When Lardis talked of what had happened that night fourteen years ago, he usually spoke of 'a breath of hell', which came roaring out of the Gate to burn the Wamphyri in its fire. But at other times and less romantically, he had admitted that it might have been some kind of unthinkable weapon, whose power was such that the hell-landers themselves had little or no control over it. 'Whatever their world was like before,' (he would say), 'it really must be hell now, if that was merely the backdraught of one of their wars! Zekintha told me all about that: how their weapons were devastating.'
Measuring his pace, Nathan started to run. He had kept the others waiting too long and they'd be impatient. He was right: almost a mile away, Andrei Romani was complaining again. 'Is he deaf as well as dumb?'
Coming lithely, jinglingly from the mouth of the pass, Nestor and Jason joined the two older men. 'No,' Nestor shook his head and gave a disdainful grimace. 'My brother's neither deaf nor daft, nor even dumb. He doesn't want to speak, that's all. He's just… Nathan.'
Lardis glanced at Nestor, could almost taste the bitterness where his mouth puckered on his sour words. A pity they weren't closer, he thought, like they'd been as children. For then they had been inseparable.
Nestor had looked after his brother until they were well into their teens. Maybe he'd looked after him too well, fought one too many fights for him, taken one too many knocks on his behalf. Whatever, it wasn't the same between them now. And then there was Misha, of course. Young boys will always be boys and friends, until they grow into youths and become rivals.
Nathan and Nestor Kiklu: Nana's sons…
Twins, yes (Lardis continued to consider them), but in no way identical. Indeed, they seemed poles apart: in their looks, philosophies, lifestyles. Nestor upright, brash, devil-may-care, outspoken and even noisy; Nathan weighed down (but with what?), withdrawn, serious, and silent of course.
Nestor was like his mother. Only see them together, and there could be no hiding the fact that he was her son. Except where Nana was small, Nestor was tall; as would his brother be tall, if only he would stand up straight! Long-limbed, both of them. Which was somewhat strange in itself; for their father, Hzak Kiklu, had been small like Nana. All the better for hiding in holes in the ground. Perhaps that was the reason. Many children had grown up tall and strong, since the destruction of the Wamphyri.
Nestor had his mother's dark, slightly slanted eyes, her straight nose however small, her glossy black hair falling to his broad shoulders. Her smile, too, which could be mysterious at times. His forehead was wide; his cheekbones high; his chin jutted a little, more so when he was angry. His body was that of an athlete, and he wore his jacket with the sleeves rolled back, to display the width of his forearms. He looked Szgany through and through. That was Nestor, a youth to be proud of. But as for Nathan: Well, a throwback there! Though to what, Lardis couldn't imagine. Nathan's eyes were less tilted, and for all that they were the deep blue of a sapphire, still they lacked the gem's great depth. Their gaze was usually vacant, misty, or at best wandering (much like the mind which directed them, Lardis supposed, and indeed, much like the lad himself). But the strangest thing about him was his hair, which was the colour of damp straw! It was like Zek's hair, but a little darker, and Nathan kept it cropped as if ashamed of it. Possibly he was, for like his other anomalies it set him apart.
As for the rest of his features: they were not too dissimilar from Nestor's. A strong chin, high cheekbones, broad forehead… his mouth was fuller than Nestor's, less cynical, but given to twitching a little in the left-hand corner. Then of course there was his skin, which was pale to match the colour of his hair; so that all in all, he scarcely looked Szgany at all.
His mother said his pallor was due to spending too much time indoors, or walking abroad at sundown, when most of the Szgany stayed close to home. According to Nana, his health in general was poor, so that he avoided the common activities of Settlement's more active youths and preferred his own company. Well, the latter was quite obviously true enough. But to Lardis's knowledge, the rest of it simply didn't add up. On the contrary, Nathan seemed a wanderer born, and was forever out and about. Sunup and sundown alike, you would find him in the forest or on the mountain slopes, anywhere but indoors. And sickly? Lardis didn't think so. A disinclination towards japing, girl-taunting and — chasing, and rough-and-tumbling with the other louts didn't automatically make him sickly, did it?
No, Nathan wasn't just the runt of the litter, he was a throwback. But to what? And if he didn't look Szgany, then what did he look?
Lardis had pondered that question time and again: who did Nathan remind him of? Whose was that soft, that compassionate, indeed that innocent look in his eyes? But as always it remained a puzzle, an aggravation, a word stuck to the tip of his tongue which refused to eject and reveal itself. And Nathan himself an aggravation, so that at times even Lardis could kick him — if only to stir him to life!
That was why he had asked Nana Kiklu if he could bring her boys with him this time, into Starside on his annual pilgrimage: to get Nathan away from his old haunts, try to stir him into life. Maybe he'd find something here in the awesome barren wilderness to lure his mind back from wherever it wandered now…
Even as Lardis Lidesci thought these things, so there sounded the soft, regular pad of flying feet and the clatter of pebbles, and an approaching man-shape silhouetted against the glare of the near-distant Gate. And as the light grew marginally brighter over Starside, Lardis's thoughts immediately changed tracks.
What, sickly, this one? Well, if so, then Lardis wished he was as sickly as that, with heart and lungs banging effortlessly away, as once they had used to, to power his tireless limbs. And vacant, Nathan? Not now at least. No, for his eyes were shining where he came panting to a halt, and shrugged in that apologetic way of his. He was sorry he'd kept them waiting.
'Did it interest you, then, the Gate?' Lardis asked him, before anyone else could speak.
Nathan already had his breathing under control. He looked at Lardis and nodded, however slowly. But a nod was an answer, which in itself was an improvement; usually you wouldn't even get that out of him. And Lardis was pleased. It was like when they sat at the campfire in Settlement and he told his stories of the old times, and sensed Nathan's attention rapt upon him above all the others put together. A dummy? Well, perhaps… but only on the outside.
'Huh!' Nestor grunted. 'Oh, he's interested, sure enough. Interested in all the weird, unanswerable things. Stars in the sky: how many there are. Ripples on a river: why he can't count them. Where people go when they die, as if the smoke from their funeral pyres isn't answer enough in itself. And now the hell-lands Gate? Why, of course he's interested in it! If it doesn't matter a damn, then Nathan's bound to be interested in it.'
Again the sourness in his voice.
But Jason, Lardis's son, who was eighteen months younger than the Kiklu boys, was less hard on Nathan. 'The world's not much to Nathan's liking,' he said, 'and he steers as far clear of it as he can. Which is a very hard thing to do, because of course he must live in it! That's why he concerns himself with things which seem to us irrelevant. This way he has his world, and we have ours, and we don't cross over too much one way or the other.'
(And Lardis nodded, albeit to himself, for he considered this a statement of astonishing perception.)
Lardis was proud of his son; Jason was open-handed, instinctively fair-minded, handsome in his dark Gypsy fashion, and intelligent. But just like anyone else, he was wont to err now and then. Like now. And: