‘Great!’ said Jazz, dully. ‘Like Arlek, you mean? He said he’d read the future of the tribe.’
She faced him again, shook her head. ‘Arlek’s a charlatan. A cheap, trick fortune-teller, like many of Earth’s Gypsies. Our Earth, I mean. That’s why he’s so much against me, because he knows my talent’s real.’
‘OK,’ said Jazz. ‘Now let’s put our Earth right out of our minds and tell me some more about this Earth. Its topography, for example?’
‘So simple you won’t believe it,’ she answered. ‘I’ve already described the planet in relation to its sun and moon. Very well, now here’s that map you asked for:
‘This is a world much the same size as Earth as near as I can make out. This mountain range lies slightly more south than north, points east and west. That’s using the compass Earth-style. The Wamphyri can’t stand sunlight. Just like the old legends of home say, too much sunlight is fatal to vampires. And they are vampires! Sunside of the mountains, that’s where the Travellers live. They are human beings, as you’ve seen. They live close to the mountain range for the water it gives them, and for the forests and game. Sunup they live in easily erected homes, at night they find caves and go as deep as possible! The mountains are riddled with fissures and caverns. Ten miles or so south of the mountains, there are no Travellers. There’s nothing there for them to live on. Just desert. There are scattered nomad tribes of aborigines; at high sunup they occasionally trade with the Travellers; I’ve seen them and they’re barely human. Several steps down from Australia’s bushmen. I don’t know how they live out there but they do. One hundred miles out from the mountains and even they can’t live. There’s nothing there at all, just scorched earth.’
Despite his discomfort, Jazz was finding all of this fascinating. ‘What about east and west?’ he said.
She nodded: ‘Just coming to it. These mountains are about two and a half thousand miles east to west. This pass lies something like six hundred miles from the western extent of the range. Beyond the mountains west are swamps; likewise to the far east. No one knows their extent.’
‘Why the hell don’t the Travellers live close to the swamps?’ Jazz was puzzled. ‘If there are no mountains there, then there’s no protection from the sun. Which means there can’t be any Wamphyri.’
‘Right!’ she said. ‘The Wamphyri live only in their castles, right here behind these mountains. But the Travellers can’t go too far east or west, because the swamps are vampire breeding grounds. They are the source of vampirism, just as this world is the source of Earth’s legends.’
Jazz tried to take that in, shook his head. ‘You’ve lost me yet again,’ he admitted. ‘No Wamphyri there, and yet vampires breed in the swamps?’
‘Maybe you weren’t listening to me earlier,’ she said. ‘I can understand that. It’s like Arlek said: you’ve a lot to learn. And only so much time in which to learn it. I told you that the Wamphyri are what happens when a vampire egg gets into a man or woman. Well, the true vampires live in the swamps. They breed there. Every now and then there’s an upsurge; they break out and infest the local animals. And they’d do the same to men, too, if there were any there. The Wamphyri go back to a time when men were infested. Now they do their own infesting.’ She shuddered. “The Wamphyri are men, but changed by the vampires in them.’
Jazz took a deep breath, said: ‘Whoah! Let’s get back to topography.’
‘Nothing more to tell,’ she answered. ‘Starside are the Wamphyri castles and the Wamphyri themselves. North of them lie the icelands. One or two polar-type creatures live there, but that’s all. They’re legendary anyway, for no living Traveller ever saw one. Oh, and at the foot of the mountains on Starside, between the castles and the peaks, that’s where the troglodytes live. They’re subterranean, sub-human, too. They call themselves Szgany or trogs and hold the Wamphyri as gods. I saw specimens mothballed in the Lady Karen’s storehouses. They’re almost prehistoric.’