want to be transported back to his own world while he was still in… in a state of shock? And so, 'Fair enough,' he said. And in open admiration: 'Your man is fortunate, Nana Kiklu. At one and the same time, his woman is accommodating and charming.'
'I thank you,' she answered at once, 'but as for my man — alas, no.' And now a certain longing, an emptiness, crept into her voice, and a sadness on to her face. For like Harry, Nana, too, had been deprived. 'My man was… less than fortunate,' she explained. 'In the battle for the garden, the Lord Belath's gauntlet, dipped in poison, sliced Hzak's shoulder to the bone. I prayed he would survive. He did survive — for six sunups.'
Now Harry Keogh sighed, more a groan than a sigh proper, and turned his face away; but not before she saw the sympathy living in it, and the regret. The time had been — but now was gone — when he might have contacted Hzak Kiklu to comfort him, tell him that the Wamphyri were no more. But ex-Necroscope, the dead were beyond Harry now.
'All things pass,' she said, bravely. 'Now — can you sit up? I have soup for you, with chunks of soft meat. Your blood has grown thin as water through all the hours you've lain here. This will thicken it up.' She brought soup and bread. Harry was suddenly very tired, but he was hungry too. While he ate, Nana Kiklu looked on in silent approval. She approved of him wolfing the food she'd prepared, and she approved… of him.
Under his bedclothes lay the body of a hunter, a fighting man; hard-muscled as Hzak's had been, yet pale and different. Well, of course he was different, for he came out of the hell-lands of legend! But… not that different. She'd washed him tip to toe and so knew he wasn't that different. But handsome, aye! Tall, and lean in the hip. Strong too, before his sickbed, and would be again. Nana had no concept of the word 'athlete', but she could picture Harry chasing a wild pig and casting his spear: the ripple of his muscles, the narrowing of his strange honey-brown eyes. She could picture him doing… many things.
As for the waving grey streaks in the russet of his hair: it seemed unlikely that age could have put them there. Harry Dwellersire was — what, ageless? When she'd listened to him rambling in his fever, he had sounded like nothing so much as an innocent boy; for a fact his body seemed older than his mind! Nana couldn't know it, but in that last thought she had struck upon the absolute truth.
So, why was he greying? Did it result from great learning, the wisdom that came from it, the weight of mighty knowledge? But knowledge of what strange things? In her reasoning, too, she came closer to the truth than she knew. But as things were she could only offer a small, unselfconscious shrug which went unnoticed. Why strive to understand anything? He was after all a hell-lander. It was probably as well that she neither knew nor understood.
Harry was asleep almost before the last spoonful of soup was down, and a half-hour later Nana Kiklu handed over her duties to another, much older woman. Good as her word, she said nothing about their charge's partial recovery…
Harry woke up at the end of the six-hour shift, saw the old Gypsy woman nodding on her stool, closed his eyes and moaned until she started awake. Then he kicked his limbs, but feebly, convincing her that he was feverish still. When he calmed down she spooned soup into him, crooned to him until he slept again. Six hours later he employed the same subterfuge with a third Szgany woman, but this time there could be no hiding his rapid improvement. He was only saved by the prompt arrival of Nana Kiklu.
'He looks well,' his unknown Gypsy nurse told Nana as she came in from Starside's long night, shrugging herself out of a heavy coat of fur. 'His fever is in abeyance; all the clamminess has gone out of him; he took enough soup for two men! I think he'll wake soon. We should tell The Dweller.'
And feigning sleep, Harry heard Nana's answer:
'Let's not be too hasty. The Dweller is resting. Sunup is five hours away and the dawn will be time enough. Don't worry, I will see to it.'
'As you will,' the other answered, and left.
Harry had done most of his thinking in his sleep, which in the main had been restful; also in his dreams, which were less so. He was aware that his son would soon take him out of this world into his own and leave him there, and that he would be a free man again. But only a man, no more Necroscope, and no way round it. He wasn't reconciled to it but had no choice. For the time being, however, his frustration seemed all burned out of him; except… he supposed it must return. Yes, as long as there were locked rooms in the mansion of his mind — while he remembered the Mobius Continuum, and the myriad dead friends who were lost to him now — it would always return.
But looking at Nana Kiklu where she came to stand over him, looking at her through three-quarters shuttered eyes, which yet feigned sleep, he found himself remembering other, more mundane things. Earthly, even earthy things; yet not of the earth, and certainly not of the grave. For Nana Kiklu was far from that. On the contrary, she was full of life. And he remembered how her breasts had felt against his face when she'd hugged him.
And then he knew why he continued to feign sleep: so that he could watch her watching him. He wanted to consider her expression, and see if he could sense that in her which he felt in himself. It had been a long, long time since he'd known a woman.
When Nana sat beside him he merged into her shadow, felt drawn to her. The top buttons of her soft leather blouse were open; leaning over him to straighten his pillow, the curves of her elastic breasts were partly exposed. Only lift his hands a little and he could test their weight. It was a struggle not to. And to control his breathing.
She cocked her head a little on one side, half-shuttered her own eyes, frowned at him. But her eyes, like her thoughts, were very deep. She had noticed the rise and fall of his chest: a trifle… irregular? Both Harry and the Gypsy, each wondered what were the other's thoughts.
In the same moment that he felt he must touch her, finally she moved, got up, went to the door — and barred it. And Harry knew, in the way people do, what was going to happen; also that he wanted it to happen.
She came back, her Gypsy hips swaying hypnotically, and sat down again. But as she adjusted his blanket, so her hand crept beneath it on to his naked thigh. Harry stopped breathing, stiffened with the shock of her touch, and her suspicions were at once confirmed. Her laugh was low and husky. 'I thought your fever had cooled a little. But look, here you are hot as ever! Hot — and hard…'
Already erect, his manhood grew more yet into her tightening, deliciously mobile fist, to hammer like a heart against her palm. Until he groaned, 'No! Wait! Nana, don't waste me!' His trembling hands found the buttons of her blouse and her breasts tumbled free. While he fondled and kissed their softness, teasing her brown nipples to life, she struggled to be rid of her clothes and into bed with him.
'Fill me, Harry Dwellersire,' she moaned, 'for we've both been empty and aching for far too long. I'm not sure why you ache, but this may be part of the cure.'
He made no answer, found the sucking gate to her sex and drove into it. In the next moment, for a moment, he held himself back, then panted: 'I can't — daren't — damn it, I'll get you pregnant!'
'No,' she shook her head, rolled over on top and came down slow and heavy on him, trapping his flesh deep in her lava core and his face in the silky curtain of her hair. And slowly working her body, with her breasts lolling in his face, she gasped, 'I'm… barren.' It was a lie; Hzak's seed had been at fault, she knew. But as for Nana, she wanted a child — so why not Harry's?
Harry felt himself swelling, shook his head wildly. 'Nana, I can't hold it!'
'Don't try,' she told him, and instantly felt him jerking, geysering into her. His long bursts seemed unending, lubrication for the hot engine of her womanhood.
Too quick,' he moaned, angry with himself. 'Too damned quick!'
'Yes,' she murmured, smothering him in her breasts, her kisses. Too quick. But that one was for you. This one will be for me, and it will be slower.'
It was. And so was the next…
In the grey twilight, just before sunup, Nana crept from Harry's bed and dressed, went to The Dweller and told him that his father's fever had broken. When she left her lover of a few brief hours, he was sleeping a dreamless, exhausted sleep, and somehow she knew it was the last she would see of him.
But, warm inside, she also knew that it was not the last of his works.
II
Four years later: Lardis Lidesci's house stood on a rise a little above Settlement, where the grassy, temperate but abrupt foothills of Sunside climbed towards rocky outcrops and steep, forested heights. He liked sitting in front of the house at sundown, to catch the last rays of the sun; likewise before sunup, to watch it rise. Unthinkable four short years ago (two hundred 'days', or sunup-sundown cycles), and even now nerve-tingling: to
