Vampire World 1 Blood Brothers

Chapter 25
Along the way were other hunters; glimpsed dimly between the misty trees, they were like wraiths drawn out of the earth by the warmth of the new day. No one approached, and in a few minutes Nathan's guide found the path: a narrow way cut through the woods. By then it was almost full daylight, and Nathan had had more than enough of the cowed hunter's company. 'You say this path will lead me direct to lozel's cave?'

'Indeed, Lord. Indeed it will.'

'I thank you,' said Nathan. 'From here on I go alone.'

'I... can go?'

'Of course.' Nathan turned his back on him and followed the path. But he was aware that behind him the hunter backed off - slowly at first, breathlessly - then turned and tiptoed away, and finally ran for Vladis-town. Shaking his head, Nathan went on.

lozel Kotys was up and about. In the mouth of his cave, the hermit braised slivers of skewered pork on hot stones at the rim of his fire. Becoming aware of Nathan's approach about the same time as Nathan smelled his cooking, lozel looked down from the elevated shelf in front of his cave and saw a vague, grey figure where his feet stirred the lapping mist.

'Now hold!' the hermit's voice rang out, wavering and a little infirm. 'Who comes and why? I receive no casual visitors here ...'

'But you'll receive me,' Nathan called back, coming on without pause. And if lozel wouldn't receive him ... so much for Thikkoul's stargazing!

There was a ladder at the foot of the rocks. As Nathan strode closer lozel went to draw it up. Nathan caught at the lower rungs and held on, and gazed up at the other's furious face scowling down on him. Against the strength of Nathan's arms and the weight of the ladder both, the hermit could do nothing. Anyway, he'd noted his visitor's dress and curious colouring, and as the anger drained out of him something of anxiety, fear took its place.

'Who are you?' he gasped, releasing the ladder and backing off a pace, until only his grey-bearded face was visible. Nathan fixed him with his eyes, and climbed.

'I'm a Traveller,' he said. 'And I've travelled a long way to see you, lozel Kotys.'

lozel was small, wrinkled, middling clean and reasonably clothed in well-worn leathers. While he wasn't extremely old, he did suffer from some infirmity which caused his limbs and voice to tremble. And his dark eyes ran a little with rheumy fluids. 'Eh? A Traveller?' he said, his eyes darting, taking in all they could of Nathan where he stepped off the ladder on to the shelf. 'And you've come a long way, you say? How is it possible? Unless - from Turgosheim?' And now his voice, fallen to a whisper, was hoarse.

Nathan had learned something of the ways of these people, and something of their fears. 'lozel,' he said, 'I'm not here to harm you. I'm simply ... here!' It was difficult to find a reason for being here. He didn't have one, except that Thikkoul had foreseen it, and beyond it to a possible reunion with loved ones whom Nathan had long thought dead and passed from him forever. That alone would be reason enough, but how to explain all that to lozel?

'Simply here?' the hermit repeated him, shaking his head. 'No, if there's one thing I've learned in life it's this: that nothing is "simply" anything, and no one is "simply" anywhere. You were sent - by him!'

'Him?'

'Maglore! You are my ... replacement!'

Nathan sighed. Nothing these people said made any sense. 'I don't know this Maglore,' he said.

'Maglore of Runemanse - in Turgosheim!' the other told him.

Things began to connect. Nathan said: 'That makes twice today I've been mistaken for Wamphyri, or one of their changeling lieutenants. But I'm not. I'm Szgany.' He decided to tell it all. 'I'm from the west, beyond the Great Red Waste. Upon a time the Wamphyri were there, but they were driven out, beaten in a great battle.

Now they've come back - from here. Or rather, from Turgosheim. I came to see how you people lived here in this land of vampires, so that I would know how best to advise my own people in the west.' He shrugged. 'Well, and it seems I must tell them to fight on - even to the last drop of blood! For obviously you don't "live" at all but merely exist, like goats fattened for the slaughter.'

While Nathan talked he scratched vigorously at his left wrist. A grain or two of sand must have got under his strap to irritate him, and he still felt lousy from having walked too close to his hunter guide. But as he paused from speaking, finally the itch became too great. In order to scratch more freely, he rolled the leather strap from his wrist and slipped it free of his fingers. Circling his wrist, a band of white skin showed glassy grains embedded and inflamed. Nathan got them out with his fingernail, rubbed spittle into the red patch, and went to pick up his strap.

lozel had been watching closely, however, and beat him to it. Frowning, he took up Nathan's wristlet strap and looked at it - curiously at first, then with studied intensity. Finally his eyes narrowed in what seemed to be recognition, and nodding knowingly, he gave the strap back.

Nathan said: 'Is there something ...?'

The other shrugged. 'A strange thing to wear as ornament, that's all. Some weakness in your wrist, that you need to keep it strapped up, "man of the west"? Or is the twisted loop some sort of sigil? Your brand, perhaps?' There was that in lozel's quavering voice which Nathan didn't like, which more than suggested that the hermit considered his visitor a liar.

'You people are suspicious, full of fear,' he said. 'You meet strangers like dogs: yapping and snarling. It was a mistake to come here. Even if I could help you, I can't see that it would be worth it.'

lozel looked beyond him, down at the trail where sunlight came filtering. But more than sunlight had come. And: 'Oh yes, you made a mistake coming here, all right!' the hermit said.

Nathan looked, felt his first pang of apprehension as he saw a handful of men approaching. They were led by the ragged hunter. There! That's him!' the hunter pointed. As the party arrived at the foot of the ladder, Nathan climbed down; lozel stayed where he was, up on the rim of the ledge. Nathan faced the newcomers, and saw that they were much of a likeness; inbred, ugly, rough and ragged. The hunter was no village idiot: they were all cut of much the same cloth. And all of them were armed.

'My name's Nathan,' he said, perhaps lamely. 'I've come from the west, beyond the Great Red Waste, as a friend.'

'He has come from the north,' lozel called down. 'Rather, he is fled here from the north - from Tur-gosheim - and comes as an enemy, albeit unwitting ... maybe! They'll be after him in a trice, and if they find him here ...'

The men ringed Nathan about, looked at him, fingered his clothes. One of them took his knife. Nathan stood tall, tried not to appear afraid. He turned to their obvious leader, a man who was burly and big-bellied; the only one who looked as if he ate well. His eyes were piggish in a red, puffy face. Nathan spoke to him. 'lozel is wrong. I'm from the west.'

'Aye,' lozel called down again, his voice heavy with sarcasm. 'And he's come across the Great Red Waste. Why, certainly he has! Only see how desiccated he is, all poisoned from the wasteland's gases. And his clothes all in tatters.' His voice hardened. 'He's fled out of Tur-gosheim, believe it. Some Lord's unwilling pet, and I think I know which one. Why, he even wears Maglore's sigil upon his wrist!'

The burly one nodded, scratched his chin, looked Nathan in the eye and gave a musing grunt. 'lozel's right,' he said. 'No one has ever come out of the west. In any case, the lands beyond the Great Red Waste are legendary: we're not even sure that they exist.' He frowned. 'But I'll grant you one thing: you don't look Szgany.'

'One of Maglore's experiments,' lozel interrupted again from the safety of his ledge. 'This one's a changeling!'

'Eh?' The leader of the bunch at once drew back from Nathan, likewise his companions. 'A vampire thing?'

'Not him,' lozel shook his head. 'And that's puzzling, I admit. But I was cooking and my hands are smeared with oil of kneblasch, which I rubbed into the leather of his strap. If he were Wamphyri we'd know it: he'd be in pain from that strange strap of his. Also, he carries silver on his person. Last but not least, sunlight falls on him and he suffers no ill.'

'It's true!' the scabby hunter put in. 'He came from the grasslands, with the sun full on him!'

'So,' said their leader, eyeing Nathan up and down. 'And what's to be done with you?'

Nathan glanced at him in disgust, then looked up at lozel until their eyes met and locked. And: What are you thinking, you scruffy, treacherous old dog? Nathan wondered. Treachery, yes - just as Thikkoul had warned.

lozel's thoughts were easy to read; his mind had been opened before, often, so that he couldn't close it. Even Nathan's small talent found no difficulty in breaching his mental defences. Or perhaps it was simply that Nathan was desperate to read the other's thoughts.

He is or was Maglore's, I'm sure of it, lozel was thinking. But is he a runaway, or was he sent? Is he here to replace me, or did he hope to enlist my aid in hiding himself away?

'So,' Nathan said, 'what I've heard about lozel Kotys is true.' (Two could make accusations.)

'What's that?' the burly one was interested.

Nathan glanced at him again, contemptuously. 'Why, that the Wamphyri use him as a spy against the Szgany. Against you! Except he blinds you with the lies of a so-called "mystic", so that you don't see him for what he really is. Now tell me, who else have you ever met who returned out of Turgosheim?'

'Don't listen to him, Dobruj!' lozel screeched. 'What, me, a spy? I spy on no one. To what end? Why, all I ever ask is to be left alone. But this one: just look at him! His clothes, his alien colours, his story! Hah! From beyond the Great Red Waste, indeed! His lies are obvious.'

Dobruj was the burly one, the chief. Craning his neck, he scowled up at lozel. 'Aye, and this isn't the first time you've been suspicioned, old hermit! If I had the proof of it, one way or the other ... huh!' He fingered his chin again, and looked at Nathan. 'But meanwhile, what's to be done with you?'

'Only listen to me,' lozel had managed to compose himself, 'and you'll know what to do with him. Put him in the tithe and so save one of your own! Vormulac's tithesmen come tonight, and already your tally is short, because of deserters. So why not let this one make up the numbers, eh? If he, too, is a runaway - from Turgosheim - they'll surely take him back again. Which will stand you and Vladistown in good stead, Dobruj. Ah, but if he's a spy, they'll find reasons not to take him! And then ... there will be time later, to deal with him. Either way, you've nothing to lose.'

Dobruj thought about it, cocked his head on one side and glanced yet again at Nathan before making up his mind. Finally he nodded and said: 'It makes sense.' At which, two of his men grabbed Nathan by the arms. He tried to fight them off until a third held the point of his own knife to his ribs. But:

'None of that!' Dobruj commanded. 'If he's going in the tithe we don't want him damaged. Right, enough of this. Back to town ...'

As they bundled Nathan along the path, Dobruj called up to the hermit: 'You, lozel - be sure you're close to hand in town when the tithesmen come. For should these accusations of yours make a fool of me, I'll be wanting words with you ...'

'Hah!' the hermit called out, shaking his fists from on high. 'You'll see! You'll see!'

Dobruj paused a moment and narrowed his piggish eyes at him. 'Aye, we'll see what we'll see,' he said. 'But make sure you're there anyway.' It was a command, not to be denied. And it was a sure threat.

lozel watched them out of sight, then went to a ledge in the cave and took up a sigil shaped in gold. It had been given to him by the Seer Lord Maglore of Rune-manse. Maglore's sigil: whose shape was the very image of the strap on Nathan's wrist, but moulded in heavy metal. Muttering curses, lozel carried it to a dark corner, sat down on the edge of a stool, and closed his eyes. And just as Maglore had instructed him, so the hermit held the golden shape warm in his hand and felt its weird contours, and sent his thoughts winging, winging, winging -

- All across the mountains to Turgosheim ...

In Vladistown - a huddle of maybe one hundred and twenty drab dwellings of timber, sod, withes and skins; nothing so sophisticated or large as Mirlu Township, Tireni Scarp or Settlement - Nathan was detained with six other young men in a timbered pen which was largely open to the sky. On the inside, a few narrow awnings kept the sun off the prisoners. These were not criminals but tithelings: the 'legitimate get' of vampire tithesmen, who would arrive out of Turgosheim after sundown to collect their miserable flesh-and-blood levy. Since male and female tithelings were kept apart, there were two such stockades.

Nathan's belt had been taken from him and replaced with a length of twine. To offer him up to a lieutenant of the Wamphyri bearing silver upon his person ... the consequences would be unthinkable! He would never see that belt, buckle or sheath again. As for the silver locket and chain given him by Atwei at their parting: they went unnoticed under his flowing hair and soft leather shirt. After dark and before the tithesmen came, he would secrete them in an inside pocket.

Nathan was mortally afraid but tried not to show it. The others penned with him were less reticent. Listening to their whispers, it was plain they'd given up all hope. They saw themselves as fodder for the Wamphyri; even when loved ones came to speak to them through the perimeter fence, they could scarcely be bothered. The place was heavy with depression, rank with the acrid stench of fear. A tented privy in one corner did nothing to improve the atmosphere. Nathan would like to shut the hushed conversations out and think his own thoughts, but could not. In the end he listened however listlessly, gleaning what scraps of information he could.

The tithesmen would come an hour or so after sundown, when the last soft flush lay low on the southern horizon. Should all go well they would take Dobruj's tribute of flesh and be out of here in less than one hour; but if anything was amiss ... someone must be made to pay for it. Dobruj was the town's headman, whose back bore the scars of past failures, when the tally had been short now and then. He wasn't likely to make that mistake again. Yet even now a pair of defectors had brought the count down: the tally was two men short -or one man, now that this flashy stranger had been taken - so that Dobruj must find one more, when the tithesmen came.

The day was no shorter than any Sunside day, yet somehow time flew. Nathan likewise thought of flight, but outside the stockade the guards were cautious for their lives; only let a titheling escape ... who would take his place? When water was brought Nathan drank it, but he refused the tasteless food. It was snapped up by the others as if they hadn't eaten in a week. Well, things were not that bad, but neither were they good. He continued to listen to their stories ...

For a year and nine months now Wamphyri demands had been on the increase, tithe collections more frequent, the sack of Sunside's resources more utter. The Lords of Turgosheim were draining the townships as never before; they seemed unable to get enough of anything; there was such a thirst, a hunger and fire in them as to outdo all previous greed. As for its cause or source: who could say? What man would ever dare to ask? But one thing for sure: their monstrous works across the barrier mountains were grown more monstrous yet!

Things had crashed in the foothills - gigantic, hideous Wamphyri constructs; mad, mewling, ravaging carnivores - word of which had found its way through the forests to the towns on the rim. The Wamphyri made aerial monsters in Turgosheim, from innocent flesh and blood! But these were creatures far removed from their doleful, nodding manta flyers. As to their purpose: again, who would dare ask?

Nathan didn't need to ask; for remembering only too well that night almost a hundred sundowns ago, when a ... a creature called Vratza Wransthrall had died on a cross in Settlement - and the things that creature had told to Lardis Lidesci - Nathan knew! Wratha's raiders had been first to fly the coop, yes, but others would soon follow her. And they were preparing even now, in Turgosheim. If the quality of their warriors was such that they were still crashing in the hills, however ... well, obviously Wratha had a head start. And how dearly Nathan would love to get that information back to Lardis Lidesci, if Lardis was still alive. Somehow, Nathan fancied that he was ...

In the heat of the day Nathan drowsed, and when the flies would let him he slept; it seemed as well to conserve his energies for whatever was to come. Sleeping, he dreamed of several things, most of which were forgotten whenever he started awake. Dimly, he remembered the mournful howling of his wolves in the faraway. And certain of the Thyre dead, whose sad thoughts had reached him even here.

Midday came and went; more water and a crust of bread; the stockade guards changed and changed again. Nathan slept, jerked shivering awake in the shade of his awning, put out an arm into the waning sunlight to absorb a little warmth. Waning, yes - already. For all that Sunside's day was like half a week in the world of his unknown father, still time's inexorable creep was the same in both worlds.

Later . .. Nathan was hungry. This time when food came he ate it, and appreciated it. Already his perspective was changing. Once, he read the mind behind a child's sad eyes peering in at him through the stockade fence: When will it be my turn? Not for a long time, for I'm only six. Aye, but soon enough, soon enough.

Another Visitor' as evening drew in was lozel Kotys. His mind was loose as ever; it overflowed with venom, but also with wonder and not a little fear. Who are you, and where from? Out of the west? Is it possible? Not Maglore's man, as I've discovered, though he wants you badly enough now. But who? How? Why?

Nathan looked up at the glaring eyes in the bearded face, which glowered at him through the gapped fence. 'Oh?' he said, in a low voice. 'And have you spoken with your master, then? Are you his thrall, in mind if not in body?'

And lozel gasped and went away ...

Nathan slept again, long and deep, and woke up cold and cowed. The first stars were out, and beyond the stockade's wall a fire blazed up. Tables had been set, where barrels of wine stood in a row. A low platform had been erected, with a number of great wooden chairs at its centre. Dobruj was there, striding nervously this way and that, waiting.

Then: it happened all at once.

The stars were blotted out; they blinked off and on again as something black, several things, passed between. There came the throb of powerful wings to fan the fire, as shapes of midnight flowed overhead, settling to a rise in the near-distant grassland border. And finally the tithesmen, Wamphyri lieutenants, were here.

They came striding, four of them - tall, powerful, cruel, arrogant; certain of themselves, showing nothing of fear, only scorn - with lesser vampire thralls bringing up the rear. Nathan saw them through the stockade fence, and knew where he had seen such before. They were much of a kind with Vratza Wransthrall.

No time was wasted: Dobruj met them grovellingly, and was pushed aside. He followed them to the platform where they took seats. And: 'Bring them on,' one of them, the chief among them, commanded. His scarlet eyes glanced towards the stockades. 'But quality this time, if you please, Dobruj. For I was here a year ago, remember? You won't be foisting any more scum on me this time!'

The tithelings were paraded, females first. One at a time, eight girls were taken up on to the platform, where the lieutenant ripped their blouses to the waist, exposing their breasts, and lifted their skirts to admire their thighs. And while they stumbled there in tears, trying to cover themselves, he licked his lips and sniffed at them lewdly, like a dog, but without seeming much impressed. In any case: They'll do,' he grunted shortly, grudgingly. 'And the men?'

As the girls were led away, Nathan was brought out along with the six other young men. He was the fourth put up on to the platform. 'Oh?' said the lieutenant. 'And what have we here?'

Dobruj answered breathlessly: 'A stray - we don't know from where. I thought maybe he'd come ... out of Turgosheim?'

The lieutenant was all of six inches taller than Nathan; pinching his face in a massive hand, he squeezed until Nathan opened his mouth and displayed his teeth, much like a shad examined by a man. 'What?' The lieutenant released Nathan, sent him staggering, and turned to Dobruj. 'Eh? Out of Turgosheim, did you say? How so?'

Dobruj flapped his pudgy hands. 'His clothes, Lord, and his colouring. He's not a man of these parts. We thought perhaps ...'

'Be quiet!' the other told him. 'You're not supposed to think. We don't need you to think. But this one was never in Turgosheim, believe me! However, he is the best of what we've seen, so I'm not displeased. Now, let's see the rest.'

The other three were brought up together; the lieutenant merely glanced at them, then at Dobruj. 'One short,' he growled, warningly, his eyes reduced to crimson slits.

The eighth comes now,' Dobruj answered, as a scuffling sounded from the edge of the firelight. His men dragged lozel Kotys into view, kicking and screaming. But as soon as he saw the vampires he fell silent, gasping.

The chief lieutenant looked at him for several long seconds, then at Dobruj. Until from deep in his throat, soft and dangerously low, 'Some little joke, perhaps, Dobruj?' He took hold of the headman in the armpit, squeezing him hard there as he drew him close. 'I certainly hope not.'

Dobruj gulped, gasped his pain and fluttered his free arm. 'Lord,' he cried out for his life. 'Please listen! All of your provisions have been put aside on travois, exactly as required. Fruits, nuts, honey in jars, grains, beast-fodder by the bale, and wines. As for the barrels you see on the table there: they are extra to the tithe - for you! Take a sip, a taste, I implore you!' One of his men ran forward with a jug. The lieutenant grabbed it up, drank until it swilled his face, and spilled the rest over Dobruj's head.

'Aye, it's good!' he said, tossing Dobruj aside. 'But what shall I do with this?' He pointed at lozel, grovelling in front of the platform.

lozel looked up. Take me to Maglore!' he cried. 'He will have me. I was his upon a time, until he returned me here ...'

'Ah!' the lieutenant's eyes opened wide. 'So you are that one! The Seer Mage mentioned you, of course - his spy!'

'There! There!' lozel grinned, however lopsidedly, aware of Dobruj's eyes - and the eyes of many another - burning on him. 'I knew it would be so.'

'Indeed,' said the lieutenant. 'And Maglore told me: "If lozel is offered in the tithe, by all means bring him in, but don't bring him to me. For if he is a traitor to his own, how then will he serve me? Ah, but the manses will always require provisioning, and even offensive meat is still meat!" So spake Maglore!'

'No - no!' lozel jumped up, turned to run.

'Still him!' Dobruj ordered it, grimly and with some satisfaction. And one of his men cudgelled the hermit behind the ear, so that he fell asprawl. With which it was over.

The chief lieutenant came down off the platform and went among the tithelings. He singled out the two comeli-est girls, plus Nathan and one other youth, then spoke to the lesser vampire thralls who accompanied him. 'These four go with us. The rest are for the march through the pass. Be sure not to lose any on the way.'

He saw them off with their laden travois along a forest track, and without another word headed out of town across the plain to where the silhouettes of flyers nodded grotesquely at the crest of a rise. Nathan and the other youth were each given a small barrel to carry; they and the girls were shepherded ahead; the lieutenants brought up the rear, carrying barrels as if they were weightless. And the rest was dreamlike: The great grey beasts nodding in the night; the barrels loaded into their fetid pouches; the tithelings made fast at the rear of long saddles, where they were warned: 'One false move and we'll ditch you into space, and see if you can fly like the Wamphyri!'

Then the launching and dizzy climb as hugely arched wings trapped wafts from below; the sick, soaring flight over twelve or thirteen miles of forest, foothills, ragged peaks; finally the sighing, slanting descent between crags, spires, flaring orange and yellow gas jets and reeking chimneys. Down, down into a vampire realm, past grim battlements, ruddily glaring windows and balconies, towards communal landing- and launching-bays in the great dark gorge which was Turgosheim ...

In normal circumstances, Maglore would rarely if ever lower himself to attend a draw and allocation of common tithelings; he would send a thrall, to collect his get on his behalf. But these were scarcely normal times, and if lozel Kotys could be believed this 'Nathan' was no common or ordinary Sunsider.

Three 'lots' of tithelings had been brought in: four from Vladistown, five from Gengisheim, six out of Kehrls-crag. These were the so-called 'cream', flown in for special treatment; the commoner stuff would follow on foot. But the draw was the same for all: bone sigils in a bag, and luck the only arbiter.

The draw for the best of the batch was worked on a strict roster. Maglore must consider himself fortunate that it was his turn in the round, else he must do some serious bargaining and even then be lucky to obtain this oddity, this Nathan, before it could be ... damaged. But his luck was out (his sigils had already been drawn; he'd got two middling girls and a loutish youth), and so was obliged to wait and do a little bargaining after all. Which was his reason for lingering until Nathan had been 'won' by Zindevar Cronesap.

Zindevar wasn't at the fatesaying in person; neither were the Lords Eran Painscar, Grigor Hakson, and Lorn Halfstruck of Trollmanse. All were busy elsewhere - occupied or preoccupied with their various creative endeavours, most likely - but lieutenants were there in their stead. Eventually Zindevar's man had his three -two more males, to go with that 'item' which Maglore found most interesting - and headed for the launching bays. Maglore left one third of his get (the surly youth) in the care of one of his two thralls, and with the half-naked, whimpering girls in tow caught up with Zindevar's unhappy-seeming lieutenant in an antechamber.

'No luck, then?' he said, coming up behind him.

'Eh?' Taken by surprise, the man turned, saw Maglore and said, 'Oh!' He bowed clumsily. 'My Lord Maglore!' His confusion was understandable; it wasn't usual for Wamphyri Lords to pass the time of night with the lieutenants of other Lords or Ladies; even one's own lieutenants could scarcely be considered worthy persons. Then Maglore's query struck home.

'Luck?' the man's face turned sour as he eyed Maglore's girls. 'It appears that you at least have more than enough! As for Zindevar ...' He shrugged sorrily.

Maglore nodded. 'She won't be happy with just three lads, be sure.'

'Huh!' the other scowled, then rounded on his charges and glared at them for being male.

Nathan, no less uncertain and afraid than his fellow prisoners, was nevertheless fascinated to recognize Mag-lore from two separate sources; one was his name (lozel Kotys had mentioned him as a former master); the other was his awesome and awe-inspiring aspect. He was without question that same 'mage' glimpsed however mistily in the eye of Thikkoul's mind as he gazed on Nathan's stars to read his future: the one of whom he'd warned, He would use you, Jearn from you, instruct and corrupt you.'

So that where the other captives cringed back, avert- ing their eyes from Zindevar's lieutenant as he rounded on them, Nathan continued to stand tall and gaze upon Maglore. It was merely his way - the Szgany way, innocent and even nai've - and never intended as a slight or an insult, neither to Maglore nor even to the bullying lieutenant. But that one's eyes blazed up like fires as he mistook Nathan's natural curiosity for dumb insolence.

'What?' he roared, catching Nathan up by the front of his jacket and shirt. 'Why, you - !' He held him like that a moment, then hissed and thrust him violently away, and snatched back his hand as if he'd been stung. Nathan's jacket was torn open; a button popped at the neck of his shirt; Atwei's silver locket, which he had replaced around his neck, dangled into view. And the lieutenant still astonished, gazing at his huge, iron-hard hand. Then:

'What?' he said again, a whisper this time, as finally he noticed the locket at Nathan's neck. 'Silver? Can I believe it? Would you poison me, then? You ... prissy ... little ...!'

Pointing a shaking hand at the locket, he grated: Take it off! Throw it down!'

Nathan did so, and stood with his back to the hewn stone wall. The lieutenant stepped forward snarling, stamped on the locket with a booted foot. It flew into several pieces, and a tight curl of hair sprang free. 'Hah!' The man pounced, snatched up the black wisp and showed it to Nathan. 'And this?'

'A ... a keepsake,' Nathan gasped. The pubic hair of ... of a maiden.'

'Indeed!' The man grinned, kicked bits of locket in all directions, held out his free hand palm up for Nathan to see. The flesh of his palm was grey, calloused, horny. Even as Nathan watched, it formed sharp scales or rasps like some hideous flensing weapon. Then the lieutenant clasped his hands together, crushing the lock between them. And with a grinding motion he reduced the tight coil to so much black snuff, inhaling it with gusto, in pinches, into eager, quivering nostrils.

'Hah! Delightful!' he crowed then, smacking his lips. 'And was she beautiful?'

'She was Thyre,' Nathan at once answered him, with a great deal of bravery and more than a little satisfaction. If he was going to die it might as well be now. 'She was a desert trog!'

For a moment there was a silence broken only by the whimpering of Nathan's fellow tithelings. Then... the lieutenant's grey-mottled face turned greyer still as he swelled up huge as if to burst. He grabbed Nathan by the throat with one hand, and drew back the other to slap him. Just one such slap would ruin Nathan's face forever. Except -

'Now, hold,' said Maglore, quietly, yet in a voice which brooked no argument. 'Only damage him and it's no deal. And I shall tell Zindevar you lost her a pair of lovely little playmates for her bed.'

The lieutenant's hand froze in mid-air; his head swivelled on his bull neck and he glared at Maglore, then frowned and said: 'What deal?' Finally he remembered his manners, blinked and relaxed a little. And: 'Lord Maglore,' he said, 'I mean no disrespect, but it is the Lady Zindevar commands me, not you.'

'Aye, and she'll command that you are disembowelled!' Maglore chuckled, however humourlessly, '- If you don't take these girls into Cronespire in exchange for that one foppish youth. Make up your mind, quick!'

Now the other was suspicious. He glanced at Nathan again. 'Oh? And what is it with him? Why would you want this one, who is either an idiot, or just plain insolent, or both? Bringing silver into Turgosheim, indeed! What madness! Don't the Szgany teach their Sunside brats anything these days?'

Maglore shrugged, and answered mysteriously, There is Sunside and there is Sunside, and Szgany and Szgany, and what is taught in one place may not be deemed necessary in another ... not yet. But this one -' he shrugged again,'- I like his colours, which are weird. Also, he seems stupidly docile, dumb, even innocent; he shall follow me around Runemanse like a pet. As for Zindevar: she shall have these girls to tweak, which is bound to stand you firmly in her favour.'

A moment's pause for thought, and: 'Done!' Zindevar's lieutenant released Nathan, sent him flying along the wall and out of his sight behind Maglore. And the Mage of Runemanse told his girls:

'Go with this gentleman and he will take you to your new mistress, a very lovely Lady who will show you many wonderful things!' Hearing which, even Zindevar's 'gentleman' burst into baying laughter, as Maglore took Nathan's shoulder and quickly walked away with him ...

Along the way to Runemanse - a route covering almost two and a half miles of caves, crags, causeways; often climbing internally through communal cavern systems, or externally over vertiginous chasms and up dizzily spiralling walkways of bone and cartilage - Maglore kept up an onslaught of seemingly innocuous questions. But Nathan knew for a fact that his interest was anything but innocent, which was made obvious by the veritable barrage of mental probes which Maglore used in a prolonged simultaneous attempt to penetrate the shield around Nathan's secret mind. Given the chance (if Nathan were to relax his guard for a single moment), he knew that these probes would at once enter and explore the innermost caverns of his brain.

Even before meeting Maglore, Nathan had known that the Wamphyri Lord was a telepath; however stupidly -unwittingly, whatever - Maglore's spy lozel Kotys, the so-called 'mystic', had given him away. But Nathan could never have anticipated the full range of the Seer Lord's mind, whose insidious energies seethed in his vampire skull like the smoke of balefires, sending out curling black tendrils of thought in all directions.

In order to maintain and reinforce the telepathic wall with which Nathan had surrounded himself, he used the subterfuge of asking questions of his own: he knew how difficult it would be for Maglore to scry upon his mind and construct meaningful answers to his questions at one and the same time. And why shouldn't he question? Nathan knew that Maglore would not harm him, not yet at least and perhaps not ever. No, for Thikkoul had foreseen a long stay for him in Rune-manse, but nothing specifically harmful that Nathan could remember.

The sun rises and sets, Thikkoul had read in his stars, and sunups come and go in a blur where you wander in a great dark castJe ol many caves. I see your face: your hollow eyes and - greying hair?

Well, that last was ominous, admittedly. But now that Nathan was here, what had he to lose? Very little of his own, for in Turgosheim his life was nothing; but still there were certain interests he must protect. His knowledge of the Thyre, for instance: their secret places over and under the desert; also his familiarity with old Sunside, where Wratha and her renegades (and in a little while the vampires of Turgosheim) would do to his people what had been done here. He must give nothing of such knowledge away to benefit the Wamphyri, not if there was a way to avoid it.

'Why didn't we fly to Runemanse?' he asked Maglore where they crossed a swaying bridge of sinew and arching, alveolate cartilage. 'Do you have no flyers?'

'I have one, aye,' Maglore answered, offering him a curious, perhaps indulgent glance. 'It is in use now, where a man of mine flies back a surly Kehrlscrag youth to Runemanse. But flyers are for the younger Lords, my son, and for the generals to ride out and command their armies. Oh, I have made a flyer or two in my time, but mainly I prefer to walk. When I can go on foot I do so, but where the way is too sheer or distant I fly. Personally, I dislike great heights; for gravity is a curious force and insistent. I have never flown in my own right, as certain Lords are wont to do, for that requires an awesome strength, and alas my body is feeble - by comparison.' But he did not say with what.

They were in the middle of the span. In the dark, distant sprawl of the gorge, the lights and flaring exhausts of some of the spires came up level with their eyes. More than a thousand feet below, Turgosheim's depths were lost in dark velvet shadows. Maglore paused and drew his charge to him, and with an arm around his shoulder leaned out over the fretted cartilage wall to look down. Behind Nathan and Maglore, one of the mage's vampire thralls waited silent but alert.

And: 'About flying,' said Maglore quietly, huskily, with a scarlet, sideways glance at Nathan. 'Can you imagine flying from here? To leap out upon the air, and form your flesh into stretchy scoops like the wings of a bat? To trap the currents rising out of Turgosheim, and so glide from peak to peak? Ah, but what an art that would be! Even though I've never used it, I have it, for I am Wamphyri. I probably could do it even now, despite the lack of that special strength which could only be mine by virtue of ... a certain lifestyle. But you: you would fall like a stone, and splash like an egg ...'

Maglore drew Nathan closer in an arm which contracted like a vice, crushing his shoulders. Nathan felt the other's awesome strength, and for a moment thought it was his intention to lift him up and throw him down. For all his protestations about his 'feeble body', the vampire Lord could do it ... just so easily. Nathan looked at his hideous face, so close - that long-lived, evil face, grooved as old leather; its white eyebrows tapering into veined temples under a lichen-furred dome of a skull; the crimson lamps of Maglore's eyes, set deep in purple sockets - and tried not to be afraid. Perhaps Maglore sensed it: the bolstering of Nathan's resolve, his determination, and perhaps he admired it. At any rate he released him, and said:

'Go on, cross the bridge and I shall follow on.' And as Nathan set out: 'Aye, there's a great art to flying,' Maglore repeated himself from close behind, but in a lighter tone now. 'One of the more physical arts of the Wamphyri, called metamorphism. But there are arts and there are arts. Arts of the body, of the will, and of the mind. Indeed, for will and mind are not the same. I have known splendid minds with little or no will at all, and creatures with a rare and wilful tenacity but hardly anything of mind!'

Nathan walked on, across the bridge of bones, the fossilized cartilage of mutated men, and spied ahead at the end of the span a walled staircase carved from the face of the gorge itself. It went up a hundred, two hundred feet, to where Turgosheim's rim had been notched and weathered into wind-, rain- and time-sculpted battlements. But there were landings, too, with dark-arched passageways leading off to rooms and regions within that vastly hollowed jut of rock, that massive promontory turret, Maglore's manse over an abyss of air and darkness. And there were also gaunt win- dows - some of them aglow with fitfully flickering lights, and others dark as the orbits of a skull - which gloomed out from it.

'Runemanse!' Maglore whispered in Nathan's ear, when his charge came to a stumbling halt. 'In which I practise my arts. And where you will practise ... yours?'

At the end of the bridge, as he stepped up into a walled landing or embrasure, Nathan turned to Maglore. 'My arts?'

Peering at him through red-glowing, slitted eyes, Mag-lore grasped his shoulder in a hand like iron. 'I have sensed arts in you, yes,' he said. 'Undeveloped as yet ... perhaps. Do you understand mentalism?'

Nathan was almost caught off guard. 'Mentalism?'

'Call me master,' Maglore growled. 'When you answer me, you must call me master. Here in Runemanse I have creatures, thralls, beings which are mine. I shall require of you what I require of them: obedience. If your ways are seen to be slack, so might theirs grow slack. Wherefore you will call me master. Do you understand?'

'Yes, master.'

'Good.' And returning to his previous subject: 'Mentalism, aye. Telepathy. To read the secret minds - the thoughts - of others, and so discover their wily plots and devious devices.'

'I know nothing of it,' Nathan shook his head. His guard was solid now, or as near solid as he could make it. But Maglore's eyes grew huge in a moment as for one last time he tried to enter his charge's mind. Nathan could almost feel his disappointment as he failed and withdrew.

Then Maglore nodded, and: 'Perhaps you don't at that,' he said. 'But you do have a capacity for strange arts, believe me. Yes, for I sense them in you. Perhaps we can develop them. One such is the opposite of mental-ism: it is to create a wall which shields the user's mind from outside interference. In some rare men it is a natural thing. One cannot read their minds, however crafty one's skill.'

Nathan shrugged and tried to look bewildered. 'I am trying to understand, master.'

Maglore relaxed, sighed, and said, 'Let it be.' He indicated an arched entrance across the landing. 'This is to be your home. Enter now and be with Runemanse as you have been with me: unafraid. For to walk with fear is to fail, especially here.'

Nathan held back a little, pausing there on the external landing. But in fact it wasn't fear this time, more the oppressiveness of the place, like the pause before lowering oneself into some deep and lightless hole. Or perhaps it was the sigil carved in the virgin rock of the arch which held him back: the twisted loop which Nathan had known all his days, which indeed was part of him and was now to be even more a part of his life. And so he stood there, looking up at it; until, but impatiently now: 'Enter!' Maglore commanded again. 'Enter now, of your own free will, into Runemanse.'

Nathan could only obey, while in his secret mind he wondered: But at the end of the day, will it be so easy to leave, 'of my own free will'? And as Maglore's hand closed like a claw on his shoulder, guiding him forward into the perpetual gloom of Runemanse, he supposed that it would not.. .