they take other than milk. If Maglore could be sure he would father other than a vampire, then he might give me my child, but until then he won't spoil me for the sake of 'some usurper brat!''
'You asked Maglore for a child?' Nathan couldn't believe it. 'Do you mean… you wanted to bear his child?'
'Yes,' she answered, leading the way through a labyrinth of empty rooms to one with a window and, set back in an alcove, a curtained area. There, for the first time, she looked Nathan full in the face. But her chin was raised and her eyes defiant. 'You have not seen Maglore when he's young. You're not a woman. You do not know what it is to be with a vampire Lord. You have no understanding of the word 'fulfilment'.'
'No,' Nathan replied, drawing back from her. 'But I have seen what remains after women have been… fulfilled! And if they're not dead, they're doomed!'
She nodded, looked away. 'Yes, you are right. But with me… Maglore has been careful, and gentle. I am not changed. Or if I am, it is that I hated him and now love him. A woman can be in thrall to a man in more ways than one.'
'You actually love him?' It seemed impossible.
'I love Maglore!' she snapped. 'Not his works or the thing inside him, but him!'
It was beyond understanding. For a moment, lost for words, Nathan shook his head. Then he said: 'But surely, it's his vampire that makes him what he is?'
'And that is the paradox,' she answered, 'which tears me like rotten cloth. I hate that thing inside Maglore as much as I love its host! For where he is my master, it is his master! And I am jealous of it and hate it because it shares him with me. Also, it shares me with him! But when he is with me in the guise of a young man, then I cannot help but love him.'
Nathan had backed up to the curtained alcove; Orlea had followed and was standing close to him, with her hand on the curtain rope, when he said, 'I think… that I pity you!' He spoke before considering his words, perhaps without even meaning them; for he had no way of knowing what her life had been like before Runemanse. It was simply an expression of his horror. But whatever else she'd lost, Orlea still had her pride. Her dark eyes blazed as she told him:
'Save your pity for yourself, Nathan, for you've not yet seen Runemanse.' With which she pulled the rope. The curtains swished open, and Nathan saw… Maglore's siphoneer. At first he did not recognize what he was looking at, but then he did, and staggered away grimacing and gasping.
'So you see,' she let the curtains fall and followed him, taking his arm to steady him, 'there are times when it's useful to have someone to love and cling to in a place like this. Aye, even a thing like Maglore.' Looking into her eyes, Nathan saw nothing of the feral yellow of a thrall's evil intelligence, or the scarlet of tumultuous Wamphyri passions. But perhaps he did see something of the vacancy of madness…
Next on her list, Orlea showed Nathan Maglore's study or 'room of meditation', to which only a few trusted thralls had access. His eyes were drawn at once to a heavy golden model of the Seer Lord's sigil upon a slender onyx base, and he wondered at its use; or perhaps it was merely ornamental. And seated for long hours before a marvellous model of Turgosheim, he absorbed what Orlea told him of the vampire gorge. This was a great deal more than he'd learned from Nicolae Seersthrall, and went a long way towards completing his knowledge of the geography of the place and the history of its inhabitants. More than two-thirds of Sundown had passed by the time they were finished there.
'Are you tired?' she asked him. 'Or do you wish to continue?'
'I don't know if I am tired,' Nathan answered truthfully. There's so much to see, learn. And what I've seen already will keep me awake, I'm sure. Anyway, I need to be fatigued in body as well as mind, to sleep soundly.' But inside he knew that he really should sleep, and do as much of it as possible, at every opportunity. For if he should allow himself to become overtired, sooner or later he would let his guard down. His secret talents must remain secret; his knowledge of the Thyre and their desert places was a trust he could never break; he must see about the fabrication of a false geography and lifestyle for that olden Sunside in the west, which he'd left so far behind. For eventually Maglore would want to know about it, he was sure.
'Now would be a good time for sleeping,' Orlea told him as if reading his thoughts, though in fact she had not, for he kept them guarded and could sense nothing of telepathy in her. 'For the deep sleep which you require, if you'd stay strong in Runemanse. Fear saps your strength here — everyone's strength, except Maglore's. One's nerves are stretched to breaking point; breathing and heartbeat fluctuate; will withers to a husk, even as Maglore's grows stronger. For it's not only blood that vampires suck, Nathan. They suck everything.'
He followed her back down to the great hall, where there was little of activity now. Several female thralls were still out and about, however, and a group of them stood in secretive conversation. Seeing Nathan and Orlea together they fell silent, frowning, and apparently frustrated. Then, when he would have made for his room, Orlea took his elbow and guided him in a different direction, down a passageway carved in pumice.
'Where are we going?' Nathan inquired.
'To a place where those women won't bother you,' she told him. 'For they fear me almost as much as they fear Maglore.'
'And where is the Seer Lord now?' He felt uneasy, but was not quite sure why he wanted to know.
'Asleep,' she answered. 'He has his routines. This is one of the times when he sleeps. Sunup will rouse him from his bed, when he'll retreat to his workshops in the lower levels. Unlike the other Lords, most of which work only at night and cower in the dark when the sun stands on high over Sunside, Maglore has regulated his sleeping evenly between day and night.'
They reached the outer wall where a narrow window looked towards the north-east, and stone steps spiralled down around a mortared stone core. At the bottom was a lesser hall like a warren, with passages leading off. She led the way down one of these to a room with a door like Nathan's. It was Orlea's room, but inside… the door was fitted with a bolt. This wasn't the only difference, for her apartment was very well appointed. She had a bath, furniture, furs on the floor, and tasselled drapes at a tiny window punched through the massive wall; and her bed was curtained with gauzy drapes, which hung to the floor from rails between the posters.
There were several gas jets with low yellow flames. She went about the room plugging them with bone dowels, until the light was reduced to a smoky dusk. And as Nathan's imagination began to run rampant, she said: 'No one will bother you here. Here you may sleep safely.'
'Orlea,' he headed for the door, 'I appreciate your concern for me, but I fear that if Maglore knew I was here…'
'He does,' she cut him short, stopped him in his tracks. 'Do you think I would dare if he did not? He ordered it.'
Mind whirling and senses numb, Nathan faced the door, his hand reaching for the bolt. But hearing the rustle of curtains, he turned and looked back. Her clothes lay where she'd tossed them on a stool beside the bed, and the drapes were still mobile, shivering into stillness.
Tingling with an electric awareness, scarcely daring to breathe, Nathan asked, 'What… did he order?'
'Everything,' her voice came back to him, very small and somehow sad. 'I'm to take your innocence, until there's nothing left for them.'
'His vampire women?'
'Yes.'
He went back to the bed. 'Orlea, I know better now. I know that I'm to avoid them, which in turn makes this unnecessary.'
'Do you spurn me and defy Maglore?'
'No, I don't spurn you,' he said, trying hard to make her understand, without belittling himself. But in the end he knew there was only one way, which was to tell the truth. 'It's just that I have no experience of women,' he finally blurted it out. 'I don't know… anything!'
'Well,' she answered, 'and weren't we all innocent, upon a time?'
Even as she spoke, Nathan's ringers were trembling as if they were some other's where they removed his clothes. 'I mean it,' he said. 'I really don't know anything at all.' Even now it wasn't the whole truth, but close enough.
'But you will,' she whispered, 'you will. Even as I know, so shall you.'
He was naked. 'Orlea, I…'
'Come to bed and warm me,' she told him. 'At least I'll know that there's only one of you, that your actions
