A Coven of Vampires by Brian Lumley Read Free Book Online Page A

ago hounded out of Kliihn on the coast for his frauds and fakeries. His subjects—in no wise nicer persons than Fregg himself—were a rabble of yeggs, sharpers, scabby whores and their pimps, unscrupulous taverners and other degenerates and riff-raff blown here on the winds of chance, or else fled from justice to Chlangi’s doubtful refuge. And doubtful it was.
    Chlangi the Doomed—or the Shunned City, as it is elsewhere known—well deserved these doleful titles. For of all places of ill-repute, this were perhaps the most notorious in all the Primal Land. And yet it had not always been this way.
    In its heyday the city had been opulent, its streets and markets bustling with merchants, its honest taverners selling vintages renowned throughout the land for their clean sweetness. With lofty domes and spires all gilded over, walls high and white, and roofs red with tiles baked in the ovens of Chlangi’s busy builders, the city had been the veriest jewel of Theem’hdra’s cities. Aye, and its magistrates had had little time for members of the limited criminal element.
    Now…all good and honest men shunned the place, and had done so since first the lamia Orbiquita built her castle in the Desert of Sheb. Now the gold had been stripped from all the rich roofs, the grapevines had returned to the wild, producing only small, sour grapes and flattening their rotten trellises; arches and walls had toppled into disrepair, and the scummy water of a many-fractured aqueduct was suspect indeed. Only the rabble horde and their robber-king now lived here, and outside the walls a handful of hungry, outcast beggars.
    Now, too, Fregg kept the land around well scouted, where day and night men of his were out patrolling in the badlands and along the fringe of the desert, intent upon thievery and murder. Occasionally there were caravans out of Eyphra or Kliihn; or more rarely parties of prospectors out of Kluhn headed for the Mountains of Lohmi, or returning therefrom; and exceeding rare indeed lone wanderers and adventurers who had simply strayed this way. Which must surely elevate the occurrences of last night almost to the fabulous. Fabulous in Fregg’s eyes, anyway, which was one of the reasons he had brought his scouts of yester-eve to morning court.
    Their tale had been so full of fantastic incident that Fregg could only consider it a fabrication, and the tale wasn’t all he found suspect. 
    Now the court was packed; battle-scarred brigands rubbed shoulders with nimble thieves and cutthroats, and Fregg’s own lieutenants formed a surly jury whose only concern was to “get the thing over, the accused hanged, and on with the day’s gaming, scheming and back-stabbing.” Which did not bode well for transgressors against Fregg’s laws!
    Actually, those laws were simple in the extreme:
    Monies and goods within the city would circulate accord ing to barter and business, with each man taking his risks and living, subsisting or existing in accordance with his acumen. Monies and so on from without would be divided half to Fregg and his heirs, one third to the reaver or reavers clever enough to capture and bring it in, and the remaining one-sixth part to the city in general, to circulate as it might. More a code than a written law proper, there was only one real law and it was this: Fregg’s subjects could rob, cheat, even kill each other; they could sell their swords, souls or bodies; they could bully, booze and brawl all they liked and then some… except where it would be to annoy, inconvenience, pre-empt or otherwise interfere with, or displease, Fregg. Simple.
    Which meant that on this occasion, in some way as yet unexplained, last night’s far-scavenging scouts had indeed displeased Fregg; a very strange circumstance, considering the fantastic haul they’d brought back for him!
    Now they were here, dragged before Fregg’s “courtiers” and “council” and “jury” for whatever form of inquisition he had in mind, and Arenith