are your own and not directed by some other. At least it will be you, and not some slimy-black thing inside that drives you on.'
He passed through the curtains to where her slender hand greeted him. She turned back the covers and he slid in beside her. She covered him with the blankets, then with her strange cold love…
Later, in the dusk of the curtained bed and the musk of their bodies, Nathan asked: 'How did you come here?'
'I was a child on Sunside,' Orlea told him, 'just fourteen years old, when the headman of my village, Gobor Tulcini, noticed me. He was a brutal man, Gobor, with a frail and much abused wife. But then, he abused everything: his position, his people — phah! — the very air he breathed. Why, wild dogs are better behaved! One tithe time, he engineered a deficiency, and at the last moment chose my father to make up the number. After my father was taken, my poor mother died of grief. Then Gobor took me into his house, so that he might 'bring me up as his own'. So he said…
'My duties were to look after the village children, which I loved. For after all, I was only a child myself. But while I looked after them, Gobor… looked after me. His wife knew but feared him terribly, and so made no complaint. Twice in a year, by his order, she helped me lose the child he had made in me.
'I bided my time, until I could stand it no longer. Then, one night when the tithesmen came out of Turgosheim, I crept to the square and offered myself for the taking. Gobor would have snatched me back and beaten me, but a lieutenant, seeing that I was more comely than some of the girls on offer, questioned me. I told him my mother was dead and my father had been taken by the Wamphyri, and Gobor had kept me for himself, out of sight of the tithesmen. Well, the truth was that I was too young for the tithe, but most of what I said was true.
'Also, I said that I vastly preferred Turgosheim to the great brute Gobor, which was the whole truth. Even death was preferable, though that was not the entire reason. But being a child and still nai've — in my thinking, at least — I also thought I might find my father here. And despite that I was young, I was brought into Turgosheim.
'Luckily, a man of Maglore's drew me in the fatesay-ing, and so I came here. I had learned the ways of men from Gobor, and used a woman's wiles on Maglore. He was fascinated to know how I, a child, was such a woman. And when he knew… then he arranged for men of his to be tithesmen for a spell, going into Sunside to collect the pitiful human tribute of the Szgany. And he instructed his men to choose a new leader for the people of my village, and to bring Gobor back with them. Thus the great brute met his end in the provisioning of the Lord Vormulac's melancholy Vormspire, which I believe was my father's fate before him…'
As she finished her story Nathan slipped out of bed and began to dress himself. She watched him through the curtains a while, then said, 'You don't have to go.'
'But I do have my own place here,' he told her, 'which I had better get used to.'
'As you wish. And there will be another time, when you will be more at ease. Then I'll show you the things you still don't know.'
'By Maglore's command?' Even as he said it, Nathan knew that it was churlish of him. Especially now that he knew what her life had been. But with the words already out, it was too late to make amends.
And after a moment she answered quietly, 'Maybe… and maybe not. We all must do as we're told, but the way in which we do it is our own concern…'
He left and made his way to his room. There were several vampire thralls in the great hall, a handful of women and one or two males. The latter glanced at Nathan, perhaps enviously, but he was pleased to note that the females ignored him. They had learned Maglore's lesson. And anyway, he was no longer an innocent. Oh, he was, in many ways, but not in that way. That part of him was gone forever.
In one way he felt more the man, but in another he felt dejected, made small. And he remembered what his mother Nana had used to tell him when he'd been hunting, that good meat is always the tastiest when you've caught it yourself…
From then on time passed quickly, and as Nathan got to know Runemanse, so its menace receded a little, but never entirely. And Orlea had been right: there were times when he would wake up in the night (even during the long days), with his nerves screaming and his heart pounding in his chest. It was simply the knowledge that terror and morbid works were all around, and that every other creature in Runemanse, and indeed Turgosheim, was a plague-bearing vampire. With the sole exception of Orlea herself.
And as for Orlea: she was as good as her word and showed Nathan those things he still didn't know. She took him to her room a second time, and on a third and final occasion he made his own way there by prior arrangement. And again he saw how she had been right, for he was more at ease and pleased to take the initiative. Being young and potent, he enjoyed her slender body and might easily have fallen in love with her, except she warned him against it.
'I am Maglore's,' she told him, when on that third occasion he proved hard to drive from her room. 'And I have done my duty by him and obeyed his orders.'
'Maybe,' he said, at her door. 'But you've loved me anyway, and you found it pleasant.'
'No,' she shook her head, 'but I made you think so.' And as his face fell: 'From now on you must never look at me with those eyes, Nathan, for if he sees it he'll punish both of us, which in my case would be unfair. You mean nothing to me, not as a lover. But as a friend…?'
'Shall we be friends, then?' She was closing the door on him, for good.
'Best if we are,' she answered. 'There are a hundred rooms and workshops in my master's house, and he wants you to see all of them. But if you would prefer the company of some other…?'
'No,' said Nathan, as the door closed in his face, and he heard the bolt slide home. 'No, but I'll always be grateful for your company, and for your friendship.'
'So be it,' she whispered from beyond the door…
After that she was cold and withdrawn as ever, and Nathan made no further advances towards her. But when it was Maglore's time for sleeping, and when Nathan would see Orlea on her way to her master's apartments… sometimes he felt embittered.
Maglore called for him often during that early period, and whatever Nathan was doing he must rush to the Seer Lord's side. Once, entering Maglore's apartments, he found a handsome, slim, broad-shouldered vampire Lord waiting there. But as this stranger spoke to him he started, and actually staggered from the shock. For the voice, if not the vibrant body it came out of, was unmistakable: it was Maglore's!
'How do I look?' Maglore inquired, when Nathan had recovered.
'Young!' He blurted out the first word that came to him. 'A man in his prime, forty or forty-five! You look… like a Lord!'
'Like a 'real' Lord, do you mean?' Maglore chuckled. But his amusement was brief, and in a moment his brow clouded over. 'All my life I've denied the thing within,' he growled. 'Except when I may no longer — when I cannot deny it! Then, briefly I am as you see me now. For this is how I am 'rewarded' for my cooperation. Which only goes to prove that however much I deny my creature, and myself, still the blood is the life. Now go, my son, and reflect on the wonder you have seen, and how it was achieved. And always remember, I am Wamphyri!' And to give his words more emphasis yet, he yawned his jaws to show Nathan the forked tongue that flickered in the red vault of his mouth.
But as Nathan headed for the spiral stairwell, so Maglore called after him: 'My son!' He looked back, and the young Seer Lord stood there smiling. 'Now tell me, do you understand the provisioning?'
Nathan shook his head. There's a great deal of Runemanse I've not yet visited.'
Then do so, today, now.'
Nathan nodded. 'And shall Orlea take me there?'
'Ah, no — not this time. Take yourself there, or go with one of my men. But along the way, you may tell Orlea that I am waiting…'
Nathan did as he was told. The last had been a cruel command and Maglore knew it, but not as cruel as ordering Nathan to visit the rooms and workshops of the provisioning.
He went there with Karpath, a thrall of Maglore's for three years, a lieutenant for eleven, and now the Seer Lord's right-hand man. Karpath was interested in Nathan, and as they descended through the many levels asked him: 'How do you find our master?'
Nathan looked at the other. Two inches taller than Nathan, Karpath was broad as a door, heavy-jawed, grey
