Necroscope V: Deadspawn

'In some large part!' Harry nodded at once. 'Don't sell yourself short. So what are you trying to say, Lardis?'

'I am wondering…' the other began to answer, paused and sighed. 'The Dweller, when lucid, has mentioned…'

When 'lucid'? Now what the hell was this? Harry would look inside Lardis's head, but something warned him not to take on too much. 'Yes?' he prompted.

'Is it possible — ' Lardis jerked the shotgun shut across his arm, thus loading it, its twin barrels pointing straight at Harry's heart, 'that you are their advance guard?'

The Necroscope conjured a Möbius door directly under his own feet and fell through it — and in the next moment rose up out of another door behind the Traveller chief. The echoes of the double blast were still bouncing between the higher crags; a whiff of black-powder stench drifted on the air; Lardis was cursing very vividly and swinging the double barrels of his weapon left and right through a 180-degree arc.

Harry touched him on the shoulder, and as Lardis crouched down and spun on his heels took the gun from him. He propped the weapon against the wall, narrowed his eyes and tilted his head on one side a little — perhaps warningly — and growled, 'Let's walk and talk, Lardis. But this time let's try to be a little more forthcoming.'

The Gypsy was build like a bull; for a moment he remained in his half-crouch, eyes slitted, arms reaching. But finally he changed his mind. Harry was Wamphyri. Go up against him? One might as well hurl oneself from a high place, which would be a much quicker, far less painful death.

But this time, no longer distracted by the gun, Harry read his thoughts. 'No need to die, Lardis,' he said, as softly as possible. 'And no need to kill. I'm no one's vanguard. Now, will you tell me what has happened — what is happening — here? And take the shortest route about it?'

'Many things have happened,' Lardis grunted, catching his breath. 'And many more will happen. That is, if The Dweller's premonitions — his dreams of doom — should come to pass.'

'Where is The Dweller now?' Harry demanded. He glanced sharply at Lardis. 'Wolfson, did you call him? And where's his mother?'

'His mother?' Lardis raised his slanted eyebrows, quickly lowered them again. 'Ah, his mother! Your wife, the most gentle lady Brenda.'

'She was my wife, once.' Harry nodded.

'Come this way,' said Lardis.

He led the Necroscope across the garden, and Harry saw for himself how great were the changes. For it was plain now that the place had been left untended. The pools were stagnating; the greenhouses were empty and cold; a bitter wind blew, bouncing wiry balls of tumble-weed across the flat, once fertile saddle. And to one side, where the level ground began to climb again like foothills to the higher peaks, there lay Brenda's simple cairn.

Harry felt the poignancy of the moment and reached out with his deadspeak. It was instinct… like the beat of his heart… like breathing… but in another moment, remembering how she'd been, he withdrew. She wouldn't know him, and even if she did remember it would only disturb her. To Lardis he said, 'She died peacefully?'

'Aye,' the Gypsy answered. 'Sunup and gentle rains, and all the flowers in bloom. A good time to go.'

'She wasn't ill?'

Lardis shook his head. 'Merely frail. It was her time.'

Harry turned away. 'But alone, here…'

'She wasn't alone!' Lardis protested. 'The trogs loved her. My Travellers, too. And her son. He stayed with her to the end. It helped keep his own trouble at bay.'

'His trouble?' Harry repeated him. 'You mean when he's not himself, not lucid? And you've called him Harry Wolfson. I ask you one more time: where is The Dweller, Lardis Lidesci?'

The Gypsy stared at him a moment, then glanced at the full moon riding the peaks and shivered. 'Up there,' he said, 'where else? Wild as his brothers, aye, and like a king among them where they lope in the trees along the ridges. Or snug in a cave with his bitch on Sunside when the sun is up, or hunting foxes in the far west. Men see him from time to time with the pack… they know him from the hands he wears where the rest have paws, and from his crimson eyes, of course.'

Harry need ask no more, for now he knew. It was something he'd wondered about often enough. Almost to himself, softly, he said, 'With The Dweller… changed, and the Wamphyri defeated, no longer a threat, there was nothing to keep his people here, nothing to hold them together. Perhaps you even feared him. And so you Travellers have drifted back to Sunside, the trogs have returned to their caves, and the garden… will soon come to an end. Unless I put it to rights again.'

'You?'

'Why not? I fought for it, upon a time.'

Lardis's voice was sour, gruff now. 'And will you also hunt on Sunside — hunt men, women and children — when the nights are dark?'

'Does my son hunt the travelling folk? Did he ever?'

Lardis turned abruptly away. 'I have to go. At the back of the saddle there's a track, a cleft, a pass. My route back through the mountains to Sunside.'

Harry followed close behind. 'Do you go alone? Why did you come here, anyway?'

To remember what was upon a time, and to see what has become. Just this one last time.'

'And now that the Wamphyri are no more: how goes it on Sunside? Have you settled, or do you journey as before?'

Lardis looked back and gave a snort. 'What? The Wamphyri, no more? Well, perhaps — for now! But the swamps boil with their spawn. All is as it was in the long ago, and what has been will be again. Vampires today, Wamphyri tomorrow!'

Harry came to a halt, let the other stride away into a rising mist. 'Lardis,' he called after him, 'remember this: don't bother me and I won't bother you and yours. That's a promise. And if you're in need, seek me out. Except… seek carefully.'

'Hah!' The Gypsy's reply rang from the mist. 'But you're Wamphyri now, Harry Hell-lander! What, and do you make promises? And should I believe them? Well, and perhaps I would have believed them upon a time. But believe the thing inside you? No way! Never! Oh, you'll come a-hunting soon enough, for a woman to warm your bed, or a sweet Traveller child when you've wearied of the flesh of rabbits.'

'Lardis, wait!' Harry growled after him. There are things I need to know, which you can tell me.' Of course, he could always stop him, instantly, and do what he would with him. But he wouldn't, for the old times. And also because he, the Necroscope, was still ascendant, still in command of himself.

The moon raced full and low in the sky; it silvered the peaks, turned the shadows of the crags black, made the mist luminous where it crept. And Harry saw that the mist wasn't rising but falling: down from the shadowed places, to fill the saddles and false plateaus, and tumble over the crags like glowing, slow-motion waterfalls. The howl of a wolf reverberated, echoing from one peak to the next. It was joined by another, and another. No natural mist, this. And these unseen creatures, they were strange and mournful.

Finally Lardis's voice came back hoarse and panting. 'Do you hear that, Harry Hell-lander? The grey brotherhood! Aye, and their king with them, come to sit by his mother and talk with her a while, as is his wont. Ask him these things you would know, and maybe he'll talk to his father, too. But as for me, farewell.'

There came a distant crunching of pebbles, the sound of scree dislodged and sliding, and Lardis was off and running, on his way to Sunside.

And the howling ceased.

Harry waited…

Finally they came out of the mist: long-eared, grey-furred, tongues lolling, with eyes like molten gold. A pack of wolves. But they were only wolves.