Finally they had made an impression. The Wamphyri!' the leper croaked, bobbing about in sudden agitation. 'What? They are back, did you say?' Abruptly he turned, hobbling off down a path towards the wooden buildings under the trees.
'Wait!' Misha called after him. 'We can't spend the night in the open!'
He glanced back. 'I only keep watch,' he husked. 'But we have a leader, too. Now wait here, and I'll bring him.'
In a little while he returned; several more lepers, all dressed alike, came with him. One of them was tall, shuffling, obviously in great pain. The sleeves of his robe seemed empty from the elbows down… but his cowl was thrown back so that his face at least was visible and clean. He was pale, hollow-cheeked, with dark expressive eyes.
'I'm Uruk Piatra,' he told the women, looking at them. The others call me Uruk Long-life. And you…' He looked long and hard at Lissa — her oval face with its gentle almond eyes; her slim, long-limbed figure — and said, 'Yes, you are Lardis Lidesci's wife. You've been here before, am I right?'
'With my husband,' she nodded. 'When he was beating the bounds. Twice, I think, but long ago.'
'Aye, long ago,' the other agreed, 'when I had hands.' He looked at all of them again, blinking in the yellow light of the lanterns. 'But I've been told a terrible thing: that the Wamphyri have returned to raid in Sunside!'
By then Lissa had taken a firm grip on her nerves. 'It's true,' she told him, 'all horribly true! We've come here from Settlement, which was burning when last we saw it. There were vampires in the streets, killing, raping, making thralls. But I remember that long ago, my husband told me that this was a place safe from all vampires. That's why we've come here: to hide through the night from the Wamphyri, and to shelter from the forest and its beasts — till sunup at least, when we'll think what to do.'
The leper leader shook his head and his expression grew more haunted yet. 'A monstrous thing!' he said. 'But there are terrible things and terrible things. For a woman to fall into the hands of the Wamphyri would be a nightmare, I know, and to live with them even worse than dying. But to live here… is a slow, lingering death in itself — which you risk just by being here.'
Nana Kiklu had had enough of this. 'So, we are turned away by lepers!' Her words were bitter. Then we'll sleep here, outside your gate. Only bring us clean blankets and a lantern, and we'll look after ourselves.'
Uruk Piatra looked at her and nodded slowly. 'Being what I am,' he said, 'does not make me any less the man. Upon a time I was Szgany, like you. Not a Lidesci, no, but I was a man. And even now I know my duty. I meant simply this: that I could not invite you in, for your own sakes. But certainly we can do better than blankets and a lamp! When lepers come here, we build them homes. Until they are built, however, a tent of skins must suffice. I suggest you pitch it under the trees, over there.'
Nana went to speak again, then hung her head.
And again he nodded. 'It's all right. I understand. Only looking at you I can see how much you've suffered.'
He gave orders and the other lepers went back to their sprawl of dwellings, returning in a while with a tent, blankets, vegetables, an iron pot and tripod. And: 'Stay here,' their leader told Nana, Lissa, and Misha,
'while they build your tent under the trees and light a small fire. Then you must make your own soup, with water from the stream there.'
And while their refuge from the night was put in order for them, so the three had told Uruk their entire story…
That was how it had been for them at the leper colony, in the early hours of the previous night. But as they had settled in to wait out the long hours of darkness, their worries were not so much for themselves as for their loved ones.
Not unnaturally, Nana's thoughts had been for Nathan and Nestor: How had they fared through Settlement's devastation, she wondered? — wondered it in her sleep, and through all of her waking hours — till at last, still wondering, she'd shivered awake with the dawn. Had it been just as bad for them? Surely it must have been even worse! And how were they faring now?
Now in the light of early morning, in the foothills over Twin Fords, Nestor finished his rabbit and stretched out his limbs in the long grass to digest it. While behind him and somewhat higher, at the sheer, rearing rim of an outcrop, vile evaporation continued to spill out of the trees and tumble down the cliff like a frothing waterfall — but less vigorously now — from the three-quarters liquefied flyer destroyed by sunlight.
As for Nathan…
Following old Traveller trails between the forest and the foothills, striding east towards Twin Fords, Nathan was tempted to seek out his brother in a way neither of them had used since childhood. It would mean breaking his easy, long-legged, mile-eating lope for a few minutes, which he was scarcely willing to do, but if it proved successful at least his mind would be at rest.
For there had never been a time in Nathan's life when he was more aware that he was only one half of twins; when, as if to accentuate his and Nestor's physical differences, he could feel this new rift between them like a great canyon, yawning ever wider the closer he came to its rim. And he knew that Misha Zanesti had been only a part of it, that it had been coming anyway and she had been merely the catalyst.
But it had all culminated so swiftly. First Misha: Because of her love for Nathan (rather, because of Nestor's jealousy), the brothers had drifted apart; that rivalry which had seeded itself in childhood had finally bloated into life, separating them. But they weren't the first brothers to come up against such a problem; it was something which might well have righted itself, eventually. Especially now that… now that Misha…
But no, Nathan couldn't bring himself to dwell upon that — Misha with the dog-thing, Canker Canison — not in the way Vratza Wransthrall had so gleefully described it. And yet he must, for back in Settlement he'd vowed against the Wamphyri, especially Canker. And though he felt choked inside, still a low growl escaped his throat as he pictured that one! Aye, and his vow was a double, even a triple vow, surely; for the Wamphyri were also responsible for whatever fate had befallen his mother, and for tearing him physically apart from his brother. As for the latter… he could only hope that it wasn't permanent.
A terrible, terrible thing to have lost all of them: his mother, Misha, and Nestor. He neither knew nor wanted to know what effect the death of his brother would have on him, but he supposed it would be like losing an even bigger part of himself — perhaps the last part.
For he and Nestor: they'd shared their mother's womb, her milk, the love of the same Gypsy girl — though she'd loved one as a brother and the other for himself. But their blood was one blood, and even their minds had seemed fashioned of like stuff; at least, they were similar enough that sometimes they touched upon each other.
Which was what Nathan intended now: to touch Nestor's mind, and in so doing prove that he still lived. And if there was nothing there, a vacuum? That was the chance he must take: to be part of something which once was whole, at least, or to be even emptier than the husk he inhabited now.
With all of these thoughts and others swirling in his head and clouding the psychic ether, it was hardly the best moment for such an experiment, but Nathan drew off from the trail anyway, sat down with his back to a boulder and closed out the day, his furious loathing of last night's raiders, all other emotions, everything, and let his mind drift…
The dead drew back from him!
He felt that at once; their shock, even their horror. But this time Nathan's interest Jay with the Jiving… he hoped. And up in the high hiJJs, in deep caves, grey-furred ears sprang erect, grey heads were lifted, and triangle eyes blinked in gJoomy lairs. There were three of them, three together, who knew his mind as if it were one of theirs: Blaze, whose brow was marked with his mother's white; Grinner, whose damp bJack lips forever twitched, as if on the verge of smiling; Dock, whose tail had been shortened when he was a cub and wanted to play with some brave vixen's brood.
They divined Nathan's purpose at once but couldn't help him, not this time. For none of theirs was abroad in the daylight, and no further reports of Nestor had reached them. If it were night, that might be different. But not now.
Nathan acknowledged them anyway, where they whined a little, curJed up and resumed their contemplations. And moving on, he let his thoughts drift, drift..
.. Until they struck upon a mind he knew, yet at one and the same time did not know! For it seemed different, changed, wiped clean. Or perhaps wiped unclean, with a dirty, bloodstained rag? For this was Nestor, and yet it
