Blood Brothers

PART EIGHT:

Runemanse — Flight — In the Blink of an Eye Within, there was no lack of activity. Huge sighings (animal or mechanical, Nathan had no way of knowing) issued up from the bowels of the place; draughts of air, some warm and others bitterly cold, blew busily here and there as if out and about upon missions of their own; there were sounds of vast, animal exhalations, gasps and grunts, and other echoes which seemed of entirely human origin: voices and/or sounds of thrall work in progress. In the weird acoustics of the place it was difficult to locate any specific source; the sounds penetrated from above, below, around. Eerie snatches of conversation, the slap of sandalled feet on hollowed flags, the chink, chink chipping of cold stone, or the reverberating, nerve-shattering clanging of a door slammed shut. Occasionally, shadows would flit apace in parallel corridors, and Nathan would glimpse feral eyes turned in his direction. Once, a hulking lieutenant loomed large, only to shrink back as Maglore's presence dwarfed him.

Extensive, Runemanse filled the honeycombed rock like a warren in a bank of earth. Innermost was a huge hall illumined by flaring gas jets, leading off from which were the rooms of Maglore's various aides: his two lieutenants, his thralls and women. The vampire Lord's own apartments were reached up steps which spiralled around a central core, and had balconies overlooking the hall as if it were an amphitheatre. At the foot of the steps a… Thing was chained, manacled to the natural pillar. Unseemly by any standards, it had its own place behind a curtain of ropes, out of sight in a small cave in the central stem. But as Nathan, a stranger, approached the foot of the stairs..

… It burst out, mewling, towering eight feet tall and shaped — very much like a man! Yet paradoxically and appallingly, not like a man at all. Not any longer. Nathan felt himself shrinking back, unable to proceed, and felt Maglore propelling him irresistibly forward. And as they went the Wamphyri Lord told his guardian creature: This man is mine. Who harms him harms me, and will answer for it. Now begone, for you are ugly.' At which the awful thing fell to all fours and scurried backwards, grovellingly, through the curtain of ropes. Nathan could hear it panting and rumbling in there as they passed by and climbed the spiral staircase.

In Maglore's rooms, food had been prepared. Nathan could scarcely contain his suspicion of the contents of the various platters. They looked innocent enough — steaming portions of rabbit and partridge, roasted vegetables, and bowls of fresh fruit — but on the other hand..

'What?' said Maglore, noting Nathan's expression across the table, and chuckling darkly to himself as he dined delicately on thigh of rabbit and red wine. 'And did you expect raw flesh, possibly Szgany, and perhaps still alive? Well, I have to admit that in certain spires and manses you would not be disappointed — but this is Runemanse. Certain of my thralls and creatures have their "requirements", but in the main I've learned to curb my own appetites. You need not concern yourself, Nathan: your food will not disgust or harm you, nor will I give you cause to throw it up; not here at least. For when I have need of… coarser sustenance, I take it in private. And even then I'm no great glutton. So have no fear; for unlike the raw red regimen of some of Turgosheim's Lords, you'll not hear my food screaming!'

Despite the terrible pictures Maglore's words conjured, Nathan tried the food and found it very good. And as his hunger took hold, so a little of his natural caution deserted him. 'Aye,' Maglore nodded approvingly. 'Eat, and when you've eaten explore the manse. Step boldly and no harm shall befall you. But before then and while you're about your meal, we have a chance to talk.' He put aside his own plate. 'On our way to Runemanse I asked you many things: your age, full name, birthplace; I inquired especially about the colours of your eyes, hair, skin, which seem scarcely Szgany colours at all, and yet are not so weak or freakish as the pallid pastels of an albino. Patently they are not the result of disease, deformity or experimentation, and so must be inherited. But from whom, mother or father? Your previous answers were vague at best.'

Nathan swallowed scooped-out oyster of partridge from his index finger, and washed it down with a sip of wine. 'My mother was Nana, a Szgany woman of course, and my father was Hzak Kiklu, a common Traveller.' He shook his head. 'I didn't get my colours from them.'

Just looking at him, Maglore could see that he told the truth. He frowned and said, 'Let it pass, for now.' But Nathan's answer had prompted another question. 'Your father was a… a "Traveller", did you say?'

'I came out of the west,' Nathan answered, 'which I also told you.' (No harm in it, since lozel had probably told him the same thing in advance.) But remembering himself in time, Nathan quickly added, 'Master.' And continued: There in the west, the Szgany of Sunside don't live in towns but travel by day and hide by night. The word "Szgany" means, among other things, "Traveller". Which is what my people are. Perhaps your own Szgany were Travellers, upon a time?'

'Oh, they were!' Maglore answered, 'in those early days after Turgo Zolte brought his people here out of the west. Aye, they travelled, before the Wamphyri brought them to heel, as it were. Hmmm!' He stroked his chin. 'How is it, then, that while your Szgany do not live in "towns", still you know the word?'

Nathan shrugged, and thought quickly. 'But I know it as in "Vladistown", master,' he said. 'Also as an old word of my own people. Though I was only a child of four or five years on the night of the burning clouds and the thunder over the barrier range — when the last of the Wamphyri were destroyed, or so it was supposed

— I remember that some of our leaders said we should build "towns" again. Others, however, were against it. No, they said, for the vampires would return one day, out of the swamps or from other places.' His answer was deliberately confused and confusing, to throw Maglore off the track. And to distract him even further, he scratched for a moment at the leather strap on his wrist, then took it off and placed it on the table where Maglore could not help but see it. And continuing to scratch at his imaginary itch, he watched the Seer Lord's scarlet eyes grow large as he pounced.

'A-ha!' Maglore cried, snatching up the strap. And just for once his telepathic mind was so open that Nathan clearly 'heard' the thought: Just as that old Sunside fraud informed me! Why, I had almost forgotten

— till now! Then, a moment later, his thoughts were guarded again. But not nearly as close as Nathan's.

And: 'What are we to make of this?' Maglore said.

'Where did you get it? And do you recognize it?' 'It is my wrist strap,' Nathan shrugged,'- master.' 'Of course it is!' Maglore shook his head — then glanced at Nathan sharply, suspiciously. 'Do you play word games with me? If so you should know: I'm good at them.'

Nathan looked blank, and again Maglore grunted, 'Hmmm!'

And: 'Ah!' Nathan said after a moment. The sign over your doors! I recognize it now: your sigil! And mine, it would seem. Except… it's nothing but a strange coincidence, master.'

'Perhaps it is,' Maglore nodded. 'And strange indeed — or would be, if I believed in coincidences. But on the other hand, I am fascinated by mysteries! So tell me now, how did you come by this thing?'

'But I've always had it,' Nathan answered truthfully. 'I think I first remember it… on the night of the thunder over Starside, and the fire in the clouds.'

'How long ago?' Maglore hunched forward in his chair.

'Nearly sixteen years,' said Nathan.

'Ahhh!' Maglore sighed. And again his mind was open. The night of the Light-in-the-West, the tremors in the earth, when I dreamed of the sigil and found it potent, and took it for my own! This is a mystery; there is an affinity, between this man and myself/

Then… perhaps he knew he was read. At any rate he sat up straighter and glared at Nathan. There are talents in you, hidden, I sense them,' he insisted for the third time. 'When I have an hour or two to spare, we must dig them out. Perhaps we might even make a start now.'

Footsteps sounded at the top of the spiral staircase, and a hulking lieutenant appeared on the landing. He paused uncertainly. Maglore scowled at him. 'Well? Is it urgent?'

'Your creature waxes in its vat, Lord,' the lieutenant reported. 'Alas, it has wrenched loose the breathing tubes and so may drown in its fluids.'

'What!' Maglore sprang up. 'Why did you not reconnect the tubes?'

'Go into the vat?' The lieutenant fell back. 'But the creature is voracious, and ill-humoured!'

Take me there, now!' Maglore shouted. 'If aught befalls that construct of mine… by Turgosheim, you'll know the meaning of ill-humour!'

Half-way across the floor he paused and looked back. 'You, Nathan. Explore the manse. If you are weary, ask any thrall to show you your room. Nowhere is forbidden to you, but avoid the women… at least until I have spoken to them. Now I must go, but one last thing: I shall keep you as a friend, for I value you for yourself and not as a cringing vampire thrall. But let me make myself plain: I will take it very hard if you should try to run away. And always remember, a man without legs cannot run very far at all.. '

He had made himself plain. In any case, Nathan couldn't see where he might run. What, into Turgosheim? Or up on to the roof of the manse and the rim of the gorge, and so across the mountains to Sunside? To be picked up and brought back again? No, for his stay here was to be a long one. According to Thikkoul, anyway.

Nathan remembered Maglore's words (it seemed as well to remember everything the Seer Lord said): 'Nowhere is forbidden to you.' But did that include Maglore's chambers? Whether or no, he explored his master's rooms first. At least he felt comparatively safe here, which was probably more than could be said for the rest of the place.

As a powerful Lord of the Wamphyri, Maglore didn't stint himself: his apartments were huge. While some of the rooms were natural caves, massive cysts in the volcanic wall of the gorge, others had been carved from the virgin rock. And above every doorway Maglore's familiar sigil was plainly visible: the loop with a half-twist, chiselled in bas-relief into arch or lintel.

Maglore's bedroom faced north, away from the sun. There Nathan looked out through narrow windows on the blue-glittering rim of the world, where strange auroras wove over a coldly distant horizon. But while the windows were wide enough to take a man, he made no attempt to step up and pass through the thick exterior wall; it was enough to simply put his head out. For out there where a precarious ledge or balcony clung to the face of the turret, and a low wall of grafted cartilage was the only protection against a fall of what must be at least twelve hundred feet… the whole affair seemed very unsafe! In any case, the view was mainly away from Turgosheim and so uninteresting. That was Nathan's excuse, anyway…

As he explored Maglore's kitchen, a vampire thrall came ghosting, making the place clean. Once-Szgany and male, he was small, thin, ghastly pale; only his eyes contained a spark, and they were yellow, feral, dangerous. When he saw Nathan he gave a start, and then was curious. 'You'll be the new one,' he nodded. 'Well, and you've a lot to learn. For one thing, you're in the wrong place. A room has been set aside for you. If Maglore were to find you here.. '

'He left me here,' Nathan answered. 'There are no restrictions upon me.'

'Oh?' The other raised an eyebrow, offered a half-sneer. 'Then you must consider yourself fortunate — for now!' He busied himself about the room. 'At any rate, you've been warned.'

Watching him at work (he worked hard, making the kitchen scrupulously clean), Nathan thought: This man was Szgany, like me. Now he's a thrall, a vampire, the next step between Szgany and lieutenant. Except he's reached his limit because he isn't… the right stuff? In Settlement, Lardis Lidesci burned such as him, before they could head for Starside. Should I pity him, or should I be afraid of him?

'Why do you watch me?' Nostrils gaping, eyes glaring, the other rounded on him; and Nathan saw that he really should not pity him. It was much too late for that.

'You must know this place well,' he said, mainly for something to say.

'Runemanse? Turgosheim? I know them well enough,' the vampire answered. 'I know what I may do and what is forbidden, the places where I may pass safely and those where I must never go. For unlike you I am not "privileged" in that respect.'

Nathan climbed wooden stairs to peer out through a high, round window. Looking west and a little south, it gave him a good view of all Turgosheim. 'Maglore says he will not change me,' he said, half to himself. 'He wants me for a friend. It seems he desires that I should retain my Szgany initiative.'

Sniggering, the other followed him up the stairs. 'What?' he said. 'You're to be his friend, you say? Well, and he's had "friends" before, has Maglore. I'm not so sure I envy you your clean blood after all. Here in Runemanse… some things are easier for a vampire.'

Nathan read his mind, however loosely. There was a great red hunger in him, and also a great fear, of Maglore. But there was pain, too, and curiosity, and a longing like the ache for a loved one who is far away, or lost forever. Which Nathan understood only too well. 'Have you been here long?' he said.

'Who counts the time?' the other shrugged, and looked at Nathan through seething eyes. 'We seem of an age, or I might be a year or two older. But I came here when I was sixteen, out of Sunside. Perhaps I might live-so long again. And how's that for a night-marish thought? Why, if I were not a vampire, I would throw myself down from this window for the guardian warriors to find broken in Turgosheim's bottoms when the sun lights on the barrier mountains! Ah, but I am a vampire, and tenacious! I might do it, but my weird blood won't let me.'

'Do you drink the blood of innocent men?' Nathan supposed he was taking a chance with a question like that, but asked it anyway.

'Rather the blood of girls and women!' the other answered gurglingly, out of a phlegmy throat. 'Sometimes, when the tithelings come, we are given our share. Maglore tries to keep his creatures happy, at least. The females will pass from hand to hand; we share their blood and bodies, until their lust is as great as our own. And the males are shared by Maglore's women. Those who are to be kept are then given employment under the supervision of Maglore's lieutenants or senior thralls, while any who are deemed unworthy… are drained, and their bodies go to fuel the manse.'

'Fuel?'

'The provisioning,' the other nodded, flame-eyed and grinning, however grimly. 'A manse can't run on air and water alone, you know. But why waste time with questions? If as you say your movements are to be unrestricted, and you'll have access to all of Runemanse's chambers, workshops, and storerooms, why, you'll soon enough see for yourself!' His answer seemed like a threat in its own right, so that Nathan didn't ask him to elaborate but looked out through the great round window.

And after a moment: 'Do you have a name?' he inquired.

'Nicolae,' said the other. 'Nicolae Seersthrall… now. And you?'

'Nathan. Nathan Kiklu.'

'Ah, no!' the other grinned again. 'You are Nathan Seersthrall. For here in Runemanse, we are all brothers and sisters. To keep your second name would mean you were a free man, which you are not. No one in Turgosheim is free.'

Turgosheim,' said Nathan musingly, continuing to scan the gorge through the empty window. 'All of its spires and manses. Can you name them?'

'Why should I?'

'Because I would consider it a favour,' Nathan answered. 'Which one day I might return.'

Nicolae Seersthrall shrugged. 'I doubt that you'll be in any position. Also, it's a waste of my time. But on the other hand — and as I believe I said before — who counts the time in Runemanse?'

He settled down on the great stone windowsill, where his arm touched Nathan's — the merest touch. But: 'Ahhh!' he said, half-sigh, half-gasp, and Nathan knew why. For where Nathan's flesh was warm, vibrantly alive, Nicolae's was cold as clay.

'And yet you are not undead,' Nathan said, drawing a little apart.

'No,' the other shook his head. 'I have never been "dead". I am merely changed, the lowest of the low. Vampire blood has contaminated my blood, that is all. But to touch one such as you, whose blood is clean….s thrilling nevertheless! And it will be even more so for Maglore's women! That's something for you to avoid, if you can, Nathan Seersthrall.'

'I know nothing of women,' Nathan shook his head. 'Or… very little.' Half apologetically, he shrugged.

'What?' Nicolae laughed. 'You are a virgin?' But his face went deadly serious in a moment. 'Never tell them that, do you hear me? For if you do, they'll not let you alone for a minute but seek to suck you dry of more than just your blood! And despite all of Maglore's commands, they'll get you in the end!'

Nathan said nothing but simply nodded, and after a while Nicolae looked out over Turgosheim. 'Very well,' he said. 'And so you would know about this place…'

He pointed to the east, right across the three-mile mouth of the gorge to where the mountains fell down to the Starside plains. 'As you see, the barrier range was like a long, edible root, out of which some giant took a great bite — or a bight? But several of his teeth were stumps and others were missing entirely, and so a number of stacks and spires were left standing in the "bight" of the gorge, like pulp in the "bite" of an apple.' He let his arm swing to the right, south-east through an arc of thirty degrees. 'There against the far wall of the ravine, the scrapings which those great teeth missed:

'In fact they are stacks weathered from the old face of the gorge. Stacks, spires, and sometimes chimneys, where the fault has not quite managed to break away from the bulk of the cliff. Tonight, despite that the vats of the Wamphyri are bubbling with a vengeance, the light is good; smoke and steam have not obscured the view; a wind over Starside's plains is drawing the vapours away. But in any case it would make no difference; I would know the various spires and manses from their shapes alone, or from their fires, whose colours are distinct.

To the left of the group, that one with the flaring yellow gas jet is Cronespire, the lair of the Lady Zindevar. Aye, and from the brightness of the flare you can see how hard she works tonight…'

Nathan looked at him. 'At what does this Lady… work?' He had guessed it but desired corroboration.

'At her vats, of course,' Nicolae's glance was scorn-ful. 'At the shaping of human flesh into other than human flesh. At the making of monsters — out of men!'

'Warriors?'

'Warriors, flyers, creatures,' said the other. 'The Wamphyri are building an army! But… do you want to know about Turgosheim, or don't you?'

Nathan nodded, and Nicolae continued. 'Next in line after Cronespire, a hand's span south, or so it appears from here — that great stack of stone standing all askew in a lesser bight of its own, haphazardly piled as by an infant balancing shards of slate — is melancholy Vormspire. Note the paleness of its lights, like glow-worms, or the foxfire on a corpse left unburied. Vormspire is the aerie of Lord Vormulac Unsleep, perhaps the mightiest of all the Wamphyri. But the stack's illuminations are ever dim, its aspect shrouded, and its vampire master morose. Vormulac and Maglore are "friends", or as friendly as the Wamphyri ever get to be.'

Nicolae's arm traversed south. 'There, where the bight curves west along the rear wall — that series of caverns like sockets in some weathered, freakish skull carved from the face of the hollow cliff itself — is Gauntmanse. Its lights, fires and smoke have a uniformly purple tinge, which among the Wamphyri is the colour of sexual prowess. Lord Grigor is the master there, or "Grigor the Lech", as he's better known. One of the "younger" Lords, Grigor's cognomen says it all: for as fast as the Lech acquires female tithelings, so he wears them out! In Gauntmanse, young girls have withered to hags in the space of one long night…'

So it went: Nicolae pointed out the more prominent spires and manses, naming them all and detailing many of the characteristics of their masters and mistresses. His discourse covered Zunspire, Masquemanse, Tor-manse, and many others along the rear wall, until the angle of observation became too acute. Then he looked into the gorge itself, where numerous lesser stacks and knolls made gargoyle humps among the shadows of Turgosheim's lower reaches. 'Down there dwell the lowly Lords and certain newcomers, and others who merely aspire. Yet even in the depths some Lords are well-established and powerful among the Wamphyri, who have chosen to live there for reasons of their own. One such is Lom Halfstruck, master of Trollmanse. His place is that square, squat knoll there, with turrets in its corners and red lanterns in their windows. Lom is a dwarf among the Wamphyri, whose legs are stunted. He says that since he was born close to the earth, it suits him to stay there, and he scorns the soaring aeries of the others…

'… But there,' Nicolae Seersthrall blinked twice, and turned his feral gaze from the gloomy gorge of Turgosheim inwards upon Nathan. 'There's a lot more, but that's enough for now.'

Nathan nodded and said, 'Despite that you're no more than a prisoner here, you seem to have acquired a great deal of useful knowledge.'

Nicolae's turn to nod and sigh. 'I've spent many a long hour at windows such as this one, overlooking Turgosheim,' he said. 'But in Runemanse there are things to look into as well as out of. I tidy Maglore's rooms, all of them. In one of this workshops he keeps an amazing model of the gorge, where all of its spires and manses are represented. For the Lord Maglore is a mage and seer, and believes in the magical, mystical things. If another Lord is spiteful towards him, Maglore utters curses against the likeness of his manse, to bring down a doom upon it! Also, being a mentalist, the model helps concentrate his mind when he sends out his thoughts to spy upon his contemporaries. It provides the targets for his mind-darts.'

'You should be careful,' said Nathan, 'that he does not look in your mind!'

'Why would he?' said the other, with a small start. 'For what am I, after all? I am nothing!' But still he drew back a little, in sudden alarm. Then: it was as if a wind had blown in through the window; the pair felt an inner chill; and in a moment Nicolae's alarm was very real. 'MagJore!' he snatched a breath.

There was a shadow in the room, at the foot of the stairs, one of many cast by the flaring of the kitchen's gas jets. This one had been there for some little time, though neither Nicolae nor Nathan had noticed it until now. But it wasn't just a shadow, for as finally their eyes focused upon it, they saw that its own were scarlet. And: 'Maglore, indeed!' it said.

Nicolae was on his feet in a moment and flying, gibbering down the wooden stairs so quickly as to shake them. But Maglore trapped him at the bottom, gripped his shoulder in one clawlike hand and drew him yelping to a halt. 'Not so fast,' he murmured in a doomful voice. 'For one who talks so readily to strangers, Nicolae, you don't do nearly enough talking to your master.'

'My tongue ran away with me!' The other was in a state.

'Oh?' Maglore answered. 'Well, and now it may run away from you entirely. Indeed, I might bite it right out of your face!'

Nathan had stood up. Looking down on Nicolae and Maglore, he could read the Seer Lord's passion. Despite Maglore's quiet tones, his anger was enormous. Starting down the stairs, Nathan said: 'Master, it was I who asked the questions. If I had not, Nicolae could not have answered them. I asked only about Turgosheim and meant no harm. And his answers seemed likewise innocent.'

Maglore glanced at Nathan as he reached the bottom step, then glared at Nicolae again. 'If he speaks so readily to you, perhaps he would speak with others — but of what? The room of the miniature, perhaps, where by use of small spells and conjurations I try to put right what wrongs are worked against me? Ah, but there are those among the Lords and Ladies of Turgosheim who would seize most swiftly upon that, whose belief in the magical, mystical things is no less than mine!'

'I would never work against you, master!' Nicolae denied it, wriggling like a worm in Maglore's grasp. 'But to talk to this Nathan… why, he is yours! In Runemanse, we are all — each and every one of us — yours!'

'But we are not all so nosy,' Maglore answered.

Nathan took a chance and said, 'If Nicolae is in any way guilty, then so am I. But I say again, we are innocent, master.'

Maglore released Nicolae and thrust him stumbling away, but fixed him with his eyes and held him incapable of flight where he came to a trembling halt against the wall. And growling, the Seer Lord answered Nathan, 'You may be innocent — possibly. But this one…?' He continued to glare at Nicolae. Moreover, his upper lip had wrinkled back from his eye teeth like the muzzle of a dog, and his fangs showed metamorphic growth where blood crept on ivory down from the ruptured gums.

'But since nothing is forbidden to me in all Runemanse,' Nathan spoke hurriedly, gasping the words out, 'what could he tell me which I cannot discover for myself?'

Slowly, very slowly, a little of the fire went out of Maglore's eyes. He had seemed huge, awesomely powerful, but now in a moment shrank down into himself and was merely… old. Then, to his errant thrall, he said: 'Ah! Now see how he pleads for you, Nicolae. Yet if the boot were on the other foot, and if I were to give you leave, you would have his blood in a moment! What it is to have compassion, eh? Why, if I don't take care, I can see this Nathan beguiling all of Runemanse with his winning ways!'

Nicolae, cowering to the wall, nodded his eager agreement. 'Oh, he's a one to watch, master, be sure!'

Maglore gave a phlegmy chuckle, then stood up straighter. 'Oh, I am sure — but you're the one I'll be watching, my lad! Now begone, you scummy, treacherous thing!'

Nicolae licked his lips, slid along the wall, fled wailing past Maglore and out of the kitchen. His footsteps receded into distance, pattering through his master's rooms…

Nathan took the opportunity to repeat, 'I meant no harm. Nor do I think that Nicolae meant any harm.'

Maglore nodded. 'I'm satisfied that you didn't. But that one — is a beggar! This time I have let you intervene on his behalf. But let's have it understood: I don't welcome such interference. And I would advise you, Nathan: even one who is to be my… friend, should know when to step carefully.'

Nathan said nothing, and in a little while Maglore asked him, 'Have you begun your exploration of Runemanse?'

'Your rooms, yes.'

'My rooms?' Maglore arched an eyebrow. 'Do you always take people at their word?'

Nathan shrugged — he hoped not negligently — and said, 'Only liars may not be taken at their word, master.'

Maglore blinked and slowly nodded, then laughed and slapped his thigh. 'Aye! It must be true! Well, well

— and so you are good at word games! And we shall get along famously. I look forward to many long conversations with you, Nathan. Except now I have things to do. A creature of mine lies damaged in its vat and I have repairs to make, lest a deal of hard work is wasted. And so I say again: go and explore the manse, or seek out your room and rest, and when I call for you come to me. Ah, but when I call, then make haste! Never keep me waiting, Nathan. Now, do you understand all?'

'Yes, master.'

Maglore turned away, and at once turned back. 'Perhaps I have already warned you, but if not I do so now: avoid my lieutenants if you can, for they are impatient men and unkind. Aye, and you must also avoid my women, who are patient beyond words and only too kind! And if you follow my meaning and my advice, all will be well…'

Runemanse was a queer mixture of rocks, mainly volcanic, whose outer sheath was of quartz and feldspar fused to granite. Many of its caverns were natural, formed from cysts of expanding gas trapped in the ancient magma as lava cooled to rock. But where softer pumice had formed in the primal flux, there the Seer Lord's thralls were at work even now, tunnelling in the body of the place like maggots in an apple.

Nathan found his 'room' (a small cyst or cavelet, in fact, situated directly below Maglore's own expansive apartments but unconnected except through the central stairwell with its hideous guardian), set back from the perimeter of the great hall at the furthest reach of a corridor hewn through the fibrous pumice of an old lava run. There were several other rooms off that corridor; their low, arched entries lacked doors but were equipped on the inside with screens of animal skin stretched over cartilage frames, which kept their interiors private from the view of casual passers-by. Nathan's room, however, had a wooden door with a peephole and a latch… but no key. Still, it was privacy of a sort.

Directed there by a slender young female thrall — a waif-like creature no less than Nicolae, but a vampire for all that, whose eyes were luminous in the darker places and cunning when Nathan found them observing him — he quickly examined his accommodation, or more literally his prison: a room four paces by five, paved with featureless, irregular slabs, with a bed under the high window and a small curtained area containing a crude commode and chamber pot. Low-burning gas jets in the walls gave flickering light but very little of warmth.

From the bed he stepped up into the deep, curtained window embrasure, opened the drapes and found the gap barred. Just as well; beyond the bars the drop was vertical and terrific! Looking out, the view was almost exactly the same as from Maglore's kitchen window overhead, which solved the problem of orientation. Then, climbing down again, Nathan found his vampire guide sitting on the rough blankets of his bed. He had left her outside the open door, without indicating that he desired company. But these creatures had minds of their own, and came and went like smoke.

Thank you for bringing me here,' he told her. 'But now I intend to sleep.'

'Well,' she indicated his bed with a languid hand, 'you have a bed. It's good for sleeping, among other things.' Her smile was enticing as she slowly unfastened her blouse, showing Nathan the inner curves of her breasts. But her flesh was sallow, and her eye-teeth long, white and sharp. Fascinated, he stared at her where she stretched like a kitten, and saw the stains of her aureoles under thin material forced up into sharp, twin peaks by the stiffening of her nipples.

He got down from the bed, looked towards the door. 'You had better go.' His voice was shaky.

'Or what?' Hers was sultry, hot, teasing. 'How will you punish me, if I don't?' She lay back, lifted her dress, showed Nathan how she was naked underneath, and everything displayed. Then, spreading her legs wantonly, she ran her fingers through her bush. Her dark flesh quaked and opened like a small mouth, moist and pouting, so that from where Nathan stood two paces away, still he could feel its sweet suction — and its venom.

'Go now,' he said, hardening his voice, 'at once, or risk Maglore's wrath!'

'Hah!' she was up on her feet in a moment. 'But we thought you were fresh from Sunside, a young lad bursting with seed. We did not know that Maglore had bought you from Zindevar, who has doubtless kept you as a gelding in Cronespire, where your sole duty has been to oil the creaking leather of her flaccid teats! And did she steal your dark Gypsy colours, too, as well as your manhood, you pale trembling whelp?'

'Out!' Nathan went to the door, held it open.

'What?' She was furious now: her nostrils flaring, eyes blazing crimson, mouth a writhing, hissing, cursing gash. 'Do you really spurn me? Do you dare? I see that you do! Fuck you then, you pallid, sapless freak!' She swept by him and out of the room.

It had been the first of Nathan's several encounters with Maglore's women; in respect of which, it seemed that both Nicolae and the Seer Lord were perfectly correct…

Nathan was mentally and physically exhausted. Fully clothed, with all three of his blankets covering him, he did eventually sleep but it was a long time coming. In the end he only succeeded after reminding himself that awake or asleep Runemanse was a place fraught with terrors, and that like it or not and for as long as he stayed here he must sleep and replenish himself at frequent intervals. Then, as he felt himself slipping from eerie awareness into the darkness of equally weird dreams, he remembered to cloak his telepathic mind with the vast and incomprehensible swirl of the numbers vortex, hopefully to protect it from the incursions of other minds with similar abilities.

In this way he shrouded his secret mind at least, which in any case would be cluttered with the debris of his waking hours and hard to decipher. But where telepathy is communication between living, physical minds, deadspeak is something else entirely. Only the minds of the dead were tuned to it, and Nathan's mind, of course…

Nathaaan! The dead voice was only a whisper at first, a sigh in the dark, uneasy drift of subconscious wandering. But as Nathan heard it, focused upon it, and drew closer to its source, so all other memories, pseudo-memories and dream-clutter were brushed aside; and the voice grew stronger. Nathaaan? It was a clotted gurgle, a dead and rotten thing, and despite its incorporeality, it was still the very 'embodiment' of evil. So that Nathan was instinctively aware that this was a voice from the pit.

'Who are you?' he asked it breathlessly, as his sleeping body grew cold and the short hairs stood erect on the back of his neck. 'What… are you?'

Ask what I was, the thing answered, its voice mournful now and racked with a sob. For that is something 1 can tell you, aye, and perhaps even show you. But as for what 1 am… why, 1 am no longer anything! Or if anything at all, an old dead thing in his lightless grave, blind and shrivelled and leathery as the mummified Thyre in their cavern mausoleums. That is what 1 am.

The Thyre? What do you know of them?' Nathan remembered his vow: he would never reveal his knowledge of the desert folk to the outside world. But it seemed that this one already knew of them. Something of them, at least.

Do I know of them? Ah, better than you think! Why, for fifty long years I have lain here in my solitude and listened to them through the long blind night: the echoes of their dead thoughts, drifting in from their dusty tombs, over Sunside and the barrier mountains, and down into Turgosheim. They are dead things no less than I myself, and so in my solitude I am privy to their thoughts. Except they are unkind and will not speak to me, and I no longer try to speak to them. But you… are different. You are alive, Nathan! Your works have definition in the land of the Jiving. You can make change, can bring things into being! Whereas I myself and all the dreaming Thyre, because we are only dead things, can change nothing.

Nathan was wary of the thing, whose evil was a miasma in his mind. 'You know my name, knew that I was here. How could you know these things, without that we've met before?'

How could I know? But I feel your trembling footsteps in the rock, which reverberate down to me like thunder! By comparison, Maglore's comings and goings are a patter of raindrops, and his thralls' a slither of leaves. Also, I hear your dreaming thoughts, called deadspeak, which are solid as spoken words to me, while the living hear nothing at all. Ah, you can build your barrier of numbers against the living, Nathan, but you may not shield your mind from the dead! We know you, Necroscope!

The thing seemed to know altogether too much. 'We?' Nathan answered. 'But the Thyre shun you, you've admitted as much. And you talk about your "solitude", which would seem to imply that all of the dead shun you. You can only be Wamphyri!'

Wamphyri, of course! said the other. It's no big secret. I am what I am. But I'm also dead, and you are the Necroscope. Or does your pity exclude such as me, as I have been excluded from light and life and existence itself, except as an old and crumbling thing in the rock?

Despite his instinctive caution, still Nathan was curious. 'Where are you — exactly?'

Where I dwelled for an hundred years; where I was blinded by treacherous sons and buried; where even now I stiffen to a stone, to become one with all the stones of Turgosheim. Upon a time my home was Madmanse. Now it is only my tomb..

Madmanse? Nathan didn't know about Madmanse.

Ah, no! The thing at once explained. Despite that Maglore and I were neighbours, you won't see Madmanse from his windows. For he was above and I was below.

'In Turgosheim's lower reaches?'

Look you, said the other. You know that Runemanse is like a turret, a hollow promontory of rock jutting from the rim of the gorge? Well, its column goes down into the roots of Turgosheim itself. The upper levels are Maglore's, but down below… is Madmanse! You must visit me one day. Maglore knows the way: an old stairwell, winding down, down. We shared the same wells, upon a time… The other's voice had sunk to a ghastly gurgle, suggestive, insinuating, inveigling. It was overpowering, very nearly hypnotic…

But even dreaming, still Nathan sensed his danger. 'Very well,' he said, pushing back the reek of mental contagion. 'So now I know where you are. But I still don't know who you were. Did you have a name?'

A name? Oh, indeed! The other's oozing, poisonous voice was more ghastly yet, like an evocation of immemorial horror, shuddering into life from beyond the grave. My name was much feared in its time, even among the Wamphyri. I was Eygor Killglance, whose very eyes were instruments of death — which was the reason my twin bastard bloodsons blinded and destroyed me! Also why they fled in the end; for they knew that I was still here, and they feared the dreams I sent them, to plague them all their days. Well, now the dogs are gone, even beyond the reach of my dreams. But they'll be back one day, and I shall still be here, waiting…

A little of Eygor's loneliness, his helplessness — but a great deal more of his bitterness, hatred, and frustration — touched Nathan's metaphysical mind, clinging there and burning like hot tears, or perhaps like acid. In the moment of its passion, the old thing in its long-forgotten vault had become more than just a disembodied mind; now it was more truly a Being in its own right, and Nathan took the opportunity to look deeper at what the once-master of Madmanse had been like towards the end of his time.

The other sensed the extension of Nathan's mind and knew that he had drawn closer. Aye, seek me out, he said. First in dreams and then in life. Here I am, here — in the dark and the dank and the drear of my prison, where I died in the mire of Madmanse…

Nathan could see, but dimly. He stood in a gloomy cathedral of a cave, vast and high-ceilinged, whose walls dripped slime and nitre. The floor was a clutter of anomalous debris, humped, fibrous, boggy. Spongy bones and white-shining cartilage gleamed everywhere, like a boneyard of monsters. The place was a vampire refuse pit, diseased, disused, and sealed up forever. But not everything here was refuse. Or perhaps it was — now.

Something leaned or slumped against the wall. At first Nathan took it for some strange stalagmite formation: a fantastic dripstone creation of nature. But he saw that its shape was much too irregular, and its texture darker than the salty, nitre-streaked stone. Lured by a morbid fascination, he willed his dream-self into motion and approached until the thing towered over him, clinging to the curve of the cavern's wall. And as Nathan's perspective changed so details stood out clearer, and the true nature of the thing was known.

It was… a monstrous amalgam, a welding together of everything unwholesome! Like Maglore's guardian creature in its curtained niche under the central staircase in Runemanse's great hall, this thing's general outline was manlike. But the Seer Lord's creature was not eighteen feet tall and composed of fused bone, black mummied flesh, knobs of gristly cartilage, and plates of gleaming-blue chitin. Nor did Maglore's guardian have additional mouths in its bloated body and rubbery limbs, as well as the one in its face!

Nathan's dream-self drew back a pace. His fevered eyes scanned the size, the shape and diseased design of this thing slumped in a kneeling position against the wall. Its horny fossil feet and shrivelled, leathery thighs; its arched back and shoulders, and misshapen, screaming skull. Fused to the wall by nitre, the great head was thrown back, jaws frozen in some everlasting rictus. A withered arm lay along a ledge of rock, terminating in a talon that drooped from a wrist almost as thick as Nathan's thigh, where blackened bones protruded from dusty, fretted, crumbling flesh. Or at least, from the desiccated stuff which once had been flesh.

And: Welcome to Madmanse, the awful voice said, and Nathan knew that it was this gargoyle who spoke to him. You entered o/ your own free will, and I shall make you heir to aJl of my mysteries — if you so desire. For I had powers in my time, Necroscope, just as you have powers now. And who knows but that one day we might trade something for something, and so benefit mutually from our… transaction?

Nathan knew he should leave, and now. But this was a new experience. This dead creature — this otherwise extinct mind — was no innocent Thyre ancient dreaming incorporeal dreams of the past, but a Lord of the Wamphyri still hoping against hope and scheming for some highly improbable future! Indeed an entirely impossible future, without Nathan. Eygor's tenacity was that of the vampire, and Nathan was his one thread of contact, his one chance of continuity.

'There's nothing I want from you,' he said, backing off farther yet. 'All you knew in life was horror, of which I've had more than enough, and probably a great deal more to come. All thanks to the Wamphyri.'

But can't you see the irony in it? The other was insistent. That I couJd be the instrument to right all of the wrongs you've suffered?

Was it possible, Nathan wondered? To fight the Wamphyri with their own evil? Was that the way to go? But what power did this creature have? And how, now that Eygor was dead, might Nathan become 'heir to all of (his) mysteries'?

Ah, there.' The other sighed in Nathan's mind. Now see how I have sparked your interest, Necroscope. Aye, and I fancy we shall speak again, and soon. But for now — 'ware! For I know the patter of Maglore's sly, slippered feet. And the Mage of Runemanse approaches even now. Until the next time, then…

Abruptly, the cavern and its occupant disappeared; the numbers vortex sprang up in its place; Nathan felt the familiar, furious tugging of alien formulae, and also Maglore's mind-probes recoiling from the whorl and suck of his mental barrier.

'Nathaaan! Nathan!' The transition from one evil voice in his metaphysical mind to another in his entirely physical ears was confusing… until a clawlike hand grasped his shoulder and shook him, rocking him in his bed.

'Who? What…?' He came gasping awake.

'Who indeed?' Maglore's face was hideous — and accusing? — in the yellow-flaring light of the gas jets, where he leaned over him. 'Who is it comes to visit you in your sleep, Nathan? Who do you talk to, secretly, in your dreams?'

'My dreams?' Nathan's guard was firmly in place. Quickly awake, he tried to sit up and Maglore withdrew a little to let him. 'Was I dreaming?' His brow was feverish and he was trembling. 'Yes, yes I was! But not a dream, a nightmare, which now has gone.'

'Ah, a nightmare!' Maglore nodded curtly, his red eyes swivelling this way and that, as if seeking out some vestige of the unknown visitant. 'That which comes in the darkness to terrify the sleeping mind. The memory of some fearful event out of the past, perhaps, or the prescience of that which is yet to befall.' He cocked his head in a listening attitude, sniffing at the air like a hound before seating himself on the edge of Nathan's bed. The result of gluttonous overeating, or merely a case of conscience. But… guilty conscience, perhaps?'

Nathan kept his mind shielded and played the innocent. It wasn't difficult, for after all he was innocent. 'Did I eat too much, Master?' He ignored the implied accusation.

Maglore narrowed his eyes, but still Nathan saw right into them. The master of Runemanse was thinking, Does he continue to play word games with me? One thing for sure: he's no fool, this Nathan.

But as Maglore stood up, so he made inquiry; 'And are you hungry?'

Nathan threw back his blankets, thrust his feet over the edge of the bed and joined the Seer Lord on his feet. 'I think I am,' he said. He glanced out of the high window and noted the orientation of the stars. And so he should be hungry, for he'd slept half-way through sundown!

Then you did not eat too much,' Maglore told him. 'And so we're left with a case of conscience; or perhaps some real however intangible thing, which came to you in your sleep. Do you believe in ghosts?'

'Yes,' said Nathan at once, relieved that he could speak the truth. Of course he believed in ghosts, for he of all men knew that they were real, even though they were not always the dark phantoms of myth which men supposed. But Maglore, for all that he was a mage, didn't know that.

The Seer Lord nodded. 'And so you should believe in them, and especially here. Let me advise you, Nathan, that Turgosheim has known a variety of terrible men and creatures. Though they themselves are gone, their auras dwell here still. And in Runemanse, you are not the only one who dreams dark dreams.'

He looked Nathan up and down. 'But tell me, why are you dressed? You did not simply fall asleep on top of the bed, for I saw you under the covers. Is there something here which you fear? Has someone… bothered you?' His frown brought his eyebrows crushing inwards under a warp of wrinkled forehead. And once again he glanced this way and that, and sniffed the air. Until, in a moment: 'A woman!' he said.

'She did me no harm,' Nathan shook his head. 'She showed me the way here, that's all.'

Maglore glared at him furiously. 'What? She showed you the way? Oh, she would do that, all right! Any one of them would do that!' He grasped Nathan's arm. 'Who was she? Did she touch you, kiss you, offer you her body? Speak, fool! Did you take her?' But even as Nathan began to shake his head: 'What? Do you lie to me? Why, there's not a horny red-blooded man born of woman who could deny those whores of mine, except maybe a whelp who doesn't know what a woman is!'

Nathan felt his ears burning red…

Astonished, the Seer Lord gazed deep into his eyes, and saw the truth written there. 'What?' he said. 'A strapping man, Szgany, almost twenty years old and never bedded a woman? Hah!' He slapped his thigh. 'Little wonder they're prettied up and on the prowl! I've never seen them so agitated! But… can it be true? You're a virgin?'

'I… I had a… g-g-girl, Szgany,' Nathan answered. It was the first time he'd stumbled and stuttered in a long time. And now he resolved never to do it again. 'She was stolen away by Canker Canison, into Starside,' his voice hardened. 'Perhaps she would have been mine, if things had been different. Anyway, we kept apart from taking lovers, and waited for each other.'

'Ah, true love!' Maglore fluttered long, almost furry eyelashes and sighed sarcastically. 'The dog Canker got her, yes?' He shook his head, made sympathetic clucking noises. 'I trust you have forgotten her? If not, you may safely do so.'

Nathan was not required to reply.

'Now, try to understand my concern, my anger,' Maglore's tone was conciliatory. 'If you are seduced by some creature of mine, you will no longer be your own creature, and therefore of no earthly use to me. It is my desire to keep your blood, body, and very mind clean and free of other influences — except my own. For I have enough of vampires, and at times the fawning of thralls becomes an annoyance. This is no unique situation, however; you will not be the first entirely human being who ever stayed in Runemanse…" He paused, and in a little while continued:

'Well, and no doubt you are wondering why I'm here. Since I was passing this way I thought to look in on you, and if you were awake bring you to table. You shall take all of your meals with me, for sometimes I crave the company of common men. Also, it seems I must keep you safe — for the time being, anyway — until I can make other arrangements.' He spoke musingly, almost to himself. But then:

'Come,' he made for the door. 'You can wash in my apartments, and while we eat we shall continue our conversation. I desire to know you better, my son. For after all, your welfare is in my hands…' Maglore glanced at Nathan sideways where he hurried to keep up, but the Seer Lord's thoughts were now as inscrutable as his expression…

Entering the great hall from the corridor, Nathan came face to face with the vampire girl who had attempted his seduction. She turned her face away immediately but Maglore had seen. He paused in his striding, nodded grimly, and called her back. She came smiling, eager, but ghosting in the awful flowing fashion of a vampire.

'So,' said Maglore. 'It is Magda. You were the one.'

She glared at Nathan and faced up to Maglore, determined to brazen it out. 'But he's one of yours, master, which you have brought into Runemanse. I thought to have him before the others, that's all, and he gave me the opportunity by asking me the way to his room. But as it happens, he's one of three things: a eunuch, or queer, or a child who still thinks it's for pissing! Me: I like a man with backbone. And so no harm done. Besides which, I had no instructions to the contrary.'

'Perhaps not, at the time,' said Maglore nodding, chucking her under the chin almost affectionately.

She rubbed against him and brushed his shoulder with her cheek. Then I have not offended?'

Maglore had been half-smiling. Now the mask slipped from his face and he called for one of his men. At the sound of his voice, a silence fell on the great hall. Then a lieutenant came striding, and Magda tried to back away. But Maglore held her.

Nathan glanced around the great hall. Nearby, a squad of pallid thralls gouged with heavy flint chisels at a wall of pumice; but work stopped as gaunt, hollow faces turned inwards on the drama. Feral eyes lit with morbid fascination, and perhaps with something of grim anticipation, too. A small group of women, pounding washing at a trickling water sluice, looked up and nudged each other, and grinned. They were drudges, most of them, older than Magda and perhaps jealous of her.

Maglore saw that, too. 'Did you wager for him?' he asked her as his lieutenant approached.

'We drew straws,' she snarled, still struggling. 'And I won.'

'Fool!' Maglore told her. 'You lost! Where orders exist you obey them, and where there are none you do nothing. That is the rule, in Runemanse. The others know that, and so they let you win. They were baiting you, trying Nathan, and testing… me!'

He tossed her into his man's arms, grew taller and glowered all about the cavern. 'Testing me?' he shouted, his face livid with a fire which seemed to burn through the very bone. 'Well, and let this be a lesson to all of you. I need not say more than this…' He glanced at his lieutenant, and twitched his head in a negligent gesture: '… Magda is for the provisioning!'

The girl screamed once and clawed for the lieutenant's eyes; he jerked back his head, struck her with a massive fist that broke her jaw and knocked her senseless. And the last Nathan saw of her, she was being carried away.

For a moment the silence seemed to ring… then Maglore headed for the spiral staircase with Nathan following on. But this time he knew better than to plead for the girl, for the Seer Lord's mind was seething like a cauldron full of poison. And as they climbed the central stairs, slowly the great hall came back to life behind them…

At Maglore's table, Nathan had no appetite. He picked at his food when the Wamphyri Lord insisted, but his spirit felt so weighted, depressed, that the morsels would not go down. And he wondered about Magda. Perhaps he'd left his mind unguarded; in any case he was jolted and learned a lesson from it, when Maglore said:

'Forget about her. You won't see her again. And anyway, why concern yourself about someone who would have drained you in a trice?'

'Because I feel it was my fault, master.'

'It was no one's fault. It was Nature's fault: the nature of the vampire. But I am glad you refused her. So should you be glad, for your continued existence.'

'Everything in Runemanse appears a threat,' Nathan answered before he could control his thoughts or words. 'There's no innocence here.'

'Well, there is now,' Maglore contradicted him. 'Aye, and there was before. Perhaps not entirely innocent, but certainly human. Didn't I tell you that you weren't the first human being to stay in Runemanse? If I let my… ladies see you and she together, then perhaps they'll leave you alone. I have sent for her and she will join us in a little while.'

'She, master?'

Maglore waved a dismissive hand. 'Ask no more. Now I have questions for you. For instance: you say you don't know women, yet wore a locket with a curl of pubic hair. And Thyre hair at that! Explain it, if you will.'

Nathan shrugged. 'It's a custom of the Thyre when brother and sister part. Atwei was like a sister to me.'

'And how did you know her so well?'

'I got to know her, in my long wanderings in the desert.'

'Ah, yes, I remember,' Maglore nodded. 'You told me about that on our way here. After Wratha and her renegades fell upon your tribe and destroyed it, you walked out into the desert to die. But the Thyre found you and you joined them, and wandered east with them from oasis to oasis. You skirted the Great Red Waste and lived like the desert trogs themselves, on the flesh of lizards and the juice of cactus plants.' Maglore blinked and shook his head. 'So much sunlight and so little colour. Why did you not burn?'

'I wore a cowled Thyre robe,' Nathan lied, 'and kept to the shade wherever possible. Then, when I came to Turgosheim's Sunside, I lived on the fringe of the forest a while before I heard of lozel and sought him out. In the forest's shade, my skin grew pale… which in any case had never been dark.'

'Why did you seek lozel out?' Maglore's questions were coming closer to the mark. Nathan must think fast, and guard his thoughts at the same time.

'I heard he was a mystic who understood strange things. Perhaps he could explain the numbers which plague my dreams, and the reason I feel like a stranger in the presence of my own kind.' He tugged at the twisted strap on his wrist. 'He might also know why I wear this, which has become a part of me.'

'Ah!' Maglore was distracted, fascinated at once, just as Nathan had hoped he would be. 'Take it off. Let me see it again.' Nathan did so, and Maglore picked it up and said: 'So, the sigil puzzles you even as it puzzles me. Why did you not say so?'

'I have lived with it,' Nathan answered. 'I wear it like my hair. Yet while it seems nothing special, I know that it is special, for it is also your sigil. It seemed presumptuous of me to claim it for my own.'

And at last Maglore chuckled. 'Not to say dangerous, eh?'

'That, too,' Nathan answered.

'Well, and we learn more about you all the time,' the Seer Lord nodded, tossing the strap onto the table. 'You're not so naive after all. And did lozel know the sigil? Could he tell you anything about it?'

'Oh, he knew it, master,' said Nathan. 'But did he know about it? — no, nothing. He was a fraud! I myself know more.'

'You do? Explain.'

Nathan took up the strap. 'I have… noticed things. In quieter moments, I have studied this device.'

'A device?' said Maglore, raising a feathery eyebrow. 'Oh, really? Do you think so? Ahhh!'

'How many sides has it?'

'Eh? A question?' Maglore leaned over the table and tested the leather between thumb and forefinger. 'Sides? Why, two, of course.'

'One,' Nathan shook his head. 'For it defies the eye, do you see?' He brought a sliver of charcoal from the fireplace and drew a line on the brown leather, down the centre of its width. As the line lengthened he turned the strap on the table, until the head of the line met up with its tail.

'Ahhh.'' Maglore's great jaw fell open.

And Nathan asked him: 'How many edges has it?'

'Eh? Edges?' Maglore's eyes darted from the strap to Nathan's face and back again. 'Why, two, plainly. What is it but a strip of leather, after all? There must be two edges, if only to separate the space between them!'

'One,' Nathan said again.

'No!' said Maglore, astonished. 'Let me try it!' He blackened the strap's rim with charcoal, until 'each' edge (in fact there was only one, as Nathan had pointed out) was smudged with soot. Then… the Seer Mage's eyes were very wide as he carefully put the strap down. And:

'For all of sixteen years I have known this thing,' he said, 'even taking it for my sigil. Yet I have never "known" it! But now, through you…" He gazed at Nathan in something approaching wonder. 'Well, in alerting me to your presence, lozel Kotys has paid his dues at last. For indeed there is this bond between us.'

He might have gone on to say more, except that was when 'she' arrived…

II She was beautiful in a wan, subdued sort of way, but it was obvious that she was not a vampire. Her eyes were as black as any Szgany eyes Nathan had ever seen, and despite the lack of sunlight — or perhaps because of it — her flesh had taken on a unique creamy texture. No longer the tanned, natural, light golden brown of a Gypsy, still her colour appeared healthier than Nathan's, and it could never be mistaken for the pallor of a thrall or the sickly grey of an undead vampire thing.

Long-legged and dressed in a black sheath split up the sides to mid-thigh, and in a gauzy blouse which scarcely concealed the elastic globes of her breasts, she approached the table and bowed from the waist. Her hair, straight, black as jet, and cut in a fringe over her eyes, was long at the sides and fell forward to frame her oval face. But as she straightened her back and stood tall, waiting for her master's command, her eyes were only for Maglore. So that Nathan supposed she dared not look at him, not in the presence of her Wamphyri Lord.

'Orlea,' Maglore acknowledged her presence with a smile, indicating that she should take a seat at the table. 'Eat with us.' And, as she sat down: This is Nathan, and you shall know him well. He is new here and Runemanse is very strange to him. I shall require you to show him all of its levels, rooms, and functions. Nowhere shall be forbidden. He shall be as you are, a free person — within those limits which I impose.'

While Maglore placed some choice tidbits on a plate and passed it to her, Orlea glanced at Nathan, perhaps curiously. Then, lowering her eyes, she picked at her food.

Nathan thought it might be as well to make conversation. 'Despite my colouring,' he spoke to Orlea, 'I am Szgany. But I came here out of the west, from beyond the Great Red Waste.' Perhaps she, and Maglore too, would take it that there were other anomalies of pigmentation in those distant regions. In any case, it was an opening.

She looked at Maglore for his approval, and he nodded. And turning a little more towards Nathan, she asked: 'How is it now, on Sunside?' Her voice was soft, pleasant, but completely lacking in animation; and never a smile to betray her emotions. In fact she seemed drained of all emotion. Nathan could well understand that.

'My Sunside, in the west, or yours?'

'My own,' she answered.

'Do you miss it?' Maybe he was taking a chance. Perhaps she would also take a chance, and answer him truthfully. But she didn't, or so he believed at that time.

'No,' she said. 'My life was hard there.'

Then why do you ask after it?'

Maglore interrupted. 'Good! And so you'll converse and find things in common. But I suspect my presence inhibits you, and anyway I have things to do. Orlea, first I would speak to you…" He stood up and moved apart; she went to him and they talked a while in lowered tones; finally Maglore left the two on their own and went about his business.

As they made an end of their meal, Nathan looked at the spread table. 'What about these things?'

'Just as you and I have our duties here, so others have theirs,' Orlea answered him. She indicated the table. 'All of this will be attended to; but for now Maglore has tasked me to show you Runemanse, and tasked you to observe closely and remember the things you see. No great difficulty in that; I know you will remember, just as I remembered in my time. Indeed, I cannot forget.'

He followed her to a room with a staircase, which they climbed to Runemanse's highest level. 'The topmost fang of the aerie,' she told him without looking back. 'We'll start there, and work our way down.'

'Why did you ask after Sunside?' Nathan was curious.

'Because you were making conversation,' she answered. 'If I had not answered, Maglore would have made me. He admires that such as you and I are civil towards each other. It pleases him that within the limits he imposes we govern our own bodies and minds, and that we temper ourselves and are matched on an emotional level — unlike vampires, who are commanded by powerful, alien urges to argue and fight at every opportunity, often for the sake of it!'

'Is that the only reason?' They had arrived at the topmost landing.

'No, for it was also my thought to ask… after the children.' She waited for him to step up beside her.

The children?'

'My life on Sunside was hard,' she said, 'but I remember the little ones. They were sweet, pure, innocent.'

Nathan shrugged. 'All young things are.'

'Ah, no!' she answered with a small shudder. The young of the Wamphyri are not…'

'And are there young ones here?'

'In Runemanse? No. Maglore cannot abide them. But when I asked him once for a child, he showed me the nurseries of the Wamphyri. The children of Sunside take milk from their mothers or wet-nurses, but in Turgosheim.. they take other than milk. If Maglore could be sure he would father other than a vampire, then he might give me my child, but until then he won't spoil me for the sake of "some usurper brat!'"

'You asked Maglore for a child?' Nathan couldn't believe it. 'Do you mean… you wanted to bear his child?'

'Yes,' she answered, leading the way through a labyrinth of empty rooms to one with a window and, set back in an alcove, a curtained area. There, for the first time, she looked Nathan full in the face. But her chin was raised and her eyes defiant. 'You have not seen Maglore when he's young. You're not a woman. You do not know what it is to be with a vampire Lord. You have no understanding of the word "fulfilment".'

'No,' Nathan replied, drawing back from her. 'But I have seen what remains after women have been… fulfilled! And if they're not dead, they're doomed!'

She nodded, looked away. 'Yes, you are right. But with me… Maglore has been careful, and gentle. I am not changed. Or if I am, it is that I hated him and now love him. A woman can be in thrall to a man in more ways than one.'

'You actually love him?' It seemed impossible.

'I love Maglore!' she snapped. 'Not his works or the thing inside him, but him!'

It was beyond understanding. For a moment, lost for words, Nathan shook his head. Then he said: 'But surely, it's his vampire that makes him what he is?'

'And that is the paradox,' she answered, 'which tears me like rotten cloth. I hate that thing inside Maglore as much as I love its host! For where he is my master, it is his master! And I am jealous of it and hate it because it shares him with me. Also, it shares me with him! But when he is with me in the guise of a young man, then I cannot help but love him.'

Nathan had backed up to the curtained alcove; Orlea had followed and was standing close to him, with her hand on the curtain rope, when he said, 'I think… that I pity you!' He spoke before considering his words, perhaps without even meaning them; for he had no way of knowing what her life had been like before Runemanse. It was simply an expression of his horror. But whatever else she'd lost, Orlea still had her pride. Her dark eyes blazed as she told him:

'Save your pity for yourself, Nathan, for you've not yet seen Runemanse.' With which she pulled the rope. The curtains swished open, and Nathan saw… Maglore's siphoneer. At first he did not recognize what he was looking at, but then he did, and staggered away grimacing and gasping.

'So you see,' she let the curtains fall and followed him, taking his arm to steady him, 'there are times when it's useful to have someone to love and cling to in a place like this. Aye, even a thing like Maglore.' Looking into her eyes, Nathan saw nothing of the feral yellow of a thrall's evil intelligence, or the scarlet of tumultuous Wamphyri passions. But perhaps he did see something of the vacancy of madness…

Next on her list, Orlea showed Nathan Maglore's study or 'room of meditation', to which only a few trusted thralls had access. His eyes were drawn at once to a heavy golden model of the Seer Lord's sigil upon a slender onyx base, and he wondered at its use; or perhaps it was merely ornamental. And seated for long hours before a marvellous model of Turgosheim, he absorbed what Orlea told him of the vampire gorge. This was a great deal more than he'd learned from Nicolae Seersthrall, and went a long way towards completing his knowledge of the geography of the place and the history of its inhabitants. More than two-thirds of Sundown had passed by the time they were finished there.

'Are you tired?' she asked him. 'Or do you wish to continue?'

'I don't know if I am tired,' Nathan answered truthfully. There's so much to see, learn. And what I've seen already will keep me awake, I'm sure. Anyway, I need to be fatigued in body as well as mind, to sleep soundly.' But inside he knew that he really should sleep, and do as much of it as possible, at every opportunity. For if he should allow himself to become overtired, sooner or later he would let his guard down. His secret talents must remain secret; his knowledge of the Thyre and their desert places was a trust he could never break; he must see about the fabrication of a false geography and lifestyle for that olden Sunside in the west, which he'd left so far behind. For eventually Maglore would want to know about it, he was sure.

'Now would be a good time for sleeping,' Orlea told him as if reading his thoughts, though in fact she had not, for he kept them guarded and could sense nothing of telepathy in her. 'For the deep sleep which you require, if you'd stay strong in Runemanse. Fear saps your strength here — everyone's strength, except Maglore's. One's nerves are stretched to breaking point; breathing and heartbeat fluctuate; will withers to a husk, even as Maglore's grows stronger. For it's not only blood that vampires suck, Nathan. They suck everything.'

He followed her back down to the great hall, where there was little of activity now. Several female thralls were still out and about, however, and a group of them stood in secretive conversation. Seeing Nathan and Orlea together they fell silent, frowning, and apparently frustrated. Then, when he would have made for his room, Orlea took his elbow and guided him in a different direction, down a passageway carved in pumice.

'Where are we going?' Nathan inquired.

'To a place where those women won't bother you,' she told him. 'For they fear me almost as much as they fear Maglore.'

'And where is the Seer Lord now?' He felt uneasy, but was not quite sure why he wanted to know.

'Asleep,' she answered. 'He has his routines. This is one of the times when he sleeps. Sunup will rouse him from his bed, when he'll retreat to his workshops in the lower levels. Unlike the other Lords, most of which work only at night and cower in the dark when the sun stands on high over Sunside, Maglore has regulated his sleeping evenly between day and night.'

They reached the outer wall where a narrow window looked towards the north-east, and stone steps spiralled down around a mortared stone core. At the bottom was a lesser hall like a warren, with passages leading off. She led the way down one of these to a room with a door like Nathan's. It was Orlea's room, but inside… the door was fitted with a bolt. This wasn't the only difference, for her apartment was very well appointed. She had a bath, furniture, furs on the floor, and tasselled drapes at a tiny window punched through the massive wall; and her bed was curtained with gauzy drapes, which hung to the floor from rails between the posters.

There were several gas jets with low yellow flames. She went about the room plugging them with bone dowels, until the light was reduced to a smoky dusk. And as Nathan's imagination began to run rampant, she said: 'No one will bother you here. Here you may sleep safely.'

'Orlea,' he headed for the door, 'I appreciate your concern for me, but I fear that if Maglore knew I was here…'

'He does,' she cut him short, stopped him in his tracks. 'Do you think I would dare if he did not? He ordered it.'

Mind whirling and senses numb, Nathan faced the door, his hand reaching for the bolt. But hearing the rustle of curtains, he turned and looked back. Her clothes lay where she'd tossed them on a stool beside the bed, and the drapes were still mobile, shivering into stillness.

Tingling with an electric awareness, scarcely daring to breathe, Nathan asked, 'What… did he order?'

'Everything,' her voice came back to him, very small and somehow sad. 'I'm to take your innocence, until there's nothing left for them.'

'His vampire women?'

'Yes.'

He went back to the bed. 'Orlea, I know better now. I know that I'm to avoid them, which in turn makes this unnecessary.'

'Do you spurn me and defy Maglore?'

'No, I don't spurn you,' he said, trying hard to make her understand, without belittling himself. But in the end he knew there was only one way, which was to tell the truth. 'It's just that I have no experience of women,' he finally blurted it out. 'I don't know… anything!'

'Well,' she answered, 'and weren't we all innocent, upon a time?'

Even as she spoke, Nathan's ringers were trembling as if they were some other's where they removed his clothes. 'I mean it,' he said. 'I really don't know anything at all.' Even now it wasn't the whole truth, but close enough.

'But you will,' she whispered, 'you will. Even as I know, so shall you.'

He was naked. 'Orlea, I…"

'Come to bed and warm me,' she told him. 'At least I'll know that there's only one of you, that your actions are your own and not directed by some other. At least it will be you, and not some slimy-black thing inside that drives you on.'

He passed through the curtains to where her slender hand greeted him. She turned back the covers and he slid in beside her. She covered him with the blankets, then with her strange cold love…

Later, in the dusk of the curtained bed and the musk of their bodies, Nathan asked: 'How did you come here?'

'I was a child on Sunside,' Orlea told him, 'just fourteen years old, when the headman of my village, Gobor Tulcini, noticed me. He was a brutal man, Gobor, with a frail and much abused wife. But then, he abused everything: his position, his people — phah! — the very air he breathed. Why, wild dogs are better behaved! One tithe time, he engineered a deficiency, and at the last moment chose my father to make up the number. After my father was taken, my poor mother died of grief. Then Gobor took me into his house, so that he might "bring me up as his own". So he said…

'My duties were to look after the village children, which I loved. For after all, I was only a child myself. But while I looked after them, Gobor… looked after me. His wife knew but feared him terribly, and so made no complaint. Twice in a year, by his order, she helped me lose the child he had made in me.

'I bided my time, until I could stand it no longer. Then, one night when the tithesmen came out of Turgosheim, I crept to the square and offered myself for the taking. Gobor would have snatched me back and beaten me, but a lieutenant, seeing that I was more comely than some of the girls on offer, questioned me. I told him my mother was dead and my father had been taken by the Wamphyri, and Gobor had kept me for himself, out of sight of the tithesmen. Well, the truth was that I was too young for the tithe, but most of what I said was true.

'Also, I said that I vastly preferred Turgosheim to the great brute Gobor, which was the whole truth. Even death was preferable, though that was not the entire reason. But being a child and still nai've — in my thinking, at least — I also thought I might find my father here. And despite that I was young, I was brought into Turgosheim.

'Luckily, a man of Maglore's drew me in the fatesay-ing, and so I came here. I had learned the ways of men from Gobor, and used a woman's wiles on Maglore. He was fascinated to know how I, a child, was such a woman. And when he knew… then he arranged for men of his to be tithesmen for a spell, going into Sunside to collect the pitiful human tribute of the Szgany. And he instructed his men to choose a new leader for the people of my village, and to bring Gobor back with them. Thus the great brute met his end in the provisioning of the Lord Vormulac's melancholy Vormspire, which I believe was my father's fate before him…'

As she finished her story Nathan slipped out of bed and began to dress himself. She watched him through the curtains a while, then said, 'You don't have to go.'

'But I do have my own place here,' he told her, 'which I had better get used to.'

'As you wish. And there will be another time, when you will be more at ease. Then I'll show you the things you still don't know.'

'By Maglore's command?' Even as he said it, Nathan knew that it was churlish of him. Especially now that he knew what her life had been. But with the words already out, it was too late to make amends.

And after a moment she answered quietly, 'Maybe… and maybe not. We all must do as we're told, but the way in which we do it is our own concern…'

He left and made his way to his room. There were several vampire thralls in the great hall, a handful of women and one or two males. The latter glanced at Nathan, perhaps enviously, but he was pleased to note that the females ignored him. They had learned Maglore's lesson. And anyway, he was no longer an innocent. Oh, he was, in many ways, but not in that way. That part of him was gone forever.

In one way he felt more the man, but in another he felt dejected, made small. And he remembered what his mother Nana had used to tell him when he'd been hunting, that good meat is always the tastiest when you've caught it yourself…

From then on time passed quickly, and as Nathan got to know Runemanse, so its menace receded a little, but never entirely. And Orlea had been right: there were times when he would wake up in the night (even during the long days), with his nerves screaming and his heart pounding in his chest. It was simply the knowledge that terror and morbid works were all around, and that every other creature in Runemanse, and indeed Turgosheim, was a plague-bearing vampire. With the sole exception of Orlea herself.

And as for Orlea: she was as good as her word and showed Nathan those things he still didn't know. She took him to her room a second time, and on a third and final occasion he made his own way there by prior arrangement. And again he saw how she had been right, for he was more at ease and pleased to take the initiative. Being young and potent, he enjoyed her slender body and might easily have fallen in love with her, except she warned him against it.

'I am Maglore's,' she told him, when on that third occasion he proved hard to drive from her room. 'And I have done my duty by him and obeyed his orders.'

'Maybe,' he said, at her door. 'But you've loved me anyway, and you found it pleasant.'

'No,' she shook her head, 'but I made you think so.' And as his face fell: 'From now on you must never look at me with those eyes, Nathan, for if he sees it he'll punish both of us, which in my case would be unfair. You mean nothing to me, not as a lover. But as a friend…?'

'Shall we be friends, then?' She was closing the door on him, for good.

'Best if we are,' she answered. 'There are a hundred rooms and workshops in my master's house, and he wants you to see all of them. But if you would prefer the company of some other…?'

'No,' said Nathan, as the door closed in his face, and he heard the bolt slide home. 'No, but I'll always be grateful for your company, and for your friendship.'

'So be it,' she whispered from beyond the door…

After that she was cold and withdrawn as ever, and Nathan made no further advances towards her. But when it was Maglore's time for sleeping, and when Nathan would see Orlea on her way to her master's apartments… sometimes he felt embittered.

Maglore called for him often during that early period, and whatever Nathan was doing he must rush to the Seer Lord's side. Once, entering Maglore's apartments, he found a handsome, slim, broad-shouldered vampire Lord waiting there. But as this stranger spoke to him he started, and actually staggered from the shock. For the voice, if not the vibrant body it came out of, was unmistakable: it was Maglore's!

'How do I look?' Maglore inquired, when Nathan had recovered.

'Young!' He blurted out the first word that came to him. 'A man in his prime, forty or forty-five! You look… like a Lord!'

'Like a "real" Lord, do you mean?' Maglore chuckled. But his amusement was brief, and in a moment his brow clouded over. 'All my life I've denied the thing within,' he growled. 'Except when I may no longer — when I cannot deny it! Then, briefly I am as you see me now. For this is how I am "rewarded" for my cooperation. Which only goes to prove that however much I deny my creature, and myself, still the blood is the life. Now go, my son, and reflect on the wonder you have seen, and how it was achieved. And always remember, I am Wamphyri!' And to give his words more emphasis yet, he yawned his jaws to show Nathan the forked tongue that flickered in the red vault of his mouth.

But as Nathan headed for the spiral stairwell, so Maglore called after him: 'My son!' He looked back, and the young Seer Lord stood there smiling. 'Now tell me, do you understand the provisioning?'

Nathan shook his head. There's a great deal of Runemanse I've not yet visited.'

Then do so, today, now.'

Nathan nodded. 'And shall Orlea take me there?'

'Ah, no — not this time. Take yourself there, or go with one of my men. But along the way, you may tell Orlea that I am waiting…'

Nathan did as he was told. The last had been a cruel command and Maglore knew it, but not as cruel as ordering Nathan to visit the rooms and workshops of the provisioning.

He went there with Karpath, a thrall of Maglore's for three years, a lieutenant for eleven, and now the Seer Lord's right-hand man. Karpath was interested in Nathan, and as they descended through the many levels asked him: 'How do you find our master?'

Nathan looked at the other. Two inches taller than Nathan, Karpath was broad as a door, heavy-jawed, grey as slate and more than three hundred pounds of solid vampire flesh. His eyes held an inner fire which, however mutely, spoke volumes. No common thrall — nor even an ordinary lieutenant — it was obvious that Karpath had known the virulent bite of a true Wamphyri Lord, and often. Something of Maglore himself was in his blood.

'How do I find Maglore?' Nathan repeated him. But then, remembering the Seer Lord's emphasis, he replied: 'He is Wamphyri, and I'm not even a thrall. I find him awesome!'

'You would like to be like him, then?' Karpath kept his voice low, but it was full of some inner passion. Nathan read his mind, made open and receptive through previous invasions of Maglore's. He was thinking: This one grows close to the Seer Lord. But is he a rival? I crave Maglore's egg and will have it, come what may! There may not be room for the two of us — this Nathan PalebJood and Karpath Seerson — in Runemanse.

Nathan had to work hard to avoid recoiling from the several vicious, bloody, and terminal scenes which came seething out of Karpath's skull then, and knew he must take care how he answered. Not only had Karpath chosen his own name in advance of his anticipated succession to Maglore's seat, but that of his supposed rival too!

'Be like him? Like Maglore? Wamphyri?' Nathan's shudder was only half-feigned. 'I think I would prefer to die first!'

And you would, most assuredly/ Karpath thought. But… perhaps I concern myself unnecessarily. This Nathan's blood is indeed pale, and weak as water. Out loud, he said nothing.

They reached the lowest level of Runemanse. Below lay Madmanse, and Karpath showed Nathan the dank, disused steps: 'an old stairwell, winding down, down', just as Eygor Killglance had described it.

Nathan wanted to know: 'Can we go down there?'

Karpath looked at him. 'We can — but we won't. Now that Wran and Spiro are flown, it is an empty place. Only a ghost dwells there now.'

'A ghost?' Nathan played the innocent, but knew very well who Karpath meant.

The ghost of Eygor Killglance,' the other confirmed it. The Seer Lord suspects that he was murdered but no one knows the truth of it, except perhaps his murderers. Eygor was very powerful and had the Evil Eye: he destroyed his enemies with a glance! His ghost is strong, too, and wafts like a giant shadow in Madmanse. When Wratha and her traitors fled from Turgosheim, their spires and manses were sacked and offered to others. Several tried to dwell in Madmanse, but all felt Eygor's presence there and could not stay. The place is hollow and echoing now. Maglore goes there from time to time, but alone.' Karpath gave a shrug. 'Perhaps he will extend his holdings downwards. I do not know…'

Then Nathan was shown the provisioning: The granary, where grain, fruits, wines and other produce out of Sunside were stored; the mill and mixing rooms where the raw materials of food were ground down and prepared in various ways, for many of Maglore's creatures had special requirements; the bakery and kitchens, and finally… the slaughterhouse and storerooms. The first of these was not in use at the time. Nathan saw huge stained chopping blocks, saws, cleavers and other implements, buckets for blood and troughs for offal, that was all. But it was enough.

He had already visited the odious pens in a high, south-facing flank of Runemanse, from which at sunup goats and pigs were driven out on to a false plateau to enjoy a few brief hours of sunlit freedom in a small field of shallow earth, scrub, and coarse grasses behind a low stone wall. And there, where a handful of rabbits ran wild, such animals spent the last of their days. For these larger beasts were hard to breed; they sickened quickly in Turgosheim and could not be kept alive. That was no great problem; the provisioning was an ongoing process; Runemanse's turnover was swift.

Karpath took him into a cold-storage room with huge windows open to the north, where the draughts were freezing cold. In there, rows of heavily salted carcasses hung from hooks — but not all the cadavers were of animals. Suddenly and without warning, Nathan came upon two which were not…

Then, as he choked and reeled dizzily from the room, he found himself caught up under the arm, and supported until his stomach had stopped churning. Finally Karpath released him and said, This is what Maglore wanted you to see. It is something of an incentive if men see what might befall them, should they fail in their duties.'

'In there,' Nathan choked the words out, 'I saw two men. One of them was a surly youth out of Kehrlscrag. He was taken in the tithe at the same time as I myself, so that we came to Runemanse together. And the other — '

'- Was Nicolae Seersthrall, aye,' Karpath grunted. The first was too surly, and the second — too talkative, I think? Had you stayed long enough, you might also have seen the girl Magda. But obviously you've no stomach for it.'

Fighting to control his gagging, Nathan said, 'I take the water which I use for drinking and bathing from the catchment sluices in Runemanse's outer walls. So does Orlea, Maglore's woman. It's rainwater, pure and simple. But I also know that the majority of Maglore's thralls and creatures drink water which has been passed through and purified by a… a man, or what's left of a man, a siphoneer. Then there's… my food?' He looked at the lieutenant pleadingly. 'Karpath, I've got to know. Have I eaten food which was prepared here? Just how are those human bodies used?'

The other grinned. 'Don't you trust Maglore, then?'

Trust him?' Feeling desperately ill, Nathan leaned his upper body out of a window embrasure.

Karpath was right behind him, whispering, 'Can you trust any of us, in Runemanse?'

Nathan saw a picture in the other's mind: one of himself, tumbling, turning, rushing to earth! But it was whimsical and meant nothing. It was simply wishful thinking, accompanied by the thought: No, for it would only jeopardize my future. This Nathan is weak, a freak, nothing. Maglore's egg would wither and die in him. While out loud he continued:

'Your fears are empty, Nathan. Nothing of nasty vampire stuff will get into you via your food. Why should Maglore wish to poison you that way, when a simple bite would suffice? Aye, and there are other ways: a fond fatherly kiss or a little sodomy, or simply by giving you to his women for a night… or to his men? No, only the lowliest thralls — who lack the power of infection, except by direct contact — prepare food for my master's table. And as for Maglore: except when he requires blood, he is satisfied to eat the meat of beasts and birds. But then, so do we all in Runemanse… mainly.'

Nathan stood up straighter, glanced towards the cold room, and said: 'How… was it for them?'

Karpath shrugged. The men, if you would call them that — personally I prefer to call them boys — were given to the women of Runemanse for their pleasure, to be drained of their sex and their blood, and Magda was given to the younger male thralls. Dead, all three would soon become undead, which was not desirable. So while they lay in their vampire sleep, they were butchered, quartered, and their parts hung up for keeping. That is how it was for them. As for how it's yet to be:

'Maglore may well require flesh for the fashioning. Also, there's meal and bone to be ground down for the manse's flyers, its gas-beasts and emergent warriors. The flyers and gaslings consume grain, mainly, and a little Sunside honey for energy, and blood or flesh naturally; for they are vampire creatures, as are all of Maglore's constructs. But warriors, especially young ones fresh out of their vats, must have it red! As for Maglore's lieutenants and thralls: well, it's good to have a roast now and then. All of these uses are in order…'

'A… roast?' Feeling his blood draining again, Nathan turned away. 'Cannibalism!'

Karpath grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, snarled: 'No, vampirism! If ever you get to be one, then maybe you'll understand.' Except the knowledge will come too late, or I shall not suffer a rival in Runemanse!p>

Nathan shut out Karpath's murderous thoughts, pulled himself together, stood up straighter and remembered what Maglore had told him: to walk boldly and without fear. Then, shrugging the grinning lieutenant's huge paw from his shoulder, he said: 'Are we finished here?'

Karpath sensed his resolve. The grin slid from his grey face as he growled, 'I've nothing else to show you.'

Then I'll be on my way.'

'Where to?'

'Wherever I wish. For as you know well enough, Maglore has given me access to all of Runemanse, and I even eat with him. I shall go to him; perhaps he already misses me; he worries constantly, for my safety.' He said these things deliberately.

Karpath was suspicious at once. Waves of jealousy flooded out from him. 'What will you tell him?'

Nathan looked him straight in the eyes. 'Karpath, listen to me and listen carefully. Maglore prizes me for my colours, and for my "innocence". Well, I'm no longer entirely innocent, but he'll keep me free of vampire influences, if he can; you've said as much yourself. But on the other hand he prizes you for your strength and for your… loyalty? And so we're not rivals, you and I. But think about this: if he is forced to make a life or death choice between us, which of us shall live?'

'What?' Karpath's brows gathered like thunderheads as he considered it.

Nathan shrugged. 'Maglore can always make himself a new lieutenant, but where would he find another familiar like me? Now, I say again: we are not rivals, but if you're determined to be my enemy — ' he turned and walked away,'- so be it.'

And behind him, Karpath made no reply but let him go…

Time passed. Nathan spent a great deal of it asleep, conserving both his physical and mental reserves. When he was awake, however, he scarcely went short of exercise: Runemanse was a far more vertical than horizontal place, and the stairwells seemed interminable.

Now that the provisioning was behind him, he felt fit to tackle anything; he didn't think Runemanse would contain anything worse than what he'd already seen or experienced. In a way he was right and it didn't, but in other ways…

He saw the Seer Lord's warriors 'waxing' in their hugely excavated vats. Apart from their armour plating, which reminded him a little of his deadspeak dream of Madmanse and Eygor Killglance's anomalous blue-gleaming appendages, the creatures in their loathsome entirety were like nothing else Nathan had ever seen before. But in any case, they were not things which a healthy mind would want to dwell upon, not if a man desired to sleep soundly. One thing he did notice: for warriors, they were a good deal smaller than those beasts of Wratha's which had ravaged in Settlement, and they weren't built for flying. However Maglore intended to use them, they wouldn't be taking part in any attack upon Wratha the Risen in olden Starside.

But the intentions of Turgosheim's other Lords were less ambiguous. From the window of his room, night after night, Nathan spied upon the training flights of monsters. Any excessive use of torches or brightening of the gas jet flares, or unaccustomed activity in this or that launching-bay along the wall of the gorge, would tell him where to look. And then he would hear again, even as he'd heard it in Settlement that time, the sputtering throb of propulsive vents as nightmare shapes went spurting through the rising vapours of Turgosheim.

Most of the Lords and Ladies tested their creatures from time to time, but not all were successful. During a session in the twilight hours before sunup, Nathan watched one especially disastrous test-flight. Vast and lumbering, the creature flew out from Vormspire with the rumble of its propulsors echoing over Turgosheim, its armour glinting ruddily in the lights of the manses, and its exhaust vapours shaped by the winds into a fantastic, billowing slipstream. A monstrous and terrifying sight, it came throbbing across the gorge with a row of sentient saucer eyes flickering this way and that within the visor of its triple-horned, heavily plated prow. But it was perhaps too heavily plated, and its balance ill-aligned.

Tilting to avoid the jutting promontory of Devetaki's Masquemanse, suddenly its nose dipped and the tilt became too steep. It attempted to adjust its balance but overcompensated. There followed a lurching roll, then a shuddering, total capsize! Upside-down, the monster's starboard gas bladders were torn open on the jagged flank of Masquemanse; deflating in a moment, they fluttered like curtains in the wind as the damaged warrior was deflected out over the gorge.

Then… the thing seemed to sense that it was finished. At the last an anguished howling was clearly audible. Mingling with the angry sputtering of propulsors, this formed a combination of alien, nerve-rending sounds which carried to Nathan as a groaning, echoing ululation: a death cry. And the doomed Thing spiralled down into deepening darkness, then plummeted, finally glanced from a corner turret of Trollmanse and slammed headlong into the rocky bottoms. Chunks of red, fleshy debris and shattered chitin armour flew everywhere, and the sounds of the crash echoed into silence…

Failures of this sort were not infrequent at first, but as time passed and the Lords became more proficient in the making of aerial warriors, they were fewer. And always Nathan was aware that these living engines of destruction were destined for olden Starside, and that eventually they would rain terror on Sunside, too. His Sunside, from which he'd fled like a coward to die in the desert…

Nathan visited the gas-beast caverns located close to the refuse pits, and understood the reason for that proximity. But the gaslings themselves… were something else which he would try in vain to forget. The horror of the thing — of all Runemanse — lay not so much in the physical reality of the system, but in its morbid and pitiless efficiency; for all of Maglore's creatures had once been men and expendable. And whenever Nathan looked at them, always the vestiges of men remained…

Eventually, when he had lived in Runemanse through thirty-odd sunups, Nathan went to see Maglore's flyers penned in the yawn of the landing-bay. The reason he'd not done so before was that Maglore had warned him off it: the north-facing wall was notorious for treacherous updrafts and freakish, blustery winds; the polished rock of the launching ramps was slippery as ice; there were no protective walls to impede the flyers on take-off. The Seer Lord had lost a lieutenant there once, who stepped in the wrong place and shot himself screaming into eternity.

Two of Maglore's three flyers were recent constructs: he had fashioned them as an exercise preparatory to starting work on his warriors. Skittish (for they sensed that Nathan was no vampire), the pair rolled their eyes and reared their diamond-shaped heads as he passed carefully along a railed walkway in front of their pens. But Maglore's scent was on him, and they quickly settled down again.

The third creature was different, however. Housed to one side of the precipitous launching bay, beneath an overhang in the lee of the cavern, it was far less nervous. Something about the thing attracted Nathan's attention. He gazed at the flyer in its pen: huge, grey, mute and comparatively docile, its huge head nodding at the end of a swaying neck, with eyes large as fists, moist and gleaming black in a weirdly manlike face. Eyes which might well be…

… But here Nathan paused in his musing. What on earth had he been thinking about? Manlike? And eyes which might well be…? For of course there was no manlike about it; those eyes were or had been human, Szgany! And again he reminded himself what he was looking at: a mutated, vampire thing — something that Maglore had changed — which, having undergone its metamorphosis, was human no more.

Leaning his elbows on the gated wall of the pen, he gazed into the great, sad, human eyes in the elongated, mutant head; gazed deep, and wondered: Who were you?

I was a youth upon a time, like you. The answer came back at once, shockingly, jerking Nathan rigidly upright against the wall! Then I was a man, a titheling, and Maglore's thralJ. But never a vampire thing… not until the end. Perhaps I of/ended him, though even now I don't know how. What does it matter? It is enough that what you see before you is all that remains of a man. Ah, but the Seer Lord of Runemanse was generous with my brain and made himself a crafty flyer this time — damn his black heart!

Shaken to his roots, Nathan clung to the wall and whispered: 'He left you your brain, a man's brain… entire?'

Not entire, no. The flyer's thoughts were vaguer now.

But enough that I remember… things. And among them my name. You asked me who I was. 7 was a thrall who knew writing and faithfully recorded the history of a race, according to the word of my master, Maglore. And my name was Karz Biteri…

Later, Nathan would spend many a long hour with Karz, or what had been Karz, learning Turgosheim's history from its onset. But on that first occasion he had been far more interested to know how the — creature? — had read his mind and been able to answer him so lucidly.

That was the way of it with all flyers, he was told, for they were the aerial command-posts of the Wamphyri with immediate access to their minds, so that they might react instantly to any order. In the reshaping of Karz's mind, when Maglore had given it something of his own alien essence, telepathy had been the governing factor. Desiring something special, he'd let Karz retain much of his memory and all of his knowledge of old Turgosheim. Thus Karz Biteri, Maglore's flyer now, was also a reference library on all Turgosheim's morbid past.

You, too, are a powerful telepath, Karz had told him then, and so we may converse. But you must learn how to shield your thoughts, and you should always remember: a man is never alone in Runemanse. When you thought you were on your own down here, I read a good many things in your head which Maglore would not like. If I could read them, so could he.

'I have shielded them,' Nathan had answered, 'constantly, or so I thought. But you're right: I thought I was alone here. And when I saw you, and realized what you were…'

You were shaken and forgot yourself, I know… The answer had been a sob, soliciting Nathan's pity; so that he'd said:

'You too should guard your thoughts, Karz, for I can feel your hatred for him. If Maglore should discover it…'

Ah, but he has, the other had cut him short. He knows! Why do you think he won't ride out upon the air? Because he fears I would tilt him into space. And so he made these new creatures, but doesn't trust them either! For if I can have such feelings, perhaps they have them, too. Oh, he knows they do not, but will not trust them anyway. It seems I have given him a bad dream that won't go away, for which I'm glad!

'Those are thoughts you really should watch,' Nathan had answered, 'and very carefully.'

He'd sensed a mental shrug as Karz answered, Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't care. What is my life, anyway? It were as well to launch myself at sunup, and cross the mountains into the sun!

At which Nathan had remembered Thikkoul's reading of his future in the stars:

'Now I see… a flight to freedom, yes! But… upon a dragon?' And Nathan had wondered: a dragon, or something that looks like one? And the thought had entered his head: why fly into the sun when there are other places to go and good works to accomplish along the way? Yes, and scores still unsettled?

Perhaps Karz had 'heard' the thought, perhaps not. But his great head had stopped nodding for a moment, and his huge dark eyes had gleamed a shade brighter…

Maglore made more creatures and cocooned them away in forbidden vaults. The more he worked at the fashioning, the less time he had for Nathan. Apart from taking his meals with Maglore, Nathan rarely saw the Seer Lord, for which he was glad. But that was during his waking hours, while sometimes in his dreams -

— He often wondered about his dreams: How he would start awake to discover his guard down and something other than his own thoughts oozing in his head, but something which always withdrew at once, leaving him his own man again. Maglore? But who else could it be? Not Eygor Killglance, for the old dead Thing in Madmanse made no bones about his presence but invariably introduced himself when he came in the night to wheedle and inveigle.

As for what Eygor wanted: some kind of bargain he wished to strike, some sort of promise to extract, and something evil to engineer from beyond the grave. So far Nathan had resisted him, but still he was curious and had long ago determined to go down into empty, echoing Madmanse one day…

Once, when the moon was full and floating outside his window, Nathan woke up and went to dash his face with water from a bowl beside his bed. But before he could lower his hands to the bowl, he saw the moon mirrored in the still water, and likewise his face. Then, as so often before, the stargazer Thikkoul's words had come back to him:

'I see your face, your hollow eyes and greying hair…' For indeed his eyes were sunken in dark orbits, and his yellow hair was flecked with grey…

Time passed ever more swiftly, and Maglore grew sparing in his use of thralls and recent arrivals out of Sunside. Now that he had enough warriors, it seemed he was conserving his energies and the raw materials of his metamorphic art in anticipation of some new endeavour.

One evening he called Nathan to him, asked for his wrist strap and snapped it into short sections. 'You with your fine clothes,' he said, 'wearing this scrap of leather like a brand! If you must be branded do it in style. Here…' And he gave him a sigil in solid gold, an inch long, whose design was the same familiar loop with a half-twist. Fashioned on Sunside, it was an earring, which Maglore told him to wear in his left ear.

By way of explaining his gift, the Seer Lord said, 'Since you're the very jewel of a lad yourself — and it being a well-known fact how much you Szgany like your jingly bits and pieces — I knew you would appreciate it.'

Til need my ear pierced,' Nathan said, without considering his words. Maglore feigned a coy look, then grinned and displayed eye-teeth as sharp as needles.

'If you were a lass, I might consider doing it myself!' he said. 'Why, I might do it anyway! Except I prize you for what you are, not for what I can make of you. You'd best have Orlea do it with a hot needle, and remain in your room until it's healed.'

Then, as Nathan was leaving, Maglore said: 'When Orlea's finished with her jabbing, send her to me. For while some jabs hurt, others are a pleasure. Oh, I follow Turgo Zolte's teachings, it's true, but even the strictest adherent has certain needs…"

Nathan chose his time carefully. And at the height of sunup when Maglore slept and the aerie was quiet, he made his way down into Madmanse.

I've been expecting you, Eygor's deadspeak voice came oozing in his mind, as he descended the cobwebbed stairwell to the uppermost, deserted levels of the stripped, haunted manse. For plainly you're an inquiring youth who can't bear a mystery to go unfathomed.

Even though a hazy light came in from the gorge, Nathan struck flints to a torch; the innermost rooms and passageways were dark, and the place had the feel of a tomb. Ah, but it is a tomb.' Eygor told him. That of a blind, blameless thing discarded like re/use into a pit, to die there and stiffen to a stone.

'Blameless?'

I was Wamphyri! How can you blame a creature for acting out its nature? Is the wolf to be blamed for worrying rabbits? Or did you only come here to scold me for those deeds which I was obliged to perform, by reason of the monstrous leech which all my life controlled and corrupted me?

'All men have urges,' Nathan answered, descending another stairwell towards the source of Eygor's deadspeak, and checking that his footprints lay clear in the dust behind him. 'But we don't all give in to them.'

Which is of course the difference between us, the other came back at once. For where mere men are not obliged to vent their passions, 1 was Wamphyri.

Tell me your story,' said Nathan. 'I've had some of it, from someone who knows all the history of Turgosheim, but not the end of it. That is the mystery. How did you die, Eygor?'

I died as I lived — as I was, yes, obliged to live — cruelly, even by Wamphyri standards. For I died at the hands of my own bloodsons. Would you hear of it?

That's why I'm here,' Nathan told him.

Then I'll not keep you. It was like this: I had the evil eye. Only show me a man, a target, Szgany, and I could crush him with a glance. Such was the energy of my Wamphyri mind, I could store it up and release it from my eyes like lightning — like a poisoned dart — to wrench my targets and stop their hearts! Do you believe me?

Nathan shrugged. 'Why should you lie — ?' he began.

Just so, Eygor cut him off.

'- You poor, "blameless" creature…'

The other's turn to shrug. Well then, perhaps not entirely blameless. But… it was my leech! With a creature like that inside me, how might I deny myself? Why, even 'aesthetes' such as Maglore are still Wamphyri.'

And how well Nathan knew it! By now he had descended to the heart of Madmanse, where he paused in a hall with a walled well. But when he held his torch out over the low wall, he saw that the irregular throat of the pit was choked with boulders. The place could hardly be a real well, not this far from Turgosheim's lowest levels, but had more the look of a methane chamber or refuse pit. So why had it been sealed? Nathan's thoughts were deadspeak, of course, which Eygor heard and answered: It was sealed to.keep me down! The dead thing's nightmare voice was very close now, gurgling like a sucking swamp. You've come as close as you can get to me, Nathan Seersthrall, except in your dreams. A stinking refuse pit, aye: the tomb of Eygor Killglance!

Suddenly the darkness was alive with unseen presences. The smoke from Nathan's torch writhed into unearthly shapes as if he'd breathed through it, or as if some draught had come moaning into the room. Except his breathing was more or less controlled, and if there had been a draught, he hadn't felt it. A moment ago, he'd thought to feel the clinging touch of cobwebs where they hung in festoons from the low ceiling, but as the flame of his torch melted them away, they were replaced by the fingers of some invisible wraith which brushed him as gently and secretly as a lover. It was as if something tried to know him, to be sure of his presence, his identity.

Ah, yesss! Eygor's voice seethed in his mind. And now you feel it, which all of the others felt before you. But you feel it more, for you are the Necroscope.

'What… was that?' Nathan had been holding his breath.

This place was mine, said the other. The porous stone, the very air. I was part of it and it was part of me. My breath and my sweat seeped into it, so that even now it remembers me. What was it? Call it my spirit, if you will. It has no form and cannot hurt you. But it guards this place for me and no one else shall ever dwell here, until those sons of mine return.

Nathan felt enclosed, strangled, dizzy. It was the smoke, the claustrophobia of the old, echoing place. He moved back a little from the choked pit. But at the same time, to keep the other engaged and know his mind: 'How did your bloodsons kill you?' he inquired. 'And why?'

Because they were cowards! And because…

'Yes?'

Perhaps I was hard with them… But it's a hard world (he was quick to defend unspoken brutalities) in which I wanted my sons to be strong. And so they were strong in the end, but not as I intended. They were strong against me! I should have seen it coming: they were lieutenants and would be Lords, and their father was the one thing that stood in their way.

Wran played the gentleman: he used his fine clothes as a shield against me, like the snobbery of a 'superior' whelp! As for Spiro; he dressed in rags, and made himself pitiful before me so that I would not strike him. Like a young male wolf, he wriggled on his back before the leader of the pack. But there was treachery in both of them. It was… my evil eye. Above all else, they feared that. Having seen it used against common thralls, they believed that one day I might..

'Use it against them?'

Eygor chuckled, as evil a 'sound' as Nathan ever heard. One thing to kill a mere man with a glance, he said, but something else entirely to kill a true vampire that way. Occasionally I lashed out at them, I admit it, but against them my eye was like a whip on the shaggy backs of dogs: it made them yelp, no more than that. But they felt my power growing stronger day by day, and finally I stung them once too often.

They gave me strong drink to deaden my senses, poisoned my food with silver, and while I lay in a coma… blinded me! Hot irons fried the surface of my eyes, until I leaped shrieking awake! And they taunted me as I followed after them in my agony, weeping acid tears and stumbling like a fool through the inky blind blackness of Madmanse.

Then… they were close and I sensed it. They stood right there before me, only a few paces away. I formed my hands into talons and rushed at them. And… they had brought me here, to a refuse pit! My legs struck the wall which you see before you; I fell! And while 1 lay at the bottom, broken in the mire, Wran and Spiro choked the pit with boulders.

For half a year I lived on muck and bones. And while my metamorphic flesh was still willing, 1 gathered to me the remnants of extinct creatures: the armour of warriors, and all of that which you saw in your dream. I made a giant of myself, my plan being to break out. But the pit was as deep as my 'food' was bad, so that my strength waned even as my size increased.

As for my eyes, I would repair them. But nothing I fashioned was nearly so good, and all of the evil had been burned right out of them. Finally I was starved. Too weak to struggle on, at last I slumped against the wall, where in the course of fifty years J commenced my stiffening. Thus Eygor KiJJgJance became the mummy-thing which you saw in your dream…

Nathan, who was almost inured to horror now, nodded and said, 'Your just deserts.'

You think so? Ah, but you're a hard one.' And what of my bastard b/oodsons? Should they go unpunished?

'Punished? They should be destroyed utterly!' Nathan answered. 'Not for what they did to you but for what they've done — and what they're doing even now — to Olden Sunside in the west.'

Ahhh! said Eygor, and Nathan read approval in his sigh. And so we are of a mind after all!

Nathan's torch was wavering; he turned to go, to follow his own tracks back the way he'd come. Wait! Eygor begged him.

'For what?' Nathan kept going, putting distance between. 'We've nothing in common. There's no way you can help me. But I sense that you would help yourself, even now!'

Nathan, it can be yours…

With his foot on a bottom step, Nathan paused. 'What can be mice?'

The evil eye of Eygor Killglance. I've read your dreams, your wildest lights of fancy, and know that you'd make war on the Wamphyri. But only think… what a weapon it would make.'p>

To kill men with a glance? To be a monster as you were a monster?'

But you said it yourself: 'All men have urges, but some control them.' You, the Necroscope, would control this special urge. My power would be yours to use or good, not evil!p>

'I don't want it.' Nathan climbed away from the voice, through the hollow shell of Madmanse.

But now that you know it's there you will, eventually.

And now that you know where I am, you'll be able to find me always. I'll never be far away, Nathan, wherever you are.

'Suppose I did… want it? What then? How would you give me your power? And what would you want in return?'

Oh, I would give it to you, never fear. And in return… my freedom1.

'Freedom? From what? You're a dead thing.' "Away from the miasma of Eygor's mind, Nathan's dizziness quickly cleared. He went faster, and as he approached the outer wall and light came in from the gorge, so the other's deadspeak began to fade and break up. It wasn't so much that Eygor couldn't reach him, but that Nathan no longer desired to be reached. He felt that he'd escaped — but just in time — from something which would damn his soul forever.

My freedom from that, from death itself! Eygor was desperate now. You can do it, Nathan. I heard it from the Thyre, carried on their dreaming deadspeak thoughts… you, the Necroscope… it for Rogei… Cavern of the Ancients….as a dead thing, too… gave him life….ou willed it, you and Rogei together… because you needed… he was alive!

Nathan had heard enough. 'Return you to life? Never!' His torch went out and he ran in near-darkness to the final stairwell. And the night-dark spirit of the place was right behind him, snapping at his heels.

Not now but… some future time. If you should need me, I… here. All I ask.. don't forget me…

Panting, trembling, Nathan came up into Runemanse, which seemed a healthy place now — almost. But in his metaphysical mind, burning like ice: Don't forget meeeeee! It was Eygor's last word, for the moment at least.

Nathan fled to the great hall, slowed down a little and headed wearily for his room. But in the passageway he ran into Orlea, who caught his arm to steady him. She saw his condition but made no comment except to tell him, 'Maglore wants you…'

In his spacious apartments Maglore paced to and fro, not worriedly but perhaps contemplatively, as if he deliberated upon some course of action. Approaching him, Nathan wondered what was on his mind. He suspected that this would not be the best time to try reading it, which was confirmed almost at once.

'Mentalism,' Maglore said enigmatically, but as yet not threateningly. He came to a halt, crooked a finger, and beckoned Nathan closer. 'Telepathy. There was a time when I asked you if you knew the meaning of it, to which you answered no.'

Nathan's shields were up, his thoughts impregnable. 'I remember, master.'

'Ah!' Maglore sighed and shook his head sadly. 'You remember, do you? And so we are come to this. You my friend and companion, a liar who hides his every waking thought from me. And why? Because if I were to see inside your head, I would know the treachery you plan.'

Nathan shook his head. His mouth was dry as dust but he forced words out of it anyway. 'I have planned no treachery against you, master.' It was true, and because his words were simple they carried conviction. No treachery against Maglore, but merely an escape from him… Nathan clamped down on the thought at once. If Maglore were to suspect that he and Karz Biteri plotted flight… and again he screwed the lid down on the contents of his mind. The effort caused perspiration to break out on his forehead.

Maglore saw it and smiled. 'You are hot, my son.'

'I've hurried,' Nathan answered.

The other nodded, and thought: Aye, and you're never lost for an answer, are you? No, for you are clever, and will serve my purpose ideally! You shall be my eyes and ears on the works of my enemies: those who exist now, across the world in Olden Starside, and those who are yet to be.

Maglore's probes were groping at the slippery, rotating wall of the numbers vortex, trying to find purchase there and so form a link with Nathan's mind. But it was a one-way system: Nathan read Maglore, but the Seer Lord couldn't read him! His mentalism was greater than Maglore's; he read him effortlessly, without even trying to, and as yet without attempting to understand what he read. And with the knowledge of his mental superiority, something of Nathan's confidence returned.

'And so you've hurried here,' Maglore nodded. 'Indeed you have — but from where?'

Obviously he knew, and Nathan dared not lie about it. 'I went down into Madmanse, but there was something there. I felt it, a presence. I fled before it, and returned here.'

Clever. He will survive. Why, this one might even try to outwit Shaitan himself. Maglore withdrew his probes and turned abruptly away. And his voice was slightly sour as he said, 'In your dreams you are not so stubborn.'

'My dreams?' So it had been Maglore after all. Unable to spy upon Nathan's waking mind, he had attempted to invade his sleep. But how often, and how well had he succeeded? 'Have you looked upon my dreams? But what harm is there in dreaming? And is it treachery to dream of freedom? I have no control over my dreams, master.'

Maglore faced him. 'You have no sinister purpose, then?'

'None.' Only a desperate desire to be out of here now; to convince Karz that we must flee; to get back to my own hind in OJden Sunside. But his secret mind was shielded, of course.

Then I've accused you falsely and you deserve an explanation,' Maglore nodded, however reluctantly; or was that, too, only part of the game which he played? 'Very well, I will tell you: The time rapidly approaches when I shall be master here. Not only in Runemanse, but the gorge entire, Turgosheim itself! You will have noticed how the Lords have perfected their flying warriors? I know you have. And for what? An attack upon Olden Starside and the renegade Wratha, who destroyed your tribe and in so doing sent you to me. Four months, sixteen sunups, until they set out. But Maglore stays here! I shall "keep" the gorge for Vormulac and be its caretaker, while the others go warring in the west. For I'm no warlord, do you see? And all the tribute of Olden Sunside shall be theirs, in that land you called home beyond the Great Red Waste.

'But here in Turgosheim: my responsibilities will be onerous, with much to watch over — all Starside and Sunside, too — and I'll harbour no dubious characters here in Runemanse to work against me while I perform my duties. Which is why I must be sure of my thralls, my lieutenants, my… friends? To that end I've visited you in your dreams, aye; for you're a strange one, Nathan, a most uncommon man. You say you have no knowledge of mentaliam, and yet your thoughts are unreadable, as if kept behind closed doors. Perhaps it's a "natural" thing, inherited like your freakish colours. But it's hard to trust a man whose thoughts are like the breath of bats, invisible.

'What's more, your dreams are stranger still! Who is it you talk to in your sleep? I have watched you sleeping; I know that you converse — but with whom, with what? Or is it just a dream? I doubt it, for I've sensed the thoughts of others from outside striving to reach you here. Who are they? Why is it I can't read them? And often the thought occurs: was this Nathan sent here, to spy upon me, perhaps? Ah, but wouldn't that be a thing: the Great Watcher, himself watched!

'But enough; I doubted you; perhaps I still do and should study you more carefully, or draw you closer to me… in one way or another. I've neither bloodson nor egg-son, as you know. A man can't live forever; especially not a Zolteist. Who knows but that you could be my vehicle, my window on tomorrow? Would you make a fitting vessel, Nathan, to carry Maglore's egg into the future?'

He clutched Nathan suddenly, his eyes gazing scarlet into blue, his nostrils flaring under convoluted ridges. Nathan was rooted to the spot, frozen, near-hypnotized by Maglore's proximity. Behind his thin, cold, cruel mouth were jaws which could gape in a moment, a cloven tongue, and teeth — but such teeth — that could ruin a man's face, rend his throat or poison his blood forever…

… But Maglore released him, turned away again, and said, 'You see what a quandary I'm in? So much to do and so little time, before I'm left alone here of all the Lords. And in addition to caring for Turgosheim, my own works to consider. For instance: an unruly flyer to change, an errant creature whose loyalty is suspect. Perhaps I'll bring him to heel, or simply reduce him to fats and fluids and vampire stuff for the fashioning.'

Nathan was aghast. He could only mean Karz!

'Leave me now,' Maglore said. 'I shall continue to trust you, for the moment at least. But for now I'm weary. We shall talk again. What will be will be.'

Nathan said nothing, made to creep away.

'But Nathan — ' Maglore stopped him, as was his wont, '- I want you to think on this. I believe you would make a good son and a better Lord. You with your freakish colours and talents. It may not be your choice, but think on it anyway. Indeed, you must give it your most serious consideration…'

He need not concern himself: Nathan could think of little else. On legs heavy as lead he made for the central stairwell, and pale as death descended. But he did not see Maglore watching him, or the grin on that one's malevolent face as Nathan passed from view.

Aye, think on it, Maglore thought (but secretly now, for he was sure of one of Nathan's talents at least). Think well on it, my son — on how you must flee from it — and so become my eyes on the great wide world beyond!

Ill Nathan waited out the long day and watched Maglore, but from a distance. The Seer Lord kept himself busy all day, and as night came down he retired. In this he was different from the other Lords; he took to his bed when he needed it, never on account of the sun alone.

But as soon as Maglore slept, then Nathan hurried to the launching bay… and found Karz ready and waiting. Say nothing, that great sad creature told him, for there's really no need. Maglore was here today and looked at me, and I read it in his eyes that my time was up. Since when I have waited for you. So Jet's be up and gone from here.

The saddle was huge, heavy, and awkward. Karz assisted where he could: lowering his neck, offering advice in respect of belts and buckles. At any moment a vampire thrall or lieutenant — especially the surly Karpath, who had been hovering over Nathan like a hawk for weeks now — might appear out of one of the stairwells. But the worst fears of the pair were not realized; there was only the wind and the deepening twilight, and the morbid lights of Turgosheim spread below and beyond.

Nathan opened the gates and edged his mount out to the rim of the launching ramp, and shivered as he climbed up into the saddle. He had food, which he placed in a saddlebag to the right of the pommel. Karz felt him in position — and felt his fear, tangibly clammy — as he flopped forward on to the ramp.

Hold on, he warned, unnecessarily, and in the next moment they were airborne. They soared out over the gulf, were buffeted into a steep climb on spiralling ther-mals, turned and passed high over the darkly jutting turret which was Runemanse. Nathan held his breath and looked down.

The wind was in his eyes, bringing tears; he could see nothing; the rearing west wall of the gorge was a blur. From somewhere in the east there sounded the dull rumble of propulsors: a training flight, it could only be. Then the gorge lay behind and the mountain range stretched ahead. 'Will we make it?'

I'm well fuelled, Karz answered, well rested, and I have volition and motivation. I want to make it. In this I surely differ from any flyer who came this way be/ore. We'll make it, yes. Even as he fell silent a tail wind came up, driving them west with a vengeance. Nathan's eyes were clear now; he felt the exhilaration of his flight 'upon a dragon'; he breathed deeply, almost as if he had never really breathed before, of air which tasted clean and sweet.

And down below, behind, on the very plateau of Runemanse, Maglore and Karpath watched them go; and the Seer Lord said to his lieutenant:

'Two birds with one stone. I have rid myself of Karz, who in any case was problematic, and I've gained a window on a far new world. For Nathan is a telepath, and powerful. Awake he hid it for me, but asleep… oh, I found my way in, from time to time. Now, whenever his guard is down, I can be in again. Why, he wears my sigil in his ear, only six inches from the centre of his brain!' He glanced at Karpath. 'Do you understand?'

'No, Lord,' the other shrugged apologetically.

Disgusted, Maglore grunted, scowled and looked away. 'On the other hand, perhaps there'll be times when I'll miss him.' While to himself: And I still don't know who he talked to in his dreams, except that they were not of this world..

The night was long, but barely long enough. Only Karz's will sustained him, while Nathan lolled in the saddle like a zombie: awake one minute, drowsing the next, then starting awake again. But as an amethyst dawn crept in like some glowing tide along the rim of the world, and secret watchers in the barrier mountains yawned and relaxed after their long night's vigil, making ready to go down into Sunside, so the great grey shadow which was Karz went wafting overhead on arched, aching manta wings, and dipped down towards the foothills over Settlement. He was seen, of course; the blast of a shotgun sounded, not aimed at Karz or Nathan for they were already gone into the gloom; the echoes rolled down into Sunside, faintly but loud enough, and the pair were guaranteed a welcome.

Nathan had not anticipated that there would be men out and about in the pre-dawn heights. The sound of the shotgun had come as a surprise. Several such weapons existed, he knew, all in the hands of the Szgany Lidesci. So then, the Lidescis had not succumbed to vampire domination. Good, and Nathan had prayed it would be so; but the very fact of it made for a change in those sketchy plans which he'd so hastily prepared in Turgosheim.

'We've been seen,' he told Karz. 'I had hoped to go down into Sunside on foot, in secret; show myself to the Szgany in streaming sunlight; approach them as a man — obviously a man! Now… they will surely connect me with a flyer seen settling towards the foothills. Namely, you.'

It's your problem, Nathan, the other answered, but weakly. I have played my part and for the moment can do no more…

They landed on a slope high in the foothills two miles west of Settlement, and while Karz munched on resin-laden pine branches, Nathan found flints and lit a fire under a hornet's nest in a patch of mountain gorse. Stung three times for his efforts, he didn't mind. He broke a small corner off the huge comb, chewed wax and honey alike for instant energy, then fed the rest to Karz.

That will get me where I'm going. The flyer was grateful.

'I've been giving it some thought,' Nathan told him, despondent for the other: that Karz, even a vampire changeling like him, should contemplate so hideous a suicide. For it seemed to Nathan that Karz's humanity was proven. 'Why don't you fly west, beyond the range of Wratha and her creatures in Karenstack? For you said it yourself: you're different from any flyer that ever was. You can find a Starside cave and make it your own, sleep out the days and forage for your food in the warm evenings or the long dawns before the sunrise.'

I'm a vampire thing and bulky, Karz answered simply. Pine cones and honey are not enough.

Down the slope someone stepped on a branch; there sounded a breathless, whispered query. Karz turned his huge soft eyes on Nathan and said, Szgany, even as I was once Szgany but no longer. These are your people, and it's time I was on my way.

Nathan slowly nodded. 'At least you are your own… man.' Then he backed off, and Karz launched himself south for the sun and rose up into a bank of cloud heading in the same direction. For a moment he was a misty outline, then gone…

Nathan knew how it must be and wouldn't go rushing to his doom. But neither could he flee from it, for that would be to admit his guilt when in fact he was innocent. Waiting for them to come, he sat down on a flinty outcrop. But when he saw the first head bobbing in the gorse, and heard the climber's hoarse panting, he stood up to shout: 'You on the hillside, listen to me! I'm not Wamphyri! My name is Nathan Kiklu! I'm Nathan, of the Szgany Lidesci!'

'Oh, really?' a young voice, hoarse with fear and breathless from the efforts of its owner's climbing, came back. 'And you came here on a flyer out of Starside, right?'

Nathan was cold, tired; the wonder was that he was alive, that he hadn't died of exposure. Now that his feet were on the ground, all he wanted to do was rest. Wearily, he held out his arms and said, 'I have no weapons. Only look at me. Do I look like a Wamphyri Lord or lieutenant?'

Gorse bushes parted and an anxious face peered through; a youth shouldered his way into view; he looked carefully all around, then gave a piercing whistle. His crossbow was loaded, and now he aimed it at Nathan's heart. 'What do you look like to me?' he said, squinting down his sights. 'You look like a dead thing!'

In Nathan's entire body, there was no ounce of resistance left. But he tried one last time. 'I'm Nathan,' he said, 'Nathan Kiklu. I'm just a man.'

'You're a liar,' said the other. 'I saw you and the flyer together. Say goodbye to all this, Nathan Kiklu.'

'What?' A gruff voice sounded from behind him, and a wiry shoulder knocked him aside. 'Did you say Nathan Kiklu?' A face which Nathan knew stared into his across a distance of no more than nine or ten feet. Then, however slowly, recognition registered, and with his jaw hanging slack the other stepped forward. In his arms he cradled a weapon from another world: a shotgun, all gleaming for the care and attention he gave it. And finally: 'Why, I'll be…!'

Small, wiry, weathered, it was Kirk Lisescu…

In Old Starside's last aerie a young Lord came starting awake in a cold sweat. His dream had been very vivid, very weird, and very uneasy. For even the Wamphyri were men upon a time, whose dreams are like those of common men, with the power to transport them back to other times and places; so that the terrors they knew in their youth, before they were vampires, may rise up to trouble them again.

In this dream there had been no blood. Instead, the young Lord had battled through the ranks of a thousand dead men whose bloodless, crumbling bodies stood up again as quickly as he cut them down! But even though his every effort had seemed useless, still he'd fought through them to get to That which they protected, the Thing which they guarded, his Great Enemy from a youth which was now almost entirely forgotten.

And when finally he had stood upon a mound of crumbling, stinking human debris — pieces which yet clutched and clawed at him to pull him down — then the aerie of his alien foe had materialized: a rearing cone of whirling, mutating numbers! And within the rush and swirl of the cone, the infinitely sad face of a yellow-haired, blue-eyed giant; made sad, perhaps, by the sacrifice of his teeming dead army, but not by that alone. For strangely, inexplicably, he also felt for his vampire enemy.

Nestor had somehow known it, that his enemy cared for him. And that was when he'd been wrenched awake, as the sad sapphire eyes of the face in the numbers vortex had gazed right into his soul, or what was left of it…

Now, standing naked and trembling beside the thickly curtained windows with his hand on the rope, Nestor's scarlet eyes stared almost vacantly west and a little south, as if his gaze might penetrate to the outside and over the boulder plains to the mountains, and across them into Sunside. The drapes were of black bat fur, thick and heavily weighted; not a chink of light passed through from the outside, and nothing of Nestor's gaze the other way. But he could imagine well enough. The peaks of the barrier range would be golden, and in a little while the sun would aim its beams this way, too, and shine on Wrathspire.

Wrathspire. That was what the Lady had finally named this place, these upper levels: Wrathspire, after herself and after the memory of another aerie which she'd fled from in the east. The Lady Wratha, aye: Nestor's Lady, now, for as long as that would last. Why, he might even love her, if he were capable of loving anyone. But all of that had gone out of him a long time ago; a dream which was wrenched from him, just as he had been wrenched from his dream. Except…

… Something of the dream remained, niggling there in the back of his wounded mind. The whirling wall of numbers, fading but — real? Absent for so long and only now — returned?

Returned…

The thought of that — of his Great Enemy, returned — made Nestor's vampire flesh tingle. And what of his stolen love? Was she out there even now, together with him? And were they lovers again, plotting against Nestor anew as once before they'd plotted in a time long forgotten?

'What's on your mind? Do you walk in your sleep?' Wratha's sleepy mumble reached him from their bed, or her bed, to which she invited him ever more frequently, until it was hard to remember when he'd last slept in his own. 'Have no fear but open the drapes if you want to look out, for I would know it if the sun were up. Oh, it is, and burning — but in Sunside! Not on Wrathspire, not yet. No, for I would feel it there, scorching the stone.'

He glanced at her sprawled unashamed, half-in, half-out of the sheets; then looked again, stared, and held his breath. One marble breast that lolled a little, tip-tilted; a flat, dimpled belly; a pale, rounded hip; the curves of thigh, leg, ankle and delicate foot. And central, a tight black mass where her thigh joined her body, half-hidden by the sheet. He breathed again. She was a wanton, this Wratha, and beautiful.

'I don't need to look out,' Nestor told her, his voice already choked with lust, like his bruised manhood, reacting to the lure of her sex as if he'd never known her. 'For I know what's out there… and also what's in here.' The room was in total darkness; it made no difference, for they were Wamphyri. Wratha lifted her head and saw him as clear as daylight, his shaft rising and hardening as his red eyes fed upon her.

Then come to bed and ride awhile,' she said. 'Or let me ride you, until you fire your juices into me. Or let my tongue tease the sweet nectar from you. Whichever way you will it, so long as we then may sleep. For though I'm weary, still I won't rest, not with you at the window like that.' And to herself: You are young, strong, beautiful, and mine.' And innocent? Oh, you were, you were.' Not a virgin, not quite, but next best. Some duJJ Szgany cow had known you, without knowing how to handle you. Ah, but Wratha knew! A touch was all it took. Why, I remember how you almost came in my hand the first time I touched you, and how I brought you along like an infant learning to walk… since when you've learned to run/ But to think of you running with someone else… I would kill her first, or you, or both of you! Is that what disturbed you? Did you dream of her again? Of Misha? Only let me come upon a Misha — any Misha — among Sunside's sluts… I'll throw her from the highest balcony!

He went back to the bed and at once sank into her flesh, which sucked at him as powerfully as the first time. That was how it was with Wratha: always like the first time. It was hot and it was cold and it was pain and it was pleasure, and when he thought he had nothing left there was always more. But it was not love, and both he and Wratha knew it.

Before they slept he let his mind drift out, out across the boulder plains to Sunside. But the searing sun was higher now and he felt it on the mountains; it leeched on his probe and weakened it, until he could feel its heat even from here. If the numbers vortex was there, it was shielded by an impenetrable veil of golden fire, which would last even as long as the day. But when the long day was done -

— There was always the night…

Two miles into the woods, in an area of freakish rock formations, hot springs and volcanic blowholes, there Lardis Lidesci and a team of tried and trusted men worked hard and sweated in tropical heat and acrid reek. Settlement lay to the north-east something less than three miles away, and the honeycombed outcrop of Sanctuary Rock stood half a mile closer, due north in the foothills. But here where the sprawling forest thinned out into an ugly scar or natural clearing, and the earth was a treacherous, crumbling, steamy grey crust streaked with ashes, sulphur and other mineral deposits, Lardis and his team built warrior traps.

The morning was already a quarter spent when Kirk Lisescu and three others, one of them a stranger, came out of the woods from the north. They hailed the old Lidesci where he supervised the lowering of the last framework of brittle poles into position over a lethal sulphur pit, to be covered with a camouflage of coarse nets and tufts of withered gorse dipped in sulphur to simulate life; the finished effect being to imitate firm ground. Tonight someone would stay out here, just one brave soul in all the empty miles around, to light small, discreet fires in the centre of this vast trap. The first would be lit an hour after sundown, the second when the first went out, and the last — if the others proved ineffective — midway through the night. From on high the place would have the appearance of a Szgany encampment, where some fool had forgotten to damp down the evening's fire. But as for any flyers or warriors who fell to earth here to investigate….hey'd very quickly discover that it wasn't earth!

Eventually Lardis was satisfied; he looked up, squinted his eyes and frowned inquisitively at Kirk and his party, then walked a well-marked path to the safe margin where they waited. And: 'Kirk,' he called out. 'But you should be at the Rock and resting by now! And a well-earned rest at that! So what brings you…?' His query petered out, for in that moment Lardis had taken a closer look at the stranger.

'Someone I thought you'd like to see,' Kirk answered with a grin. 'For it's been… what, almost a three-year?'

'Lardis,' Nathan smiled, however tiredly. They had slept on the way here, under the trees, but he was still bone-weary. His eyes were hollow and his flesh wan; there was grey in the corn of his hair, which was no longer cropped but fell behind his ears and over the back of his collar; he stood taller, and his voice was deeper. But still, of all the Szgany in all Sunside, there could be no mistaking this one. And yet…

… For a moment Lardis stood stock still, blinking like a man struck between the eyes. For it seemed as if there were two men here, and that he should know both of them. Or was it simply that his mind made connections with times, places, and faces? No, for Nathan wasn't born then. What possible connection could there be between him and… Harry Hell-lander?

But in another moment the double picture swam into one as Lardis's eyes focused and finally goggled. And as his mental confusion receded, so his jaw fell open and his breath was expelled in a gasp of acceptance, recognition. 'Nathan Kiklu!' He choked on the words, staggered forward, grabbed Nathan and clasped him to his barrel chest.

'Careful, Lardis!' Kirk warned, only half-jokingly. 'It's Nathan, all right, but he came out of Starside — on the back of a Wamphyri flyer!'

'What?' The old Lidesci stepped back a pace, held Nathan at arm's length. 'You did what?'

'It's a long story,' Nathan nodded.

'Long and daft,' Kirk agreed. 'I know for I've heard it! But I believe it, because no one could lie like that! Why Nathan's been where Wratha and the others came from, and come out of it unscathed!'

'Unscathed?' Lardis had a grip on himself. Narrowing his eyes, he looked at Kirk more seriously, questioningly now.

'Oh, I've tested him,' the wiry hunter nodded his understanding. 'Silver, kneblasch, whatever. But the best test of all is sunlight, and here he stands soaking it up! He's pale as ever, is Nathan, but he's still one of us.'

Everything from three years ago came back to Lardis in a rush. 'Nathan! We sent a runner after you but he didn't find you. You don't know about your mother, and Misha, and — '

'- I know it all,' Nathan cut him short, laughing. But the laughter went out of him in a moment. 'And all that time wasted, when I could have been here with you… with them.'

Unashamed tears filled Lardis's eyes and for a moment he couldn't speak. Then, gruffly, 'But now you're back, and you can make up for lost time. Man, you've been a trouble to me!'

'What?' It was Nathan's turn to frown. 'What makes you say that? How could I be a trouble when I've been away?'

'Aye, and left a broken heart behind you! I gave her a year, then suggested she should marry. Now hold on! — don't look at me like that! — for she, too, told me what to do with my suggestion! So she takes care of her father still, but only him now, for her brother Nicolae's been dead a year. Well, and he's one among many, but there are enough left to remember you and welcome you back. Your mother, too, brave women that Nana is. She never stopped hoping; she knew you would be back! Why, even now she's always talking about you… and…' He paused and fell silent, and something of the excitement went out of him.

Nathan understood and shook his head. 'I picked up Nestor's trail, but lost it in a river. I think he drowned.'

For a moment they were both silent, until Lardis said, 'Look, we're all finished here. We can talk on the way back to Sanctuary Rock. Then, this afternoon, I'll be busy again while you… renew old acquaintances?' And the familiar grin was back on his face again.

The rest of Lardis's men had joined him; Nathan knew one or two of them; he clasped forearms with them Szgany style but was too choked up to speak. After that, until they were underway for Sanctuary Rock, it was all business again for Lardis.

'You men, get out into the woods and hunt,' he told them. 'Food for the people, and for the fire.'

The fire?' Kirk Lisescu looked at him.

Lardis nodded. 'This place looks like a trap pretending to be an encampment. But if we leave some portions of meat to be thrown on the fires, then it will smell like an encampment! Should any Wamphyri or the like happen this way, they'll know there's food down here. And where there's food there's always… food. They won't look too close before coming in for the kill.'

As Lardis's men dispersed into the woods, he called after them, 'As soon as you're finished here, make for the Rock and get your heads down. We'll be at it again this afternoon.' He turned to one who stood apart. 'You, Janos Raccas: you volunteered to stay back and see to the lure. Well, I won't wish you luck, for I'm sure we'll be having a drink together tonight at Sanctuary Rock, or tomorrow morning at latest.' He clasped the other's forearm. And finally, to Nathan, Kirk, and his watchmen: 'Right then, let's be off. There's never enough sunlight, and it's too precious to waste just standing around in it…'

Nathan told his story, only holding back when it came to his mainly subterranean journey along the course of the Great Dark River. His debt to the Thyre was beyond value, and he wouldn't repay it in treachery. But in any case Lardis made no comment; obviously a man can travel a long way in three years; Nathan had simply skipped his uneventful trek across the desert.

Still, while Nathan talked, he did feel Lardis's eyes on him from time to time: frowning, wondering, speculating? But about what? He suspected that he would be able to read the older man's mind quite easily… but he wouldn't. He'd learned from the Thyre how it was as well to respect the private thoughts of others.

And indeed Lardis was thinking strange and speculative thoughts: about Nana, and a man called Harry Hell-lander out of another world, and about Nathan: about his origins. The son of Hzak Kiklu? Not this one. Lardis should have seen it before. But if not Hzak's son, whose? Harry's? Nathan had always been the strange one. But how strange? He had lived with vampires, and returned…

Then, feeling the lad's eyes upon him for a change, Lardis had snapped out of it. It was all speculation anyway, and only Nana would know the truth of it. Nana, aye. And now there were other things which Lardis remembered.. but he must put them aside, for the moment at least.

Far more important was Nathan's warning of the bloodwar to come: the news that the Wamphyri of Turgosheim planned an invasion of Wratha and her colleagues in Starside, which they would launch just four months from now. In the aftermath of that war, no matter what the outcome, the shadow over Sunside must surely be that much darker, and the final dissolution of the Szgany as a free people so much more certain. For the vampires would be depleted, and could only replenish themselves in Sunside.

Then for a time Lardis was quiet, his thoughts shrouded, his mood gloomy where they strode out along a woodland trail. But in a while: 'Only if we're weak enough to let it happen,' he growled. 'In which case we would deserve it. But we're not weak, lad — far from it — and forewarned is forearmed. Now, let me tell you how it's been for us while you were away…

'The Wamphyri have raided Settlement eight times since then, but never so effectively as that first time and always to their cost. Does it surprise you that we're still around, still fighting back? It shouldn't.

Wratha and her bullies are a handful, it's true, but they're still only a handful. Me, I remember when I was your age, when the vampires were a plague! We fought back then, and we always will. And never forget, we have two great allies: the barrier range and the golden sun.

'Eight times they've been back, but a while now since the last time. That was when Misha lost her second brother, Nicolae. But as for the Wamphyri, they lost a great deal more. We have weapons, Nathan, and intelligence, and humanity! But all they have is their lust for blood and their mutual hatred. The first time they came — that night they took your brother, Nestor, and my own son, Jason — they were organized under Wratha; since when, they've become a rabble! They've split up and gone their own ways; they have no single leader as such but squabble with each other as in the old days, and with much the same result: vampire anarchy, disorder, fragmentation. Recently there have been rumours that they're working together again, some of them, but I doubt it.

'Do you remember Vratza Wransthrall, the night we burned him? I'm sure you do: how could you forget the things he said, when you thought that Canker Canison had taken Misha? Well, he as good as admitted that Wratha's plan was to build herself an army, with which to fight off the rest of them when they followed her out of Turgosheim. Or she might even use it to invade Turgosheim in her own right. Except it hasn't worked out that way.

'For now, as individual Lords — and "Lady", of course — they are lessened. Their raiding parties consist of a leader, two or three lieutenants, three flyers at most, and a warrior or two. They daren't keep more than a handful of lieutenants each for fear of treachery, of being usurped! Which has been to our advantage.

'I say again, they've raided Settlement just eight times since that first time, and each raid has cost them dearly! Do you remember the shotgun shells, the tubes of silver shot and black powder which provide the energy and killing substance of our guns? We exhausted them eighteen months ago, fighting off an attack. But then — a miracle! I sent a party of men across the mountains into The Dweller's garden, his armoury. The whole place has fallen into ruins; but in one of the little houses backed up to the wall of the saddle — in a cave at the back, snug and dry under dust and old leathers they found a box of shells. A whole box! Perhaps it was handed out to someone at the time of the battle for the garden, someone who never got the chance to use it. But it was an important find for two good reasons.

'One: we had one hundred and sixty good shells for use as early warning devices — not to mention lethal weapons — against the Wamphyri and their lieutenants. Two: ever since I saw The Dweller's weapons in action, I knew that we must have them. Which is why I've kept old Dimi Petrescu hard at it all these years trying to duplicate that black powder. Now that we had these shells, I could give Dimi a little more of the original stuff to work with. Until finally he succeeded!

'….r almost. Dimi's stuff isn't as good and it doesn't make effective cartridges, but it does make a bang! You remember the giant crossbows in Settlement? We still have them. But we also have rockets, and a lot of them! But dangerous? I've had a man blind himself, and another who blew an arm off. Ah, but on the other hand, when these things work properly, then they really do work! During one raid a year ago — Gorvi the Guile, it was, with a small handful of his lads and a warrior — didn't we make him pay? You can bet your life we did! Just you wait, Nathan, and you'll see! You'll see!

'And we've learned, lad, we've really learned. More than we ever knew before, and faster. Do you know what a flyer is? Certainly, for you flew one here out of Turgosheim. But do you know what a flyer in a pit is? No? Then I'll tell you: a flyer in a pit is a dead thing! Stick a flyer in a hole in the ground and it's useless; it can't launch itself, and has to be dragged free before it can get airborne again. So we dug pits in strategic positions in and around Settlement, with spikes in the bottom to impale their ugly bellies. That worked for a while, until the Wamphyri got the idea. Then they began crashing their beasts onto our houses, and launching them from the rubble. So we made dummy houses, fragile frameworks, with pits underneath! What's more, we left barrels of Petrescu's powder down there, all fused-up and ready to detonate! We've learned how to blast those wormy launching limbs right off them, melt 'em down hissing in their pits, and bury 'em for good when the stink has blown away!' Lardis smacked his lips, found relish in detailing the more gruesome aspects of his defensive systems.

Their warriors are the worst, of course,' he eventually continued, 'but even they are not invulnerable. We used to run from them once, but not any more. If you can get an explosive device into a warrior's gasbag, that's half the battle. And if you can explode oil of kneblasch in there, that's even better! You see, warriors manufacture gas for lift, buoyancy, but when they're on the ground the gas soaks back into their systems and the bladders are retracted. So, if you doctor a warrior's bladders with kneblasch just as he's coming in to land — he's done for, poisoned! Oh, they thrash around a bit and they're noisy about it, but they quiet down after they've burned a while…' He gave a sharp, vicious nod.

'As for the Lords themselves, silver shot is the best bet. If you could hit one in the eyes he'd be finished. We've taken out lieutenants that way, with our shotguns, no trouble at all. But a lieutenant isn't a Lord. They're just too damned clever, the Lords, and we haven't managed to stop a one of them as yet. It's their Wamphyri senses. With more than the five we've got, they can sense trouble coming. They send their troops in first to clear the way, and as often as not to die for them. But a Lord is different. He can breathe a mist and melt right into it…' Lardis paused to get his breath, then said:

'Aye, and I've gone on a bit, haven't I? But I wanted you to understand. We haven't given in to them, and we're not about to.'

Finally the old Lidesci fell silent, which gave Nathan the opportunity to say: 'But you've done so well! It's all….onderful! And is it like this for all of the Szgany? Right across Sunside?'

Lardis glanced at him, shook his shaggy head and looked away. 'How can it be? Charity begins at home, son, and as far as I know it's only like this for the Szgany Lidesci. What do you expect? How far do you think we can stretch ourselves?'

'And the people of Twin Fords, Tireni Scarp, Mirlu Township and all the other towns and tribes?' Nathan's excitement was swiftly ebbing.

Lardis shrugged, but not callously. 'Should I give them gunpowder, so that they in turn may give it to the Wamphyri? How long before supplicant tribes started making it for them, eh? Or are you asking why I haven't gathered all of the tribes together? I'll tell you: because I've been through all of this before, Nathan, and small is safe. Now listen, Sanctuary Rock is only so big. Its caverns will take my people, but barely. And only my people know its secrets! Lad, why do you think I built Settlement where it stands, or leans, now? Because it was close to Sanctuary Rock, that's why! I never did trust my luck all that much, and as it happens I was right not to. No, for I knew that if there was a way back, the Wamphyri would find it. You know how a lichen clings to a rock? Well, that's nothing, compared to the way they cling to their filthy, miserable existence!'

'And Travellers when they pass through?' Nathan's voice was much quieter. 'Do you still give them shelter?'

'If they come in daylight, and if I know them, aye. But in the evening, or the night… you're making jokes, Nathan! Think, man! Things aren't like that any more. Would you harbour a leper in your camp? Of course not. Well, then, how much more virulent is a vampire?'

Nathan nodded. 'You're right, of course…' And after a moment's silence: 'What about the other townships? How have they fared?'

'Badly!' Lardis answered at once. 'Karl Zestos leads the people of Twin Fords, what's left of them. They're Travellers now, a small band torn to pieces in the raids. Karl's no fool, though. He's learning, just like I had to learn when I was his age. They have caverns in the cliffs east of here; not as good as Sanctuary Rock and not so easily defended, but they're working on it.'

Nathan nodded. 'He asked me to join him that time when I passed through Twin Fords. I liked him well enough, but I was still looking for Nestor. What about Mirlu Township?'

'Swept away!' said Lardis. 'Scattered, gone! Four or five sunups after Settlement, then it was Mirlu Township's turn. We expected them to come back here, if only to punish us for what we did to Vratza. But they fell on Mirlu instead. The brothers Wran and Spiro. They must be madmen!' (And Nathan thought: they are!) 'Sent in a warrior to wreck the place, and waited outside for the people as they fled. Aye, and the bastards recruited a few that night! The survivors are Travellers now, like all the rest. Only me and mine, and the folk of Tireni Scarp, have managed to hang on to what was theirs. And then by the skin of our teeth.'

Through the trees Nathan could see the foothills and the dome of Sanctuary Rock. The morning was only a third done and he was almost home. Or if not home exactly, back among his own people at least. He felt his heart leap inside him. His mother was alive and well… and Misha! All weariness fled, he felt he must run the rest of the way; and Lardis sensed it in him.

'Can't let you go, lad,' he said. There'll be some who know you, but others who don't. And there's not much of trust in men these days. You go in there bragging how you flew home on a vampire thing.. ' He shook his head. 'Anyway, I'm just as eager as you, if only to see your mother's face.' He glanced at Nathan and grinned. 'Not to mention Misha's.'

Nathan grabbed his arm. 'Is she… is she…?'

'She's a beauty!' Lardis stopped him. 'Ask any one of the young, single men and they'll all tell you the same thing: that Misha Zanesti is beautiful.'

Nathan's face fell. 'The young men? But, does she… has she…?'

'Now hold!' said Lardis. 'What's all this? Are we back to stuttering again? And why ask me? I'm an old lad and past that sort of thing — well, almost. Anyway, another hour and you'll be able to ask the girl herself.'

An hour! It sounded like a lifetime.

But it wasn't..

On the final approach to Sanctuary Rock along dusty foothill trails, Lardis and the others stepped very carefully. 'Pits everywhere,' Lardis informed. 'Can you see them?'

'Now that you mention it, yes,' Nathan answered. 'A man would have to be a fool to fall into one.'

Lardis gave a grunt and shrugged. 'Well, people do forget from time to time, and then we have accidents. But flyers and the like aren't as bright as men — ' (then, remembering Nathan's story about Karz Biteri) '- well, not usually. And anyway, at night they use their noses as much as their eyes.'

They climbed closer to the Rock, a gigantic outcrop jutting from the wooded hillside, bald and domed on top, but hollow as a rotten tooth in its base. 'And do you live here now?' Nathan had been inside the place as a child; it seemed a dire sort of existence, to actually live here.

'We hide here,' Lardis answered, 'but we still "live" in Settlement — because I won't let go! It's no great distance, and we always come back to the Rock at nights. But the Wamphyri? Territorial? Hah.' They don't know the half of it!'

'But if you still live in town, why have we come up here?'

'Because right now this is where the work is. Enough for everyone. We're hollowing the place out, making it liveable, and charging the larger outer caves with Dimi's powder. Yet another way to kill a warrior: flatten the bastard under a hundred tons of rock!'

'Without flattening yourself?'

'We've tunnelled our way through to the back and far side. It's quite a maze in there. So that now the Rock's a sanctuary, a makeshift home, a lethal trap and an escape route all in one. The Wamphyri haven't discovered us yet and with luck they never will. If they do…' Again Lardis's fatalistic shrug, 'it will cost them as dearly as it costs us.'

In the main entrance a chain of people, men and women, passed heavy leather buckets laden with dirt and small rocks from the inside to the open, and there tipped them over the rim of a shallow bluff on to the scree slopes below. Sweating and grimy, the people looked much alike. Most of them merely glanced at Lardis and his party, nodded, and carried on working. But one of them dropped her bucket and the work came to a halt.

Then… it was as if a whirlwind had struck! Nana rushed at Nathan so as to almost knock him down. He wrapped her in his arms, grabbed her up fiercely, kissed her dirty neck and hugged her like a lover. His mother! Alive and well! Finally they held each other at arm's length, and Nathan's eyes drank Nana in; he let her aura, her smell — no, her scent — wash over him, and thought, She's so… small!

'You're so… big!' she said. There were tears behind her eyes, but she wouldn't cry in front of people.

Lardis put an arm round each of them. And to Nana: 'Take him to your place in the Rock,' he said. 'Let the work go. No one here will grudge you that.' His voice was husky, too.

On their way inside, still holding each other, they found their way blocked as a huge, frowning figure stepped out of the line. It was Varna Zanesti, Misha's father. He clasped forearms with Nathan, nodded and said, 'Well, what a sight for sore eyes you are! And do I have a son at last, or what?' As ever, Varna was straight to the point.

At first Nathan didn't understand, so Varna prompted him, 'That conversation we had, in Settlement that morning?'

Then Nathan understood, sighed and said, 'I'm honoured.'

'Huh!' Varna grunted. 'Damn right you are! Very well then, I'll see to it — and at once!' Finally he grinned.

'Where is she?' Nathan asked.

'In the woods with the children, teaching, gathering nuts, fruits. Will midday suit you?'

'Eh?'

'To be wed, of course!'

Nathan looked at Nana, who nodded. And: 'Yes, whatever you say,' he answered Varna.

'Consider it done then,' said the other. 'Now be off, and enjoy what time you have left as a free man.'

Nana had a large cave close to the main entrance. There, where beams of sunlight shot in through holes in the perforated rock and dust motes drifted like specks of gold, she sat Nathan down on a blanket on a ledge carved in the wall. And while she saw to the needs of two old ladies in her care — in the course of preparing their food — she talked to him and questioned him over her shoulder. In a little while he stopped answering, and Nana saw that he'd stretched out and gone to sleep.

Then, as the old ones ate their food Nana sat beside him. She stroked the lines from his brow, cried all the tears she'd stored up for so long, and loved her son for all the lonesome times she'd missed loving him…

Nathan dreamed of Maglore, who in any case had never been far from his thoughts since his escape from Runemanse; an image of the man, the vampire Lord, the monster, had seemed printed indelibly on his inner eye, but faintly, like an after-image.

Maglore in his aerie, in a darkened room, alone, with a smile on his ancient, evil face and his eyes half-closed, and spider hands with spindly fingers resting upon an image of his sigil, the hammered gold loop with a half-twist. Nathan dreamed of the Seer Lord, and knew that Maglore in turn dreamed of him, of Nathan!

He conjured the numbers vortex and washed Maglore away in its seething swirl — and saw the smile on his fading face turn to a scowl — before he drifted deeper into sleep…

He dreamed of his wolves. They had felt the swirl of the vortex and stirred in their mountain cave. He knew that their yellow eyes blinked in the gloom, and could feel their warmth and smell the musty heat of their curled bodies. But they were tired and he should let them sleep; it was sufficient that they acknowledged his return…

His freely drifting mind touched upon the deadspeak minds of Sunside's Great Majority: a Jiving mind listening in on the dead. They knew him at once, but the message of their swiftly receding whispers was as vague and mysterious as ever: That one, Nathan!'

'But the Thyre speak for him; they say there's no harm in him, only good.'

'So was his father good, in his time. But in the end

?'

'We could tell him much.'

'We daren't!'

Among them was a voice which was very faint. 'I, asef Karis, could tell him most of all.'p>

'And be shunned among the dead forever?' The others were alarmed.

'You are cold and cruel,' the faint one replied.

'But not as cold and cruel as the Wamphyri necromancer who is his brother!'

'He is a vampire. They are not the same.'

'Can Nathan live forever, then? And what will he be when he dies? Ah, and will he stay dead?'

Finally, reluctantly: 'Perhaps you are right,' said asef Karis. With which their dead voices faded away entirely as the teeming dead fell silent in their graves and resting places…p>

At last it was Eygor Killglance's turn; the leathery amalgam which was Eygor, blind and dead in his pit in Madmanse. But Eygor didn't talk about Nathan, he talked to him. The killing eye, Nathan. It can be yours!' The clotted gurgle of his mind spanned all the miles between. 'Now look, and see what my sons did to me!'

Nathan stood at the feet of the Thing in the pit again, and stared up at its dead face, its closed eyes which even now, in his dream, creaked open! And a pair of blind white orbs huge as the eggs of swans, white as shining marble, wept acid tears on to a fretted, crumbling cheek!

'Only see how I cry,' said Eygor, 'because my eyes are blind and white. Ah, but upon a time the right one was filled with blood! See!' And at once, the right eye of the gargoyle dripped scarlet. 'While the left was full of pus!' And indeed the left one turned yellow, and swelled like a boil about to burst. And Nathan knew that if it did and the poison splashed him, then that he would be infected, heir to Egyor's eyes!

He came shouting awake…!

But the eyes were gone. The original great white blind glaring eyes (like the eye which Thikkoul had seen in Nathan's stars, perhaps?), the bloody eye and the yellow one, too: gone! Only his mother's eyes, Nana's, were there to greet him where he jerked violently upright. And gazing back worriedly into his, all they contained was love and concern.

For Nathan was more than ever like Harry Keogh before him, and she knew from his mumbling that he talked to… people, in his sleep; or at least listened to them talking to each other. But mainly she was concerned because of who these people were, and the fact that they were no more…

Aye, he was more than ever like his Necroscope father, which could be a blessing -

— Or a curse.

Nathan and Misha were married at 'noon', when the sun stood at its highest point far to the south and central over the distant desert. The ceremony was simple; Lardis presided; all of Sanctuary Rock's workforce was present, almost a hundred and forty of them. Times were hard but Lardis had done his best, providing bread and wine and a beast turning on a spit over a fire.

At the high point of the affair the old Lidesci gathered the couple and their parents to him — Misha in white, Nathan in his freshly cleaned Thyre clothing, which by Szgany standards was still exceptionally fine gear — and with Nana standing face to face with Misha, and Varna glowering at Nathan, then Lardis commenced to say the approved words:

'Varna Zanesti, what can you say of this girl, your daughter Misha?'

That she's innocent, unknown by man or monster,' Varna growled. 'Also that she's obedient and good. Far too good for this one!'

Nathan was obliged to back off a step and lower his head. It was all part of the ritual.

'And Nana Kiklu,' Lardis turned to her. 'What have you to say to that?'

'No mere girl is good enough for a son of mine,' Nana answered, tilting her chin and sniffing at Misha. 'I can only hope that their children take more after him.' But not too closely after their grandfather!

Lardis turned to the couple. 'And do you love each other?' They answered yes. 'So you may, and from this time forward you have that right — to love with your hearts and your bodies — for you're now man and wife!'

They kissed; people applauded; everyone enjoyed a little food, and toasted the health of the couple in wine. There was music and the younger ones danced, those who had the strength for it. But at their first opportunity, Nathan and Misha slipped quietly away…

Their travois was waiting behind bushes under the south-west facing wall of the Rock. There Misha made;"Nathan look away — Three years is a long time, after; all!' — while she changed into Traveller clothes and folded her dress into a pillowcase, and discreetly averted her eyes as he likewise changed. It was the Szgany way. Then, dragging the light-framed travois behind them, they went out into the forest. Heading south-east, they skirted the Rock along an old trail, but half-way towards Settlement turned off into virgin woods and found a place where the bracken stood tall.

In the heart of the bracken Nathan put up their shelter, a skin stretched over the bole of a fallen tree, made fast to projecting branches, while Misha cleared the ground and spread their blankets underneath. And with mixed feelings they stood looking at the finished job. Everything seemed to be melting into a blur now for Nathan. He still daren't believe that he had really escaped from Turgosheim; yet here he was, married to Misha, and their first bed ready for them. She didn't seem changed; it might be as if he'd never been away.

'Our home for half a day,' he finally said.

'And for part of a night,' she answered. 'For I won't go back till the stars are out at least. Tonight of all nights, I won't scurry and scuttle in fear of Them.'

Nathan looked ruefully at their rude shelter. 'Not much of a little house, is it?'

She smiled in a way he remembered and loved well enough — a smile she'd kept only for him, which was half-innocent, half-brazen — and answered: 'People have lived, and loved, in worse than this, Nathan. Anyway, you'll remember this "little house" for the rest of your days. I shall see to that.'

Following which…

… It was as it has always been and always will be between lovers. And for an hour, two, three, they excited, explored and exhausted each other. Misha was mainly innocent, for which they both were glad. And Nathan… if Misha suspected anything she said nothing. And anyway, he was careful not to 'know' too much. From now on they could learn together, or at least he must make her believe that it was so. It wasn't so much that he deceived her, rather that he would not disappoint her.

And he didn't, not in any measure…

In the time scale of the world of Nathan's father, the couple stayed in their love nest for an entire day, and one more to go before sundown. Like all young animals paired off, they loved and slept to excess; between times they replenished themselves on bread and cheese from a bundle in the travois.

Three years without each other; now each moment spent together filled the space of an hour apart, and the husks of empty years fell aside. They got to know each other all over again, but more surely now, more certainly: like a broken wall repaired and made stronger. And the extra wrinkle here or line there: all smoothed themselves out, or seemed to, until their faces were the same yet more than before. Nathan had used to think Misha's shape was boyish; now it was all woman. She had likened his yellow hair to sunlight; now it was a misted morning, with some of the gold fading to grey.

Eventually they left their bower and walked to Settlement, which served to revive more old memories. A handful of people were working there; Nathan met some old friends, saw a few new faces. They wandered the forest ways they'd known as children, bathed in the same shingly pool at the river's bend, fell more deeply, truly in love than ever. Back in Settlement they ate a meal with friends, and Nathan stood for a while outside his old home under the stockade's west wall. Some repairs had been made but the place seemed like a shell now; at least there wasn't a flyer trap underneath it; maybe one day Nana would live here again. But live here, as she had used to in better times.

In the shade of the forest as they returned to the bower, suddenly Nathan shivered, paused, listened. There was only the cooing of pigeons. Misha looked at him curiously. 'What is it?'

Frowning, he touched the golden sigil in his ear. Then he shrugged and offered an awkward smile. 'Only the ghosts of memories.' Or the feeling of someone listening, watching, waiting. Instinctively he shielded his mind and conjured the vortex: two perfectly logical moves, of which only the first was a good one. For Nathan didn't know that where the vortex kept certain evils at bay, it lured one other more surely than crows are lured to a cornfield. And even if he did know it would make little difference, for that one was dead.

In any case, and long before they reached their love nest, the feeling had passed…

Evening fell on Sunside, and the first stars came out as the sky slowly darkened towards night. In their bower the lovers slept, touching all along their length, so close they might be one. In Settlement and other places the first fires were burning even now, lures for Starside's Lords. But the last vampire raid on Settlement had been a while ago; there was no reason why any monster should come hunting here now, and certainly not in this private place. In Nathan's metaphysical mind the numbers vortex whirled, and in its heart the mysteries of the universe were hidden behind countless mutating formulae; as were his secret thoughts. Thus the vortex was his protection -

— And his betrayal.

High in the mountains, in a saddle between peaks where the gold had faded to grey, a Lord and his lieutenant gazed down on Sunside, the first through scarlet eyes and the other with eyes which were feral. The latter was Zahar (once Zahar Sucksthrall, but no longer), and his master was the Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri, an awesome necromancer whose rapid rise to power had made him a living legend on all the levels of Starside's last aerie. Their flyers rested a little apart, nodding their great, slate-grey heads in that curiously vacant way of theirs.

Zahar knew why they had come here: it was a habit of Nestor's to rest here a while, this very spot, and gaze down on Sunside before a raid. Always here, over Settlement. But while he found a constant fascination with the place, he had never once raided in the town. In the past he'd always given the same reason: 'I think… I know this place. But there's nothing here that I want, not any longer.'

Tonight was different. Wratha had suggested that she and Nestor might raid together, yet he had flown out early with just Zahar in attendance. Just the two of them, without even a warrior. And Nestor's gaze was very keen, even eager tonight as he looked down on the glow-worm flicker of the town's fires; and Zahar sensed within him an eagerness, a strange cold passion, and a purpose.

For a while the lieutenant fidgeted, then asked: 'Do we raid here tonight? Do we recruit? If so we should be careful, for these people have a reputation. Those fires could well be lures!'

Nestor merely glanced at him, but at least the question had drawn him back to earth. 'We hunt,' he answered.

'Hah!' Zahar snorted appreciatively. Tor women?'

'For a couple, male and female,' Nestor's voice was like a low wind out of the Icelands, cold and foreboding. 'A great enemy of mine who went away and is now returned. A treacherous Szgany dog and his bitch, who plotted against me. Even now they are hiding from me, in the woods where they always hid. But I shall find them now as I found them then.'

Zahar stared at him, feared him. Nestor had no background. There was nothing in his past to guide his future. Except this, perhaps, whatever it was. And he was pure as pure Wamphyri! All Nestor knew, he'd learned in Old Starside's last aerie. And despite that the ways of the aerie were hard, he'd learned fast. Add to this the fact that he was a necromancer… the Lord Nestor's mind and his ways were unknowable.

Still, Zahar thought that he should make some answer. 'How will you find this enemy, Lord?'

Again Nestor's glance, and his grim smile. 'He sleeps and dreams,' he said. 'But I know his dreams, for they penetrate my own like darts.'

Zahar said nothing. He had been right: his master's mind was entirely unknowable.

'Now listen,' Nestor continued with more animation.

'In the twilight before the dawn I sensed his return, and dreamed that I went to fetch him into Starside to punish him. But my dream was ominous, and in the hour of my triumph I fell foul of some nameless fate. Tonight, leaving Wratha to sleep on, I rose early and came down to my apartments, from where I heard the Lord Canker Canison singing to the moon. Because they say he is touched with oneiromancy, I mentioned the dream to him. He howled like a wolf and told me that the future is inviolable; the only danger lies in trying to read or alter it; what will be will be. I agree with that last: what will be will be. Except…'

'Yes, Lord?'

'If aught befalls me, will my enemy go free? I can't bear the thought of that.' He shook his head. 'No, for if I'm destined for hell I want to know that my enemy got there before me, or follows close behind, at least! These are my instructions:

'He is mine and you shall take the girl. If all goes well we head direct for Starside. But if I should come to grief my order is this: drop the girl and take him! Do you understand?' His voice was suddenly sharp.

'Yes, Lord.'

'For I don't mind that she lives, only that he should not! And in no circumstance are they to be allowed to live together. Which is why you will take him and head for Starside. For I've heard of a certain legend, and I'm determined that he shall be the one to test it.'

He explained his meaning in more detail, then continued: 'Zahar, a dream is only a dream and I'm not afraid of it. Nor do I fear anything. But if aught should go astray, don't fail me. For I am the Lord Nestor and life and death are one to me, and even in the worst possible future, I shaJI be back!'

'I believe you, Lord,' said Zahar.

They went to their beasts and mounted up. And Nestor said, 'Now follow close behind, and I'll take you to them.'

Zahar kept his thoughts well guarded where he goaded his flyer into the air. But in the eastern foothills and along the peaks he'd seen banks of mist forming, and knew that the Wamphyri hunted there. While Nestor pursued dreams and ghosts out of his unknown past, they hunted for the good things of life: for the blood which is the life, for women and slaves, and for the sheer joy of it. Huh.' Not much of joy in Nestor. But then, there'd not been a deal of it in Vasagi either! And this one had his egg.

Nestor 'heard' none of this; his damaged mind was full of other things and remembered only those which he wanted to remember. And as his flyer arched its wings and soughed down the wind towards the tree-line, he was maddened by the swirl of alien numbers rushing faster and faster in his brain. Now, at long last, he would track the maelstrom to its source and destroy it — destroy him — forever. As he should have destroyed him in the far, dim, all but forgotten past…

The mist on the mountains. Like Zahar, Nana Kiklu had seen it, too, and had gone straight to Lardis. Now they were out searching for the newlyweds, Nana in one direction and Lardis in the other. He was the one who found them, and with time to spare, or so he thought. But in fact he was just too late.

Arm in arm, they headed for the Rock along a foothill trail. Trudging and weary, they dragged their worldly goods behind them. Lardis saw them, sighed his relief and hurried forward… only to freeze as the night air throbbed and the starlight seemed to dim a little, and a shadow went wafting overhead! Lardis fell into a crouch, snapped his shotgun shut, and looked up. He saw them — flyers, a pair — banking against the hillside, and stooping towards the lovers like hawks! And now they too felt the throbbing of the air, looked up and saw the swooping flyers. Instinctively, Misha flew into Nathan's arms.

This way!' Lardis bellowed. To me!' They saw him, ran towards him. The flyers veered a little and their belly pouches yawned open; their wings formed arches where they seemed almost to drift down upon the pair.

'Down!' Lardis yelled. 'Get down!'

The flyers were upon them, buffeting them apart; the one which pursued Nathan made to scoop him up; he stumbled and the flap of the thing's pouch sent him flying. It formed its wings into air-traps and hovered, following him where he tumbled down a scree slide.

Frantically, Lardis swung his weapon towards the other beast but daren't fire; Misha was in the way. The creature was almost upon her when suddenly… she gave a scream and disappeared! She was the victim of one of Lardis's pits! But better that than the other. Far better! She might be injured, but she was safe for the moment. And the old Lidesci launched himself feet-first down the scree slide after Nathan.

Nathan was on his feet. He turned to look back up the slope — and the flyer was there, right behind him! He saw it, and saw that its rider was…

… Nestor!

Nathan might not know the face — that twisted, snarling visage with its scarlet, glaring eyes — but he would recognize the mind anywhere, however warped and changed it had become. At close range there was no mistaking it; he felt its hatred, and knew that recognition was mutual. Nestor was a Power now, and Nathan's own telepathy that much more enhanced.

You! The word was a hiss, burning like acid as it flowed from Nestor's mind.

'Nestor!' Nathan gasped, as the flyer's head passed over him and its belly pouch yawned. He smelled its stench… and in the same moment heard Lardis's yell:

'Get down!' A split second later and the old Lidesci came skidding on his heels and his rump, collided with Nathan and sent him flying. The two of them rolled and tumbled; but relentless as a shadow and almost as close, the flyer followed after. They hit the bottom of the slope, and Lardis was first on his feet. Growling like a bear he turned his weapon on the flyer and discharged it pointblank into the creature's eyes — once, twice!

The thing screamed high and shrill, lashed its head left and right, and its wings pounded frantically, uselessly at the air. Then, as a wingtip struck the slope, the beast tilted to one side, which threatened to unseat its rider. Yelling like a madman, Lardis reloaded and aimed at the vampire Lord.

And even if Nathan would wish it otherwise, there was nothing he could do about the rest of it. Dazed and still trying to climb to his feet, he heard the twin shotgun blasts and felt Nestor's agony! And again he and Lardis were bowled over as the stricken flyer's thrusters uncoiled downwards and drove it out and away into the night, with Nestor lolling and jerking in the saddle.

By now Sunside lay under a blanket of mist, and because the main body of Wamphyri hunters were in the east, it could only be a natural mist rising from the woods and rivers of the region. Nestor's flyer dipped low and tore a soft hole in the stuff, which quickly filled in behind it.

Lardis was yelling, 'I got the bastard! I got him in the eyes, like I told you! If my aim had been better I could have taken his head off!'

The mist rolled up and covered them, and passed up the slope. And despite that Lardis had been talking about Nestor, there was only one thought in Nathan's mind now: 'Misha?'

'Come on,' Lardis growled. 'She fell into one of our own pits. And that other flyer may still be around, might even have landed!' Reloading his shotgun, he headed up the slippery scree slope. But even as they began climbing, so Zahar came gliding from above and fell on them. It was as swift as that: the mist opened and the flyer was there.

Lardis got off a shot before he was buffeted aside. He was on his feet again in a moment, aiming at a nodding, mist-wreathed head, squeezing the trigger. And the gun blew up in his hands! One of the old cartridges, a bad one, had finally let him down. Blown backwards and off his feet, he waited for the shock to pass, then struggled upright and looked for Nathan… and saw nothing but the mist. But in a little while he found the wind to climb the slope.

Misha was waiting at the top, shivering and dishevelled but otherwise unharmed. She took Lardis's hand and helped him up, then grabbed him and looked into his eyes. He could only lower his head and look away… EPILOGUE

Unconscious from the flyer's gases, Nathan lolled in Zahar's arms where the vampire lieutenant carried him across the wormhole-riddled terrain surrounding the hell-lands Gate and tossed him down on top of its low crater wall. Beyond that wall, snug as an eye in its socket, the vastly glaring Gate shone with a cold white light, causing Zahar to lower his eyelids half-way shut and put up a hand against the dazzle.

He found a toe-hold and stepped up onto the wall, picked Nathan up and paced forward to the very 'skin' of the shining hemisphere of light. There he paused, looked at the man in his arms and shrugged. There seemed very little of a 'great enemy' in this one, and as any vampire would know, there were better uses for good Szgany flesh than this! On the other hand, his master's warning couldn't be ignored; Zahar dared not fail him who had sworn to return. For Nestor was a Lord and crafty necromancer, while Zahar was only a lieutenant.

Well, time now to get it over with. He cradled Nathan like a child in one arm, and slapped his face until his eyes flickered open. 'What?' Nathan groaned, rolling his head and seeing first Zahar's awful face, and then the blinding light spilling from the Gate! The hell-lands portal, which he knew at once, glaring like… like 'a great blind eye'!

Zahar grinned at him and said: 'Courtesy of the Lord Nestor. Whoever you are, this world has seen the last of you. But I hope they make you welcome in hell!' And so saying he spilled Nathan out of his arms into the glare, which absorbed him in a moment, effortlessly and without a sound, like an eye blinking away the irritation of a dust mote…

Far to the east in a blocked pit in Madmanse, the gigantic monstrosity which was Eygor Killglance lay where he had died, slumped against a nitre-streaked wall, and groaned a vast and terrible deadspeak groan. He was dead, the physical Eygor, but his mind of course went on. Except there was no one now to know it, not with any certainty. For like the guttering of a distant candle jn the ultimate darkness of death, Eygor had seen Nathan's light go out. Which could mean only one thing: that the Necroscope was no more.

In the higher levels of the promontory, called Runemanse, perhaps Maglore 'heard' something of Eygor's groaning; perhaps he 'felt' something of Nathan's passing. At any rate he rushed to his room of meditation and placed his trembling fingers on the sigil shaped in gold, and let his mind drift out from Turgosheim, then hurtle west at the unthinkable speed of thought, which is instantaneous. But the sigil was lifeless now, merely a strangely twisted mass of heavy metal, and Maglore's 'window on an unknown world' was closed. It was weird, because even though Nathan's aura was gone, the feeling persisted that he was not dead. What, then? Undead? Locked in that metamorphic sleep which precedes the vampire condition? Had he finally succumbed to the seduction of vampirism? Did Wratha or one of hers have him? And Maglore sighed. Better perhaps if he had made him his own after all…

In all the dreaming places of the Thyre, suddenly the darkness was that much deeper. For the ancients also knew of Nathan's passing from this world, but they knew a little more than the rest: that he was not dead. For if so he would be one with them, an honoured member of an elite, 'extinct' society, where his deadspeak voice would always be welcome. No, he was not dead but removed from them, taken away, transported to a place from which no one ever returned.

The teeming dead of Sunside knew it, too, and felt safer for it, however shamefully. But men reap what they sow, and in the child there is always that of the father. Perhaps Nathan had posed a threat, and perhaps not. Whatever, it made no difference now for he was gone. And of all of them who had passed into Sunside's air and earth, only Jasef Karis missed him and wished that he had spoken to him.

But not a one of them — not Eygor, Maglore, the Thyre, or all the dead of Sunside put together — could ever have dreamed that they would hear Nathan's deadspeak voice again, or see his candle burning in the darkness as before..

Nestor's awakening was slow and painful. His eyes were burning, his back had been very nearly broken, but his mind… was free of numbers! And with that, it all came back to him:

… His flyer, blinded, with its face half shot away and its tiny brain peppered with poisonous silver pellets. Nestor, too, reeling in the saddle with sightless eyes, his face a raw red mess and consciousness slipping as he fought to command his crippled beast up, away, back to Starside. He remembered a long low glide, and his inability to impress himself on the flyer's mind. The wonder was that the beast had stayed aloft so long.

.. Then the crash: the whiplash as he was hurled from the flyer's back, his body somersaulting, smashing against the bole of a great tree, falling through branches which snapped under his weight, down to the forest's floor. And the darkness.

Following which: Ministering hands? Kindness? Ointments and bandages, to assist in the healing process which Nestor's leech had already commenced? Brief bouts of consciousness, in which he had known that people moved about him, caring for him, even feeding him a vile soup, which his body accepted readily enough despite that it was not his usual fare. It could only mean that he had made it back to Starside, where Wratha had found him crashed among the great hardy firs of the barrier range below the tree-line, and brought him into the last aerie.

But when he had tried to speak to her, it was not the Lady Wratha's voice which answered him. And because his eyes were so badly damaged and bandaged, he'd not seen the ones who covered his shivering body with blankets to keep him warm, and fed him, and pricked the silver shot out of his face, and generally succoured him through his fever.

Until now, finally, he heard their whispers, and felt once more the pain in his back, the agony of his ruined face. But he held still as they peeled away the bandages, and listened to their whispers tailing off as they sensed that he was awake. Then, despite the pain of tearing scabs, he gradually forced his eyes open and felt pus begin to ooze as something of sight returned. But -

— Was the room dark, or was it his eyes? It was both, he knew. He was healing, but not yet fully healed. For even a dark room would appear as daylight to one who was Wamphyri. But this room seemed full of a thick grey mist, and his eyes burned like fire when he blinked them to clear his vision. Except his vision would not clear. He was half-blind, and a long way yet to go before his vampire repaired him back to new.

He stirred, groaned, moved his limbs and tested his body. And like shadows the ones who had saved him backed off, melted away and out of this misty room of vague grey shapes and musty odours. Their movements seemed strange, stumbling, crippled as badly as Nestor himself and perhaps worse. For he was at least aware of his blood surging and knew that his limbs were his own again. He was weak but would be strong, and given time he would see as well as ever. But not yet for a while.

Now that Nestor was alone he put out a trembling hand to feel his bed, the wall, the edge of a table. All of wood, and warm. In no way the familiar cold grey stone of the last aerie. So what was this place? Where was he and what had awakened him? Deep down inside, some strange instinctive terror grinned and gurgled, and in the eye of memory showed him a picture out of the past: Of a flyer, gouting smoke and steam and shrivelling as its hide split open; then spilling its loathsome fats as the sun ate into it like acid and reduced it to so much slop! The sun…! Was that what had awakened him, fear of the sun? But why? Where was he… and what was the hour?

Someone entered the room and Nestor froze, then fought to control his fear as the grey shadow came closer and stood beside his bed. His fear? But of what? He was the Lord Nestor of the Wamphyri! 'What…?' he gurgled from scabby, tattered lips. 'Who…?'

'Ah!' The grey shape nodded. 'And so you'll recover and return to Starside. Good!'

But though the voice was warm and not unkind, still its tone was strange, bitter, and… satisfied? And what was that it had said? About a return to Starside? Suddenly, anger and frustration flooded Nestor. He struggled to a sitting position and focused his damaged eyes until the grey one's misty silhouette filled in a little and his features took on shape beneath the cowl of his robe. But they were still grey features, poorly defined and oddly… incomplete? The wraithlike figure leaned a little on a crutch which fitted under his right shoulder, and his robe hung like a shroud from his insubstantial frame.

'It's so dark in here,' Nestor said stupidly, or perhaps hopefully.

The other shook his head. 'No, it's light enough. Or will be soon.'

Nestor's pain threatened to engulf him again. He was Wamphyri, but he was still learning their disciplines. As yet he couldn't suppress pain. He fought it back as best he was able, and asked: 'Who are you, and what is this place?'

'My name is Uruk Piatra, called Uruk Long-life,' the grey one answered with a shrug. 'But a misnomer, I fear. And as for this place… it's a leper colony.'

For a single moment Nestor's brain froze: a leper colony! Leprosy, the great bane of vampires! — but in the next he was galvanized to activity. Then, swinging his legs out from under the blankets, he grabbed the dangling arms of the other's robe. But they were only empty sleeves and couldn't take his weight. They ripped at the shoulders and came away in Nestor's hands where he fell back again onto the bed. And he saw how Uruk's twig arms ended in swollen fungus nubs at the elbows!

After that: a rush of adrenalin — a madness of vampire-induced flight in which all of Nestor's previous agonies were forgotten — a blundering confusion of blind terror as he fled the colony out into the forest. And even then no respite, for in the south the light was improving moment by moment. Grey shapes stood gaunt as ghosts in the mist of Nestor's perception as he rushed this way and that under the trees, trying to avoid them. He crashed among a cage of squawking chickens and wrecked it, fell against a fence and tumbled over it, and felt no pain now but only fear as he careened deeper into the dawn woods in search of a place to hide.

A deep hole in which to find safety from the sun and wait out the long day. A sanctuary in which to rest and recuperate, sleep and dream… and nightmare, certainly.

About what had been, and what was yet to be…