Geza stared at him, but Stefan knew his captain would obey. Geza's own success in the ranks depended on Stefan's position. With a brief hesitation, the captain hefted Vordana's body over his shoulder and left once more.
Stefan took two long, slow breaths to quell his anxiety, then stood up straight. If Buscan truly wished to replace him, he would know soon enough, but something about the parchment felt wrong. It was unprecedented for a fief steward of title to be replaced with no prior word-and certainly not a lord in good standing. And not by some untitled miscreant. He would wait for further word from Keonsk.
A month passed, and nothing came.
Stefan began to relax. Geza showed some disquiet in his presence, but otherwise life remained ordinary. Until the night Byanka screamed.
Stefan sat in the hall by the fire and heard her horrified wails from the upper floor. He ran up the stairs, following her voice, and found her standing in their son's room, ripping at her hair.
In the bed lay his son, or what had once been his son.
The little face and hands were shriveled husks above the covers, and his eyes were open but dried and sunken. He looked like one abandoned in a wasteland to die of starvation and thirst, transformed into a dwarfish, withered old man. Stefan had kissed his son good night just hours before, and now the boy was dead.
Byanka cried out like a madwoman. "I hear the guards whispering. The visitor who came that night… What have you done to us?"
When Stefan reached out to give her comfort, she shoved him away and began howling again.
In the days that followed, her mood remained unchanged. One evening when Stefan again tried to calm her, he saw lines in her face and the darkening rings about her eyes. Fear filled him at the thought of an unknown plague spreading among them. He closed the manor to outsiders and kept his guards out of the villages as much as possible. Byanka continued to wane over the next three days. No matter how much water or broth she drank, she suffered from a terrible thirst. When she finally died, Stefan wept, crouched by her bedside, where she lay as withered as their son had been.
Within a moon, the peasants and animals of Pudurlatsat began dying.
Crops and trees withered along with them. Geza followed orders without question but wouldn't look his liege lord in the eyes. At the month's end, Stefan rode to an outlying village of the fief and found it thriving. Only the town nearest the manor, on the river to Keonsk, suffered this mysterious blight. He returned home that night at a loss for what could be done.
He feared sending word to Keonsk for assistance. He feared an inquest. Once in the courtyard, he handed his horse to a guard, walked to the manor's main hall, and froze in its archway.
A cloaked and cowled figure stood by the hearth. It took effort for Stefan to breathe evenly as he entered. Someone had come looking for Vordana. When the figure turned his way, Stefan's anxiety turned to horror.
Fair skin was as gray as Stefan's dead wife and son when he had buried them. The man's shin-length robe was soiled all over, as were his boots and bloodstained shirt. Stark white hair hung out of the cowl in dirty, lanky clumps. His eyes peered out from sunken sockets.
Stefan tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat.
Vordana stood by the hearth.
Yes, came the word with its taint of reptilian slur, but Stefan was uncertain if he actually heard it aloud. He jerked out his sword and rushed around the hall's table.
Laughter surrounded him, and he stopped before the pale figure of Vordana. Disbelief made him dizzy as he held out his sword.
I am already dead, and that will not help you.
Vordana's dead lips never moved.
I could drain you to a husk, like your mate and offspring, but I want you to live a long, painful life… my puppet! Even your guards I will leave… for a while.
Stefan rammed the blade through Vordana's chest. The man lurched back one step, but that was all.
Unintelligible words, like a hum, built to an ache inside Stefan's head. His vertigo increased with those sounds in his skull, and he lost control of his body. His hands dropped limply to his sides, and his legs buckled until he knelt upon the floor.
Vordana did not bother to remove the sword from his chest. Stefan watched helplessly as the man's pale, begrimed hands clamped about his own head. Over the hum in his head came words he could understand.
I can maintain my watch here just as easily behind a puppet, but for my broken life, yours is forfeit. You remain in the manor, and by my command, if you step beyond the threshold, you will die in that instant. You will do whatever I instruct but always while locked within your stately cage. I will drain your town and land as I need to sustain myself. When they are gone, I will turn to you and your household.
And before you think that death is your escape, you will not join your son and wife by such an act. Look upon me to see what lies beyond your death if you attempt to take your own life.
Stefan lost awareness of the room, of himself, and of Vordana, except for the words that subjugated his own thoughts over the chant buzzing within his skull.
Then all was sudden silence, and he opened his eyes.
The hall was empty, as was the passage through the archway. He ran along it to the front door and pulled it open. There was no one outside.
In that quiet moment, it seemed his fevered imagination, fed with guilt and loss, had conjured him a nightmare. Had Vordana even visited him? Light-headed, he put his hand on the edge of the doorway to steady himself. A chill bit his hand through to the bones, and he fell back with a scream.
"What happened?" Wynn asked abruptly. "Could you not leave the house?"
Lord Stefan closed his eyes and shook his head. He opened the blanket wrapped about him and held up his hands. Or rather one, for the other was missing. All that Wynn saw of his left hand was a scarred stump of wrist.
"We had to cut it off," Geza said in Belaskian.
Wynn jumped at his voice. She had forgotten his presence across the room while she listened to Stefan's tale.
"It had to be removed before the rot of dead flesh spread," the captain added.
"Your wife and child," Magiere asked of Stefan. "Were there any wounds or other marks on their bodies?"
Elena shook her head, answering for him. "They just faded, the life draining from them."
"How did Vordana survive two thrusts through the heart?" Leesil asked. "And how did he trap this lord in the manor? What are we dealing with here?"
There was long pause.
"We hoped you would tell us," Stefan said.
"Well, he was certainly an undead, judging from your description," Leesil said. "Perhaps even a type of Noble Dead we haven't heard of."
"What is that… a Noble Dead?" Stefan asked.
"The highest, most powerful of the undead," Wynn answered. "They retain more of who and what they were in life than simple spirits of the dead. They move freely in the world under their own volition, but must feed on the living to sustain themselves. They can learn, grow, become more than they are, like the living."
Magiere grunted at this last comment, but Wynn did not respond. They never spoke of their disagreement over Chane in the sewers of Bela, but Wynn knew Magiere had been wrong. It stood to reason that if not all humans were the same, then not all vampires were the same either. Lord Stefan's replacement was certainly another matter.
"So Vordana is one of your Noble Dead," Stefan said, pulling the blanket around himself again. "He gained a title after all."