by Brian Lumley
'Your own man,' he babbled. 'Yes, yes, of course you are! And I'm a fool who says and questions too much, when in fact you are the one who should question, and I should supply the answers!'
Nathan felt sick with disgust. Perhaps this creature was the village idiot after all; but at least his words had given him an idea. 'You're right,' he said, nodding. That's what I need: a little shade and a few answers.'
'Then ask away!' the other cried, coming to a crouch and backing away towards the forest, and leaving his crossbow where it had fallen. 'Whatever questions you like, Lord. And if I can answer them I will, be sure!'
Nathan took up the weapon, loaded it with the spare bolt from under the tiller and applied the safety; and the other at once groaned and put up his trembling hands, as if to ward off a shot. Nathan looked at him, then at the crossbow in his hands and frowned again. 'What?' he said. 'Man, I won't shoot you! Do you always greet strangers this way?'
'Strangers!' the other was almost hysterical. 'Do I greet strangers this way… always? But there are no strangers! Who would come? Who can come… except such as you? As yet you are unchanged… but soon, ah, soon! You're one of theirs, I know it, come to practise your deceptions among your slaves!'
'Deceptions?'
'Ah! No! I did not mean it!' The other threw his arms wide and fell to his knees for a third time in the dappled shade of the trees. 'Forgive me! I am confused!'
'You're… a fool!" Nathan couldn't contain himself. The hunter burst out sobbing at once, crying:
'No, no! I was not taken in the tithe! Please don't take me now! Whatever you want, only ask it of me, but let me be a man all my days and not… not a monster!
'Now listen to me,' Nathan hardened his voice. 'You are wasting my time. There's something I want to know. And that's all I want with you.' He tossed the crossbow aside.
'Ask away! Ask away!'
'lozel Kotys — where can I find him?'
'Eh? lozel the mystic? lozel the hermit?'
'If that's what you call him,' Nathan nodded.
'lozel, aye!' the other's eyes started, as if he made some connection. 'For he has been there, of course!'
'Do — you — know him!?' Nathan's patience was exhausted; he spoke through clenched teeth.
'Yes! Yes, of course!' The hunter turned, pointed north across the forest to where a steep, thinly clad knoll or outcrop reared above the trees. There… a mile… the knoll. And at its foot, a cave. lozel lives there, alone. Only head for the knoll, through the woods, you'll cross a path, well-worn, which runs between the town and his cave.'
'Show me,' said Nathan.
'Indeed, yes, of course!' The hunter made to set off at once, but Nathan stopped him.
'Pick up your crossbow.'
'My weapon, aye!' the other licked his lips, trembling as he did as he was told…
Along the way were other hunters; glimpsed dimly between the misty trees, they were like wraiths drawn out of the earth by the warmth of the new day. No one approached, and in a few minutes Nathan's guide found the path: a narrow way cut through the woods. By then it was almost full daylight, and Nathan had had more than enough of the cowed hunter's company. 'You say this path will lead me direct to lozel's cave?'
'Indeed, Lord. Indeed it will.'
'I thank you,' said Nathan. 'From here on I go alone.'
'I… can go?'
'Of course.' Nathan turned his back on him and followed the path. But he was aware that behind him the hunter backed off — slowly at first, breathlessly — then turned and tiptoed away, and finally ran for Vladistown. Shaking his head, Nathan went on.
lozel Kotys was up and about. In the mouth of his cave, the hermit braised slivers of skewered pork on hot stones at the rim of his fire. Becoming aware of Nathan's approach about the same time as Nathan smelled his cooking, lozel looked down from the elevated shelf in front of his cave and saw a vague, grey figure where his feet stirred the lapping mist.
'Now hold!' the hermit's voice rang out, wavering and a little infirm. 'Who comes and why? I receive no casual visitors here…'
'But you'll receive me,' Nathan called back, coming on without pause. And if lozel wouldn't receive him… so much for Thikkoul's stargazing!
There was a ladder at the foot of the rocks. As Nathan strode closer lozel went to draw it up. Nathan caught at the lower rungs and held on, and gazed up at the other's furious face scowling down on him. Against the strength of Nathan's arms and the weight of the ladder both, the hermit could do nothing. Anyway, he'd noted his visitor's dress and curious colouring, and as the anger drained out of him something of anxiety, fear took its place.
'Who are you?' he gasped, releasing the ladder and backing off a pace, until only his grey-bearded face was visible. Nathan fixed him with his eyes, and climbed.
'I'm a Traveller,' he said. 'And I've travelled a long way to see you, lozel Kotys.'
lozel was small, wrinkled, middling clean and reasonably clothed in well-worn leathers. While he wasn't extremely old, he did suffer from some infirmity which caused his limbs and voice to tremble. And his dark eyes ran a little with rheumy fluids. 'Eh? A Traveller?' he said, his eyes darting, taking in all they could of Nathan where he stepped off the ladder on to the shelf. 'And you've come a long way, you say? How is it possible? Unless — from Turgosheim?' And now his voice, fallen to a whisper, was hoarse.
Nathan had learned something of the ways of these people, and something of their fears. 'lozel,' he said, 'I'm not here to harm you. I'm simply… here!' It was difficult to find a reason for being here. He didn't have one, except that Thikkoul had foreseen it, and beyond it to a possible reunion with loved ones whom Nathan had long thought dead and passed from him forever. That alone would be reason enough, but how to explain all that to lozel?
'Simply here?' the hermit repeated him, shaking his head. 'No, if there's one thing I've learned in life it's this: that nothing is "simply" anything, and no one is "simply" anywhere. You were sent — by him!'
'Him?'
'Maglore! You are my… replacement!'
Nathan sighed. Nothing these people said made any sense. 'I don't know this Maglore,' he said.
'Maglore of Runemanse — in Turgosheim!' the other told him.
Things began to connect. Nathan said: 'That makes twice today I've been mistaken for Wamphyri, or one of their changeling lieutenants. But I'm not. I'm Szgany.' He decided to tell it all. 'I'm from the west, beyond the Great Red Waste. Upon a time the Wamphyri were there, but they were driven out, beaten in a great battle.
Now they've come back — from here. Or rather, from Turgosheim. I came to see how you people lived here in this land of vampires, so that I would know how best to advise my own people in the west.' He shrugged. 'Well, and it seems I must tell them to fight on — even to the last drop of blood! For obviously you don't "live" at all but merely exist, like goats fattened for the slaughter.'
While Nathan talked he scratched vigorously at his left wrist. A grain or two of sand must have got under his strap to irritate him, and he still felt lousy from having walked too close to his hunter guide. But as he paused from speaking, finally the itch became too great. In order to scratch more freely, he rolled the leather strap from his wrist and slipped it free of his fingers. Circling his wrist, a band of white skin showed glassy grains embedded and inflamed. Nathan got them out with his fingernail, rubbed spittle into the red patch, and went to pick up his strap.
lozel had been watching closely, however, and beat him to it. Frowning, he took up Nathan's wristlet strap and looked at it — curiously at first, then with studied intensity. Finally his eyes narrowed in what seemed to be recognition, and nodding knowingly, he gave the strap back.
Nathan said: 'Is there something…?'
The other shrugged. 'A strange thing to wear as ornament, that's all. Some weakness in your wrist, that you need to keep it strapped up, "man of the west"? Or is the twisted loop some sort of sigil? Your brand, perhaps?' There was that in lozel's qua
vering voice which Nathan didn't like, which more than suggested that the hermit considered his visitor a liar.
'You people are suspicious, full of fear,' he said. 'You meet strangers like dogs: yapping and snarling. It was a mistake to come here. Even if I could help you, I can't see that it would be worth it.'
lozel looked beyond him, down at the trail where sunlight came filtering. But more than sunlight had come. And: 'Oh yes, you made a mistake coming here, all right!' the hermit said.
Nathan looked, felt his first pang of apprehension as he saw a handful of men approaching. They were led by the ragged hunter. There! That's him!' the hunter pointed. As the party arrived at the foot of the ladder, Nathan climbed down; lozel stayed where he was, up on the rim of the ledge. Nathan faced the newcomers, and saw that they were much of a likeness; inbred, ugly, rough and ragged. The hunter was no village idiot: they were all cut of much the same cloth. And all of them were armed.
'My name's Nathan,' he said, perhaps lamely. 'I've come from the west, beyond the Great Red Waste, as a friend.'
'He has come from the north,' lozel called down. 'Rather, he is fled here from the north — from Turgosheim — and comes as an enemy, albeit unwitting… maybe! They'll be after him in a trice, and if they find him here…'
The men ringed Nathan about, looked at him, fingered his clothes. One of them took his knife. Nathan stood tall, tried not to appear afraid. He turned to their obvious leader, a man who was burly and big-bellied; the only one who looked as if he ate well. His eyes were piggish in a red, puffy face. Nathan spoke to him. 'lozel is wrong. I'm from the west.'
'Aye,' lozel called down again, his voice heavy with sarcasm. 'And he's come across the Great Red Waste. Why, certainly he has! Only see how desiccated he is, all poisoned from the wasteland's gases. And his clothes all in tatters.' His voice hardened. 'He's fled out of Turgosheim, believe it. Some Lord's unwilling pet, and I think I know which one. Why, he even wears Maglore's sigil upon his wrist!'
The burly one nodded, scratched his chin, looked Nathan in the eye and gave a musing grunt. 'lozel's right,' he said. 'No one has ever come out of the west. In any case, the lands beyond the Great Red Waste are legendary: we're not even sure that they exist.' He frowned. 'But I'll grant you one thing: you don't look Szgany.'
'One of Maglore's experiments,' lozel interrupted again from the safety of his ledge. 'This one's a changeling!'
'Eh?' The leader of the bunch at once drew back from Nathan, likewise his companions. 'A vampire thing?'
'Not him,' lozel shook his head. 'And that's puzzling, I admit. But I was cooking and my hands are smeared with oil of kneblasch, which I rubbed into the leather of his strap. If he were Wamphyri we'd know it: he'd be in pain from that strange strap of his. Also, he carries silver on his person. Last but not least, sunlight falls on him and he suffers no ill.'
'It's true!' the scabby hunter put in. 'He came from the grasslands, with the sun full on him!'
'So,' said their leader, eyeing Nathan up and down. 'And what's to be done with you?'
Nathan glanced at him in disgust, then looked up at lozel until their eyes met and locked. And: What are you thinking, you scruffy, treacherous old dog? Nathan wondered. Treachery, yes — just as Thikkoul had warned.
lozel's thoughts were easy to read; his mind had been opened before, often, so that he couldn't close it. Even Nathan's small talent found no difficulty in breaching his mental defences. Or perhaps it was simply that Nathan was desperate to read the other's thoughts.
He is or was Maglore's, I'm sure of it, lozel was thinking. But is he a runaway, or was he sent? Is he here to replace me, or did he hope to enlist my aid in hiding himself away?
'So,' Nathan said, 'what I've heard about lozel Kotys is true.' (Two could make accusations.)
'What's that?' the burly one was interested.
Nathan glanced at him again, contemptuously. 'Why, that the Wamphyri use him as a spy against the Szgany. Against you! Except he blinds you with the lies of a so-called "mystic", so that you don't see him for what he really is. Now tell me, who else have you ever met who returned out of Turgosheim?'
'Don't listen to him, Dobruj!' lozel screeched. 'What, me, a spy? I spy on no one. To what end? Why, all I ever ask is to be left alone. But this one: just look at him! His clothes, his alien colours, his story! Hah! From beyond the Great Red Waste, indeed! His lies are obvious.'
Dobruj was the burly one, the chief. Craning his neck, he scowled up at lozel. 'Aye, and this isn't the first time you've been suspicioned, old hermit! If I had the proof of it, one way or the other… huh!' He fingered his chin again, and looked at Nathan. 'But meanwhile, what's to be done with you?'
'Only listen to me,' lozel had managed to compose himself, 'and you'll know what to do with him. Put him in the tithe and so save one of your own! Vormulac's tithesmen come tonight, and already your tally is short, because of deserters. So why not let this one make up the numbers, eh? If he, too, is a runaway — from Turgosheim — they'll surely take him back again. Which will stand you and Vladistown in good stead, Dobruj. Ah, but if he's a spy, they'll find reasons not to take him! And then… there will be time later, to deal with him. Either way, you've nothing to lose.'
Dobruj thought about it, cocked his head on one side and glanced yet again at Nathan before making up his mind. Finally he nodded and said: 'It makes sense.' At which, two of his men grabbed Nathan by the arms. He tried to fight them off until a third held the point of his own knife to his ribs. But:
'None of that!' Dobruj commanded. 'If he's going in the tithe we don't want him damaged. Right, enough of this. Back to town…'
As they bundled Nathan along the path, Dobruj called up to the hermit: 'You, lozel — be sure you're close to hand in town when the tithesmen come. For should these accusations of yours make a fool of me, I'll be wanting words with you…'
'Hah!' the hermit called out, shaking his fists from on high. 'You'll see! You'll see!'
Dobruj paused a moment and narrowed his piggish eyes at him. 'Aye, we'll see what we'll see,' he said. 'But make sure you're there anyway.' It was a command, not to be denied. And it was a sure threat.
lozel watched them out of sight, then went to a ledge in the cave and took up a sigil shaped in gold. It had been given to him by the Seer Lord Maglore of Runemanse. Maglore's sigil: whose shape was the very image of the strap on Nathan's wrist, but moulded in heavy metal. Muttering curses, lozel carried it to a dark corner, sat down on the edge of a stool, and closed his eyes. And just as Maglore had instructed him, so the hermit held the golden shape warm in his hand and felt its weird contours, and sent his thoughts winging, winging, winging -
— All across the mountains to Turgosheim…
In Vladistown — a huddle of maybe one hundred and twenty drab dwellings of timber, sod, withes and skins; nothing so sophisticated or large as Mirlu Township, Tireni Scarp or Settlement — Nathan was detained with six other young men in a timbered pen which was largely open to the sky. On the inside, a few narrow awnings kept the sun off the prisoners. These were not criminals but tithelings: the 'legitimate get' of vampire tithesmen, who would arrive out of Turgosheim after sundown to collect their miserable flesh-and-blood levy. Since male and female tithelings were kept apart, there were two such stockades.
Nathan's belt had been taken from him and replaced with a length of twine. To offer him up to a lieutenant of the Wamphyri bearing silver upon his person… the consequences would be unthinkable! He would never see that belt, buckle or sheath again. As for the silver locket and chain given him by Atwei at their parting: they went unnoticed under his flowing hair and soft leather shirt. After dark and before the tithesmen came, he would secrete them in an inside pocket.
Nathan was mortally afraid but tried not to show it. The others penned with him were less reticent. Listening to their whispers, it was plain they'd given up all hope. They saw themselves as fodder for the Wamphyri; even when loved ones came to speak to them through the perimete
r fence, they could scarcely be bothered. The place was heavy with depression, rank with the acrid stench of fear. A tented privy in one corner did nothing to improve the atmosphere. Nathan would like to shut the hushed conversations out and think his own thoughts, but could not. In the end he listened however listlessly, gleaning what scraps of information he could.
The tithesmen would come an hour or so after sundown, when the last soft flush lay low on the southern horizon. Should all go well they would take Dobruj's tribute of flesh and be out of here in less than one hour; but if anything was amiss… someone must be made to pay for it. Dobruj was the town's headman, whose back bore the scars of past failures, when the tally had been short now and then. He wasn't likely to make that mistake again. Yet even now a pair of defectors had brought the count down: the tally was two men short — or one man, now that this flashy stranger had been taken — so that Dobruj must find one more, when the tithesmen came.
The day was no shorter than any Sunside day, yet somehow time flew. Nathan likewise thought of flight, but outside the stockade the guards were cautious for their lives; only let a titheling escape… who would take his place? When water was brought Nathan drank it, but he refused the tasteless food. It was snapped up by the others as if they hadn't eaten in a week. Well, things were not that bad, but neither were they good. He continued to listen to their stories…
For a year and nine months now Wamphyri demands had been on the increase, tithe collections more frequent, the sack of Sunside's resources more utter. The Lords of Turgosheim were draining the townships as never before; they seemed unable to get enough of anything; there was such a thirst, a hunger and fire in them as to outdo all previous greed. As for its cause or source: who could say? What man would ever dare to ask? But one thing for sure: their monstrous works across the barrier mountains were grown more monstrous yet!
Things had crashed in the foothills — gigantic, hideous Wamphyri constructs; mad, mewling, ravaging carnivores — word of which had found its way through the forests to the towns on the rim. The Wamphyri made aerial monsters in Turgosheim, from innocent flesh and blood! But these were creatures far removed from their doleful, nodding manta flyers. As to their purpose: again, who would dare ask?
