why was that work so perfected in a female of the Wamphyri? It is a paradox to which I have no answer.
'So, I have seen and been near her — too near and once too often, for I believe it was Vavara bade Malinari ram me in this pipe! — yet I cannot recall her clearly to memory. Perhaps that in itself defines her beauty: that its power is such as to maze common men, and no less common women. But here another paradox: for despite that she was that beautiful — a beguiler, a gorgeous witch, a sensuous sorceress — still she was unsure of
herself, uncertain of her beauty. I can offer no other explanation for her habits, that a goddess (albeit a demon goddess) such as she was so offended by the concept of beauty in others that she could not bear it, and so was wont to remove the breasts, lips, noses, and other parts of her female thralls to make them ugly!
'There, in a nutshell, we have Vavara. And just as my vampire world was separated in two parts that were opposites, Sunside and Starside, so was she separated: her luminous exterior from the dark and swirly deeps within.
'She was Malinari the Mind's first choice as an ally; not because he lusted after her but because he knew that certain of the other Lords did. And Vavara had determined she would not be any Lord's woman, nor would she ever take a man until she found one who was at least her equal in desirability. An unlikely occurrence, for she was the one who had described Shaithis — generally considered godlike — as a mere 'lump' of a man! Oh, she took men, be sure, but they were her thralls and easily disposable in the unlikely event of complications.
'And Vavara, too, had heard rumours of a bloodwar in the offing, and also how Lesk the Glut had been boasting of what he would do to her after he'd sacked Mazemanse, her spindly, fretted, many-spired aerie where it stood not far from Malstack and Lord Szwart's Darkspire. How he would put out her ruby-red eyes to kill their fascination, singe her eyebrows, her long lashes, and the hair of her head to make her a hag, then fuck her every opening into great holes fit only for shads in the rut. Hah! So much for Vavara's 'beauty', if Lesk the Glut had his way! Is it any wonder she sided with Malinari?
'And finally there was Lord Szwart. But if I have found it difficult to describe Vavara, how then shall I portray Szwart who was and still is literally indescribable? For, of course, all three of them are extant still…
'… I see by your silence that you would have what I know, despite that I know so little. So be it; what knowledge is mine shall be yours, no more nor less.
'As to who or what Szwart is: the best that I can offer — he is Wamphyri! But he is the essence of Wamphyri, distilled or filtered by the foulness of his forebears, mutated beyond recognition not by Nature but by necessity, more leech than Lord, and a fly-the-light in the fullest sense of the word.
'The flickering light of candles, torchlight, firelight — the light of man-made combustion — these are the only kinds of light his eyes can bear, and even then not with complete impunity. But if the light matches the fire of his eyes he is fairly safe. Brighter than that, he knows pain! And any who would give Szwart pain… let him first pierce himself with silver dipped in kneblasch, fasten boulders to his neck, slit his wrists, and leap from the topmost battlements of the tallest aerie.' Then he might be safe from Szwart.
'And only let someone declare enmity towards Szwart — let him broadcast his aversions or discuss them with his peers, and then have his words find their way back to the night-black master of Darkspire — and no matter who this loudmouth might be, whether high or low in the Wamphyri pecking order, be sure that Szwart would do his damnedest to put a stop to such mutterings.
'Aye, and when Szwart did his damnedest… 'There was one Narkus Stakis, Lord of Narkslump, a collapsed pile on the western fringe of the clump, who from the onset of all the rumour-mongering and side-choosing had voiced abroad his detestation of Lord Szwart. Precisely why he held Szwart in such low esteem, who could say? Perhaps he'd had wind of Lord Doombody's provisioning and other preparations for war, and the accompanying rumour that Drama! intended to root out all 'deviants' (which is to say his enemies, real and imagined) from the ranks of the Wamphyri.
'If that were a fact, then the proximity of Szwart's Darkspire to DramaTs Dramstack in the core of the clump would seem certain to make Szwart just such an enemy. For if Lord Doombody
wished to expand territorially (assuming that this was his real purpose) he must first annex Darkspire, Szwart's gloomy, shadow-shrouded manse across too small a gulf of air. And so, and also because Drama! controlled a large percentage of Starside power, the very inferior Narkus Stakis had determined to side with him — whether or no Dramal required him as an ally.
'Alas for him that he made known his decision, especially his disinclination towards Szwart…
'Lord Szwart was black; his aerie was black, and shadowed for the most part by mighty Dramstack; his warriors and flyers were black, and the black of night was his medium. Lord Stakis's Narkslump, more a great cleft knoll than a stack proper, stood in the western fringe of the cluster and low to the earth, and its silhouette against the northern auroras was more a ragged hump than a fang. Gloom was its constant companion.
'On the night that Narkus died a great drift of cloud obscured the moon and stars, and Starside was never so dark. The clouds sweeping north out of Sunside were black and swollen in their bellies, pregnant with rain that lashed at the aeries of the Wamphyri. There had been fantastic lightnings over the barrier mountains, and the wide forests of Sunside would be awash in the aftermath of the storm. Not a good night for raiding on the Szgany, not with the air full of ozone, when careless flyers and riders might so easily attract hellfire from the sky, to singe them and send them plummeting. For which reasons most of the Lords and Ladies stayed to house. Most of them.
'But throughout the night several watchkeepers in aeries near the western rim, where they looked down on Narkslump's split dome, had noted how Lord Stakis's nightlights — the braziers within his battlements, behind the merlons and embrasures, and the torches in his watchtower turrets — were going out one by one, as if extinguished by the torrential rains. Except they were still going out long after the rains were done.
'Came morning; the Wamphyri stayed abed while the accursed sun rose up and up, to its zenith, when the spires of the highest stacks were lit by its rays, and many-layered curtains were drawn against its lethal heat. The day passed as all days must; soon it was night again, and the Lords and Ladies up and about. Lights burned in all the aeries — except Narkslump.
'And slow but sure the truth became known. A small handful of thrall survivors came on flyers and on foot, over the barren boulder plains to neighbouring Scarstack and Lurelodge, begging refuge from the master and mistress respectively of those middling manses. A body of men flew out from Scarstack to Narkslump and down into its landing bays. And later, in the midnight hour, they reported back to Lord Oulios the Scar on Narkslump's condition as they had found it. Also on Narkus's condition, as they had found him, his three lieutenants, and the body (or bodies?) of his thralls.
'Word spread swiftly abroad, to all the stacks of the Wamphyri. And now certain things were remembered from the previous night:
'In Dramstack, when the rains were at their worst, how the aerie's Desmodus colony was startled from its roost. A thousand great bats, all chittering and panicked for no apparent reason, whirling, colliding, and scolding where they circled the fretted ceiling of their cavern lair. And Lord Dramal Doombody, nodding in his private chambers, startled awake by confused mental messages from these bat familiars: A dark shadow — a stranger, doubtless an enemy — has passed close by. Though he was cloaked in darkness, we sensed him, his eyes burning on Dramstack. They seethed and were full of hatred!
'But Dramal's watchmen, huddling miserably in their draughty turrets and cold stone niches, and his flightless guardian warriors, rumbling behind the earthworks and on the boulder-strewn approaches to towering Dramstack, had seen nothing but a fleeting shadow: that of a cloud, they said. And cold, wet and dull, they failed to wonder why the shadow had sped west rather than north.
'And so Dramal had ordered his familiars: Go back to sleep! You
nightmared. The pounding rain and lightning shook you loose from your dusty perches. No stranger is come to harm me or mine in Dramstack.
'Not him or his, no…
'A similar disturbance had been recorded in Karl Szorkala's Karlspire. And further west, in the grounds of Lady Sasha Lureswain's Lurelodge, one of her earthbound warriors had reared up and buffeted ineffectually at a dark blur of a shape that fluttered to a landing just beyond the bounds of Sasha's demesne — in Lord Stakis's territory, aye.
'So to the report of them that flew from Scarstack to Narkslump, when they returned to Oulios the Scar in his high place. Narkslump was intact, as were its flyers and warrior creatures, all dutifully in their places, however nervous, unattended, and unfed. Vampire thralls, however — male and female, eunuchs and fighting men alike, some twenty in all — lay dead in their beds or at their various places of duty: in the walls and corridors, on the
