Twenty-seven years ago,

---

Windblown ice drifted across the frozen ground, blowing over the Earth in wispy veils of white. Biting, icy wind howled across a frozen hellscape utterly devoid of any life. Nothing could be seen under the hazy, gray sky but endless white interrupted only by the occasional outcropping of black basalt jutting out from under a crust of snow. Few other lands were so harsh in the dead of winter.

But here in the very northernmost lands in all the world, it was only early autumn.

Such a climate made even the rather disagreeable weather of the Lands Under Shadow seem as pleasant as the mildest of the Jade Isles. North of the fjords of the Broken Lands, across frigid waters of the Thousand Teeth, was a land so remote and inhospitable that it had no name in any civilized tongue. The Seal-Eaters had some names for this place in their incomprehensible language, but even they rarely ventured beyond the icy coasts. Seals and walruses - the only things of interest to those primitive folk - occupied only the coastal areas. The icy heart of that septentrional continent belonged to no man.

That was not to say that this place was completely uninhabited. Deep inside a narrow fissure within a crag of icy rock was the haunt of perhaps this land's only inhabitant, and one of the few vampires left in the world.

"Thaw, damn you," snarled the occupant of this dank lair as he tossed another patty of dried muskox dung into a firepit of coals and anemic flames. The freeze-dried lump of oxshit crackled as it slowly ignited, illuminating the corpse of a Seal-Eater strung up over the fire by a sinew rope tied around his ankles. Frozen absolutely solid, his round, pale face was perpetually frozen into the terrified howl that punctuated his brutal life. Even the hatchet that the vampire had buried in his belly months ago was still there, intentionally left in the petrified corpse so as to keep as much precious blood inside the body.

Drops of mucus from inside the frozen cadaver's nostrils melted from the warmth of the fire, dropping and sizzling angrily on the coals directly below. The drops of moisture raised the vampire's hopes that his victim would thaw soon. Producing a jagged knife from the tattered folds of a robe of animal hides, the vampire made an incision across the Seal-Eater's bony cheek. Freshly-melted blood dripped at a teasingly-slow rate from the cut, each of which the vampire greedily captured in a bowl fashioned from a human skull. The incision would clot shortly, especially given that the vast majority of the corpse's blood remained locked inside his frozen veins, but it would yield enough to hold the starving vampire over for a few hours while the rest of the cadaver thawed out. Hardly a spoonful of dark red blood had pooled at the bottom of the skull before the vampire gulped it down.

"Blegh," the vampire grunted, scraping the blood off his tongue with yellowed, jagged fangs. "You taste positively dreadful," the vampire complained to the corpse hanging in front of him. "No sweetness at all. Fishy, just like the seals your kind eat."

"You know, I've tasted a great many of your kind over the centuries," the vampire continued on, holding the bowl under the sliced cheek to collect the occasional droplet of blood. "Dining options are rather limited in these latitudes, and admittedly I have never cared for the flavor of your people. That said, I must confess that you, sir, have the dubious honor of being the most unpleasant-tasting fellow I have ever fed on."

A spittle of melted saliva dripping from the corner of the Seal-Eater's mouth and sizzling in the fire was the only response.

"Such an honor is not conferred lightly, sir. Over my long life, I have tasted the blood of every race of man in this world. Even by the standards of my kind, I am very advanced in age. We vampires are immortal, you see, and the only things that can kill us are silver, sunlight, or a wooden stake in the heart. Seeing that the nearest woody shrubs grow fifty leagues south of here, that your people haven't developed even the most basic metallurgy, and that the sun doesn't shine here for nearly two months in the winter... I am rather safe here. There is a price to pay for such safety, to be sure. But, if you are to survive to be nearly two thousand years old, you have to make some sacrifices."

"Some of my peers might call me a coward for the lengths I have gone to ensure such a long life. 'Dregen the Craven', some have called me." The vampire gave a shrug, cupping the skull bowl in his bony fingers all the while.

"Admittedly not an entirely dishonest moniker," Dregen rambled on. "But what was I supposed to do? I was a minister under Lord Nosferas, not a warrior. My strength was not in fighting, but in problem solving. And so when Nosferas was killed and Zachaeus led mortal men in his war against other vampires, I solved that problem the best way I knew how: I disappeared! I traveled up to this desolate place and let all the other vampires kill themselves and forget that I ever existed. Those that called me Dregen the Craven? All but a handful of them are dead. Zachaeus is too busy ruling the Lands Under Shadow and managing his idiot children to pay any mind to his cousin Dregen banished to the very edge of the world."

"I'd be a liar, though, if I said I didn't miss life down south, back during the times under Lord Nosferas. He was a tyrant to be sure, but those loyal to him could count on his protection. A little freedom was a small price to pay for a good bloodmeal, or more stimulating company than a dead Seal-Eater."

Moisture was beginning to drip from the ears and mouth of the upside-down corpse at a steady rate now. Dregen gave a pinch of the Seal-Eater's throat, testing to see if his jugular had thawed out yet. The vampire had nearly slit the half-thawed throat when he felt the presence of an intruder in the cave.

Dregen spun on his heels toward the entrance of his lair, hunching over his dagger as he stared wide-eyed out into the icy wasteland outside.

"Chkuna tklakak nag 'tmek!" Dregen warned in the guttural tongue of the Seal-Eaters. "Begone, or I'll kill you!" He repeated in his preferred language. Only the howl of icy winds outside his cave could be heard in response. Several tense moments passed before Dregen saw what had disturbed him.

Fluttering against the frigid wind outside, a tiny, solitary bat flew in from the blizzard and perched itself on the vampire's arm. It was nearly dead from exhaustion, with numerous pinholes and nicks in its membranous wings earned from what must have been an arduous journey from God knows where.

"What a curious visitor!" Dregen exclaimed - immediately relieved of his initial fear as he examined the bat clinging to the sleeves of his crudely-stitched robe. "You are a very long way from home, my little friend; at least a hundred leagues my estimation. Just look at your wings! What could have possibly possessed you to fly so far north?"

The shivering bat stared into Dregen's eyes as the vampire probed the little bat's memory. Dregen's eyes once again went wide with surprise.

"You've flown so very far, my little friend. Too far to jest about such a thing. But how can that be?"

The vampire probed the bat's mind and saw into its memories once more.

"How can that possibly be true?" Dregen asked again. "Zachaeus and his heirs are all gone?"

It had been many a year since Edward was forced to flee. He trained hard and spent many a hour perfecting his secret weapon, his special power. Now, his training was complete. He felt he was ready to fight, to make the attempt to take back his home and free his people. For now, he had to save his energy for the big journey ahead, and for the right time to make their move.

He and his princess had since married. She would be his queen when he took back his home, the one woman who would rule by his side for eternity. During his training, they welcomed their first child into the world, a son, whom they named after his deceased father. He prayed that his son would not end up like his brother.

His wife was resting as he stared up at the sky one night, as was their infant child. He sighed and frowned. Edward worried about the chance that their plans may not succeed. But, he dared not give up hope, lest darkness consume his heart like it had his eldest brother. He narrowed his eyes as he remembered that awful day. His brother, and anyone who dared to side with him, would pay for their crimes. They would all pay!

Edward calmed himself. He had to be patient. That time would come soon enough. And so, he returned to his quarters, and to his family, to wait out the rest of the days remaining hours.

Like a lump of phlegm in a gasping throat, a little, scratchy man had lodged himself in a wide alley. When he budged from his place, which was seldom, it was only to pace about a perimeter he had set for himself, which was meager. He might shuffle to a resident's door and examine the rust on the knocker and the grain in the damp wood for the fourteenth time, feigning a great interest in each. He might contemplate lifting the roughspun tarp in the alcove, before remembering again that he was a goodly, law-fearing fellow, with no propensity for letting his curiosity migrate to his feathery fingertips. He might, rarely, venture out to the mouth of this alley, and even there tilt behind a crate or a corner as he watched the square for whatever it was that he watched for, squinting against the lamplight. But he always flinched away to the shadows again, pushing himself flush against a dank, grimy wall. It wasn't another man he feared. As if he had committed no crime, he did not flee from the scrutiny of the city guards as it listed down the alley. As if he was neither traitor nor deserter, he did not take to flight when a patrol of the queen's troops rounded the bend in the street. Though the barbarian kingdoms were sweeping through as quick as wildfire, it was still the Land Under Shadow they conquered, a land where the terrors came in all appearances, but always with an appetite. Something of those designs must have visited the weedy creature in his dreams—or slithered past his door—to put him in such a temperament.

Then: ka-click. Ka-click. Leather heels resounded from the alley's west entrance. The man heard them and despaired. Ignoring the cold and the wet as they bled through the tatters in his shoes, stinging his feet, he flung himself into the alcove. The burlap was stretched taut over hard and angular things, maybe carts or folding stalls, which left him bruised and battered in the catching, but obscured, and deathly quiet. The man held his breath in his throat, and watched the far wall: for the dim, stretched shadows, and the silhouette which carved them from the distant lamps. The figure paused. It waved its snout as if sampling all the scents on the wind, struggling to choose one. Then it passed. Its footsteps were swallowed up in the mist, but issuing from it came another sound: a voice, brassy-tenor and just a little pompous.

"Apologies, good man. I'd have lit a candle, had I known I'd be late."

The creature in the alcove hesitated, but when he was sure that this was not some man-like voice deceiving him into a monstrous embrace, he clambered toward it. "Are you truly of Solomon's order?" he squinted. "You most of all should know the danger. To meet under starlight, while one of them hunts ..."

Lifting his cloak, the stranger revealed his belt, lined with weapons and deadly contraband. Strange instruments gleamed silver; potions and extracts lustered faintly with an artificial fire. "You are safe in my company," he said. "Now—what is it that you saw? Or—yes, more importantly, where did you see it?"

He looked to the peasant's quivering hands and loosened a winebladder from his belt. Offering it, he watched as the peasant uncorked and sniffed. The vapors, hot, but vaguely fragrant of mint and butterscotch, must have been some comfort; he grasped the bladder by the neck as if to strangle it and drank deeply of whisky, wincing, coughing, speaking with a fresh rasp: "The Seeds. Thought it another beggar at first, but it had teeth, big and blunted like for chewin' up corpses."

"The Seeds," echoed the hunter to himself, "of course, where its victims will not be missed ..."

"And its eyes!" barked the peasant, as if already losing his grasp over his inhibitions. "They shone green in the dark. Under the orange of the lanterns and the blue of the stars, its eyes took to green, not like no man I ever peeped. It looked like a rabid raccoon, pondering some mad attack."

A gossamer-thread of spittle broke between the peasant's mouth and the mouth of the winebladder.

"It watched you, then?"

"Eyein' me up, aye, wonderin' if I'd give it a struggle. Any day now it'll come for me, I'm sure of it. Even when you arrived, I was sure you was ... that I was ..."

The hunter watched the liquor in the peasant's shaky hands, though the shake was fast subsiding. He contemplated snatching it back, for it was a good, well-built vessel, but at the sight of the spittle he decided he could always buy another. He even refused it when the peasant offered it, at which the scrawny thing clutched it to his ribcage.

"I'll look into it," said the hunter as he turned away. But the other had noticed the flatness in his tone.

"Where are you going? Do you not believe me?"

He kept walking, but could hear behind him the muted shuffling of threadbare shoes. "Look, I do not doubt what you saw. Not at all."

"Then help me."

"But—" the hunter turned on his heels—"the last vampire spotted in Ortheoc was the one slain by Valnorn, my master, nearly a decade ago. It's exceedingly unlikely that another has survived all this time, entirely unnoticed. Whereas you 'saw' a vampire, you were probably looking at something else altogether."

"Something else!" the peasant hissed. "What else has fangs like a rat's teeth?"

"Some species of naga have been known to look like that. Egg-eaters."

"It had hair."

"Oh? Yes, naga are hairless. I'll give you that. So it was a half-orc. Or a night-elf."

"A night-elf ..."

"Or," said the hunter, stepping closer, looming himself over the now-hunching creature, "you saw an ugly, particularly nasty beggar. You were in the Seeds, sir."

The peasant detected the threat in that sentence: of being asked why he had ventured there, what his business had been in that nasty place. He continued to shrink where he stood, no longer able to look the hunter in the eye. He had wasted the time of an armed, hardened, and dangerous individual, he realized, and his walking away from this alley was no longer certain. So the peasant took to the same techniques of survival which protected him in the presence of a guard captain, or a knighted soldier, or a baron's son: he lowered his gaze, folded his hands, and accepted whatever cruel amusements laid waiting for him.

"Oh, damn it all," the slayer growled, seeing this over his shoulder, for he had tried to escape before this happened. He hated pathetic things because he hated the feelings of pity they sowed in his chest. And though he would not admit it, he had spent many of his days terribly bitter. The hunters' purpose had always been to render themselves purposeless, after all, but in all their training, no one had ever prepared them for that future where they were unneeded, unremarkable. It had once seemed so far away, unattainable in their lifetimes.

"Listen," he said. "I cannot promise what I will find there. But I will go to the Seeds and—at least investigate what you have seen."

The peasant looked up. "Thank you, sir. Thank you."

"Close your shutters. Lock your door. Let none inside who you do not know by name. They ... a vampire needs permission to enter an abode. It is a magical symptom of their foul condition."

On those words they parted, the peasant scurrying, the hunter striding, each with a sudden purpose. On the latter's part, he had to search. He had to plan. He had to resupply. And if his contact spoke true, he had to kill once more.

At sunset one night, Edward left his family to hunt. He fed quickly and gathered some animals whose blood would sustain his family. He had to protect them as well as finish up whatever training remained. He sighed as he returned to the little shack they were currently forced to stay in, along with the followers and soldiers and such who remained loyal to Edward after what had happened in his homeland. Luckily, they outnumbered those who were loyal to his brother, but he knew his brother had probably hired others to replace those who weren't.

Anyway, he looked out the window as Emily fed their son, wondering what was happening while he was away. He frowned as he became very worried, and narrowed his eyes when he became angry. But, he had to be strong, for everyones' sake. They needed a strong leader and that was what he had to be.

He mentally prepared himself for whatever lay ahead.

(I was not sure what else to write.)

Present

---

Pine boughs above roared softly in the evening breeze as Edward withdrew into his cabin in the evening. The warm glow of the hearth shone out through the doorway into the darkened forest as the vampire prince quietly opened and then locked the door so as not to disturb his sleeping followers within, casting orange firelight upon Bartolomue for a moment before leaving him in the dark once more.

He almost always took the night watch, as it allowed him to share most of his waking hours with his nocturnal liege. As the Commander of the Guard of Castle Bathory, it also seemed fitting to him that he should accept the more strenuous duties and lead by example. It was important to maintain a sense of duty and discipline, Bartolomue felt, even after all that had happened. Never mind that Castle Bathory and all but a handful of its guardians had been destroyed in Ulrek's War. As long as Edward and his son drew breath, the House of Zachaeus Bathory still remained and Bartolomue would serve them until his dying breath. That final breath was now much nearer than when he had started, for almost thirty years had passed since he made that pledge to the previous Guard Commander on the eve of Castle Bathory's destruction.

He was scarcely a man when he accepted the role of Guard Commander and was tasked with escorting Edward and Emily out of the doomed castle to safety. Twenty-seven years later, he had given nearly all of his life to Prince Edward. They had spent the past three decades moving from country to country like thieves on the lam. In the first few years after Ulrek's War, Edward and his loyal retinue had been welcomed into the courts of kings and lords, their hospitality belying selfish hopes of using the last Bathory heir as a puppet vassal to rule the Lands Under Shadow in their stead. But as time went on, and the Disciples of Solomon went farther afield to achieve Solomon Kane's quest to rid the world of vampires, the remnant of House Bathory was welcome in increasingly fewer lands. Now, Edward and his retinue lived in true exile in remote lands on the edge of the world: an abandoned trapper's cabin in the Red Forest near the edge of the Fire Lands.

The guard commander sat against the shaggy trunk of a red pine, staring out into the starlit forest, he wondered as he often did whether he had wasted his life in service to Edward. Edward was no closer to earning his father's throne than he was when he accepted the mantle of Guard Commander. In truth, Edward was in a much worse position than when Ulrek and Solomon Kane ousted him from the Lands Under Shadow. Five years after leaving the Lands Under Shadow, Edward and his retinue were the pampered guests of a wealthy merchant living in the safety of a walled compound in the great city of Aepiranth; twenty-seven years on, they lived like peasants in a sod-roof cabin of half-rotten timbers situated in a brutish, untamed land hundreds of leagues from home. What would another ten years bring?

It's not about my life, Bartolumue reminded himself, it's about those of the ones I left behind.

Bartolumue recounted the rumors that made their way from the Lands Under Shadow: the once-unified kingdom had become a barbaric and violent hell in the absence of the vampire lords. Petty kings - increasingly under the sway of the zealous Disciples of Solomon - waged constant war across the land. Reavers from the Broken Lands plied the coasts and rivers, taking boys as thralls and maidens as wives. Peasants were enslaved by dwarves to mine mithril in their ancestral mines. Violence and terror ruled the Lands Under Shadow in the absence of the vampires. If there was any chance to return Edward and restore order to their homeland, Bartolomue was resolved to take that chance. For in truth, it was his people languishing under the duress of war and famine and terror that he had pledged his eternal support to, not some exiled vampire prince.

He sat quietly in the dark for some time, allowing his eyesight to readjust to the dim starlight of the forest before resuming his patrol around the camp. Wielding the crossbow issued to him as a castle guard some thirty years ago and a short scimitar favored by the local people of the Fire Lands, Bartolomue set out into the forest. His studded leather cuirass creaked softly as each inhalation pressed his paunch against the undersized armor. The grizzle-bearded guard may not have been in peak fighting condition any longer, though Bartolomue was still a seasoned fighter to be sure. Many an assassin and vampire hunter attempting to take Edward or Emily's life had met an end at Bartolomue's hand, and he still had plenty of fight left in him.

A ghostly call sounded through night as the guard captain patrolled the forest: a deep, resonant howl in the distance that transitioned into a high-pitched squeal. A terrifying sound if one didn't know the source, but Bartolomue recognized it at once as the bugle of a stag elk - a strange but harmless denizen of these exotic woods. Theirs was a crepuscular call, notifying Bartolomue that dawn would be coming soon. Through the pine boughs up above, the night sky slowly began to transition from black to dark blue: confirmation that the night was nearly through.

Perhaps it was knowledge that his watch was nearly over that lowered his guard, but it was much too late when the guard captain heard a sound that - unlike the calling of the elk - was much more sinister.

Footfalls on the pine-needles behind him.

Bartolomue spun on his heels immediately, leveling his crossbow, and found himself face-to-face with the round, swarthy faces of two Firelander men. Clad in lamellar armor, their bows were already drawn with vicious iron arrowheads aimed directly at his chest. Several moments of tense silence passed as Bartolomue and the Firelanders held their weapons pointed at one another.

"Lower your weapon," whispered one of the Firelanders in an almost unintelligible accent. The fact that they even knew his language at all was impressive enough.

Bartolomue held his crossbow toward the Firelanders, but glanced back at the cabin behind him. The guard captain knew he wouldn't survive this encounter, not against both of them. But he could at least alert Edward and his other fighting men before he was slain.

"INTRUDERS!" Bartolomue screamed before being struck across the face and having his crossbow and sword physically removed from his posession.

Shouts of alarm rang out from the cabin at once. Prince Edward accompanied by five crossbow-armed men stormed out the door into the forest at once. In the torchlight of Edward's men-at-arms, they saw some twenty to thirty men clad in lamellar armor surrounding the cabin, bows drawn but aimed just beneath Edward and his men, perhaps as a show of some small measure of good will.

Edward's guards shared no such goodwill to the intruders, pointing their crossbows directly at the cohort of exotic warriors surrounding them despite being hopelessly outnumbered.

"Who goes there?!" Edward's guards barked "Identify yourselves!"

Two of the lamellar-clad warriors stepped aside, allowing the presumed leader of the Firelander warriors to step forward toward Edward. Unarmed, but clad in a tunic studded with lamellar plates, his face was round and chubby - even more so than was typical for the nomads of the Fire Lands with their fatty diets. Perhaps a noble among their people? Did the Fire Lands even have nobles to speak of? Edward's men had presumed the people of this country to be simple barbarians with no sense of social order. But the armor and weaponry clearly demonstrated a level of craftsmanship that was not possible among true barbarians. Whatever this man was, he approached Edward and gave a brief bow of the head in respect.

"Please, lower your weapons," the leader of the Firelanders requested in the tongue of the Lands Under Shadow. "We are friends of Prince Edward Bathory."

Edward was checking on his resting wife and son, Zachaeus(named after his grandfather), when he heard the sounds outside. He thought there was chaos. There was something amiss. He frowned. He took a breath and headed for the door. He opened it and saw his head guard and others confronting someone who was a stranger to him. He frowned at what he saw and he stepped outside.

"Who are you? I demand to know your name and why you are here."

Edward used his commanding royal tone when he spoke. He had to keep a strong appearance for the sake of his family and the others who remained loyal to him. He had gotten word of many humans and vampires still loyal to him, and praying for his return as well as the restoration of the kingdom to the way things were, and could not afford to lower his guard at times like this. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at them and waited.

"Well?"

Edward was not going to be patient, not now.

"I am a servant of the Prophet Ongu, the Left-Handed Lord, the Son of the Moon God. He is the immortal master of Amhezan; what your people call the Fire Lands. Before your birth, Prince Edward, our Prophet visited the Lands Under Shadow and learned the wisdom of your father. In time, he came to call Zachaeus a friend. A fortnight past, a vision came to our Prophet. He knew that Zachaeus' son had found his way into his wards, and sent me here to find him."

"I know it must seem unbelievable to the ears of an outlander," the Firelander said, noting Edward's incredulous scowl. "But to our people the Prophet's wisdom simply is. You will soon find that the Prophet's wisdom is no more incredible than the fact that the sun sets and falls each day without fail. His foresight and truth are immutable laws of nature. His wisdom is infallible; his will irresistible."

"And what, then, wills your master?" Asked Bartolomue. The eyes of Edward, his guards, and the Firelanders went to the Guard Commander as his Firelander captors brought him before their leader. His eye was blackened from where one of his captors had struck him, visibly unnerving the other guards although Edward remained resolute.

"The Prophet seeks an audience with Prince Edward."

The leader of the Firelanders gave a sharp whistle and the sound of pine needles crunching softly underfoot could be heard as some large beast was galvanized into action from the darkness of the forest. Edward's guards aimed their crossbows at whatever approached. Ambling into the torchlight of the clearing in front of the trapper's cabin came a four-strong team of shaggy, two-humped camels - exotic beasts that elicted dumbfounded awe in Edward's guards. Leather tack and saddles strapped upon their shoulders held up a giant wooden palanquin. The Firelander leader grunted something in his native tongue to the camels, bringing the camel team to a halt directly in front of Prince Edward. With gurgling groans of annoyance, the camels awkwardly stooped down onto their knees, lowering the palanquin to a comfortable height at which it could be entered. The leader of the Firelanders approached the palanquin and opened a door for Edward to enter.

The interior of the palanquin was spacious indeed, and could comfortably seat four. Giant seating cushions were neatly arranged inside, and windows were affixed with several layers of breathable silk curtains that would serve to block the sun's rays - clearly fashioned with vampire occupants in mind.

"Your wife and son shall ride with you," the Firelander said, beckoning Edward inside the palanquin with a flourish of the hand. "Your men shall walk with us. We will make the journey to the Prophet's court as comfortable as possible, but do recall that his will is irresistible. Refusing to heed the Prophet's summons is not an option."

@gorgenmast
Edward narrowed his eyes as he listened. His suspicion was great. He glanced behind him. The doorway had been left slightly open. He could hear the sounds of slumber within. His wife and son were sleeping and he would hate to disturb them for any reason at all. He sighed and looked back towards the males before him. The prince frowned. His guard remained high. He took a careful step forward.

"Before I do anything of the sort, I ask for one thing. You must give me your word that no trickery will befall us, that no harm shall be done to any of us. Only then, will I speak with him."

His wife awoke, having head his loud voice. She stood in the doorway, holding their child in her arms. She frowned, worried.

"Prince Edward, while your men are decidedly brave and loyal, they are very much outnumbered. Had we wished harm upon you and your followers, we would have already carried it out."

"To be fair, they have already inflicted some harm," black-eyed Bartolomue chimed in.

"You were subdued," the Firelander leader corrected. "If we wished you actual harm, you'd have been slain before you were even aware of our presence."

"In any case, Prince Edward, I can assure you that you and your followers shall be treated amicably. No harm shall come to any of them."

@gorgenmast
Prince Edward sighed. He glanced behind him yet again. He blinked when he saw his wife and son there. His wife was giving him a worried look. Their son was fussy, clearly frightened.
"da....da?"

His son was just starting to talk and his fear was showing in his voice, Edward noticed. He sighed and turned back to face the firelanders'.

"Very well, if we have your word. I just do not wish for my guard or my family to come to harm, especially during this time."
The prince turned and held his wifes' hand. He led them into the palanquin. His guard remained high, his eyes looking around in every direction. He was protective of his family and such.

The Tenement District. The rest of Ortheoc wanted nothing better than to forget the existence of this cesspit; this memory of their failings, this afterimage of their avarice. Reflected in the gaunt face of a panhandler they saw their own apathy for The Other. In the flights of crows and vultures they were reminded of their own fear of death, the only collector they could not bribe away with gold or sex or a favor at court. Would that these hypocrites could cut the decrepit apartments from the skyline, like cutting a cancerous growth; or scrub the stench, as with some stinging balm smeared over a streak of gangrene; simply discard somehow this collection of outcasts and untouchables. Here, nonetheless, stood "The Seeds," the hardy weed of Ortheoc, mocking the gardens with all their ritual and pomp. Here, a museum to the true humanity of the city masters: bodies in the street, unpaved mud, rain-rotted domiciles.

Dezeric had dressed in mottled browns for his venture into this place: muddy shoes, a moth-eaten cloak, cotton wraps about his neck and legs. But the misfortunes of a Seed dweller were not so easily counterfeited. Layers of sweat and stink had not so permeated his crevices—the armpits, the groin—as to discolor the fabrics through weeks of constant wear. No boils went unlanced on his skin, no warts unburned, til they had grown as large as crabapples. He tiptoed to avoid the lumps and puddles of frozen excrement, not at all like the resigned trudge or the purposeful flutter of the locals. Moreover, although Dezeric swigged whisky straight from a sea-glass bottle (an elegant detail, he thought), his hand didn't shake as he did it; he didn't get the craving pangs of a man whose drink was his only warmth on a night like this one, the howls of winter rasping at his feet, his hands, his nose, his ears. Thankfully, most were huddled in the taverns or around their anemic hearths at this hour, unconcerned with the business of the conspicuous outsider. And the Seeds were not thick with people like they would have been twenty years ago, a natural consequence of the wars, first against the Báthory pretender, then the Futhurlings, then the Carling queen.

What did he even hope to find here? Eyes and teeth—eyes and teeth, and hair, by his contact's description. What a waste of an evening, skulking around glowering at beggars, who often enough didn't even possess those three in the right quantities. But just as Dezeric passed the Bull & Brazen, its hall bright with fire and raucous with laughter, a familiar tension shivered up his spine, and he knew that he could not have come in vain. He was being watched: from the darkness, from a distance, with that intimately predatory intent that could chill an already-icy street.

Despite his trusty instincts, honed over years, the hunter was well out of practice with his profession. He stopped and looked about, trying to pinpoint the source of the dread which crept over his body, but no doubt managing only to let the creature know, wherever it was, that he had noticed its presence. How Master Valnorn would have scolded him for such an amateurish mistake! But this was not a time for reminiscing; Dezeric pushed that thought aside, warming as it was. Now the joy of the hunt had splayed its full grasp over he, who could only push further, deeper into the heart of the noxious aura. The beggars, noticing his frenzy, gave him a wide radius as they passed, wanting no part of whatever sickness, madness, or hysteria had come over this stranger to their territory.

It seemingly led him off to a ruinous square, the fountain empty and crumbling and overgrown with dead lichen. But the oppressive atmosphere thinned as he walked, whereupon he doubled back toward the Bull & Brazen. Dezeric then investigated another direction, behind the tavern, but nearly touched the city wall, and again could feel that he had been driven astray. Was this an aspect of the creature's sorcery? The very same adaptation by which it had eluded the land's cleansing for all this time? The hunter looked into the orangey glow of the windows, then up at the tavern's sign, depicting a horned beast and a human pugilist, both in bombasted trousers, each throwing punches at the other. He did not imagine that a vampire would hide where the locals had lit so many candles and ovens and braziers. The flames were one of its few banes, capable of marring its hideous form with permanent and agonizing damage. Some subspecies even reacted to fire as to the sun itself; doubly cursed were they against the purifying light. But it was near; near enough, in fact, for that to seem the only likelihood, until a bundle of black rags moved in Dezeric's peripherals.

He had thought it a swimming-headed drunkard at first, or even a corpse, that bony framework propped up against the side wall. But at its first twitch he did not even need to see its fangs or the supposed green-glow of its glare to know. Too pale to be human, too thin to be half-orc, and too—aromatic—to be any breed of elf, even those who delved deep in sulfurous caverns and fungal forests. It could be nothing else. The scent of putrefaction was everywhere in the Seeds, diluted to a gentle perfume on the circling winds; but here it clung to this animal, surrounded it. It raped the senses and sent Dezeric heaving to shove his nose into the crook of his elbow, while also drawing his sword. It was no Pthaalma, if the legends were true, but small runic shapes had been cut out of the flats of the blade, then inlaid again in silver. The writing shone black with age and tarnish, standing out against the dull snow-grey of the pitted steel.

"Stand and die with dignity, monster," said the slayer through his cloak, his eyes watering, "or flee, and die in disgrace. It makes no difference to me."

The eyes were not catching the light at the right angle, or the right intensity, to give off that supposed green glint. Thus, Dezeric could only see the vampire's features in their outlines: a narrow chin supporting a long, yearning mouth; a hooked nose with wide, flappy nostrils. A hood concealed its ears but its hair hung in greasy coils. Its lips broke as it moved to speak, revealing incisors as long as fork prongs and as yellow as fried pork fat.

"Monthter?" it lisped, flicking a black tongue through the gap between those knobby teeth. "Do you greet everyone like that? And what have I done to you and yourth, to detherve that epithet, 'monthter'?"

"You and your race have sown countless lamentations upon this land. Orphans—widows—fathers bereaved of their sons," the hunter replied. "You have withered crops and poisoned rivers. You have spread plague and terror. You have gamed with human lives in pursuit of vampiric ideals."

"I did all that?" the creature cooed, looking terribly sorry.

"Stand, wretch. Stand and face silver judgment."

"'Wretch' now! And didn't you thay I could choothe?"

Dezeric would not be mocked. "Stand!" he snapped, the rage flung from his lips in a delicate spray.

After, he heard what he could swear was the vampire's sigh, like the gases belched from the stomachs of the freshly dead as their bowels loosened and their insides jellified. It stood with a similar croak; was it struggling to move? Perhaps it had not fed in some time. Dezeric could not bring himself to pity something so ghastly, however.

"So you carry a blade as well," he said, nodding to the black shape at the vampire's waist, curved and wicked. "I could fell you in a proper duel, if you would prefer that over a hunt."

Another sigh. "Don't you think you're enjoying thith a bit too much?" said the vampire. "No, let'th play. I've not had a good hunt in a while."

"With pleasure," Dezeric said, simultaneous to his surprise attack. For a human his step was quick, his lunge deep. But the blade made no purchase as the monster began to blur, and shift. It seemed to draw its sword too, and even swing at its foe, though the weapon dematerialized before the blow landed. A ghostly image of a sickle-sword hit Dezeric's side, where it broke and scattered like a smoke ring. "Hah!" guffawed the hunter, feeling no worse for taking the blow than if he had parried it. In fact, behind his mail shirt and his thick woolen robe, his flank scarcely tingled.

He had to expect as much from such a cowardly race. At first sign of peril they scurried and skittered into their dark corners even in the company of their detestable packs—their "families"—never mind a lone specimen like this one. Dezeric threw open his cloak with a flourish, and reached for one of the glass flasks at his hip. The creature was fully transmuted now into a cloud of mist, silvery-pale, but what would it do, he wondered, when the very air was hostile to its new form? With a swing of his arm he sent the vial flying and then falling in a cacophony of shattered glass as it sundered against the tavern's stone wall. Forth spilled its contents, which stuck to the wall, and trickled down to its base, and sprayed out into the air. The liquid soon started reacting to the atmosphere, crackling with an arcane vitality, almost a life of its own. Sparks took to flames, which shifted from lazy, listless reds to a sharp, baneful yellow-white as they grew hotter, hotter, devouring more and more essence from the nearby air. Finally, the flames fanned out and flapped, mimicking the very phoenix of whose feathers the potion had first been distilled.

But Dezeric was not watching this spectacle. He watched the mist as it attempted to diffuse toward the other end of the alley, the cold end, the dark end, but was snared in flames which were too quick, lashing it and licking at its heel, as one could imagine the mist having a heel while it was in full retreat. Indeed, Dezeric watched as more and more of the mist was kissed with light and heat, until, unable to bear it, the vampire was forced to disperse, and melt down the walls.

The slayer shook the sweat from his brow, and grimaced a triumphant grimace. He had not killed it yet—not until he watched it die with his own eyes—but the pain he had inflicted, the wounds, had to be giving his quarry some serious contemplation and regrets. Moreover, it could not have gone far with such injuries; Dezeric had hoped the fire might force the thing back into its corporeal form, but it mattered not if the final staking and beheading happened that night or the next, in this district or that one. He had already won. It was just a matter of following the stench to the site of Final Death, a site of the vampire's choosing.

He was still chuckling, even as the magic fizzled out and its smoke wisped away toward the moon. "Come for me whenever you like, you parasite," said the hunter. "Come and get your revenge. I'll be ready. Do you hear me out there, you gust of stinking breeze? Come as a wolf, a bat, or whatever you wish. I'll be ready."

There were beggars leering. Dezeric sheathed his sword, and slit a purse full of pennies as he made his way west, back toward the civilized side of town. The coppers spinning across the ground helped most of them to forget what they had just seen.

The hunter himself, however, was slower to forget. In fact, he could not help but feel like that oppressive presence was following him; like it hadn't let up ever since he stepped foot near the Bull & Brazen tavern ...

Dezeric woke to screaming. In the slippery confusion of that limbo state, snatched back into the world and yet still half-dreaming, he might have thought them the screams of the beggars, watching his body fall slack in the battle against his nameless, faceless foe, gaunt and ashen-grey. Or they were his own screams, a triumph from which his waking had wrested him, because a dream must always end before its most climactic moment. But—no. Across the room the window started coming into focus: latched, but spilling new dawn light onto the hardwood floor, shutters thrown ajar. Splayed over the shoulders of a chair he saw the cloak and robe he had worn just one night prior, still smattered with salt and smirch. On the dresser: bottles of perfume and gin, shapes he could count and colors he could sort from his five paces. Dezeric recognized their bedchamber and the realness of it. He was, most assuredly, awake. And yet the screams persisted.

"Adrie?" he wheezed over a parched tongue. "Adrie, what's wrong?"

"Oh my God," she was saying, again and again, "oh my God, oh my God."

He moved to comfort her, at first ignoring the pang in his side. But as the pain grew too great to ignore, seizing in his muscles, even radiating through the hipbone itself, he collapsed again into their bedding, unable to support his own weight as it knotted at his flank and screamed. And as Dezeric gripped the spot and winced, he discovered the subject of his wife's horror. He touched the side of his stomach and he felt wet. He pulled his hand away; it was smeared with black, clumps of black; and stripes of grey-orange-green. Looking down, he saw a tear in his linen shirt, its edges dark and flaking; and underneath, jewels of pus and dried weep, shards of rancid amber clinging to a slash of black skin, black veins, black tissue.

Dezeric hadn't the time to even wonder where he had obtained such an injury. First of all, he knew precisely where. Second, the blood pooled in his head, quick and sizzling, and he lost his purchase on the room and its orientations. Whisky came up hot and sour, soon followed by last evening's sausages and pickled cabbage leaves. Adrie, his darling Adrie, leapt from her footing in alarm, but had at least shut up for a second. Now he could only hear the blood in his ears and his own retching and the splatter against the blanket. It was almost peaceful.

"Will you be all right by yourself? I have to leave if I'm to bring you a doctor."

"Water first," he coughed, blinking to snip the tears from his eyes. "Water." She rambled off to fetch it, and the room continued to swirl. Dezeric anchored his eyes on the paneling of the far wall, a single knot in a single plank, and managed to think a little in the chaos of his fever. When exactly had this happened? He was sure he was not bitten, but something physical must have struck him, some kind of armament; any mere spell would not have left such a small and local wound. Then, was he struck from behind when he went to the fountain? When he passed between the tavern and the neighboring buildings? No, he would have noticed such an attack; in his body, or in that tyrannical atmosphere which followed in the creature's malice and intent. That could only leave—the hunter's eyes went wide.

The sword. That phantom sword was aimed to cut precisely where he had now begun to putrefy. And it was not merely smeared in excrement or dragged over the cadavers of rotting livestock, like soldiers had done in the wars to ensure swift deaths for their enemies, no matter how small the scratches inflicted on the field. These—properties—clung to the sword even as it followed its master into the immaterial.

Dezeric remembered now. He had felt a little numb and tingly, but unharmed, when the sword appeared to have gone right through him—through this exact spot. But of course he would feel no pain when his armor offered the blade no resistance, and when his skin and nerves withered instantly to its touch, as if unnaturally and instantly aged into weeks of post-death.

Adrie came with a cup and a pitcher. She saw her husband and saw that something had annealed his gaze in the brief time she was away. He had turned fierce—driven. A glass of smallbeer would not calm it, but she handed it over anyway.

"Do not waste your time with the physicians," Dezeric said after he had washed the sour down his throat. His hands were white on the cup. "I need a priest."

"You need a priest?" Adrie said. She needed only take the soiled cover from the bed and begin to drag it away to punctuate her skepticism, but as she peeled it away from the bed, she also gestured at the discovery which had shaken her into hysterics in the first place: the puddle of weep seeped into the underlinens, yellowish and fetid. Words were not needed.

"A priest," said her husband, again and more assured.

Over the next hour she buzzed about the bedchamber, rearranging, adjusting, stockpiling. She gave Dezeric a bucket beside the chamberpot, and his mother-in-law's good quilt, provided that he promised not to soil it like the first. In turn she promised him fresh milk and wheat porridge when she returned from market. Adrie also left him a bottle of gin on the nightstand, to settle his stomach; and a bowl of water, with towel, for washing up wherever he felt rankest. When she left him she had bundled herself in her stiffest wools and her darkest cloak. Dezeric, meanwhile, first ripped away the quilt, still musty after years of closet hibernation. When the sweat continued trickling through his skin, and his attempts at sleep only ended in an antsy jostling about the tangled sheets, he stood, and threw open the window, and bathed in a jolt of winter breeze. That done, now fresher in body and spirit, he reckoned it couldn't hurt to start, either, on what would no doubt become a gauntlet of treatments. He still had to stake this vampire before it fled the city, if it hadn't fled already, God forbid. So Dezeric took the towel and uncorked the bottle on the nightstand. Shoving the gin-soaked cloth into the gape with no real anticipation or care, he overwhelmed himself with the singeing sensation that flared out from the necrotic flesh. Even when he pulled the cloth away it continued to bubble under the layer of black, though Dezeric could swear it sounded like sizzling when it burned him so. But he readied the towel again, wetting it with a fresh drizzle of gin. This time he bit a corner of the quilt, and counted himself down from five.

By the time Adrie returned, food stuffed under her arms and a stranger in tow, the house was muggy with steam. Dezeric had shut the window and all the doors and started the fireplace on the first floor. He had been heating up stones in the embers, ferrying them up to the bedroom, and dropping them into the bucket, now filled with melted snow from the rain barrel. They hissed and spat and released white plumes into the room, keeping it hot and damp and fragrant. Dezeric had administered a gulp or two of liquor to himself as well, wringing still more sweat from his clammy figure.

But the stranger was fanning his neck with his hat, so Adrie ended this with a brisk push at the window, whereby the steam escaped toward the street in billows. In the room the atmosphere already began to thin. "Why are you out of bed?" she murmured, as if to prove to the other man that it was not her idea, nor her doing.

"I need to be hale again as soon as possible," Dezeric said, though he resigned himself to the bed for now.

"For what? What could be more important than your health?"

"What, indeed?" said the stranger. He set down his bag at the end of the bed. Opening it, he revealed his panoply of blades, forceps, tinctures, measuring devices. "My name is Chalmard. Good morning. Quite a clever way you've got here. You must have a decent store of medical knowledge yourself. You're trying to sweat out your excess humors, yes?"

"Chalmard." Dezeric blinked the fog from his eyes. He peered at the bag's contents, then at his wife. "I'm sorry to have brought you this far out of your way. You have wasted many steps and much of a morning on me."

"Nonsense."

"I speak nothing of the kind. You are a physician, correct? I have surmised that my wound will require the finest in blessings and divine aeonics. It will not be cured by such—pedestrian methods."

Chalmard turned to the woman. "You said his name is Dezeric? Dezeric, sir, since I have come 'this far out of my way,' perhaps I should be allowed to try my pedestrian methods first, before you resort to superstition and charm-clutching."

"I'm fine. Really." Damn it; he was wasting time. Even now that thing slumbered in the dirt somewhere, scheming its evacuation from Ortheoc to plague some other city slum.

"At the very least, you will want some extract of breadseed," said the doctor, plucking from his bag a particular vial of brown glass, about the size of a man's thumb, and placing it on the nightstand. "To aid with sleep."

Dezeric eyed the vessel. "Certainly. Thank you."

"May I see the wound?"

Dezeric did not respond, but he did, with some reluctance, roll over, exposing his flank. When the doctor had donned his mask and his watertight gloves, he took a large forceps, and gripped the damp, sticky shirt between its teeth. Dezeric's skin went pimply as raw winter air kissed it; the rest of him shivered along with it. He had spent significant time stoking that fire, moving those roasted stones, bathing in steam.

Chalmard, meanwhile, was practically burying his nose in the necrotic flesh. Either he squinted at it vainly through the foggy lenses of his mask, or he was from one of those quack colleges that had their students tasting urine and pus for the sake of scientific thoroughness. He almost looked to be trying to sniff the laceration through the snout. "Fascinating," said he. "Can you feel this? You said this was magically induced?"

Dezeric looked over to see metal being jammed at the wound. He had not noticed. What he did notice, however, was Adrie's appalled expression. It made him terribly uneasy to think just how badly he must have been worrying her right now. "Yes. A magic blade."

"Fascinating," the doctor said a second time. "Look how abruptly it transitions from living to dead. There is almost no corona, no inflammation. No green at all beyond the site of contact ... and no granulation. A recent wound?"

"Very recent."

"Hmm." The doctor kept prodding. "I wish I could see how it will behave three days from now. Sir Dezeric, may I take some samples of the dead tissue as well?"

"If it won't hurt, cut whatever you like," the patient replied, though with some resignation.

Polished steel glid along the black in Dezeric's side. It snipped flaps of the necrotic tissue and guided it into clear glass vials, which were then cradled back into the medical bag. The doctor rubbed some sort of stinging brown paste over the opening, but did not bandage it, or otherwise cover it whatsoever. As he explained to Adrie, just outside the door:

"Two days from now I will return to treat that wound properly. For now, he needs water, bread, and peaceful, restful sleep."

"Why in two days, doctor?" Adrie replied. "You have seen the state of him. And he hasn't been back for but half a day."

"I will need a day to source leeches for his humor rebalancing, and maggots for debridement."

"Leeches and maggots." Her voice quivered.

"You have trusted modern medicine this far along—smartly. Yes, maggots will devour the dead flesh, and leave the living intact. You can believe in me, my patrons in the city, and indeed, those little, pale feasters."

"Then I have no choice." There was a long pause. "What of your payment?"

"Let's speak of that on the day of treatment. Fare thee well, Adriada, and a pleasure to meet you."

Adrie gave a shaky "goodbye" and disappeared awhile; guiding the good physician to the door, doubtless. When she returned she heaped herself at the corner of the bed, looking terribly pathetic. Anxious, worn-down—in some way, needy. There was something Dezeric needed to tell her before she asked, so as to give her at least a little faith.

"I—" he feigned a weakness in his chest a moment, to buy himself a few more seconds—"I'm sorry for hiding from you. For sneaking off."

"Where have you been going?" Adrie asked weakly. "Who have you so angered that he has struck you with a sword?"

"Listen—I cannot tell you right now."

"Oh my God, Dez."

"I didn't want you to worry. I promise, I will tell you when I am bandaged. When this is over."

There was a heave in her shoulders. Dezeric couldn't hear her, nor see her face—she faced away from him, unable to look at him—but he knew what it meant. And he recognized the inflections when she whimpered, "All right. When it's over."

She slept on the first floor that night—to avoid the infections in the sheets, and other things, too. After the blanket was washed, the firewood cut, the corns pounded into flour, the suppers cooked, she spent the remainder of her day tending to her husband and ensuring his comfort. It was a dirty move, nursing him despite how he had hurt her. Now he couldn't sleep again, too wracked with the day's regrets. Dezeric looked over at the nightstand. The vial hadn't moved. Why would it? That dirty drug interested neither of them. But now he had nothing to do but puke, shit, and fester, and its temptations beckoned, and his curiosity answered. He had napped once in the afternoon, but now that he had, he was anxious again, eager to spend energy he didn't possess. He had nothing to do but wait for sleep again; to become so exhausted in his boredom that it would come for him by force. Given the circumstance, it could not hurt to sedate himself just a little, barely enough to doze off on. He didn't know how much that was, but he would know it when he felt it, like with liquor. So he uncorked the bottles and took a sniff, ready for acrid, biting vapors to flood his nostrils. Instead it smelled sweet, chocolatey, slightly floral, like walking past the best baking stalls at market in the spring. If it tasted like it smelled then he would not even need the gin, though a gulp of that never left his nerves any more frayed and stiff than without, either. Feeling brave, Dezeric sipped the breadseed straight from the narrow neck of the vial. The smell had been deceptive after all; it tasted bitter, like burnt paper or some-such. He needed the liquor to wash it down.

The breadseed's effect, however, came nearly instantaneously. He was moving forward despite still laying in bed; he drifted closer and closer to the wall and yet never quite reached it. The whole world slowed. His body deepened, numbed, like a hundred thousand slashes from that magical black sword. For a time Dezeric had to focus on not dying, like if he stopped concentrating for even a second then his consciousness would slip from his body and be unable to return. But when he let go of this worry, he understood all at once how an opium den could come to be. Nothing in the world seemed more important now than laying there wrapped up in a cocoon of utter and unbreakable peace. There was no wondering how someone carrying great aches in his body or great aches in his soul could feel so loved by the bitter, milky liquid in the jar. Dezeric scarcely cared that he had betrayed his wife, or that she had found out, or that she genuinely thought he could die before the physician Chalmard returned with his quack cures. Dezeric had been right to think it a dangerous thing, such blissful apathy. He didn't even care when, following the lull of his head toward the window, he saw, staring back at him, two round, blinking, green reflections.He did not care for a time, but then he saw the punchline. He started to cackle.

"You can't enter," he slurred to the shape in the window.

The shape jimmied its long, talon-like fingernails into the crack under the window.

"You don't have permission," Dezeric said, his whole lung's-ful spent on giggling.

Click. Somehow the lock on the window—the one inside the room—had come undone. The hinges creaked. The sounds of the city outside came into full sensation, crisper now that they were not muffled behind a sheet of glass. Dezeric watched a single leg, knobby and spider-thin, plant its foot upon his floor, by the puke bucket. He was terribly confused. Had Adrie given the shape permission to be here? Had the shape disguised itself as a human doctor, met Adrie in town, and tricked her into leading it here? He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat; to protect himself from the sun? Or was it simply parked under a tent when it wrought the fateful words from her lips at market?

A clawed hand steadied itself on the windowpane. The shape swung its head into the room, those locks of hair swaying limply, sticking to each other and the grease that made them shimmer. Behind this head, a narrow bosom wriggled through.

"You don't get to be here," Dezeric said.

Lastly the second leg landed beside its twin, such that the shape could finally stand upright. It was wearing thieves' clothes, dark and loose, and its ashy skin blurred in the darkness as well. It shambled toward the lamp on the dresser, which Adrie had left lit as a nightlight. It crouched, seemingly staring into the flame a moment, mesmerized by it, swaying to its flicker; a little fleck of the sunrises it had forsworn so many years ago.

There was a nauseating wet smacking sound as the vampire opened its mouth.

"Come for me whenever you like, you parathite," it said.

It turned back to Dezeric. Its eyes weren't catching the light in green angles anymore.

"Come and get your revenge. I'll be ready."

They were bottomless and empty, like a starless sky.

"Do you hear me out there, you gutht of thtinking breethe? I'll be ready."

Dezeric laid in bed staring, glaring at the lantern. It had to topple over somehow, or suck the vampire's face into its bowl, where the flames would catch that oily hair and then spread to the rest of it, too. The vampire watched him back, seeming to have noticed this effort. It had certainly noticed the irony.

"You thaid thomething elthe ath well," it said. Its fingers picked at the lantern hinge, swinging open its little door. It knitted its lips, gave a gust of breath, and blew out the ivory candle inside. Shadows consumed the bedchamber. "Thtand and die with dignity. Or ... can't you, now?"

Dezeric couldn't see it anymore, and that alarmed him well enough. Worse, however, was the silence. He could not hear its breathing, nor its footsteps. He could not hear the floorboards creaking as it, without question, meandered toward him. He could not hear Adrie downstairs.

"Adrie?" he murmured. He tried again to call her name, mustering any and all strength the opium allowed him to muster. "Adrie, help me. No ... no, Adrie, call out to me. Just let me know that you're safe. Please."

Another metal let out a different soft click. Steel slid against steel; a magical sword released from the only scabbard which could contain it without rotting away to its touch. These Dezeric could hear, and they filled him with dread. The opium haze was betraying him now. It nibbled at the inside of his skull, then filled those pocks with doubts. He was imagining terrors which weren't there, and stretching the dimensions of the terrors which undoubtedly were.

"Vampire," Dezeric called out, "where is she? What have you done with her?"

There was a breath in the dark. Perhaps it contemplated answering. But no answer arrived to meet these questions in the inky room.

"Then, at least tell me this," Dezeric croaked: "Is she still alive? Did you leave her be?"

That wet, squelching sound, of the vampire's lips parting around its incisors, thick and blunted like a rat's, too long for its mouth. Warm, damp breath tickled Dezeric's ear, and a pointed tongue shoved itself into the hole. Its breath smelled so thickly of rot Dezeric should have instantly retched up his half-bowl of porridge. Instead, nothing.

"My gift to you, hunter: you will die wondering."

All along his stomach the man in the bed felt numb, prickled by tiny spines as the flesh melted away. The sword made no sound and neither did its victim, unconcerned with death when it was this painless—this easy. But that was the scariest thing of all, Dezeric realized. The sword butterflied him, and the long, dull teeth began to gnaw at the black jelly which had formed there of his pluck, yet he could not bring himself to give another goddamn. He tried to fight and he failed. He tried to rid the land of its greatest and most wicked scourge and he failed. He tried to be a good husband and ...

But it didn't hurt. Not the necrotic jelly and not the living flesh underneath. Not the spongy belly or the firm, callused heart propped over it. Nothing hurt anymore; the booze and the opium had seen to that. Dezeric had woken to screams. And he fell asleep, one final time, in the coldest, deepest silence he had ever known.

Why must the venom of regret pump bitterest in the vein while the heart already suffers to throb? Why, in children's stories, do the ghosts of the past haunt only the most ruinous, the most forsaken abodes—the mansions and attics where their happiness moldered? Khvresh wondered. In this sordid, sleepless place, wondering was all he could do to squander his immortality in some final, desperate pastime. But why not? All hopes for redemption or redress had long fled the hole he now infested. Its ground was salted with the crumbs of old, dead dreams.

These walls, shelter from the sun, sheltered too from the stars. Emerging from the earth, Khvresh found at times that entire seasons had waxed and waned with nary a thought for he; he, who once lorded over death, and rot, and despair, and entropy itself. Desert flowers burgeoned and wilted. Summer storms flooded the roads and swept away their detritus, and the sands drank them up again. And none of these things—indeed, no one in the world—watched for the parting of Caurgast lips, doted on Caurgast decrees, sought Caurgast consent. The world had buried them and forgotten. Though they yet lived, already they were inhumed. Yet, and Khvresh anguished to even acknowledge it, his was not the greatest tragedy to befall one of their race. For even this subterranean hell afforded him three comforts still, three more than some could savor in the ashes of Solomon Kane's holocaust. First—the vampire's boon and his bane—gone was the need to count time, measure the angle of the sun, tiptoe round half-lit dwellings fearing the baleful rays which leaked in.

Second: though scarce and scattered, prey, when it came, was easily felled. In some undutiful belief that they had only brigands and wolves to fear on the roads, or that the western vampires who fled through their lands followed in the same feeding traditions as the native counterparts, caravan bosses still armed their guards with weapons of steel and wood; toys, for all the good they did. There should have been some food left, Khvresh remembered, now that food and humans domineered his thoughts. He rose from hammocks of camel hide, nailed to rock and strung around stalagmites. Blind as an earthworm, but probing the all-familiar surfaces with taloned feelers, he dragged his belly along the clenching clefts like meat wriggling down a throat; he crawled until the cavern yawned high and wide, like he had splashed into the stomach of the earth.

The Caurgasts had made of this cavern something like a master foyer, and its lowest corner was their larder. An eons-old drip, drip, drip from the toothy ceiling had shallowed out the rock, while a heap of putrescence had dyed it a maggoty grey-green. Hunching over the bones, Khvresh pried them apart with his hands, and cracked them open against the points of the stalagmites. But scraps of cartilage and crumbs of marrow would not sate any vampire, never mind one who had supped the blood of kings, not so long ago. (How long had it been?) He scooped up more bones, turning them over in his hands, feeling for the slimy, spongy give of flesh neglected in past feedings, missed by greedy teeth. What he found was but a flap, but it was meat, and he swallowed it whole and felt it sliding greasily down his throat, more greasily than he through the craggy tunnels. And what a pathetic meal it made. It barely silenced Khvresh's panting and scraping, the din of some flogged beast. Mustering enough backbone to creep up to the mouth of the cave, and seeing from the reddish and shadow-streaked sands that the sun smoldered in the west, he turned, and, having no other choice, scanned the antechamber for his third comfort, the one he treasured most. Though two others no doubt hid and amused themselves elsewhere in the black, impermeable network of their asylum, the third shivered nearby, also watching the light. She had her knees pulled up against her chin, and she rocked back and forth on her buttocks. She looked terribly anxious, in the way of children guarding a closet door for spooks.

"As the sun rises, so too must it fall again," said Khvresh reassuringly, "my darling Lornhir." He knelt to run his hand through her hair, finding it, like his own, matted and greasy. Under his touch she remained taut, and neither this nor his promise, cooed into a soot-smudged ear, stirred her from her angst.

"Say," Khvresh continued, "what about a hunt? Would that lift your spirits?"

Not even this, however, could tempt Lornhir from her mesmerism. Something in particular—or nothing at all, and the oppressive weight of this absence—kept its clinch over her terrored heart; a corner of the cavern had become fecund, a breeding-ground for her nightmares. But Khvresh could fill the shadows with teeth and talons, too. He could play just the same song over his prey; even when the heart was stagnant, and beatless, and just as black as his.

"Lornhir, your brother hungers. Hunt for him." He reached under Lornhir's skinny, girlish arms, and wrested her up until she had nowhere else to look but at him. "Food! Hunt!" he screamed, spittle now dotting her cheek.

How had it come to this? Khvresh could forgive the mortals and infant races for forgetting his name; the Caurgasts, as far as the world knew, had been vanquished, exterminated, over thirty years ago. But his own sister? Even she no longer feared him?

But just as he moved a hand to strike her, Khvresh swore he saw another shift, far in the reaches of his eye's periphery. Where something in the shadows yawned and stretched, like it rose from a deep, deep slumber. And for a moment, one moment, he and Lornhir were as like in heart as they were in flesh and blood. He understood. He shared her terror.

Lornhir dropped from his hands and scampered to his feet, cowering behind his bare and grimy legs.

"Shah-Cthaumaphon," muttered Khvresh, the name threatening to choke him as it surged up his throat like vomit. "He has returned?"

Khvresh had thought it dusk-time, the vampire's dawn; when they should have been rising, and relishing, and readying for a new, dark hour. He saw now that he was wrong. An afternoon blue still blazed outside; only, as the light sprawled through the mouth of the cave, it bent, and trembled, and shifted to a quivering purplish-red. It grasped toward Shah-Cthaumaphon, and sank into his shape. At his edges he shimmered like a mirage splashed over the distant sands. But past the silhouette, further, deeper, every spark of light disappeared and was devoured, as if the night sky yawned open and drank the stars.

This sentient abyss came in the shape of a man, or its nearest approximation of one. The spirit's hands were too long and spindly for his arms, his arms too long for his torso, and so on, from his vestigial neck to his vestigial feet.

"G-greetings, my lord."

Shah-Cthaumaphon unfurled, patiently filling that whole side of the cavern with his presence. His claws gripped at two opposite walls, and his back arched over the stalactites above.

"What brings you from your travels?" asked Khvresh to the countenance in the ceiling. He dreaded the master's scorching gaze, although the master had no eyes; he dreaded the thunderous resounding of the master's voice, although he had no mouth.

"UUUUUUUUNPAID ... YOUR DEBT, UNPAID ..." This warning shrieked not through the cavern; but through the Caurgasts' own skulls, both of them who beheld him. It bounced off bone and shivered through the pluck encased within, for the spirit spoke without lungs and tongue.

Khvresh wondered where Lornhir slunk off to; what she wished to say but dared not. He, in kind, dared not turn around to search for her.

"Soon!" he cried. "As soon as we can. The time hasn't been right."

Like a flame emits heat, the black flames snaking from Shah-Cthaumaphon's black shoulders reeked of cold as he slithered near. Cold. Centuries of vampirism had deadened flesh which once remembered the sensation. To be reminded now, with such malice that dwarfed even his own ... Khvresh shuddered.

Then the terrible howling returned to his thoughts: "PPPPPPPPPPPPROMISED ... SOON ... ALREADY, SOON ..."

"I know what I said." Khvresh wondered whether, if he were to strike toward the edimmu, he would hit meat, bone, jelly, ooze, anything tangible and concrete; or shadow, nothing more. Whether that evil cold would infect him and crawl up his arm like a blight. Whether Shah-Chthaumaphon could eat a clawed hand like he ate light and warmth. "We will give you everything we owe, and more. But we require your patience, my lord."

"PPPPPPPPATIENCE ... FINITE, PATIENCE ... GUESTS ... SQUANDER ..."

"Yes," said Khvresh. "Patience. You will have what you are owed. On my oath."

"OOOOOOOATH," said the edimmu. "VAMPIRE ... PROMISES. OBSCENE ... HONOR ... BLASPHEMY ..."

But what else could he say? Khvresh only watched, and waited. Was this the end of their bargain? Immortal, timeless, both of them, and yet this restless spirit couldn't wait another forty, fifty years? While the Caurgasts replenished their strength, and gathered their allies? Seconds felt like hours. A minute felt like a century; until finally, Shah-Cthaumaphon decided that he had more pressing business somewhere else—or, perhaps, that his vengeance could wait another year. He drifted toward the mouth of the cave, where the light stoppered and clogged as it was pulled into his darkness; then, he vanished into the sands beyond.

The mortals called them Balba Yemeq. The edimmu used an ancient, long-forgotten name: Limtulkku. The sands, either way, were no anathema to him; the master wandered freely under the heat and the light, even if they forced him to take a subtler form. But something bound him to the cave. Something made him need the Caurgasts, just as much as they needed the shelter he had provided to them.

But Khvresh would remember these injustices and injuries when he escaped this wretched place. When he had servants and slaves and an army again. When he had reclaimed the estate and restored terror to his realm.

You will get exactly what you are owed, wraith. Oh, yes. Mark my words.

"Brother." Lornhir had rushed to his side, and begun pulling him away. With Shah-Cthaumaphon's departure the afternoon light could leak into the cave once more. The rays had burned Khvresh's hand, and most of his leg, while he nursed old fantasies. Foolish. Foolish. They both looked down at the raw, weeping sores now running down his flank.

"I'm all right," said Khvresh despite the sting. He grasped Lornhir by both her ears. They kissed with heat and with longing; for each other, and for things they had lost along the way. "But I cannot heal without ..."

"Blood," Lornhir remarked. "Right. I'll leave at first dark."

"You are so good to me. Even when I have been so cruel."

"For father's heir—for my prince—anything."

They kissed again.