over where Zahar left off. For there remains a great deal to be seen, and I want to know all. Meanwhile, move about and make yourself useful by all means, but stay within earshot of this stairwell. When I return, I shall call for you.'
'Yes, Lord. But -'
'But?'
Grig looked at the steps leading down, and at the nitre-streaked walls. That is an odorous place, Lord: a kennel, by all accounts. Are you sure you would see it?'
And again, as if at some command, the unseen creature howled far below, and a wave - an almost visible reek - of animal musk came wafting up out of darkness. There was ordure in the smell, strong urine, the stench of some feral beast's lair. Grig turned to Nestor again, and said, 'Lord?'
That howling ... was not a man,' said Nestor.
Grig shook his head. 'No, Lord. Canker Canison makes creatures in his own image ...'
Nestor shrugged. 'Still, I made a promise, and I must be known by my word. Also, Canker will make a powerful ally. Well, an ally of sorts.' He started down the deeply hollowed steps. 'Wait for me, and when I return, answer my call.'
'Yes, Lord.'
And Nestor proceeded down into Mangemanse . ..
The spiral staircase was deep. Nestor went cautiously; his Wamphyri eyes were now so changed that he saw almost as well as in daylight. There was no more howling, but an aura of expectancy. Without even knowing he did it, Nestor sent his vampire awareness ahead of him, probing the root of the shaft. Something was down there, but keeping well back, and keeping quiet now.
And Nestor sent: I am the Lord Nestor. Your master, Canker Canison, has asked me to attend him. Who harms me dies! If not by my hand, by Canker's certainly. Snuffles echoed up to him, but that was all. At the foot of the steps . .. Nestor was appalled! To the left, a natural cave led back into darkness absolute, in which feral eyes - huge, yellow, malevolent - glared for a moment, then blinked out. But this was not the source of his concern. That was the veritable midden which lay in a second, smaller cave, to the right.
The reeking dung of some large beast, possibly the thing with the yellow eyes, was piled in slumping heaps out of which grew squat, corpse-white mushrooms; while around and in between the piles swirled sickening green puddles of piss! Nestor stood on a narrow, raised, unpolluted path midway between the two, the unknown guardian on the one hand and its despicable depository on the other. But if this was how Canker kept Mangemanse generally ... then it well deserved its name!
And holding his breath, he proceeded along a corridor towards an area where a row of tiny round windows let in a little grey light from the west, and also the wind which hummed a different tune through each orifice, and sucked away the stench of the stairwell midden. Perhaps this was where Canker had derived the inspiration for his instrument. But now, as Nestor left the windows behind and their song dwindled in his ears, so the way ahead turned inwards from the outer sheath and into the rock of the stack proper, and the corridor grew dark again.
Striding out, Nestor found himself listening to the slap, slap, slap of his own footsteps on the worn stone; but when he came to a sudden, breathless halt, he knew that he heard much more than that. For from somewhere not too far behind sounded a soft and regular - yet strangely irregular - padding, and the panting of a loping fox or wolf . .. both of which paused only a split second after Nestor paused.