Stunned, Javez fell back, tripped, would have fallen. But Wratha was standing beside him, smiling her smile. She held him upright, watched his face, mouth and throat, all working in unison, doing nothing. And the knob of Javez's throat going up and down like some strange dumb bird's wattle, as he gathered saliva to cry out. But before he could gather enough -

- She showed him a splinter of ironwood stripped from a shattered tree in the mouth of the pass. And: 'Do you remember?' she said, dragging him by the hair back on to the bed with his father. 'You gave me a knife like this, upon a time - to kill myself, I suppose. But no, I used it for another purpose. And now I give it back.'

'Wratha-a-o-a!' he gurgled, as she drove the splinter deep into his groin, and drew it out; into his shuddering belly, and drew it out; into his heart, and twisted it there, and wrenched it until it broke . .. Then, when all was still, she kissed them both gently, upon their clammy foreheads, and left them sprawling in their blood where they had died ...

In the morning they were found; the tribe built up the campfire and burned them, and elected a new leader. A search was made, but nothing was found. And no one slept for long and long, because they suspected a vampire had come to them out of the swamps. They were wrong, for she had come from Starside.

And now she was on her way back.

In the hills Wratha waylaid a hunter in the night, killed him, and drew sustenance from his red-pulsing lifestream. And each time she appeased her hunger in this fashion, so the changes in her metabolism accelerated, and her undead vitality went from strength to strength. Her vampire senses developed; she felt the restless, eerie zest of the vampire and a renewed, replenished Just for life - albeit for the lives of others. In the way such passions took her, she knew that she was rare; it was as if she were a vampire born. Perhaps some credit was due Karl of Cragspire, for he contained a leech within him, grown from an egg, whose essence had mingled with Wratha's.

In the next sunup she went down into the stony gullies and bottoms of Turgosheim, between the spires of the Wamphyri with their massive scree jumbles, and under the very fapades of their manses fretted in the glooming faces of soaring ravines and jutting crags. And no warrior bothered her where she flitted like a shadow to the base of Cragspire, whose guards kept watch on the ramps and in the entranceways. Guards, aye, but thralls for all that; but Wratha was more than any mere thrall now, for she went under her own direction.

She climbed Cragspire at its rear, to an unguarded lower level, then came up onto a walkway of cartilage grafted to the stack's exterior. The walkway spiralled steeply for the heights but there was no one there to stop or challenge Wratha. Higher, the spire was hollow in many of its parts, so that she entered within and proceeded all the faster, from hall to hall, stairway to stairway.

She knew the rooms where Karl's lieutenants kept their Szgany odalisques, and the closets where the women kept their clothes. And dressed in just such a sheath, which revealed far more than it concealed, finally she made her way to the Lord of Cragspire's quarters. And all the spire asleep now except for those with duties, whom Wratha had known to avoid.

But in all three of the approaches to the penultimate levels under the seared ramparts of the spire itself, there she found small warriors on guard, protecting their master's privacy. And in the third such entrance-way, because her patience was used up, she approached the tethered monster openly, with her head held high. The creature blinked its many eyes at her and shuffled, but merely grunted and made no move to stop her. For the beast recognized Wratha: that she had used to come and go with the spire's master. And HE had instructed that this one should be allowed to pass, with no interference. It was an order which had never been rescinded. Also, the master's scent was on Wratha, even in her blood.

And she passed the armoured bulk of it by, where its pincers and stabbers worked unceasingly at thin air, and its cavern of a mouth chomped however vacuously.

And so Wratha came to Karl in his rooms, and knew where to find him asleep. Except he wasn't asleep, for the vampire in him had warned of someone's approach. And entering his bedroom, she found Karl waiting for her. Then ...

... His astonishment was great! He drew her to him, lifted her up, gazed upon her from every angle. There was no word in his mouth, which gaped. And Wratha ... she had been beautiful before, even as a lowly thrall (though in truth, she'd never been lowly). But now ... everything about her was a man's fondest, darkest dream. Just looking at her, Karl knew she could make even the most erotic dream reality. And he saw with every glance what he had made: such a vampire!

Aye, and he knew what he had missed all this time . ..

She took off her dress for him and sat on his great knee, and as he fondled her, he was now more thrall than she - far more. Then, when he would have her, she made him wait and told him everything, sparing no detail.

Hearing her out, Karl's rage flared to match his inflamed passions. For just as Wratha had guessed it, so now the Lord of Cragspire likewise knew the author of this thing. His eyes bulged and his snout flattened back and grew ridged and convoluted, like that of a great bat, while the teeth sprouted in his jaws like scarlet scythes! Until he came roaring to his feet with a name on his bloodied lips:

'Radu!'

'But my way,' she insisted, clinging to his arm. 'Do it my way.'

'He dies tonight, now - the death he planned for you - changed to a vampire and buried forever. Not in a cave, no, but in a grave fifty feet deep, whose construction I shall supervise personally. Especially its filling!'

'Ah, no,' she advised, 'for as we've seen, even the best-buried persons sometimes return. And Radu is a traitor you must be rid of always. Do it my way.' And she told him her way. Karl listened, and smiled in his fashion; which in the circumstances was hardly a smile at all. Then: He called for Radu, who got dressed and attended his Lord at once, wondering what it could be, at this hour of sunup. And in Karl's quarters Wratha was hidden away, watching and listening to everything.

'Lord?' Radu stood before Karl's great bone chair.

Karl's crag of a body hunched there, his scarlet gaze accentuated by the uneven flaring of gas jets in the walls. Such was his doomful silence, that for a moment Wratha feared he'd lost the words. But then: 'It is ... it is this business of the Szgany thrall, Wratha,' Karl growled, breathing heavily as he reined back on his Wamphyri rage. 'I am finding some difficulty sleeping, because it puzzles me. And you know how I hate a mystery.'

Radu shrugged (negligently, Wratha thought), and without Karl's leave seated himself upon a carved stool. 'Where's the mystery, Lord? Strong-willed in life, she remained unchanged in undeath. Rising up from your fatal kiss, she stole a flyer and departed Cragspire, Turgosheim, the world entire. She flew south for Sun-side, into the risen sun. She is no more.'

Karl nodded. 'So we have supposed,' he answered, breathing easier now. 'So you ... have suggested.'

Now Radu detected the edge in his Lord's voice and came to his feet. Again his shrug, not so negligent now, as his eyes slid this way and that. 'But the evidence was such -'

'- What evidence?'

'Eh? Why, her absence - the missing flyer!'

'Ah! That evidence.' Karl fingered his chin, studied Radu intensely.

And for the third time Radu's shrug, now absolutely genuine in its bewilderment. 'But ... what other evidence is there?'

Karl nodded again, and sighed deeply. Then, apparently changing the subject, he said: 'Do you know, the other Lords see me as a dolt?'