Budayeen Nights: Stories

Introduction to Marîd and the Trail of Blood

This story is one I commissioned, and gave George the idea for. I had been asked to edit an anthology of stories about lady vampires, and I went to several science fiction and fantasy writers (as opposed to horror writers), to get a science fictional take on what vampires are or might be. (Another story that appeared in the same anthology was Larry Niven’s “Song of the Night People,” which expanded into The Ringworld Throne.)

This also is one of my favorite Budayeen stories, mostly because it spotlights one of my favorite characters in that world, Bill the Cab Driver. Bill is a minor character in all three of the novels: Having won the lottery, he spent all the money to have one of his lungs removed and replaced with a sac containing a lifetime supply of the most powerful hallucinogen known to the underworld, time-released into his bloodstream so that Bill can be permanently, blissfully, and devastatingly stoned for the rest of his days, a condition which doesn’t improve his cab driving any.

Bill is, in his way, a very New Orleans character — like Safiyya the Lamb Lady, who also figures in the story, and Laila who runs the moddy shop. Certainly there are enough dented fenders in New Orleans to attest to the fact that, for a long time, Louisiana had no open-container law. Maybe they still don’t. George was fascinated by the strange New Orleans street-people who wandered around the French Quarter for years.

“Trail of Blood” is also one of the few Budayeen stories in which Marîd acts from an almost unselfish motive — that is, without being backed against a wall and put in peril of his own life.

Just one of those things you see on the Street on those long hot Budayeen nights.

— Barbara Hambly