another husband. And as for the old man: surely the day had long since dawned when the mentalist would have been no more. His rapidly shrivelling brain, desiccated bones and knotted ligaments must certainly have done for him by now, when during some nightmare raid from Starside - with neither wit to hide himself away, nor agility to flee - Jasef would have ended his days as fodder in the belly of a hybrid Wamphyri warrior creature. Except ... that had been then and this was now, and things were very different.
Lardis continued to follow the progress of the pair as they climbed towards him, and his thoughts in respect of the aged Szgany telepath were neither callous nor calculating, merely honest: Old Jasef, with his mind-reading abilities and what-all: what he ate didn't amount to much, nor was he troublesome. In his lean-to adjacent to Nana's cabin, he lived out his time in what small comfort was available and was grateful. For he knew that in certain Szgany tribes he might not be so fortunate; he might even be put down, like his father before him, because there was something of the Wamphryi in him. It was very little and showed itself only in his mentalism, but in Lardis's eyes that made him valuable. Especially now that things were starting to happen again, albeit things which the Szgany could well do without.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Now Lardis looked back some thirteen sunups to the last time Nana brought Jasef Karis to see him - and to what had resulted from the visit:
'Karen's in her aerie and worried!' The old man's hands had fluttered like brown-spotted birds. 'Likewise Harry Wolfson where he prowls with the pack on Star-side's flank, howling under the racing moon. Their thoughts are strange and ominous. I have seen with their eyes how the auroras writhe and pulse over the Icelands, and smelled with their nostrils the weird winds that blow from that cold realm!'
Lardis had nodded, and asked: 'What are their thoughts?'
'Karen is uneasy - very! She makes monsters!'
'Out of men?' Not wanting to believe it, Lardis had held his breath. It had been hard enough, that time four years ago, to believe she still lived! What, Karen alive? And Harry Dwellersire so sure that she was dead? But when The Dweller returned to Starside after delivering his father back to the hell-lands, then the truth of it had been seen: the Lady Karen herself had come visiting! She and The Dweller (two of a kind?), walking, talking together on the silvered slopes, in the heights over Star-side's boulder plains. But why not? She had been his ally against the Wamphyri Lords, hadn't she? She had been the one to bring first warning.
And now this: she practised the arts of the Wamphyri and made monsters! But from what? Perhaps it was as well after all that The Dweller had become a changeling, whose powers waned like his waning man-flesh. Aye, for he was the leader of the grey brotherhood now - a wolf! - albeit a wolf with the pale slender hands of a human youth. Had it been otherwise ....h, what unthinkable nightmares he and Karen might have bred together! And what blood-lusting progeny, to come raiding again out of Starside!
Jasef, however, had given a shake of his palsied head. 'No, Karen took no men to make her creatures. Neither flesh of Travellers nor even trog flesh, but ... stuff, which she discovered alive in the workshops of the Lords Menor Maimbite and Lesk the Glut, buried beneath the ruins of their toppled aeries.' Then with a shrug he'd added: 'But what odds? For it, too, had been the stuff of men ... upon a time.'
While word of Karen's weird industry and Harry Wolfson's fretful prowling was bad enough news in itself, still Lardis had wanted to know why they'd been driven to these extremes; had Jasef gleaned the reason for it? Had The Dweller's metamorphosis driven him mad? What did Karen fear that she made guardian creatures, when she herself was the last of the Wamphyri? There had been rumours: some said she'd taken men for lovers and never harmed a one of them. What had Jasef divined of these things? Anything at all? Or was he merely groping in the dark?
'Awful winds whistling out of the Icelands,' the ancient had moaned, rolling his eyes. 'The changeling and Karen, they have watched the auroras weaving, and listened to voices out of the