so often before, the stargazer Thikkoul's words had come back to him:
'I see your face, your hollow eyes and greying hair ...' For indeed his eyes were sunken in dark orbits, and his yellow hair was flecked with grey ...
Time passed ever more swiftly, and Maglore grew sparing in his use of thralls and recent arrivals out of Sun-side. Now that he had enough warriors, it seemed he was conserving his energies and the raw materials of his metamorphic art in anticipation of some new endeavour.
One evening he called Nathan to him, asked for his wrist strap and snapped it into short sections. 'You with your fine clothes,' he said, 'wearing this scrap of leather like a brand! If you must be branded do it in style. Here ...' And he gave him a sigil in solid gold, an inch long, whose design was the same familiar loop with a half-twist. Fashioned on Sunside, it was an earring, which Maglore told him to wear in his left ear.
By way of explaining his gift, the Seer Lord said, 'Since you're the very jewel of a lad yourself - and it being a well-known fact how much you Szgany like your jingly bits and pieces - I knew you would appreciate it.'
Til need my ear pierced,' Nathan said, without considering his words. Maglore feigned a coy look, then grinned and displayed eye-teeth as sharp as needles.
'If you were a lass, I might consider doing it myself!' he said. 'Why, I might do it anyway! Except I prize you for what you are, not for what I can make of you. You'd best have Orlea do it with a hot needle, and remain in your room until it's healed.'
Then, as Nathan was leaving, Maglore said: 'When Orlea's finished with her jabbing, send her to me. For while some jabs hurt, others are a pleasure. Oh, I follow Turgo Zolte's teachings, it's true, but even the strictest adherent has certain needs ..."
Nathan chose his time carefully. And at the height of sunup when Maglore slept and the aerie was quiet, he made his way down into Madmanse.
I've been expecting you, Eygor's deadspeak voice came oozing in his mind, as he descended the cobwebbed stairwell to the uppermost, deserted levels of the stripped, haunted manse. For plainly you're an inquiring youth who can't bear a mystery to go unfathomed.
Even though a hazy light came in from the gorge, Nathan struck flints to a torch; the innermost rooms and passageways were dark, and the place had the feel of a tomb. Ah, but it is a tomb.' Eygor told him. That of a blind, blameless thing discarded like refuse into a pit, to die there and stiffen to a stone.
'Blameless?'
I was Wamphyri! How can you blame a creature for acting out its nature? Is the wolf to be blamed for worrying rabbits? Or did you only come here to scold me for those deeds which I was obliged to perform, by reason of the monstrous leech which all my life controlled and corrupted me?
'All men have urges,' Nathan answered, descending another stairwell towards the source of Eygor's dead-speak, and checking that his footprints lay clear in the dust behind him. 'But we don't all give in to them.'
Which is of course the difference between us, the other came back at once. For where mere men are not obliged to vent their passions, 1 was Wamphyri.
Tell me your story,' said Nathan. 'I've had some of it, from someone who knows all the history of Turgosheim, but not the end of it. That is the mystery. How did you die, Eygor?'
I died as I lived - as I was, yes, obliged to live - cruelly, even by Wamphyri standards. For I died at the hands of my own bloodsons. Would you hear of it?
That's why I'm here,' Nathan told him.
Then I'll not keep you. It was like this: I had the evil eye. Only show me a man, a target, Szgany, and I could crush him with a glance. Such was the energy of my Wamphyri mind, I could store it up and release it from my eyes like lightning - like a poisoned dart - to wrench my targets and stop their hearts! Do you believe me?
Nathan shrugged. 'Why should you lie - ?' he began.
Just so, Eygor cut him off.
'- You poor, "blameless" creature ...'
The other's turn to shrug. Well then, perhaps not entirely blameless. But ... it was my leech! With a creature like that