living ice!'
At which Lardis's eyes had narrowed. Twice now the old man had mentioned the Icelands, those far northern regions beyond Starside, into which the Wamphryi had banished malefactors of their own kind since time immemorial. After the battle at the garden, several surviving Lords were known to have fled there: the gigantic, acromegalic Fess Ferenc, the entirely loathsome Volse Pinescu, the squat and vindictive Arkis Leperson - even the great Lord Shaithis himself, plus an unknown number of lieutenants and thralls. Well, and they were only the last of many gone before them. But none had ever returned. Not yet...
And Lardis had shivered and husked: 'Are you telling me that they fear the return of ...?'
'Wait! Wait!' Old Jasef had fluttered his hands. 'In the hour before dawn I dreamed of The Dweller, the changeling, the wolf with a man's hands. Except it was more than just a dream, and he asked for you, Lardis. If you would know more, then go and speak to him who runs with the pack.'
'Oh?' Lardis had grunted, shrugging in that jerky way of his, to indicate his irritation. 'Just like that? And should I, too, run with the wolves? And will they also respect my life, like the tame wolves of Settlement? Now tell me: even if I wanted to see The Dweller, how would I seek him out and where find him?' But he'd known the answer even before the question was out.
'Where else?' said Jasef, cocking his head on one side.
At the grave of his mother, of course ...
Nana and Jasef had reached the topmost flight. Puffing and panting where the going was steep, the old man leaned heavily on Nana. Their errand must be important. Lardis called down, 'You should have sent a runner. I would have come to you.'
A runner - even those simple words conjured images: Of a racing moon in the skies over Starside, and Jean grey shapes, running like quicksilver, whose silhouettes seemed part of the night. Never fully seen - a grey blur on the periphery of sight - they melted into the ridges, the crags, the shadows of black and stirless trees. Their triangle eyes had been luminous in the garden's preternatural gloom.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
For of course Lardis had known his duty, and despite his fear had gone there; climbed up to the high pass and through it to the garden, to meet with Harry Wolfson at the grave of the Gentle One Under the Stones. Oh, he'd not gone alone or unarmed; five of his best men had accompanied him, and he'd carried his shotgun and a box of silver-shot cartridges from The Dweller's armoury. It wasn't that Lardis didn't trust Harry Wolfson: he had trusted, almost worshipped him in his time and would do so even now - to a point. But there had been word of him. Hunters on the evening slopes of Sunside, returning late to Settlement, Mirlu, Tireni Scarp, had seen him running with the pack. And he had howled with the best of them!
They had their pact, however, and not a man of the western Szgany townships would ever shoot at a mountain wolf. Still, to be absolutely sure they'd not be tempted, Lardis had left his men to wait for him at the back of the garden, where the pass led down to Sunside. And then he'd gone on alone to the rendezvous, at the grave of The Dweller's mother. Except it had not been the changeling whom Lardis met in the now ruined garden. Not him but his father, the Necroscope Harry Keogh, returned at last out of another world.
Lardis could remember the first moments of that meeting in detail: how first the garden had been empty, then the tall figure of the hell-lander, standing there at the wall, alone, shoulders slumped, forlorn, where a moment ago there had been an empty space. And Lardis had known at once who this must be, for no other could come and go like that; and he'd wondered: Is this what The Dweller wanted me to know, that his father is back in the barrier mountains?
But then, at Lardis's approach, so Harry had straightened, turned, seen him there. And in that selfsame instant Lardis had known that The Dweller wasn't the only changeling in Starside. Grey and gaunt, Harry's flesh, and crimson his eyes. Wamphyri!
As for the rest of that meeting - their actions, the substance of their conversation - it was all but forgotten.