering and a little infirm. 'Who comes and why? I receive no casual visitors here…'
'But you'll receive me,' Nathan called back, coming on without pause. And if lozel wouldn't receive him… so much for Thikkoul's stargazing!
There was a ladder at the foot of the rocks. As Nathan strode closer lozel went to draw it up. Nathan caught at the lower rungs and held on, and gazed up at the other's furious face scowling down on him. Against the strength of Nathan's arms and the weight of the ladder both, the hermit could do nothing. Anyway, he'd noted his visitor's dress and curious colouring, and as the anger drained out of him something of anxiety, fear took its place.
'Who are you?' he gasped, releasing the ladder and backing off a pace, until only his grey-bearded face was visible. Nathan fixed him with his eyes, and climbed.
'I'm a Traveller,' he said. 'And I've travelled a long way to see you, lozel Kotys.'
lozel was small, wrinkled, middling clean and reasonably clothed in well-worn leathers. While he wasn't extremely old, he did suffer from some infirmity which caused his limbs and voice to tremble. And his dark eyes ran a little with rheumy fluids. 'Eh? A Traveller?' he said, his eyes darting, taking in all they could of Nathan where he stepped off the ladder on to the shelf. 'And you've come a long way, you say? How is it possible? Unless — from Turgosheim?' And now his voice, fallen to a whisper, was hoarse.
Nathan had learned something of the ways of these people, and something of their fears. 'lozel,' he said, 'I'm not here to harm you. I'm simply… here!' It was difficult to find a reason for being here. He didn't have one, except that Thikkoul had foreseen it, and beyond it to a possible reunion with loved ones whom Nathan had long thought dead and passed from him forever. That alone would be reason enough, but how to explain all that to lozel?
'Simply here?' the hermit repeated him, shaking his head. 'No, if there's one thing I've learned in life it's this: that nothing is 'simply' anything, and no one is 'simply' anywhere. You were sent — by him!'
'Him?'
'Maglore! You are my… replacement!'
Nathan sighed. Nothing these people said made any sense. 'I don't know this Maglore,' he said.
'Maglore of Runemanse — in Turgosheim!' the other told him.
Things began to connect. Nathan said: 'That makes twice today I've been mistaken for Wamphyri, or one of their changeling lieutenants. But I'm not. I'm Szgany.' He decided to tell it all. 'I'm from the west, beyond the Great Red Waste. Upon a time the Wamphyri were there, but they were driven out, beaten in a great battle.
Now they've come back — from here. Or rather, from Turgosheim. I came to see how you people lived here in this land of vampires, so that I would know how best to advise my own people in the west.' He shrugged. 'Well, and it seems I must tell them to fight on — even to the last drop of blood! For obviously you don't 'live' at all but merely exist, like goats fattened for the slaughter.'
While Nathan talked he scratched vigorously at his left wrist. A grain or two of sand must have got under his strap to irritate him, and he still felt lousy from having walked too close to his hunter guide. But as he paused from speaking, finally the itch became too great. In order to scratch more freely, he rolled the leather strap from his wrist and slipped it free of his fingers. Circling his wrist, a band of white skin showed glassy grains embedded and inflamed. Nathan got them out with his fingernail, rubbed spittle into the red patch, and went to pick up his strap.
lozel had been watching closely, however, and beat him to it. Frowning, he took up Nathan's wristlet strap and looked at it — curiously at first, then with studied intensity. Finally his eyes narrowed in what seemed to be recognition, and nodding knowingly, he gave the strap back.
