'"The twins, grown up now, planned to put their father in a pit; for according to the lore or history of Starside — what little has ever been recorded — that was usually the best way. Or they could kill him out of hand, by trapping him in an inescapable place and setting fire to him, before he became totally ungovernable.
' "But it didn't come to that. Fond of flying, he formed an airfoil and flew out upon the gulf one night. This involved, of course, a great effort of will — which he relaxed, perhaps deliberately, high over the boulder plains. And Thing that he was, his immediate devolution into something less than airworthy was instantly fatal. He fell like a stone, and even protoplasm will only stretch so far.
' "So much for him.
' "His sibling children made a pact: they would not go with others to spread the curse abroad but cleave to each other, and so keep the thing to house. And all the while, year after year, they lived in fear that it might be in them, too — which indeed it was. But because they kept their flux under strict rein, and used it sparingly, the curse skipped their generation — only to emerge in the next!
'"It came out in the young Szwart, aye. Having been suppressed in his parents, the vampire essence they passed down to Szwart was of an entirely different order. How best to explain? When a man is born blind, his remaining senses may develop more fully in order to compensate for the loss. In Szwart's parents, the normal functions of their vampire leeches had been suppressed — which served only to magnify the essence that they passed down to Szwart!
'"Szwart's will has kept him sane within limits, but he is a totally devolved creature. He sleeps alone, to ensure that no bloodson of his will carry this thing into the future. His ugliness is such that men might easily go insane if they saw him in the worst of his myriad… designs. Tonight he maintained something of a manlike outline in order to be here with us, but normally he can't bear to be seen, which is why he shuns light and companionship. This last is no great hardship; we Wamphyri were ever loners. But let any man speak out against him as a freak — or shrink from the horror of him — it's as if his phobias were reinforced. And despite that he knows his ugliness well enough, knows the truth of it, still he will kill the offender, if only because his action or reaction reminded him of his infirmity."
'And Vavara said, "Yet you say he's not mad?"
'"Not yet," Malinari told her, "Though it must come eventually. Perhaps in a hundred years, or fifty, or maybe less. But he was here tonight; you saw him; he reasons."
' "I have seen him, yes," Vavara answered. "And his reasoning is as warped and fluctuating as his flesh! He looked like a mad thing to me, or close enough."
'"Have it your own way," my master told her. "But if he is a mad thing, then for the moment he's our mad thing. Also, he's the Lord of Darkspire, commander of men and monsters, and Darkspire guards our flanks…"
'Then for a while they were silent, until Vavara inquired: "What of his parents, the incestuous twins?"
'"Szwart was born beautiful and seemed perfect," Malinari answered. "At seventeen he ascended. And at eighteen his father found him in Darkspire's Desmodus colony, hanging with the bats from the fretted ceiling — but hanging in flaps and folds, like a blob of dough such as the Szgany use when baking their bread! In his gluttony, he had absorbed a great many bats before falling asleep.
' "Father and mother both, they tried to trap and burn him. He trapped and burned them! So the story goes. My advice: never treat Szwart with disdain because he is not pretty. And as for his quirks: we are Wamphyri and we all have quirks — even you, Vavara, or so I've heard it rumoured. But with the exception of our mutual enemies, no one takes us to task over our little… idiosyncrasies? As for Szwart, who is our ally: neither slight nor scorn him. And don't underestimate him, either
Korath had been silent for some little time. Perhaps he brooded on the past. Whatever, Harry prodded him with a thought:
Korath? And he responded with a grunt:
Huh?
My time fare grows short now, (Harry's deadspeak voice was faint and wavering) and Jake isn't far from waking. We've come a long way, in more senses than one, but we're by no means finished. When I go, your contact with Jake goes with me. Then you will be alone. If you ever want to hear from us again — for who knows? We might yet find some mutual benefit in renewed contact — then you'd fast get on with your story. But make it as brief as possible. Here's how it goes:
Malinari and the others, they lost their bloodwar and were banished. Then for four hundred years you survived the Icelands and eventually returned to Starside. And finally you came fare. That's the story, now fill in the details.
And Korath answered, Ah, but the details may take a little longer!
But not too long, said Harry.
As for Jake: this time he voiced no complaint. He was so 'into' Starside now — Korath's story had so intrigued him — that he wanted to know the rest of it, no matter how ugly it might get. And:
Very well, said Korath. Then let's be done with it…
'So then, Malinari, Vavara, and Szwart, they were made out to be the weird ones, the freaks, the outsiders. But in fact they were no more freakish than many of the Lords and Ladies in the camp of Dramal Doombody. Ah, but Lord Doombody had problems of his own. For the time being it seemed he had his leprosy under control, true, but what of the future? Even a man as mighty as Dramal has his limits, and likewise his vampire leech. He knew it was time to consolidate his position against a dubious future, when he might become weak and vulnerable.
'Since his aerie towered close to the centre of the clump, Dramal had resolved to annex all of the neighbouring stacks and so make them his own, or at least give them to allies with whom he had unbreakable pacts. This way — as he became less capable over however long a time — he would be surrounded by "friends" as opposed to enemies. And there in a nutshell we have the real basis of what was falsely termed "Malinari's bloodwar": in fact it was forced on The Mind and the other "freaks" by Dramal himself.
'Anyway, my master and his allies were determined to make a good long fight of it, and they did. Briefly, then:
'Malinari, Vavara, and Szwart: they set to and strengthened their earthworks in Starside's bottoms, and manned them with every sort of vicious atrocity from their vats. The triangle of barren earth accommodating their aeries became their first line of defence. As for the stacks themselves: Malstack wasn't altogether impregnable, but still Malinari felt fairly secure. The landing bays and walled ledges were few and well defended, and the gantlet approaches terrible in their severity. Over every possible avenue of invasion, corbels carved in the likeness of vomiting warrior-heads threatened boiling piss and flaming tar.
'Vavara's Mazemanse was more problematic. But it had good points as well as bad. In silhouette, the aerie looked like the roof of an ancient cave upended, with spindly stalactites going up instead of down. Causeways and buttresses stretched between, and various levels were roofed over with timbers out of Sunside and slate tiles from the scree slopes of the barrier mountains. Towards the centre the many rock spires were joined by massive, mortared walls to form the bulk of the aerie. Externally, radiating ribs of timber, the boles of Sunside ironwoods, supported slate rooves and timbered battlements, and boulder walls built by ancestral inhabitants protected the whole from attack up the sliding scree shambles of the bottoms.
'When the war came, Mazemanse suffered its greatest damage from aerial warriors driven to crash headlong into the delicate outer spires, thus bringing them down on the inner walls, causeways, barracks, and other habitations. Small-minded, such creatures as were crippled in these deliberately contrived collisions would then sacrifice themselves by smashing down on roofs to break them in. Sometimes this worked, but on many occasions the roofs were false and hid needle spires or stakes of mountain pine. Impaled warriors would then be set on fire and fried in the fiery jets of their own gas-bladders; their molten fats and noxious liquids would be drained off as ammunition for the castle's corbel chutes.