Nothing of my technology which you can't discover and duplicate for yourselves, given time.'
Lardis felt a great excitement, but at the same time he was frowning again. For now he detected something else in The Dweller's tone, words between his words. There was a sense of - finality? - in the things he said. But if the Szgany were at a beginning, who then was at an end? Or ... who suspected that his end was upon him?
'Other matters,' The Dweller painfully rasped, his urgency cutting into the Gypsy's thoughts; so that again Lardis wondered, Mentalist? Thought-thief? While out loud he said:
'You, yourself, Dweller?'
The Dweller gave a small start, and now it was his turn to wonder. The Gypsy was shrewd. Had Lardis been anticipating his host or simply answering some question of his own? Had he seen the pain in The Dweller's scorched face, heard it in his voice? Had he perhaps guessed that The Dweller's sun-poisoned flesh was dying? Well, possibly, but even a shrewd man could scarcely guess the whole truth, the final truth -that even now The Dweller's vampire was reshaping what untainted flesh remained. But into what?
'Myself?'
Lardis nodded. 'If we Travellers - we Szgany, since it appears we'll journey no more - if we leave the garden, then what of you, your trogs, your people? What of those Travellers who were here before me and mine? What of your mother ... aye, and your father? What of Harry Hell-lander? This is the second sundown he's tossed and babbled in his strange fever. Who knows how long before he'll recover? Last but not least, what of the garden?'
The Dweller nodded. 'We'll deal with all of these things in their turn. My mother ... is failing. I have watched her grow old while in fact she's still young. In the world where she was born, women of her age are still in their prime, but that was never her destiny.' Now his rasping voice turned a little sour. 'From the day she met my father the shape of her life was preordained, with never a chance that it might run a straight course. She wasn't weak, but neither was she strong ... enough. She was ordinary, and Harry is - he was -extraordinary. And yet her life has not been miserable; indeed she has been happy, here in the garden. The nature of her affliction is that it shuts out all manner of horrid things from her mind, until almost everything has been shut out. And now she dwells alone, within.'
'Not alone, Dweller!' Lardis protested.
The Dweller held up a slender hand. 'I know, I know: my people look after her well, and are rewarded with her smiles. But such responses are automatic; she merely obeys her instincts; she is mainly alone - but not for long. Soon she'll join that throng who went before, going on from this place like a vine growing over the wall. Well, and it's true there are worlds beyond and I mustn't be greedy. So let it be: let her simple smile brighten some other's garden awhile. Until then I'll stay with her, along with a few others of my people who won't leave her ...' He paused a moment. And in a little while:
'As for you and your people, Lardis: you'll prosper on Sunside, I'm sure. And myself? Well, I looked after myself, my mother, the garden, long before the first of you Szgany joined me here; and now ... I have friends other than trogs and Travellers. What's more, I no longer have any enemies.' He stood up, seeming to flow to his feet in the weird way of the Wamphyri, and paced the floor to the window that looked out on the garden. Lardis followed him, watching as he opened the window, leaned out a little way, and inclined his head upwards to the misted mountain peaks. The ghost of a howl came ululating down, thin and eerie, echoing in flooding moonlight. And behind his golden mask The Dweller smiled.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'No harm will come to me or mine," he eventually continued, when the howling stopped. 'Shortly, even my most faithful will leave me; I shall ask them to leave, by which time they'll be ready.'
'But ... why do you isolate yourself?' Lardis was at pains to understand his motives. 'Will you stay on here, alone?'
'Stay here? Ah, no. But I shall return from time to time, to talk to her, in my way ...'