Carpe Jugulum

'I've never seen centaurs at all except in pictures,' said Agnes.

'Must've come down out of Uberwald,' said Nanny. 'Nice to see them about again.'

Agnes hurriedly lit the candles when she got into the cottage, and wished there were bolts on the door.

'Just sit down,' said Nanny. 'I'll get a cup of water, I know my way around here.'

'It's all right, I-'

Agnes's left arm twitched. To her horror it swung at the elbow and waved its hand up and down in front of her face, as if guided by a mind of its own.

'Feeling a bit warm, are you?' said Nanny.

'I'll get the water!' panted Agnes.

She rushed into the kitchen, gripping her left wrist with her right hand. It shook itself free, grabbed a knife from the draining board and stabbed it into the wall, dragging it so that it formed crude letters in the crumbling plaster:

VMPIR

It dropped the knife, grabbed at the hair on the back of Agnes's head and thrust her face within inches of the letters.

'You all right in there?' Nanny called from the next room.

'Er, yes, but I think I'm trying to tell me something-'

A movement made her turn. A small blue man wearing a blue cap was staring at her from the shelves over the washcopper. He stuck out his tongue, made a very small obscene gesture and disappeared behind a bag of washing crystals.

'Nanny?'

'Yes, luv?'

'Are there such things as blue mice?'

'Not while you're sober, dear.'

'I think... I'm owed a drink, then. Is there any brandy left?'

Nanny came in, uncorking the flask.

'I topped it up at the party. Of course, it's only shopbought stuff, you couldn't-'

Agnes's left hand snatched it and poured it down her throat. Then she coughed so hard that some of it went up her nose.

'Hang on, hang on, it's not that weak,' said Nanny.

Agnes plonked the flask down on the kitchen table.

'Right,' she said, and her voice sounded quite different to Nanny. 'My name is Perdita and I'm taking over this body right now.'

Hodgesaargh noticed the smell of burnt wood as he ambled back to the mews but put it down to the bonfire in the courtyard. He'd left the party early. No one had wanted to talk about hawks.

The smell was very strong when he looked in on the birds and saw the little flame in the middle of the floor. He stared at it for a second, then picked up a water bucket and threw it.

The flame continued to flicker gently on a bare stone that was awash with water.

Hodgesaargh looked at the birds. They were watching it with interest; normally they'd be frantic in the presence of fire.

Hodgesaargh was never one to panic. He watched it for a while, and then took a piece of wood and gently touched it to the flame. The fire leapt on to the wood and went on burning.

The wood didn't even char.

He found another twig and brushed it against the flame, which slid easily from one to the other. There was one flame. It was clear there wasn't going to be two.

Half the bars in the window had been burned away, and there was some scorched wood at the end of the mews, where the old nestboxes had been. Above it, a few stars shone through rags of mist over a charred hole in the roof.

Something had burned here, Hodgesaargh saw.

Fiercely, by the look of it. But also in a curiously local way, as if all the heat had been somehow contained...

He reached towards the flame dancing on the end of the stick. It was warm, but... not as hot as it should be.

Now it was on his finger. It tingled. As he waved it around, the head of every bird turned to watch it.

By its light, he poked around in the charred remains of the nestboxes. In the ashes were bits of broken eggshell.

Hodgesaargh picked them up and carried them into the crowded little room at the end of the mews which served as workshop and bedroom. He balanced the flame on a saucer. In here, where it was quieter, he could hear it making a slight sizzling noise.

In the dim glow he looked along the one crowded bookshelf over his bed and pulled down a huge ragged volume on the cover of which someone had written, centuries ago, the word 'Burds'.

The book was a huge ledger. The spine had been cut and widened inexpertly several times so that more pages could be pasted in.

The falconers of Lancre knew a lot about birds. The kingdom was on a main migratory route between the Hub and the Rim. The hawks had brought down many strange species over the centuries and the falconers had, very painstakingly, taken notes. The pages were thick with drawings and closely spaced writing, the entries copied and re-copied and updated over the years. The occasional feather carefully glued to a page had added to the thickness of the thing.

No one had ever bothered with an index, but some past falconer had considerately arranged many of the entries into alphabetical order.

Hodgesaargh glanced again at the flame burning steadily in its saucer, and then, handling the crackling pages with care, turned to 'F'.

After some browsing, he eventually found what he was looking for under 'P'.

Back in the mews, in the deepest shadow, something cowered.