by Brian Lumley
First as a child:
Misha as he’d seen her that first time: all naked, sleek, shining, and agile as a fish in the water, swimming in the sun-dappled shallows and beckoning him to join her there. Strangely her innocence had deprived him of his own! And despite that he had been a child, his thoughts had been a man’s thoughts. After that there had been other times, but always he kept his sensual self from her; they had played as children, sexless at first, until the passing years had brought changes.
One time, when they had been swimming together and after they’d scrambled back into their clothes—as they laughed and rough-and-tumbled each other on the riverbank—finally they’d fallen into each other’s arms and she had felt him hard against her. At once, he’d sensed her catching her breath and drawing just a little apart. But then, as curiosity got the better of her, she had let her arm fall “casually” across Nathan’s lower half, to test the response of the small rod where it throbbed in his trousers.
Misha had older brothers; she wasn’t blind; she knew about such things.
One day as they wandered in the forest, when he was fifteen and she something less than a year younger, they’d come across a plum tree. It was late in the season and the fruits were very ripe. Lifting her up until she could reach the shining, purple plums, Nathan had been more than ever aware of her thighs swelling into firm, rounded, still boyish buttocks, and conscious of the buds of her breasts where she strained her arms upwards. So that after she had picked several of the fruits, and he relaxed his grip to let her slide down between his hands—
—He’d marvelled at the sight of her brown legs, revealed where her dress rode up about her waist. She had seen his eyes on her and felt him against her where she stretched her toes for the forest’s floor; and she’d told him, however breathlessly, impulsively:
“Ah, see! Your little man is jumping again …”
And when he’d turned away, embarrassed and reddening:
“Nathan, wait!” she had taken his elbow. “It’s all right. I understand. There’s no harm in him. He jumps for joy—for the joy of me!”
For her brothers had girlfriends, too, and Misha knew how they dealt with their frustrations, how they gained relief from the overabundance of their emotions. “You should let him out,” she told Nathan then, still clinging to him, “before he bursts!”
And in the secrecy of the long grass under the plum tree, she had whisperingly, wonderingly compared the purple of his swollen glans to the tightly stretched skins of ripe plums, and stroked him to orgasm. Since when and for three long years, she had satisfied him in this way, and allowed him to return this most tender compliment. But wise beyond her years, she had not once let him into her.
“Ah, no!” she would say when his flesh seemed most insistent. “For when my children come along I must be able to teach them, which I can’t do while I’ve still so much to learn. Also, I have not made up my mind. I may love you, Nathan, but I can’t be sure. What if I discover someone else to love, but too late? If I let your flesh into mine now, this very minute, it might decide me against my will.”
And finally, just a year ago, walking in the twilight before the night, when they paused to fondle a while on a grassy bank and she’d held him throbbing in her hand, and Nathan had told her:
“H-h-he wants to k-kiss you, too. Where only my f-fingers have kissed you.”
And again on impulse she’d taken him deep into her mouth to draw his sting, and afterwards told him:
“There. Flesh is flesh, Nathan, but this way makes no new flesh.” And putting her finger to his lips, she’d added, “Shh! Say nothing, make no protest! We are grown up now. Give me just another year, and then—I shall make up my mind. But it won’t be easy. My father and brothers see many men in Settlement, and they see you. Oh, I know—I know you are more different than even they suspect—but harder far to convince them of that. And anyway, there could be someone else.”
The only “someone else” there could be was Nestor and Nathan knew it, but he’d said nothing. Except … he had wondered. For there had also been times when Nestor and Misha were alone together, too, and who could say but that—?
—But no, for Nestor chased after the other girls of the village, while Nathan had no one but Misha. Surely that must make a difference?
Now that his brother had entered his dream, Nathan moved on, moved forward, to the present. And now Misha was no longer a slip of a girl but a young woman, sitting there in his mother’s house, like some warm wild flower in the light of lamps and the glow of the fire.
Small but long-legged—elfish as the creatures of Szgany myth, which were said to inhabit the deep forests—Misha Zanesti was the focus of Nathan’s fascination; indeed, she was his only fascination in the world! So that it was hard to concentrate on what they were saying, she and his mother, when all he really wanted to do was look at Misha. Even now, dreaming, he couldn’t remember what had been said, but he certainly remembered the way Misha had looked:
Her hair dark as the night, velvet, the darkest Nathanhad ever seen, which in the light of the sun shone black as a raven’s wing. Her eyes—so huge and deeply brown under black, expressive, arching eyebrows that they, too, looked black—all moist and attentive where she listened to Nana Kiklu’s warm low voice, and now and then nodded her understanding and agreement. Her mouth: small, straight and sweet under a tip-tilted nose which, for all that it flared occasionally in true Gypsy fashion (indeed, a great deal like her father’s) had nothing hawkish or severe about it. Her ears, a little pointed, pale against the velvet of her hair where it fell in ringlets to her shoulders.
She might be less wild, voluble, deliberately voluptuous—less enticing and far more retiring—than certain of Settlement’s Szgany girls, but she was in no way less than them. Misha lacked nothing of fire, Nathan knew, but kept it subdued and burning within. So that he alone (and perhaps Nestor, too?) saw its light blazing out from her in all directions, like the white of her perfectly formed teeth when they smiled into the sun. Ah, but he’d also seen those teeth snarl and knew of several village youths who’d felt the lash of her tongue when they sought to be too familiar! Well, they’d been lucky, those lads, for they might have felt a lot more than that if he … if Nathan … but that wasn’t his way. Or it hadn’t been, not then.
In any case, Misha could look after herself and had her own philosophy. He remembered her words: “If a girl flaunts herself and acts the slut, she can only expect to be treated as such. I do not and will not!” But with Nathan she’d always acted as the mood took her. For which he was glad …
His mother and Misha faded from Nathan’s dream and were replaced by Nestor. Nestor striding in the streets of Settlement, admired by the girls and adored by his friends even as the stuttering Nathan was shunned. Nestor proud, strong—arrogant?—but never the bully. Not until that night, last night, when he would have used his physical strength to bend another to his will. Nestor who had cared for and protected Nathan through all the years of their childhood, and cared for Misha, too, until he’d seen how closely she and Nathan were drawn together.
Nestor gone, taken, stolen by a Wamphyri flyer into Starside.
No. said a voice in Nathan’s dream, one which he recognized at once. For it was a mind-voice, and telepathic voices—even the whispers of the dead—are not unlike their more physical counterparts; they “sound” the same as if spoken. But this was no dead person speaking, not even a “person”, though Nathan had always considered him as such. And:
No, the mental voice came again, like a snarl, a cough, a bark in Nathan’s dreaming mind. Your brother—our uncle—has not been stolen away into Starside. The flying creature which took him crashed to earth in the east, on Sunside.
Nathan pictured the speaker. He had his own name for him: Blaze, after the diagonal white stripe across his flat forehead, from his left eyebrow to his right ear, as if the fur there was marked with frost. Blaze, whose eyes were the brown of dark wild honey in the twilight, a
nd feral yellow at night. Lean but not skinny, all muscle, sure-footed as a mountain goat and fleeter far. And intelligent?—oh, far beyond the average intelligence of the pack! He admired and respected him, and knew that it was mutual. Why else should the wild wolves of the barrier mountains call Nathan their “uncle”, and come to him in his dreams as they sometimes came to him in his waking hours?
The grey brother read Nathan’s thoughts, which were focused now beyond the scope of casual dreaming. Because you are our uncle! he insisted. Mine, and likewise the ones you call “Dock” and “Grinner”, my brothers from the same litter. And because you and we are of one blood and mind, we are curious about you and consider your welfare. Our father would have wished it, we think … (A mental shrug, the twitch of a grey-furred ear.) You are not of our kind, but you are of our kin, after all. You are our uncle, as is Nestor. But you are the one who understands us. You, Nathan, of all the Szgany, translate our thoughts and answer them.
Nathan had never understood the way they included him in their wolf family-tree; it could only be a compliment; he considered it as such, and was satisfied to be their friend. But now it seemed his friendship with the wolves was bearing fruit.
“What of Nestor,” he was eager. “Does he live?”
Our grey brothers in Settlement saw him taken into the creature’s mouth, the other’s snarling answer came at once. He was snatched up, whirled aloft, carried east and towards the barrier peaks. But in the hills and all along the spine of the mountains, we observed the creature’s clumsy flight. Wounded where a great bolt was lodged in its flesh, it could not clear the mountains. With fluids raining from its wound, it fell to earth, came down in the pines and expired on the slopes above a Szgany township. And so your brother, who is our uncle Nestor, is not in Starside but Sunside. But … I cannot say if he lives. Members of the pack were close to hand, but not that close. And the men of the town are fearful now of creatures other than men. Aye, and even of strange men! The grey brotherhood must stay well clear.
“Which town?” Nathan could scarcely contain his excitement, which threatened to wake him up. “Where did the flyer crash? If Nestor is still alive, I have to find him. He’s all I have left.”
You have us.
“Among men, he’s all I have.”
You have the Lidesci, who was our father’s friend even before we were littered.
“But Lardis Lidesci…is not of my blood.”
(A nod of that wise wolf head.) The town is the next one to the east, between the rivers.
“Twin Fords?”
That is its name, we think. But Nathan, you have your mother, and a young female of the Szgany. We have seen you together, and she is always in your mind.
“Misha? I don’t know if she lives. And if she lives, I don’t know where or for how long. She was taken by a … by a human dog! By a beast-thing, Wamphyri!”
The Dweller, our father, was a wolf-human, a werewolf.
Nathan shook his head. “Your father could not have been like this one. You are animals, not-humans. But this one was a … a beast! He was inhuman.”
We know of him. (That nod of a wise head again.) In the east, beyond the pass, the grey brothers have heard him singing to the moon in Karenstack. For he worships our silver mistress much as we do. But you are right: he is not like us. We are … animals, and he is a man-beast.
“Wamphyri,” said Nathan, “aye.”
And your mother? What of her?
“I don’t know. Perhaps she was taken; I pray by my star that she was not; perhaps she ran off into the woods. But if she did, then why has she not returned? Do you know anything of her?”
No. It is only by chance that we know of Nestor. We wish you luck in your search for him.
“Do you leave me now?” Nathan was reluctant to let them go.
New things have come to pass. (In Nathan’s mind, Blaze’s golden eyes seemed to burn on him. But their yellow fire was fading, and the wolf’s telepathic voice was faint now, retreating.) Strange and monstrous creatures are come into Starside, from where they raid on Sunside. The woods and mountains are no longer safe, neither for wolves nor men. These are problems for which we have no answers, but there is one at least who might know. Now we go to find out about these things.
Desperately, Nathan tried to retain him, hold on to this one familiar thread—however weird, tenuous, unbelievable—in a world which in the space of a few short hours had become a nightmare. “Answers? But there is no answer to the Wamphyri.”
You may be right. You may be wrong. (The voice was fading out and starting to lose all sense and meaning. How else could Nathan translate the next and last words he heard, except that he misunderstood them?) But our mother speaks to our father, who is your brother. And if anyone would know, he is that one. And so we go to speak to the one who suckled us.
“Your mother, a wolf?”
Aye, where her bones lie bleached in a secret place …
It seemed that a cold wind keened upon Nathan then, as the wolf-voice went out of his dreams –
—But the wind was only the night air where someone had uncovered his head. Squinting his eyes in the firelight he saw Lardis kneeling beside him, turning back his blanket. “Nathan,” the old Lidesci growled. “Be up, lad, and away from here. This one you’ve guarded so well, he wakes up—and I have business with him.”
As dreams are wont to do in the light of reality, Nathan’s was quickly disintegrating, breaking up. Those parts concerning impossible relationships were quickly forgotten; his wolves had always called him uncle, so that he saw nothing strange or new in it. It wasn’t worth retaining. But as for the one important item of information, about Nestor: he clung to that, repeating it to himself:
The flyer that carried Nestor away has crashed to earth in the east, close to Twin Fords.
Strange to think that just yesterday, in the late afternoon, Nathan and the rest of Lardis’s party had passed through Twin Fords on their way home. Since then, it was as if a new age had dawned. An age of darkness.
Perhaps he had spoken out loud before he was fully awake. For Lardis at once demanded: “Eh? Twin Fords? What of it?”
“I … I was dreaming,” Nathan answered. “Of Twin Fords, I think.” He’d long ago learned not to talk about his dreams. Especially the stranger ones.
But Lardis was shaking his weary, hag-ridden head. “No, it was no dream. Twin Fords was hit last night, as prelude to what happened here. A handful of refugees came in while you lay sleeping, and you must have overheard us talking. Twin Fords is no more; its people won’t go back there; the tribes are sundered, Nathan, and we’re all to be Travellers again. The days will be ours, and the golden sun our one sure friend, but all the long dark nights will belong to them, the Wamphyri!”
The Wamphyri lieutenant was groaning, stirring on his cross. Nathan stood up, eased his cramped bones and felt fire in his bruises. He glanced at the stars over the black barrier range, saw that the hour was well past midnight. He had never slept so long in one place, at one time. His bladder was full of water, which he must be rid of.
Stumbling away into the shadows, he found a place to relieve himself. The ground all around was already desecrated, steeped in vampire mist, warrior stench, and unavenged Szgany blood. A little urine couldn’t hurt. Already Nathan’s thoughts had turned as sour and cynical as the bitter brown taste in his mouth …
When he got back to the cross the lieutenant was fully awake, turning his head this way and that, as far as the spike through his topknot would allow, glaring at the handful of men who were gathered there to question him. For a moment the vampire’s scarlet eyes lit on Nathan, burned into his soul, drove him back a pace before they moved on. Nathan was no threat; he was a mere youth, of no importance. But the men were something else. Especially the apish, hollow-eyed leader of this Szgany rabble.
Vratza Wransthrall brought his scarlet gaze to rest upon Lardis and scowled at him. “Man,” he croaked, “you are doomed. For what you have don
e and will do to me—” his eyeballs swivelled left and right, observing the silver spikes which pinned him to the cross, “—my master, the Lord Wran, will stuff your throat with your own tripes, rip out your living heart and eat it smoking, and feed your tatters to his warriors. Whoever you were, you are no more.”
Lardis looked up at him, tilted his head a little on one side, sniffed at the air suspiciously, disdainfully. He glanced at the men around him: Kirk Lisescu, Andrei Romani and his brothers, and one or two others, inquiring: “Do the words rise or fall from his lips? I think they fall; or is it the stench of warriors lingering on the night air? No, for that is sweet by comparison. And so it seems we’ve erred and should have nailed him higher. But what the hell… a stench is only a stench.”
The vampire’s muscles bunched as he flexed grey arms on silver spikes; he gave a shudder that wracked his entire body, then groaned and hung still. But in another moment, lifting his head to glower at Lardis as before, he said: “Aye, make your jokes while you may. For all of this—” he snorted and tossed his head derisively in a small, sneering gesture which dismissed Settlement in its entirety, “—is finished. And all of your people are as dust. Let every man, woman and child of them that are yours count each breath he takes from this time forward, enjoying it individually as if it were his last. For the lucky ones have very little of breathing left to do. As for them that are unlucky: they shall be heir to the dubious delights of the great stack on Star-side; from the mills where their bones will be ground down for meal, to the pens of the warriors and the reeking methane pits. They shall be fuel for my master’s lusts, flesh for his fashioning, fodder for his beasts. So be it.”
Someone had brought Lardis a stool where he sat with a hiked knee supporting his elbow, and his square chin resting on the knuckles of a calloused hand. His attitude towards his captive seemed almost casual, but anyone in his acquaintance would recognize how doomful was his calm, quiet voice as he answered, “Long-winded bastard, aren’t you?” And then, more businesslike: