hair, of course - and her nose, which had a flange and was convolute beyond her ability to mask it with vampire metamorphism. A rarity, Rusha actually admitted to these small flaws - or rather, she would not admit to them, and so must keep them covered. With luck, Radu might find himself 'on a good thing' with the Lady Rusha Basti. With the exception of Lord Shaitan the Unborn, who preferred absolute control over his odalisques, and Hengor Hagi, because he had the bulk of a bull shad and Rusha would not suffer the necessary bruising of such an affaire, she'd had all the Lords worth mentioning as lovers. Indeed, she loved them and left them as easily as snapping her fingers!
But on the other hand ... Rusha was not so easy as might at first be reckoned. Stolen out of Starside just four or five years ago, she had ascended in very short order. And the young Lord who had taken her ... well, where was he? She had his egg, be sure, but did she also have his head? According to Rusha he had died of some wasting disease in her loving embrace. And if so, then he'd probably expired happy - but expired, definitely! Emil Hagisman had heard of certain female spiders, who ... but he'd made his point, and Radu assured him he need say no more.
Then there were the Drakuls, Karl and Egon. They had been among the first-established in Starside. The younger bloodsons of a loner family vampirized in the swamps, they'd been obliged to care for themselves almost from infancy. For the Drakul family had dwelled in the mountains, where as long as they stayed Starside of the peaks they'd been able to eke out something of an existence.
But allegedly, in those days there had been dog-Lords in the hills -men much like Radu, but with a great deal more of the wolf in them and far less of intelligence - and these and the Drakuls had feuded. One night, hounded by these wolflings, the man, his wife, and one older son had been driven over into Sunside in the twilight hours before the dawn. Unable to find shelter, they'd perished in the blast from the rising sun. But the infant brothers - twins, which were not uncommon among the Szgany - had been left behind and raised half by the wild dog-Lords, half by a pack of common grey brothers.
When they were old enough (and they were only youths even now, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, but precocious far beyond their years), then they had come down into Starside to build an aerie among the menhirs of the Wamphyri. Demoniac fighters, both of them were viciously territorial, even more so than the Wamphyri in general. Perhaps it was only natural, for after all their mountain-dwelling parents had had nothing. Currently the brothers occupied Drakstack, which Egon had claimed as his own; wherefore his twin was already at work on nearby Karlscar. Both of these stacks would make tremendous aeries, which together might house vampire armies to rival anything of Shaitan's making. Shaitan, however, was aware of Drakul rapaciousness; needless to state, the brothers were not his favourites among the lesser Lords. Nor were they anyone's, for even by Wamphyri standards their ways were dark ...
And finally the Gust's lieutenant went on to tell Radu of Turgo Zolte, Shaitan's so-called 'son.' But discovered by Shaitan in an act of black treachery, Turgo had been thrown out of his 'father's' manse onto the boulder plains, to exist as best possible in the scree and the rubble and the dust. It was said he dwelled now in Sunside, sleeping out his days in deep caves where the sun couldn't find him, and constantly on the run from the Szgany. If so, then he was fortunate indeed - and far more so than his co-conspirators.
One of these had been tossed into the Starside Gate, and so banished to unknown hells; the other lay undead in a deep grave on the boulder plains, slowly stiffening to a stone among stones ...
As for the lesser Lords and Ladies: they were diverse as all of the aforementioned, but Emil Hagisman would gladly say on if Radu wished it. He didn't, for in the new-found conceit or self-assurance of his own strengths and talents, he wasn't much interested in the lesser personages. Certain things, however, continued to puzzle him; not least how for so long he'd been ignorant