the leader of a wandering Szgany tribe in the shadow of the Wamphyri, must have taken its toll of him), but that there was little now to occupy his mind, so that he was wont to dwell too much in the past. Which was something Nathan understood well enough, for on occasion he was himself given to dwelling in other worlds, and adventuring in lands of fantasy. It helped shut the real world out: the sounds of Settlement and its scathing voices, with all the taunts and questions which in the main Nathan no longer bothered to answer, or answered with his stumbling stutter. For ever since the night of the red clouds and the thunder in the hills, he had spent his time withdrawing from this world.. .into others.
Other worlds, yes, and lands of fantasy ...
... The twilight mountainsides, for instance, when he was alone and his wolves would come whining out of the hills to be with him. That was a secret, however, something he kept to himself, lest Settlement's Szgany youths call him a liar. For as everyone knew, wolves must be caught as pups and trained, or else they can't be trusted.
... And in his daydreams, which he knew were morbid things, however much they fascinated him.
... But especially when he slept and dreamed of ... oh, of all manner and shape of things! Of the crumbling dead in their graves, who could talk to him if they wanted to but would not, though he frequently overheard them talking to each other; of meaningless yet maddeningly familiar numbers, cluttering his reeling brain until he thought his head must fill and burst from their constantly mutating rush and whirl; and of a different world of men which was weird and unknown as the spaces between the stars.
. .. Perhaps like the world beyond the Gate?
Again the shouting of the others reached out to him from the foothills and the pass; until at last Nathan backed away from the coldly glaring source of his fascination, and jumped down from the low crater wall. But as he picked his way very carefully between the gaping mouths of giant, perfectly circular wormholes where they pierced the ground and angled down into otherwise solid, compacted earth and rock all around the perimeter of the Gate, still he sensed the lure of the silent, shining sphere, and felt it like a magnet in his mind.
'Nathan!' Andrei Romani's call came yet again, distantly, followed in a while by the echoes of his bull voice rolling down from the hills: 'Nathaaan!'... 'Nath-aaan!... Nathaaan!'
Nathan had moved away from the Gate now, but still was unable to tear his eyes or his thoughts from it. The Gate to the hell-lands, another world, and possibly a world that was terrifying.
When Lardis talked of what had happened that night fourteen years ago, he usually spoke of 'a breath of hell', which came roaring out of the Gate to burn the Wamphyri in its fire. But at other times and less romantically, he had admitted that it might have been some kind of unthinkable weapon, whose power was such that the hell-landers themselves had little or no control over it. 'Whatever their world was like before,' (he would say), 'it really must be hell now, if that was merely the backdraught of one of their wars! Zekintha told me all about that: how their weapons were devastating.'
Measuring his pace, Nathan started to run. He had kept the others waiting too long and they'd be impatient. He was right: almost a mile away, Andrei Romani was complaining again. 'Is he deaf as well as dumb?'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Coming lithely, jinglingly from the mouth of the pass, Nestor and Jason joined the two older men. 'No,' Nestor shook his head and gave a disdainful grimace. 'My brother's neither deaf nor daft, nor even dumb. He doesn't want to speak, that's all. He's just... Nathan.'
Lardis glanced at Nestor, could almost taste the bitterness where his mouth puckered on his sour words. A pity they weren't closer, he thought, like they'd been as children. For then they had been inseparable.
Nestor had looked after his brother until they were well into their teens. Maybe he'd looked after him too well, fought one too many fights for him, taken one too many knocks on his behalf. Whatever, it wasn't the same between them now. And then there was Misha, of course. Young boys will always be boys and friends, until they grow into