by Brian Lumley
And in a while, Karz answered, 'For which I am grateful, Master. But if I may make so bold, all that you have told me was yesteryear — even a hundred years in the past — and this is today, when we know that the Lady Wratha breeds warriors in secret for the fighting of aerial battles. But against whom? Which man or men does she hate now, and to what new, even higher station does she aspire?'
Maglore looked at Karz and said, 'Hmm?' But he had heard him well enough. And he thought: Aye, a clever man and a fine brain, but perhaps a dangerous tongue. I'll grant you a year, Karz my friend, or two at most. After that: you'll retain some of your intelligence at least — but flyers aren't much sought after for their conversation.
While out loud: 'Mark this well,' he said. 'Let there be no more frivolous discussion of things you may hear from time to time in Runemanse. And never again let the substance of my conversation form the body of yours. Not even with the best of motives or intentions. Do you hear?'
'Of course, Lord. From now on I'm deaf, dumb and blind.'
Smiling grimly, Maglore shook his head. 'Let dumb suffice,' he said. 'Which I can arrange, and swiftly, if you cannot!
'As for Wratha and certain forbidden flying things which I've reason to believe she's breeding in the bowels of Wrathspire: she'll be called to give account soon enough. And not only Wratha but others I could name. As for now, let it rest.
'And as for me: I must rest, for it's sunup and I grow weary!' He stood up, and Karz backed away, bowing.
'Put these things of mine away,' Maglore told him, peering about his study workshop. 'Make all tidy, then return to your studies or tend your duties. Not least, prepare my good clothes, complete with chain and sigils. And my gauntlet: get the rust off it, if you can. Doubtless I shall be up and about from time to time during the long day, but be sure I am up at sundown!'
'Indeed, Lord!' Karz answered, who knew why his master must rise with the sinking of the sun, but in light of their conversation made no comment nor even thought about it, not until much later when Maglore was abed.
Then: Looking out through a window and up at the spires and high crags, each one tipped gold in sunlight — and gazing far across the miles-wide gorge of Turgosheim, whose honeycombed walls contained the great manses, to where the pale lights of melancholy Vormspire still burned like glowworms despite that it was day — Karz did think about it, and wondered at its meaning. For it was this: That the Lord Vormulac Unsleep, who in his prime had been the most powerful of them all, and still retained a measure of his former might, had called a meeting in Vormspire in the second hour following twilight. And no simple gathering this, for all of the Wamphyri had been called, Lords and Ladies alike, with tithe-penalties for any who might think to abstain.
Aye, times were changing in Turgosheim; Karz Biteri could feel it in his water! And he fancied that soon there'd be new histories to write, possibly even in blood…
Lord Vormulac Taintspore, called Unsleep after his insomnia of seventy years, had seated himself at the head of the great table; this was only proper, for he was convenor and host both. Tithemaster, adjudicator and 'aesthete' (the word must be read in the same light as 'ascetic' as applied to Maglore, insofar as such words may be said to apply to any of the Wamphyri), Vormulac was greatly respected… generally.
He was no strict adherent to Zolteism, but neither was he a glutton. He had not dealt his fellow Lords ill, not even in his prime. His forces had never attacked, other than to defend Vormspire; but when they had made war, then it had been utter and ruthless! Eighty years ago, Vormulac had lain Gonarspire and Trog-manse to waste, decked their masters in silver chains and hung them from their own battlements to await the rising sun's hot melt. Since when Turgosheim had stayed relatively free from internal feuding.
In aspect: Vormulac had kept his shaved head and thrall's forelocks for all of a hundred and thirty years. What had suited his old master Engor Sporeson in that earlier time had suited Vormulac ever since. His own thralls were similarly cropped, including the women. His forelocks, having lost most of their jet sheen through long years of sleeplessness, were iron-grey; they were plaited and finished with tassles, which dangled down on to his nipples. His eyes, not quite uniformly crimson but marked with curious yellow flecks, were close-set and deep-sunken in ochre orbits.
Vormulac's nose was long and thin, and sharply hooked at the bridge; it might be that in some former time it had been badly broken. Its convolutions and the gape of its nostrils were less marked than in most of the Wamphyri, but its great length was a singular anomaly, with a pointed tip which came down almost to the centre of his upper lip and lent his frown a hawkish severity. He wore iron-grey moustaches which dipped at their ends to meet the 'V of his goatish beard, and within this boundary of bristles his mouth was wide, thin as a gash, and held slightly but not cynically aslant. He wore a thin white scar in the hollow of his left cheek, from the orbit of his eye to the corner of his mouth, which might account for the latter's tilt. His ears lay flat to his head, and their conch-like whorls were tufted with coarse white hair.
A huge man, he stood almost seven feet tall. The histories had it that gigantism was common among the olden Wamphyri, when some had reached eight feet and more! Vormulac was happy with his seven, which were especially advantageous on occasions such as this. Since the seat of his chair was also an inch or two higher than the rest of them about the table, he made an imposing figure indeed.
And yet, overall, Vormulac's face and form were as melancholy in aspect as Vormspire itself, and the aura of his rooms, furniture, and tapestries — despite their richness, intricacy and questionable 'beauty' — was likewise doleful. Neither overtly dull nor doom-fraught as such, yet full of some sad nostalgia, theirs was a silent conspiracy to evoke visions of fled or stolen youth, mordant mistakes, and everlasting poignancy.
Maglore, Vormulac's contemporary down the years, knew the reason well enough. So might several of the others if they had cared to mark and remember such things; but in a world without proper records, time itself becomes an efficient eraser.
The reason was this: That in his youth, after Vormulac received the dying Engor Sporeson's egg and ascended in his turn to Vormspire, and while still he retained something of Szgany humanity, he had returned to Sunside to reclaim the love of a sweetheart lost when he'd been taken as a titheling. She had come back with him to Vormspire, where their passion was such that in a very short time his vampire, however immature, produced an egg which passed to her through intercourse.
Alas, what Vormulac's former master had not told him was this: that he, Engor, was a leper!
The Wamphyri, whose metamorphic flesh shrugged off most of the common Szgany diseases, were prone to leprosy. While it made itself manifest in several forms and was little understood, they believed that one strain at least was genetic and passed on through the egg. It might skip one or more generations, but sooner or later must recur somewhere down the line. In the Lord of Vormspire's case it had skipped just one generation: his own.
After several years, when his love's flesh had taken on the hue of decay and begun to slough (and only then recalling his former master's swift deterioration and death), Vormulac had opened Engor's mausoleum to see if he might discover some clue there. Within, Engor's body lay in many crumbling pieces, with more than sufficient evidence to show how the filthy rot had continued to work on his flesh — from his leech outwards — even after he himself was dead!
Then, to make a quick end of it, Vormulac had poisoned his exhausted, ravaged love with kneblasch and silver, and placed her body with Engor's in the mausoleum. The tomb had then been fired like an oven; when all was cold again it had been sealed up — forever. From which day forward Vormulac had dreamed of her burning, and of his own flesh slowly softening, until he'd vowed to sleep and dream no more. Well, and he hadn't slept, but it was Maglore's belief that he still dreamed.
The story accounted for the first of his self-given names, Taintspore, likewise for the melancholy aspect w
hich both he and Vormspire wore like shrouds…
These were some of Maglore's thoughts and memories where he sat at Vormulac's right hand at the head of the table. And as their host named and formally introduced the other guests (such introductions were mainly unnecessary, for each knew the others well enough; it was simply a formality, by way of starting the proceedings), so the Mage of Runemanse also considered them:
'The Lady Zindevar of Cronespire,' Vormulac intoned, his voice gritty as gravel. And, with some small effort at gallantry: 'Never in all her years more… more beautiful.'
'Hah!' she snorted, and her eyes flashed fire at him. 'All what years, pray?'
Vormulac shrugged. 'A handful of handfuls, Lady,' he made amends, however drily. 'And after all, what are a few years to the Wamphyri? Why, you are the merest girl!'
Much to Maglore's dismay, Zindevar was seated on his immediate right, and she was no 'mere girl' but a contemporary. When he had come out of the swamps that time ('lowborn', as it were, a Szgany mystic who went into the forbidden places to meditate, breathed a spore and came out Wamphyri), Zindevar had already ascended to Cronespire. Then she had been young, but even then she had not been beautiful!
She was squat, hairy, of lesbian persuasions, and the atmosphere about her pervaded with a manly odour which all her many perfumes together could never hope to obscure. And despite her years — whose number fell far short of Vormulac's and exceeded Maglore's — she looked young or in her middle years at most, which said a deal for her mode of life. Zindevar was no great 'ascetic'.
Rouged and painted, with her elbows on the table and one hand scratching at her chin while the clawlike fingers of the other rapped upon the old oak, there was this overpowering air of aggression about her, this impatience, this great disdain — mainly of men, Maglore supposed. He could scarcely contain the urge to shrink his nostrils and creep away from the touch — even from the thought — of that great fat thigh of hers bulging against his where they sat at table. And he refrained from more than a glance into her mind, which was full of breasts and behinds of various shapes and styles; and red-rimmed, yawning, pulsating orifices; and blood, of course. But the worst of it lay in knowing that he shunned the lascivious display of her mind not so much because it was disgusting, but because it was seductive! For whatever his alleged sensitivities, Maglore was Wamphyri no less than the Lady Zindever herself.
As for the mainly derisory agnomen 'Cronesap': while its use was common among the Wamphyri, it was never used to Zindevar's face except as a deliberate insult; for which reason Vormulac had avoided it. It referred to the way in which she had ascended: by gradually sapping the blood and energy of the ancient Lady who had occupied her aerie before her. Nor was she any different now, as her many female thralls could doubtless testify. Only a handful of her lieutenants were men in the fullest sense of the word (necessary for the protection, maintenance and administration of Cronespire), and even then she kept an equal number of female officers, to guarantee a balance. As for Cronespire's menials: all of its males were eunuchs to… to a creature.
So much for Zindevar; Maglore had missed several cursory introductions of lesser lights; even now Vormulac was moving on again:
'Now I bring to your attention the Lord Grigor Hakson of Gauntmanse,' he said, 'with whom we commiserate; his get from the draw these several tithes has been scarcely sufficient to his needs.' Grigor, tall, thin and shifty-eyed, nodded sourly, perfunctorily, all about the table, then returned to examining his fingernails. 'Following these proceedings,' Vormulac continued, 'and in the event there are persons present who would care to barter with him, Lord Grigor will doubtless make himself available in the pursuit of a mutually advantageous deal or two.'
Maglore leaned forward a little to scan down the table at Grigor of Gauntmanse, or 'Grigor the Lech' as he was known. One of the younger Lords and full of lust, recently his share of the Sunside tithelings — of the lottery in human lives — had been low in women; almost without exception his tokens had matched up with Szgany males, of which he had plenty. Maglore read it in his mind how tonight, if Grigor could find a taker, he would offer four strong men for just two half-decent girls! Someone would make a killing, certainly. In other circumstances it might well be the Lady Wratha. Except, and as Maglore knew, tonight she'd be otherwise engaged.
So the introductions went on, and next came Canker Canison. To see the Lord of Mangemanse was to know that somewhere in his ancestry was a spore-infected dog or fox. Named for the disease of the inner ear which had driven his father baying mad (till mounting a flyer he'd soared south into the rising sun), Canker had caused the fleshy lobes and fine whorls of his own ears to fret themselves into curious and intricate designs, including his sigil, a sickle moon. His hair was red and the gape of his jaws vast; his long-striding walk was more a lope; when laughing, he would throw back his head and shake tip to toe.
Lorn Halfstruck: The Lord of Trollmanse was a dwarf among the Wamphyri, with legs which were stunted to little more than thighs with feet. But with his barrel chest, hands like grapples, and arms almost as long as himself, any who would think to belittle him must maintain a safe distance. His reach was phenomenal, and he knew the vulnerability of a man's essential parts…
Vasagi the Suck, who was likewise deviant of form: Vasagi was the victim of an hereditary bone disease. The small handful of Wamphyri diseases were mainly hereditary: various animalisms, several forms of insanity, aggressive autisms, acromegaly and other bone disorders; though with the exception of leprosy, they were rarely fatal. But when the growth of Vasagi's jaws and teeth had threatened to outstrip the metamorphic flesh of his face, then he'd simply extruded them. Which is to say, he'd stripped his upper jaw of teeth, unhinged his lower jaw, withdrawn all flesh from the offending bones and so been rid of them. Now, chinless, his mouth was a tapering pale pink tentacle tipped with a flexible needle siphon, not unlike the proboscis of a bee, which he could slide into the finest vein with amazing dexterity. Needless to say, he was not an ascetic.
So the list went: Ursula Torspawn of Tormanse, who affected an almost human guise even to the extent of wearing Sunsider clothes, with all their leather tassles and tinkling bells (but bells of tin, not silver). Yet at one and the same time, she swore by the use of the rendered fats of Szgany women as lotions to hold at bay the sag and scathe of more than a century, and kept preserved various mementoes of her lovers down all those long years… in jars. It must be stated, however, that Ursula had not availed herself of these souvenirs while yet their owners lived. For despite that she knew the toll to be paid for the denial of her Wamphyri flesh, she was Zolteist to a point, whose nature was neither cruel nor entirely sanguinary.
The list extended itself: Lord Eran Painscar; Lady Valeria of Valspire; the Lord Tangiru; Zun of Zunspire; Gorvi the Guile; the Lady Devetaki Skullguise (who today, for whatever reason, wore her smiling mask); Wran the Rage and his brother Spiro Killglance of Madmanse… all of these and many more. Thirty-six Lords in all and seven Ladies. The introductions took the best part of an hour. And all the while Maglore aware of Zindevar's growing impatience, and of her hot fat thigh against his; and all of their various thoughts impinging upon his own, until he could reel from the innuendoes and infamies, the dooms and desires of their collective mind.
They kept the bulk of their thoughts suppressed, of course, for the Lord of Runemanse was not unique in telepathic skills. All of the Wamphyri had them to some extent; at the very least, they could sense the direction of another's thoughts. Zindevar, for instance: That Lady was as much aware of Maglore's close presence as he was of hers, which might well account for her impatience and the lewd scenes with which she filled her mind. She'd probably reckoned, and correctly, that these would suffice to keep him out.
Taken with the idea, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye — and caught her staring back at him! Her eyes were hot and burned on him, and her nostrils pinched with suspicion. So then, and what did she have to hide?
; But by now Vormulac had reached an end, and only one was left to announce: Wratha the Risen. Maglore put all else out of mind in order to concentrate on the Tithemaster's introduction: The Lady Wratha,' Vormulac intoned, narrowing his eyes, 'of Wrathspire…' But now there was an edge to his gravelly tone, so that all fidgeting and murmuring stopped at once and all eyes turned to Wratha — which was no great hardship.
Maglore looked along the table to where she was seated at the very end facing Vormulac down its great length, and knew that he had never seen her looking more… delicious, indeed edible! And in that selfsame moment the mental ether was full of two waves of thought: one of lust, and the other a jealous loathing. No need to search for the origins of such sweeping emotions. Ah, but the crests of both waves foamed with something of respect, too, and even admiration! Aye, for Wratha the Risen had style.
She had not seated herself properly in her chair but was curled there, entirely at ease, with both elbows on one rest and her hands supporting her chin. Her hair fell in plaits almost to her shoulders, which were fitted with a torque of finely worked gold. Depending from this golden harness, ropes of black bat fur hung down vertically to form a smoky curtain. Wratha's pale shoulders showed through, likewise her arms, the points of her tilted breasts, a large area of immaculate thigh and her knees where her legs were folded. Seen as pale curving stripes through dusty black bars, the rest of her was scarcely secure from viewing.
Paradoxically but not unusually, Wratha's eyes were least in evidence; they were protected by the scarp of figured bone upon her brow, their fire subdued by the ornamentation of blue glass ovals at her temples, and matching earrings where they dangled from the fine-furred lobes of her ears. But apart from her Wamphyri ears and the tilted, somewhat flattened aspect of her nose, whose convolutions were not exaggerated to any great degree — and the red-flickering fork of her tongue, of course — apart from these things, she might well be Szgany: a clean-limbed Gypsy girl from Sunside, whose flesh was still untried, just as she must have appeared to Karl the Crag almost a hundred years ago.
