'I had prepared for five; since it appears we're now six, my girls are setting an extra place - or perhaps two, for Canker may yet honour his obligations. Wran Killglance: as victor, you will take the chair directly opposite mine, at the guest's "head" of table. You others ... may sit where you will.'
Female thralls scurried, finished setting places, then fled out of sight. Wran seated himself opposite Wratha at the end of the table as she had suggested, and indicated a seat to Nestor some three chairs away on his left. Nestor took the indicated chair and sat there wondering what to do with himself. The chair was built for a man, or more properly a Lord of the Wamphyri. Seated in it, he felt like a mere boy. In time his vampire leech, developed from Vasagi's egg, would attend to that: his metamorphic flesh would stretch and fill out. But for now ... well at least he could try thinking like a Lord.
Spiro Killglance sat on Nestor's left, with some five or six chairs separating them. Opposite Spiro, Gore Sucksthrall took his place, and Gorvi the Guile edged into a chair across from Nestor. On the table in front of Wratha's guests, wooden platters, hollowed into shallow bowls, contained barbed stabbing spikes of soft gold. There were leather drinking jacks, and several large jugs of fired pottery patterned in the fashion of Sunside's Szgany, containing sweet water or weak wine for the jacks. Wratha knew better than to serve strong drink. Her own plate and cup were of gold; she likewise knew how to make her guests feel small and even unworthy.
The fare was scarcely extravagant: lightly braised hearts, kidneys, and livers of shads, and four suckling wolves roasted on spits and basted in a sauce of their mother's milk, urine, and blood. Inpidual or special requirements were not catered for; the food was simply an expression of Wratha's hospitality; the Wamphyri normally 'refuelled' themselves in the first hours after sundown, according to personal needs, habits, and tastes. That which at this hour would be breakfast to a Traveller, was therefore a mere novelty to them.
Nestor, on the other hand, was hungry. He had last eaten well before sundown, in the cabin of Brad Berea in the forest. In the time-scale of a parallel world beyond the Starside Gate (which Szgany and Wamphyri alike called the hell-lands, because since time immemorial no one had ever returned from them), that was the equivalent of four days. There was no way Nestor could know that, but he did know that since sundown he'd survived on a few nuts, and a piece of wild fruit in the woods; scarcely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Well, too late now to worry about his soul, but his body must go on at least.
Also, while his memory was still largely impaired prior to his time spent with the Bereas, his mind itself was completely healed and receptive - made receptive by his parasite egg, which demanded that he be strong and cunning - so that he was constantly learning. The ability, indeed the need to learn anew had been sparked within him. And with no background as such, an empty past, every smallest item of new information was soaking into his brain like rain into desiccated earth. While deep in his subconscious, thirsty seeds of ambition, knowledge, even memory - however misshapen or mutated from their source material - were waiting to spring to life. But he could not become wise, strong, Wamphyri, in a depleted body. And so he ate.
He ate with gusto, stabbing a slice of shad liver, which was in any case a Szgany delicacy, and doing it justice as he held it in his hand and tore at it with strong teeth. And such was his hunger that the meat never even touched his platter! Another slice followed, and a steaming kidney, whole, which he manoeuvred onto his plate without losing but a splash of gravy. Then a jack of wine, and tender flesh from a thigh of suckling wolf. The Szgany didn't eat wolf, but Nestor
didn't know what the meat was. Whatever, he would have eaten it! It was strong and imparted strength. And while he ate, he studied his surroundings.
The Great Hall was all of a hundred and fifty feet long by sixty feet wide. It ran parallel with the south-facing wall of the stack, where windows had been cut through the solid rock to the chasm of open air that spanned the boulder plains all the way to the barrier mountains. In places, these deep embrasures in the wall of the spire were almost tunnels; in others, where the rock was thinner, they formed archways out onto high balconies of grafted bone, whose baffles of hide and cartilage were so constructed as to turn aside and deaden the buffeting of the wind. Framed in one such opening, Nestor observed the fluttering of a banner, which periodically displayed Wratha's sigil: a kneeling man in silhouette, with slumped shoulders and bowed head ...
Each window was fitted with black bat-fur drapes which presently stood open, giving access to the pale dawn light. Many hours still to go before the sun shone on Wrathspire, by which time the curtains would be drawn. But from where Nestor sat, if he turned his head a little, he could see the morning mists of Sunside gathering in the gaunt grey peaks and passes, forming clouds and drifting free. The sight was nothing new to him, except ... in previous times, he'd seen it from the other side. Perhaps at that - at these distant echoes and thoughts out of the past, of Sunside and what he had been there - Nestor felt something of poignancy for a life gone and forgotten forever, but all such emotions were rapidly fading now.
In two of the 'corners' of the mainly irregular hall, curtained areas hid Wratha's smaller, personal warriors from view. But in a third she had deliberately left thedrapes open. At the sight of the creature shackled there, her guests were reminded yet again of Wratha's sovereignty in these dizzy aerial levels. Twice the size of a man and nine times heavier, with overlapping, inch-thick scales of blue-grey, chitin armour, the creature was mainly claws, jaws, and teeth. Going on all fours like a bear (despite that it once was a man, or men), it would occasionally rear upright, grunt and mutter questioningly, and shake its chains curiously -but purely out of habit.
During the daylight hours proper, when the sun was high and Wratha had taken to her bed, two of these beasts would be stationed in the stairwells near the launching bays, while the third would roam through Wrathspire top to bottom, guarding mainly against aerial incursions, but also patrolling Wratha's chambers. The Lady's lieutenants and thralls, some of whom had duties in these unsociable hours, had her scent upon them, of course, and so were safe. But as for any stranger . ..
Nestor's gaze was attracted to the dome of the ceiling, where on several occasions he'd sensed some strange, furtive activity. Now he saw what it was: a colony of giant Desmodus bats! For in the darkest corners and the gloom of deep ledges (from which locations their spillage could neither intrude nor disgust), Wrathspire's lesser inhabitants clung like dense black cobwebs or fragments of a shroud to walls and ceiling, causing the darkness to crawl there. Even as Nestor watched, a party of latecomers entered through a window, chitter-ing shrilly as they dispersed to various parts of the living blanket. Vampires all, though not of the human strain, these were Wratha's familiars. And Nestor wondered - but in no way morbidly - if he would be heir to just such a colony, five levels down in Suckscar.
While making these observations, Nestor had continued to eat, until now he was replete. Sighing, he stripped a last morsel of tender flesh from the thigh bone of a wolf-cub, glanced round the table ... and paused in his chewing. Every eye seemed rapt upon him: the way he had disposed of his food. Finally he put down the gleaming bone, ran his fingers through his hair to clean them, and glanced at Wran questioningly. The Rage seemed to find something amusing; he stifled a laugh and merely grinned, and took another sip from his jack. But Wratha, no less fascinated than the others, raised an eyebrow and said:
'Well, at least one of us has an appetite!' Which galvanized the rest of her guests to something of activity, at least. For now they, too, took up their skewers ...