The stink of his flesh made her gag, but his skin felt chilled. And there was something wet smearing against her face.

She opened her mouth, trying to breathe, and the wetness spread across her lips. A coppery taste hit her tongue. The liquid was as cold as his skin, but she could still recognize the taste from the times she cut a finger or thumb while preparing food in the inn's kitchen-and she'd raised the small wound to her mouth, trying to stop the drops of blood.

Corische pressed her face tighter against his chest until she could not breathe at all, only feel and taste the slight bit of his blood escaping into her mouth. Every sensation in the dark became unreal and distant until all feeling in her body faded and her breath stopped altogether.

Teesha awoke on the stone floor in the dark. Had it been hours or days? It felt… somehow felt even longer. There was light in the room, yet the hatch above was not open. Rashed kneeled over her, a small oil lamp in his hand. Something flickered across his cold features. Pity? Regret? She sat up to look about anxiously, but Corische was nowhere to be seen. A heavy wooden door with an iron slide bolt was set in the wall opposite the stairs that led up to the hatch. Otherwise, the room was empty.

Rashed stood and opened the door to expose a long hall angling downward into the earth. Along its sides were other doors like the first, each with a slide bolt, but also looped steel at the jambs where the door could be secured with a lock.

"This used to be a dungeon of some sort," he said.

Teesha was too weak and confused to either question or object when he scooped her up in his arms, lantern still in hand, and carried her into that hallway. He did not stop at any of the doors but walked to the end of the passage, and placed his free hand firmly against the end wall, careful not to drop her. The stone under his hand gave, sinking into the wall, and he reached inside to some hidden pocket of space.

Teesha heard something akin to grinding metal, then the grind of stone as the hall's end pivoted open to reveal a set of stairs angling farther downward. Rashed slipped through and descended.

He walked on and on until finally he reached an end chamber. Within it was nothing more than five coffins. Four were of plain wood and little more than long boxes, while the fifth appeared to be of thick oak with iron bindings, crafted for the final rest, yet without any handles on the outsides of its lid.

"This is where you must sleep now," he said, "in a coffin with the dirt of your homeland. If you go out into the sunlight, you will die." He set her down in one of the four wooden coffins. "You will rest here near my own. I've already prepared it for you."

And so Teesha, the carefree serving girl, was gone, and something else was born in her place.

She learned many things over the next few nights: That she could not refuse the wishes of her master, that she needed blood to exist, that Rashed's coffin was half full of white sand, and that she was undead. Rashed taught her everything with his endless dispassionate patience, and although she sometimes wished for the rest of true death, hatred for Corische kept her rising every night.

He was more than lord of the keep. He was a master among the Noble Dead, those beings among the undead who still retained their full semblance of self from life in an eternal existence no longer subservient to the mortality under which the living grew old and weak. They were the vampires and liches who possessed physical bodies, their own memories, and their own consciousness. The Noble Dead were the highest and most powerful of the unliving. The only weakness for vampires, however, was that they were slaves to the one who created them. Corische's master, his own creator, had somehow been destroyed, and so he was free to create his own servants.

Teesha found that when he gave a verbal order, she could not refuse him. Internally, she could despise him, fantasize about seeing him scorched in flames, and think whatever she pleased. But when he spoke, she could not stop herself from obeying. Neither could Rashed, Parko, or Ratboy-not that Rashed would have refused anyway. The tall, composed warrior seemed honestly loyal to his master. This revolted Teesha, as Rashed was clearly superior to Corische on every imaginable level.

Rashed taught her how to feed without killing, harmonizing the thrum of her voice to the exertion of her will, until the victim became pliable and docile.

When she asked Rashed why he cared so for mortals, that he did not wish to kill them, his reply was coldly practical.

"Even a heavily populated area like this one cannot support four of us recklessly. We must be careful or lose our home and our food supply."

She came to understand that their kind developed different levels of power. Rashed thought her mental abilities were quite pronounced. His own and Ratboy's were adequate. Parko couldn't express himself well enough for the others to gauge his abilities, yet his senses were highly acute, even beyond the average heightened senses of a Noble Dead, and he was a constant trial for Rashed to control. Corische's telepathic skills were so limited that Teesha sometimes wondered how he fed.

Most of the Noble Dead developed mental abilities, but these often were dependent on the individual's inclinations in life. Teesha had always loved dreams and memories, for her life had been filled with the best of them, and so she eventually found she could easily reach into the mind of a mortal and project sweet waking dreams and alter memories.

The first time Rashed took her hunting was a revelation. They rode his bay gelding together for a while and then dismounted and tied the horse to a tree. Slipping through the forest, she realized they were hiding in the shadows on the outskirts of her home village. A farmer came out of the tavern and stepped into the trees to relieve himself. Teesha recognized him. His name was Davish.

"Watch me," Rashed said. "This is important."

He stepped out of the shadows. "Are you lost?" he asked Davish.

The farmer started slightly at the sound of a strange voice, and then he looked in Rashed's eyes and seemed to relax into a kind of confusion. "Lost? I…? I'm not sure."

"Come. I will help you home."

Davish appeared.to be frightened, but not of Rashed. He kept looking around as if he should know where he was but did not. Rashed reached out as if to help him, but then gripped his arm, pulled him over, and wasted no time biting down on his throat. Teesha watched in fascination.

Rashed did not drink much and then pushed the dazed farmer toward her. "Feed, but not too much. You must not kill him. You'll be doing this on your own soon enough."

Teesha grabbed Davish and began feeding, unable to stop herself, and surprised by how right the act felt. She was not repulsed at all. Then she realized how delicious his blood tasted, how warm, how strong she felt. Pure pleasure seeped through her. She could not stop.

"That's enough." Rashed pulled her off. "Don't kill him." He laid Davish out on the ground and then used a knife to connect the holes made by his teeth, but he did this carefully and did not cut too deeply. He leaned close and whispered, "Forget."

"What did you do?" she asked.

"You simply reach inside their thoughts with your own. Force the fear, the moment, the emotion to fade."

And so she learned that Rashed was able to manipulate emotions, and able to create a blank space in his victim's memory. Teesha herself learned to create dreams and manipulate more complex memories.

Ratboy, on the other hand, hunted through his ability to blend. No one noticed him. No one remembered him. He did not hunt with finesse or by creating dreams, but he was able to feed by mentally intensifying his own innate ability to be forgotten. That was all.