sky, so the three heard Peder Szekarly's croaked question: 'But what is it?' Peder had been the last to leave the gnarled tree; he made no attempt to seek cover; he stood trembling, looking down on Starside through a jagged gap in the rocks.
From where Lardis crouched, he couldn't see Peder, didn't know that his young friend stood exposed. 'I don't know what it is,' he finally answered, 'but I saw it - felt it - like a burst of brilliant light, searing my eyes, my soul!'
The lightning?' Peder didn't understand.
At last Lardis looked up and saw him standing there, and knew that the thing of his premonition, whatever, was almost upon them! 'Peder, get down!' he cried.
Too late.
Down on Starside's boulder plain, the sphere Gate disappeared in a LIGHT which ate it in a moment, a light to sear a man's eyes, his soul, as Lardis had said. But it was much more than that, more powerful than that, more terrible than that. In the smallest fraction of a second it leaped the gap between and shone on Peder. Only for a moment, but long enough. Smoke leapt from him. He screamed, clutched at his face, tottered back away from the gap in the rocks. Even as he stumbled, a giant's hand seemed to slap at him, hurling him down!
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
In the next moment there commenced such a howling of torn earth, riven rock, crazed winds ... it was like the combined hissing, mewling, and bellowing of every warrior the Wamphyri had ever spawned! And as the sky turned red over Starside and the frightened clouds went scurrying, so Lardis looked out - because he had to know, had to see.
And what he saw ...!
It was as if something of the hell-lands themselves had erupted through the sphere Gate. Which was as close to the truth as Lardis or anyone else might ever guess, except perhaps a handful of men a universe away, who knew the truth in its entirety.
For the Gate itself was no longer visible, only a mighty mushroom of frothy white and dirty grey, shot through with red and orange fires, boiling for the sky. Already its billowing dome towered high as the mountains, and even now its stem was leaning towards the Icelands, as if bowed down by the weight of its roiling head.
Lardis's jaw fell open; he mouthed unheard, unremembered things into the warm wind off Starside, that demon breath which whipped his hair back and hurled hot grit in his face. And as the furnace blast died away he shielded his eyes against the tracery of lightnings that leaped and crackled between the incredible mushroom and the boiling earth.
Then, hearing Andrei and Kirk calling to him, he pulled himself together and went to them where they crouched beside Peder. Miraculously, the youth had closed his eyes in the moment of the fireball; though the skin of his face, neck, hands was badly seared, his sight was returning with each passing second. Clutching at his leader's hand, he gasped, 'Lardis, Lardis! It was ... it was -'
'I know,' Lardis nodded. 'It was hell!'
Later, Peder's hair would fall out and his gums and fingernails bleed, and when his face grew new skin it would always be white. But at least he would seem to recover, for a while, and be the whole man again. However that might be, he would die six years later, by which time his appearance would be as grey and gnarly as the aspect of an ancient. Nor would there be heirs to survive him ...
In the wild woods to the west of Settlement, in the predawn silence of sunup, old Jasef Karis had dreamed his last dream and now tried to rouse himself, shake himself awake, stand up. But something was desperately wrong; his arms hurt as if they were cramped, and there was a grinding pain in his chest. It was as much as he could do to open his eyes.
Above him, Jasef saw the oiled skin which Nana had draped over low branches like an awning, to keep the dawn rains from his wrinkled hide. Except he'd rolled to one side in his sleep and so lay uncovered, drenched and shivering. The way he felt - hot on the inside, cold out, yet sweating from the pain of the thing in his chest - he suspected that the dawn light in the green canopy overhead would be the last he'd ever see. It must