‘You’re right,’ she said, making herself more comfortable. ‘There have been times when I’ve just about given up hope, but now I’m glad I didn’t. You want to hear my story? All right then, Jazz, this is how it was for me . . .’
She began to talk, low, even-voiced, and as she got into the story so she fell into the dramatic, colourful style of the Travellers – and of the Wamphyri themselves, for that matter. Being a telepath, their manner and modes of expression had impressed themselves upon her that much more quickly, until now they were second nature. Jazz listened, let her words flow, conjured from them the feel and the fear of her story . . .
15
Zek’s Story
‘I came through the Gate kitted-up just like you,’ Zek commenced her tale, ‘but I wasn’t as big or as strong as you are. I couldn’t carry as much. And I was dog-tired . . .
‘It was night on Starside when I arrived – which is to say I didn’t stand a chance! But of course I didn’t know what my chances were, not then – or I might simply have put a bullet through my brain and that would have been the end of that.
‘I came through the Gate, climbed down from the crater rim, saw what was waiting for me. And nothing I could do but face it, for there was no way back. Oh, you can believe that before I climbed down I threw myself at the sphere in a last desperate attempt to escape; but it just stood there, pouring out its white light, implacable and impenetrable as a dome of luminous rock.
‘But if the sight of Them waiting there had scared me, my exit from the Gate had not been without its own effect upon them. They didn’t know what to make of me. In fact they weren’t “waiting for me” at all – they were there, at the Gate, on business of their own – but I didn’t find that out until later. The whole thing is a blur in my mind now, like a bad dream gradually fading. It’s hard to describe how it was, how it felt. But I’ll try.
‘You’ve seen the flying beasts that the Wamphyri use, but you haven’t seen their warrior creatures – or if you have, then you haven’t seen them up close. Now I’m not talking about such as Shaithis’s lieutenants, Gustan and that other one; they were ex-Travellers, vampirized by Shaithis and given a little rank and authority. They had not received eggs, as far as I’m aware, and could never aspire to anything greater than service to their Lord. They were vampires, of course – of a sort. All the changelings of the Wamphyri are, but Gustan and the others are still men, too . . .’ She paused and sighed.
‘Jazz, this will be difficult. Vampires are . . . their life-cycles are fantastically complex. Maybe I’d better try to clarify what I know of their systems before I carry on. Their biological systems, I mean.
‘Vampires, the basic creatures, are born in the swamps east and west of the mountains. Their source, their genesis, is conjectural: there are perhaps parent creatures, mother-things, buried there in the quag, never seeing the light of day. These mothers would be pure and simple egg-layers. Now I’ve talked to the Travellers, and to the Lady Karen – Wamphyri herself – and no one knows any more than I’ve told you about the basic vampire. One thing you can guarantee, though: they don’t emerge from their swamps during sunup.
‘When they do spawn, then the first task of each and every one of them is find a host, which they pursue with the same instinct as a duck taking to water. It isn’t in their nature to live by themselves, indeed if they can’t find a host they quickly desiccate and die. You could say they’re like cuckoos, who . . . but no, that’s a poor analogy. Like tapeworms, maybe – or better still, like liver flukes. So they’re parasitic, yes, but that’s where any similarity ends . . .