level, all accurately marked with the location of every room, chamber, hall, whatever. With arrows showing north, south, etcetera, and all landmark curiosities clearly displayed. For it strikes me a man could get lost in Suckscar, which would never do. But with a map, I may check my route before I go abroad from my rooms. Is all understood?'
'Yes, Lord,' Zahar answered. 'I know a man, a thrall. On Sunside he drew maps of the Traveller trails. Likewise here in Suckscar, except he drew them for Vasagi. When the Suck raided, he knew where he was going.'
'Good!' said Nestor. 'A useful man, that. Later, you must send him to me.' And after a moment, 'Now tell me, Zahar, where should I look first?' He sounded tired now, and Zahar noted the fact ... also that they were quite alone in Suckscar's nether levels.
Hugging his wounded arm and hand, finally Zahar answered, 'Vasagi's vats ... may be of interest. Creatures of his - or yours, Lord - are waxing even now.' He looked at his arm and hand. And so did Nestor. The bleeding had stopped; Zahar's metamorphic vampire flesh was healing him; he would soon be good as new.
To the vats, then,' said Nestor. Before retiring, he would see what Vasagi the Suck had fashioned. But the idea of bed was appealing now, and the long ^arside 'day' still lay ahead. For some time to come Nestor would continue to sleep like a Traveller, until his change was complete. But after that the sun (its presence in the sky over Sunside) would act on him like a poisonous drug, compelling him to sleep in his dark, shadowy room, with the curtains drawn against the light.
They climbed up to the centre level, then made their way north-west through a maze of passageways and halls to a place where the rock was of a volcanic origin. The ancient lava was pitted like the alveolate bones of birds; and in a vast, low-ceilinged hall, long-escaped gasses had left cavernous pits in the grained, fibrous floor. Except for these sunken 'vats' the floor had been levelled; the vats had been lined with clay and sealed with tar from Sunside's tar pits. This was where Vasagi and doubtless many other Lords of the Old Wamphyri before him had bred their warriors and familiars. And as Zahar had said, some of the Suck's constructs were waxing even now.
From a swirl of gluey fluids, a great colourless eye gazed vacuously up at Nestor where he stood at the rim of a vat. The metamorphic liquid in the vat was almost opaque; the creature it covered was little more than a vague outline, like a series of submerged rocks covered with spines; only the quivering of the grey-green surface told of life. And the mindless gazing and swivelling of the eye, of course.
'A warrior,' Zahar informed quietly, tonelessly, almost as if he feared to breathe, where he stood directly behind Nestor at the vat's rim. 'A replacement. Vasagi lost several in Traveller traps on Sunside. Some of the tribes are very well organized under brave leaders. The Szgany Lidesci are clever indeed, and will pay heavily for their cleverness - eventually.'
Nestor's vampire was alert, alive, wriggling frantically in his body and mind. It sharpened his previously dull and damaged wits, expanded his five mundane senses and awareness to their present limits, issued warnings he couldn't ignore. He did not need to glance over his shoulder to know that Zahar was only an inch away, and that his good arm and hand hung down on a parallel with Nestor's spine. He could almost feel the pent pressure in that hand and arm, and certainly he could 'hear' the deadly design of Zahar's mind. A lunge forward, a shove, was all that was needed.
Nestor stepped aside, and his motion was so swift that it left Zahar stumbling a little. And merely glancing at him, Nestor said, 'What is this liquid?'
At the end of the vat was a ramp sloping down and disappearing into the murk and slop. It was flanked by narrow stone steps. Nestor moved towards that end, and behind him he heard Zahar take a deep breath. But inside Nestor, his vampire was still at work, and what was instinct to it became instinct to him. So that even before Zahar spoke, he knew what the fluids were: the metamorphic juices of life! This vat was a cold womb for the foetal fashionings of a vampire thing. And Vasagi the Suck had been both father and mother to the contents. The liquids were the white of the egg which sustains the yellow chick, a plasma soup of lymph and protoplasm, derived mainly from innocent blood but contaminated or 'fertilized' with Vasagi's own urine, blood, spittle and sperm.
'It is the sweet juice of forty Travellers, all squeezed by Vasagi!' said Zahar, his throat clogged with weird emotion, perhaps pleasurable anticipation? 'It feeds his creature, oils its joints, and defines its very allegiance. Emerging from its vat, it would know him at once. In another sunup and sundown, it will emerge ...' He let his voice tail off.
And Nestor looked at him. 'But the question is, will it know me?'
Zahar shrugged, and struggled with himself not to smile. His thoughts were sinister and Nestor knew it. He also knew a little about Nature: the way the Travellers imprint wolves by midwifing the bitches and supplanting the dog fathers, so that the whelp grows up as guardian to child and man. It was one of those memories which occasionally sprang to mind, unbidden out of a mainly forgotten past.
But who could take chances with a creature such as this? What? Approach such a thing with outstretched hand as it woke to monstrous life and vacated its vat? Best to imprint it now, and stamp his own seal over whatever remained of Vasagi's. He couldn't know it, but the thought was not original to him. Or it was, but it had been spurred by the process of metamorphosis taking place within him.