"Me too," I laughed.

"The betting… against you… has dropped… since you passed… the first Trial. More vampires… are betting… on you to… win, now."

"That's good to hear. Have you bet anything on me?"

"I have… nothing to bet," Harkat said. "If I did… I would."

While we were talking, a rumor spread through the Hall, upsetting the vampires around us. Listening closely, we learned that one of the last remaining vampires on his way to Council had arrived before dawn and immediately rushed to the Hall of Princes to inform them of vampaneze tracks he'd come across while traveling to the mountain.

"Maybe it's the same vampaneze we found on our way here," I said, referring to a dead vampaneze we'd stumbled on during the course of our journey.

"Maybe," Vanez muttered, unconvinced. "I'll leave you for a while. Stay here. I won't be long."

When he returned, the games master seemed worried. "The vampire was Patrick Goulder," he said. "He came by an entirely different route, and the tracks were quite fresh. It's almost certain that this was a different vampaneze."

"What does it mean?" I asked, unsettled by the anxious rumblings of the vampires around us.

"I don't know," Vanez admitted. "But two vampaneze on the paths to Vampire Mountain are hardly coincidence. And when you take Harkat's message about the Vampaneze Lord into consideration, it doesn't look promising."

I thought again of Harkat's message and Mr. Tiny's long-ago vow that the Vampaneze Lord would lead the vampaneze against the vampires and crush them. I'd had other things to worry about, and still did — my Trials were far from over — but it was hard to ignore this ominous threat to the entire vampire clan.

"Still," Vanez said, making light of it, "the doings of the vampaneze are of no interest to us. We must concentrate on the Trials. We'll leave the other business to those best equipped to deal with it."