by Brian Lumley
Meat was not the flyer’s usual fare; its diet would normally consist of crushed bone, grasses from Sunside, honey and other sweet liquids, and some blood. Having metamorphic flesh, however, it was capable of consuming almost anything organic. On this occasion, having gorged itself on the frozen flesh of another flyer, it must now rest until the food was digested and converted. Bloated, it no longer lay where the ex-Lords had first spied it beside the gnawed carcass of Volse’s flyer, but had found shelter slumped in the lee of a great block of ice half a mile to the west, where Shaithis had sent it.
Forming great saucer eyes in its leathery flanks, the dull, stupid thing gloomed on the Ferenc and Volse Pinescu and lolled its diamond head at them as they approached. Moist and heavy-lidded, its eyes “saw” but could scarcely comprehend. Until the flyer was instructed to do something, and then by its rightful master, Shaithis himself, it would do nothing, not even think. Oh, it would seek to protect itself to a degree, but never so far as to harm one of the Wamphyri. For stabs of concentrated vampire telepathy could sting such creatures like darts, bringing them to trembling submission in a moment. Thus, while the flyer would not fly for Fess or Volse, it would lie still for them. Even when they sliced into its warm underbelly to sever great pipes of veins, which they would then suck upon.
Shaithis, in his niche in the ice castle, “heard” the huge creature’s first mental bleat of distress and was tempted to issue orders, such as: Roll, crush these men who torment you! Bound up and fall upon them! Even now, at a distance, he could transmit such commands and know that the flyer would instantly, instinctively obey him. But he also knew that while the beast might injure the Lords, it could not kill them, and he remembered the Ferenc’s warning. To set the flyer upon them (unless it could be guaranteed to incapacitate them utterly) would be to place himself in direst jeopardy. Which was why he ground his teeth a little but otherwise lay still and did nothing.
To Shaithis it seemed a great waste: his good flyer, used for food. Especially since Volse’s flyer—literally two tons of excellent if not especially appetizing meat—already lay out there going to waste. Except even that was not entirely true. Frozen, the creature would not waste but remain available for long and long. But Shaithis knew that there was more than mere hunger in it; the Ferenc had a purpose other than to fill his belly.
For one, the beast would be left so depleted by this first gluttonous “visit” of Fess and Volse that any further aerial voyagings would be out of the question; which meant that Shaithis was now stuck here no less than the others. It was partly the Ferenc’s way of paying him back for his failure in the battle for The Dweller’s garden, but it was mainly something else.
For the fact was that indeed Shaithis had been the great thinker, with a capacity for scheming which had set him above and apart even from his own kind, the universally devious Wamphyri. If any man could find his way out of the Icelands, then Shaithis had to be the one. An escape which must likewise benefit Fess Ferenc, who would doubtless follow his lead. And as Fess had so vividly pointed out, this was the reason Shaithis’s life had been spared: so that he could concentrate on survival to the benefit of all the exiles.
That “all,” of course, meaning Fess Ferenc specifically; for Shaithis had no doubt but that eventually (unless there should occur some large and unforeseen reversal) the entirely loathsome Volse Pinescu must surely go the way of all flesh. As to why the Ferenc had so far suffered Volse to live: perhaps he simply couldn’t abide the thought of eating him! Shaithis allowed himself a grin, however pained and bitter, before reexamining the question of Volse’s survival. A much more likely explanation would be the loneliness and boredom of these Icelands; perhaps the giant Fess craved companionship! Certainly Shaithis, in the short time he’d been here, had felt a great weight of loneliness pressing down upon him … or had he?
For all that this place appeared utterly dead and empty of any noteworthy intelligence, still he was not convinced. Even here in his ice niche, with his thoughts well shielded, still there was this instinctive tingle of awareness in his vampire being, a suspicion in his vampire mind that … someone observed him in his trials? Possibly. But to know or suspect it was one thing, and to prove it another entirely.
Wherefore he would now sleep and let his vampire heal him, and later turn his attention to matters of more permanent survival—
—Not to mention a small matter of revenge, of course.
Battening his mind more securely yet, Shaithis settled down and for the first time felt the cold, the physical cold, beginning to bite. And he knew that the Ferenc and Volse Pinescu had been correct: even Wamphyri flesh must eventually succumb to a chill such as that of these Icelands. There could be no denying it, not in the face of such evidence as Kehrl Lugoz.
Then, even as Shaithis made to close his right eye (for the left would remain open, even in sleep) something small, soft, and white hovered for a moment before his face, finally darting away with tiny, near-inaudible chittering cries into upper aeries of undisclosed ice. But not before Shaithis had recognized it. Pink-eyed, that tiny flutterer, with membrane wings and a wrinkled, pink-veined snout. A dwarf albino bat, it gave Shaithis an idea.
By now Volse Pinescu and the Ferenc would be absorbed in their meal, probably numb from their gluttony. Shaithis would risk opening his mind again. He reached out and called to the ice castle’s bats, which eventually came to him. Fearful at first, finally they settled to him singly, then in twos and threes, and at last almost buried him in their soft, snowy blanket. An entire colony of the creatures, they crowded into Shaithis’s niche.
And with their small bodies warming him, so he slept …
The minion bats of Shaitan the Unborn (also called the Fallen) not only warmed Shaithis where he slept but also watched him, as they had since his arrival. They had watched Fess Ferenc and Volse Pinescu, too; also Arkis Leperson and his thralls (both of whom, within a period of just two auroral displays, Arkis had drained before secreting their bloodless corpses in cold storage in a glacier) and a pair of Menor Maimbite’s lieutenants, released from thralldom by Menor’s death in the battle for the garden. All of these had wended their various ways here, whose subsequent activities the miniature albinos had faithfully reported back to their immemorial master, Shaitan.
The last-mentioned duo, ex-Travellers vampirized by Menor, had been the first of this fresh crop of exiles to get here. Having exhausted their dead master’s finest flyer, they had crashed its panting, desiccated carcass in the salt sea at the edge of the Icelands and covered the last thirty miles afoot. Then they’d seen the smoke which Shaitan deliberately sent up from his chimney, and dragged themselves to what might possibly be a warm place. Well, and it had proved warm enough. Now they turned slowly on bone hooks suspended from the low ceiling of an ancient lava blowhole which opened on the volcano’s west-facing flank: Shaitan’s ice-cavern larder.
The lieutenants had been easy meat; they had no vampires in them; their minds and flesh had been altered but they were not yet Wamphyri. Given a hundred years or more and they might have been harder to take. But time had run out for them right here and now, along with all of their rich red blood.
As for the four Wamphyri Lords: Shaitan was rather more leery of them. Let them fight among themselves first, wear themselves out. It seemed only prudent. In his youth (which Shaitan scarcely remembered), ah, it would have been different then! He’d have had the measure of all of these and four more just like them. But three and a half thousand years is a long time, and time takes its toll of more than memory. Indeed, of almost everything. Now he was … tired? If it must be admitted, even his vampire was tired! And his vampire was by far the greater part of him.
Not ailing, frail, or dying tired, just … tired. Of the unrelenting cold, which periodically would cut through the volcanic rock to the mountain’s heart, even to the blowhole caverns in its roots; of the interminably dull routine of existence; quite simply, of the sameness and emptiness of being in these eternal,
ageless Icelands.
But not yet tired of life. Not utterly.
Certainly not to the extent that Shaitan would advertise his presence to such as Fess, Volse, Shaithis, and Arkis Leperson! No, for when you came right down to it there were plenty of better ways to die. Aye, and now that the exiles were here there might be more and better reasons to stay alive, too.
Especially this “Shaithis.”
Indeed, with a name like that he might even prove to be the realization—the embodiment?—of a totally new existence. This last was only a dream of Shaitan’s, true, but it had not faded with time. While all else had turned grey, his dream had stayed clear and bright. And red.
A dream of youth, renewed vigor, a victorious return to Starside and Sunside and of laying them waste, and then the invasion of worlds beyond. Shaitan’s belief, his instinctive conviction that indeed such worlds existed, had sustained him through all the monotonous centuries of his exile, giving purpose to that which was otherwise untenable.
But while the dream remained young and bright, the dreamer had grown old and somewhat tarnished. Not in his mind but in his body. The human parts of Shaitan had wasted, been replaced by inhuman tissues; the metamorphism of his vampire had trancended the deterioration of the host body until the man-part had disappeared almost entirely, leaving only rudimentary or vestigial traces of the original flesh, organs, and appendages. But the fused mind of man and vampire remained, and for all that a great deal had been forgotten, still the accumulation of that mind’s contents—its knowledge—was vast. And EVIL.
Shaitan’s EVIL was fathomless, but he was not mad. For intelligence and evil are not incompatible. Indeed they are complementary. The murderer requires a mind to construct his clever alibi. An idiot cannot build an atomic weapon.
Evil is the perverse rejection of goodness, which in Shaitan was absolute. His was an EVIL which might put the universe itself to the torch, then gaze upon the cinders and find them good! He was Darkness, Light’s opposite; he could even be said to be the Primal Darkness, which opposed the Primal Light. Which was the reason why even the Wamphyri had banished him. But he knew, without knowing how he knew, that he’d been banished long before that.
Banished … by GOOD? By some benevolent God? No metagnostic, still Shaitan could conceive of such a One. For how may EVIL exist without GOOD? But for now—
—He put such thoughts aside. He’d thought them for long enough. In three and a half thousand years a mind has time to think many things, from the remotely trivial to the infinitely profound. For the moment his origin was not important, but his destiny was. And his destiny might well be part and parcel of this man, this being, called Shaithis.
In the Old Times the Wamphyri had named their “sons” after themselves. Bloodsons, egg-recipients, common vampires—all had adopted the name of their sire. The custom had changed somewhat but not entirely. Arkis Leperson was the recipient son of his leper father, Radu Arkis: “Arkis the Leper,” they’d called him. Wherefore his “son”—a Traveller lieutenant who more than a century ago found favor in Radu’s scarlet eyes—was now Arkis Leperson. He carried Radu’s egg.
Similarly, Fess Ferenc was the bloodson (born of woman) of Ion Ferenc; his Traveller mother died giving birth to the giant, whose size was such it impressed his father to let him live. A great error, that. While yet a youth Fess had killed Ion, then opened his body to steal and devour his vampire egg whole. This way Ion could not pass it to any other, and his aerie on Starside must devolve “naturally” to Fess.
Shaitan, in his day, had sired many offspring and by various means, but his egg had gone to Shaithar Shaitanson, who in his turn had fathered vampires. And Shaitan’s bloodspawned children had been named Shaithos, Shailar the Hagridden, Shaithag, and so on. While among his egg-son Shaithar’s spawn had been one called Sheilar the Slut, and possibly others with similar-sounding names, derived from the One Original. And all of these before Shaitan himself was banished.
Wherefore … was it too much to ask, too improbable, that three thousand years later this one, this Shaithis, should now appear, banished like his forebear before him? Shaitan thought not. But a direct descendant? The blood is the life, and only blood would tell. Aye, blood would tell.
Take from him, Shaitan commanded the miniature officers of his law. Just one of you. A nip, the merest sip. Take from him and bring it to me. He said no more.
And in his ice-crevice hiding place Shaithis scarcely felt the fishhook-sharp needles that punctured the lobe of his ear and drew blood, and was only faintly aware of the whir of small wings making away from him into the frozen labyrinth of the ice castle, then out of that amazing sculpture and into the star-bright night of the world.
Some short time later, the albino swooped down inside the all but extinct central cone to Shaitan’s sulphur-yellow apartments, and there hovered, waiting on his word. From his dark corner he commanded it: Come, little one. I won’t crush you.
The tiny creature flew to him, folded its wings, and fastened to Shaitan’s … hand? It coughed up spittle and mucus into what passed for a palm, and one small bright splash of ruby blood. And:
Good! said Shaitan. Now go. Only too pleased to obey, the bat hastened from its master and left him to his own devices.
Fascinated, for long and long Shaitan gazed at the ruby droplet. It was blood, and the blood is the life. He waited impatiently for the vampire flesh of his hand to open into a tiny mouth and sip the droplet in—an automatic thing, born of hideous instinct—from which he would know that this was just the blood of a common man. But he waited in vain, for like himself Shaithis was uncommon. Very much like himself.
And:
“Mine!” said Shaitan at last, in a croaking, shuddering, delighted whisper. “Flesh of my flesh!”
At which the droplet quivered and soaked through the leprous skin of his hand, and into him as if he were a sponge …
3
THE FERENC’S STORY
Shaithis slept long and long.
The bats kept him warm (at least kept him from freezing solid in his ice niche); his wounds healed; his thoughts, like Shaithis himself, remained hidden. Until it was time to rouse himself and be up and about. Which was when his hiding place was discovered.
What!? Who!? The astonished, involuntary mental exclamations brought Shaithis starting awake, echoing in his mind. While still the echoes rang he was on his feet, his blanket of albino bats breaking up in chittering disarray, whirring away from him like a shock of sentient snow. Another moment and his hand filled his gauntlet; he let his Wamphyri senses reach out—but cautiously, tentatively—to discover who was here. Whoever, he must be near, else he wouldn’t have sensed Shaithis’s emergence.
While sleeping, Shaithis’s thoughts had flowed inwards, an art in which he was adept; his dreams could not be “heard” by any other. But during the transition from deep, healing sleep to waking they had escaped like a yawn, and someone had been close enough to hear it. Too close by far.
Shaithis allowed his mental probe to touch that of the other, and immediately snatched it back. Contact had been brief but recognition mutual: insufficient to detail specific identities, but enough that each creature was certain of the other’s presence. Shaithis glanced this way and that. There was only one way out of his niche; if he was trapped, then he was trapped; so be it.
Who is it? He sniffed the cold air with his bat’s snout. Is it you, Fess, come for your supper? Or must I soil my good gauntlet in pus to tear out the loathsome heart of the odious Volse Pinescu?
And back came the answer, like an astonished gasp in the vampire’s mind: Hah! Shaithis! You survived The Dweller’s death-beams, then?
Arkis Leperson! Shaithis knew him at once. He breathed his relief, watched curiously for a moment while his breath fell as snow, then made for the exit. Along the way he flexed his muscles, swung his limbs, inhaled deeply and tested his ribs. All seemed in order. Pah! What had those minor dents and scratches been for wounds, anyway? Repairs ha
d been minimal; his vampire flesh had scarcely been overtaxed; he was left with an ache here, a bruise there.
Arkis stood close to the foot of the ice staircase. He was squat for a Lord of the Wamphyri: scarcely more than six feet tall—ah, but a good three feet broad, too! A massive barrel of a man, his strength had been prodigious. Now it seemed he’d lost a little weight. Shaithis moved towards him, closing the distance between with the easy, flowing glide of the vampire; sinister to ordinary men, but normal by Wamphyri standards. In another moment they were face-to-face.
“Well,” said Shaithis, “and is it peace? Or are you too hungry to think straight? I’ll be frank: I could use a friend. And by the look of you … huh! Our circumstances are much the same. The choice is yours, but I know where there’s food!”
The other’s entirely instinctive reaction was a single belched word: “Food?” His eyes opened wide and his flaring, convoluted snout plumed ice-crystal breath.
Plainly, Arkis was starving. Shaithis offered him a grim smile, took from his pouch the last piece of cold bear heart and devoured half in a single bite, then tossed the rest to the leper’s son—who snatched it from the air with a cry almost of pain. And without pause he crammed his mouth full.
Arkis had been sired by Morgis Griefcry out of a Traveller waif. She’d been a leper and her infection had taken him in his member, which (along with his lips, eyes, and ears) had been among the first of his parts to slough. The disease had been like a fire in him, burning him faster than his vampire could replenish. Finally, with cries of grief echoing his name to the full, Morgis had taken a firebrand and hurled himself and his Traveller odalisque into a refuse pit whose accumulation of methane gas had done the rest. His suicide had left Arkis the youthful Lord and heir to a fine aerie. Even better, Arkis had not contracted his forebears’ disease! Not yet, anyway. Perhaps he never would. It had all been many sundowns agone.