by Brian Lumley
He was aware of the Thing as a shadow among lesser shadows in a cavern of black rock, unsuspected except for the red glow of its eyes where they floated in luminous yellow orbits. What he, Shaithis, was doing in such a place he could not say, except that he felt he’d been called here. Yes, that was it: he was not here entirely of his own free will but mainly because this enigmatic being had called him here.
And as if to confirm that thought: ‘Shaithis, my son,’ said the Dark Hooded Thing, whose true voice was deeper, darker, and probably more deceiving than any Shaithis ever heard before. ‘And so at last you’ve answered me. Difficult to reach you, my son, through that clever deflective screen of yours, else I had known you and called you here long before now.’
Shaithis’s Wamphyri eyes and awareness were accustomed now to the gloom of the place. Indeed he saw and sensed as well as ever, which is to say very well indeed: as a cat at night or Desmodus on the wing. The darkness made no difference; in fact, and with regard to his whereabouts, it merely served to confirm his first instinctive guess that he was in some natural chamber deep in the belly of the slumbering volcano. Which would appear to make Shaitan the Lord of these subterranean regions.
In such close proximity, the other read his thoughts as if they’d been spoken words and answered: ‘But of course, just as I have been since… oh, a long, long time.’
Shaithis peered intently at the crimson-eyed shadow which was Shaitan. It was strange, but for all his vampire-enhanced awareness he saw only an outline of the other’s form. No fault of his; his senses were not impaired; Shaitan must be shielding his physical self in a manner like to Shaithis guarding his thoughts. But… Shaitan the Fallen? Could it really be — was it really possible — for any creature to live so long? He made up his mind that indeed it must be, for here he stood in the presence of just such a one.
And: This isn’t just a dream,’ said Shaithis then, with a shake of his head. ‘I can feel your presence and know you are real: that same Shaitan of whom Kehrl Lugoz was, and is, so mortally afraid, that ancient Being out of the first annals of Wamphyri legend. You were banished here in prehistory, and you live here still.’
‘All true,’ the other answered, and darkness stirred where he stood, as if he had offered a casual shrug. ‘I am that same Shaitan, the so-called Unborn, who was and is your immemorial ancestor!’
‘Ah!’ said Shaithis, as truth finally dawned. ‘We are of one blood.’
‘Indeed, and obviously so. You stand out from the others like a meteor speeding through the stirless stars, much as I stood out in that distant time when I fell to earth. And our ambitions are the same, aye, and our intelligence. I am your origin, Shaithis, and your future. And you are mine.’
‘Our futures are bound up together?’
‘Inextricably.’
‘Outside of these Icelands, you mean? In more civilized places?’
‘In Starside, and in worlds beyond Starside.’
‘What?’ Shaithis was taken aback, for there was something here which smacked of that earlier dream. ‘Worlds beyond Starside? You mean the helllands?’
‘For a start.’
‘And you know of such places?’
‘Upon a time, I was the inhabitant of just such a place. But that was before I fell — or was thrown — to Earth.’
‘And you remember it?’
‘I remember nothing of it!’ The Dark Hooded Thing growled, moving marginally closer; and there was that about its motion — as if its very flux had intelligence, a sentient viscosity — which caused Shaithis to take a pace to the rear. ‘My memory, all memory, was robbed from me when I was cast out.’
‘No memory of what you did, who and how you were?’
Again the Thing moved closer, and once more Shaithis backed away, but not too far for fear he should back right out of his own dream. ‘Only my name, and that I was vain and proud and beautiful,’ said Shaitan, conjuring more echoes of that former dream. ‘But it was a long time ago, my son, and given time all things change. I, too, have changed.’
‘Changed?’ Shaithis tried hard to understand. ‘You’re no longer vain, no longer proud? But even the least of the Wamphyri know such vices — and enjoy them. They always will.’
Shaitan slowly shook his hooded head, which Shaithis knew from the movement of his crimson eyes in their yellow orbits, the only parts of the creature which were visible through the warp of his inky, impenetrable mental shield. ‘No longer beautiful!’ he said.
‘But it’s the same for all of us,’ Shaithis answered. ‘We know we are not beautiful and accept it. And anyway, what has beauty to do with power? Why, there are those of us who even foster our ugliness as a measure of our might!’ Inadvertently, he thought of Volse Pinescu.
Shaitan picked the picture clean out of his mind. ‘Aye, that one was ugly. But he himself willed it. I did not. And physically and mentally hideous as the Wamphyri are, still by comparison they are beautiful.’ And for the third time he came closer.
Shaithis stood his ground but groped for his gauntlet. It was a dream, true, but he’d not yet relinquished all control. ‘Do you wish me harm?’ he said.
‘On the contrary,’ the other answered, ‘for we’ve a long way to go together. But this art I practise is wearying. It were better if you knew me as I am.’
Then show me yourself.’
‘I was preparing to,’ Shaitan answered. ‘Indeed, I was preparing… you.’
‘Enough!’ said Shaithis. ‘I am prepared.’
‘So be it!’ said his ancestor, and relaxed his hypnotic will.
What Shaithis saw then shocked him awake a second time, as if the sleeping volcano itself had erupted under his feet. He started up gasping in his ice-niche, wide-eyed and astonished by the castle’s luminous light after the dream-darkness of the cone’s core, with a chill in his black heart spawned more — far more — of what the Dark Hooded Thing had shown him than of any mundane or merely physical condition. And because the dream had been more than a dream, in fact a visitation, it didn’t fade back into some subconscious limbo of obscurity but remained sharp, etched in the eye of his mind as clear as the sigils on an aerie’s fluttering banners and pennants.
Shaithis, himself a monster in every respect, was not a creature to shock easily. Where the Wamphyri were concerned, ‘fear’ or ‘horror’ were more or less defunct concepts, eradicated and replaced by rage. Adrenalin was rarely released into a vampire’s system to encourage or enable flight, but usually to trigger his animal passions so that he would stand and fight — viciously, brutally! An awareness of their superiority had been bred into Starside’s vampires through all the long centuries of their sovereignty, when it was indisputable that of all their world’s creatures they were far and away the dominant species. Much as common Man was dominant in his world.
But the fact remained that Shaithis had once been a common man — a Traveller vampirized when Shaidar Shaigispawn renamed him, made him his chief lieutenant or ‘son’, and gave him his egg — and as such he’d learned what fear was all about. Even now after half a millennium he still remembered, if only when he slept. For however monstrous a man may become, the things that frightened him as a youth will continue to do so in his dreams.
What had frightened Shaithis the most in those early days of his abduction from Sunside — in that time now five hundred years in the past, before the Lord Shaidar coughed his scarlet egg into his throat and changed him for ever — had been the many and monstrous anomalies of Shaidar’s lofty aerie: the cartilage creatures and gas-beasts, the entirely unthinkable siphoneers, the vast vats in the lower levels of the stack where trogs and Travellers alike became flyers or warriors or yet weirder facets of Shaidar’s hybrid experimentation. For the vampire Lord had delighted in showing to Shaithis (at that time a young, as yet innocent Traveller) his most nightmarish creations, and in torturing his mind with the half-threat that one day he, too, might be a diamond-headed flyer, armour-scaled warrior or flaccid, pulpy siphoneer.
Morbid distortions and abnormalities such as these, then, had been the harbingers of Shaithis’s worst nightmares during those early days of Wamphyri apprenticeship. But in time, as he himself ascended to the aerie’s throne-room, such fears had receded, been suppressed, had succumbed to the vampire in him, which bade him become a maker of monsters in his own right; an art in which finally he’d excelled. And his flyers had been the most weirdly graceful, his warriors ferocious beyond any previous ferocity, and his other creations and experiments… varied. So that it was only in dreams out of his youth that he remembered and took fright at such things. Except that even in the most vivid and awe-inspiring of these, nothing that memory had conjured had been half as monstrous as that which the Dark Hooded Thing had shown him.
‘Ugly,’ Shaitan had called himself, but there is ugly and there is ugly. And as for hybridism…
Shaithis pictured again the thing which had stood there when his ancestor relaxed his hypnotic shield to let himself be seen as he really was: an abomination which not even the most perverse or insane Wamphyri mind might envisage, made all the worse through its reality. It had been… what? A man-sized slug or leech — corrugated, glistening black, and mottled grey-green — but rearing upright like a man? A vampire, yes, such as might develop from an egg inside a man or woman, but grown huge beyond all reasonable measures; so that Shaithis had wondered: But if this grew inside a man, then what became of its host!?
Then, as the grotesque but mainly vague picture of the thing (made vague, by virtue of its obscenity) scarred itself into his mind, so he’d become aware of something of its finer detail, which in the next moment had sufficed to shock him awake.
The thing (no, he must not think of it as a ‘thing’ alone but also as Shaitan, his ancestor?) had rubbery limbs, some of which ended in suckered tentacles. Others, however, did not but were equipped with vestigial human and other animal parts: mummied hands and withered, rudimentary feet, and even a gleaming bone claw. And it was these parts, and also Shaitan’s flat, composite face on its spade-shaped cobra head, which repulsed Shaithis the most and brought about the resurgence of his long-forgotten phobia.
For he knew that the hybridism he saw here was not that of some Wamphyri Lord’s experimental vats but of Nature; or rather of the vampire’s unnatural tenacity, its determination to cling to life in circumstances however desperate, through travails and triumphs down all the nameless ages. Aye, for the Lord Shaitan had grown simply too ancient for the accommodation of mortal, human flesh, and his original body had wasted away to be replaced almost in its entirety by the metamorphic organism which was his vampire. Which was, indeed, now him.
Ugly? The result was hideous; especially so to Shaithis in his dream, for there it had been the embodiment of every nightmare of his apprenticeship.
As to how he knew the fate which had befallen Shaitan in his ice-bound isolation — his evolution, no, devolution, from man-vampire or Wamphyri to pure vampire — that had been written in the vast intelligence, hatred and sheer evil of the leech-thing’s scarlet eyes, unblinking under their cobra’s hood. Not the unbridled, mindless hatred so often seen in the seething eyes of a warrior, or the vacant, lidless stare of a hugely nodding flyer, and certainly not the watery, vapid gaze of a siphoneer. But such evil intelligence that Shaithis had known this thing was no morbid experiment but a true mutation.
He had known, too, with reinforced certainty, that indeed this was Shaitan the Unborn, called the Fallen. For of all Wamphyri legends there was one of universal prevalence: that to the innermost core of his being, Shaitan had been evil above all other men and creatures…
6 Dark Liaison
Shaithis’s mental guard was down, his mind accessible as he emerged more fully from sleep. And there was someone there, a dark presence, to take advantage of his confusion. It was Shaitan, of course; even at a distance his gurgling, venomous ‘voice’ was unmistakable.
Evil? Do you say I was evil? No, I was wronged. Wronged by the Wamphyri, my own kind! For I was stronger than them and they feared me. And you, son of my sons? Do you also fear me? See how you start awake from me, as if I were some DOOM come down upon you rather than your salvation.
Shaithis went to close his mind… and hesitated. His hideous ancestor was the master of the dead volcano, wasn’t he? What harm could he do from there? This could well be the perfect opportunity to learn more about him without alerting the others to his presence.
Shaitan picked all these thoughts out of Shaithis’s mind and chuckled monstrously. Aye, he gurgled, for it would never do to let them in on our secret. Not until it’s too late. Or at least, too late for them.
Shaithis lay back, narrowed his eyes and scanned across the glittering expanse of the ice-castle’s hollow heart to focus upon the huddled shapes of Fess Ferenc and Arkis Leperson where they slept on. He reached out with his Wamphyri awareness to touch upon the flimsy mental barriers they’d erected about their sleeping minds, satisfying himself that they were in fact asleep.
And finally he answered that dark intelligence which had proclaimed itself his ancestor: I think I prefer you this way, Shaitan: out in the open, as it were, and not cloaked in dreams. But it was clever of you to break in on me like that. My so-called ‘peers’ among the Wamphyri were never up to it.
They were not of your blood, Shaitan at once answered. Or should we say, they were not of mine? Our minds mesh like those of twin brothers, Shaithis. It’s a sign, that you’re a true son of my sons, so that we are as one. We were meant to be as one and triumph over all adversity, and then go on to victories unimaginable.
Aye, Shaithis nodded, wonderingly, in this and in other worlds, as you have stated. I think it would be interesting to know more about that. Indeed it would interest me greatly to retake Starside from the alien enemies who dwell there now, and to avenge myself upon them. Now tell me your thoughts. For you’ve hinted we’ve a way to go together. Have you planned our first steps along that way? And how do I know 1 can trust you anyway? Your legends are infamous even among the Wamphyri, who themselves are not much known for straight dealing.
Again Shaitan’s loathsome chuckle. My son, you’ll trust me because you have to — because without me you’re stuck here — and I shall trust you for the same reason. But if a token of my good will is required: have you not already seen enough of it? Who was it sent his small albino bats to you to keep your sore bones warm while you slept? And who was it disposed of one of your enemies, whose intentions were dire against you to say the least?
An enemy? Shaithis raised a mental eyebrow. And who might that have been?
What? The other seemed taken aback. But you know well enow! I speak of the abominable whelky one, who disguised himself with pustules and was companion to the Ferenc. Why, time and again he urged that grotesque giant to seek you out and murder you!
Shaithis nodded. That would be Volse’s way, sure enough. I was never a favourite of his. Nor he of mine. The monstrous clown: if his wens had been wits he’d outshone the lot of us! So it was your beast that killed him, eh?
Of course, of course, Shaitan’s mental voice sank deeper and darker yet. And do you think I could not kill you, too? Ah, I could, my son, I could… but will not. His tone was light again in a moment. No, for I sense that we’ll do well together. And since in various ways I’ve already shown my good will, the next stage is up to you.
Stage? Shaithis frowned. What stage is that?
Of the plan, Shaitan explained. Or would you have me do it all, and likewise claim all the credit?
Explain.
But there’s nothing to explain. Just go along with it in accordance with your own plan — exactly as planned — and that will suffice. In short, bring them to me, my son, so that I may deal with them in my way.
Fess and the leper’s son? And will you kill them? And then me, too, perhaps? Maybe I’d do better to stay joined with them against you? Better the devil you know, they say.
And after long moments: Devil? That�
�s a word I don’t much care for, said Shaitan. I don’t know why, but I don’t like it. Be advised not to call me that again, not even obliquely.
Shaithis shrugged. As you will. And before he could say or ask any more: They are waking up, Shaitan hissed. The squat one and the giant both. Best if I leave now and not compromise you. Only bring them to me, Shaithis! A great deal depends upon it.
And as suddenly as that Shaithis’s mind was free of outside interference. But only just in time.
‘Shaithis?’ The Ferenc’s rumble echoed in the cold air. ‘I sense that you’re awake. Hah! It’s a bad conscience makes a man restless as you. You’ll have to mend your ways.’ And he laughed uproariously. The ice-castle shuddered and sent down a cascade of variously sized icicles, which in turn brought Arkis more fully awake.
Scratching himself, the leper’s son sat up. ‘What’s all the noise?’ he demanded.
Time we were up,’ Shaithis called across to him. ‘No more delays. We make our breakfast — poor fare that it is — and then we’re on our way. What or whoever the volcano houses, he’s our meat today. And all his goods in the bargain.’
‘Big talk, Shaithis,’ the other answered. ‘But we’ve to get past the pale, cavern-dwelling bloodbeast first.’
Three of us this time,’ said Shaithis, ‘and forewarned is forearmed. Anyway, Fess knows the beast’s lair. We’ll give it a wide berth and seek some other way in.’
The Ferenc chewed on cold meat and made his way down to the floor of the hall. ‘I for one am ready for it,’ he said. ‘A man can’t live for ever — not even a Lord of the Wamphyri, not that we’ve seen, anyway — and I’m damned if I’ll die of boredom or locked in the ice, terrified that something will find me there and dig me out.’