But my wolves talk to me, and sometimes I hear the dead whispering in their graves ...
He shrugged. 'No, I'm no seer - but I know how to hope when hope is all that's left. And I fancy you do, too, Lardis. Isn't that why you came back up here: to dig again where you have already delved enough, even knowing you'd find nothing?'
After a moment Lardis sighed and nodded, turned away and continued on down. 'Then you have to go,' he said. 'Except - if your star is good to you, and likewise mine to me - you'll promise to come back one day and be my son.'
'I feel I'm that already,' said Nathan, lying yet at one and the same time, and however paradoxically, remaining sincere. For certainly the old Lidesci had been as much a father to him as any he had ever known. And yet behind Lardis's back where Nathan couldn't be seen, he frowned wonderingly. Because just for a moment then he'd seemed to remember something else from last night's dream ... something which his wolves had told to him? Some connection between his father - his real father, Hzak Kiklu - and theirs? Some blood relationship between the two? And was that why they called him uncle?
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Still unseen, Nathan shook his head in bewilderment. But how could that be? For quite obviously, their father had been a wolf!
It was all very mysterious and puzzling. But then, that was frequently the way of it with Nathan's dreams: some things appeared as real and solid as the ground under his feet, while others were vague and ephemeral as ripples on a pool, or frost on the high peaks before the dawn. Some things he remembered, and others he was glad to forget, mainly because he couldn't understand them. Best to fasten on what he perceived as real, he supposed, and leave the fanciful stuff to its own devices.
It was a mistake, but all men make them. Especially when they are under pressure. And Nathan was no exception .. .
In the hours after dawn, as Nathan trekked for Twin Fords, the thought or question would frequently recur: But why would they take my mother?
He would understand - and detest his understanding of it - if she had been raped, vampirized, murdered out of hand. For after all, so many had been. But taken? Nana Kiklu was no mere girl. On the other hand, she was or had been a warm and beautiful woman. Her sons had always thought so anyway, and without prejudice - especially Nathan.
But . .. did the Wamphyri take people indiscriminately? Were they so insensitive of human life that they would simply take, defile, use or waste whatever, whoever, was available? Perhaps they were and did.
Or perhaps it was just that they followed a simpler set of rules: blood is blood, and flesh is merely flesh. For when a hunter is hungry, is he concerned that the rabbit he shoots should have pleasing marks? Does he really care if it is past its prime? And what about the sandal-maker? What difference does it make to him which beast supplies the leather for his sandals, as long as it's supple, hard-wearing stuff?
But on the other hand, the Wamphyri were or had been men, and the 'beasts' they hunted were likewise men - and women! So that they didn't just hunt for meat, or even for stuff to fashion into monstrous undead creatures, but for ... other reasons, too. And so Nathan would always come back to that, and end up wondering if Nana shared the same fate as Misha Zanesti. If Nana had been taken.
And if she hadn't? Then what had happened to his mother, and where was she now?
Nathan had seen a monstrous, massively armoured warrior creature ravaging destructively in the streets of Settlement, and knew that these Wamphyri fighting beasts were carnivores, indeed vampires in their own right. Maybe that was the answer: a horrific answer, to be sure, but a quick end at least. Could it be that the same monster which flattened their home had also snatched up his mother? If so, she would have been dead instantly. But never a trace of her, nothing, not even (Nathan was obliged to consider it, however flinch-ingly) a splash of red.
The same for Misha; except that with Vratza Wrans-thrall's deliberately cruel picture still burning in Nathan's all-too-vivid imagination - and Canker Cani-son's slavering dog-voice reverberating in the vaults