From this vantage point, as the air cleared and the sun sucked up and steamed away a swirling ground mist, Jazz was able to see why Lardis had chosen such a difficult route. Down below a forest stretched deep and wide, away out onto the Sunside plain. Criss-crossed with rivers tumbling from the mountains, the deep, dark green of the woods told of an almost impenetrable rankness. Up here the rivers were still streams, easily forded, but down below they tumbled through gulleys, joined up, finally broadened into wide watercourses winding through the forest. Good for hunting and fishing, certainly, but no good at all for trekking. The choice had been as easy as that: a difficult route or an impossible one. And of course the foothills did command a view of all the land around, a factor much to Lardis's liking.
'This time,' Jazz told Zek, 'I believe I'll sleep.'
'You did last time,' she reminded him. 'Are you beginning to feel the strain?'
'Beginning to feel it?' He managed a grin. 'I'm looking for a muscle that doesn't ache! And yet the Travellers have these damned cumbersome travois to lug around, and I don't hear them complaining. I suppose it's like you said: I'll get used to it. But I'd hate to think what it would be like for anyone who was unfit, or maybe an older person, stranded here.'
'I wasn't so fit,' she reflected. 'But I've had more time to get myself broken in. I suppose in a way I was lucky that the Lady Karen got me first. And then that she was... well, a "Lady", or as much of a one as her condition would allow her to be.'
'Her condition?'
'She has Dramal Doombody's egg,' Zek nodded. The Wamphyri Lord Dramal was doomed from the day he took a leper - which was how he came to be named that way. I'll explain:
'Leprosy is also part of the Travellers' lot. They are prone to it. Passed on, inherited or simply contracted from another leper - don't ask me. I don't know anything about the disease. But when its symptoms start to show in a Traveller, then he's kicked out. It happens now and then: his tribe simply abandons him. Or her. Dramal, in his youth five hundred years ago, took a female leper. She had the disease but it hadn't started to show yet. The vampire Lord found her comely; he cohabited with her in his aerie; too late he discovered her curse.'
Jazz was puzzled yet again. 'You mean she passed it on to him? But I'm amazed that any of these terrible creatures have survived at all! Quite apart from the fact that they continually war with each other, they drink the blood of Travellers, have sex with Traveller women, generally leave themselves wide open to all sorts of diseases.'
'And yet,' Zek answered, 'in their own way they're scrupulous. The true Wamphyri Lord or Lady is, anyway.'
'Scrupulous?' Jazz was taken aback. 'Are you serious?'
She looked at him, stared unblinking into his eyes. 'Cockroaches are also scrupulous, in their way. But all in all, the Wamphyri are ... choosy, yes. Their retainers, their henchmen - generally Travellers who've been changed, vampirized but not given an egg, like those two you saw with Shaithis - they're not so fussy. But as for "leaving themselves wide open to diseases": that might be true if they were wholly human. But as you've seen, they're not. Once a man is vampirized his body becomes invulnerable to disease. That's why they live so long. Even the aging process is defeated.'
'But not invulnerable to leprosy? Is that what you're saying?'
'Apparently. Anyway, this woman of Dramal's died in the tower where he locked her. Then the disease came out in him. Of course, his vampire flesh fought it. When limbs withered down they were regenerated, and when flesh wasted away it was replenished. But Dramal couldn't win. The vampire in him was itself infected. As the disease got a hold, all of Dramal's energies went into combatting it, holding it at bay. His aerie was shunned by the Wamphyri, and even in times of truce he had no visitors. He held his own people in thrall, of course, but as he weakened even they began to whisper and plot against him. They were afraid of catching the disease.
'Now all of this took time, almost five hundred years of gradual deterioration, but just a few years ago Dramal began to fear that the end was in sight, that one of the Great Undead was about to die - or that he would soon become so weak that his retainers would rise up against him, stake and behead him, and burn his remains to ashes. Then they would flee the aerie, which was now generally considered a pesthole. He determined that before they could do that he must deposit his egg - but not with one of the treacherous gang who now surrounded him. With the egg would go his power, of course, and the aerie would pass into the hands of his successor. So he took Karen Sisclu from an eastern Traveller tribe and made her one of the Wamphyri, and before he died transferred all of his power to her. In better times he would most certainly have passed on his egg through the sex act, but he no longer had the strength for that. He had expended all in teaching Karen the ways of the Wamphyri, the secrets of the aerie, and in passing on his sigils and the loyalty of his various beasts. And so he merely kissed her; that was sufficient; during that monstrous kiss his egg passed into her.'
Jazz couldn't suppress a small shiver. He grimaced and said: 'God, what a world this is! But tell me: by "her condition" do you mean the fact that she's now Wamphyri, or is it worse than that? I mean, does she have Dramal's leprosy, too?'
'No, not that,' Zek answered, 'but it's possible she's in an even worse fix, if you can imagine that. You see, Wamphyri legends have it that the first true Mother was a human female whose vampire produced more than the normal single egg. Indeed, the eggs were produced almost endlessly, until the vampire itself and its female host were drained - until there was nothing left of them! They gave birth to vampires until the effort withered them to lifeless husks. And this was how Dramal had determined to repay the others of the Wamphyri for their scorn, their naming him Doombody and for his isolation: but mainly for the sheer evil of it. He would cause to be brought into this world a hundred vampire eggs, all of which would find hosts in the denizens of his aerie. Why, even the flying beasts and warrior creatures would be Wamphyri! Which would mean the debasement of the entire hag-ridden race! Do you understand?'
Jazz nodded, but a little uncertainly. 'I think so. He hoped that Karen would become a Mother, that her vampire would produce the same endless stream of eggs. But how could he be sure?'
'Maybe he couldn't,' she shrugged. 'Maybe he merely hoped it would be so - but he told Karen it would be. And she, poor, damned, doomed creature that she is, she believes it. And the Wamphyri do have strange powers. Perhaps in some way he has engineered it. Anyway, he's gone now into corruption and so she waits, and the vampire in her slowly matures. Except... some mature more quickly than others. In some it is a matter of days, in others many years. If her vampire is a Mother, then she'll suffer the same fate as that first Mother of legend...'
Zek paused, and on impulse reached across and touched Jazz's face. Before she could withdraw her hand, he kissed her fingers. This, too, was on impulse. She smiled at him and shook her head.
'I know what you're thinking,' she said. 'And I certainly don't have to read your mind. It's a grasshopper mind anyway; from such a very dire subject to - dalliance? - in one move.' Then she grew serious again. 'But you're right, Jazz, this is a very terrible world. And we're not out of it yet by a long shot. We should both save our strength.'
'I've noticed,' he told her, 'that you've been sticking pretty close to me. Maybe it's as well I can't read your mind.'
She laughed. 'There are a lot of unattached male Travellers, Jazz,' she said. 'Now to them, and to Lardis too, it will seem I've made up my mind - whether I have or not. This way I won't have to keep fending them off. But don't make me keep fending you off, too, for I'm not sure how well I'd succeed.'