'Well, I will make a long story short: the Ladies accepted their new sister (Zindevar of Cronespire, perhaps grudgingly), and following the Ladies the Lords. For after all, Wratha was Wamphyri now; which was, is, and presumably always will be the way of things. The route to ascension is not important, only the getting there. And it should be remembered: for every one of us born to the spires and manses, there is one who was born on Sunside or in the swamps.
'So Karl died, and Wratha was risen. Long live Wratha! In Turgosheim only a blind man or a fool would ask why beings who could live as long as the Wamphyri usually live so short.
'But who shall dictate otherwise, eh? As I've said often enough before: we are not true masters but slaves to our parasites, and not even entirely to them but to blind Fate, who leads us all upon our teetering march across the abyss of life and undeath. Such is the nature of the Wamphyri, and jealousy, greed, hatred and lust — and blood — their way of life. So be it. Perhaps it's as well to leave it at that…'
Maglore paused, then said, 'Very well then, Karz Biteri, Historian, and now you know the history of Wratha the Risen.' Following which he sighed and fell silent.
And in a while, Karz answered, 'For which I am grateful, Master. But if I may make so bold, all that you have told me was yesteryear — even a hundred years in the past — and this is today, when we know that the Lady Wratha breeds warriors in secret for the fighting of aerial battles. But against whom? Which man or men does she hate now, and to what new, even higher station does she aspire?'
Maglore looked at Karz and said, 'Hmm?' But he had heard him well enough. And he thought: Aye, a clever man and a fine brain, but perhaps a dangerous tongue. I'll grant you a year, Karz my friend, or two at most. After that: you'll retain some of your intelligence at least — but flyers aren't much sought after for their conversation.
While out loud: 'Mark this well,' he said. 'Let there be no more frivolous discussion of things you may hear from time to time in Runemanse. And never again let the substance of my conversation form the body of yours. Not even with the best of motives or intentions. Do you hear?'
'Of course, Lord. From now on I'm deaf, dumb and blind.'
Smiling grimly, Maglore shook his head. 'Let dumb suffice,' he said. 'Which I can arrange, and swiftly, if you cannot!
'As for Wratha and certain forbidden flying things which I've reason to believe she's breeding in the bowels of Wrathspire: she'll be called to give account soon enough. And not only Wratha but others I could name. As for now, let it rest.
'And as for me: I must rest, for it's sunup and I grow weary!' He stood up, and Karz backed away, bowing.
'Put these things of mine away,' Maglore told him, peering about his study workshop. 'Make all tidy, then return to your studies or tend your duties. Not least, prepare my good clothes, complete with chain and sigils. And my gauntlet: get the rust off it, if you can. Doubtless I shall be up and about from time to time during the long day, but be sure I am up at sundown!'
'Indeed, Lord!' Karz answered, who knew why his master must rise with the sinking of the sun, but in light of their conversation made no comment nor even thought about it, not until much later when Maglore was abed.
Then: Looking out through a window and up at the spires and high crags, each one tipped gold in sunlight — and gazing far across the miles-wide gorge of Turgosheim, whose honeycombed walls contained the great manses, to where the pale lights of melancholy Vormspire still burned like glowworms despite that it was day — Karz did think about it, and wondered at its meaning. For it was this: That the Lord Vormulac Unsleep, who in his prime had been the most powerful of them all, and still retained a measure of his former might, had called a meeting in Vormspire in the second hour following twilight. And no simple gathering this, for all of the Wamphyri had been called, Lords and Ladies alike, with tithe-penalties for any who might think to abstain.
Aye, times were changing in Turgosheim; Karz Biteri could feel it in his water! And he fancied that soon there'd be new histories to write, possibly even in blood…
Lord Vormulac Taintspore, called Unsleep after his insomnia of seventy years, had seated himself at the head of the great table; this was only proper, for he was convenor and host both. Tithemaster, adjudicator and 'aesthete' (the word must be read in the same light as 'ascetic' as applied to Maglore, insofar as such words may be said to apply to any of the Wamphyri), Vormulac was greatly respected… generally.
He was no strict adherent to Zolteism, but neither was he a glutton. He had not dealt his fellow Lords ill, not even in his prime. His forces had never attacked, other than to defend Vormspire; but when they had made war, then it had been utter and ruthless! Eighty years ago, Vormulac had lain Gonarspire and Trog-manse to waste, decked their masters in silver chains and hung them from their own battlements to await the rising sun's hot melt. Since when Turgosheim had stayed relatively free from internal feuding.
In aspect: Vormulac had kept his shaved head and thrall's forelocks for all of a hundred and thirty years. What had suited his old master Engor Sporeson in that earlier time had suited Vormulac ever since. His own thralls were similarly cropped, including the women. His forelocks, having lost most of their jet sheen through long years of sleeplessness, were iron-grey; they were plaited and finished with tassles, which dangled down on to his nipples. His eyes, not quite uniformly crimson but marked with curious yellow flecks, were close-set and deep-sunken in ochre orbits.
Vormulac's nose was long and thin, and sharply hooked at the bridge; it might be that in some former time it had been badly broken. Its convolutions and the gape of its nostrils were less marked than in most of the Wamphyri, but its great length was a singular anomaly, with a pointed tip which came down almost to the centre of his upper lip and lent his frown a hawkish severity. He wore iron-grey moustaches which dipped at their ends to meet the 'V of his goatish beard, and within this boundary of bristles his mouth was wide, thin as a gash, and held slightly but not cynically aslant. He wore a thin white scar in the hollow of his left cheek, from the orbit of his eye to the corner of his mouth, which might account for the latter's tilt. His ears lay flat to his head, and their conch-like whorls were tufted with coarse white hair.
A huge man, he stood almost seven feet tall. The histories had it that gigantism was common among the olden Wamphyri, when some had reached eight feet and more! Vormulac was happy with his seven, which were especially advantageous on occasions such as this. Since the seat of his chair was also an inch or two higher than the rest of them about the table, he made an imposing figure indeed.
And yet, overall, Vormulac's face and form were as melancholy in aspect as Vormspire itself, and the aura of his rooms, furniture, and tapestries — despite their richness, intricacy and questionable 'beauty' — was likewise doleful. Neither overtly dull nor doom-fraught as such, yet full of some sad nostalgia, theirs was a silent conspiracy to evoke visions of fled or stolen youth, mordant mistakes, and everlasting poignancy.
Maglore, Vormulac's contemporary down the years, knew the reason well enough. So might several of the others if they had cared to mark and remember such things; but in a world without proper records, time itself becomes an efficient eraser.
The reason was this: That in his youth, after Vormulac received the dying Engor Sporeson's egg and ascended in his turn to Vormspire, and while still he retained something of Szgany humanity, he had returned to Sunside to reclaim the love of a sweetheart lost when he'd been taken as a titheling. She had come back with him to Vormspire, where their passion was such that in a very short time his vampire, however immature, produced an egg which passed to her through intercourse.