Vampire World I: Blood Brothers (Necroscope #6)

PART EIGHT:

Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers

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 lor 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 Mag-lore 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 Mag-lore. 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. Mag-lore 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 Tur-gosheim 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 Zinde-var. 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 Vorm-spire. 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 Rune-manse,' 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 Rune-manse?'

'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, Necro-scope!

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 Mad-manse. 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 or 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.