Free A Coven of Vampires by Brian Lumley Page B

remember your vow, and return to me here before Cthon releases the sun to rise again over Theem’hdra. On behalf of all lamias, I have spoken.”
    The sulphur pits which were her eyes lidded themselves with lava crusts, but Orbiquita did not see. She was no longer there….
    • • •
    Tarra Khash left Chlangi by the south gate, two hours after the sun’s setting. By then, dull lights glowed in the city’s streets in spasmodic pattern, flickering smokily in the taverns, brothels, and a few of the larger houses and dens—and (importantly) in Fregg’s palace, particularly his apartments in the tower. It was a good time to be away, before night’s thieves and cutthroats crawled out of their holes and began to work up an interest in a man.
    Out of the gate the Hrossak turned east for Kluhn, heading for the pass through the Great Eastern Peaks more than two hundred miles away. Beyond the pass and fording the Lohr, he would cross a hundred more miles of grassland before the spires and turrets of coastal Kliihn came into view. Except that first, of course, he’d be returning—however briefly, and hopefully painlessly—to Chlangi.
    Jogging comfortably east for a mile or more, the Hrossak never once looked back—despite the fact that he knew he was followed. Two of them, on ponies (rare beasts in Theem’hdra), and keeping their distance for the nonce. Tarra could well imagine what was on their minds: they wondered about the contents of his saddlebags, and of course the camel itself was not without value. Also they knew—or thought they knew—that he was without weapon. Well, as long as he kept more than arrow or bolt’s flight distance between he was safe, but it made his back itch for all that.
    Then he spied ahead the tumbled ruins of some ghost town or other on the plain, and urged his mount to a trot. It was quite dark now, for Gleeth sailed low as yet, so it might be some little time before his pursuers twigged that he’d quickened his pace. That was all to the good. He passed along the ghost town’s single skeletal street, dismounted and tethered his beast by a heap of stones, then fleet-footed it back to the other end and flattened himself to the treacherous bricks of an arch where it spanned the narrow street. And waited.
    And waited….
    Could they have guessed his next move? Did they suspect his ambush? The plan had been simple: hurl knife into the back of one as they passed beneath, and leap on the back of the other; but what now?
    Ah!—no sooner the question than an answer. Faint sounds in the night growing louder. Noise of their coming at last. But hoofbeats, a beast at gallop? What was this? No muffled, furtive approach this, but frenzied flight! A pony, snorting its fear, fleeing riderless across the plain; and over there, silhouetted against crest of low hill, another. Now what in—?
    Tarra slid down from the arch, held his breath, stared back hard the way he had come, toward Chlangi, and listened. But nothing, only the fading sounds of drumming hooves and a faint whinny in the dark.
    Now instinct told the Hrossak he should count his blessings, forget whatever had happened here, return at once to his camel and so back to Chlangi by circuitous route as previously planned; but his personal demon, named Curiosity, deemed it otherwise. On foot, moving like a shadow among shadows, his bronze skin aiding him considerably in the dark, he loped easily back along his own route until—
    It was the smell stopped him, a smell he knew at once from its too familiar reek. Fresh blood!
    More cautiously now, nerves taut as a bowstring, almost in a crouch, Tarra moved forward again: and his grip on the haft of his knife never so tight, and his eyes never so large where they strained to penetrate night’s canopy of dark. Then he was almost stumbling over them, and just as smartly drawing back, his breath hissing out through clenched teeth.
    Dead, and not merely dead but gutted! Chlangi riff-raff by their looks,