Brian Lumley - Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers

Wratha threw wide the curtains!

In a moment Karl woke up screaming - and found himself chained to his bed. His cries gonged like great

cracked bells as his skin peeled back and his blood boiled. The sun'srays were in his eyes, which

blackened to craters in his head! His hair became smoke, while his limbs and various parts cracked open

to issue jets of steam and stench! Through all ofthis Wratha laughed like a madwoman, danc ing from one

foot to the other in her excitement and hauling on a rope to drag Karl's bedmore surely into the focus of

the sunlight.

His body shrivelled and shrank; his vampire leech deserted him, came writhing from his bursting belly.

Wratha closed the curtains and rushed to his side. Like Karl, his leechwas fatally burned. Dying, it

produced its egg - and she had what she wanted! Of her own free will, she opened herself to the thing,

which entered without pause to fuse with herflesh.

Now her agony would seal the contract. But the deed was done, and Wratha was exultant.At last she

was Wamphyri.'

VAMPIRE WORLD I

BLOOD BROTHERS

BRIAN LUMLEY

A ROC BOOK

ROC

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published 1992

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Roc is a trademark of Penguin Books Ltd Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to

the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's

prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

which it is published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

For Nick Austin, my guiding light for many years.

So far we must have got through our weight in Metaxa,

but there's a lot more left where that came from!

CONTENTS

part one Looking Back 1

part two Looking Further Back, and

Scanning Forward 87

PART THREE Now 167

part four The Brothers - The Raids 255

part five Vampires.' - The Sundered

Tribes - The Search 347

partsix Szgany Sintana - Dissension in

the Aerie - The Thyre 433

part seven Nestor - Titheh'ng –Turgosheim 527

part eight Runemanse - Flight - In the

Blinkof an Eye 625

PART ONE

Looking Back

1

Morning. Sunrise. Sunup!

The sun had risen up fifteen times since the battle for The Dweller's garden; risen up over the

southwestern horizon, travelled a predestined path accordingto its cycle, sunk down again into the

south-east. Fifteen times that low, warm, oh so lazy golden arc across thesky, making for a like number

of sundowns.

Sundown: night, darkness, peril!

Sundown. A time of terror since time immemorial: when the last yellow glints would slip silently from the

high crags of the great barrier range, until its topmost peaks turned a pale ochre, then ashen, finally

wolf-grey and silver under the stars of Starside. A time of terror, yes .. . but no longer. For the battle in

The Dweller'sgarden had been fought and won, and the near-immortal masters of Starside's aeries, the

Wamphyri, were immortal no longer. Indeed, they were either dead or flowninto the Icelands. Of the

latter, only a few had survivedto flee.

Sundown, and nothing to fear from it. Not any more. It was strange ...

On the one side of the mountains, that closest to the sun (Sunside, with its forests and rivers, and, to the

south, its pitiless furnace lands), daylight would persist for a further twenty-five hours; but on Starside the

barrier mountains shut out the sun's life-giving warmth, leaving only the stars and the aurora over the

Icelands to light the rugged land. So it had always been, so itwould always be.

Except upon a time there had also been the Wamphyri!... But now there was none. Not in Starside,

anyway. No vampires here but one, and he was different. He was The Dweller.

And at the beginning of that new night, that fifteenth sundown in the New Age of Starside, The Dweller

had called for Lardis Lidesci to attend him at his house in the garden high over Starside's boulder plains.

Lardis was a Traveller king, leader of one of Sunside'sSzgany tribes. He was short, barrel-bodied,

apelike in the length of his arms; his lank black hair framed a wrinkled, weather-beaten face, with a

flattened nose and a wide mouth full of strong, uneven teeth. Under wild eyebrows, Lardis's brown eyes

glittered his mind's agility, even as he himself was agile despite his stumpyshape. Yes, he was Szgany, and

it showed.

'Szgany': in fact the word had two meanings. Star-side's trogs, cavern-dwelling neanderthals, likewise

called themselves Szgany. To them it meant 'The Obedient Ones' - obedient to the Wamphyri! As for the

genesis of Traveller usage, that was lost in time. Now whenthe Gypsies used the word to define other

than a trog, it best described themselves, their way of life: tinkers, music-makers, seekers after refuge

(often in deep caverns, like the dwelling places of the trogs), wanderingmetalworkers, fey people:

Szgany.

Travellers. Ah, but upon a time - an oh so recent time - there had been reasons aplenty for the nomadic

existence of the Gypsies! And each and every one of those reasons monstrous, and all of them inhabiting

the stone- and bone-built aeries of the Wamphyri! But theWamphyri were no more.

It was strange; Lardis was not yet accustomed to it; the sun was setting for the fifteenth time since the

great battle and still he shivered, longing for the mistedvalleys, wooded slopes and forests of Sunside.

Across the mountains it was still twilight and true dark many hours away. Plenty of time to find sanctuary

in one or another of the many labyrinthine systems of caverns, there to wait out the night until ... But no,

all of that was yesterday. Yet again Lardis must remind himself:Fool! The yoke is lifted.The Szgany are

free!

Pausing where he made his way through the garden,Lardis looked back and up at the topmost crags.

Theywere ashen now: charcoal dusted a pale blue-grey from the brightening stars, the colour of a wolf at

twilight.Soon the hurtling moon would be up, half golden in the sun's reflected light, half blue as Icelands

sheen. Then the wolves of Sunside would sing up from the dark forests and down from the pine-clad

mountains, and those of Starside would hear them, yawn and stretch,emerge from their treeline dens and

answer with songs of their own. For the moon was mistress to all the greybrothers.

Shivering (from the chill of twilight?), Lardis glancedall about in the dusk. At trog workers, leathery,

shuffling, nocturnal, already up and about and seeing to their various duties; at the dim but reassuring

yellow lights of Traveller dwellings huddled to the gently sloping walls of the saddle; at the misty

silhouettes of greenhouses, the glitter of starlight in a shimmeringgeothermal pool, a creaking wind-vane

atop its skeletal tower, turning in the breeze off Starside. And then he shivered again, and started out

more urgently for TheDweller's house —

- Only to slow his pace in the very next moment. Noneed for haste. It was sundown, yes, but there was

nothing hurtful here. Not any more. So...why shouldhe feel that something was wrong?

Lardis trusted his instincts. His mother had used to

read palms, and his father had seen far things; all of the Lidescis had been fey. And tonight Lardis was

jumpy without knowing the reason. Could this be why The Dweller had called him, because something

was wrong? Well, he would know soon enough. But one thing Lardis already knew: that he had heard

the call of Sunside, its rivers, forests and open spaces, and come what may his stay in The Dweller's

garden would notbe long.

Three acres in a row front to rear, the garden was - it had been - a marvellous place. It was a small

valley ina gently hollowed mountain saddle. In this region Nature had flattened the barrier range

somewhat; thus when the sun stood at its low southerly apex, it somehow managed to shine between

even the highest peaks and down the long slopes, glancing off the crags to light here. From twilight to

twilight, the aching light of Sunside struck through the pass in a great warm mistywedge.

A long, curved dry-stone wall defined the garden's forward boundary, beyond which the ground dipped

sharply towards frowning cliffs, weathered shelves,more declivities, gentling foothills, and finally Starside's

barren plains. Encompassed by the wall, the slopes of the saddle, and a narrow pass at the rear, were

small fields or allotments, greenhouses, wind-vanes, sheds and storehouses, and clearwater ponds. A

number of pools were astir with trout; others bubbled with thermal activity. Lush with vegetation, much of

it crushed and ravaged in the battle but already sprung up and growing again, a surprising number of the

garden's vegetablespecies would have been at home in The Dweller's own world. Hardy, improved or

developed by The Dweller himself, they had grown accustomed to Starside's longnights and longer,

occasionally dreary days.

Repairs to the garden were nearing completion. Even stones slimed by exploding gas-beasts or

evaporating Lords and their lieutenants had been cleaned, or removed to the rim and avalanched down

onto Starside. Vampire debris had gone into a crevasse, been drenchedwith The Dweller's fuels, burned

up with hideous stenches. Eventually the last taint had been expunged. Broken dwellings had been

mended, flattened greenhouses re-erected, The Dweller's generators repaired. Many of the garden's

systems were fragile, requiring frequent attention; tending them was how The Dweller's people earned

their keep, and the work served to instruct them in his ways.

His 'people': trogs sent by the Wamphyri to work mischief against him, only to be converted to his

cause; a few Travellers from tribes other than Lardis Lidesci's, grateful for The Dweller's sanctuary; and

Starside's grey brotherhood, the wild ones of the mountains, who hunted under the moon. These latest of

his volunteers were wolves, but it was as if he were their brother -which indeed he might well be. For

The Dweller's vampire had been passed to him by a wolf...

A vampire, aye - indeed, Wamphyri! For he carried a true egg. And if he were not The Dweller, with his

own place here in the garden, what then? On Starside's boulder plains, east of the shining hemisphere

portal to lands unknown, there stood the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. In its prime it had been the

property of theLord Dramal Doombody who, upon his demise, gifted it to his heir the Lady Karen. Might

not The Dweller, himself Wamphyri, feel the aerie's alien lure, make it his own, take his machines there to

light that monstrous stack as now they lit the garden?As for the Lady Karen herself: In the battle for the

garden, Karen had sided with the

defenders; moreover, she had brought first warning, and with her hybrid warriors had fought like a

wildcat against the vampire Lords! Engaging Lesk the Glut,she'd opened his chest with her gauntlet, cut

through the pipes of his heart, torn it smoking from his body while yet Lesk stamped and snorted! The

Lady Karen: she had been something! But now ...

Some said she lived in her aerie still, though Harry Keogh (called Hell-lander, and sometimes

Dwellersire) would doubtless dispute it;if he were fit and wellenough to dispute anything. Harry Keogh:

The Dweller's father, his bloodsire.

After the battle, Harry had sojourned awhile with Karen in her aerie; who but a magician out of the

hell-lands would dare? She was, after all, Wamphyri! But upon his return to the garden he'd reported

Karen's demise: how, in order to avoid some dark, unspoken fate, she had killed herself. Perhaps it was

so, but mention her name to The Dweller and he would only smile. Except... these days he wasn't much

given to smiling.

Lardis arrived at his destination: a white stone bungalow with round windows and a chalet-styled roof,

situated close to a hot spring. An exterior staircase of yellow-varnished pine zigzagged up to a small

balcony under projecting eaves, which fronted The Dweller's bedroom in the hollow of the red-tiled roof.

After the battle in the garden, when the house suffered exploding gas-beast blasts, only its shell had been

left standing.Trogs and Travellers, working together under the direction of The Dweller, had soon put it

back to rights. Now it seemed The Dweller no longer took pride in it. Nor inany of his previous works.

The Dweller waited in his doorway. He wore his golden mask, of course, and a voluminous yellow robe

which covered his entire body down to his feet. Lardis

paused before him, raised a clenched fist and uttered acustomary greeting: 'Tear down the mountains!'

Customary, habitual, indeed instinctive, the ancient Szgany imprecation no longer had meaning. In return

The Dwellernodded, took Lardis's elbow and escorted him to thelong room which was his study. A

circular window in an end wall looked out over Starside to the distant,shimmering horizon and the

auroras of the far north. Asecond window in the opposing wall viewed the garden, the narrowing funnel

of the saddle, the gaunt cragsrising on both sides and merging into peaks. In the cleft of the pass the sky

wasa banded blue, where the sapphire in the well of the V shaded upwards intoindigo to accommodate

the first glitter of Sunside'sstars.

Seated on simple stools in soft yellow electric lamplight, the two men faced each other across a small

pinetable. Despite the fact that Lardis was The Dweller'ssenior by a good six or seven years, and a

leader in hisown right, he was ill at ease in the other's presence. Hehad felt this way, indeed increasingly

so, almost fromfirst arrival here. His discomfort might have its sourcein The Dweller's alien origins - the

fact that he was abeing from an unknown world, commanding awesome weapons and powers - but that

was only part of it.Rather Lardis sensed in him something of the ancient powers of this world (or more

properly, of Starside),and for the most part his disquiet lay in knowing what stared back at him through

the orbits of The Dweller'sexpressionless golden mask - scarlet Wamphyri eyes!Well, no secret there.

For much to his credit, The Dweller had disclosed all: the fact that he was therecipient of a vampire egg -

from the bite of a wolf!

Lardis, however, suspected that there was even morethan this to his persistent disquiet. Gazing

somewhat

obliquely on his host, he felt that The Dweller's unseen eyes saw more than was their right, that they

might even peer into a man's soul. Lardis's soul, like his conscience, was crystal clear, but his thoughts

were never less than searching. He didn't much like the idea thatperhaps The Dweller was also a

thought-thief, a mental- ist. Certainly the majority of the Old Wamphyri hadhad the power, in one degree

or another.

Finally The Dweller spoke. 'You are silent.' His voicewas young, yet old with knowledge, with

strangeness. It had a rough edge, a rasp of physical pain. Beneath his robe, The Dweller's burns were not

yet healed. Notentirely.

Lardis shrugged awkwardly, felt lost for an answer.'You sent for me. I came to discover your needs.'

'My needs?' The Dweller answered Lardis's shrug with one of his own. 'I myself don't know what they

are! But for the moment they are the needs of my people. Later ... we shall see.'

Lardis waited, and eventually:

'I fear there are changes in the offing,' said The Dweller, sighing. 'There are several subjects to discuss.

My mother, my father, myself. Yourself, and your people.The garden, and its future. If it has one.'

Still Lardis waited.

'The garden served a purpose, in its time,' The Dwellercontinued. 'It was a home, a refuge, even a

fortressagainst the Wamphyri. Against their arrogance, anyway: their "invincibility". Well, they were not

invin cible. Nor am I. Nothing is. Also, the garden proved apoint: that while a fixed, permanent home

may be vulner able, still it may be defended, and successfully. One of several things which made the

Wamphyri strong was their territoriality. They would not suffer rivals within their spheres. Once they laid

claim to a place - or to anything, for that matter - it was theirs forever, or as long as they could hold it.

This was no weird idiosyncrasy; most creatures, once they have found their place, will not move lightly

aside. And men are much the same. Which is how and why we held the garden andbrought the

Wamphyri down.' He paused.

'In my father's country,' The Dweller continued in awhile, 'in his world, they have this saying: "An English

man's home is his castle." It may be translated as a warning: "Make no threat against me on my own land,

for here I am strong. Here,I am the master!'" Again The Dweller paused, then asked, 'Do you understand

whatI'm saying?'

Lardis wasn't sure he did understand, but certainly he was worried. The Dweller's mode of expression

sounded like nothing so much as a Wamphyri word game! And suddenly Lardis wondered:In the battle

for the garden, wasit his purpose to simply defend himself against the Wamphyri... orto usurp

them? If thelatter, what did that make Lardis Lidesci and his people? Free men... or thralls? Now that

The Dweller alone held sway on Starside, how would he use hispower?

Finally Lardis found his voice. 'Are these things applicable to me?'

'To you and yours, yes,' The Dweller replied. The Szgany fought for me and my garden. What they paid

in blood has been returned in skill and knowledge; and in future, should the need arise, your people will

know how to defend themselves. But for now ... what is there for you on Starside? What was there ever,

but a threat? Well, the threat is no more. So go back to Sun-side, quit your travelling, build settlements

and live in peace - for as long as you may. You've earned yourselves a breathing space, time of your own

in which togrow strong. Only remember: the vampire swamps are still there. If ever the Wamphyri should

return, whether bred in the swamps or... other places, next time beready for them.'

Lardis had been holding his breath. He let it out in a sigh which was almost a gasp. For while still

puzzled, he was also relieved. He need no longer feel guilty about his intentions; his mind had been made

up to leave, which coincided with The Dweller's advice. As for certain other fears in respect of The

Dweller's purpose, he saw now that they had been unworthy.

'Before the next sunup,' he finally replied, ‘I’ll take my people out of here. Until then, if you'll help us,

we'lllearn all we can from you. As for fighting the Wamphyri, in that we are of one mind. I have always

fought them.And if they return I'll fight them again.'

Under the rim of The Dweller's mask where it enclosed his cheek bones and housed his nose in a prow,

his lips twitched into a smile. He nodded and said, 'Yes, I know - but in the past you have fought with

muscle, blood, bone. The next time will be with "science". Ah, you think you don't know the word, but

you do! You've seen it at work, here, all about you! In your permanent settlements, the towns you'll

build, there will be time for it. Time for all manner of things, now that yourendless trekking is at an end!

"Science", yes: it means to learn and to understand ... everything! What? And is everything too much for

you? Well, perhaps it is. But you Szgany are a crafty people: metalworkers, weapon-makers, skills left

over from a time before the Wamphyri. Just a little learning, even a little science ... Why, there's nothing in

this garden you couldn't make! Nothing of my technology which you can't discover andduplicate for

yourselves, given time.'

Lardis felt a great excitement, but at the same timehe 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 uponhim?

'Other matters,' The Dweller painfully rasped, his urgency cutting into the Gypsy's thoughts; so that again

Lardis wondered, Mentalist?Thought-thief? While outloud 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 reshapingwhat untainted flesh remained. But into what?

'Myself?'

Lardis nodded. 'If we Travellers - we Szgany, since itappears 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, whatof 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

straightcourse. 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 everythinghas 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

growingover the wall. Well, and it's true there are worlds beyondand 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 littlewhile:

'As for you and your people, Lardis: you'll prosper onSunside, 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 nolonger 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 thegarden. 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 ahowl came ululating

down, thin and eerie, echoing in flooding moonlight. And behind his golden mask TheDweller smiled.

'No harm will come to me or mine," he eventuallycontinued, 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 atpains to understand his motives. 'Will you stay on

here,alone?'

'Stay here? Ah, no. But I shall return from time totime, to talk to her, in my way ...'

'To your mother? When she is -'

'When she's dead, yes.'

For a moment Lardis believed he saw red fires reflected on the rims of the eye sockets in the golden

mask, and he was hard put to contain a sudden shudder. Wamphyri, The Dweller, aye - and much more

thanthat. For like his father before him he had... ah,powers!

The Dweller looked at Lardis, clasped his broad shoulders in pale thin hands, and thought: He's brave,

thisman. Brave and loyal. He should fear me, even run from me, but he stands his ground. Whatever

comes to pass- however itshall be -I'll not hurt him or his. Never!

It was as if Lardis heard him. All of the fear went outof him; a great deal of fear which, until the moment

itleft him, he'd scarcely realized was there at all. At least he'd never admitted it, not even to himself.

Finally he straightened up and nodded. Then it seems we haveno more to talk about,' he said. 'Ah -

except your father,of course.'

The Dweller's answering nod was thoughtful, deliberate. 'How goes it with him?'

Now Lardis gave a grunt and offered a frustrated shrug. 'We care for him, feed him, watch over him in

his fever,' he answered. 'Everything as you instructed -but we've no knowledge of his sickness. You say

that both of you were burned by your own weapons, those brilliant beams of sunlight with which you

Brian Lumley - Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers

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