II
On the Plain of Boulders
Twenty-five to thirty minutes earlier, in Turgosheim:
It had been that Maglore the Mage was down in Mad-manse, or what had been Madmanse when the Killglance brothers, Wran and Spiro, had resided there; down in that haunted, cobwebbed, bat-shrouded mausoleum of a place, inspecting it as a prospective extension of his own Rune-manse. He'd been there with his lieutenant, Karpath Seersthrall, making diagrams of the manse and measuring certain of its rooms which he might use as metamorphic vats. For Maglore had many monsters to fashion, and the space in Runemanse was all but used up.
But down in Madmanse - where even now the dread spirit of its murdered one-time master, Eygor Killglance, seemed to waft on a gloomy aether - suddenly the grey fur at the back of Maglore's neck had tingled and stood erect, and for a moment, however brief, a symbol had blazed up bright in the eye of his seer's mind. This symbol:
It was Maglore's sigil, by which every other Lord and Lady of the Wamphyri knew him. But it was also the sigil of another, gone from Maglore's ken for some seventeen sunups now. And now ... returned? Was it possible? The Seer-Lord's window on Olden Sunside/Starside returned to life, or undeath?
But now that Vormulac Unsleep and his aerial vampire army were flown west on their crusade against Wratha the Risen, and Maglore left to his own devices in the mighty gorge of Turgosheim, this was just the stroke of good fortune he'd been seeking! Indeed, for if that oh so crafty Nathan was back in Olden Sunside, why, then Vormulac's progress might yet be spied upon, and Maglore heir to all the lore of a hitherto unknown land!
'Nathan!' Maglore had stood up straight and sniffed at the air, gazing all about in the gloom of deserted Madmanse. 'Why, it is as if I can even smell you!'
'Nathan Paleblood?' The hulking Karpath's eyes had narrowed as Maglore rubbed claw-like hands together, chuckled and headed for an upwards-leading stairwell. 'What of him, master?'
At which Maglore had paused and looked back, his crimson eyes flaring up in the dark. 'Paleblood? Nathan Paleblood? But you mean Nathan Seersthrall, surely?'
And Karpath had backed off a pace. 'I ... I used to think of him as Paleblood, master - because he was so pale, and his blood so weak.'
'Oh?' Maglore's voice was deep, dark, clotted. 'But this ... this urge to apportion names worries me somewhat, Karpath. For it's outside your jurisdiction. In Runemanse, only Mag-lore names the creatures which are his. In all such matters the Wamphyri are jealous to a fault, which I'm sure you know. So ... is it perhaps that you anticipate your ascension? Do you lust after my egg, Karpath?'
'Master,' the other trembled. 'Master, I -'
'- This much I promise: when I decide that the time is ripe to invest another with my powers, you shall be the first to know.'
Following which, without pause, the Seer-Lord Maglore had proceeded alone to his room of meditation ...