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 — '
'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?
PART FOUR: The Brothers — The Raids
I
Predawn twilight on Starside, sunup a few hours away, and the peaks of the barrier range already changing from one massively homogeneous black-fanged silhouette to gaunt, grey-featured sentinels in their own right, each taking on its own unique shape. Soon the sun's rays, glancing through the high passes, would colour them gold. The change from dark to light was always inspiring, even gladdening.
So thought Lardis, head man of the Szgany Lidesci.
But to have spent the best part of a night here — on Starside! at sundown! — under the silver light of the moon and the blue glitter of the stars… and to have slept here! It was a thought which invariably set Lardis's scalp to tingling, brought gooseflesh creeping, and a sense of awe, wonder and heart-pounding horror bursting out afresh from every inch of his body and soul…
Every fifty sunups or thereabouts, Lardis would make this.. this what, pilgrimage? — this passage of exorcism, anyway — into Starside, and across the barren boulder plains to the tumbled stacks of the Wamphyri; to Karenstack, the last aerie, and back again through the great pass to Sunside. But he knew he would never make it alone, that the ghosts of all that had been would journey with him, touching their cold fingers now and then to the knobs of his spine.
A rite of exorcism, aye: to drive out the demons from his dreams and the olden nightmares even from his waking hours. A renewal of his faith, his belief — that the Wamphyri were no more, and would never return — in the shape of one more trek across their ancient territories, through all the long lonely hours of sundown, which had been their time. That was why Lardis came, why he continued to come and always would, as long as his legs could carry him: to convince himself of the marvellous truth, that they were no more.
'Dead and gone forever,' he muttered, mainly to himself, pausing to look back on Starside from a vantage point in the foothills, not far from the mouth of the pass. 'Wiped out in a body and cleansed from the world in what they thought was the hour of their triumph, when they toyed with their victims and glutted themselves at the shining sphere Gate. All of them that were left: Lord Shaithis, and even Shaitan the Unborn himself, who was their father, destroyed with their creatures. Likewise the Lady Karen, burned up in a single breath of hell, in the searing fire of something more hateful than all of them together! All gone, those creatures of evil. And possibly… possibly some that were good, too, even if they did bear the seeds of evil within them.'
'Some that were… what, 'good', did you say?' An old and trusted friend and companion of Lardis's, Andrei Romani, stood there with him. 'Oh, really? The Wamphyri, d'you mean? Then perhaps you'll be so kind as to refresh my memory, for I'm damned if I can remember any that were good!'
Lardis glanced at him and nodded knowingly. 'Yes, you can. You're being contentious, that's all. What about
