to slough (and only then recalling his former master's swift deterioration and death), Vormulac had opened Engor's mausoleum to see if he might discover some clue there. Within, Engor's body lay in many crumbling pieces, with more than sufficient evidence to show how the filthy rot had continued to work on his flesh - from his leech outwards -even after he himself was dead!
Then, to make a quick end of it, Vormulac had poisoned his exhausted, ravaged love with kneblasch and silver, and placed her body with Engor's in the mausoleum. The tomb had then been fired like an oven; when all was cold again it had been sealed up - forever. From which day forward Vormulac had dreamed of her burning, and of his own flesh slowly softening, until he'd vowed to sleep and dream no more. Well, and he hadn't slept, but it was Maglore's belief that he still dreamed.
The story accounted for the first of his self-given names, Taintspore, likewise for the melancholy aspect which both he and Vormspire wore like shrouds ...
These were some of Maglore's thoughts and memories where he sat at Vormulac's right hand at the head of the table. And as their host named and formally introduced the other guests (such introductions were mainly unnecessary, for each knew the others well enough; it was simply a formality, by way of starting the proceedings), so the Mage of Runemanse also considered them:
'The Lady Zindevar of Cronespire,' Vormulac intoned, his voice gritty as gravel. And, with some small effort at gallantry: 'Never in all her years more ... more beautiful.'
'Hah!' she snorted, and her eyes flashed fire at him. 'All what years, pray?'
Vormulac shrugged. 'A handful of handfuls, Lady,' he made amends, however drily. 'And after all, what are a few years to the Wamphyri? Why, you are the merest girl!'
Much to Maglore's dismay, Zindevar was seated on his immediate right, and she was no 'mere girl' but a contemporary. When he had come out of the swamps that time ('lowborn', as it were, a Szgany mystic who went into the forbidden places to meditate, breathed a spore and came out Wamphyri), Zindevar had already ascended to Cronespire. Then she had been young, but even then she had not been beautiful!
She was squat, hairy, of lesbian persuasions, and the atmosphere about her pervaded with a manly odour which all her many perfumes together could never hope to obscure. And despite her years - whose number fell far short of Vormulac's and exceeded Maglore's - she looked young or in her middle years at most, which said a deal for her mode of life. Zindevar was no great 'ascetic'.
Rouged and painted, with her elbows on the table and one hand scratching at her chin while the clawlike fingers of the other rapped upon the old oak, there was this overpowering air of aggression about her, this impatience, this great disdain - mainly of men, Maglore supposed. He could scarcely contain the urge to shrink his nostrils and creep away from the touch - even from the thought - of that great fat thigh of hers bulging against his where they sat at table. And he refrained from more than a glance into her mind, which was full of breasts and behinds of various shapes and styles; and red-rimmed, yawning, pulsating orifices; and blood, of course. But the worst of it lay in knowing that he shunned the lascivious display of her mind not so much because it was disgusting, but because it was seductive! For whatever his alleged sensitivities, Maglore was Wamphyri no less than the Lady Zindever herself.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
As for the mainly derisory agnomen 'Cronesap': while its use was common among the Wamphyri, it was never used to Zindevar's face except as a deliberate insult; for which reason Vormulac had avoided it. It referred to the way in which she had ascended: by gradually sapping the blood and energy of the ancient Lady who had occupied her aerie before her. Nor was she any different now, as her many female thralls could doubtless testify. Only a handful of her lieutenants were men in the fullest sense of the word (necessary for the protection, maintenance and administration of Cronespire), and even then she kept an equal number of female officers, to guarantee a balance. As for Cronespire's menials: all of its males were eunuchs to ... to a creature.
So much for Zindevar; Maglore had missed several cursory introductions of lesser lights; even