‘Explain?’ said Lardis, coming no closer. ‘But isn’t all of this explanation enough?’ He opened his arms expansively, as if to enclose the entire garden.
‘I’ve been away four years, Lardis,’ Harry reminded him, but not in exactly those words. He made automatic conversions; time on Sunside and Starside was not measured in years but in those periods between sunup, when the barrier peaks turned gold, and sundown, when auroras danced in the northern skies. ‘When I left this place and returned to the hell-lands,’ (he did not say, ‘after my son had crippled and banished me’, for he’d read in Lardis’s mind that he knew nothing of that), ‘we’d just won a resounding victory over the Wamphyri. The sun had burned The Dweller, very badly, but he was well on the road to a complete recovery. The futures of you and your Traveller tribe, and The Dweller’s trogs, too, seemed secure. So what happened? Where is everyone? And where’s The Dweller?’
‘In good time.’ Lardis nodded, slowly. ‘All in good time.’ And in a little while, frowning:
‘When I saw you come here,’ (he seemed to have changed the subject), ‘ – when you appeared here in that way of yours, as once The Dweller was wont to appear – ‘ (past tense? Harry contrived to hide a small start), ‘well, I knew it was you, obviously. I remembered how you looked – you, Zek, Jazz – as if all of that were yesterday. Yes, and I remembered the good times, in the days immediately after the battle here in the garden. Then, approaching you, I saw your eyes and knew you were a victim no less than The Dweller in that earlier time. And because you are Harry Wolfson’s father, his natural father – and I suppose also because I carry this shotgun, loaded with silver from your son’s armoury – I wasn’t afraid of you. For after all, I am Lardis Lidesci, whom even the Wamphyri respected in some small part.’
‘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.’