Johan's journey into the caves beneath Shauku's castle showed at once his personal bravery and his thirst for knowledge, for both were sorely tested as he descended short wooden stairs within the sham wine tun.

His first warning was a smell so awful it made his nostrils cringe and his head ache. The air was already ripe with eye-watering wood smoke, but worse was a stench that carried like a slaughterhouse, the corruption of carrion.

Below the wine cellar ran a dim catacombs, no more than a craggy rambling tunnel. Bolted to two walls were chains with manacles but no prisoners.

A shriek welled up from the darkness beyond.

A victim? Of Lady Shauku?

Chiding himself for squeamishness, Johan girded his loins and took another step in his bare feet. He had to see Shauku's secret source of knowledge, learn more of whatever she glimpsed when donning the dream coat. It lay ahead, Johan guessed, or hoped. He had to go on. Still invisible, almost intangible, Johan crept forward toward a dim flickering light.

As he crept along, one hand brushed the dusty walls. Odd walls, he found, that grew stranger with each step. So queer was the substance, Johan stopped to investigate where two walls intersected at a shallow angle. With a flint-hard fingernail he shaved silver-gray stuff from a doorway. It wasn't stone but was soft as chestnut wood. Holding it to his eye, Johan saw the sliver was veined like skin with a delicate webbing.

Surely, thought the mage, that couldn't be right. The veins had to be tracks of old vines or water stains, even cracks of metallic flaking. Stepping to another oddly-angled wall, he scraped another sliver. The same. Marveling, Johan drilled a thumb through the porous not-stone. Not soapstone, riot wood, not glass, so what was it? Shaking his head, the mage realized he was truly puzzled for the first time in decades.

All the walls were made of this not-stone material. Whence had they come?

That answer, at least, was simple. The ruined castle was built atop even more ancient ruins of…?

Shaking his head, Johan passed on.

Finally, where smoke billowed along the ceiling of the angular catacombs, Johan reached his destination. He stopped in shock.

A chamber big as a mead hall was lit by a ring of fire. At first glance, the archmage thought of a giant nest occupied by some ugly baby bird. Yet the reality was far stranger.

Covering the floor of the cave were fractured crystals of amber. Even broken, their gorgeous golden luster, reflected a million times in firelight, gave the room a scintillating homey glow.

As if by contrast, wedged in the center of the room was the ugliest creature Johan had ever beheld.

Big as a house, a gray mound of fetid flesh sprouted toothy mouths, bulging eyeballs, whiplashing tentacles, and questing tongues. The thing stank abominably, like sewage and sulfur and gangrenous flesh. Gaping in shock, Johan thought it some alchemist's wild experiment gone awry, as if some dastard had herded together elephants, then hacked the poor beasts to pieces, then mashed and fused the pieces together. Yet this mess still lived and suffered every second. For there was no doubt in Johan's mind that the being, or thrust-together beings, was fully conscious and in enormous pain. Never still, the giant thing quivered like a jelly. Mouths champed, fangs clashed, tongues waggled, tentacles whipped, eyes bulged fit to explode. One source of the monster's pain was clear, for it was surrounded by a trench filled with burning charcoal and chunks of freshly stoked wood. The ring of fire hemmed the creature so close the heat licked its tortured flesh like a bluring tongue.

"Impossible!" Johan shook his horned head, doubting his eyes. He'd seen so many hideous hallucinations lately, this must be another. "But I smell it! And the noise!" Johan didn't know what to think. If he did imagine this giant freak, surely his sanity had teetered into the abyss.

Someone came into sight. Feeling like a child stealing apples rather than an emperor, Johan ducked behind a boulder and peeked, heart pounding, throat dry.

Mincing inside the ring of fire, oblivious of heat, came another being, more hideous because it was closer to human form. Tiny, bald as a baby, pointy-eared, sleepy-eyed, with skin sallow as if jaundiced, it wore only a rotting robe of faded gray that smoked from the steady wood-fire heat. The hideous keeper ignored lashing tentacles and fanged mouths. Indeed, the wizened one looked almost gentle as it caressed the corrugated flesh of the giant. Johan actually saw the mangled monster recoil at its touch, though it was rooted as a tree. The archmage watched the keeper produce a small knife and diligently saw off tiny buds that had sprouted. The captive giant thrashed and writhed, but the sallow keeper paid no mind as it snipped and cut. Stubs dripped slimy goo in greasy gray-white runnels.

A commotion came from another dark tunnel, and Johan recalled the bloodcurdling scream heard earlier. In came three people. Two brawny legionnaires in black leather and yellow tunics manhandled a struggling young woman, thin and tanned, dressed in leather and fur, obviously a member of the pine tribe. The scrappy woman kicked and cursed her captors, but her arms were bound behind by black rope. The soldiers pushed her to her knees amid fractured amber crystals.

Johan watched in fascination as the sallow invalid by the monster's side stepped barefoot into the ring of burning coals, one jaundiced hand holding its hem high, though the rag smoked and had to be stamped out. The woodswoman struggled anew, bucking and jumping so hard the legionnaires used four arms to pin her down.

Approaching the kneeling prisoner, the sickly keeper extended a single yellow finger with a pointed nail and touched the woman's ear. Instantly she stilled as if paralyzed. Gently, like an aged grandmother holding a newborn baby, the fiend stroked the prisoner's tawny hair. Slowly the invalid bent its head as if to kiss the woman's neck. Opening a withered mouth exposed fangs like white needles-which sank into the victim's tanned throat.

Vampire!

Even the Tyrant of Tirras, with many black deeds writ against his name, was appalled by the frightening site. A vampire infested this palace like a monstrous rat within its walls. And he'd lived here for days and not known! Could have been drained like a chicken as he napped!

A long while the vampire fed like a leech from the victim's throat. Unable to move, the woodswoman gibbered in fright. Her mouth and tongue quivered as she uttered some prayer. Two trickles of red ran down her neck as the vampire sucked her heart's blood. The two legionnaires stood stock still, backs straight, eyes fixed on the chamber's smoky ceiling. Gradually the victim stopped shaking and wilted, drained white as a mushroom. Wiping a red mouth delicately with a finger, the vampire signaled the legionnaires to remove the corpse. Grabbing the dead weight, they hustled it away into a tunnel.

Hunkered behind the stones, with only one eye showing, Johan broke a cold sweat. Then he trembled as the wizened fiend called in a raspy voice, "I know you are there, Emperor Johan. I expected you to follow eventually. You came seeking wisdom, after all. You shall have it. Come. Come out."

Terror gripped Johan. His only thought was to flee. Yet he could not. Feet, hands, head, even his jaw and eyeballs were fixed fast, frozen in place where he knelt behind boulders. Paralyzed, he saw the wizened vampire shuffle to his side. Sallow skin, wrinkled bare skull, even red veins outlined in pointed ears and thin eyelids were all visible in the guttering light of the ring of fire. The musky snake odor of the vampire mingled with the curdled whale-meat stench of the giant horror, odors so rank Johan wanted to gag.