As he explored Maglore's kitchen, a vampire thrall came ghosting, making the place clean. Once-Szgany and male, he was small, thin, ghastly pale; only his eyes contained a spark, and they were yellow, feral, dangerous. When he saw Nathan he gave a start, and then was curious. 'You'll be the new one,' he nodded. 'Well, and you've a lot to learn. For one thing, you're in the wrong place. A room has been set aside for you. If Maglore were to find you here.. '
'He left me here,' Nathan answered. 'There are no restrictions upon me.'
'Oh?' The other raised an eyebrow, offered a half-sneer. 'Then you must consider yourself fortunate — for now!' He busied himself about the room. 'At any rate, you've been warned.'
Watching him at work (he worked hard, making the kitchen scrupulously clean), Nathan thought: This man was Szgany, like me. Now he's a thrall, a vampire, the next step between Szgany and lieutenant. Except he's reached his limit because he isn't… the right stuff? In Settlement, Lardis Lidesci burned such as him, before they could head for Starside. Should I pity him, or should I be afraid of him?
'Why do you watch me?' Nostrils gaping, eyes glaring, the other rounded on him; and Nathan saw that he really should not pity him. It was much too late for that.
'You must know this place well,' he said, mainly for something to say.
'Runemanse? Turgosheim? I know them well enough,' the vampire answered. 'I know what I may do and what is forbidden, the places where I may pass safely and those where I must never go. For unlike you I am not "privileged" in that respect.'
Nathan climbed wooden stairs to peer out through a high, round window. Looking west and a little south, it gave him a good view of all Turgosheim. 'Maglore says he will not change me,' he said, half to himself. 'He wants me for a friend. It seems he desires that I should retain my Szgany initiative.'
Sniggering, the other followed him up the stairs. 'What?' he said. 'You're to be his friend, you say? Well, and he's had "friends" before, has Maglore. I'm not so sure I envy you your clean blood after all. Here in Runemanse… some things are easier for a vampire.'
Nathan read his mind, however loosely. There was a great red hunger in him, and also a great fear, of Maglore. But there was pain, too, and curiosity, and a longing like the ache for a loved one who is far away, or lost forever. Which Nathan understood only too well. 'Have you been here long?' he said.
'Who counts the time?' the other shrugged, and looked at Nathan through seething eyes. 'We seem of an age, or I might be a year or two older. But I came here when I was sixteen, out of Sunside. Perhaps I might live-so long again. And how's that for a night-marish thought? Why, if I were not a vampire, I would throw myself down from this window for the guardian warriors to find broken in Turgosheim's bottoms when the sun lights on the barrier mountains! Ah, but I am a vampire, and tenacious! I might do it, but my weird blood won't let me.'
'Do you drink the blood of innocent men?' Nathan supposed he was taking a chance with a question like that, but asked it anyway.
'Rather the blood of girls and women!' the other answered gurglingly, out of a phlegmy throat. 'Sometimes, when the tithelings come, we are given our share. Maglore tries to keep his creatures happy, at least. The females will pass from hand to hand; we share their blood and bodies, until their lust is as great as our own. And the males are shared by Maglore's women. Those who are to be kept are then given employment under the supervision of Maglore's lieutenants or senior thralls, while any who are deemed unworthy… are drained, and their bodies go to fuel the manse.'
'Fuel?'
'The provisioning,' the other nodded, flame-eyed and grinning, however grimly. 'A manse can't run on air and water alone, you know. But why waste time with questions? If as you say your movements are to be unrestricted, and you'll have access to all of Runemanse's chambers, workshops, and storerooms, why, you'll soon enough see for yourself!' His answer seemed like a threat in its own right, so that Nathan didn't ask him to elaborate but looked out through the great round window.
And after a moment: 'Do you have a name?' he inquired.
'Nicolae,' said the other. 'Nicolae Seersthrall… now. And you?'
'Nathan. Nathan Kiklu.'
'Ah, no!' the other grinned again. 'You are Nathan Seersthrall. For here in Runemanse, we are all brothers and sisters. To keep your second name would mean you were a free man, which you are not. No one in Turgosheim is free.'
Turgosheim,' said Nathan musingly, continuing to scan the gorge through the empty window. 'All of its spires and manses. Can you name them?'
'Why should I?'
'Because I would consider it a favour,' Nathan answered. 'Which one day I might return.'
Nicolae Seersthrall shrugged. 'I doubt that you'll be in any position. Also, it's a waste of my time. But on the other hand — and as I believe I said before — who counts the time in Runemanse?'
He settled down on the great stone windowsill, where his arm touched Nathan's — the merest touch. But: 'Ahhh!' he said, half-sigh, half-gasp, and Nathan knew why. For where Nathan's flesh was warm, vibrantly alive, Nicolae's was cold as clay.
'And yet you are not undead,' Nathan said, drawing a little apart.
'No,' the other shook his head. 'I have never been "dead". I am merely changed, the lowest of the low. Vampire blood has contaminated my blood, that is all. But to touch one such as you, whose blood is clean….s thrilling nevertheless! And it will be even more so for Maglore's women! That's something for you to avoid, if you can, Nathan Seersthrall.'
'I know nothing of women,' Nathan shook his head. 'Or… very little.' Half apologetically, he shrugged.
'What?' Nicolae laughed. 'You are a virgin?' But his face went deadly serious in a moment. 'Never tell them that, do you hear me? For if you do, they'll not let you alone for a minute but seek to suck you dry of more than just your blood! And despite all of Maglore's commands, they'll get you in the end!'
Nathan said nothing but simply nodded, and after a while Nicolae looked out over Turgosheim. 'Very well,' he said. 'And so you would know about this place…'
He pointed to the east, right across the three-mile mouth of the gorge to where the mountains fell down to the Starside plains. 'As you see, the barrier range was like a long, edible root, out of which some giant took a great bite — or a bight? But several of his teeth were stumps and others were missing entirely, and so a number of stacks and spires were left standing in the "bight" of the gorge, like pulp in the "bite" of an apple.' He let his arm swing to the right, south-east through an arc of thirty degrees. 'There against the far wall of the ravine, the scrapings which those great teeth missed:
'In fact they are stacks weathered from the old face of the gorge. Stacks, spires, and sometimes chimneys, where the fault has not quite managed to break away from the bulk of the cliff. Tonight, despite that the vats of the Wamphyri are bubbling with a vengeance, the light is good; smoke and steam have not obscured the view; a wind over Starside's plains is drawing the vapours away. But in any case it would make no difference; I would know the various spires and manses from their shapes alone, or from their fires, whose colours are distinct.
To the left of the group, that one with the flaring yellow gas jet is Cronespire, the lair of the Lady Zindevar. Aye, and from the brightness of the flare you can see how hard she works tonight…'
Nathan looked at him. 'At what does this Lady… work?' He had guessed it but desired corroboration.