by Brian Lumley
Oh, yes, surely Hell’s gate! Where I’ve just witnessed a so-called ancestor of mine emptying the Ferenc’s head like a rat sucking out a stolen egg.
And: “Indeed you have!” Shaitan had at once, gurglingly, agreed, while his crimson eyes in their yellow orbits glared out from the darkness beneath the black, corrugated flesh of his cobra’s hood. “My creature siphoned off his blood—for safekeeping, until later, you understand—and I sucked out his brain. But you’ll note how we left the best for you, eh?”
With which he’d made a small effort to propel the corpse in Shaithis’s direction, so that it had appeared to take two stumbling, flopping steps towards him before crashing at his feet. And of course he’d known exactly what the other meant. For hiding in the Ferenc’s huge, pale, dehydrated shell, his vampire (ah, sweetmeat of sweetmeats!) was still to be discovered and reckoned with. And:
“Won’t you join me?” Shaitan had offered a clotted, gurgled invitation—before wrenching Arkis from the bubbling blade of the ingurgitor and throwing him down to the lava floor, there falling or flowing over him as he commenced to search for his frantic, cringing parasite.
To this point events had left Shathis somewhat stunned—but not for much longer. He was after all Wamphyri, and all of this had been much as anticipated. And of course, the blood was the life. Dining with Shaitan may even have sealed something of a bond between them.
It might have, anyway.
After that …
There was a lot to remember and events contrived to jumble. A good many fractured scenes and conversations overlapped their jagged edges in Shaithis’s memory. As contrary breezes blew up off the cold blue star- and aurora-litten waste, bringing nodding snow devils to swirl around the bases of the glittering, plundered ice-castle tombs of anciently exiled Wamphyri, so he attempted to arrange these fragments in chronological order, or failing that to separate them at least.
Shaitan’s cavernous workshop, for example, located immediately beneath the volcano’s hitherto unseen north-facing scarp, where soon after Shaithis’s advent the Fallen One had escorted him upon a guided tour.
Apart from the high-ceilinged, stalactite-adorned vastness of the place—with its near-opaque windows of ice looking out upon and lending grotesque distortion to the very roof of the world, and its deep permafrost pits where Shaitan was wont to confine in ice his more volatile, less manageable experiments—the workshop had seemed much like any other. Shaithis, too, was a master of just such creative metamorphism; or so he had always considered himself, until he saw his ancestor’s work.
Gazing down on one such piece through ice clear as water, he had offered his opinion: “This alone would suffice to have you denounced and banished afresh, or destroyed outright, if this were Starside and the Old Wamphyri still held sway. Why, it has reproductive organs, which were forbidden!”
“A bull, aye,” Shaitan had answered with a nod of his cowl. “Alas but procreation, the act of copulation, its contemplation—even the possession of organs, of the means—drives creatures to rage. I made this one a mate, female, which for thanks he at once tore to pieces! But even if she’d lived and brought forth, what then? I cannot see that he’d permit offspring to survive but would surely devour them at the first opportunity. Just look at him, and as yet half grown! But so untrustworthy, at last I was obliged to freeze him here. The fault was his sex. It made him prideful and pride is a curse. It’s the same with men, of course …”
“And therefore with the Wamphyri,” Shaithis had said.
“More so!” Shaitan cried. “For in them all such urges are amplified by ten!”
“But they don’t tear their odalisques in pieces. At least, not always.”
“More fool them,” said Shaitan. “For if you can live forever, what sense to breed that of your own flesh which may one day usurp and destroy you?”
“And yet you sought out women in which to spend yourself,” Shaithis had been quick to point out, “else I’d not be here.”
And at that their eyes had met and locked across Shaitan’s creature frozen in its pit of ice, and after a while the Fallen One had answered: “I did, it’s true—and perhaps for that very reason …”
It had been their first argument or discussion as such, but only one of a great many to come. And while it would soon become Shaithis’s complaint that his ancestor conversed with him in terms more befitting a child, generally he accepted that the ancient, evil Being was trying to instruct him. Perhaps he considered his great age gave him the right; for after all, he was Shaithis’s senior to the extent of seven spans.
… Another time: Shaithis had been shown a developing siphon-snout, absorbing liquids where it gradually took on shape and substance in a vat. The thing was much similar to the guardian ingurgitors (of which the volcano’s master had three) but the siphon was longer, more flexible, and bedded at its roots in great walls of flesh, so that the creature’s tiny, greedily glittering eyes were almost entirely hidden in bulging bands of grey, gleaming muscle. Shaithis had known immediately what the thing was, inquiring of Shaitan:
“But don’t you have enough of these? It surprises me you trouble yourself to make more. By now you’ve surely had the best of the ice-encysted Wamphyri … those of them who were readily got at, anyway. So what use to persist?”
Shaitan had cocked his cobra’s head on one side, coiled up his arms, and inquired: “And have you fathomed it all, my son? Do you know the precise use to which they’re put, these things of mine?”
“Certainly. They are variations on a theme: ingurgitors not unlike that or those which stopped Volse and Arkis, but rather more specialized. Their slender, bone-tipped cartilage snouts vibrate in ice to shatter it, whereby paths are drilled to the suspended exiles in their otherwise impenetrable sheaths. Once a channel has been cut, then the beast drains off its victim’s liquids through its snout, which siphoned fluids—”
“—Are then regurgitated into my reservoirs!” Shaitan, perhaps peeved with Shaithis’s ingenuity, had finished it for him. “Yes, yes—but aren’t you curious to know how? How may the driller siphon off solids, eh? For of course his victims are mainly frozen, whose fluids gurgle like glue.”
“Ah!” Shaithis had been fascinated.
“I will explain … in a moment. As to why I bother myself with these Old Lords, when (as you’ve pointed out) they’re now so few in number and invariably low in sustenance, the answer to that is simple: because it pleases me to do so. The terror in the minds of those of them who can still think at all is so rare and delicious as to be exquisite. If I had not them, then whom would I terrify, eh? Could I even exist, without my measure of tyranny and terror?”
And Shaithis had understood. Evil feeds on terror; without one the other cannot exist; they are inseparable as space and time. And reading his thoughts, Shaitan had whisperingly, gurglingly, chortlingly agreed:
“Aye, it’s simple as that: I like it, and I need the practice!”
So that was why; and the how of it was likewise simple:
The drillers squirted metamorphic acids into their victims, whose desiccated tissues then dissolved into liquids which were drawn off before they could resolidify.
“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?”
&n
bsp; 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’d 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 in the east. I’ve heard of such 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 noisy 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 allowed it to be. I repeat: it was because I was willful 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 left 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 at a loss 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 earlier 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?”
