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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 i
'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 gri
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 gri
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 ...