The Source

Jazz's head swam, partly from the throbbing pain where he'd been clubbed but mainly from trying to take in all that Zek was telling him. 'Stop!' he said. 'Let's concentrate on the important stuff. Tell me what else I'll need to know about this planet. Draw me a map I can keep in my head. First the planet, then its peoples.'

'Very well,' she nodded, 'but first you'd better know how we stand. Old Jasef and one or two men have gone on into the pass to see if there's a watcher — a guardian creature — in the keep back there. If there is, Jasef will send a telepathic message through it to its master, the Lord Shaithis. The message will be that Arlek holds us captive, and that he'll use us to strike a bargain with Shaithis. In return for us, Shaithis will promise not to raid on Lardis Lidesci's tribe of Travellers. If it's a deal, then we'll be handed over.'

'From what Arlek was saying about the Wamphyri,' Jazz said, 'I'm surprised they'll even be interested in making a deal. If they're so much to be feared, they can just take us anyway.'

'If they could find us,' she answered. 'And only at night. They can only raid when the sun's down below the rim of the world. Also, there are some eighteen to twenty Wamphyri Lords, and one Lady. They're territorial; they vie with each other. They scheme against each other all the time, and go to war at every opportunity. It's their nature. We'd be ace cards to any one of them — except the Lady Karen. I know for I was hers once, and she let me go.'

Jazz tucked that last away for later. 'Why are we so important?' he wanted to know.

'Because we are magicians,' she said. 'We have powers, weapons, skills they don't understand. Even more so than the Travellers, we understand metals and mechanisms.'

'What?' Jazz was lost again. 'Magicians?'

'I'm a telepath,' she shrugged. To be ESP-endowed and a true man — or a woman — is a rare thing. Also, we're not of this world. We come from the mysterious hell-lands. And when I first arrived here I had awesome weapons. So did you.'

'But I'm not ESP-talented,' Jazz reminded her. 'What use will I be to them?'

She looked away. 'Not a lot. Which means you'll have to bluff your way.'

'I'll have to what?'

'If in fact we go to the Lord Shaithis, you'll need to tell him you… can read the future! Something like that. Something it's hard to disprove.'

'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.'

She paused for breath, finally said: That's it, the planet and its peoples in one. There's only one thing I've left out — that I can think of at the moment, anyway — because I'm not sure of it myself. But you can be certain it's something monstrous.'

'Monstrous?' Jazz repeated her. 'Most of what I've heard is that! Let's have it anyway, and then I've got some more questions for you.'

'Well,' she frowned, 'there's supposed to be something called "Arbiteri Ingertos Westweich". That's from a Wamphyri phrase and it means — '

'Him in His Western Garden?' Jazz tried it for himself.

She smiled a half-smile, slowly nodded. 'Arlek was wrong about you,' she said. 'And so was I. You do learn fast. It's The-Dweller-in-His-Garden-in-the-West.'

'Same difference,' Jazz shrugged, and then it was his turn to frown. 'But that sounds sort of placid to me. Hardly monstrous!'

'That's as it may be,' she answered, 'but the Wamphyri fear it or him or whatever mightily. Now, I've told you how they're forever squabbling, warring with each other? Well, in one circumstance — to one extent — they're entirely united. All the Wamphyri. They'd give a lot to be rid of The Dweller. He's legended to be a fabulous magician whose home is said to lie in a green valley somewhere in the central peaks to the west. I say "legended', but that might give the wrong impression. In fact it's a very recent legend, maybe as little as a dozen Earth years. That's when the stories started, apparently. Since then he's been said to have lived there, marked out his own territory, guards it jealously and deals ruthlessly with would-be invaders.'