by Brian Lumley
At sunup Heinar found Turgo packing his small tent and a very few personal things, and sniffing out the breeze from the east. “Something on your mind?” he inquired.
“I came to you with nothing,” Turgo answered, “and I’m not taking much more away with me. What little I have, I’ve earned. Any complaints?”
“None. But I don’t like to see you go. Has last night upset you? Is it the girl? What happened wasn’t her fault; this Shaitan was full of arts; she would still make a good wife … for someone.”
“Not this someone,” Turgo shook his head. Then, galvanized, he hugged the other, and said, “Heinar, listen … be careful!”
Astonished, the Hagi freed himself. “I always am careful,” he answered. “But of what this time?”
Turgo shrugged, looked away. “Something of innocence has gone,” he said, finally. “In its place, something full of dark knowledge, power, evil, has come. Like the Szgany Ferenc before them, the Szgany Hagi are touched by it.” Grey-faced, he turned to Heinar and grasped his shoulders. “Listen: I can’t watch it happen again, not to you and yours, and stand there powerless to stop it! It came from the west, and so I’m heading east.”
Frowning, Heinar inquired, “And if this evil lingers on, how should I guard against it?”
“Chiefly with your eyes. And whenever you see it, put it down! One of your men hasn’t returned. If he does, watch him—and his wolf! Watch the ones who did return, likewise Maria Babeni. Most obvious of all, watch Vidra Gogosita.”
“Vidra? His mother’s in a state. He wandered off in the night, apparently. His fever …”
“Oh?” Turgo hardly seemed surprised. “Then say a prayer that he never comes back. Aye, and you’d do well to watch his mother, too.” He put his pack on his shoulder, headed off.
Heinar felt the sun warm on his weatherbeaten face and was seduced by a feeling of well-being. He called after Turgo: “I think you exaggerate! Whatever evil came with this Shaitan, whatever sickness he carried, it’s disappeared with him. Also, and wherever he is, it’s bound to kill him in the end. There’s nothing here now to run away from.”
“Running?” Turgo called back over his shoulder, dappled by sunlight where he strode among the trees. “Yes, I suppose I am. It’s the only way I know to put distance between.” When he paused to look back, his lips were tight and grim. Then:
“In certain ways we’re alike, you and I, Heinar,” he said. “And do you make camp beside a poisoned pool? No, for you know better than that. Well, and so do I know better. For I’ve seen this thing before and know that I can’t live with it. Now let me warn you one last time, and I pray you’ll heed these final words of mine: keep watch, Heinar—keep watch!”
But the sun still felt very warm and reassuring to Heinar. He would keep watch, of course—well, for a while. “Eat well, then,” he called out after Turgo, perhaps a little too gruffly. “Stay healthy. Have many children … eventually.”
Turgo’s nod was his only answer. And then he was gone…
Turgo Zolte was right: it would take Heinar Hagi eight long years to eradicate Shaitan’s vampire taint from his people, a task which in the end would amount to culling the tribe down to less than half its current numbers. It was to be man’s first real stand against vampires (if not the Wamphyri proper), out of which would be learned many a valuable lesson for the future.
Of the Szgany Ferenc who had featured in Turgo’s tale of Oulio lonescu: the taint in their blood never would be washed away but would stay with them to the end of their days, not only in this world but also in one other.
That, however, is a tale already told …
III
Raging, Shaitan fled from the camp of Heinar Hagi. He flowed through the night, which was his element, and covered himself with its darkness; but behind him a watchdog—indeed a wolf—came fast on his heels. And behind the wolf came Sunsiders, Szgany, which he had discovered were in no way trogs. Difficult to impose one’s will on such as these. Their own will was so very strong! Shaitan would have more sway over their women, who at least appreciated his beauty. But to remain beautiful, indeed, to remain alive … this was now his chief priority.
Turgo Zolte’s bloodied hardwood bolt stood out from his right shoulder, giving him pain. He might will something of the pain away, but not the bolt itself. That would have to be drawn out. And despite the speed of his flowing flight along the forest’s fringe, the wolf was gaining. Its eyes were very nearly the equivalent of Shaitan’s own in the night and the darkness.
Cliffs reared suddenly on Shaitan’s left hand; he lengthened his stride, flowed through the uneven foliage, climbed up onto a low ledge. Vines and creepers hung down from above. But it was not his intention to climb.
He jammed the flight end of the bolt in his shoulder into a niche, wrenched his body sharply to one side. The bolt snapped … and Shaitan cried out! Blood flowed freely, its smell inflaming him. Now he felt behind his shoulder with his left hand. The barb of the iron arrowhead protruded an inch, but he had no leverage to pull it out. He tore down a length of tough vine, looped it over the arrowhead, tied its ends to a creeper growing from a crevice.
The wolf had heard Shaitan’s cry, smelled his blood. It came snarling, leaping to attain the ledge, scrabbled there a moment to regain its balance. Then it saw Shaitan and leaped again, locking its jaws on his arm. Its weight overbalanced him; locked together they fell from the ledge; the bolt was torn from Shaitan’s back.
In the near-distance, Shaitan’s closest human pursuer called out to his wolf: “Seek him!” But the wolf had already discovered Shaitan, who was himself on the point of discovering a new and terrible weapon. Within him, his vampire was at last mature. Metamorphic, its flesh was Shaitan’s flesh.
The wolf had jaws like a bear-trap, clamped fast now to the bones of Shaitan’s forearm. Their eyes met, feral yellow against evil scarlet, and the man felt something of the beast’s ferocity. So did his vampire, which must make him ferocious to match. Something was summoned to his flesh, summoned from his flesh! He felt a burning in his fingers as if they were on fire, an agony in his face and jaws far greater than the mere pain in his back. And yet these additional pains were not without … pleasure?
It was not unlike those occasions when he had summoned his vampire mist; but he had not summoned this, not knowingly. For this was the instinctive response of his metamorphism, the tenacity of his vampire, its lust for life; and suddenly the great wolf was no more than a puppy!
Shaitan’s fingers, grown to claws, rammed into the animal’s sides and tore them; his jaws, yawning impossibly wide, elongated into a nightmare cavern of serrated tusks which sprouted from red-gushing gums; his eyes were blobs of sulphur shot with scarlet fire. Gutting the wolf, he let its entrails spill. And when its agonized jaws flew open, then Shaitan’s closed—upon its throat. Which he tore out in a welter of pipes and gristle and gore!
In just a moment, the wolf was wolf no more but a mangled carcass; it hadn’t even cried out but died silently, in vast astonishment…
A second passed … another … and a third.
“Lupe?” A voice called from close at hand. “Where in all that’s …?” A man stepped out of the trees into starlight—in time to see something move in the undergrowth at the foot of the cliffs. “Lupe?” the man repeated, but in a whisper now, wonderingly, as he lifted his crossbow.
Crouching down a little, he ran to the place beneath the cliffs. As he got there, so the darkness came flowing to its feet! Starlight gleamed on the horror that was Shaitan, which reached out a bloody hand and caught the other by his throat.
The watchman would have discharged his weapon—but he’d left the safety on! Shaitan knocked it from his trembling hand and drew him closer. And:
“Lupe?” he quietly, almost conversationally growled, his monstrous head cocked on one side. “Ah, no—for my name is Shaitan!” And as he lowered his face to the other’s throbbing neck, “But from this time forward you must call me master …�
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With his new disciple or lieutenant, who was the first entirely human underling of the Wamphyri, Shaitan headed east as before. There were no more pursuers; the night was long; they covered a good many miles—before the sun found them out.
For Shaitan’s symbiont or parasite was a two-edged sword: one could not accept its advantages without its disadvantages. Sunlight, which had irritated Shaitan from the outset—almost from the moment of his breathing the red, corpse-spawned spores—now became a seething agony in his eyes and against his hide. It burned him, visibly steamed the moisture from his flesh, ate into him like acid and sapped his strength. He could stand to go out from the shade for seconds, but minutes would deplete him horribly, and an hour would kill him. His thrall was less susceptible for the moment; given time, however, and he, too, must surely succumb to direct sunlight. Such was the measure of Shaitan’s corruption, and his contagion.
They were climbing diagonally eastward, above the foothills and towards the tree-line, when sunup came with its fogs in Sunside’s valleys and forests, and its probing golden beams on the peaks; beams which gradually joined up to become a wall of yellow fire, creeping down towards them where they went all unsuspecting, like ants on the flank of the mountain.
And yet perhaps Shaitan (or his leech) did suspect something; for there was an anxiety in him, not yet fathomed, to be out of this place and once more into the cool of Starside. But when he felt the effect of the first of those as yet hazy beams on his nakedness, and when he observed in astonishment the rapid evaporation of his body’s fluids and the scorching of his flesh, then he understood well enough his instinct—or that of his vampire—to take cover. And so, forced into the shade of a deep cave, Shaitan and his thrall, Ilya Sul, waited out the long day.
The cave had been the lair of some creature but now was empty; lesser caves and branching fissures within were cool, damp, dark; Shaitan felt reasonably secure. But he also felt hungry. The sun’s rays, in however brief a time, had depleted him sorely. He fuelled himself on Ilya Sul, which weakened the man more yet but bound him even closer to his master. Also, it fed the vampire fire in Sul’s blood, and hastened his change. So that when he went out on to the slopes with his crossbow, to find food for himself, he returned within the hour, feeble and blistered by the sun. But at least he’d shot a kid, which Shaitan gorged upon before tossing the less appealing parts to Sul.
So they fed themselves.
And then they slept, because by now they could feel the weight of the risen sun, like an immovable boulder, blocking the door of the cave; which meant there was no going on for a while. And Shaitan could hear the land outside sizzling with a deadly heat; he could even smell the scorching of the rocks, so that his skin crept with the knowledge of what that golden furnace could do to him …
Shaitan came starting awake!
He shook Sul, cautioned him to silence. “The sun is high,” he whispered. “I can feel it. Also, I feel Sunsiders! So come, find a dark hole for yourself.” They retreated into the cave deeper still, found shadowed niches in which to crawl.
And the weary trackers, with a wolf, came after; but not into the cave. For lying there, Shaitan fought down the urge to create a mist and flee into it (what, into the sunlight?) and instead willed it that the men would turn back. The grey one was their guide: he fastened upon its mind with his vampire awareness, spelling out the doom which would befall if it should enter.
The wolf pawed the remains of their meal at the entrance where they’d tossed the scraps, but came no farther. The men, Szgany Hagi, saw the skin, hair and bones, and knew that this had been a goat. And one of them said, “A bear, probably a big one. This must be his lair. See, these remains are fresh. Why, he might even be at home!” And so they passed on by.
Shaitan waited a moment, then crept to the entrance. And keeping well back from the dazzle, he taxed his eyes to watch the men move away, marvelling greatly that they went in brilliant sunlight, with no apparent harm! Then … he was filled with bitter resentment. They lived here, where he could not; they hunted here, living on the earth’s simple things, which he could not. It was their place, their haven (their heaven?) and could never be his except… in the dark of night.
Well, and so they lived and hunted here: indeed, they even hunted Shaitan himself! But tomorrow and tomorrow there would be other days, and long dark nights, when he would hunt in his own right—for men! Aye, and then he would turn their heaven into a hell.
It was a solemn promise, which Shaitan made unto himself…
Sunside’s day was long and long, seeming interminable to Shaitan; but at last the shadows lengthened, the sun became a hot, smoky red blister on the south-eastern horizon, and the first pale stars blinked into being high over the spine of the barrier mountains. Twilight came down, and it was time to move on.
At which point there came a diversion.
Emerging from the cave into the gloom of evening, Shaitan was startled to hear a wailing and moaning, and to observe the approach of two figures—whom he recognized at once. The one who cried out and tore at his hair came, after all, as no great surprise: for this was the treacherous thrall, Vidra Gogosita, who seemed in a bad way indeed. But the other figure, advancing upon Shaitan quietly, hollow-cheeked and flame-eyed, was a shocking sight indeed. For he—
—was a dead man! He—was in fact Dezmir Babeni!
Ah, but there had been changes. He was still bearded, and shortish in the limbs and trunk as before, but much of the fat was gone from him now so that he no longer appeared squat. He was a leaner Dezmir Babeni, certainly, but just as surely the same man. And he was no longer dead.
This was a new thing. Before Babeni, Shaitan had never so depleted a man, or even a trog, as to kill him. The creatures who were his thralls had not died but lived only to accommodate Shaitan’s needs. This man, however, had died. Babeni was dead … or undead?
“Master! Master!” the young Gogosita came ghosting to Shaitan, hands fluttering. “Take me back, I beg you! I have nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be.” Shaitan did not even look at him but put him aside. For his gaze was rapt upon Babeni. And Babeni’s rapt upon him, and full of hatred!
The undead man growled and lurched forward, his pale grey hands reaching, his eyes like sulphur pits, lit with fire in their cores. “You!” he accused, his voice harsh and rasping. “You, Shaitan, you did this thing to me. And now this youth tells me you’ve done other things to my daughter!”
He bore down on Shaitan, grasped him, went to fasten his teeth in his neck. And Shaitan saw how those teeth were grown into fangs! Stunned until now, immobilized, finally he summoned his vampire strength to throw the other off, then leaped on him to choke him. Babeni’s grey face turned purple under the crushing power of Shaitan’s hands, but still he fought back and his body heaved with an impossible strength.
Amazed, Shaitan knocked Babeni’s head again and again upon the hard and stony ground, until the skull at the back was soft and dented. Finally the other quit fighting and lay back. But he was not dead and his limbs twitched, and his yellow eyes followed Shaitan wherever he moved.
And Shaitan looked at him and thought: The strength of your body is second only to mine, and its wounds heal even as fast. In relieving you of your frail human life, I have given you this unlife. However unwittingly, it seems I have bestowed certain powers upon you! And yet you are not my thrall and will not accept me as your master. Wherefore I must kill you, lest you become a rival. But how may I kill you, if you are undead?
Babeni was even now taking up a jagged rock, staggering to his feet, mewling brokenly as he lurched towards Shaitan. Spittle dribbled from a corner of his mouth and his head and neck were soaked in blood; because of his damaged brain, he came on lopsidedly, like an idiot. Shaitan stepped aside, tripped him, looked for a large stone with which to finish it. But:
“How may I kill you?” he asked out loud, as yet again the mewling thing clambered upright.
“Master,” Vidra Gogosita clawed
at his arm. “I know how to kill him!” For Vidra had sat at the campfire one time when Turgo Zolte had been telling his stories.
“Oh?” Shaitan looked at him, at the same time avoiding the staggering cripple. “And would you redeem yourself? Well, and maybe you have your uses after all. Say on then: what will it take to put him down?”
“A stake through his heart,” Vidra gasped. “To fix him in place. Then cut off his head. Finally, burn him—all of his pieces!”
“All of that?”
Vidra nodded. “This is how the Szgany Hagi will deal with you, if they catch you!”
Shaitan nodded. “Indeed? Then we must test this thing. You shall build me a fire.” And to Ilya Sul where he fended off the thing which had been Dezmir Babeni: “Put your bolt through his heart.”
The other obeyed and Babeni was knocked down, stretched out upon the ground, with only the flight of the bolt sticking up from his chest. He bled the merest trickle, even when Sul took a knife and commenced sawing through his neck, its pipes and the bones of his spine. Through all of which the undead man’s limbs jerked and twitched, and air whistled in and out of his chomping jaws, until the pipes were severed and the head detached.
Then they burned him, but even burning he thrashed about while his fats were rendered down …
Observing all, Shaitan nodded again. “And this is how they would deal with me? Hah! But if you think he died hard, then you don’t know the half of it. The Hagi shall not catch me, Vidra Gogosita; and if they do, I will not be the one to die.”
Meanwhile, Ilya Sul had built the fire to a roaring blaze. “I… I can’t seem to warm myself,” he complained, examining his cold grey arms.
“I am the same,” Vidra agreed. “For we have known the kiss of the great Wampir, our master Shaitan.”
And again Shaitan was interested. “Wampir?”
Vidra explained, repeating all that he had heard from Turgo Zolte. And when he was done:
“Ah, no!” said Shaitan. “For the wampir is a common bat, a dull creature which is my Starside familiar. But I am uncommon. Wherefore I shall be called … Wamphyri! Aye, for I like the sound of it. The great Lord Shaitan, first of the Wamphyri! So be it.”