He was dressed in his traditional blue robes, although he now wore his hood down, no longer bothering to hide his grey, scarred, stitched-together face. Harkat didn't have a nose, and his ears were sewn underneath the skin of his skull. He had a pair of large, round green eyes, set near the top of his head. His mouth was jagged and full of sharp teeth. Normal air was poisonous to him — ten or twelve hours of it would kill him — so he wore a special mask that kept him alive. He moved it down over his chin when he was talking or eating and back up to cover his mouth when he wasn't. Harkat had once been human but had died and come back in this body, after striking a deal with Mr. Tiny. He couldn't remember who he'd been or what sort of a deal he'd struck.

Harkat had carried a message to the Princes from Mr. Tiny, saying that the night of the Vampaneze Lord was coming. The Vampaneze Lord was a mythical figure whose arrival would supposedly signal the start of a war between the vampires and vampaneze, which — according to Mr. Tiny — the vampaneze would win, wiping out the vampire forces in the process.

Catching my eye, Harkat lowered his mask and said, "Have you… seen much of… the Halls?"

"A little of them," I replied.

"You must… take me… on a tour."

"Darren won't have much time for tours," Kurda sighed miserably. "Not with the Trials to prepare for."

"Tell me more about these Trials," I said.

"The Trials are part of our vampiric heritage, going back as long as any vampire can remember," Gavner told me. Gavner Purl was a Vampire General. He was very burly, with short brown hair, and he had a scarred, beaten face. Mr. Crepsley teased him a lot about his heavy breathing and snoring. "In the old nights they were held at every Council," Gavner continued, "and every vampire had to endure them, even if they'd passed a dozen times already.

"About a thousand years ago, the Trials were restructured. This was about the time that the Generals came into being. Before that, there were just Princes and ordinary vampires. Under the new terms, only those who wished to be Generals needed to undertake the Trials. A lot of ordinary vampires take the Trials even if they don't want to be a General — a vampire usually has to pass the Trials of Initiation to earn the respect of his peers — but they aren't required to."