Page 9 (1/2)
Exiles
Startled, Shaithis fell into a defensive crouch, turned in a slow circle, gazed all about He saw only ice, but kne for certain that this place contained more than that And at last, crihts into a probe: Who speaks?
What? the infirain in his mind, and Shaithis sensed a derisory snort Don’t h, Shaitan! You knoell enoho speaks! Or have the long, lonely years addled your wits? Kehrl Lugoz speaks, old fiend We were exiled together; elled awhile in the caves of the cone; ere ’co as there was meat But when the meat was finished our friendship ith it And I fled while I could
Kehrl Lugoz? Shaithis frowned as he strove to reends almost as old as the race itself And this Shaitan which the hidden speaker referred to: not the Shaitan, surely? He frowned again, and as suspicion turned to curiosity asked: Where are you?
Where I’ve been for how long? Preserved in the ice, undead, that’s where I a in my frozen hell of endless time And you, Shaitan? How has it been for you? Has the cone kept you war in a frozen hell? The very scenario Shaithis had conjured only a o! Yes, and he believed that whoever this Kehrl Lugoz ho spoke to hireat icicles had roused hi, he said then, relaxing a little, for I’m not Shaitan A son of his sons, perhaps, but my name is Shaithis, not Shaitan
Oh? Ha, ha, ha! The other see The Lord of Liars even to the end, eh, Shaitan? Perverse as ever Aye, you were the worst of a bad lot Well, what does it one, and let
The voice faded as its owner sank down again into per all of his vampire senses to their full, believed he’d located its source I’m up here! that mental voice had told him at the onset Somewhere up above
Shaithis was in the heart of the carved, wind-fretted ice-castle now There, locked in clear ice all of three feet thick, he could see a edly up like the ossified root of a glass tooth: a ’splash’ of stony spittle fro the face of the ice-sheath where it covered the castle’s lava foundations, carved into its cold crystal contours, glassy steps wound up out of sight into grottoes of glea for it but to follow them; the vampire Lord ed peak of the core, where its last black igneous fang pointed straight up, as if threatening to break out of its sheath And staring through ice hard as stone, finally Shaithis spied the author of the es he’d heard in the corridors below
There in blue-gleaht in a lava niche, with one hand resting lightly upon a ridge of rock, as upon the arm of a favourite chair - a man ancient as time, weary, withered and weird! Encased as surely as any fly in amber, his eyes were closed, his frozen body motionless, his mien severe as his fate And yet he sat there proudly with his head held high upon a scrawny neck, and with that certain so in his aspect which spoke in: the fact that he was Waoz, whoever he had been
No, whoever he still was!
Shaithis put out a hand to the wall of smooth ice, pressed down hard until his palm was cold and flat A minute went by, then another, until finally: Thud!
It was faint - so very faint and far-see - but it was still there And after a pause of two oz lived However protracted his heartbeat, however fossilized his body (and it was, very nearly, fossilized), still he lived Except, and as Shaithis had already inquired of himself, as this for life?
He stared hard at the shrivelled thing, studying it through three feet of ice which, however pure, nevertheless blurred the picture and shifted its focus with Shaithis’s every smallest motion And now he believed he knew the answer to that other question he’d recently asked himself: which orse, to be buried undead, or sent into the hell-lands, or banished here? And the vaht of all the naoz had come up here and sat himself down, and waited for the ice to form
Thud! And this tihts and was startled, Shaithis snatched back his hand
Kehrl Lugoz was too old even to guess at his age The Wae, do not necessarily show it Shaithis hie, yet looked no older than a well-preserved fifty But in the face of privations such as this one had known, it sioz looked almost as old as time
The eyebrows above his closed, steeply slanted eyes were bushy, white, locked in ice like the rest of him His hair hite as a halo of snow over a brorinkled and brown as a walnut, hite sideboards which frizzed out wildly to half-obscure his conchlike ears His ancient face was not soin its cocoon until wasted The grey cheeks were sunken in, the chin pointed, with a thin wisp of white beard fluffing there Eye-teeth like fangs overshot the withered lower lip; they were yellow and the one on the left was broken There’d been insufficient strength in the frozen varow another
The nostrils in the squat, convoluted nose (more properly a bat’s snout than was usual in : disease, Shaithis supposed And a huge purple as visible bulging under the chin, like the puffedwattle of one of Sunside’s birds
As for Kehrl Lugoz’s garb: he wore a simple black robe, its hood thrown back, wide sleeves floppy about his scrarists, and hem loose around his chicken’s calves Except of course the sleeves and hem were not loose but frozen in ice hard as stone His hands where they protruded froered, with sharp, pointed nails, and upon his right index he wore a large ring of gold Shaithis could not il Veins stood out white in the backs of his hands, instead of olive or purple Before he froze hi
Wake up! Shaithis sent I want to know your history, your secrets Indeed, for it would seem to me that you are Wamphyri history! This Shaitan you speak of: do you mean Shaitan the Unborn? He and his disciples were banished to the Icelands in the very dawn of legends But still here? How? No, I cannot believe it Wake up, Kehrl Lugoz! Answerin the ice had returned to his drea; his shrivelled heart continued to thud, but it seeevity, even suspended animation, is not immortality
’Damn you!’ Shaithis snarled out loud His curse echoed back to hi with other echoes? - from the bowels of the ice-castle He waited until the echoes had died away and only the weirdof ice-winds remained, then sent out his vampire awareness all around Was anyone there?
Well, if there was so his presence Except -
- Suddenly Shaithis re! If someone should find it out there
He reached out hisand loud but this tiet the beast aloft now But at least he could send it away from here
Go! he coo! Westward, half a mile at least, and there hide As best you can, anyway And in hisinstantly to obey him
Then, satisfied that the flyer would put distance between itself, Volse’s dead creature, and what - or whoever else ht possibly be in the vicinity, Shaithis returned to the proble in the ice had been awakened by a fall of icicles So be it
Exploring an upper terrace, the vampire Lord found a vast spout of ice like a frozen waterfall, and at its fringe many lesser for and nine inches through its stem, he snapped off and carried back to the ice-encased husk of Kehrl Lugoz Since the petrified old fool couldn’t be roused by mentalof this great blade of ice against his sheath
Fully absorbed in his task, Shaithis failed to detect the furtive approach of others up the ice staircase He ’shouted’ telepathically at the frozen, ice-distorted figure where it sat: KEHRL LUGOZ, WAKE UP! Then swung back his icicle haoz’s sheath But the great icicle refused to swing, because so his shock fro, vibrating arch of his forked tongue - eyes bulging and crimson, and with his less than hu into a fearsolanced back over his shoulder, then dropped the great icicle and reached for his gauntlet But in that sae talon of a hand fell upon his wrist and trapped it, and Shaithis stared into the grirey faces of two fellow survivors froarden: Fess Ferenc and Volse Pinescu!
He snatched back his hand and stumbled away fro ’But you’ve learned stealth, you two!’
’We’ve learned a great s’ Volse Pinescu choked the words out past a huge scab of crusted pus which half-sealed his lips, i his speech ’Not least how the "invincible" vampire army of Shaithis of the Wamphyri could be burned and blasted and crushed, its aeries destroyed, and its survivors banished like whipped dogs into eternal wastelands of ice!’
Volse’s boil-festooned face turned purple with fury as he took a heavy, threatening step closer to Shaithis But the Ferenc’s teth, and with his terrible hands, he didn’t e in hireat deal, Shaithis,’ he ru here it’s dawned on us just how much Aye, for this is a cold and lonely place’
’Cold?’ Shaithis blustered ’What is cold to the Waet used to it’
Volse strained his head forward aggressively, and a batch of boils on the left side of his neck burst and spurted their yellow pus on to the ice ’Oh?’ he gurgled ’Like he got used to it, d’you mean?’ He inclined his loathsooz seated motionless as a mountain not three impenetrable feet away ’Him and all the others we’ve found, encysted in their echoing fortresses of ice?’
’Others?’ Shaithis looked uncertainly froain
’Dozens of thee, acro at straaiting out their tiical thaw shall come and free them into a land filled with life Or until they die For the cold of this place is not like the cold of Starside, Shaithis Here it goes on for ever! Get used to it?’ (Now he echoed Volse Pinescu) ’Resist it? Warainst it? But fires need fuel - the blood is the life! And hat do we sustain ourselves while we’re "getting used to it"? Blood cools, Shaithis, trickle by trickle, hour by hour Limbs stiffen, and even the stoutest heart runs slow’
Now Volse took it up ’You ask: what is cold to the Wamphyri? Hah! How often were you cold on Starside, Shaithis? I’ll tell you: never! The heat of the hunt kept you war or Traveller Your bed ar at sunup, as were the breasts and buttocks of the lusty wos you had to keep you warm We all had theether and take The Dweller’s garden" And nohat have we got?’
Shaithis looked at the Ferenc, who shrugged and said: ’We have been here longer than you It is cold and we grow colder Worse, we grow hungry’ His voice was now a growl
Volse’s hand touched the ugly gauntlet at his hip tentatively perhaps thoughtfullyit couldBut Shaithis backed away
And as the threatened Lord plunged his hand into his own gauntlet and flexed it there, displaying its gleaes, Fess Ferenc raised an eyebrow and rumbled: ’Two to one, Shaithis? Do you like such odds, then?’
’Not especially,’ Shaithis hissed, ’but I’ll make sure you lose at least as much blood as you drink! Where’s the profit in that?’
Volse grunted, coughed up yellow phlegm and spat it out ’I - say - it - would - be worth it!’ He went into a crouch, and now he too wore his gauntlet
But the Ferenc only relaxed, stepped aside, shrugged again and said: ’Fight if you wish, you two Myself, I’d prefer to eat Full bellies are less fierce, and brains with blood in theht not fit men, but certainly it was applicable to the Waht twice And: ’Hah!’ he snorted, this time at the Ferenc ’But it seery, Fess! For if ere to fight, Shaithis and I, why, you’d sup on the loser - and so er than the winner!’ He nodded and reauntlet ’I’ jaw and grinned, however grie, but I had always considered you just such a fool’
Shaithis, still wary, hung his own gauntlet at his belt, finally nodded and took out fro as his fist ’Here, if you’re so hungry’ And he tossed it Volse snatched it fro jaws upon it But the Ferenc only shook his head
’Red and spurting for et it, anyway’
Shaithis frowned and narrowed his eyes suspiciously as the giant started down the ice-steps ’What’s your plan?’ he snapped ’Who will you kill?’
’Not who but what,’ the Ferenc answered over his shoulder ’And I’ll not kill it but merely deplete it little by little I should think it’s obvious’
Shaithis and Volse went skidding after him ’What?’ Volse questioned round a ’s obvious?’
The Ferenc glanced back at him ’What did you eat when you crashed your exhausted flyer here?’ he said
’Ah-hah!’ Volse spat out chunks of cold dark flesh