by Brian Lumley
‘It still doesn’t answer my first question,’ Shaithis had argued. ‘Which was: why do you trouble to make more of these creatures?’
(Shaitan’s shrug, of sorts.) ‘I say again, mainly for the practice; as has been almost everything I’ve done these last three thousand years. Practice, yes, towards the time when we shall build an army of warriors, and with them set out against Starside and all the worlds beyond!’
For a moment the scarlet eyes beneath the Fallen One’s cobra’s hood had burned more brightly yet, like fires stoked from within. But then he’d nodded, gradually returned from the privacy of his dark-cloaked thoughts, and said: ‘Ah, but now you must tell me: since you seem of the opinion that I breed too many, just how many of my ice-drillers and kindred creatures have you seen?’
Shaithis had been taken aback. He’d imagined a great many such beasts, to be sure. But what evidence he’d seen of them in the looted ice-castles had been the slow work of countless centuries, in no way the concerted effort of a handful of auroral periods, nor even entire cycles of such. And while here in the workshops at the roots of the volcano several vats steamed and bubbled where Shaitan’s experiments continued to shape, still there were precious few working beasts. No flaccid siphoneers here as in Starside’s aeries, for the cone’s caldera contained a small lake of water; nor any great requirement for gas-beasts, where several of the volcano’s caverns — especially Shaitan’s living quarters — were warmed by active blowholes. So that after giving the question some little thought, Shaithis had been obliged to answer, ‘Now that I think of it, I can’t say I’ve actually seen any — except this one cooking in its vat.’
‘Exactly, for there are none! Not of the visible, mobile-and-eating-their-heads-off varieties, at any rate. I keep only my ingurgitors, for the protection they afford me. Now come.’ And Shaitan had taken his descendant down to black, lightless nether-caverns where every niche, crevice and extinct volcanic vent served as a storage chamber for the ice-encased progeny of his experimental vats.
And there he inquired of him, ‘So advise me: how would you keep such as these both awake and full-bellied?’ And answered himself, ‘Out of the question! What, in these almost barren Icelands? You wouldn’t. Which is why, as their various purposes are served, I freeze them into immobility down here. And here they stay, inert for the moment, the raw materiel of tomorrow’s army. And when I require another, perhaps different sort of creature — why, I simply design and construct one! The art of metamorphism, Shaithis. But nothing wasted, my son, never that.’
Continuing to gaze down on his ancestor’s preserved experiments, Shaithis had nodded. ‘I see you’ve tried a warrior or two,’ he commented. ‘Fearsome but… archaic? Perhaps I should advise you: Starside’s warriors have come a long way since your day. In all truth, these things of yours would not last long against certain of my constructs!’
If Shaitan was offended, it hardly showed. ‘Then by all means instruct me in these superior metamorphic skills,’ he’d answered. ‘Indeed, and in order that you may do so, you shall have complete freedom of my workshops, materials and vats.’
Which had been much to Shaithis’s liking…
Another time, Shaithis had asked: ‘What of your ingurgitors? Since plainly they are working beasts, and since it’s your habit to — separate them? — from what they take from their victims, how do you sustain them? On what do you feed them? For as you yourself have pointed out: these Icelands are very nearly barren.’
Shaitan had then shown him his reservoirs of frozen blood and minced, metamorphic flesh, explaining: ‘I’ve been here a long, long time, my son. And when I first came here, ah, but I quickly learned what it meant to go hungry! Since when I’ve made provision not only for myself but for my creatures, both now and in the dawn of our resurgence.’
In blank astonishment, Shaithis had gazed upon the rims of (literally) dozens of potholes of black plasma. ‘Blood? So much blood? But not from the frozen Lords, surely? There were never sufficient of the Wamphyri in all Starside to fill these great bowls!’
‘Beast blood,’ Shaitan told him. ‘Whale blood, too. Yes, and even a little man blood. But you are correct, only a very little of the latter. The blood of beasts and great fishes is fine for my creatures; it will fuel them to war when that time is come, following which… why, there’ll be food aplenty for all, eh? But the man blood is mine — and yours, too, now that you’re here — for our sustenance.’
Shaithis had been even more astonished. ‘You’ve bled the great fishes in the cold sea?’
‘Actually, while I called them fishes, they are mammals.’ Shaitan had shrugged in his fashion. They’re warm-blooded, those giants, and suckle their young. Soon after I came here I saw a school at play, spouting at the rim of the ocean, so that my first ingurgitor was designed with them in mind. It was a good design and I’ve scarcely changed it down the centuries. Doubtless you’ve noted the vestigial gills, fins, and other seeming anomalies in the volcano’s guardian creatures; likewise in my driller.’
Shaithis had noted those things. Indeed it was his habit to note everything…
On another occasion, fascinated by the sheer age of his self-appointed ‘mentor’, Shaithis had thought to suggest: ‘But you have been here — upon the earth, in Starside and in the Icelands, mainly in these frozen wastes — almost.since the Beginning!’ Even speaking those words he had realized how naive they must sound and how much in awe of the other he must seem, which his ancestor’s dark chuckle had at once confirmed.
The Beginning? Ah, no, for I perceive that the world is a million times older than I am. Or did you mean the beginning of the Wamphyri? In which case I can but agree, for I was the first of all.’
‘Really?’ Again Shaithis forgot to distance himself from his astonishment. It was hard to be inscrutable in the face of revelations such as these. Of course, the legends of Starside said that Shaitan the Fallen had been the first vampire, but as any fool is aware, legends are like myths: mainly untruths or at best exaggerations. The first? The father of us all?’
The first of the Wamphyri, aye,’ Shaitan had answered at last, after a long, curious silence. ‘But not… the Father, did you say? No, not the Father. Oh, I fathered my share, be sure, for I was young with a young man’s appetites. I had been a man entire and fallen to earth here, where my vampire came to me… came out of… out of the swamps…’ He paused, leaving his words to taper into a thoughtful silence.
And after a while: ‘Out of the vampire swamps?’ Shaithis had pressed him. There are great swamps to the west of Starside, and according to legend others to the east. I know of them but never saw them. Are these the swamps of which you speak?’
Shaitan was still distanced by strange reverie. Nevertheless he nodded. Those are the swamps, aye. I fell to earth in the west.’
Shaithis had heard him use this term — about ‘falling to earth’ — before. Frowning and shaking his head, he’d said, ‘I fail to understand. How may a man fall to earth? Out of the sky, do you mean? From your mother’s womb? But weren’t you also called the Unborn? Where did you fall from, and how?’
Shaitan had snapped out of it. ‘You are a nosy person, and your questions are rude! Still, I’ll answer them as best I may. First understand this: my memories start at the swamps, and even then they are faded and incomplete. Before the swamps, I… I’m not sure. But when I came naked to this world I came in great pain and great pride. I believe that I was exiled into this place, thrown down here even as the Wamphyri exiled me at last to these Icelands. The Wamphyri exiled me because I would be The One Power. Well, and perhaps I had tried to be a Power in that other place, too, wherefrom I was banished and fell to earth. It is a mystery to me. But this I do know: compared to the other place, this world was like a hell!’
‘Someone had sent you here as a punishment, to a life of hell?’
‘Or to a world which could become a hell, of my making. It was a question of will: anything could be, if I so willed it or a
llowed it to be. I repeat: it was because I was wilful and prideful that I was here. Or at least, that is how I seem to remember it.’
‘You do not actually remember falling, then? Only that you were suddenly there, in the vampire swamps?’
‘Close to the swamps, yes, where my vampire came into me.’
Shaithis had been keenly interested in that last. ‘In our time,’ he mused, ‘we’ve both had occasion to kill enemies and tear their living vampires out of them to devour. Fess Ferenc and Arkis Leperson were only the most recent. We know what such parasites look like: full-formed they are barbed leeches, which hide in men to shape their thoughts and urges. And in certain hosts, over long periods, they may grow so fused as to become inseparable.’
‘As in myself, yes,’ Shaitan had answered. ‘Indeed, there remains precious little of the original me at all, while my vampire is grown to what you see.’
‘Just so,’ said Shaithis. ‘You, or rather your vampire — as a result of prolonged metamorphism — is now gross. But how was it then? Did it come to you as an egg? Did the parent creature remain in the swamps? Or did the parasite come to you full grown, take you by surprise and slither into you complete?’
‘It came to me from the swamp,’ Shaitan had repeated. That much I know… how I do not know.’
The problem had vexed Shaithis (and his ancestor no less), but on that occasion at least they’d been lost for further questions and answers.
A good many auroral periods later, however, when Shaithis was busy in a corner of the workshop, carefully constructing a warrior for his ancestor’s approval:
‘This is how it was!’ said Shaitan, coming swiftly and in some excitement upon Shaithis where he worked, and flowing up to him like a midnight shadow. ‘In that earliest existence of which I apprised you, I served another or others but desired to serve only myself. As a reward for my pride — which is to say for my wit and great beauty, of which I was perhaps too much aware — and for my pains, I was thrown out and removed from my rightful place in that society. I was not destroyed, not wasted, but used! I became to Them … a tool! A seed of evil, which They would sow between the spheres! Do you see? I was the folly and the penance! I was the Darkness which allows for the Light!’
In the face of this outburst, Shaithis had brought his work at the vat to a halt. Unable to understand the other, he could only shake his head and throw up his hands. ‘Can’t you explain yourself more clearly?’
‘Damn you — no? Shaitan had shouted then. ‘I dreamed it; I know it for the truth; but I cannot understand it! I’ve told it to you so that you also may attempt to fathom it — and likewise fail to fathom it, even as I have failed!’
With which and in a fury, he had rushed off and disappeared into the volcano’s labyrinth.
For a long time after that Shaithis had not seen the other at all; he had merely been aware of his ancestor’s shadowy presence. But a time had come when, going again to the vats, he’d found the ancient gloomily examining his various adaptations where they squirmed and hardened in their liquids; and there, following customary greetings but in answer to no specific remark or query, Shaitan had listlessly mumbled: ‘I have been banished out of many spheres and thrown down from many worlds. Aye, and others like me, throughout all the myriad cone-shaped dimensions of light.’ That had been all.
Mad creature! (Shaithis had kept this thought, and others he was thinking, very much to himself.) But it’s as well you rush around crazed while I’m about my work. The last thing I would want is for you to become interested in what I’m doing now. For in fact he was there at that time in order to inject brain matter into his new construct, so stimulating and even directing the foetal ganglion’s growth. Except… these were cells obtained from a rather special source, and by means of Shaitan’s ice-boring ingurgitor…
Putting all such business aside for the nonce, however, and pandering to Shaitan’s insanity, if that is what it was, he had answered: ‘In which case, when we go against Starside with these warriors I’m fashioning, your revenge will be so much sweeter. Nothing will stand before us; and if there are higher worlds to conquer, they too shall finally fall, even as you fell to earth.’
His words had seemed to suffice to draw the other up from whatever morbid depths claimed him, even so far as to correct his temporary imbalance. And: ‘Indeed, these appear to be good warriors, my son!’ he’d at once remarked. A rare compliment; at once qualified by: ‘Which they should be, for in Starside you had a sufficiency of superb clay with which to practise.’
And after that the ancient rambled no more…
Later still:
The two had constructed a slender, streamlined, powerful flyer, equipped it with a sucking snout and given it the stripped-to-basic brain of one of Menor Maimbite’s otherwise defunct lieutenants. Fuelling the beast on quality plasma, they’d sent it on a reconnaissance flight to Starside. After that and over the space of a good many auroral displays, they’d waited on its return but in vain. Eventually, when almost all hope had faded… then the flyer had returned, bringing back with it a scrawny shivering waif of a Traveller child.
A boy of eight or nine years, the flyer had snatched him at sundown from a party of Travellers where they camped in the hills over Sunside. It appeared that the Travellers no longer went to earth when the sun sank down into night. Why should they, when the Wamphyri were no more? But the return journey from Starside had been long, and the child almost dead from exposure.
Shaitan had carried him away to his private chambers for ‘questioning’; shortly thereafter, the ancient’s mind-call had summoned Shaithis from where he worked at the vats: Come!
A single word, yes, but its author’s excitement had spoken volumes…
5 Sundown — Exorcets — The Godmind
Shaithis stood tall and severe in the black, gapped caldera wall and looked south towards Starside. Overhead, the aurora wove in a sky which was otherwise black, but he knew that on Starside it would be sunup. The mountain peaks would be burning gold, and in Karen’s aerie thick curtains and tapestries woven with her sigil would guard the uppermost windows, where lances of sunfire might otherwise strike through.
He looked south, narrowing his scarlet eyes to focus upon a far faint line of fire all along the horizon, a narrow golden haze which separated the distant curve of the world first from blue then black space, where all the stars of night hung glittering and hypnotic, seeming to beckon him. Which was a call he would answer. Soon.
Indeed he must, for when the aurora died to a flicker and the sky in the south darkened to jet, then it would be sundown; in advance of which, Shaithis and his devolved, depraved ancestor would muster their warriors, mount their flyers and launch a small but monstrous army from the volcano’s steep lava slopes. For them the realization of a dream, and for Starside the advent of a nightmare, was finally in the offing. Shaitan’s dream for so many hundreds of years, now looming into being, brought into sharp relief by a lone flyer’s recent return out of Starside with its burden of a stolen Traveller waif.
Shaithis remembered the event in minute detail: the way his gloating ancestor had carried off the exhausted, half-dead boy into the gloom of his sulphur-floored chambers; following which (eventually), his mental summons: Come!
In his mind’s eye Shaithis saw it all again: the Fallen One, jubilant where he paced or flowed to and fro across the black, grainy floor of his apartments in his excitement. And before Shaithis had been able to frame a question: ‘This Dweller of whom you’ve spoken — ‘ Shaitan had turned to him ‘ — this alien youth who used the power of the sun itself to bring down the mighty Wamphyri.’
‘Yes, what of him?’
‘What of him?’ Shaitan had gurgled darkly, delightedly, in his fashion. ‘Devolved, that’s what! Even as I myself am devolved — but to his far greater cost. So, he bathed you all in blazing sunlight, eh? By which reducing Wamphyri flesh to steam and stench? Well, and he seared himself, too! His vampire must have been injured; it could
not repair itself; his metamorphic man-flesh sloughed away even as a leper’s. Then… his desperate vampire returned him to an earlier form: that of its original host and manifestation. Less bulk in that, making the wastage easier to contain, d’you see? And so your Dweller is now… a wolf!’
‘A wolf?’ Astonished, Shaithis had remembered his dream.
‘A beast, aye, going on all fours. A grey one, the leader of the pack, with nothing of powers except those of the wild. The Travellers hold him in awe, whose forepaws are human hands. A little of his mind must be human, too, at least in its memories. And of course his vampire has survived, in however small part, for that was what saved him. But the rest is wolf.’
‘A wolf!’ Shaithis had breathed it again. Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d experienced oneiromantic dreams. It was an art of the Wamphyri, that’s all. ‘And his father, the helllander Harry Keogh?’
‘He is back in Starside, aye.’
‘Back?’
‘Indeed, for following the battle at The Dweller’s garden he returned to his own place. Something which you could hardly be expected to know, for by then you were in exile.’
‘His own place? The helllands?’
‘Helllands! Helllands! They are not helllands! How often must I tell you: this place is hell, with its sulphur stenches, vampire swamps and sun-blasted furnace lands beyond the mountains! Ah, but Harry Keogh’s world… to the likes of us it would be a paradise!’
‘How can you know that?’
‘I can’t — but I can suspect it.’
‘This Harry Keogh,’ Shaithis had mused, ‘he had powers, to be sure, but he was not Wamphyri.’
‘Well, now he is.’ Shaitan at once contradicted him. ‘But as yet untried. For who is there to test him, in devious argument or in battle? What’s more, the Travellers don’t much fear him, for he will not take the blood of men.’