by Brian Lumley
At that moment it grew darker and the three paused to glance speculatively, apprehensively at each other. A thin cloud layer had drifted in to cover the higher reaches of the cone. The first small flakes of snow began to drift down and coat the ledge.
Arkis looked at the sky all about. “One cloud?” He voiced his thoughts out loud. “Which just happened to form here? A vampire mist, d’you think?”
“Obviously,” said the Ferenc. “Whoever dwells here, he’s sensed us coming and seeks to make it harder for us. He makes his lair more obscure, and the way to it more difficult.”
“Which means we’re on the right track,” Shaithis added. He set off again along the ledge, and behind him the others almost automatically followed on.
“Huh!” Arkis grunted. “Well, at least your premonitions were good. Perhaps too good. It seems to me this one has the edge on us. He sees and knows all while we remain in the dark, as it were.” He swatted at a small white bat which flitted too close.
And the Ferenc’s eyes went wide as he gave a small start and burst out, “His albinos! His bats! We should have known. That’s how he tracks our course. The midges pursue us like fleas after a wolf cub!”
Shaithis nodded sagely. “I had suspected as much. They’re his minions no less than Desmodus and his small black cousins were ours back on Starside. They scan our whereabouts and circumstances, reporting all back to … whoever.”
Arkis gaped and grasped his arm, drawing him to a halt. “You suspected these things and said nothing?”
“A suspicion is only a suspicion until it’s an established fact,” Shaithis answered, angrily shrugging away the other’s restraining hand. “And anyway, it makes a very important point and gives us an insight into his circumstances.”
“Eh? Insight? Circumstances? What are you on about? What point does it make?”
“Why, that the cone’s master fears us! Bats to report our movements; a snowfall to hinder us; a sword-snouted creature guarding his hive, as the soldier bees of Sunside guard their honey? Oh, yes, he fears us—which in turn means that he’s vulnerable.” And to himself: Good reckoning—perhaps he really is. But still I’ll take my chances with him. At least we have this much in common: our intelligence.
And at once, gurgling in Shaithis’s mind: And our blood, my son. Don’t forget our blood!
Again, at once, the Ferenc snapped, “What?” His huge head swung round in Shaithis’s direction, and his eyes glared under gathering black brows. “What was that? Did you say—or think—something just then, Shaithis?”
Shaithis hid his momentary panic behind bland innocence. “Eh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Say something? Think something? What’s on your mind, Fess?” And as the Ferenc and Arkis scanned nervously all about, he sent a triple-shielded thought:
Twice you’ve almost given me away, Shaitan. Do you think this is a game? If there’s so much as a hint of what I’m up to, I’m a goner!
The Ferenc scowled. “On my mind? No, nothing on my mind, except to get finished with this, that’s all.” He straightened from his half-crouch. “So what say you: Do we go on, or do we call it a day? Is he vulnerable, this master of the volcano, or are we even more so? It’s a nervy business, this climbing in the snow, not knowing what’s waiting for us.”
Shaitan came whispering into Shaithis’s mind: Get on with it; bring them in; bring them to me! Do it quickly. For he’s no fool, this giant. He’s sensitive and we’ve both underestimated him. You’ll need to watch him—and carefully.
“I’ve noticed,” said Shaithis to the others, almost conversationally, “how the small albinos come and go from the west. So I say we stick to the ledge and see where it goes.”
“No!” the Ferenc growled. “Something’s wrong, I’m sure of it.”
Shaithis looked at him, then at Arkis. “Do you wish to go down again? Have we wasted all our time and effort? Has a cloaking vampire mist entirely unnerved you? But our enemy wouldn’t have issued it unless we had unnerved him!”
Arkis said, “I’m with the Ferenc.”
Shaithis shrugged. “Then I go on alone.”
“Eh?” The Ferenc stared hard at him. “Then be sure you go to your death.”
“How so? Is this the place where Volse was taken?”
“No, that was on the other side, but …”
“Then I’ll take my chances.”
Arkis said, “Alone?”
Shaithis shrugged. “Which is worse, to die now or later? Better to do it here, I think, locked in combat, than locked in the ice with something drilling its way to my heart.” And then, suddenly, as if he’d run out of patience, he hissed at both of them: “There are three of us, remember! Three ‘great’—hah!—Wamphyri Lords against … what? An unknown being who quite obviously fears us almost as much as we—as you—fear him.” And he turned away from them.
“Shaithis!” the Ferenc called after him in a tone half angry, half admiring.
“Enough,” Shaithis snapped over his shoulder. “I’ve done with you. If I win through, all is mine. And if I lose—well, at least I’ll die as I’ve lived, Wamphyri!” He continued along the ledge, and without looking back sensed the eyes of the two following him. Then:
“We’re with you,” came the Ferenc’s final decision, but still Shaithis stared straight ahead. And at last he heard Arkis’s voice, too, calling out:
“Shaithis, wait for us!”
He did no such thing but hurried on that much faster, so that now they must scramble to catch up. And with the pair hot on his heels so he came upon the mouth of the first cave even as Shaitan had forewarned. Here, because it would be expected of him, Shaithis paused. Breathing heavily, the others saw the dark cavern entrance into which he concentrated his gaze.
“A way in, d’you think?” said Arkis, but none too eagerly.
Shaithis stared harder yet into the cave’s gloomy interior, then made a show of carefully backing away from it. “Obviously so,” he said. “Perhaps too obviously …” And to the Ferenc: “What say you, Fess? For it’s amply apparent that the cold of these climes has focused our awareness to a fault. Is this a safe way to go or not? Myself, I think not. It seems to me that far back in the cavern something stirs. I sense a thing of great bulk but limited intelligence, yet stealthy, too.” Which was, of course, the Ferenc’s own description of a sword-snout. And as Shaithis had hoped might be the case, it put a picture of just such a creature into the giant’s mind.
Fess thrust forward his great head into the cave, glared into its depths, and wrinkled his snout-like nose. And, “Aye,” he growled in a little while, “I sense it, too. And indeed this could well be a way in, for the cone’s master has guarded it with a bloodbeast.”
Shaithis nodded. “Or maybe with the bloodbeast?”
“Eh?” said Arkis.
“Perhaps he has only the one creature,” said Shaithis. “For if there were a pair, then Fess here might well have been taken at the same time as Volse.”
“But what does that matter now?” Fess shrugged. “Even on its own, this thing is a monster. Are you suggesting we might go against it? Madness! One of us would surely die—possibly two, even all of us—or at least end up sorely wounded, before this thing succumbed. I saw it strike three times in as many seconds, unerringly, and ram Volse through and through like a fish on a Traveller’s spear. Why, he didn’t even know what hit him!”
But Shaithis shook his head. “No, I’m not proposing to take it on; quite the opposite. What I’m saying is this: if there’s only one such beast and it’s here, then we go in by some other route.”
“What?” Arkis scowled. “And they come thick and fast, these entrances and exits, do they?”
Shaithis shrugged. “So it would seem. The tunnel where Volse was taken. The cave you thought you saw back there on the lava cliff. This dark entrance here before us. Now listen: The master of the cone sent a mist to confuse us, didn’t he? But not to keep us from this cave, not if this is where he’s stationed his sword-snout.
So … perhaps there’s another entrance close by.” He gave a sharp nod. “I say we continue to follow the ledge, a little way at least. Then, even if it comes to nothing, at least we’ll have explored this part of the face to the full.”
“Fair enough,” said the Ferenc. “No argument here. As long as you’re not asking me to go in there!”
Arkis growled, “Then let’s get on. We waste time with all this talk and conjecture.” He started off, in the lead, and the Ferenc followed on. And now Shaithis brought up the rear.
Overhead the small cloud had snowed itself out; the aurora writhed and the stars gave the icy curve of the world’s horizon a blue sheen; Shaithis sensed the vampire awareness of his two “companions” focused ahead, leaving him free to converse with Shaitan. And:
There, he sent a tight-guarded thought. And how does this formation … suit you? Also, what was the idea of the small snowstorm? I thought you were eager for them, yet there you go trying to frighten them off.
The answer came back at once:
First, your formation suits both of us very well. Second, the snow served to confuse and distract them—especially the giant. Now listen and I’ll describe your route from this point forward. Very soon now you’ll come to a place where the rock is riven into deep crevices. One such crack has been filled in with lava which forms a floor. Follow this and it will lead you direct to my abode at the hollow core. As for your companions, alas, their time runs very short. Indeed they haven’t enough of it to find their way here. Not on their feet, anyway.
There was nothing of humor in Shaitan’s mental voice, only an icy resolve. Shaithis made no further comment; and anyway, Arkis, heading the column, had come to a halt. Fess joined him, then Shaithis.
Before them the surface of the ledge and the near-vertical face of the cliff were split with deep fissures a full pace in width. Arkis looked at the others. “What now?”
“We go on,” said Shaithis.
Perhaps his reply had been too ready, or he had sounded too sure of himself, for the Ferenc looked at him for long moments. And at last the giant said, “But the way looks like a jumble of broken rock. Any cave we find will surely have collapsed in upon itself.”
“We won’t know that until we look,” Shaithis answered. “It’s just that I feel we’re very close now.”
The Ferenc narrowed his eyes. “It appears I’m not the only one whose awareness has been focused to a fault. But very well, we press on. Arkis, lead the way.”
The leper’s son, muttering darkly to himself, stepped out across the first crack, teetered a little on the first side, and found his balance. And so they all proceeded. Then, after negotiating a half dozen more crevasses:
“Ho!” Arkis called back. “But this next crack has a floor, formed of a frozen river of rock.”
“An ancient lava-run,” said Fess, joining him.
Shaithis came last and looked at the cliff, riven where in olden times the flow had forced an exit. “Lava from the secret heart of the volcano,” he said. “So perhaps we’ve found our way in, after all.”
The Ferenc stepped under the cliff’s overhang, into the shadow of the cleft. “Let me scan it.”
Arkis went after him, with Shaithis bringing up the rear, and they all three sniffed the air, probing the way ahead with keen vampire senses. Until at last Arkis ventured: “I sense … nothing!”
“Likewise,” said Shaithis, relieved that the small-talented Diredeath had discovered no threat (where in fact he found the place menacing and uninviting to a fault). The Ferenc, however, seemed of a similar mind to Shaithis; except he was perfectly, and honestly, willing to voice it.
“I don’t like it,” he gave his opinion, “for it smells too much like the cave where Volse got his.”
“You’ve let Volse’s death prey on your mind,” Shaithis told him. “And anyway—and as has been said before—forewarned is forearmed. Also, there are three of us this time. Arkis and I, we have our mighty gauntlets, and you have your even mightier talons. And in any case we’re already decided that the bloodbeast was hidden in that first cave. Myself,” (he paused to sniff the cave’s air again), “I think it likely that the cone’s master has worked some beguilement here: he has gloomed on this place and left the smell of death here. But a smell is only a smell, and I smell success! I’m for going in.” He looked from Fess to Arkis.
Arkis shrugged. “If this so-called cone’s master has comforts in there, then I’m with you, Shaithis. I’ve had it to the tusks with hardship! I could use some rich red blood in my belly, and a woman in my bed. D’you suppose it’s a harem he guards so jealously?”
Shaithis’s turn to shrug. “I’ve never been a one for the histories,” he said, “but I’ve heard it said that some of the banished Lords took their concubines with them. We can’t say what we’ll find until we find it.”
“Comforts, aye,” said the Ferenc, licking his lips. “I could use some of those myself. Very well, we go on.”
Shaithis put on a scowl and said, “And how’s this for a turn of events? Are you suddenly our leader? It seems you like having the last word, Fess Ferenc. ‘Arkis, you lead the way.’ And, ‘Very well, we go on.’”
“Bah!” was Fess’s retort. “If no one ever made a decision, then we’d be here forever. Here, let me lead the way …”
Which was exactly what Shaithis had wanted.
The darkness of the interior was like daylight to the vampire Lords, indeed it was preferable to the auroral light and the blue sheen cast by the stars. The Ferenc strode where the way was obvious and unobstructed, inched along where it was made obscure by jumbles, or where the uneven ceiling came down low, or where blisters of lava had burst to form jagged-rimmed, circular cusps of rock like small craters in the almost corrugated texture of the floor. And where other natural fissures or blowholes radiated from the main run, he steadfastly followed the ancient lava flow.
Arkis stayed a pace or so to the Ferenc’s rear, followed immediately by Shaithis. As they progressed so the oppressive sensation of ominous expectancy or foreboding lifted a little, which (to Diredeath and the Ferenc, at least) lent credence to Shaithis’s “theory” that the volcano’s dweller had deliberately set a fearful aura over the mouth of the run to dissuade any would-be explorers.
Shaithis stayed very much on the alert, kept his thoughts fully guarded, would like to contact Shaitan but dared not, not with Fess and Arkis probing in all directions with their minds, their Wamphyri awareness sharp for the smallest hint of mental activity. And always they moved deeper into the heart of the rock.
Eventually, the Ferenc called a halt, whispering, “We must be halfway in at least. Time to take stock.”
“Of what?” Arkis grunted. His blunt query sounded like an avalanche, echoing out and back in slowly decreasing waves of sound.
“Dolt!” Fess whispered again when he could be heard. “What use to have the sense of bats, to be able to smell out the way ahead like wolves and keep our minds tuned for the thoughts of others, when at every opportunity all you can do is make great noise? Would you alert our enemy to our presence?”
Abashed, Arkis kept his answer low: “Hell, if he’s at home, surely by now he knows we’re coming.”
“Perhaps,” Shaithis intervened, “but in any case, let’s keep it quiet.”
“Taking stock, yes,” said the Ferenc. “Going first all this way has taken the edge off my awareness. Arkis, you can spell me.”
“No problem,” and the other took the lead, glad for the chance to make amends. But after moving on only a dozen or so paces:
“Now hold!” Arkis said. “Something’s weird!”
They had all felt it at the same time: a sensory void, a region vacant of all vibrancies, whether for good or evil, a place stagnant as some stirless, sunless subterranean lake. And they likewise knew what that meant: that the place had been made sterile, for even darkness and cold stone have a feel to them. Someone wanted them to believe that there was nothing, absolutely nothing
, here … because there was something here.
Shaithis’s flesh tingled and he knew the others must be feeling the same sensation. Arkis, in the lead, stood rooted to the spot, gurgling inarticulately; but it was much too late for gurgling anything. Shaithis felt the heavy mental curtain deliberately ripped open—felt fear and horror springing into being behind it and rushing to burst through its tattered drapes—then saw the blur of leprous grey which was to be the end of Arkis Leperson, called Diredeath. And indeed his death was dire!
Where the Thing came from would be hard to say—a niche in the wall of the place, a side tunnel, a hiding place in the lee of some bulge of lava—but it came at great speed and with fell intent. And it was exactly as the Ferenc had described it. Patched white and grey, mottled like veined marble, it seemed to uncoil or erupt into being, as if some massive boulder half buried in the floor had come to life and reshaped itself. Its legs were a blur, claws scrabbling as it reared before Arkis; its fish-like head bore a bone lance tapered to a sharp point and equipped with thorns or hooks all along its length; its eyes were like saucers, fixing its victim with their emotionless glare.
Arkis’s gauntlet was on his hand, ready; but as he raised his arm the Thing struck at him in a move too fast to follow. Its lance gashed his short, squat neck as it sawed past, and its needle toothed jaws closed on his gauntlet arm. The arm was severed, swallowed at a gulp. In drawing back, the Thing sawed at Arkis’s neck again and sliced into his whistling airpipe; in the next moment its lance was rammed forward a second time, directly into him, piercing his squat body to the heart. He jerked and throbbed where he was held upright on the bone blade, and his tusks chomped on thin air, turning red as he coughed up a spray of blood.
Fess whirled away from the scene (Shaithis thought to run) and his eyes were huge and scarlet. But a lot more than simple fear lit them: there was fury, too! The giant grabbed Shaithis with one taloned hand and drew back the other like a bunch of black-gleaming scythes. “Treacherous bastard!” he snarled. “Your father’s egg was rotten, and the pus is still in you!”
