‘So I do,’ Shaithis answered. ‘It’s just that I worry when loyalties change so fast, that’s all. And now would you care to finish your own story? The last we heard you’d left your injured warrior in the mouth of a lava-run and gone down onto the plain to examine the ice-castles.’
‘That I did,’ Arkis agreed. ‘And I found things pretty much as the Ferenc described them: the ice-locked thrones of all those unknown Wamphyri Lords out of time, all cracked open and empty, like Sunside hives raped of their honey. Aye, and in those ice-castles which stood more distant from the central cone, there too I found evidence of attempted robbery, except in many an instance the ice had been too thick and the aeon-shrivelled Lords remained safe, unburgled, intact. Which meant that they were also safe from me.
‘Finally I wearied of my eerie explorations. I was hungry but unable to break into these ancient permafrost pantries; the small albino bats no longer trusted me but avoided my crushing hands; if my former thralls the Largazis still lived, by now they’d be halfway here. They’d be exhausted, too, and unable to outrun me. Ah, but that was a thought! It was time I returned to my warrior creature to see how it was holding up. And so I climbed up to the high cavern where I’d hidden the beast away.
‘Except it was not there. Several small pieces of it were there, but that was all.’
The sucking thing.’ The Ferenc nodded. ‘The blood-beast with the hollow, swordlike cartilage snout.’
‘But how so?’ Shaithis wasn’t so sure. ‘For a mindless beast to suck a man or, given time, even a warrior dry, this I can understand. But then, to cut the carcase of so huge a creature into small pieces and drag them away . . .?’
The Ferenc only shrugged. These are the Icelands,’ he said. They harbour strange creatures with stranger habits, and food is scarce here. Now think: on Starside would we ever have dreamed of chewing on the rubbery arteries of a flyer? What, with trogs in our larders and Travellers on the hoof just across the mountains? Not likely! But here? Hah! It didn’t take us long to learn. Oh, we lowered our sights soon enough. And what of the mainly conjectural creatures and beings which have possibly spent their entire lives here? If the loathsome, leprous bloodbeast hunts only for itself, then perhaps it has its own pantry somewhere. And if it hunts for a master?’ Yet again his shrug. ‘Perhaps he’s the one who butchered Arkis’s warrior and dragged its bits away.’
And Shaithis, turning his private thoughts inwards to guard them, thought: A master, aye, you’re right, Fess! A master of evil – the very source of evil – in the shape of a timeless vampire Lord; indeed one of the first true Lords. The dark Lord Shaitan! Shaitan the Unborn! Shaitan the Fallen!
‘Well?’ said Arkis Leperson. ‘Does the Ferenc make sense or what? And if he does, what’s our next move?’
And perhaps cautiously, Shaithis answered, The Ferenc makes sense – possibly.’ And to himself: Indeed he does, for a misshapen fool! But he’s been here longer than I have. Perhaps this isn’t the sudden burgeoning of previously unsuspected intelligence in the great freak, but simply the fact that he’s had longer to feel Shaitan’s influence at work … to feel his ancient eyes on him, staring through the pink orbits of his myriad albino minions!
Now the Ferenc echoed Arkis: ‘Well? What now, Shaithis? D’you have a plan?’
A plan? Oh, yes, a plan! To discover more about this Shaitan; to seek him out and learn why he allowed me to clothe myself in his albinos for their warmth; but mainly to know what it is, this weird affinity, which draws me to a creature I’ve never known except in muttered myths and legends.
And out loud: ‘A plan, aye,’ he answered. And thinking with his usual, almost casual clarity, he created a plan out of thin air, entirely on the spur of the moment. One which would, he hoped, suit his vampire companions, and one which especially suited himself. ‘First we cut a good weight of meat out of this flyer,’ he said, ‘as much as we can carry comfortably; and then, on our way to the central cone, you can show me some more of the frozen Lords. So far I’ve seen only the one,’ (Kehrl Lugoz, who was banished here along with Shaitan at the dawn of Wamphyri tyranny), ‘upon which, due to its insufficiency, I may not base a firm opinion. Then, in the inner ice-castles, you may also care to show me these shattered keeps wherefrom the bodies of certain Lords have been stolen. These several things for a start, then.’ And I’ll think of others as we go along.