Blood Brothers

Maglore saw that, too. 'Did you wager for him?' he asked her as his lieutenant approached.

'We drew straws,' she snarled, still struggling. 'And I won.'

'Fool!' Maglore told her. 'You lost! Where orders exist you obey them, and where there are none you do nothing. That is the rule, in Runemanse. The others know that, and so they let you win. They were baiting you, trying Nathan, and testing… me!'

He tossed her into his man's arms, grew taller and glowered all about the cavern. 'Testing me?' he shouted, his face livid with a fire which seemed to burn through the very bone. 'Well, and let this be a lesson to all of you. I need not say more than this…' He glanced at his lieutenant, and twitched his head in a negligent gesture: '… Magda is for the provisioning!'

The girl screamed once and clawed for the lieutenant's eyes; he jerked back his head, struck her with a massive fist that broke her jaw and knocked her senseless. And the last Nathan saw of her, she was being carried away.

For a moment the silence seemed to ring… then Maglore headed for the spiral staircase with Nathan following on. But this time he knew better than to plead for the girl, for the Seer Lord's mind was seething like a cauldron full of poison. And as they climbed the central stairs, slowly the great hall came back to life behind them…

At Maglore's table, Nathan had no appetite. He picked at his food when the Wamphyri Lord insisted, but his spirit felt so weighted, depressed, that the morsels would not go down. And he wondered about Magda. Perhaps he'd left his mind unguarded; in any case he was jolted and learned a lesson from it, when Maglore said:

'Forget about her. You won't see her again. And anyway, why concern yourself about someone who would have drained you in a trice?'

'Because I feel it was my fault, master.'

'It was no one's fault. It was Nature's fault: the nature of the vampire. But I am glad you refused her. So should you be glad, for your continued existence.'

'Everything in Runemanse appears a threat,' Nathan answered before he could control his thoughts or words. 'There's no innocence here.'

'Well, there is now,' Maglore contradicted him. 'Aye, and there was before. Perhaps not entirely innocent, but certainly human. Didn't I tell you that you weren't the first human being to stay in Runemanse? If I let my… ladies see you and she together, then perhaps they'll leave you alone. I have sent for her and she will join us in a little while.'

'She, master?'

Maglore waved a dismissive hand. 'Ask no more. Now I have questions for you. For instance: you say you don't know women, yet wore a locket with a curl of pubic hair. And Thyre hair at that! Explain it, if you will.'

Nathan shrugged. 'It's a custom of the Thyre when brother and sister part. Atwei was like a sister to me.'

'And how did you know her so well?'

'I got to know her, in my long wanderings in the desert.'

'Ah, yes, I remember,' Maglore nodded. 'You told me about that on our way here. After Wratha and her renegades fell upon your tribe and destroyed it, you walked out into the desert to die. But the Thyre found you and you joined them, and wandered east with them from oasis to oasis. You skirted the Great Red Waste and lived like the desert trogs themselves, on the flesh of lizards and the juice of cactus plants.' Maglore blinked and shook his head. 'So much sunlight and so little colour. Why did you not burn?'

'I wore a cowled Thyre robe,' Nathan lied, 'and kept to the shade wherever possible. Then, when I came to Turgosheim's Sunside, I lived on the fringe of the forest a while before I heard of lozel and sought him out. In the forest's shade, my skin grew pale… which in any case had never been dark.'

'Why did you seek lozel out?' Maglore's questions were coming closer to the mark. Nathan must think fast, and guard his thoughts at the same time.

'I heard he was a mystic who understood strange things. Perhaps he could explain the numbers which plague my dreams, and the reason I feel like a stranger in the presence of my own kind.' He tugged at the twisted strap on his wrist. 'He might also know why I wear this, which has become a part of me.'

'Ah!' Maglore was distracted, fascinated at once, just as Nathan had hoped he would be. 'Take it off. Let me see it again.' Nathan did so, and Maglore picked it up and said: 'So, the sigil puzzles you even as it puzzles me. Why did you not say so?'

'I have lived with it,' Nathan answered. 'I wear it like my hair. Yet while it seems nothing special, I know that it is special, for it is also your sigil. It seemed presumptuous of me to claim it for my own.'

And at last Maglore chuckled. 'Not to say dangerous, eh?'

'That, too,' Nathan answered.

'Well, and we learn more about you all the time,' the Seer Lord nodded, tossing the strap onto the table. 'You're not so naive after all. And did lozel know the sigil? Could he tell you anything about it?'

'Oh, he knew it, master,' said Nathan. 'But did he know about it? — no, nothing. He was a fraud! I myself know more.'

'You do? Explain.'

Nathan took up the strap. 'I have… noticed things. In quieter moments, I have studied this device.'

'A device?' said Maglore, raising a feathery eyebrow. 'Oh, really? Do you think so? Ahhh!'

'How many sides has it?'

'Eh? A question?' Maglore leaned over the table and tested the leather between thumb and forefinger. 'Sides? Why, two, of course.'

'One,' Nathan shook his head. 'For it defies the eye, do you see?' He brought a sliver of charcoal from the fireplace and drew a line on the brown leather, down the centre of its width. As the line lengthened he turned the strap on the table, until the head of the line met up with its tail.

'Ahhh.'' Maglore's great jaw fell open.

And Nathan asked him: 'How many edges has it?'

'Eh? Edges?' Maglore's eyes darted from the strap to Nathan's face and back again. 'Why, two, plainly. What is it but a strip of leather, after all? There must be two edges, if only to separate the space between them!'

'One,' Nathan said again.

'No!' said Maglore, astonished. 'Let me try it!' He blackened the strap's rim with charcoal, until 'each' edge (in fact there was only one, as Nathan had pointed out) was smudged with soot. Then… the Seer Mage's eyes were very wide as he carefully put the strap down. And:

'For all of sixteen years I have known this thing,' he said, 'even taking it for my sigil. Yet I have never "known" it! But now, through you…" He gazed at Nathan in something approaching wonder. 'Well, in alerting me to your presence, lozel Kotys has paid his dues at last. For indeed there is this bond between us.'

He might have gone on to say more, except that was when 'she' arrived…

II She was beautiful in a wan, subdued sort of way, but it was obvious that she was not a vampire. Her eyes were as black as any Szgany eyes Nathan had ever seen, and despite the lack of sunlight — or perhaps because of it — her flesh had taken on a unique creamy texture. No longer the tanned, natural, light golden brown of a Gypsy, still her colour appeared healthier than Nathan's, and it could never be mistaken for the pallor of a thrall or the sickly grey of an undead vampire thing.

Long-legged and dressed in a black sheath split up the sides to mid-thigh, and in a gauzy blouse which scarcely concealed the elastic globes of her breasts, she approached the table and bowed from the waist. Her hair, straight, black as jet, and cut in a fringe over her eyes, was long at the sides and fell forward to frame her oval face. But as she straightened her back and stood tall, waiting for her master's command, her eyes were only for Maglore. So that Nathan supposed she dared not look at him, not in the presence of her Wamphyri Lord.