like a flat-topped mound — or perhaps one of Ben Trask's 'buttes?' — glooming on the horizon, while its vile body sprawled like a corpse, crumbling in the new-found light of Starside.
'In the far east and west, as far as men were yet to journey, the vampire swamps were drying out, cracking open in their beds, cleansed by the sun. And in all the length and breadth of Sunside/Starside, no vampires existed — at least as far as men knew. But that didn't mean that men wouldn't keep watching, not while I lived, anyway!
'Nor was the transformation confined to the swamps. Water, presumably released from the Icelands, had brought great rains to the scrubland savannas, and showers even to the furnace deserts south of Sunside's fertile belt, until the land was green as far as the closest Thyre colonies. All of which processes of an altered Nature, and others, would continue a while yet—
'—But not for long enough.
'As for the Starside Gate: that was scarcely the ominous place it had been. For now it was the centre of a lake, a constantly moving body of water diverted from its source in your world, in this world, Jake, and driven by its own weight into Starside. And the wormholes around the Gate — or 'energy channels,' as Ben Trask calls them, which wound through solid rock to the first or 'primal' Gate, the white sun deep in the belly of the crater — they had become whirlpool sinkholes, diverting the waters of the lake a second time and returning them to the Refuge at Radujevac in this world, Earth, and on into the Danube. Thus nothing was lost, and nothing gained.
'But what a wonder! That fountain of light, reaching up a hundred feet into the Starside night, lit up by the Gate glowing in its core, and raining its soft white waters on the land and into the lake! Moreover, it had closed off both routes out of and into Sunside/Starside, which preserved the integrity of both worlds…
'And so things stood, for one and a half of your years — Earth years, that is — and seventy of my days, for the sun rose much higher now and the days were longer yet. Well, at least in the new beginning. But it wasn't destined to stay that way.
'Man can't master Nature, Jake. Or if he does his reign is short. What Nathan and the men of E-Branch had done was against Nature… what? To move a world? And slow but sure the lure of the white sun, its strange gravity, began to turn us northwards again. The days grew shorter, the sun sank ever lower, and Starside's shadows lengthened as before. The rains retreated, seasons we had known but briefly merged into one, the savannas wilted away to their usual russets and yellows. Nightly the rim of the barrier mountains showed more stars, flowing back into position from the north, and once again the grim Northstar, which had always shone on Karenstack, rode high in the Starside sky.
'But were the Szgany dismayed? Or the trogs in their caverns, or the desert-dwelling Thyre? Not a bit of it! The trogs had detested the surplus of light; it destroyed their mushroom farms and irritated their skins and moon- white eyes. The Thyre in their subterranean colonies had been hard put to build barriers against unseasonal flood waters that coursed along their river routes. And the Szgany? We had enjoyed our permanence of climate; what need had we of seasons, when the trees were ever in fruit? But with the world turned… even the foliage — the flora? — had suffered. Too much sun in the one season, a surfeit of rain in the next, and colder air in the third.
'And now back to normal, except there was no more scourge, no more vampires, no more Wamphyri.' They'd been erased forever out of our world and the Szgany could sleep easy in their beds and not fear for their lives and the blood of their loved ones. Why, we might even begin to explore those lands and territories previously forbidden to us — Starside itself, perhaps! And the great lakes or oceans that lay north of the boulder plains. And those unknown lands to east and west of the no-longer 'barrier' mountains, beyond the dried-out swamps and the Great Red Waste; for it would take time for the swamps to revert. And the Thyre were no longer un-men but neighbours — we valued their friendship and had determined to share with them all the 'technology' that Nathan had brought us from the Hell-Lands. Ah, how perfect it all seemed!
'Grand schemes and grander dreams, aye. 'Ah, Jake, but my seer's blood told me it wouldn't be so. And I fretted while I waited…
'There are myths and there are legends. A myth is a story come down the ages, so changed by its re-telling over and over that that we may no longer say if it is true or simply a story. One such myth was Shaitan the Unborn — until he became reality. A legend, on the other hand, is something much closer in time. A legend is not so old that it has lost its authenticity.
'Here in your world, Jake, you have a saying: 'he's a living legend.' Do you see what I mean? A thing — usually a man or woman — that attains legendary status even in its, his or her own lifetime. But legends are generally older than that, if not as old as myths. In Sunside, our days being so long, the Szgany use them as a measure much as you use years. And we have a legend that dates back twenty-five thousand sun-ups. Not as long as your history, no, but still five hundred years. Oh, yes, I have learned your numbering system. I pride myself that I've learned many things, even though I've no use for them on Sunside.
'But five hundred years ago in my world, there were three Great Vampires unlike any others before or since. And they were legends. Two of them were Lords (for now, the time being, let's say that they were Lords, past tense) and the other a so-called 'Lady'. But Vavara, believing her name potent enough in its own right, a warning enough in itself, scorned all titles and cognomens. The name itself would suffice, and she was simply Vavara. And perhaps she was right. For see, even as I speak that name — ' Vavaaara' — so I shudder. Ugh!
'Not that she was ugly. On the contrary, she was incredibly beautiful — irresistibly so. And that was Vavara's menace: she was a beguiler, a spellbinder. It was a kind of hypnotism, Jake, but by no means the same as Grahame McGilchrist's. Grahame uses a drug to enhance the authority of his eyes and voice; his is a skill as opposed to a true Power. There again, who can say? Perhaps Vavara's hypnotism was just such a skill, but one enhanced out of all proportion by her vampire leech, as all human senses are enhanced by vampirism.
'Trask's science has it that not only humans but all creatures possess lures other than the purely physical attractions efface and form. But in humans the voice and the eyes are especially important in defining a person's — what, charisma? Hah! But that is also a Szgany word, for personality. Ben talks about pheromones, and chemistry and such. But all I know of chemistry is how to mix a decent gunpowder. And it's a damn hard thing to beguile a rocket, or silver shot from double barrels!
'Anyway, and whatever this attraction is, Vavara had it. And again, perhaps Ben's right. For the spell she cast over men was stronger than her power over women, and usually fatal. Any man who took her fancy — whether a simple Sunsider or even, on occasion, a Lord of the Wamphyri — he was a goner. To resist Vavara was a wasted effort.
'So much for the witch. Now for the wizards: 'The other two were Lords, as I have said. Lord Szwart was one, for he had taken his Szgany name, by which the Szgany knew him: Szwart, pronounced like the German 'schwartz,' which means black. And black he was, blacker than night, black as the black heart of the leech that empowered him… but with what strange powers? I've said he was blacker than night: a totally inadequate description. Lord Szwart was the night!
'Now, all of the Wamphyri are children of the night. Certainly they are, for they cannot bear the sunlight. And because night is their element — because they are awake at night, and see and revel and hunt at night — it is like a cloak they wear, disguising them even from the most keen-sighted of men. On Sunside when vampires were abroad in the forest, the Szgany would lie still in their hiding places and watch them pass. And sometimes when they passed a clinging mist would spring out of the earth, by which you would know they were there; or perhaps the stars would blink as a shape flowed across them, but you would not see whose shape it was, just a darkness in the lesser dark. And sometimes — oh, sometimes — the mist and the shape would come close, closer, and sniff… and laugh!
'But you must excuse me, Jake, the things of which I speak are not pleasant things. I may not speak of them without remembering…
'Anyway, Lord Szwart's command over the night was so much greater than any other's that when the sun was down he was simply invisible. He made no mists, blotted no stars, and cast no shadows. Yet he was seen, but only once, by a man of the Szgany — seen in a storm, in a flash of lightning — and then no more. But the man who saw him was a madman until his dying day, which wasn't long in coming. For he went into the woods to dig a hole to hide in, but never stopped digging! And when finally the pit fell in on him, he didn't cry out in his horror at being buried alive but only his lunatic joy… for at last he was safe, and Lord Szwart could never get him now.
'I do not know what Lord Szwart was. Only that he was Wamphyri.
'Which leaves one other, and perhaps the most dangerous of all. Lord Nephran Malinari — called Malinari the Mind, or simply The Mind — was a mentalist, a thought-thief, a mind-reader without peer. None of the stripling
