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  “Aye, for Turgosheim confines these young Lords, who are restless and hungry for expansion into more seemly manses and aeries of their own. They feel their burgeoning strength and would vie with one another, and day by day they make practice and flex their muscles. For the time being all of this gauntlet-rattling is verbal; but soon, if they can’t go abroad to make war, who can guarantee that they won’t make it here? It wouldn’t be the first time—no, nor even the tenth—that Turgosheim was torn with internecine war!”

  Karz Biteri’s voice fell to a hoarse whisper. Taken in the grip of his subject, he was no longer the Historian but a commentator on current events: a dangerous pastime at best, and more so for a thrall. Even so, he wasn’t voicing his own specific fears but those of his master, Maglore of Runemanse, who was himself much given to rumination and often out loud. “Even now,” Biteri continued, “in the secret caverns of certain of the larger manses …” He paused and glanced nervously all about, cautioning: “— this next is rumour, you understand, which may not be repeated—warriors designed for aerial combat are mewling in their vats! Abominations which have been forbidden ever since that creature of Shaitan’s slaughtered Turgo Zolte in the swamps, on the day his people came fleeing out of the west to make homes for themselves in … in the …”

  He paused again and once more cast all about with startled eyes, this way and that. Had someone come into the room unseen? Suddenly, for all the flaring of the gas jets and the searing glare of their mantles, it seemed darker. But then, it always seemed darker when a Lord was about.

  Karz Biteri gulped and his parched throat clenched in upon itself like a fist. But somehow he croaked out the last few words: “Homes for … for themselves in … in the dark clefts and crags.”

  And as the echoes of his words died away, now the unseen intruder made his—no, her—presence known, and flowed into view from the shadows. Seeing and knowing her, Karz gulped that much harder and fell to his knees. “My … my Lady!”

  This was a public place in the lower levels, set aside for aspiring lieutenants, thrall nurses, manse-managers, beast victuallers, brewers, and other specially talented thralls such as Karz Biteri. Honeycombed with lesser rooms, it was a sprawling cavern system which looked out over eastern Starside towards the sunless and forbidding Icelands. At the current hour one would not normally expect to find any Lord or Lady in this vicinity; there was precious little here for them, or so Karz Biteri had always supposed. And this close to sunup (even though the sun could not harm them in the depths of Turgosheim) they usually preferred to be in their own apartments. But right here and now the presence of the Lady Wratha was living, or undead, proof of the unpredictability of the Wamphyri.

  Wratha the Risen: she was herself like a ray of sunlight falling upon some dark jewel. At least, that was her guise. But Biteri knew that on occasion she looked far more like something risen up from hell! For indeed she had returned from hell, or its brink, this ex-Szgany girl who was now a powerful Lady of the Wamphyri.

  She laid a hand upon his bowed, balding head and her perfume fell on him cloyingly. “Up, Historian,” she sighed. “What? And is this not a free place? You have every right to be here, you and these tithelings of yours. But I was passing by, on my way through the levels to Wrathspire, and I heard something of your words as you instructed these … young people.” She drew him to one side, while he fluttered his hands and said:

  “My … my words, Lady? But there was nothing of any deliberate mischief in them. I merely recounted the histories, what little is known of them, in accordance with my Lord Maglore’s command. It is part of the induction, and …”

  “I know these things,” she stopped him with a glance.

  “But I thought that something which I heard was more of the present than the past, and I wondered at the presumption of any thrall that he should so speculate upon the affairs of his superiors.”

  “My Lady,” again Biteri went to his knees, almost collapsing there this time. “If I have … offended?”

  “Up!” she hissed, almost dragging him to his feet. “Perhaps you have offended. But if so … well, you are not my thrall to punish, and as yet I’ve no reason to repeat what I heard.” She glared at him, and her huge eyes opened a fraction wider. Their fire held an almost physical heat, which would normally be contained beneath the scarp of carved bone worn upon her brow, and subdued by small circular plates of a deep blue volcanic glass fixed to her temples in front of her conch-like ears. But when she opened wide the doors to those furnace eyes, like this …

  She saw the cold sweat on Biteri’s brow, the pounding of a vein in his neck, and inquired: “Do you fear me, Historian?”

  “I am but a thrall,” he gave his stock answer, the only entirely safe answer. “Here in Turgosheim, the Wamphyri hold sway. If I do or think incorrectly I may die, or worse! Wherefore I fear no one but myself, for my own actions underwrite the terms of my existence. I repeat: in Turgosheim the Lords, and of course the Ladies, hold sway.”

  “Only in Turgosheim?”

  “And in all the world,” he added hurriedly, “when the sun is down and shadows creep. As for me: things are as they are, and mine is not to fear but to obey.”

  “Then obey me now,” she told him, her voice low, languorous, deadly dangerous, “and make no more speeches of warriors mewling in their vats. Ah, I know where you have heard these whispers—which are the fears of old, old men, whose learning has stunted their manly appetites—but put them out of your mind. Aye, while yet your mind is your own.”

  “Of course, Lady, yes!” he answered, following her where she moved back towards the tithelings.

  She paused and took his arm, as if he were the friend of a lifetime, saying, “Do you know, Historian, but just as Maglore has you, I too had a trusted thrall upon a time. Oh, I’ve had many such, aye, but this one was … very special. No hard and thorny lieutenant, but a soft-skinned song-bird out of Sunside. Yes, it’s true: he bathed me and sang me songs! Alas, but the many intimacies I allowed him were not enough; he would be my husband and lord it over Wrathspire as my equal! For he was a strong, comely young man, and what was I but a woman, after all?”

  She let go his arm and suddenly her voice was cold as ice. “Well, he’s not much for singing now, though I’ll admit he grunts a bit. For now when I go to my bed, the bulk of his warty hide guards my doorway, and what small part remains of his brain cringes from the lash of my thoughts!”

  And Karz shuddered deep inside as he remembered what he’d heard of the guardian of Wratha’s bedchamber: that it once was a handsome Szgany thrall, whose ambitions had been bigger than his member. And he was reminded of an old thrall adage: “Never attempt the seduction of your master, neither by word nor deed. Remember: seduction was only the first of his disciplines!”

  But Wratha’s voice was light again as she commanded, “And now you must show me these likely tithe-lings of yours, fresh out of Sunside.”

  The Historian couldn’t deny her. What she suggested went against the general rule, but she’d caught him preaching less than orthodox lessons, which gave her the upper hand. And now she would inspect the tithelings, likewise unorthodox, but what could he do? Nothing, except step aside as she went among them smiling like a girl: the Lady Wratha, dead and buried ninety-five years ago, but undead all the years flown between.

  As she turned her eyes away from him, Karz could only marvel at this thing anew. He was forty-five years old and looked seventy, while she was more than one hundred years but looked only twenty—at the moment, anyway. It was her vampire, he knew, moulding her metamorphic flesh to the shape she desired, presenting her as fresh and vital as life itself. Ah, but only anger her and the thing inside would respond instantly, a transformation which even the greatest of the Lords would avoid at any cost! For Wratha was no simple Szgany girl, and it astonished the Historian that she ever had been—if she ever had been.

  He thought on what Maglore the Seer had told him of her:

  Wratha ha
d been a Sunsider, living in a small tribal community with her father. The leader’s son had wanted her, but her father, a strong man in his own right, said she should have the husband of her choice. Being contrary as well as beautiful, she wouldn’t make a choice but scorned all of the tribe’s young men alike. When her father died, the leader made it plain that her choice had now narrowed down: she could be his son’s woman, or she could be listed for the tithe. It was simple as that.

  Not so simple after all, for she ran off! Angered beyond reason, and despite the pleas of his son, her tribal leader put her on the tithe list. If she wouldn’t go to his son, then let her go to the vampires.

  She lived wild in the hills awhile and managed to avoid the first tithe. Like her father before her, she was opposed in every way to vampire supplication and believed they should be fought, destroyed, even followed Starside of the mountains and put down in their manses. Madness! For at sunup, warriors were let out to roam on the floor of the gulleys and ravines of Turgosheim, to keep the Wamphyri safe from attack through their most vulnerable hours. And anyway, how may you kill men who are already dead?

  Well, there were ways, but on the few occasions they had been tried—when lieutenants and lesser Lords had come over the mountains at sundown to collect the tithe, been ambushed, dealt with—Wamphyri retribution had always been swift and merciless. The last of these “risings”, which had taken place some forty years ago, was still told of around the campfires; but the heroic insurgents in question, and their tribe to its last member, were no more. The story itself was still the ultimate deterrent.

  In any case, Wratha was captured, kept prisoner, tormented and threatened (but never harmed physically, neither marked nor sullied, for that was not the sort of tribute one paid to the Wamphyri), and finally handed over at tithe-time to collector lieutenants on their tithe routes through the tribal territories. But somehow, during her captivity, she had managed to obtain and conceal a small amount of kneblasch oil and a packet of silver filings upon her person …

  At that time and to the present day it was the practice of the collectors to march most of the tithelings back to Turgosheim. Special cases (beautiful girls, strapping youths, clever musicians and men skilled in the working of metals) went on the backs of flyers. In this way they were spared any small ravages which might occur en route, so ensuring their pristine presentation. Wratha’s hands were loosely bound; she was strapped into the long saddle behind the pilot-lieutenant of a flyer; at the last moment the leader’s son came to sneer, and tossed up to her a small bag of belongings.

  On their way back to Turgosheim, she got her hands loose and began to stroke her captor’s back, and to whisper sensual suggestions in his ear. He was an aspirant but in no way Wamphyri; once a Sunsider himself, he found this beautiful Szgany girl’s attempt at his seduction pleasing; he made no objection to Wratha’s stroking and her fondly beguiling words .. and all the while she worked kneblasch oil into his broad back, and now and then fingered the handle of the ironwood knife which she’d discovered in the bag given to her by the man she’d spurned.

  The pilot lieutenant’s blood was infected with vampirism, of course; he was in thrall to the Wamphyri generally, and to his own patron Lord especially. And this was the source of his downfall: his own tainted blood, which made possible Wratha’s poisoning of his system. She worked the kneblasch deep into his spine, his back and shoulders, until he grew at first fatigued, then ill where he began to rock in the saddle. The tree-line was below them and the dark peaks beckoned, but his hands trembled on the reins and his body was clammy with the sweat of fever.

  “You are sick!” Wratha told him, feigning concern. “Take us down before we crash, and let me care for you until you’re well again.”

  Gripped by this dread lethargy, he began to do as Wratha suggested, settling his flyer down towards the trees. But deep within he suspected that she was the source of his discomfort, and instead of landing squared his shoulders to fight off whatever it was that sickened him. Which was when Wratha used her knife, driving it into his back to the hilt. In fact the knife had been given to her as an instrument of mercy, so that she could take her own life. But that wasn’t her way. Indeed, life had never been so dear to her.

  She wrenched the ironwood blade this way and that in the lieutenant’s back, until he cried out and his spine arched in agony. Then, as he slumped sideways in the saddle, Wratha toppled him into space. He crashed down in the pines, and a moment later his flyer followed suit. Unhurt, Wratha jumped free and went to look for him where she’d seen him fall. She found him under the canopy of the trees, groaning and badly broken, and hurled dust of silver in his face until he breathed it in. And as he coughed and choked, so she stabbed him again and again: in the eyes to blind him, then in the heart to make an end of it. And finally she set about dismembering him.

  But in the twilight hours before sunup, the light of her fire was seen by a late patrol out of Turgosheim. Suspicious riders came winging to investigate—and discovered Wratha burning the lieutenant’s pieces!

  She was retaken—this time knocked unconscious—and so at last was brought in with the other tithelings. Except of course where they were innocent, she was guilty of this “heinous” crime against the Starside Lords, and naturally her life was forfeit. No question of what should become of her, or to whom should go the task of execution. For her thrall victim had a brother, also a lieutenant…

  The other tithelings were assigned, but Wratha was handed over to Radu Cragsthrall, to do with as he wished, so long as his final act was to kill her. Radu was the brother of Lathor, the lieutenant she had killed. But he was also thrall-in-chief to Karl the Crag, and dwelled in Cragspire. Karl was a rock of a man, Wamphyri through and through, but of all that a capricious Nature had given him in physical strength, she had taken back in wits. In short, he was a dullard.

  And Radu paraded Wratha proud and naked before his Lord Karl, listing all the many things he would do to her, before she paid the ultimate price; which list was long and detailed. At first Karl applauded his chief lieutenant, but Wratha had caught his eye and was not cowed by Radu’s threats. Hers was a stunning beauty, with hair blacker than night and eyes to match, legs long as sundown, pointy breasts, and a behind firm as an apple. And her mouth was a special delight: shaped like a crossbow’s wings, pouting, and fitted with a soft dart of a tongue whose sting … Karl might not find displeasing. A dark Gypsy jewel, she tilted her breasts at him, so that he lusted after her.

  Radu saw the girl’s ploy, ceased numbering his intended torments, knocked her to her knees. She cried out and fell against Karl where he sat, and hugged his legs to her breasts. And as she begged his protection, so Radu rushed upon her. But the Lord Karl of Cragspire held up a hand … simply that, but more than enough. Which was when Radu, stalled, had made what could so easily have been a fatal error. “She is mine!” he had snarled. “She was given to me!”

  “Aye,” Karl nodded his great head. “Just as you are mine, given to me. But with the heat of your words—this which you would do to her, and that which you will do—you have set my juices working, and I would try her first. So tell me: do you make objection?” And all the while Wratha hugging his thighs, saying:

  “Save me, Lord! Save me! I killed his brother because he would have taken me, to which end he landed his flyer in the hills. But am I to be given to mere thralls, while even the greatest of Wamphyri Lords goes wanting?”

  Radu calmed down. Blood was in his Lord’s eye and a dab of spittle at the corner of his mouth. True, Karl was a great fool and easy to handle when he was at peace with the world, but when his mood was sour … then the vampire in him took over. No sensible idea to turn him sour now. And so he said: “Do I make objection? No, of course not, Lord—except that she is unworthy! But if it will amuse you, have her first by all means, and instruct her in your ways. For after all, what better teacher could she have?”

  “Exactly,” Karl growled, and that was that.

 
Then … the Lord Karl took his time about the “trying” of Wratha, the while becoming enamoured of her. Finally she bowed to being vampirized by him, which was inevitable: stuff of his got into her from his kisses and embraces, also from those acts which she performed to entertain and ensnare him. However and for all of which, she let herself be Karl’s thrall only insofar as that without him she was doomed, and no further. Her will was that strong, and in Wratha’s case his was that weak. But at least as Karl’s paramour her life was spared - for the moment. A respite she must put to good use.

  Now Karl knew he must let Radu have Wratha in the end; or if not “must”, then “should”. She had been rightly condemned to death by Radu’s hand, and Karl could only lose face among his Wamphyri peers if he prolonged matters. And so he was in the dilemma of being, as it were, in thrall to a thrall. And meanwhile Wratha pleaded that she would do anything to avoid her fate, if only Karl could show her the means of her delivery. She did not wish to die but live forever … with Karl, in Cragspire, of course.

  The time came one night when she fell asleep in his arms, crying how she loved him and must be with him always. And Karl determined that she would be. Draining her to the last drop of blood while first she slept, then swooned, and finally died, he laid her prone in a private room and crossed her arms on her breast; then called Radu to see what he had done. “There,” he said. “The sentence is carried out. What does it matter who killed her or how? She is dead. Soon she will be undead, and mine, wherefore you need no longer concern yourself.” Dullard that he was, he didn’t see the glint in Radu’s eyes, or the way his chief lieutenant choked back his anger.