'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 carefully. '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?'
'To be wed, of course!'
Nathan looked at Nana, who nodded. And: 'Yes, whatever you say,' he answered Varna.
'Consider it done then,' said the other. 'Now be off, and enjoy what time you have left as a free man.'
Nana had a large cave close to the main entrance. There, where beams of sunlight shot in through holes in the perforated rock and dust motes drifted like specks of gold, she sat Nathan down on a blanket on a ledge carved in the wall. And while she saw to the needs of two old ladies in her care — in the course of preparing their food — she talked to him and questioned him over her shoulder. In a little while he stopped answering, and Nana saw that he'd stretched out and gone to sleep.
Then, as the old ones ate their food Nana sat beside him. She stroked the lines from his brow, cried all the tears she'd stored up for so long, and loved her son for all the lonesome times she'd missed loving him…
Nathan dreamed of Maglore, who in any case had never been far from his thoughts since his escape from Runemanse; an image of the man, the vampire Lord, the monster, had seemed printed indelibly on his inner eye, but faintly, like an after-image.
Maglore in his aerie, in a darkened room, alone, with a smile on his ancient, evil face and his eyes half-closed, and spider hands with spindly fingers resting upon an image of his sigil, the hammered gold loop with a half-twist. Nathan dreamed of the Seer Lord, and knew that Maglore in turn dreamed of him, of Nathan!
He conjured the numbers vortex and washed Maglore away in its seething swirl — and saw the smile on his fading face turn to a scowl — before he drifted deeper into sleep…
He dreamed of his wolves. They had felt the swirl of the vortex and stirred in their mountain cave. He knew that their yellow eyes blinked in the gloom, and could feel their warmth and smell the musty heat of their curled bodies. But they were tired and he should let them sleep; it was sufficient that they acknowledged his return…
His freely drifting mind touched upon the deadspeak minds of Sunside's Great Majority: a Jiving mind listening
