Wratha the Risen: she was herself like a ray of sunlight falling upon some dark jewel. At least, that was her guise. But Biteri knew that on occasion she looked far more like something risen up from hell! For indeed she had returned from hell, or its brink, this ex-Szgany girl who was now a powerful Lady of the Wamphyri.
She laid a hand upon his bowed, balding head and her perfume fell on him cloyingly. 'Up, Historian,' she sighed. 'What? And is this not a free place? You have every right to be here, you and these tithelings of yours. But I was passing by, on my way through the levels to Wrathspire, and I heard something of your words as you instructed these… young people.' She drew him to one side, while he fluttered his hands and said:
'My… my words, Lady? But there was nothing of any deliberate mischief in them. I merely recounted the histories, what little is known of them, in accordance with my Lord Maglore's command. It is part of the induction, and…'
'I know these things,' she stopped him with a glance.
'But I thought that something which I heard was more of the present than the past, and I wondered at the presumption of any thrall that he should so speculate upon the affairs of his superiors.'
'My Lady,' again Biteri went to his knees, almost collapsing there this time. 'If I have… offended?'
'Up/' she hissed, almost dragging him to his feet. 'Perhaps you have offended. But if so… well, you are not my thrall to punish, and as yet I've no reason to repeat what I heard.' She glared at him, and her huge eyes opened a fraction wider. Their fire held an almost physical heat, which would normally be contained beneath the scarp of carved bone worn upon her brow, and subdued by small circular plates of a deep blue volcanic glass fixed to her temples in front of her conch-like ears. But when she opened wide the doors to those furnace eyes, like this…
She saw the cold sweat on Biteri's brow, the pounding of a vein in his neck, and inquired: 'Do you fear me, Historian?'
'I am but a thrall,' he gave his stock answer, the only entirely safe answer. 'Here in Turgosheim, the Wamphyri hold sway. If I do or think incorrectly I may die, or worse! Wherefore I fear no one but myself, for my own actions underwrite the terms of my existence. I repeat: in Turgosheim the Lords, and of course the Ladies, hold sway.'
'Only in Turgosheim?'
'And in all the world,' he added hurriedly, 'when the sun is down and shadows creep. As for me: things are as they are, and mine is not to fear but to obey.'
'Then obey me now,' she told him, her voice low, languorous, deadly dangerous, 'and make no more speeches of warriors mewling in their vats. Ah, I know where you have heard these whispers — which are the fears of old, old men, whose learning has stunted their manly appetites — but put them out of your mind. Aye, while yet your mind is your own.'
'Of course, Lady, yes!' he answered, following her where she moved back towards the tithelings.
She paused and took his arm, as if he were the friend of a lifetime, saying, 'Do you know, Historian, but just as Maglore has you, I too had a trusted thrall upon a time. Oh, I've had many such, aye, but this one was… very special. No hard and thorny lieutenant, but a soft-skinned song-bird out of Sunside. Yes, it's true: he bathed me and sang me songs! Alas, but the many intimacies I allowed him were not enough; he would be my husband and lord it over Wrathspire as my equal! For he was a strong, comely young man, and what was I but a woman, after all?'
She let go his arm and suddenly her voice was cold as ice. 'Well, he's not much for singing now, though I'll admit he grunts a bit. For now when I go to my bed, the bulk of his warty hide guards my doorway, and what small part remains of his brain cringes from the lash of my thoughts!'
And Karz shuddered deep inside as he remembered what he'd heard of the guardian of Wratha's bedchamber: that it once was a handsome Szgany thrall, whose ambitions had been bigger than his member. And he was reminded of an old thrall adage: 'Never attempt the seduction of your master, neither by word nor deed. Remember: seduction was only the first of his disciplines!'
But Wratha's voice was light again as she commanded, 'And now you must show me these likely tithelings of yours, fresh out of Sunside.'
The Historian couldn't deny her. What she suggested went against the general rule, but she'd caught him preaching less than orthodox lessons, which gave her the upper hand. And now she would inspect the tithelings, likewise unorthodox, but what could he do? Nothing, except step aside as she went among them smiling like a girl: the Lady Wratha, dead and buried ninety-five years ago, but undead all the years flown between.
As she turned her eyes away from him, Karz could only marvel at this thing anew. He was forty-five years old and looked seventy, while she was more than one hundred years but looked only twenty — at the moment, anyway. It was her vampire, he knew, moulding her metamorphic flesh to the shape she desired, presenting her as fresh and vital as life itself. Ah, but only anger her and the thing inside would respond instantly, a transformation which even the greatest of the Lords would avoid at any cost! For Wratha was no simple Szgany girl, and it astonished the Historian that she ever had been — if she ever had been.
He thought on what Maglore the Seer had told him of her:
Wratha had been a Sunsider, living in a small tribal community with her father. The leader's son had wanted her, but her father, a strong man in his own right, said she should have the husband of her choice. Being contrary as well as beautiful, she wouldn't make a choice but scorned all of the tribe's young men alike. When her father died, the leader made it plain that her choice had now narrowed down: she could be his son's woman, or she could be listed for the tithe. It was simple as that.
Not so simple after all, for she ran off! Angered beyond reason, and despite the pleas of his son, her tribal leader put her on the tithe list. If she wouldn't go to his son, then let her go to the vampires.
She lived wild in the hills awhile and managed to avoid the first tithe. Like her father before her, she was opposed in every way to vampire supplication and believed they should be fought, destroyed, even followed Starside of the mountains and put down in their manses. Madness! For at sunup, warriors were let out to roam on the floor of the gulleys and ravines of Turgosheim, to keep the Wamphyri safe from attack through their most vulnerable hours. And anyway, how may you kill men who are already dead?
Well, there were ways, but on the few occasions they had been tried — when lieutenants and lesser Lords had come over the mountains at sundown to collect the tithe, been ambushed, dealt with — Wamphyri retribution had always been swift and merciless. The last of these 'risings', which had taken place some forty years ago, was still told of around the campfires; but the heroic insurgents in question, and their tribe to its last member, were no more. The story itself was still the ultimate deterrent.
In any case, Wratha was captured, kept prisoner, tormented and threatened (but never harmed physically, neither marked nor sullied, for that was not the sort of tribute one paid to the Wamphyri), and finally handed over at tithe-time to collector lieutenants on their tithe routes through the tribal territories. But somehow, during her captivity, she had managed to obtain and conceal a small amount of kneblasch oil and a packet of silver filings upon her person…
At that time and to the present day it was the practice of the collectors to march most of the tithelings back to Turgosheim. Special cases (beautiful girls, strapping youths, clever musicians and men skilled in the working of metals) went on the backs of flyers. In this way they were spared any small ravages which might occur en route, so ensuring their pristine presentation. Wratha's hands were loosely bound; she was strapped into the long saddle behind the pilot-lieutenant of a flyer; at the last moment the leader's son came to sneer, and tossed up to her a small bag of belongings.
On their way back to Turgosheim, she got her hands loose and began to stroke her captor's back, and to whisper sensual suggestions in his ear. He was an aspirant but in no way Wamphyri; once a Sunsider himself, he found this beautiful Szgany girl's attempt at his seduction pleasing; he made no objection to Wratha's stroking and her fondly beguiling words.. and all the while she worked kneblasch oil into his broad back, and now and then fingered the handle of the ironwood knife which she'd discovered in the bag given to her by the man she'd spurned.
The pilot lieutenant's blood was infected with vampirism, of course; he was in thrall to the Wamphyri generally, and to his own patron Lord especially. And this was the source of his downfall: his own tainted blood, which made possible Wratha's poisoning of his system. She worked the kneblasch deep into his spine, his back and shoulders, until he grew at first fatigued, then ill where he began to rock in the saddle. The tree-line was below them and the dark peaks beckoned, but his hands trembled on the reins and his body was clammy with the sweat of fever.
