Aye, (Shaithis could not restrain himself), laugh long and loud, Fess Ferenc! But remember: he who laughs last . . .
The Ferenc’s chuckling faded in Shaithis’s mind, and: Not too seriously hurt, then? A pity. Or perhaps you merely put a brave face on it? But in any case, I think a warning is in order: don’t interfere, Shaithis. If you think to command your flyer into flight, forget it. For if we can’t find your creature, then be sure we’ll come back for you. Order it to attack us, still we’ll triumph in the end. For as you know well enow, flyers make poor warriors and our thoughts would stab it like arrows. And then we’d come back for you! But only let it be our way and make no protest, and for some little time to come . . . well, at least you’ll know where to go when you’re hungry. And for as long as your flyer lasts – and provided we are not in the vicinity when you go to feed – then you shall last just precisely so long, Shaithis of the Wamphyri.
Shaithis found a deep, sheltered ice-niche in the castle’s labyrinth and hid himself away. He wrapped himself in his cloak and toned down his vibrant vampire aura. Now must be a time of healing. Perhaps he would sleep and conserve his energy. And there was still a little bear-heart left over for when he awakened. So long as he guarded his thoughts and his dreams alike, Volse Pinescu and Fess Ferenc would not find him.
But first there was something he must know. Why, Fess? he sent out one last telepathic question. You could have killed me yet let me live. Not out of the ‘goodness’ of your heart, surely. So why?
Halfway down the ice-stairs, the Ferenc smiled with a mouth almost as wide as his face. You were ever a thinker, Shaithis, he answered. Aye, and a clever one at that. Oh, you’ve made mistakes, certainly, but the man who never made a mistake never made anything. The way I see it, if there’s a way out of this place you’ll find it. And when you do I’ll be right behind you.
And if I don’t?
(The Ferenc’s mental shrug): Blood is blood, Shaithis. And yours is good and rich. Let one thing be clearly understood: if this is as far as we go — if the ice is our destiny – then at the last I shall be the one who sits encased awaiting the Great Thaw. Fess Ferenc and none other. But I shall not go hungry to my fate . . .
Two exiled Wamphyri Lords – one grotesque and huge, and the other hugely grotesque – left the glittering ice-castle and sniffed the bitter air, then let their snouts guide them to Shaithis’s doomed beast.
Meat was not the flyer’s usual fare; its diet would normally consist of crushed bone, grasses from Sunside, honey and other sweet liquids, and some blood. Having metamorphic flesh, however, it was capable of consuming almost anything organic. On this occasion, having gorged itself on the frozen flesh of another flyer, it must now rest until the food was digested and converted. Bloated, it no longer lay where the ex-Lords had first spied it beside the gnawed carcass of Volse’s flyer, but had found shelter slumped in the lee of a great block of ice half a mile to the west, where Shaithis had sent it.
Forming great saucer eyes in its leathery flanks, the dull, stupid thing gloomed on the Ferenc and Volse Pinescu and lolled its diamond head at them as they approached. Moist and heavy-lidded, its eyes ‘saw’ but could scarcely comprehend. Until the flyer was instructed to do something, and then by its rightful master, Shaithis himself, it would do nothing, not even think. Oh, it would seek to protect itself to a degree, but never so far as to harm one of the Wamphyri. For stabs of concentrated vampire telepathy could sting such creatures like darts, bringing them to trembling submission in a moment. Thus, while the flyer would not fly for Fess or Volse, it would lie still for them. Even when they sliced into its warm underbelly to sever great pipes of veins, which they would then suck open.