Vampire World I: Blood Brothers (Necroscope #6)

Vampire World I: Blood Brothers (Necroscope #6) Page 10

Ill

'Two thousand years ago,' Maglore began without pause or any further introduction, Turgosheim was a vast canyon: a place where the mountains had torn themselves asunder, a deep dark stony gash with its mouth opening towards the Icelands far to the north. Its uneven body gaped like a wound in the belly of the mountains, and its several tails tapered into the passes which lead to Sunside.

'Within the canyon stood a good many stacks and spires eroded or split from the original rock, some whose roofs were flat and others which were craggy. And in the canyon's walls were caverns and overhangs and ledges galore, so that the very rock was honeycombed. The gorge was some four miles long north to south, two and a half to three east to west, and mainly sheltered from the sun at its zenith by the body of the range itself. Only the highest spires and flat summits ever felt the full force of the sun.

'In its bed, the canyon was a jumble of fallen boulders, scree, lesser ravines and olden watercourses, with some deep caverns in the walls where lowly trogs lived out their lives in gloom and ignorance. In the beginning, our ancestors were obliged to utilize these dull creatures as best they could, at least until they could explore Sunside for the bounty of its forests and lakes, and its Szgany settlements, of course.

'In short, Turgosheim the canyon was much as it is now, with the exception that it was empty, and only a handful of Turgo Zolte's people to furnish and inhabit its spires and manses. But to them, despite that in reality Turgosheim was a small place, it looked huge! Not so vast an area as Olden Starside with its rearing stacks and endless boulder plains, no, but enormous to them who were so few. And trog meat plentiful, and eventually the sweeter meats of Sunside, too.

'Plentiful, aye, in that time when Turgo Zolte's people, who had fled here from the devil Shaitan in Olden Starside, were only a handful...

The great manses were built, extended, and furnished with cartilage and bone; and all the spires likewise, their external stairways covered over and protected by oiled skins, in imitation of those mightier stacks in Olden Starside. The passes to Sunside were opened up; at sundown our ancestors hunted in the forests, flying home before sunup with their booty. Life was good, and the Wamphyri prospered ... for a while. 'They prospered,and they multiplied.Turgo had crashed and died in the swamps; his body produced spores; animals and men from Sunside were infected. Some of them joined with Turgosheim's Wamphyri and no one objected. For despite that these outsiders were lowborn, of spores and not the true egg, still they made us strong. And as yet there was room galore in the great canyon. Ah, but all the time what space there was ... it was narrowing down!

'Lords begat Lords and Ladies, likewise the swamps, and in six hundred years Turgosheim was crowded. Even the smaller manses, the lowliest spires, were occupied, and Wamphyri blazons fluttered from the merest mounds. And the road to ascension was hard indeed, when the new Lords must inhabit stacks which in an earlier time had been rejected as mere stumps!

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'Meanwhile, Zolteism as a creed had waned. Hard to deny oneself with all of the good things of life so close at hand, a twilight's flight away over the peaks or through the passes. They, our ancestors, revelled in blood and the hunt, and the fulfilment of their leeches became their only pastime. As for their carnal appetites: they satisfied those, and with enormous zest, among the tribes of the Szgany. But to what end? Yet more Lords and Ladies, and no more room to house them.

'Men go to war for two main reasons; to feed themselves, and to expand into new territory. No, three, for even the most peaceful of men will retaliate against an aggressive neighbour who seeks to relieve him of those selfsame commodities, food and space. The Wamphyri were no different. Of food there was plenty - as yet -but space was limited. Lesser Lords of low-huddling mansions envied those in their rearing spires, and slovens in crumbling caves could only imagine the opulence of Ladies in their vasty caverns. As for fresh-spawned vampires: they must be satisfied with their lot in whatever niches were available in the canyon floor!

'Satisfied ...? Oh ...?

'It was a scenario for war!

'Younger or less affluent Lords banded together and made vampire thralls, lieutenants, warriors, more than any legitimate requirement. They marched on the greater spires, to take them one at a time. And for every Lord vanquished, staked out, beheaded, burned, there were three or four to occupy the various levels of the ravaged stack. And then the new masters of these levels, being freshly blooded and full of battle, would make war with each other: level against level, stack against stack, manse against manse! Even so, amidst all the reek and roil, most of the Warlords held back from breeding warriors with the power of flight, for any who broke this rule would soon find themselves under attack from all the others in a body.

'But after each wave of fighting, victors and vanquished both would see how worn down and rag-tag they had become, and raid on Sunside like recurrent plagues to replenish themselves. And we may readily understand how, in order to fuel themselves for more war - or restore themselves in its aftermath - our Wamphyri ancestors raped and depleted Sunside. How, with never a thought for the future, they harried the Szgany who were that future almost to extinction! Aye, for while some of us may have resisted it all our lives, we nevertheless admit that the blood is the life, and in those early days of Turgosheim Szgany blood was rapidly running out!

'Eventually, common sense prevailed; the Lords called a Grand Truce; they gathered together and talked. And here, thirteen hundred years later, we may consider ourselves fortunate that among the hotheads were thinkers. They saw now how Turgosheim was small in comparison with Olden Starside in the west. Turgosheim was small; the range in which it was a gash was small; the region across the mountains - called Sunside for obvious reasons - that, too, was small. Quite obviously, to destroy Sunside would have been to destroy themselves. So they saw how close they'd come to disaster. Well, the upshot was this:

'No more wars, not for some time, anyway; a resurgence of Zolteism; a ban on raiding, even hunting on Sunside, and likewise on the breeding of unnecessary creatures. Peace returned to Turgosheim ....ut at a price. What price? Suppression of Wamphyri passions, the outlawing of territorial expansionism, and the introduction of the tithe-system. Which rules apply even to the present day, and we've each sworn by our sigils to abide by them.

'Oh, there have been feuds, even wars between times, but never so wasteful, and never so threatening to all of us. So things have stood for long and long.

'Except ....imes are changing, and the changes have crept up on us all but unseen. My meaning? Simply this: that once again Turgosheim is filling up, with too many thralls, lieutenants, Lords and Ladies. Except this time it's our duty to heed the lessons of history, and never again allow matters to reach such a head that we go up against each other.

'In short: we need to expand! - but outwards, to avoid a great clashing of heads. Aye, and some among us may even feel the need to abandon Turgo Zolte's doctrines entirely, and let their parasites hold full sway. For they fear the stagnation of their leeches, which are the driving force of the Wamphyri as a race.

'Expansion, then - but to where? In all this range there is only one gorge suitable to our needs, whose spires and caverns are protected from the sun: Turgosheim. As for new blood for our young Lords and Ladies - from what source? Already Sunside feels the strain, as it did those many hundred years ago. The Szgany are grown unwilling to breed; some put their girl babies to death, and disfigure their boys rather than let them grow up and be taken in the tithe. Oh, they'll part with their fruits, wines, grain and livestock readily enough; but their children were harder come by, and so harder relinquished.

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'Nor may we assist in that respect; that is, with regard to their reluctance to impregnate their women. For while our lustier Lords would doubtless relish such ... such forays into Sunside, the seed of vampires breeds only vampires. Of which we have enough.

'And so I say again: expansion, which seems to be our only recourse. But the question remains, where to expand? Into which legendary land of plenty? Well exactly, into a literally legendary land of plenty - into Olden Starside itself!'

As Maglore paused a murmur went round the table. There had been some small background noise before, when first he'd commenced to speak: a cough or snort here and there; a disinterested shuffling of feet, chairs; the occasional whisper. But now their attention was very much riveted upon Maglore, and the Mage of Runemanse could feel the weight of every scarlet glare, sense the swirl of hot, speculative thoughts, where he stood waiting for their low mutterings to fade. Until finally:

'I am a seer, as well you know,' he continued. 'Seer and mentalist both. And for many years I have scried upon Starside - but carefully! For in their time the Old Wamphyri had wizards, too; indeed, and until recently, there were still great minds in those remote western reaches, where mighty sorcerers had come among the descendants of Shaitan in their aeries. I sensed their presence there, and knew they commanded Powers out of alien worlds!

'Eighteen years ago there was a war, then four years of peace when nothing of their thoughts reached out to me, and finally...

'... Finally, fourteen years ago, the time of the Light-in-the-West. Sensitive eyes detected it: like the glimmer of a white sun rising, but westwards; it cracked like dawn, and then was gone. But sensitive flesh recorded the tremor which accompanied it, racking the earth in its passing. And sensitive dreamers felt its rolling thunder deep in the floors of their manses, which brought them starting awake. I was one of them who shot awake that time, and in my mind there burned a sigil out of nowhere, which I have taken for my own from that day to this.

'As for the meaning of the light itself:

'I, Maglore, have voiced a theory: that the last of the great old Wamphyri magicians brought down a calamity on Olden Starside, since when they are no more. Except ... I could be wrong. They might be there in their aeries as before, but quieter now and biding their time. Till what? Till when? No way to know, unless we go and discover for ourselves, one way or the other ...'

The Mage of Runemanse shrugged and scratched his chin; he had played his part; he was glad to sit down.

Replacing him, Vormulac came to his feet and held out his arms for silence. For following the momentary lull as Maglore had finished speaking, now Vormspire's great hall was suddenly alive with the shouts and queries of many of the younger Lords, reacting with feverish excitement to the Mage's hints of ventures and explorations - and possibly even war - in the west.

'Wait!' Vormulac commanded - and again: 'Wait!' -as the clamour threatened to become an uproar and drown him out. But gradually the din subsided as they all leaned forward in their chairs and focused their attention on the Lord of Vormspire; all except Wratha, who made small but significant gestures to her cohorts sitting there. Maglore saw or sensed these urgent covert signals, but made no effort to alert Vormulac. By now the deed was done, anyway, and nothing Wratha could do about it - except rage!

The rest of them were under Vormulac's control now, eager to hear what he had to say. He glanced down at Maglore on his right and nodded, and said: 'Our thanks to the learned Lord of Runemanse, for detailing the histories and background to these times and circumstances in which we live; certain of our circumstances, at least ...' His voice was low, dark, insinuating. And after a pause in which the hall grew even quieter: 'There are, however, other circumstances to which I would alert you, and they are these:'

(Wratha was sitting up now, and making more of her urgent signals, even as Vormulac commenced what would quickly become a series of grave accusations): 'First,' he began, 'Maglore has mentioned the making of unseemly warriors, fighting creatures with the power of flight. They have been forbidden in Turgosheim since Turgosheim's first day. Second, territorialism, or rather expansionism: forbidden, except in the near future outside Turgosheim, where now it has become a necessity. We must seek to move out, and soon, but it is still a crime to prepare for war within. Third, the tithe, a subject which I know certain of you hold close to your hearts, because of what is seen as its ... inadequacies? For while the grain, beasts, fruits, wines of Sunside have always been distributed evenly, fairly, and according to individual needs, its human produce has been apportioned on the basis of pure chance. "Pure", yes .. .

'This was necessary, certainly, lest the flower of Szgany females go to Zindevar of Cronespire, Grigor Hakson of Gauntmanse, and others of the younger Lords; and likewise Sunside's young males to persons of other persuasions. I make no discrimination here: we are what we are, and no one's needs are less than any other's, except in the requirements of their spires and manses, which differ according to size.

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'So -' (he gave a shrug) '- occasionally the finger of fortune points the other way: those who require girls get youths, and vice versa. But time usually evens up the score, and if not we resort to barter, occasionally at a loss depending on our needs. And because it has been - or rather, while it was - a matter of random but equal chance, the system was seen to work well enough. Until now ...

'Well, I have made certain points, but without being specific. Time now to be specific!' He looked at Wratha, directly, the glare of his eyes reaching out to her down the full length of the table. Glaring back at him, her guard slipped, and Maglore read in her mind a single word: Flight.'

He looked at the others sitting there: Gorvi the Guile, whose thin face was void of expression, and his mind shielded by a white, impenetrable glare. The brothers Wran the Rage and Spiro Killglance of Madmanse: the one remarkably placid, while the features of the second were twisted (as was Spiro's custom when cornered) into a hateful mask. Canker Canison: more wolf- or dog-like than ever, his feral eyes shifting this way and that but mainly watching Wratha. Lastly Vasagi the Suck: whose thoughts were usually strange as his countenance and often unreadable - never more so than right now - though Maglore did glimpse monsters in them, and knew that Vasagi's mastery over metamorphism must give him the edge in the breeding of weird warriors.

All of them: they had pushed their chairs back a little; they cast sporadic glances over their shoulders, checking that the way was clear behind them; they controlled their hearts, which to a man were beating faster.

For Vormulac's gaze had transferred from Wratha to them, bathing each in his turn in the red glare of his eyes. And now he spoke to them:

'For long and long we the Wamphyri Lords and Ladies of Turgosheim have known the penalties to be paid by any among us who would transgress against our laws. Penalties great and small, depending on the wrong which must be righted. Recently, accusations have been made which I, Vormulac, have investigated. First the matter of the titheling draw, its supposed "impartiality". What? The draw impartial? Hah.' And indeed the Lord Grigor of Gauntmanse has a right to feel dissatisfied at his poor get, from a system which for some time now has been manipulated!'

What?.' The astonished, outraged thought blasted out as from one mind - almost. For of course to some of them gathered here, Vormulac's accusation came as no great surprise. But among the majority: jaws dropped as if hinged; split tongues flickered and damp black nostrils gaped; eyes opened wide and scarlet. A furious fist (Grigor's) slammed down upon the table and made it shudder; speechless for the moment, in the next he would doubtless demand a name or names.

And perhaps he had one already. For Canker Canison had somehow contrived to slink away from the table to one of the great open windows, where even now he drew the curtains and leaned out. In a moment he was noticed; heads turned in his direction; he faced back into the room, staggering this way and that. 'Such treachery!' he barked, his muzzle wrinkling back from canine teeth. To rig the draw! It makes me sick! I grow nauseous from the lack of good clean air ...'

And as Canker stumbled towards Wratha's end of the table, close to the arched exit from the hall and the stairway to the landing bays, so Maglore thought: He has given a signal.' Beyond the window, something waits.'

But already, and apparently unperturbed, Vormulac was continuing. 'Second,' (he once again held up his arms for quiet), 'of the making of warriors beyond common requirements: why, I have it on good authority that just such monsters are waxing even now, in secret caverns in certain spires and manses!'

What?.' Again the outrage, the astonishment, hurled out from their massed mind. But before it could be given voice:

'Warriors, aye!' Vormulac raged, at last giving vent to previously suppressed fury. 'And for what, I ask, if not for war? Enough! Now I accuse!'

Sidling away from their vacated chairs, Gorvi the Guile, the twins of Madmanse, and Vasagi the Suck joined Canker Canison where he edged towards Wratha. Vormulac pointed them out, and all heads and eyes swivelled to follow his trembling, stabbing finger. 'There they go,' he spat the words out as if they were poison. 'Full of guilt, as witness their stealth. Canker, with his tail between his legs: a mangy cur indeed! And Vasagi the Suck, who alienates himself even further from his fellows. Also Gorvi the Guile, never so deceitful as now. And Wran and Spiro of Madmanse, whose madness finally overflows!'

Wratha was free of her chair; the others joined her; they backed off towards the arched exit.

'See them go,' Vormulac shouted, 'who by their own actions betray themselves! For I ask you, would innocents react in such a fashion? See, they join their leader, the very author of this treachery, of whom I say again: she has risen too far! But why is everyone astir? Be calm all of you, and sit down. They shall not escape.'

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Many of the outraged Lords and Ladies were throwing back their chairs, springing to their feet, some reaching instinctively for gauntlets which were no longer there, relinquished in Vormspire's landing-bay antechambers. Others had commenced to surge menacingly along both sides of the great table towards Wratha and her five, but came to an abrupt halt as Vormulac put fingers to his lips and whistled.

It was a short, shrill, even ear-piercing blast ... and it was a summons. He could have called his creature just as easily with his mind, indeed more easily, but did it this way, openly, so that all of them would know what he was about. And now to a man they saw how Wratha was trapped.

All except Maglore, who wondered: Why has she not undergone her monstrous transformation? Why is she so cool? And at once answered himself: Because now is no time for raging but for thinking, and even now she calculates!

'Now hold!' Wratha hissed, as if to prove Maglore's point, and produced from beneath the bat-fur ropes of her robe a curious instrument formed of some small creature's bladder attached to a slender silver rod or wand. She held the bulb in her hand, pointing the wand into the hall. And: 'Oil of kneblasch,' she informed, squeezing the bulb however slightly. A fine spray issued out from perforations in the end of the rod, hanging in the air like a mist.

The aerosol's effect was immediate. As a thin garlic waft permeated the hall, the furious Lords and Ladies groaned and began to retreat towards Vormulac where he stood at the head of the table. Their faces had turned pale, even sickly; they shouldered each other aside in their anxiety to put distance between themselves and Wratha's illegal weapon.

Then, as a frantic clattering of chitin and a series of querying animal grunts sounded from the stairwell beyond the arch, Wratha warned them: 'Enough poison in this bladder to drive all of you to your sickbeds for a sunup, and some of you permanently! Call off your creature, Vormulac, or suffer the consequences. If your guardian warrior so much as glares at me, believe me ... I'll crush this bulb flat!'

Vormulac's warrior, his personal bodyguard, came through the archway. It was a small one of its sort, no more than a ton or two in weight but very ugly: a thing of hooks and pincers, grapnel arms and stabbers. Slategrey and chitin-blue, with its scales rattling where it scurried like a scorpion towards the six accused, the creature's intentions seemed murderous.

'Vormulac!' Wratha bared her fangs, prepared to squeeze her bulb.

'Wait!' the Lord of Vormspire snarled at his warrior, and brought it clattering to a halt. And to Wratha: 'Lady, why do you delay matters? My warrior's not here to harm you, but to ensure that you do no more harm! He is your escort out of this place, into the shame and seclusion which you all deserve so well.'

Amazingly, she laughed. 'What? And do you banish us like wayward children, back to our spires and manses? No, I think not. For Olden Starside waits, and we would be the first to claim its aeries, and all the sprawling treasures of legendary Sunside.'

' "Would be", aye,' Vormulac answered her, grin for grin. 'Oh, I know your ambitions well enough. But your plans lie in ruins, Wratha, and that's the penalty you pay. For while we've kept you busy here, our most trusted lieutenants have commandeered your aerial warriors, or destroyed them in their vats. By now your forbidden creatures, and those of these dogs who run with you, are either dead or redirected. So, you would be first in Olden Starside, eh? Well, we say you'll be last!'

Again she laughed ... then crouched down snarling, and pointed her wand at Maglore. At that range there was no way she could squirt him, but still he cringed inside. And: 'You, mentalist,' she hissed. Thought-thief. Why, I've sensed your snooping for all of a ten-year. But you could only hear such thoughts as we chose to think! Aye, and so you've followed a false trail, Maglore of Runemanse.'

Now she pointed at Zindevar, saying: 'And you, blood-hag. Ah, I remember you! You were ever the jealous one, even from the first. Why, if not for Devetaki, who overruled you, you would have vetoed my ascension, then tried to take me for ... for your companion! How dared you ever imagine that I, Wratha, would make my bed with such as you? What? When there's ripe raw muck in the methane pits? And did you think I couldn't buy your spies, or offer them what you could not possibly give? Ah, but you've sent some pretty boys into Wrathspire, my Lady Cronesap! I thank you, for I had them all before sending them back again, but without the information you required. Or at best, with the wrong information!'

Now, while Zindevar fumed and sputtered, Wratha looked at Devetaki Skullguise, and saw that in her anger she wore no mask but had exposed the damaged half of her face down to the flensed bone. 'And you, Devetaki, who was my good friend,' she said, her voice low now and less spiteful. 'Indeed, I admired you greatly. But you've listened to my enemies, and so become one of them ...'

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She threw back her shoulders. 'Well, and you are all fools ... but none so great as you, Vormulac! What? Warriors waxing even now in secret caverns? But I tell you - they are waxed!'

And as for the third time she laughed, so Canker Canison lifted his muzzle and howled like a wolf. It was an eerie ululation, which passed out through the high windows and into the gulf of Turgosheim. And no less than Vormulac's whistle, it was also a call - which in a moment was answered!

But between times: 'Rush them!' Grigor the Lech shouted. 'What? And are we afraid of a stench? If the bitch uses her weapon, she and her pack are vulnerable no less than the rest of us! Vormulac, use your warrior to crush them!'

The Lords and Ladies took heart and surged forward again. Vormulac's creature, waiting for his command, sensed the tension and the fact that the six had been alienated; it clattered this way and that, watching them, undecided, with its stabbers and pincers at the ready. Wratha aimed her spray: at the skittering warrior -then at the Lords and Ladies - then back to the warrior. She was no longer in control, and her girl-shape was gradually giving way to monstrous metamorphism.

Finally ...

... Canker Canison laughed! He threw back his head and shook like a fox shedding fleas, and a weird new sound - in fact a very old sound, out of times immemorial - sounded in Vormspire. The throb and sputter of an aerial warrior's propulsive orifices!

There came a wind from the great window, which blew the heavy curtains inwards; but in the next moment they were torn from their hangings by a nightmare shape whose armoured bulk barely cleared the gap as it slammed through the parapet wall, tore up the flags of the floor and skidded to a halt within the great hall! A warrior, but what a warrior!

If the dimensions of Vormulac's poor creature were six times as great, still it would not equal this one. Moreover, since Vormspire's upper levels were all of two thousand feet above Turgosheim's bottoms, this monster was not only equipped for but had already proved itself in flight.

There!' Wratha howled in savage glee, as masonry and cartilage from the shattered balcony went flying, and dust from the rubble billowed up in a suffocating cloud. And as the monster's acid breath burned through the torn shreds of curtains draping its incredible head, she cried: 'Well, Vormulac, and will you also "commandeer" this one?'

Like all Wamphyri warriors, the thing was a hybrid atrocity - a blasphemy against all the laws of creation -but in this case more so. In Olden Starside worse, bigger, yet more hideous creatures had been made from men and metamorphic vampire stuff, but this was Tur-gosheim, where nothing like this was ever seen before.

Red-mottled in its softer underbelly and silver-scaled on top, with an electric sheen which reflected the glare and splash of the hall's gas jets, the thing was like a flexible machine, an instrument of madness, mayhem, murder. And it was Canker Canison's construct beyond a doubt, for its huge 'face' was that of a monstrously mutated fox! Scarlet eyes were set about the forehead in a semicircle, with others in rows along its armoured sides; but its jaws ...

... The head carried three sets of jaws, one facing front and the others to the flanks, all equipped with the teeth of a primal carnivore. Behind those lethal blades, each throat was a cavern which could swallow a man whole. Shaggy, the thing had Canker's red hair, making its looks foxier yet. Tufts of hair sprouted from between its scales, pushed back by their overlap, and patches of stiff red bristles protected the underbelly.

Along its lower flanks pectoral to ventral, the warrior's scales were hinged to house its retracted mantle and gas bladders. Angling down from its serrated spine, a ferocious array of claspers, pincers, slabbers, clubs, and saws of chitin plate festooned its sides. A dozen 'launchers', like fleshy springs, were coiled in depressions in the segmented belly. At its rear and flanking the anus, propulsor tubes like the siphons of an octopus vented their hideous vapours. Tip to tail, the thing measured forty feet; through its middle it was nine.

Now that the dust had settled, its many eyes were staring, taking in the total scene. And its tiny brain was waiting for a command - any command - from its maker and master.

There were exits from the great hall other than through the archway, boltholes in its rear wall, behind Vormulac where he stood as if transfixed at the head of the table. Even if he had felt capable of answering Wratha's derisory question with regard to 'commandeering' this monster, he could not have done so; for in the moment that he blinked his astonished eyes and recovered from his paralysis of shock, so the vast invader commenced to roar!

That was enough for the Lords and Ladies; they fled, all except a pair of lesser lights who had been bowled over by the creature's destructive arrival. Young Lords, as they dragged their broken bodies free of the debris, so they came within range of the warrior.

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Kill! Canker Canison issued a mental command. The warrior fell on the crippled Lords and worried them like a wolf worrying rabbits; it tossed one out screaming through the shattered gash of the window, trampled the other flat, then rose up and fell on the great table, whose pieces flew in all directions.

And that was enough for Vormulac!

Making for a bolthole exit in the wake of his fleeing guests, he sent similar instructions stabbing towards the bewildered mind of his own small guardian: Kill them - all six of them!

The creature at once hurled itself at Wratha and her five. She held out her weapon at arm's length, squeezed the bulb and vaporized its contents directly into the charging beast's face. It breathed every last drop of moisture into its vampire lungs, into its system ... reared back, all of its appendages clashing in unison ... came on with yet more determination, but gagging and frenziedly shaking its great head.

And meanwhile, Canker had called to his warrior.

In a short-lived, stomach-churning sputter of propulsors, with a thrust of powerful launching limbs, the horror skidded and flopped twice its own length down the hall. Overwhelmed by its sheer bulk, Vormulac's beast was made impotent, forced back from Wratha and her group. And without pause Canker's warrior grasped the lesser creature in its left-flank claspers and commenced to dismember it.

It was the grisly work of moments, seconds, nothing so great as a minute. Stabbers slammed in and out like pistons, damaging and loosening joints; pincers went into the wounds, grasping and tearing; saws were a blur of chitin. Vormulac's creature screamed - high-pitched, throbbing, a piercing agonized whistle - but briefly. There were grunts of satisfaction from the greater warrior, and thuds as various detached appendages and other portions were tossed aside. Fluids splashed: grey, yellow, red, and a reeking pink mist rose up.

Then the screaming stopped ...

Canker's monster grunted again (in disgust, even disappointment?), thrust aside a shuddering mound of steaming meat, turned its triple-jawed head a little to glare down the ruined hall at pallid faces gawping from the bolthole exits.

Canker Canison laughed and danced, cavorting in a gleeful frenzy ... then stopped abruptly and fell to all fours, saliva dripping from his muzzle. And after the briefest pause: Kill! he commanded a second time, his scarlet eyes ablaze.

His creature ploughed debris where it went roaring down the hall.

'No, hold!' cried Wratha, taking Canker's elbow, assisting him to his feet. 'No beast could reach them in there; that wall is solid rock, with a warren of escape tunnels. Best save your creature's energy.'

The six ran down the hall to where the warrior had come to a halt. And from there Wratha called, 'Vormulac, Maglore, Zindevar, Devetaki and all you others. Remember: it was you who turned on me, not out of fear but jealousy! We posed no great threat, me and my five. What, against all of Turgosheim in a body? No, not even if we had made a dozen creatures like this one. But all we have is four ... for the moment.

'Four of them, all tested and airworthy, and made of good strong vampire stuff; not to mention other good stuff, even the very best stuff, out of Sunside. Aye, and to hell with your tithe-system! By now they're en route to a peak in the western reaches of the range, where we've hidden away a cache of food to replenish us -flyers, warriors and all - before we leap the Great Red Waste. This was always our plan; not to war with you but to fly west, to the aeries of Olden Starside and make new lives there. Except you were greedy and jealous and would be first, and you envied those of us with spirit enough to try it.

'Well, Vormulac, I'm sorry to disappoint you and your lieutenants; your men will find nothing in our houses but a handful of thralls and empty vats. Whatever else we're obliged to leave behind, you are welcome to it. Take our spires and manses and keep them. We've no longer any use for them.

'And so we fly west - let him follow who dares! For you have set yourselves against me and mine, and so are become our enemies. We shall know how to deal with you, when at last you have the nerve for it. So be it...'

She and her five headed for the stairwell to the landing bays. But before passing under the archway, she paused, looked back and shouted.

'Vormulac, Maglore: send no mind-message ahead of us. For if in leaving gloomy Vormspire we should suffer any hindrance, then Canker's warrior will fire its propulsors directly into your hidey-holes. And if in the past you've found kneblasch a trifle bothersome, why, you don't know the half of it!'

With which she and her renegades were gone.

In the tunnel escape routes, Vormulac and the others were torn two ways. These man-made passages led down into the rock, eventually emerging onto exterior walkways which descended to the lower levels. But to go that way would take time and in the end expose them to whatever other dangers waited in the gloom of Turgosheim's canyon. For shortly, Wratha and her gang would mount and launch their flyers; likewise their lieutenants out of Wrathspire and Madmanse, and the other houses of treachery. Indeed, the latter would be out there even now, spiralling on thermals out of Turgosheim, waiting in the night for Wratha and the others, ready to join with them like a swarm and thrust westwards.

"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"

Ah! But what if they'd left a rearguard to watch their backs? Only Wratha's word for it that all their warriors except this one were already fled. An unthinkable fate: to be caught on a flimsy exterior staircase of cartilage and bone, by some cousin of the monster which snarled and sputtered in the great hall!

Crowding there in the low, narrow tunnels, these were some of the more mentionable thoughts of the Wamphyri Lords and Ladies where they huddled and cursed. Until Maglore clapped a hand to his forehead and cried: 'Canker has called for his monster to attend him! Our siege is ended!'

The mentalist was right. Sputtering and snarling, Canker's warrior spat acid towards the bolt-hole tunnels, then propelled itself in its ungainly fashion to the shattered window. For a moment it perched there, its hideous head projecting outwards, before launching itself into the night. The rest of the balcony went with it, while a cloud of noxious fumes from its propulsive vents remained behind.

Braving these loathsome vapours, Vormulac, Maglore, and half-a-dozen others left their refuge and rushed to the window. Outside, Wratha and her renegades, and their lieutenants, rode the night in a spiral round Vormspire's ramparts. Behind them, climbing - with its gas-bladders bulging, mantle extended and propulsors blasting - Canker's creature headed west. The Lady was off and running, and nothing anyone could do to stop her.

Her laughter came back to them, and a simple warning:

'Vormulac ... send flyers and lieutenants after us if you will, to our refuelling station in the western heights. We can spare a warrior, I think, to swat them from the skies. And so for now, farewell!'

'Whatever awaits you in Olden Starside, Lady,' he shouted after her, 'be sure not to return! You know the penalty if you do!'

Her fading laughter was the only answer ...

Later: there was unaccustomed, even hurried activity in all of the great spires and manses of Turgosheim; new workshops with extensive vats were designed, and others long fallen into disrepair put back to rights. Before sunup the word was out: the ban on the making of warriors was lifted!

Wrathspire, Madmanse, Gorvistack, Suckspire, Mange-manse: all of these were put to the sack and their spoils, both human and material, were divided as fairly as possible; likewise the possessions of the two Lords murdered by Canker's creature in Vormspire's great hall. And so a rapid re-shuffling commenced, which saw lesser Lords arguing their individual merits as they vied for ascension to these redesignated, soon to be renamed, cavern mansions and crag aeries.

While in Runemanse:

... In the hour before sunup, the Seer Lord Maglore called for his thrall Karz Biteri to attend him in the topmost apartment, a cavelet with a dual purpose: on the one hand to act as a lookout, and on the other to house the manse's siphoneer. It was a place Karz avoided, except to feed its grotesque inhabitant which reclined flaccid, mindless and motionless behind drawn curtains. For even the Wamphyri held certain things as unseemly, and knew when to hide them away.

There Karz found his master, lost in weird reverie, gazing gravely out through the horizontal slit of a window, across the gulf of Turgosheim towards melancholy Vormspire in the canyon's south-eastern bight. And after he had stood before him for some little while, finally Maglore blinked his strange eyes and focused them, and turned them on Karz.

'Being an intelligent man and curious,' he said, his voice rustling as ever, 'by now you will know what has happened.'

Karz could only nod. 'Something of it, Lord.'

'Well, and we shall discuss it at length,' Maglore took him by the shoulder and turned him about face. 'And you shall write it down in the glyphs of Mendula Farscry, as part of the modern history of Turgosheim. But before that ...' (he guided the Historian toward the room's curtained area), 'I would remind you of my warning about Wratha, and the pleasures and pains of knowing her too well. Indeed, of the perils in knowing any of my contemporaries.'

'But... I have not forgotten, Lord!' Karz protested.

'Be still and listen,' Maglore told him as they arrived before the curtains, where he turned Karz so that they stood face to face. 'For you see, despite all of her crimes, no harm has befallen the Lady Wratha; the witch and her coven are fled into Olden Starside. But what of their thralls, their manses, and spires, their dupes? I will tell you: all tossed aside to fend for themselves, disassembled, apportioned and scattered. They are left to count the cost, not Wratha. But I also mentioned her dupes ...'

'Dupes, master?'

'Indeed,' Maglore nodded. 'Indeed.' And in a moment:

'How long since you opened these curtains, Karz?' His hand was on the rope.

'A while,' the other gulped a little, his throat suddenly dry as he wondered what Maglore was about. 'Not long. I wash the creature and turn him thus and so, and fill his trough. I search his flesh for sores, and if and when I find them apply your ointments. I know that he is old, and so look for signs of decay. And -'

"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"

'I know,' Maglore stopped him. 'All of these tasks which you perform. I know. For you are faithful, Karz, and observe your duties well. But I know of a one - we both know of him - who was unfaithful, who did not fulfil his trust, who was suborned and bought ... by Wratha!' Suddenly Maglore's voice was hard, cruel. 'Well, and he also counts the cost.'

'Huh - huh - he?' And now Karz was terrified, without as yet knowing why.

'My siphoneer is old, Karz,' Maglore cried at last, yanking on the rope. 'And despite that you tend him so well, soon he will die. Where there is no will, there is precious little will to live, eh? For which reason, among others, I have got myself a new siphoneer. Behold!'

The curtains swished open, and behind them -

- Two siphoneers: one wrinkled, mottled, old but still functional, for the moment at least; the other pink and new, and not yet fully ....ormed. The Historian saw the bulk of them, in this topmost room of Runemanse, but not all of them. What he did see lay on a platform over the vast bowl of water whose outlets supplied the manse's needs; the mouth of the older one dribbling water into the bowl, like the drool of an infant or an idiot, except the falling droplets were sweet and clear. Their bodies were trembling like jelly from the pounding of hugely enlarged hearts; their limbs, cleverly boned and amputated at knees and elbows, were filmed in vampire slime; their living veins, similarly sheathed and elongated by metamorphism, extended from the butchered nubs and disappeared into conduits of dead bone which descended through the floor.

What Karz Biteri could not see (and what he had trained himself not to think about) were the many hundreds of feet of these living capillaries, all dangling down inside their bone pipes through Runemanse above and Madmanse below, to the wells in the floor of Turgosheim from which they drew up the water! But for all his training, Karz could imagine them well enough.

He looked at the new siphoneer - at its head, all shaven, with dark sutures and blue bruises betraying some recent surgery: an extraction of brain, of most of the brain, he knew - and at its vacant, grin-grimacing face, which Karz recognized only too well. For this was the face, and what was left of the form, of Giorge Nanosi, called Fatesayer, whose veins were even now extruding from his stumps, and inching down the pipes to the wells!

Unable to restrain himself, the Historian reeled away from the curtained area to the window, and there stuck his head out to draw long and hard on the dark air.

Maglore, reading his mind, came to stand beside him. 'And so you see what is become of the Fatesayer,' he said, 'who was less impartial than we thought. Aye, for when Wratha stuck her hooks in him, she said his fate loud and clear. So be it!'

Karz's shoulders jerked. Maglore pulled him away from the window, saying: 'What? And would you foul Runemanse with your vomit? I'll not have it, neither within nor without! Go tend your duties, make clean my workshops. For soon I'll be practising my arts.'

Karz staggered away, out of the room, and made unsteadily for the lower levels.

Maglore followed him a little way, but beyond the arched entrance paused and looked back. His eyes went to the blazon carved in bas-relief over the doorway, as it was carved over all of Runemanse's doors:

This was that sigil of which he'd dreamed at the time of the Light-in-the-West, from which time forward he'd taken it as his own. As for its meaning (if it meant anything at all), that was anybody's guess. Maglore's guess was that it must be potent; else why would he, a mage, have dreamed it?

And what other potent things would Wratha find, he wondered, in Olden Starside?