At that same time, Resalintas was standing on one of the rare patches of firm ground in the middle of the Darkenmoors, a vast area of treacherous marshland that stretched nearly a hundred miles along the western foothills of the Copper Mountains. Theoretically, everything between the Copper and Black Mountains belonged to Belthar and was off limits to all evil creatures, but Resalintas knew all too well what a foolish idea that was. Most of the fat, complacent inhabitants of the Beltharan heartland would have been terrified if they'd known the horrors that lurked less than a day’s ride from their luxurious and poorly defended homes.

     Resalintas suspected that quite a few of those horrors had their staring, lidless eyes on him at that very moment, and a grimace of determination set itself on his granite sculpted face as he imagined them oozing and slurping their way through the marshes towards him. A solitary man standing in the middle of the Darkenmoors in the middle of the night might seem like an easy target to creatures whose prey usually consisted of young lovers enjoying the night air together or naturalists studying the habits of nocturnal insects. The disappearances of such people were usually ascribed to the treacherous sucking marshes which were almost invisible until you were up to your armpits in them. Any creature that decided to try its luck on him, though, would be in for a very nasty surprise. Resalintas had the Shadowarmies to destroy and civilization to save, and he had no intention of being kept from his duty by a swamp reacher or a marsh wraith.

     He’d been waiting patiently for four long hours, and was prepared to wait all night if necessary for the man he was supposed to meet here. His patience was endless, and there was no trace of frustration or annoyance in the expression on his face or the set of his powerful, muscular body as he considered the possibility that the man might not turn up. If dawn came and he still hadn’t arrived, he would simply shrug his shoulders, turn and walk the half mile back to where he’d left his horse, sleeping with the rest of the small troop of soldiers he'd come with. What couldn’t be helped shouldn’t be grieved over.

     Mist swirled lazily around his muddy boots, rising up in swirls and eddies where a boulder or a clump of vegetation caught the slow movement of the air, and the silver moonlight made them look like ghosts as they slowly drifted across the moors. Many people would have found them eerie and spooky and might have hugged their cloaks tighter around their shoulders before hurrying fearfully back to their homes, but Resalintas was almost totally without imagination. He knew it was only the mist, and when he watched the silvery, shining wraiths drifting across the surface of the dark, stagnant water it was with nothing more than a mild wonder at the spectacles that the mindless forces of nature were capable of producing.

     One patch of mist was different, though. It was drifting lazily towards him in the opposite direction to the movement of the air, moving with a palpable sense of purpose and malignant intent. Resalintas spotted it instantly and turned to face it, whispering a prayer of comfort and protection as he watched it approach. Evil radiated from it with a force that the priest of Samnos had rarely encountered before, and he could feel the power of the creature as it grew closer. It was in no hurry, and was made all the more frightful by the way it crept with painful slowness through the reeds and rushes, as though it knew that it would get to where it wanted to go in due course and that there was nothing in the world that could stop it.

     When it was twenty yards away it seemed to gather itself together, growing denser and thicker, and it arranged itself into a column of fog seven or eight feet high. It condensed further, and gradually transformed itself into the shape of a tall, gaunt man, dressed in flowing black robes and striding across the damp, boggy ground as though it were as solid as concrete. Resalintas noticed without surprise that it left no footprints, and that not a single leaf or stalk of reed was disturbed by its passage. The apparition smiled wickedly revealing long, needlelike teeth, and the priest felt the temperature drop several degrees around him.

     “You are alone?” the vampire asked, staring intently with his bright, penetrating eyes.

     Resalintas felt the creature’s will reaching out to him, trying to put him into a trance from which he’d awake as an undead slave. His eyes narrowed, and he batted the vampire’s mental attack away with a casual, almost thoughtless thrust from his own mind. “Perfectly alone,” he replied. “And I did not ask to meet with you to do battle with you.”

     “I must admit I found your invitation rather puzzling,” said the vampire, a scowl appearing on its pale face. “What could you, a priest of Samnos, possibly want to say to Kar-Noth, the vampire mage?”

     “You must have some idea or you wouldn't have come,” replied Resalintas. “You are powerful, possibly the most powerful of your kind in the world, and your magical abilities make you even more formidable. There are perhaps half a dozen individuals in the world who could stand against you. Not even you, however, could prevail against this.” He put his hand on the hilt of the Sword of Retribution. “And yet you came. Aren’t you afraid I might try to destroy you? Of course not, because you know perfectly well why I asked you to come.”

     The vampire mage stared suspiciously. “Keep talking,” he said at last.

     “You know what will happen to you and your kind if the Shadowarmies are victorious,” continued the priest. “Tharia will becomes an undead world. With no more fresh blood to drink, you will starve. Therefore, you do not want them to be victorious, and therefore the Shadowlord has ordered the extermination of all your breed. Therefore, those of you who survive are our natural allies.”

     “You want us to help you destroy the Shadowarmies,” said the vampire, nodding slowly.

     “Yes,” replied Resalintas. “It would benefit both of us. It makes sense for us to cooperate.”

     “And afterwards?” demanded Kar-Noth. “We go back to being enemies, and the information you will have gained about us will be used against us.”

     “If we do not cooperate, there will be no afterwards,” said the priest calmly.

     The vampire mage studied the priest suspiciously. “What form would this cooperation take?”

     Resalintas let out his breath. He’d been doubtful that the undead creature would be capable of rational behaviour, but he was slowly growing more hopeful. “The enemy has a weakness,” he said. “We may be able to destroy them if we can exploit this weakness, but to do so it will be necessary for us to go to the centre of the Shadow.”

     “Only the undead can go there,” observed the vampire, and suddenly an expression of amazement exploded onto his face. “You want me to turn you into a vampire?”

     “It's not our first choice,” replied the priest. “We are exploring the possibility that we may be able to turn ourselves into raks. In the event that we fail, however, it's as well that we have an alternative.”

     “But as a vampire you would be my slave. You would be incapable of resisting my will. Is it your intention to have me destroyed by your colleagues in order to regain your freedom?”

     “At any other time, the idea of having you destroyed would be very attractive to me, I admit,” replied Resalintas. “Unfortunately, though, we need you as an ally. The assault force which we will be assembling will have to be as large as possible if it is to stand any chance of success. There are only so many priests of Samnos capable of undergoing rak transformation, only so many wizards. We'll need you as well, and as many vampires as you can persuade to join us. Your power and your knowledge of the lands of the enemy will be invaluable.”

     Kar-Noth grinned in delight. It was a grin that made even Resalintas’s stout heart falter for a moment as he was reminded of the sheer evil of this creature. He could hardly believe that this was really happening, that he was standing here, in the middle of a swamp, chatting amiably with a creature that might well be the oldest and most powerful vampire in the world. Surely Samnos would turn from him in disgust for this tremendous, almost unthinkable sin of collaboration, and every instinct in his body cried out at him to launch an attack, to regain his God’s favour by striking down this force of evil. He resisted his instincts, though, and forced himself to stand where he was, meeting the vampire’s gaze coolly and calmly. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

     “So, if you fail to become a rak, you will stand peacefully and allow me to draw all the blood from your body,” said Kar-Noth, still grinning with delight. “And then you will be my slave. A vampire like me, but weaker and under my control. And suppose I then refuse to allow you to attack Arnor?”

     “I have no fear of that,” replied Resalintas calmly. “Your survival depends on the defeat of the Shadowarmies, so you will order me to do what I want to do anyway. It will be all the same in the end whether I attack Arnor as your slave or as a freewilled rak.”

     “And suppose we are victorious,” continued the vampire mage. “Do you expect me to release you? To give you your freedom?”

     “I'm not that stupid,” replied the priest. “I have a very good idea of what my fate will be. You will take great pleasure from making me commit acts of abominable, unspeakable evil, from driving me to every depravity that your corrupt mind can devise.”

     Only someone who knew him very well would have seen the pain in his steel grey eyes. Anyone else would only have seen his face setting in a granite-like mask of utter determination. He looked at Kar-Noth, his gaze steady and implacable, and the vampire staggered back from what he saw there.

     “However, any evil you make me commit will be small compared to the evil of the Shadowarmies. You may make me bring misery and suffering to thousands, to entire towns and cities, but nothing you make me do will threaten the whole world, as the enemy is doing. It's a good bargain.”

     “But your s-soul!” exclaimed the vampire, stammering over the unfamiliar word. “What about your soul?”

     It was suddenly too much, and the old priest burst into laughter. It was a sound that no living man had heard since his childhood years. “A vampire is concerned for my soul!” he exclaimed, tears streaming down his craggy face. “It is a miracle, a sign from Samnos Himself that He approves of my actions. I can interpret it in no other way. No, Sir vampire, I choose to believe that I would be just as likely to lose my soul if I did not do this thing. I am a priest of Samnos. My duty is to fight the forces of evil, and I am expected to make any sacrifice to do so. That is the path of Samnos, the most demanding and difficult to follow of all the Gods. And now, vampire, I will have my answer. Do you agree to this proposal or do you not?”

     “I do,” replied the vampire, suddenly serious as he felt the weight of the priest's words. “I will do everything in my power to help you destroy the Shadowarmies, including turning you into a vampire if that proves necessary, and I will contact as many other vampires as I can in an attempt to recruit them as well. Not that there are that many left. The raks caught many of us without warning and destroyed them before they knew what was happening. It was a well planned operation and executed with great efficiency. It was sheer luck that some of us were able to escape.”

     “It was a stupid thing to do,” said Resalintas. “They made a powerful enemy, and gave us a valuable ally. And being the fast breeders that you are, I doubt it will be long before you have made up your numbers.” The vampire smiled in agreement, baring his teeth again.

     “Stay in touch, but be discrete,” the priest then said. “The enemy must not know that we are meeting, or they may guess what we're up to. The one chance we have of defeating them depends on our taking them completely by surprise.”

     The vampire chuckled, a sound that had made grown men quake in their boots. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Nothing in the world can move as quietly and stealthily as a vampire. Is that all, or do we have anything else to talk about?”

     “That is all,” replied Resalintas.

     “Then I shall go, but I'll keep in touch. Farewell, priest.”

     He laughed aloud, the sound swallowed up by the swirling mists of the moors, and stretched out his arms, spreading the velvety black of his robes. The outline of his body then became momentarily indistinct, shrinking in on itself, and a moment later there was a large black bat flapping through the air, its long, slow wingbeats throwing the mists in swirls and eddies. It circled the priest three times, still laughing with a remarkably human voice and eyeing him with its glowing, red eyes, and then it was gone, leaving the old priest all alone in the middle of the cold, empty moorlands.