Vampire Rites Trilogy. Darren Shan
and safer place if we all spoke our true thoughts.”
“Well,” I said slowly, “I’m not sure I like the idea of doing a deal with the vampaneze – I think it’s wrong to kill humans when you drink from them – but if you could persuade them to stop killing, it might be a good thing.”
“This boy has brains,” Kurda said, winking at me. “What you said just about sums up my own arguments in a nutshell. The killing of humans is deplorable and it’s one of the concessions the vampaneze will have to make before a deal can be forged. But unless we draw them into talks and earn their trust, they’ll never stop. Wouldn’t it be worth giving up a few of our ways if we could stop the bloody murder?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
“Hurm!” Mr Crepsley grunted, and would be drawn no further on the subject.
“Anyway,” Kurda said, “I can’t stay hidden forever. Time to return and fend off more questions. You’re sure there’s nothing you can tell me about the Little Person and his message?”
“Afraid not,” Mr Crepsley said curtly.
“Oh well. I suppose I’ll find out when I report to the Hall of Princes and see him myself. I hope you enjoy your stay in Vampire Mountain, Darren. We must get together once the chaos has died down and have a proper chat.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Larten,” he saluted Mr Crepsley.
“Kurda.”
He let himself out.
“Kurda’s nice,” I remarked. “I like him.”
Mr Crepsley glanced at me sideways, stroked the long scar on his own left cheek, gazed thoughtfully at the door Kurda had left by, and again went, “Hurm!”
A COUPLE of long, quiet nights passed. Harkat had been kept in the Hall of Princes to answer questions. Gavner had General business to attend to and we only saw him when he crawled back to his coffin to sleep. I hung out with Mr Crepsley in the Hall of Khledon Lurt most of the time – he had a lot of catching up to do with old friends he hadn’t seen in many years – or down in the stores with him and Seba Nile.
The elderly vampire was more disturbed by Harkat’s message than most. He was the second oldest vampire in the Mountain – the oldest was a Prince, Paris Skyle, who was more than eight hundred – and the only one who’d been here when Mr Tiny visited and made his announcement all those centuries ago.
“A lot of today’s vampires do not believe the old myths,” he said. “They think Mr Tiny’s warning was something we made up to frighten young vampires. But I remember how he looked. I recall the way his words echoed around the Hall of Princes, and the fear they instilled in everyone. The Vampaneze Lord is no mere figure of legend. He is real. And now, it seems, he is coming.”
Seba lapsed into silence. He’d been drinking a mug of warm ale but had lost interest in it.
“He has not come yet,” Mr Crepsley said spiritedly. “Mr Tiny is as old as time itself. When he says the night is at hand, he might mean hundreds or thousands of years from now.”
Seba shook his head. “We have had our hundreds of years – seven centuries to make a stand and tackle the vampaneze. We should have finished them off, regardless of the consequences. Better to have been driven to the point of extinction by humans than wiped out entirely by the vampaneze.”
“That is foolish talk,” Mr Crepsley snapped. “I would rather take my chances with a mythical Vampaneze Lord than a real, stake-wielding human. So would you.”
Seba nodded glumly and sipped at his ale. “You are probably right. I am old. My brain does not work as sharply as it used to. Perhaps my worries are those of an old man who has lived too long. Still…”
Such pessimistic words were on everybody’s lips. Even those who scoffed outright at the idea of a Vampaneze Lord always seemed to end with a ‘still …’ or ‘however …’ or ‘but …’ The tension was clogging the dusty mountain air of the tunnels and Halls, constantly building, stifling all present.
The only one who didn’t seem troubled by the rumours was Kurda Smahlt. He turned up outside our chambers, as upbeat as ever, the third night after Harkat had delivered his message.
“Greetings,” he said. “I’ve had a hectic two nights, but things are calming down at last and I’ve a few free hours. I thought I’d take Darren on a tour of the Halls.”
“Great!” I beamed. “Mr Crepsley was going to take me but we never got round to it.”
“You don’t mind if I escort him, Larten?” Kurda asked.
“Not in the slightest,” Mr Crepsley said. “I am overwhelmed that one of your eminence has found the time to act as a guide so close to your investiture.” He said it cuttingly, but Kurda ignored the elder vampire’s sarcasm.
“You can tag along if you want,” Kurda offered cheerfully.
“No thank you,” Mr Crepsley smiled thinly.
“OK,” Kurda said. “Your loss. Ready, Darren?”
“Ready,” I said, and off we set.
Kurda took me to see the kitchens first. They were huge caves, built deep beneath most of the Halls. Large fires burned brightly. The cooks worked in shifts around the clock during times of Council. They had to in order to feed all the visitors.
“It’s quieter the rest of the time,” Kurda said. “There are usually no more than thirty vampires in residence. You often have to cook for yourself if you don’t eat with the rest at the set times.”
From the kitchens we progressed to the breeding Halls, where sheep, goats and cows were kept and bred. “We’d never be able to ship in enough milk and meat to feed all the vampires,” Kurda explained when I asked why live animals were kept in the mountain. “This isn’t an hotel, where you can ring a supplier and re-stock any time you please. Shipping in food is an enormous hassle. It’s easier to rear the animals ourselves and butcher them when we need to.”
“What about human blood?” I asked. “Where does that come from?”
“Generous donors,” Kurda winked, and led me on. (I only realized much later that he’d side-stepped the question.)
The Hall of Cremation was our next stop. It was where vampires who died in the mountain were cremated. “What if they don’t want to be cremated?” I asked.
“Oddly enough, hardly any vampires ask to be buried,” he mused. “Perhaps it has something to do with all the time they spend in coffins while they’re alive. However, if someone requests a burial, their wishes are respected.
“Not so long ago, we’d lower the dead into an underground stream, and let the water wash them away. There’s a cave, far below the Halls, where one of the larger streams opens up. It’s called the Hall of Final Voyage, though it’s never used now. I’ll show it to you if we’re ever down that way.”
“Why should we be down there?” I asked. “I thought those tunnels were only used to get in and out of the mountain.”
“One of my hobbies is map-making,” Kurda said. “I’ve been trying to make accurate maps of the mountain for decades. The Halls are easy but the tunnels are much more difficult. They’ve never been mapped and a lot are in poor shape. I try to get down to them whenever I return, to map out a few more unknown regions, but I don’t have as much time to work on them as I’d like. I’ll have even less when I’m a Prince.”
“It sounds like an interesting hobby,” I said. “Could I come with you the next time