'Enough of that for now,' she said. 'Come over here, to my tent. Nikha says you need a wash. We can take care of that. And then I'll get you a blanket.'
Close to her tent she set up a tripod and bowl, and brought hot water from the fire. A piece of bark provided a cleansing, milky sap, with which Nathan scoured his face and hands. But watching him, Eleni.saw him wincing whenever he stretched his arms.
He had removed his leather jacket but still wore his shirt. Take it off,' she said.
He looked at her sideways, questioningly. They were alone in the clearing now, almost. The men were off hunting; women tended their offspring or performed other duties; Nikha was seeing to his beasts. Take what off?'
'Your shirt. When you bent over it rode up your back. I have seen your bruises. Were you beaten?'
Beaten? No, merely tossed aside — but by a Thing as strong as four men! The thing that took my Misha. 'A Lord of the Wamphyri very nearly killed me,' he finally answered. 'I suppose I was lucky.'
He tried to reach over his shoulder and grasp the fabric of his shirt, but couldn't. Perhaps it was as well; Nikha had come back and was sitting on the steps of his vehicle. Seeing Nathan glancing that way, Eleni asked him: 'Are you concerned that my brother is watching us? Well, you shouldn't be.' And before he could answer she took the hem of his shirt in both hands and lifted it, and as he bent forward stripped it from his back.
'Now your brother will know I'm forward,' he groaned. 'Or that you are!'
And now for the first time she laughed, and her laugh was as husky as he had guessed it must be. 'Nathan, Nikha will be delighted!' she told him. 'Can't you see that he's still trying to marry me off?' But as she saw the extent of his bruising her laughter died away. And: 'You suppose you were lucky?' she repeated him. 'But your back should have been broken in three places! Now wait.'
She ran to Nikha and past him into the caravan, and was back in a moment with ointment wrapped in a leather pouch. 'It smells, but it's good!' she said, applying the stuff liberally to his back. 'Next sunup the sting will have gone, and by midday the bruises fading. I guarantee it. When we pass through the townships, we Gypsies guarantee all of our products!' And again she laughed.
Then she helped him on with his shirt, took him into her tent and gave him a blanket. Her bed was a huge watertight skin stuffed with down, herbs and dried ferns; more than sufficient for Nathan's needs, he made no complaint. As he lay down she threw the blanket over him, and almost before she left the tent and closed its flap he was asleep…
Numbers formed a whir/pool which sucked Nathan in, whirled him round and around, and dragged him unprotesting down the centra/ funnel of warping algebraic equations. To anyone else it would be a nightmare, but not to him. Unlike the dead, who could have talked to Nathan if they wished it but never did, the numbers were his friends. In a way, they did 'talk' to him; except he didn't have the math to understand their language. In a world largely without science, Nathan had no math at all. What would probably have been instinctive, intuitive in him from his first serious lesson, had never had the chance to develop. Not yet.
But he did understand that the numbers could sometimes carry him — his thoughts at least — to other places, other minds. It was a telepathic talent he shared with Nestor, part of which was to reach out with his mind and make a connection with that of his twin. Another part of it, which was his alone, allowed him to contact and speak with his wolves. In his waking hours this might only be accomplished by an effort of conscious will, and even then it had sometimes failed him, but when he slept it was quite beyond his control. For then his talent seemed to work on its own, or occasionally with the help of what Nathan had long since named 'the numbers vortex'.
Now he was in that vortex, but only for a moment. For in the next he felt himself expelled, hurled out and down — into water! Into the river!
And because he had searched for Nestor, now he was Nestor. He was one with his brother's mind. He knew what Nestor knew, felt what he felt, observed what he observed. Which was nothing.
Nathan knew what 'dead' minds feel like. This was it, and yet at the same time it was less than death. For the dead know many things, and this mind — Nestor's mind — knew nothing at all! And Nathan believed he knew what that meant: that his brother was freshly dead, and as yet had learned nothing from all of those others who had gone before.
He felt what Nestor felt: nothing. Or perhaps he did feel or was aware of something: the gentle flow of cold, cold water — his lungs full of the stuff, which weighed like lead to drag him down — and the first, tentative nibble of some small, curious fish. He observed what his brother observed: nothing. Or if not that, a drift of dark green weed sliding slowly across his blurred, submerged view, to fill the screen of his gaping, glazing eyeballs….efore the final darkness closed in!
And with that he knew that Nestor was dead, drowned, and gone from him forever.
He started awake — .'
— To find Eleni Sintana down on her knees beside him, her brown eyes wide and anxious where they stared into his. She had hold of his shoulders, holding him down under the water. Except… there was no water. And at last he breathed, stopped struggling, allowed her to push him back into his own depression in her bed. And:
'A dream?' she inquired, her concern clearly apparent.
Nathan nodded, felt cold sweat drip from the tip of his nose. More than that, Eleni, he wanted to say, but couldn't, because he knew that she wouldn't understand. But looking up into her face, her eyes… she so reminded him of his mother… and of Misha… he wished she would wrap her arms around him, for his protection.
He saw that she was going to — until Nikha's soft voice sounded from the door of the tent, saying: 'We're about ready to eat, Nathan. Will you join us?'
And the spell was broken.
Nathan joined the others to eat, but he was quiet and had no appetite. There was nothing wrong with the good food, nothing wrong with the company, just with him. For he knew now that he was alone, entirely alone, and that what he'd mistaken for his awakening into this world had only been the beginning of the end. The Wamphyri had wrought reality out of a fantasy — changed everything, made him aware of his place here, and given him an identity — only to rob him of his roots. Now he was drifting, as Nestor's body had drifted, and not even the weeds of what might have been to anchor him.
For the last link had been broken, Nestor was dead, and Nathan felt in his heart the coldness of his brother's watery grave…
And two miles down river, in a shingly bight, a burly, bearded fisherman cried out, tossed aside his rod, went plunging into the water to his thighs.
He had been monitoring the progress of a log drifting out of the main current and into the shallows of the backwater. And knowing that fish sometimes swim in the shadow of floating debris, he had thought to see a big one accompanying this piece of driftwood. But lolling closer to the bank, suddenly the log had given a lurch and turned over, and in the next second the fisherman had seen that what had come adrift from it to slip down into the clear water was anything but a fish!
That had been a moment ago; now Brad Berea waded to the log and thrust it aside, sank to his knees in the shingle, and gathered up the body of a young man from where it bumped slowly along the bottom. The youth's clothes were ragged, waterlogged; he was limp, cold… dead? Well, very likely. But his flesh seemed firm, his limbs were still flexible, and his lips were not entirely blue.